a court, who might have been
the tutelar genius of an empire.

_Memoirs and Correspondence of the Most Noble Richard Marquess
Wellesley._ By ROBERT B. PEARCE, Esq. 3 vols. London: Bentley.

LETTER TO EUSEBIUS.

MY DEAR EUSEBIUS,--I have received yours from the hands of the bearer,
and such hands! Why write to consult me about railroads, of all things?
I know nothing about them, but that they all seem to tend to some
Pandemonium or another; and when I see of a dark night their
monster-engines, with eyes of flame and tongues of fire, licking up the
blackness under them, and snuffing up, as it were, the airs from Hades,
I could almost fancy the stoker a Mercury, conducting his hermetically
sealed convicts down those terrible passages that lead direct to the
abominable ferry. I said, "I know nothing of them;" but now I verily
believe you mean to twit me with my former experiment in railway
knowledge, and have no intention to purchase shares in the La Mancha
Company (and I doubt if there be any such) to countenance your Quixotic
pleasantry. I did speculate once, it is true, in one--London and
Falmouth Scheme--with very large promises. I was then living at W----,
when one day, just before I was going to sit down to dinner, a chaise
stops at my door, out steps a very "smart man," and is ushered into my
library. When I went into the room, he was examining, quite in a
connoisseur attitude, Eusebius, a picture; he was very fond of pictures,
he said; had a small but choice collection of his own, and I won't say
that he did not speak of the Correggiosity of Correggio. I was upon the
point of interrupting him, with the intimation that I did not mean to
purchase any, when, having thus ingratiated himself with me by this
reference to my taste, he suddenly turns round upon me with the most
business-like air, draws from under his cloak an imposingly official
portfolio, takes out his scrip, presenting me with a demand for fifty
pounds, the deposit of so many shares, looking positively certain that
in a few seconds the money would be in his pocket. People say, Eusebius,
that the five minutes before a dinner is the worst time in the world to
touch the heart, or to get any thing out of a man's pocket for
affection; but I do not know if it be not the best time for an attack,
if there be a speculation on foot which promises much to his interest,
for at that time he is naturally greedy. Had Belisarius, with his dying
boy