gular undeniable case of "_infandum
regina_." The only comfort is, that our fingers were simultaneously
burned.

Amongst other transactions, I had been induced by my old fiend Cutts,
now in practice as an independent engineer, to apply for a large
allocation of shares in the Slopperton Valley, a very spirited
undertaking, for which the Saxon was engaged to invent the gradients.
This occurred about the commencement of the great Potato Revolution--an
event which I apprehend will be long remembered by the squirearchy and
shareholders of these kingdoms. The money-market was beginning to
exhibit certain symptoms of tightness; premiums were melting perceptibly
away, and new schemes were in diminished favour. Under these
circumstances, the Provisional Committee of the Slopperton Valley
Company were beneficent enough to gratify my wishes to the full, and
accorded to me the large privilege of three hundred original shares. Two
months earlier this would have been equivalent to a fortune--as it was,
I must own that my gratitude was hardly commensurate to the high
generosity of the donors. I am not sure that I did not accompany the
receipt of my letter of allocation with certain expletives by no means
creditable to the character of the projectors--at all events, I began to
look with a milder eye upon the atrocities of Pennsylvanian repudiation.
However, as the crash was by no means certain, my sanguine temperament
overcame me, and in a fit of temporary derangement I paid the deposit.

In the ensuing week the panic became general. Capel-court was deserted
by its herd--Liverpool in a fearful state of commercial coma--Glasgow
trembling throughout its Gorbals--and Edinburgh paralytically shaking.
The grand leading doctrine of political economy once more was recognised
as a truth: the supply exorbitantly exceeded the demand, and there were
no buyers. The daily share-list became a far more pathetic document in
my eyes than the Sorrows of Werter. The circular of my brokers, Messrs
Tine and Transfer, contained a tragedy more woful than any of the
conceptions of Shakspeare--the agonies of blighted love are a joke
compared with those of baffled avarice; and of all kinds of consumption,
that of the purse is the most severe. One circumstance, however, struck
me as somewhat curious. Neither in share-list nor circular could I find
any mention made of the Slopperton Valley. It seemed to have risen like
an exhalation, and to have departed in simi