eave, when the clerk, in his removal of
some papers, not to be trusted within reach of a stranger, dropped a
letter from the bundle, on which was my name. From the variety of
addresses it had evidently travelled far, and had been returned from
half the post-offices of the Continent. It was two months' old, but
its news was to me most interesting. It was from Mordecai; and after
alluding to some pecuniary transactions with his foreign brethren,
always the first topic, he hurried on in his usual abrupt
strain:--"Mariamne has insisted on my leaving England for a while.
This is perplexing; as the war must produce a new loan, and London
is, after all, the only place where those affairs can be transacted
without trouble.--My child is well, and yet she looks pallid from
time to time, and sheds tears when she thinks herself unobserved. All
this may pass away, but it makes me uneasy; and, as she has evidently
made up her mind to travel, I have only to give way--for, with all
her caprices, she is my child, my only child, and my beloved child!

"I have heard a good deal of your proceedings from my correspondent
and kinsman in Paris. You have acquitted yourself well, and it shall
not be unknown in the quarter where it may be of most service to
you.--I have been stopped by Mariamne's singing in the next room, and
her voice has almost unmanned me; she is melancholy of late, and her
only music now is taken from those ancestral hymns which our nation
regard as the songs of the Captivity. Her tones at this moment are
singularly touching, and I have been forced to lay down my pen, for
she has melted me to tears. Yet her colour has not altogether faded
lately, and I think sometimes that her eyes look brighter than ever!
Heaven help me, if I should lose her. I should then be alone in the
world.

"You may rely on my intelligence--a war is _inevitable_. You may also
rely on my conjecture--that it will be the most desperate war which
Europe has yet seen. One that will break up _foundations_, as well as
break down superstructures; not a war of politics but of principles;
not a war for conquest but for ruin. All the treasuries of Europe
will be bankrupt within a twelvemonth of its commencement; unless
England shall become their banker. This will be the harvest of the
men of money.--It is unfortunate that your money is all lodged for
your commission; otherwise, in the course of a few operations, you
might make cent per cent, which I propose to