will procure everything but life. Pray what difference is there between speculating in divs and consols, and in tea and bees' wax? Foolish girl, none whatever. I have resolved to lay to our estate before I die many goodly acres, so don't you talk ridiculously; and, indeed, I must seriously desire that you will henceforth not interfere with the 'concerns of great pith and moment' in which your husband and myself are about to be engaged."

Thus did the father deliver himself, and in an imperious tone and attitude not to be mistaken by the consternated Letitia. Poor Letitia! her pride was wounded, and when she thought how Lady Dashover and company would exult, she was indeed annoyed. Her husband's visits to London now became very frequent, and after a while it might, without the fear of contradiction, be said that he spent full half his time in the metropolis, a change which his young wife did not regard as the dictates of that pure affection which he had hitherto professed, nor as one which a youthful partner ought to think of

VOL. II.

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unconcernedly. But she had no other alternative, and if she did venture to remonstrate against this breaking up of domestic quiet, she was speedily silenced by her parent, whose over-weening vanity and thirst for gain, bid him sacrifice everything to his own gratifications.

Favouring breezes filled the sails of speculation, and wafted on the partnership towards the wished-for haven of fortune. Father and son were in high spirits, and the occupants of Elleringay were manifestly destined for still greater advancement. In London Jemmy boasted of his seat in the country, and in the country Gideon vaunted of his immense profits. Again and again did the latter apostrophize to himself, and declare what a noodle he had been to waste so much of his life in those soporific and dismal chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields, when he might by entering into commercial speculations have been worth more by tens of thousands-nay, when he might undoubtedly, with his acumen, have been one of the merchant princes. But, argued he, people

only find out great truths when they are going to die.

Now as Mr. Inglis had by his marriage, and by his present extensive concerns, become a man of some importance, he resolved during his town visits to merge a little more into the aristocratic districts, in other words, to penetrate the regions of the West End, and by one scheme or another he was at length proposed and voted into one of the second-class clubs. He had, like many other gentlemen of his kind of mind, notions amounting to conviction, that it was a very respectable thing to speak of my club, to write letters from the club, and so forth; besides, as this great change in his life had unavoidably driven him much from his own fire-side, it was expedient that he should find a temporary home in town, where he could comfortably wile away his leisure hours.

He had not been a member long before he spoke in the most eulogistic terms of these institutions, and avowed his protest that they were the most rational and praiseworthy

inventions going. To be a member of a club was, in his opinion, to be living in the great common world, where a man found choice society, rubbed off antiquated notions, and really saw what was going on in every day life. It is true he had heard the arguments against them, to wit, that wives, mothers, sisters, and so forth, had towards these establishments an invincible hatred, but he reasoned within himself that it was the nature of the other sex to love opposites, and thwart the sounder understandings of their lords; ergo, they ought not to be noticed.

Soon did he become a gay and fashionable lounger on the ample steps of that noble pile, and in no great length of time he was to be observed cracking jokes, and joining in the loud laughing ha! ha! with whiskered dandies and moustached idlers. The club became more attractive than the 'Change, and he learnt to chatter with more delight on the second-hand scandal of St. James' or Pall Mall, than seriously talk with brokers and money makers. To have discoursed with his new acquaintances on the qualities

of Congou, or like utilitarian articles, would have been to disgust his ring-fingered hearers, and absolutely horrify these "silken sons of pleasure." His doings east of Temple Bar now began to be performed with little zest, and we fear he did not keep that lynxeyed watch on the markets which had been his wont. When he went down to Elleringay, some little exertion was required; he then had to act his part at dissimulation, and throw the dust in the eyes of his revered partner, which task, to tell the truth, Jemmy had the tact and adroitness to very cleverly manage.

The success which had attended the first few transactions of the firm had the most benumbing effect on the reflective faculties of Gideon, and he verily thought that he might with confidence place his existence in the clever and honest hands of his son-inlaw. At the expiration of the first two or three quarters Gideon did go to London and examine the accounts, but really it was a useless errand, as everything was balanced up to a farthing, and very consoling sums of