owing
that if they fail, they lose nothing but what was lost long since--their
credit."

The career of Audley's ambition closed with the extinction of the "court
of wards," by which he incurred the loss of above L100,000. On that
occasion he observed that "His ordinary losses were as the shavings of
his beard, which only grew the faster by them; but the loss of this
place was like the cutting off of a member, which was irrecoverable."
The hoary usurer pined at the decline of his genius, discoursed on the
vanity of the world, and hinted at retreat. A facetious friend told him
a story of an old rat, who having acquainted the young rats that he
would at length retire to his hole, desiring none to come near him;
their curiosity, after some days, led them to venture to look into the
hole; and there they discovered the old rat sitting in the midst of a
rich Parmesan cheese. The loss of the last L100,000 may have disturbed
his digestion, for he did not long survive his court of wards.

Such was this man, converting wisdom into cunning, invention into
trickery, and wit into cynicism. Engaged in no honourable cause, he
however showed a mind resolved; making plain the crooked and involved
path he trod. _Sustine et abstine_, to bear and forbear, was the great
principle of Epictetus, and our moneyed Stoic bore all the contempt and
hatred of the living smilingly, while he forbore all the consolations of
our common nature to obtain his end. He died in unblest celibacy,--and
thus he received the curses of the living for his rapine, while the
stranger who grasped the million he had raked together owed him no
gratitude at his death.

CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE.

I have already drawn a picture of Jewish history in our country; the
present is a companion-piece, exhibiting a Roman Catholic one.

The domestic history of our country awakens our feelings far more than
the public. In the one, we recognise ourselves as men; in the other, we
are nothing but politicians. The domestic history is, indeed, entirely
involved in the fate of the public; and our opinions are regulated
according to the different countries, and by the different ages we live
in; yet systems of politics, and modes of faith, are, for the
individual, but the chance occurrences of human life, usually found in
the cradle and laid in the grave: it is only the herd of mankind, or
their artful leaders, who fight and curse one another with so much
sincerity. Amidst these in