quite another sort of creature. Thence all ideas, that
were purely ornamental, were banished. You could not speak of any
thing romantic without rebuke. Politics were excluded. A newspaper was
thought too refined and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in
writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the annual balance in
the company's books (which, perhaps, differed from the balance of last
year in the sum of 25_l._ 1_s._ 6_d._) occupied his days and nights
for a month previous. Not that Tipp was blind to the deadness of
_things_ (as they call them in the city) in his beloved house, or did
not sigh for a return of the old stirring days when South Sea hopes
were young--(he was indeed equal to the wielding of any the most
intricate accounts of the most flourishing company in these or those
days):--but to a genuine accountant the difference of proceeds is
as nothing. The fractional farthing is as dear to his heart as the
thousands which stand before it. He is the true actor, who, whether
his part be a prince or a peasant, must act it with like intensity.
With Tipp form was every thing. His life was formal. His actions
seemed ruled with a ruler. His pen was not less erring than his heart.
He made the best executor in the world: he was plagued with incessant
executorships accordingly, which excited his spleen and soothed his
vanity in equal ratios. He would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little
orphans, whose rights he would guard with a tenacity like the grasp of
the dying hand, that commended their interests to his protection. With
all this there was about him a sort of timidity--(his few enemies used
to give it a worse name)--a something which, in reverence to the dead,
we will place, if you please, a little on this side of the heroic.
Nature certainly had been pleased to endow John Tipp with a sufficient
measure of the principle of self-preservation. There is a cowardice
which we do not despise, because it has nothing base or treacherous in
its elements; it betrays itself, not you: it is mere temperament; the
absence of the romantic and the enterprising; it sees a lion in the
way, and will not, with Fortinbras, "greatly find quarrel in a straw,"
when some supposed honour is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a
stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of a balcony; or
walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked down a precipice; or let
off a gun; or went upon a water-party; or would willingly let