d all the combinations
of human character, developed my own powers, and mastered the resources
of others. What expedient in negotiation is unknown to me? What degree
of endurance have I not calculated? What play of the countenance have
I not observed? Yes, among my creditors, I have disciplined that
diplomatic ability that shall some day confound and control cabinets.
O, my debts, I feel your presence like that of guardian angels! If I be
lazy, you prick me to action; if elate, you subdue me to reflection;
and thus it is that you alone can secure that continuous yet controlled
energy which conquers mankind.'

Notwithstanding all this, Fakredeen had grown sometimes a little wearied
even of the choice excitement of pecuniary embarrassment. It was
too often the same story, the adventures monotonous, the characters
identical. He had been plundered by every usurer in the Levant, and in
turn had taken them in. He sometimes delighted his imagination by the
idea of making them disgorge; that is to say, when he had established
that supremacy which he had resolved sooner or later to attain. Although
he never kept an account, his memory was so faithful that he knew
exactly the amount of which he had been defrauded by every individual
with whom he had had transactions. He longed to mulct them, to
the service of the State, in the exact amount if their unhallowed
appropriations. He was too good a statesman ever to confiscate; he
confined himself to taxation. Confiscation is a blunder that destroys
public credit: taxation, on the contrary, improves it, and both come to
the same thing.

That the proud soul of Tancred of Montacute, with its sublime
aspirations, its inexorable purpose, its empyrean ambition, should find
a votary in one apparently so whimsical, so worldly, and so worthless,
may at the first glance seem improbable; yet a nearer and finer
examination may induce us to recognise its likelihood. Fakredeen had
a brilliant imagination and a passionate sensibility; his heart was
controlled by his taste, and, when that was pleased and satisfied, he
was capable of profound feeling and of earnest conduct. Moral worth
had no abstract charms for him, and he could sympathise with a dazzling
reprobate; but virtue in an heroic form, lofty principle, and sovereign
duty invested with all the attributes calculated to captivate his rapid
and refined perception, exercised over him a resistless and transcendent
spell. The deep and discipline