ores of
an inhospitable sea--in a climate of nine months' winter--to show
that I am able to conquer all the obstacles of nature. I might have
fixed it on the shores of the Euxine--in the most fertile regions
of Asia--in the superb plains of central Russia--or on the banks of
the Danube; but I preferred fixing it in the extremity of the
North, to show that the mind and power of Russia dreaded no
impediments, of either man or nature.'

"I am now in London for a week. You will find me in my den."

I visited him "in his den;" and it deserved the name as much as ever.
Not a pane had been cleared of its dinginess; not a cobweb had been
swept from its ceiling; nothing had been removed, except the pair of
living skeletons who once acted as his attendants. They had been
removed by the Remover of all things; and were succeeded by a pair, so
similar in meagreness and oddity of appearance, that I could not have
known the change, except for its mention by their master, congratulating
himself on being so "fortunate" in finding substitutes. I found Mordecai
immersed in day-books and ledgers, and calculating the exchanges with as
much anxiety as if he were not worth a shilling. But his look was more
languid than before, and his powerful eye seemed to have sunk deeper
beneath his brow.

"You are probably surprised at seeing me here;" said he, "but I have
more reason than ever to be here. There is a time for all things, but
not if we throw it away. My last excursion to Poland has revived my zeal
in behalf of my nation; and as years advance on me, like the rest of the
world, I find that I must only exert myself the more."

"But, Mordecai, you are opulent; you can have no necessity for
abandoning the natural indulgences of life. You will only shorten your
days by this toil. At least why do you linger in this dungeon?"

He smiled grimly. "It _is_ a dungeon, and I only value it the more. To
this dungeon, as you call it, come, day by day, some of the haughtiest
names of the land. If I lived in some west-end Square, with my
drawing-room filled with _Louis Quatorze_ gew-gaws, and half-a-dozen
idle fellows in livery to announce my visitors, I should not feel the
hundredth part of the sense of superiority, the contemptuous triumph,
the cool consciousness of the tyranny of gold, which I feel when I see
my shrinking supplicants sitting down among my dusty boxes and
everlasting cobwebs. I shall not suffer a grain