icular. Were we
both engineers, you would spend your life in watching some old woman's
wheel, which spins flax by the ounce; I must be in the midst of the
most varied and counteracting machinery, regulating checks and
counter-checks, balancing weights, proving springs and wheels, directing
and controlling a hundred combined powers."

"And your fortune, in the meanwhile?" said Jerningham; "pardon this last
hint, my lord."

"My fortune," said the Duke, "is too vast to be hurt by a petty
wound; and I have, as thou knowest, a thousand salves in store for
the scratches and scars which it sometimes receives in greasing my
machinery."

"Your Grace does not mean Dr. Wilderhead's powder of projection?"

"Pshaw! he is a quacksalver, and mountebank, and beggar."

"Or Solicitor Drowndland's plan for draining the fens?"

"He is a cheat,--_videlicet_, an attorney."

"Or the Laird of Lackpelf's sale of Highland woods?"

"He is a Scotsman," said the Duke,--"_videlicet_, both cheat and
beggar."

"These streets here, upon the site of your noble mansion-house?" said
Jerningham.

"The architect's a bite, and the plan's a bubble. I am sick of the sight
of this rubbish, and I will soon replace our old alcoves, alleys, and
flower-pots by an Italian garden and a new palace."

"That, my lord, would be to waste, not to improve your fortune," said
his domestic.

"Clodpate, and muddy spirit that thou art, thou hast forgot the most
hopeful scheme of all--the South Sea Fisheries--their stock is up 50
per cent. already. Post down to the Alley, and tell old Mansses to buy
L20,000 for me.--Forgive me, Plutus, I forgot to lay my sacrifice on thy
shrine, and yet expected thy favours!--Fly post-haste, Jerningham--for
thy life, for thy life, for thy life!"[*]

[*] Stock-jobbing, as it is called, that is, dealing in shares of
monopolies, patent, and joint-stock companies of every
description, was at least as common in Charles II.'s time as our
own; and as the exercise of ingenuity in this way promised a road
to wealth without the necessity of industry, it was then much
pursued by dissolute courtiers.

With hands and eyes uplifted, Jerningham left the apartment; and the
Duke, without thinking a moment farther on old or new intrigues--on the
friendship he had formed, or the enmity he had provoked--on the beauty
whom he had carried off from her natural protectors, as well as from
her lover--or on the monarch against whom