eemed bereft of hope.

The tied-up knocker, the straw-strewn street, the closely drawn curtains
announced to London the next morning that the distinguished minister
was seriously ill; and from an early hour the tide of inquirers, in
carriages and on foot, passed silently along that dreary way. High and
mighty were the names inscribed in the porter's book; royal dukes
had called in person; and never was public solicitude more widely
manifested. There is something very flattering in the thought of a great
intelligence being damaged and endangered in our service! With all its
melancholy influences, there is a feeling of importance suggested by
the idea that for us and our interests a man of commanding powers should
have jeoparded his life. There is a very general prejudice, not alone in
obtaining the best article for our money, but the most of it also;
and this sentiment extends to the individuals employed in the public
service; and it is doubtless a very consolatory reflection to the
tax-paying classes that the great functionaries of state are not
indolent recipients of princely incomes, but hard-worked men of office,
up late and early at their duties,--prematurely old, and worn out before
their time! Something of this same feeling inspires much of the sympathy
displayed for a sick statesman,--a sentiment not altogether void of a
certain misgiving that we have probably over-taxed the energies employed
in our behalf.

Scarcely one in a hundred of those who now called and "left their names"
had ever seen Sir Horace Upton in their lives. Few are more removed from
public knowledge than the men who fill even the highest places in
our diplomacy. He was, therefore, to the mass a mere name. Since his
accession to office little or nothing had been heard of him, and of that
little, the greater part was made up of sneering allusions to his habits
of indolence; impertinent hints about his caprices and his tastes. Yet
now, by a grand effort in the "House," and a well got-up report of a
dangerous illness the day after, was he the most marked man in all the
state,--the theme of solicitude throughout two millions of people!

There was a dash of mystery, too, in the whole incident, which
heightened its flavor for public taste; a vague, indistinct
impression--it did not even amount to rumor--was abroad, that Sir Horace
had not been "fairly treated" by his colleagues; either that they could,
if they wished it, have defended the cause them