eir
favour; and acting upon that sublime scale of measures for which this
great nation has always been so famous, the Statue issued an edict that
a new literature should be invented, in order at once to complete the
education of the Millionaires and the triumph of the Romantic over the
Classic School of Manners.

The most eminent writers were, as usual, in the pay of the Government,
and BURLINGTON, A TALE OF FASHIONABLE LIFE in three volumes post octavo,
was sent forth. Two or three similar works, bearing titles equally
euphonious and aristocratic, were published daily; and so exquisite was
the style of these productions, so naturally artificial the construction
of their plots, and so admirably inventive the conception of their
characters, that many who had been repulsed by the somewhat abstract
matter and arid style of the treatises, seduced by the interest of a
story, and by the dazzling delicacies of a charming style, really now
picked up a considerable quantity of very useful knowledge; so that when
the delighted students had eaten some fifty or sixty imaginary dinners
in my lord's dining-room, and whirled some fifty or sixty imaginary
waltzes in my lady's dancing-room, there was scarcely a brute left among
the whole Millionaires. But what produced the most beneficial effects on
the new people, and excited the greatest indignation and despair among
the old class, were some volumes which the Government, with shocking
Machiavelism, bribed some needy scions of nobility to scribble, and
which revealed certain secrets vainly believed to be quite sacred and
inviolable.

CHAPTER 13

Shortly after the sailing of the great fleet the Private Secretary
engaged in a speculation which was rather more successful than any
one contained in his pamphlet on 'The Present State of the Western
Republics.'

One morning, as he and Popanilla were walking on a quay, and
deliberating on the clauses of the projected commercial treaty between
Vraibleusia and Fantaisie, the Secretary suddenly stopped, as if he had
seen his father's ghost or lost the thread of his argument, and asked
Popanilla, with an air of suppressed agitation, whether he observed
anything in the distance. Popanilla, who, like all savages, was
long-sighted, applying to his eye the glass which, in conformity to the
custom of the country, he always wore round his neck, confessed that he
saw nothing. The Secretary, who had never unfixed his glass nor moved
a step sin