placed it with interest in his house. If I would but
listen to him, my capital might be trebled in a year, he says, and the
interest immensely increased. He enjoys the greatest esteem among the
moneyed men here; keeps a splendid establishment and house here in
Barrackpore; is princely in his benefactions. He talks to me about the
establishment of a bank, of which the profits are so enormous and the
scheme so (seemingly) clear, that I don't know whether I mayn't be
tempted to take a few shares. Nous verrons. Several of my friends are
longing to have a finger in it; but be sure this, I shall do nothing
rashly and without the very best advice.

"'I have not been frightened yet by your draughts upon me. Draw as many
of these as you please. You know I don't half like the other kind of
drawing, except as a delassement: but if you chose to be a weaver, like
my grandfather, I should not say you nay. Don't stint yourself of money
or of honest pleasure. Of what good is money, unless we can make those
we love happy with it? There would be no need for me to save, if you
were to save too. So, and as you know as well as I what our means are,
in every honest way use them. I should like you not to pass the whole
of next year in Italy, but to come home and pay a visit to honest James
Binnie. I wonder how the old barrack in Fitzroy Square looks without
me? Try and go round by Paris on your way home, and pay your visit, and
carry your father's fond remembrances to Madame la Comtesse de Florac.
I don't say remember me to my brother, as I write Brian by this mail.
Adieu, mon fils! je t'embrasse!--and am always my Clive's affectionate
father, T. N.'"

"Isn't he a noble old trump?" That point had been settled by the young
men any time these three years. And now Mr. J. J. remarked that when
Clive had read his father's letter once, then he read Ethel's over
again, and put it in his breast-pocket, and was very disturbed in mind
that day, pishing and pshawing at the statue-gallery which they went to
see at the Museo.

"After all," says Clive, "what rubbish these second-rate statues are!
what a great hulking abortion is this brute of a Farnese Hercules!
There's only one bit in the whole gallery that is worth a
twopenny-piece."

It was the beautiful fragment called Psyche. J. J. smiled as his comrade
spoke in admiration of this statue--in the slim shape, in the delicate
formation of the ne