eed,
with building and cultivation; but stock is not capital, any more than
the fat of a corpulent man is health or strength."

"Surely, Mr. Touchwood," said Bindloose, who felt his own account in the
modern improvements, "a set of landlords, living like lairds in good
earnest, and tenants with better housekeeping than the lairds used to
have, and facing Whitsunday and Martinmas as I would face my
breakfast--if these are not signs of wealth, I do not know where to seek
for them."

"They are signs of folly, sir," replied Touchwood; "folly that is poor,
and renders itself poorer by desiring to be thought rich; and how they
come by the means they are so ostentatious of, you, who are a banker,
perhaps can tell me better than I can guess."

"There is maybe an accommodation bill discounted now and then, Mr.
Touchwood; but men must have accommodation, or the world would stand
still--accommodation is the grease that makes the wheels go."

"Ay, makes them go down hill to the devil," answered Touchwood. "I left
you bothered about one Ayr bank, but the whole country is an Air bank
now, I think--And who is to pay the piper?--But it's all one--I will see
little more of it--it is a perfect Babel, and would turn the head of a
man who has spent his life with people who love sitting better than
running, silence better than speaking, who never eat but when they are
hungry, never drink but when thirsty, never laugh without a jest, and
never speak but when they have something to say. But here, it is all
run, ride, and drive--froth, foam, and flippancy--no steadiness--no
character."

"I'll lay the burden of my life," said Dame Dods, looking towards her
friend Bindloose, "that the gentleman has been at the new Spaw-waal
yonder!"

"Spaw do you call it, madam?--If you mean the new establishment that has
been spawned down yonder at St. Ronan's, it is the very fountain-head of
folly and coxcombry--a Babel for noise, and a Vanity-fair for
nonsense--no well in your swamps tenanted by such a conceited colony of
clamorous frogs."

"Sir, sir!" exclaimed Dame Dods, delighted with the unqualified sentence
passed upon her fashionable rivals, and eager to testify her respect for
the judicious stranger who had pronounced it,--"will you let me have the
pleasure of pouring you out a dish of tea?" And so saying, she took
bustling possession of the administration which had hitherto remained in
the hands of Mr. Bindloose himself.

"I hope it is to y