ancient church of St. Pogis, the first Sunday after the decline of Mammon. He showed how, even when the ex-millionaire was a rich man, he had doubtless scorned the beggar in his gate, and sent him disdainfully the crumbs that fell from his children's table; whereas now the beggar was an infinitely better man than he, and would go to glory; whereas he -but I desist.

The minor organs of the public press would have been wanting to their high attributes and functions, had they not made a trifling moral capital out of the great catastrophe which had convulsed the City of London. The money-articles in all the dailies were full of Goldthorpiana for at least a fortnight. Then came two or three stinging leaders, in which it was irrefragably proved that such a system of business as that pursued by Sir Jasper Goldthorpe must inevitably find its culmination in ruin and disgrace, and in which he was likened to John Law, to Rowland Stephenson, and, by implication, to the late Mr. Fauntleroy. The weekly journals teemed with tiny paragraphs, contributed by industrious penny-a-liners, not quite certain on Friday as to where their Sunday's dinner was to come from, and alluding to the Sardanapalian extravagance of Sir Jasper, to the wasteful prodigality of the Sons of Mammon, to the Persian splendour of Beryl Court, the Versailles-like magnificence of Onyx Square, and the Arcadian beauty of Goldthorpe Manor. There were little anecdotes, too, about Sir Jasper having been in the habit of purchasing early green peas at a guinea a quart, feeding his horses on Jamaica arrowroot, and cane-bottoming the chairs in his servants' hall with gold wire. Fortunately Magdalen Hill was only ruined, and was not a gazetted bankrupt, else the minor organs of the press might have had something to say against her as well.

All these anecdotes and calumnies, all these lies and scandals, Ernest Goldthorpe read in his rectory at Swordsley ;-for he had plenty of kind friends to send him the papers, however trashy they were, which contained them;-all these he perused with a secret rage and burning shame. There are few things more terrible in the eventualities of life than when misfortune creates a grief between parents and their children, -than when inevitable Fate abases the sire, and leaves the son honoured and prosperous. Ask my lady yonder, who has married a peer, whether she is comfortable in the knowledge that her poor old mother once kept a grocer's shop, and is still partial to snuff and to ardent spirits. Ask the gallant officer, who has won rank and fame and the Cross of the Bath in far distant lands, how he likes coming home from the East, and finding that his father has failed as a stock-broker, and has taken to the cornand-coal-commission business for a livelihood. Of course Ernest Goldthorpe, as a son and as a clergyman, meant to do every thing that was proper and generous for his family, when this dreadful crisis was over, and these sad affairs were arranged; but, meanwhile, he could not help thinking in his heart of hearts that it would be an exceedingly comfortable thing and an infinite relief if, for some brief period, say six months, his papa

and mamma could be relegated to the antipodes, or sunk (without any peril to their lives) at the bottom of the sea.

CHAPTER XXX.

AT THE WEST-END.

It would be difficult to describe with precision the immediate effect which the failure of Sir Jasper Goldthorpe had upon that polite world of which he had been for so long the envy and the ornament. A thunderbolt, an earthquake, a tornado, the explosion of a powder-magazine,-all these are, if not vulgar, at least hackneyed images, and will scarcely bear requoting when this most gigantic Smash is taken into consideration. The news of Goldthorpe's stoppage was wafted, of course, on a thousand wings through Temple Bar,-another edition came round Newgate Street and Holborn way,-rushed with lightning swiftness up Fleet Street, and so to Charing Cross, where, bifurcating, it was transmitted, in duplicate, westward to Tyburnia and southward to Belgravia. Consternation, amazement, rage, mortification,—all these feelings were certainly experienced by the polite world on the receipt of the disastrous intelligence; but with regard to any sentiment of pity, sorrow, condolence, or compassion, my information is by no means so exact. The polite world felt, in the first place, naturally vexed and humiliated at the collapse of a sumptuous Entity to whom they had so long bowed the knee, whom, together with its belongings, they had courted, flattered, not to say beslavered with adulation; to whose feasts they had rejoiced to be bidden; in whose sunshine they had basked; and in whose temporal Eternity-for many persons, gross as seems the paradox, do positively believe that Riches will last for ever—they had reposed so strong a faith; and Sir Jasper Goldthorpe, they argued, had no right to set himself up as a rich man, since the foundations of his formidably gigantic fortune were, after all, built upon a quicksand. For the polite world, as a rule, profess to be entirely ignorant of the fluctuations of financial and commercial speculations. The polite world screeches in agony when their banker breaks, or their stockbroker runs away, and want to hang all Lombard Street, and all Capel Court, immediately. They say they can't understand panics and hard times, and so forth. Their only notion of a firm tangible fortune is one that consists of snug dividends upon Bank or India Stock, on bonds and rent-charges, and especially on national pensions; and so long as the Bank of England doesn't break, and the British Government still holds its own, they imagine that their fortunes must necessarily be secure.

Thus, while in the City Sir Jasper Goldthorpe was looked upon as a simply unfortunate man who had gone a little too fast, over-traded, and had found at last things turn out badly, he was regarded at the West-, End, and by the impulsive polite world, as little short of a swindler. They had no patience with him. This, forsooth, was the financier worth millions, the man made of money, the auriferous oligarch who could buy

and sell half the Peerage, who had been made a baronet because he was so rich, and was to be made a peer because he was growing richer. This was the Idol to whom all had bowed down; whose feasts were like those of Marly in the reign of the Grand Monarque; whose daughters, had he possessed any, might have wedded with princes; who was, in fact, MAMMON, and in consequence to be worshiped, and made much of, so long as he would shower gold about him. Now he was down. Now his fortune turned out to be a myth, and his riches not worth a peck of cowries. Of course the polite world were shocked, irritated, and mortified that they had been deceived; and, equally of course, their just suspicions, which they had entertained for a very long period,-only twenty-four hours since they had been caressing Mammon's shoe-strings! - were only verified. They had always thought how it would end. There was always something suspicious, louche, about this man. He never looked you in the face. He was evidently, and had been for a long time, tormented by the stings of conscience. And finally, drawing a neat and genteel moral from the downfall of this rich man, who had so wickedly proved to be poorer than Job, the polite world bade its admirers, dependents, toadies, and hangers-on take warning by the fate of the Goldthorpes, beware in future of these City sharpers and adventurers, and mark the results which followed the encouragement and the admission into society of mere plebeians; for although Sir Jasper Goldthorpe's name was in Burke and in Debrett, and he had a handle to his name, and a bloody hand in his escutcheon, he had not been two days bankrupt ere the polite world found out that he was of the meanest possible extraction, and, not many years ago, had kept a shop in a little country town.

This is the way of the world, and has been these thousand years; and there is small use, perhaps, in moralising upon it. To hit a man when he is down, and find out that the wretch who stands convicted of murder has committed half-a-dozen desperate assassinations in addition to the one for which he is to be hanged next Monday; to throw a stone at the drowning man, and trip up the lame dog that is trying to get over the stile; to declare that "the woman who has made one false step has tumbled down a whole flight of stairs" (as a great wit once said); to swear, because a man wears a wig, that his teeth are false and his moustaches dyed; to give unto him who has plenty, and to take away from him who has nothing; we say that we don't do these things, and brand as cynics and man-haters those who declare that we do. But we do them, nevertheless, and, in ourselves, glory in them, every day.

Courtly Doctor Sardonix was inexpressibly shocked by the catastrophe which had laid desolate Beryl Court and Onyx Square. It was a terrible blow to him, almost as severe as though he had been put down in consultation before a third party who was an enemy, or as though some beautiful duchess whom he had been attending for the tooth-ache had died. The worst of the matter was, that there was no denying it. You cannot quite ignore the sun at noonday. The courteous Doctor did

his best for a few hours to shuffle, and evade, and stall-off the awful truth with discreet shrugs and simpers; but when the Messenger (how sorry I am to learn, on the authority of Mr. Commissioner Goulburn, that the salary of that ill-used functionary has been reduced to the paltry stipend of five hundred a year-a mere catchpole's wage)—when the Messenger, travelling westward, as well as the evil news, put in an appearance in Onyx Square, and laid his hand on all that the House of Mammon contained, it was time for Doctor Sardonix to speak out, and to express himself on a concern about which the whole polite world were talking as a Man and a physician. He comported himself, as usual, with exquisite discretion. He had nothing to say against the fallen man.

"The soul of liberality, my dear sir!" he repeated every where. "Just and upright in all his dealings, so far as your humble servant is concerned. Let us have some Christian charity. Let us not break the bruised reed. He erred, it may be,-erred from excess of energy and enterprise; but who is not liable to error? Humanum est errare."

This was the pleasing refrain of the physician's song. There is something to be got even out of toadying the unfortunate. The Doctor's present reward was to be called a good, kind soul; and to hear on every side rumours that, contrary to the usual exigent etiquette of the profession, he had allowed the Goldthorpe family to run in his debt for hundreds of fees. His hope of future guerdon lay, perhaps, in the bare possibility that, some day or another, some member of the Goldthorpe family might hold his head up again, and, by his bounty, recall the gladsome days when he scarcely ever met a Goldthorpe without having his smooth palm crossed with gold.

I am bound to admit that Doctor Sardonix refrained (purely through motives of delicacy) from leaving his card at the house of the ruined family; and that Zenobia his spouse "improved the occasion," as the diplomatists say, to make the Goldthorpe bankruptcy a frequent text for exhortations to her family and friends on the pomps and vanities of earthly things, and the sinfulness of a mere reliance on perishable dross. A good many of the neighbouring clergy, orthodox and heterodox, also "improved the occasion," as that other reverend gentleman had done at the EastEnd, even as they improved all other occasions,-wars, tumults, pestilences, famines, and railway-accidents, to suit the stops on their own particular barrel-organs. Bolsover, M.P., was neutral. He remarked that Goldthorpe might have played his cards better. This was in the lobby of the House. In the Park, hearing further details of the Smash, he opined that Sir Jasper had brought his pigs to a fine market; and after dinner, at the Club, between his rubbers, he observed that he didn't see how G. was to get out of the mess. But Bolsover was always a man of strong common sense, dealing in platitudes which every body could understand. He is sure to be a Lord of the Treasury some day.

The great West-End lawyers looked at the tragedy philosophically, and only regretted that they were not for the nonce East-End lawyers,

that they might have something to do with the case and the assignees. "There'll be pretty pickings on that estate, sir," Deedes (Deedes, Ferret, and Wax, Old Cavendish Street) remarked to Probate, of Bedford Row; in which the latter acquiesced, adding that if the case were in his hands, he would put half-a-dozen extra clerks on his establishment on the mere strength of it; and, quoth wicked old Mr. Jehoshaphat, of St. James's Place, that terrible, terrible limb of the law, who was reputed to have made a hundred and ten thousand pounds out of four bankruptcies, and to have patented a machine for the legal grinding of widows' and orphans' faces, -said this most redoubtable of solicitors, -a man who seemed to labour under a natural incapacity for being for you in a cause, and was always, and, as a matter of course, against you, suing you horribly, and selling you up at all hours of the day and night, in term and out of term,— "Since Bulgrummer's affair (the East Swindlesbury Bank and Universal Wind-winnowing Company), there hasn't been, within my recollection (and I'm sixty-nine, sir), a bankruptcy with more meat upon it."

Mr. Plumer Ravenbury-who may certainly be said to have belonged to the polite world, inasmuch as it was his function to conduct so many polite worldlings out of it-received the news with a soft sigh. He consulted his books, and found that the funeral of Hugh Jasper Goldthorpe had been paid for at the expiration of the customary year of grace, and that not one of the costly items had been disputed by the family. So ke had nothing to say against Mammon. Besides, Plumer was a disciple of the school of Dr. Sardonix; and the two played into each other's hands much oftener than was imagined, although quite unconsciously, perhaps. Undertakers are hereditary retainers of the poor as well as the rich; and if you, or any of your ancestors, have ever paid them a good long bill without questioning any of the charges, they will go on burying you and your descendants until the crack of doom. But once let a tray of feathers be quibbled at, or a silken scarf objected to, and your undertaker repudiates you, and is of opinion that you or your representatives-yourself being out of court-had better go to some cheap Funeral Company er advertising person. Every man, to the meanest, has his Boswell, I have been told, and it is a very dreadful thing to think of his undertaker, also a sable little cherub who sits down below, and looks out for the death of poor Jack Pudding.

The Bosuns (Admiral Bosun), neighbours of Mammon in Onyx Square, had never known the Goldthorpes. They were glad and thankful now, yes, thankful, Admiral Bosun, that they had been spared the disgrace and contamination of contact with those unworthy people. And Miss Magdalen Hill was ruined too, was she? No good ever came out of such wicked, wicked pride as hers. The Bosuns were not to be appeased by what they termed the shameful backsliding of their neighbours. You will generally find that the people whom you have never offended will never forgive you. Old Mrs. Twizzle, from Maida Hill, was furious against the whole Goldthorpe race. She was a wealthy but not well