of society, which none partakes of with more gusto, you might ask, When does he work?  And yet his work, as we see, is never behindhand; above all, the fruit of his work:  ready-money.  Truly a man of incredible facility; facile action, facile elocution, facile thought:  how, in mild suasion, philosophic depth sparkles up from him, as mere wit and lambent sprightliness; and in her Majesty’s Soirees, with the weight of a world lying on him, he is the delight of men and women!  By what magic does he accomplish miracles?  By the only true magic, that of genius.  Men name him ‘the Minister;’ as indeed, when was there another such?  Crooked things are become straight by him, rough places plain; and over the Oeil-de-Boeuf there rests an unspeakable sunshine.

Nay, in seriousness, let no man say that Calonne had not genius:  genius for Persuading; before all things, for Borrowing.  With the skilfulest judicious appliances of underhand money, he keeps the Stock-Exchanges flourishing; so that Loan after Loan is filled up as soon as opened.  ‘Calculators likely to know’ (Besenval, iii. 216.) have calculated that he spent, in extraordinaries, ‘at the rate of one million daily;’ which indeed is some fifty thousand pounds sterling:  but did he not procure something with it; namely peace and prosperity, for the time being?  Philosophedom grumbles and croaks; buys, as we said, 80,000 copies of Necker’s new Book:  but Nonpareil Calonne, in her Majesty’s Apartment, with the glittering retinue of Dukes, Duchesses, and mere happy admiring faces, can let Necker and Philosophedom croak.

The misery is, such a time cannot last!  Squandering, and Payment by Loan is no way to choke a Deficit.  Neither is oil the substance for quenching conflagrations;—­but, only for assuaging them, not permanently!  To the Nonpareil himself, who wanted not insight, it is clear at intervals, and dimly certain at all times, that his trade is by nature temporary, growing daily more difficult; that changes incalculable lie at no great distance.  Apart from financial Deficit, the world is wholly in such a new-fangled humour; all things working loose from their old fastenings, towards new issues and combinations.  There is not a dwarf jokei, a cropt Brutus’-head, or Anglomaniac horseman rising on his stirrups, that does not betoken change.  But what then?  The day, in any case, passes pleasantly; for the morrow, if the morrow come, there shall be counsel too.  Once mounted (by munificence, suasion, magic of genius) high enough in favour with the Oeil-de-Boeuf, with the King, Queen, Stock-Exchange, and so far as possible with all men, a Nonpareil Controller may hope to go careering through the Inevitable, in some unimagined way, as handsomely as another.