It appears that about a hundred years before Mr. Ellison’s coming of age, there had died, in a remote province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison.  This gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no immediate connections, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a century after his decease.  Minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name of Ellison, who should be alive at the end of the hundred years.  Many attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest; their ex post facto character rendered them abortive; but the attention of a jealous government was aroused, and a legislative act finally obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations.  This act, however, did not prevent young Ellison from entering into possession, on his twenty-first birthday, as the heir of his ancestor Seabright, of a fortune of four hundred and fifty millions of dollars. {*1}

When it had become known that such was the enormous wealth inherited, there were, of course, many speculations as to the mode of its disposal.  The magnitude and the immediate availability of the sum bewildered all who thought on the topic.  The possessor of any appreciable amount of money might have been imagined to perform any one of a thousand things.  With riches merely surpassing those of any citizen, it would have been easy to suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the fashionable extravagances of his time —­ or busying himself with political intrigue —­ or aiming at ministerial power —­ or purchasing increase of nobility —­ or collecting large museums of virtu —­ or playing the munificent patron of letters, of science, of art —­ or endowing, and bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity.  But for the inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the heir, these objects and all ordinary objects were felt to afford too limited a field.  Recourse was had to figures, and these but sufficed to confound.  It was seen that, even at three per cent., the annual income of the inheritance amounted to no less than thirteen millions and five hundred thousand dollars; which was one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand per month; or thirty-six thousand nine hundred and eighty-six per day; or one thousand five hundred and forty-one per hour; or six and twenty dollars for every minute that flew.  Thus the usual track of supposition was thoroughly broken up.  Men knew not what to imagine.  There were some who even conceived that Mr. Ellison would divest himself of at least one-half of his fortune, as of utterly superfluous opulence —­ enriching whole troops of his relatives by division of his superabundance.  To the nearest of these he did, in fact, abandon the very unusual wealth which was his own before the inheritance.