I have said that Ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good gifts lavished upon him by Fortune.  In personal grace and beauty he exceeded all men.  His intellect was of that order to which the attainment of knowledge is less a labor than a necessity and an intuition.  His family was one of the most illustrious of the empire.  His bride was the loveliest and most devoted of women.  His possessions had been always ample; but, upon the attainment of his one and twentieth year, it was discovered that one of those extraordinary freaks of Fate had been played in his behalf which startle the whole social world amid which they occur, and seldom fail radically to alter the entire moral constitution of those who are their objects.  It appears that about one hundred years prior to Mr. Ellison’s attainment of his majority, there had died, in a remote province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison.  This gentlemen had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no very immediate connexions, 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 Ellison, who should be alive at the end of the hundred years.  Many futile 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 decree finally obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations.  This act did not prevent young Ellison, upon his twenty-first birth-day, from entering into possession, as the heir of his ancestor, Seabright, of a fortune of four hundred and fifty millions of dollars. {*1}

When it had become definitely known that such was the enormous wealth inherited, there were, of course, many speculations as to the mode of its disposal.  The gigantic magnitude and the immediately available nature of the sum, dazzled and bewildered all who thought upon 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 intrigues; or aiming at ministerial power, or purchasing increase of nobility, or devising gorgeous architectural piles; or collecting large specimens of Virtu; or playing the munificent patron of Letters and Art; or endowing and bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity.  But, for the inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the young heir, these objects and all ordinary objects were felt to be inadequate.  Recourse was had to figures; and figures 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;