the imagination alone can supply, and all do it—­alive or dead.  You will find that Fiction, as distinguished from neat mendacity, has not one form upon earth, but a dozen.  You will find the most habitually, willfully, and inexcusably inaccurate, with the means of accuracy under its nose, that form of fiction called “anonymous criticism,” political and literary; the most equivocating, perhaps, is the “imaginavit,” better known at Lincoln’s Inn as the “affidavit.”  In the article of exaggeration, the mildest and tamest are perhaps History and the Novel, the boldest and most sparkling is the Advertisement, but the grandest, ablest, most gorgeous and plausibly exaggerating is surely the grave commercial prospectus, drawn up and signed by potent, grave and reverend seniors, who fear God, worship Mammon, revere big wigs right or wrong, and never read romances.

One mine was announced with a “vein of ore as pure and solid as a tin flagon.”

In another the prospectus offered mixed advantages.  The ore lay in so romantic a situation, and so thick, that the eye could be regaled with a heavenly landscape, while the foot struck against neglected lumps of gold weighing from two pounds to fifty.

This put the Bolanos mine on its mettle, and it announced, “not mines, but mountains of silver.”  Here, then, men might chip metal instead of painfully digging it.  With this, up went the shares till they reached 500 premium.

Tialpuxahua was done at 199 premium. 
Anglo Mexican 10 pounds paid, went to 158 pounds premium. 
United Mexican 10 " " , " 155 pounds "
Columbian 10 " " , " 82 pounds "

But the Real del Monte, a mine of longer standing, on which 70 pounds was paid up, went to 550 premium, and at a later period, for I am not following the actual sequence of events, reached the enormous height of 1350 premium.

The Prospectus of the Equitable Loan Company lamented in paragraph one the imposition practiced on the poor, and denounced the pawnbrokers’ 15 per cent.  In paragraph four it promised 40 per cent to its shareholders.

Philanthropy smiled in the heading, and Avarice stung in the tail.  No wonder a royal duke and other good names figured in this concern.  Another eloquent sheet appealed to the national dignity.  Should a nation that was just now being intersected by forty canal companies, and lighted by thirty gas companies, and every life in it worth a button insured by a score of insurance companies, dwell in hovels?  Here was a country that, after long ruling the sea, was now mining the earth, and employing her spoils nobly, lending money to every nation and tribe that would fight for constitutional liberty.  Should the principal city of so sovereign a nation be a collection of dingy dwellings made with burned clay?  No; let these perishable and ignoble, materials give way, and London be granite, or at least wear a granite front—­with which up went the Red Granite Company.