by the number one hundred:  seventy-three parts at least of that force should be given to the trumpet; the remaining twenty-seven parts may not disadvantageously be spent in doing the thing which is to be trumpeted.  This is a rule unlike some rules in grammar, which are entangled and controlled by a multitude of vexatious exceptions; but it applies equally to the conduct of all matters upon earth, whether social, moral, artistic, literary, political, or religious.

Ellesmere goes on to sum up the personal qualities needful to success; and having sketched out the character of a mean, crafty, sharp, energetic rascal, he concludes by saying that such a one will not fail to succeed in any department of life—­provided always he keeps for the most part to one department, and does not attempt to conquer in many directions at once.  I only hope that, having protited by this wisdom of mine, he will give me a share of the spoil.

Thus the essay ends; and then the discourse thereon begins—­

Milverton.  Well, of all the intolerable wretches and black-guards—­’

Mr. Midhurst. A conceited prig, too!

UUNSFORD.  A wicked, designing villain!

Ellesmere.  Any more:  any more?  Pray go on, gentlemen; and have you, ladies, nothing to say against the wise man of the world that I have depicted?

And yet the upshot of the conversation was, that though given in a highly disagreeable and obtrusively base form, there was much truth in what Ellesmere had said.  It is to be remembered that he did not pretend to describe a good man, but only a successful one.  And it is to be remembered likewise that prudence verges toward baseness:  and that the difference between the suggestions of each lies very much in the fashion in which these suggestions are put and enforced.  As to the use of the trumpet, how many advertising tailors and pill-makers could testify to the soundness of Ellesmere’s principle?  And beyond the Atlantic it finds special favor.  When Barnum exhibited his mermaid, and stuck up outside his show-room a picture of three beautiful mermaids, of human size, with flowing hair, basking upon a summer sea, while inside the show-room he had the hideous little contorted figure made of a monkey with a fish’s tail attached to it, probably the proportion of the trumpet to the thing trumpeted was even greater than seventy-three to twenty-seven.  Dunsford suggests, for the comfort of those who will not stoop to unworthy means for obtaining success, the beautiful saying, that “Heaven is probably a place for those who have failed on earth.”  And Ellesmere, adhering to his expressed views, declares—­

If you had attended to them earlier in life, Dunsford would now be Mr. Dean; Milverton would be the Right Honorable Leonard Milverton, and the leader of a party; Mr. Midhurst would be chief cook to the Emperor Napoleon; the bull-dog would have been promoted to the parlor; I, but no man is wise for himself, should have been Lord Chancellor; Walter would be at the head of his class without having any more knowledge than he has at present; and as for you two girls, one. would be a Maid of Honor to the Queen, and the other would have married the richest man in the county.