A great press of business to dispose of 257 ‘Do you know, that in all likelihood, in the course of six years, you will have as many children?’ 263 Sir Bonus Mac Scrip retreated through the breach, and concealed himself under the dining-table 279 She immediately ran through the shrubbery 304 He flattered himself that Anthelia would at length come to a determination 308 Gazing on the changeful aspects of the wintry sea 311 Preparing to administer natural justice by throwing him out at the window 318 We shall leave them to run _ad libitum_ 320 ‘He would confess all’ 322 MELINCOURT OR SIR ORAN HAUT-TON _VOCEM COMOEDIA TOLLIT_[1] PREFACE TO THE EDITION PUBLISHED IN 1856[2] ‘Melincourt’ was first published thirty-nine years ago. Many changes have since occurred, social, mechanical, and political. The boroughs of Onevote and Threevotes have been extinguished: but there remain boroughs of Fewvotes, in which Sir Oran Haut-ton might still find a free and enlightened constituency. Beards disfigure the face, and tobacco poisons the air, in a degree not then imagined. A boy, with a cigar in his mouth, was a phenomenon yet unborn. Multitudinous bubbles have been blown and have burst: sometimes prostrating dupes and impostors together; sometimes leaving a colossal jobber upright in his triumphal chariot, which has crushed as many victims as the car of Juggernaut. Political mountebanks have founded profitable investments on public gullibility. British colonists have been compelled to emancipate their slaves; and foreign slave labour, under the pretext of free trade, has been brought to bear against them by the friends of liberty. The Court is more moral: therefore, the public is more moral; more decorous, at least in external semblance, wherever the homage, which Hypocrisy pays to Virtue, can yield any profit to the professor: but always ready for the same reaction, with which the profligacy of the Restoration rolled, like a spring-tide, over the Puritanism of the Commonwealth. The progress of intellect, with all deference to those who believe in it, is not quite so obvious as the progress of mechanics. The ‘reading public’ has increased its capacity of swallow, in a proportion far exceeding that of its digestion. Thirty-nine years ago, steamboats were just coming into action, and the railway locomotive was not even thought of. Now everybody goes everywhere: going for the sake of going, and rejoicing in the rapidity with which they accomplish nothing. _On va,