Lord Spoonbill must have been very much attached to Miss Primrose to take all this trouble, and to expose himself to so many annoyances on her account; and the worst of the matter was that he could not, in making his visit to the young lady, quote all these instances of mortification and self-denial as illustrations and proofs of his devotedness to her. He could not tell her that, for her sake, he had stooped to meannesses of which any other man would have been ashamed. He could not tell her that, in order to place her in the enviable rank of nobility, he had intercepted her letters and had corrupted the integrity of Nick Muggins, the Smatterton post-boy. By the way we cannot help remarking, that Muggins was much to blame for accepting a bribe to betray his trust. But the love of gold is an universal passion, it is not confined to any one class or condition of human life; it influences the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned; "In peace it tunes the shepherd's reed, In war it mounts the warrior's steed, In halls in gay attire 'tis seen, In hamlets dances on the green; It rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below and gentlemen above." But to return to our enamoured hereditary legislator. He was walking, he scarcely knew whither, with Robert Darnley's letter in his pocket; and he was meditating most perplexedly on the various events of human life, on those at least which concerned himself, and he thought that he had been acting very much like a fool, and he felt very much inclined to make a mighty effort to act like a wise man. But wisdom is not an extemporaneous production of a fool's head. It required something more than a volition to change the whole tenor of the conduct. In his resolution to act more wisely, the Right Honorable Lord Spoonbill made with himself this stipulation, namely, that at all events, and by any means honorable, or dishonorable, he must have Miss Primrose; for it was absolutely impossible that he could live without her. It was therefore no easy matter for his lordship so to manage matters as to gain Miss Primrose at all events, and yet to act as a man of honor. For here was in his pocket a letter, which, as a man of honor, he ought immediately to hand over to Mr Primrose; and yet he very strongly suspected, that if the said letter should come into the possession of the person to whom it was addressed, it would be most probably the means of placing an insuperable objection in the way of his lordship's designs. It also entered into the mind of the meditating young gentleman that, if the acquaintance between Miss Primrose and Robert Darnley should be renewed, there might be some talk about the letters which had not reached their destination, and there might be made some enquiries. And what if, after all, Nick Muggins should turn traitor! Who could tell what influences fear or hope might exercise over the uncivilized post-boy of Smatterton?