sort of super-sublimated ichor which at present flowed in his own veins. The progress of the earl's feelings was watched with the greatest interest by Mr. Gammon, who perceived the increasing extent to which respect for him was mingling with his Lordship's sublime self-satisfaction; and, watching the opportunity, struck a spark into the dry tinder of his Lordship's vain imagination, blew it gently--and saw that it caught and spread. Confident in his knowledge of the state of affairs, and that his Lordship had reached the highest point of credulity, Gammon had the almost incredible audacity to intimate, in a hesitating but highly significant manner, his impression, that the recent failure in the male line of the princely house of HOCH-STIFFELHAUSEN NARRENSTEIN DUMMLEINBERG[27] had placed his Lordship, in right of the marriage of one of his ancestors, during the Thirty Years' War, with a princess of that august line, in a situation to claim, if such should be his Lordship's pleasure, the dormant honors and sovereign rank attached to the possession of that important principality. The earl appeared for a few moments transfixed with awe! The bare possibility of such an event seemed too much for him to realize; but when further conversation with Gammon had familiarized his Lordship with the notion, his mind's eye involuntarily and naturally glanced to his old rival, the Earl of Fitz-Walter: what would _he_ say to all this? How would _his_ little honors pale beside the splendors of his Serene Highness the Prince of Hoch-Stiffelhausen Narrenstein Dummleinberg! He was not sorry when Mr. Gammon, soon afterwards, left him to follow out unrestrainedly the swelling current of his thoughts, and yield himself up to the transporting ecstasies of anticipated sovereignty. To such a pitch did his excitement carry him, that he might shortly afterwards have been seen walking up and down the Elm Avenue, with the feelings and air of an old KING.