The Knights of the Order of the Golden Calf have no formal ceremony of election; yet has brother knight almost instinctive knowledge of brother. In the solitude of his own thoughts is he made one of the community; in utter privacy he kisses the pulseless hand of Plutus, and swears to his supremacy. The oath divorces him from pauper-life—from its cares, its wants, its sympathies. He is privileged from the uneasiness of thought, the wear and tear of anxiety for fellow-man; he is compact and self-concentrated in his selfishness. Nought ruffles him that touches not that inmost jewel of his soul, his knighthood’s Order. In the olden day the Knights of the Fleece, the Garter and other glories, won their rank upon the battlefield—blood and strife being to them the hand-maids of honour. The chivalry of the Golden Calf is mild and gentle. It splits no brain-pan, spills no blood; yet is it ever fighting. We are at the exchange. Look at that easy, peaceful man. What a serenity is upon his cheek! What a mild lustre in his eye! How plainly is he habited! He wears the livery of simplicity and the look of peace. Yet has he in his heart the Order of the Golden Calf. He is one of Mammon’s boldest heroes. A very soldier of fortune. He is now fighting—fighting valorously. He has come armed with a bran-new lie—a falsehood of surpassing temper, which with wondrous quietude he lays about him, making huge gashes in the money-bags of those he fights with. A good foreign lie, well finished and well mounted, is to this Knight of the Golden Calf as the sword of Faery to Orlando. With it he sometimes cuts down giant fortunes, and after “grinds their bones to make his bread.” And there are small esquires and pages of the Order; men who, with heart-felt veneration, lick their lips at the Golden Calf, and with more than bridegroom yearning pant for possession. These small folk swarm like summer-gnats; and still they drone the praises of the Calf; and looking at no other thing, have their eyes bleared and dazzled to all beside. The Knights of the Golden Calf shed no blood; that is, the wounds they deal bleed inwardly and give no evidence of homicide. They are, too, great consumers of the marrow of men; and yet they break no bones, but by a trick known to their Order extract without fracture precious nutriment. They are great alchemists, too; and turn the sweat of unrequited poverty, aye, the tears of childhood, into drops of gold. Much wrong, much violence, much wayward cruelty—if the true history of knighthood were indicted—lies upon the Fleece, the Garter, yes, upon the Templar’s Lamb;—yet all is but as May-day pastime to the voracity, the ignorance, the wilful selfishness, the bestial lowings of the Golden Calf. And of this Order the oldest of the brotherhood are the most gluttonous. There is one whose every fibre is blasted with age. To the imagination his face is as a coffin-plate. Yet is he all belly. As cruel as a cat though toothless as a bird!