If these experiences taught him the universal veneration men feel for wealth, they also conveyed another lesson, which was, the extreme gullibility of mankind. He met every day men who ruled cabinets and commanded fleets,--the reputed great of the earth,--and saw them easier victims in his hand than the commonest capacity in “Leadenhall Street.” They had the earliest information, but could not profit by it; they never understood the temper on 'Change, knew nothing of the variations of the money-barometer, and invariably fell into snares that your city man never incurred. Hence Mr. Merl came to conceive a very low general opinion of what he himself called “the swells,” and a very high one of Herman Merl. If we have dwelt upon these traits of this interesting individual in this place, it is simply to place before our reader's mind the kind of lucubrations such a man might be disposed to indulge in. In fact, story-tellers like ourselves have very little pretension to go beyond the narrow limit; and having given to the reader the traits of a character, they must leave their secret working more or less to his ingenuity. So much, however, we are at liberty to declare, that Mr. Merl was terribly bored, and made no scruple of confessing it. “What the deuce are you staring at? Is there anything really to be seen in that confounded dreary sea?” cried he, as Crow stood shading his eyes from the lightning flashes, and intently gazing on the scene without. “That's one of the effects Backhuysen was so fond of!” exclaimed Crow, eagerly,--“a sullen sea, lead-colored and cold, with a white curl just crisping the top of the waves, over it a dreary expanse of dark sky, low-lying and black, till you come near the horizon, where there is a faint line of grayish white, just enough to show that you are on the wide, wide ocean, out of sight of land, and nothing living near, except that solitary sea-gull perched upon the breakers there. There's real poetry in a bit like that; it sets one a thinking over the desolation of those whose life is little better than a voyage on such a sea!” “Better be drowned at once,” broke in Merl, impatiently. Crow started and looked at him; and had Merl but seen that glance, so scornful and contemptuous was it, even his self-esteem might have felt outraged. But he had not remarked it; and as little did he guess what was then passing in the poor artist's mind, as Crow muttered to himself, “I know one that will not be your guest to-day, if he dines on a cold potato, or does n't dine at all.” “Did I tell you,” cried he, suddenly, “that there's no horses to be had?” “No horses!” exclaimed Merl; “how so?” “There's a great trial going on at the assizes to-day, and Mr. Barry is gone on to Oughterard to hear it, and he has the only pair of posters in the place.”