At the end of a week, two letters of introduction arrived: one to the M.P. who represented the borough in which Ingram had resided, and to whose cause he had rendered some service in his former newspaper capacity; the other was from a baronet, Ingram had also served in a similar mode, to a literary man of some eminence; in fact, the M.P. was also an eminent _littérateur_, so that Ingram's hopes grew large and fervid. The gentleman advised moderation; but Ingram _could_ not observe it: his constitution, as yet, was master of his reason. He was smilingly received by the literary man; but he could not help observing that the literary man smiled more as he read the baronet's letter, than at his, Ingram's, application. He was begged politely to call again. He _did_ call again--and again---and again--before he found the literary man once more "at home." The event was a recommendation to wait on a small publisher, who had commenced a small periodical, and wanted a young man of genius, and all that, to edit it. Ingram went to work in that quarter:--helped to bring out four weekly numbers of the periodical--received one sovereign for his month's labour--and then the thing was stopped, like hundreds of similar ephemera, because "it did not sell." The same literary man was visited again, when this engagement failed; but Ingram left his door in wrath, and never called again; because _he saw_ the literary man enter his own house, while he, Ingram, was but at a dozen yards' distance from it; and yet the servant affirmed "he was not at home." Ingram's better and more magnificent hopes, however, were yet undissipated. During his month's harassing and ill-paid labour on the unsuccessful magazine, he was awaiting an important decision: at least he believed so. The literary M.P. had also received him with smiles--smiles that Ingram had been inured to at election seasons; but which, as green as he was, he always _felt_ to be assumed; for it is the heart, not the understanding, that really judges of the genuineness of a smile. Yet, on the occasion of Ingram's first call at the town residence of the legislator, the smile was so prolonged, that Ingram conceived it to be more like a _real_ smile, than the evanescent and valvular-like changes of skin and muscle that the M.P. always seemed to have at such delightful and momentary command while "canvassing" or "returning thanks," in the borough he represented. And then the M.P. entered, of his own accord, on the inquiry as to _what_ Ingram had written, and begged he would entrust a little manuscript or two, to his, the M.P.'s, care, and _he_ would place them in the hand of _his own_ publisher, with _his own_ recommendation, _if_ he believed they possessed merit.