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“There is nothing, however, over which I rejoice more than in the utter extinction of the anecdote-mongers–the insufferable monsters who related Joe Millers as personal experiences, or gave you their own versions of something in the morning papers. Thank heaven they are done for!

“Last of all, the unhappy man who used to be sneered at for his silence in company, will now be on a par with his fellows. The most bashful will be able to blurt out, ‘Poles massacred,’ ‘Famine in Ireland,’ ‘Feast at the Mansion House,’ ‘Collision at Croydon,’ ‘Bank discount eleven.’

“Who will dare to propagate scandal, when all amplification is denied him? How much adulteration will the liquor bear which is measured by drop? Nor will the least of our benefits be the long, reflective pauses–those brilliant ‘flashes of silence’ which will supersede the noise, turmoil, and confusion of what we used to call conversation. No, no, Corneli mi. The game is up. ‘Our own Correspondent’ is a piece that has run its course, and there’s nothing to do but take a farewell benefit and quit the boards.”

“If I could fall back on my pension like you, I’d perhaps take the matter easier,” said I, gruffly.

“Well, I think you ought to be pensioned. If I was a Minister, I’d propose it. My notion is this: The proper subjects for pension are those who, if not provided for by the State, are likely to starve. They are, consequently, the class of persons who have devoted their lives to an unmarketable commodity–such as poonah-painting, Berlin-wool work, despatch-writing, and suchlike. I’d include ‘penny-a-lining’–don’t be offended because you get twopence, perhaps. I’d pension the whole of them–pretty much as I’d buy off the organ-man, and request him to move on.”

“As, however,” said I, “we are not fortunate enough to figure in the Estimates, may I ask what is the grand scheme you propose for our employment?”

“I’m coming to it. I’d have reached it ere this, if you had not required such a positive demonstration of your utter uselessness. You have delayed me by what Guizot used to call ‘an obstructive indisposition to believe.'”

“Go on; I yield–that is, under protest.” “Protest as much as you like. In diplomacy a protest means, ‘I hope you won’t; but if you will, I can’t help it,’ Vide the correspondence about the annexation of Nice and Savoy. Now to my project. It is to start a monster hotel–one of those gigantic establishments for which the Americans are famous–in some much-frequented part of Europe, and to engage as part of the household all the ‘own time’ celebrities of diplomacy and letters. Every one knows–most of us have, indeed, felt–the desire experienced to see, meet, and converse with the noticeable men of the world–the people who, so to say, leave their mark on the age they live in–the cognate signs of human algebra. Only fancy, then, with what ecstasy would the traveller read the prospectus of an establishment wherein, as in a pantheon, all the gods were gathered around him. What would not the Yankee give for a seat at a table where the great Eltchi ladled out the soup, and the bland-voiced author of ‘The Woman in White’ lisped out, ‘Sherry, sir?’ Only imagine being handed one’s fish by the envoy that got us into the Crimean war, or taking a potato served by the accomplished writer of ‘Orley Farm’! Picture a succession of celebrities in motion around the table, and conceive, if you can, the vainglorious sentiment of the man that could say, ‘Lyons, a little more fat;’ or, ‘Carlyle, madeira;’ and imagine the luxury of that cup of tea so gracefully handed you by ‘Lost and Saved,’ and the culminating pride of taking your flat candlestick from the fingers of ‘Eleanor’s Victory.’

“Who would not cross the great globe to live in such an atmosphere of genius and grandeur? for if there be, as there may, souls dead to the charms of literary greatness, who in this advanced age of ours is indifferent to the claims of high rank and station and title? Fancy sending a K.C.B. to call a cab, or ordering a special envoy to fetch the bootjack! I dare not pursue the theme. I cannot trust myself to dwell on a subject so imbued with suggestiveness–all the varying and wondrous combinations such a galaxy of splendour and power would inevitably produce. What wit, what smartness, what epigram would abound! What a hailstorm of pleasantries, and what stories of wise aphorisms and profound reflections! How I see with my mind’s eye the literary traveller trying to overhear the Attic drolleries of the waiters as they wash up their glasses, or endeavouring to decoy Boots into a stroll with a cigar, well knowing his charming article on Dickens.