the world, too, with regard to my discovery of the new professions. Does not the world want new professions? Are there not thousands of well-educated men panting, struggling, pushing, starving, in the old ones? Grim tenants of chambers looking out for attorneys who never come?—wretched physicians practising the stale joke of being called out of church until people no longer think fit even to laugh or to pity? Are there not hoary-headed midshipmen, antique ensigns growing mouldy upon fifty years' half-pay? Nay, are there not men who would pay anything to be employed rather than remain idle? But such is the glut of professionals, the horrible cut-throat competition among them, that there is no chance for one in a thousand, be he ever so willing, or brave, or clever: in the great ocean of life he makes a few strokes, and puffs, and sputters, and sinks, and the innumerable waves overwhelm him and he is heard of no more.

   Walking to my banker's t'other day—and I pledge my sacred honor this story is true—I met a young fellow whom I had known attache to an embassy abroad, a young man of tolerable parts, unwearied patience, with some fortune too, and, moreover, allied to a noble Whig family, whose interest had procured him his appointment to the legation at Krahwinkel, where I knew him. He remained for ten years a diplomatic character; he was the working-man of the legation; he sent over the most diffuse translations of the German papers for the use of the Foreign Secretary; he signed passports with most astonishing ardor; he exiled himself for ten long years in a wretched German town, dancing attendance at court-balls and paying no end of money for uniforms. And what for? At the end of the ten years—during which period of labor he never received a single shilling from the Government which employed him (rascally spendthrift of a Government, va!),—he was offered the paid attacheship to the court of H. M. the King of the Mosquito Islands, and refused that appointment a week before the Whig Ministry retired. Then he knew that there was no further chance for him, and incontinently quitted the diplomatic service for ever, and I have no doubt will sell his uniform a bargain. The Government had HIM a bargain certainly; nor is he by any means the first person who has been sold at that price.

   Well, my worthy friend met me in the street and informed me of these facts with a smiling countenance,—which I thought a masterpiece of diplomacy. Fortune had been belaboring and kicking him for ten whole years, and here he was grinning in my face: could Monsieur de Talleyrand have acted better? "I have given up diplomacy," said Protocol, quite simply and good-humoredly, "for 

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