Neither is oil the substance for quenching conflagrations;--but, only for assuaging them, not permanently! To the Nonpareil himself, who wanted not insight, it is clear at intervals, and dimly certain at all times, that his trade is by nature temporary, growing daily more difficult; that changes incalculable lie at no great distance.

Apart from financial Deficit, the world is wholly in such a new-fangled humour; all things working loose from their old fastenings, towards new issues and combinations.

There is not a dwarf jokei, a cropt Brutus'-head, or Anglomaniac horseman rising on his stirrups, that does not betoken change.

But what then?
The day, in any case, passes pleasantly; for the morrow, if the morrow come, there shall be counsel too.

Once mounted (by munificence, suasion, magic of genius) high enough in favour with the Oeil-de-Boeuf, with the King, Queen, Stock-Exchange, and so far as possible with all men, a Nonpareil Controller may hope to go careering through the Inevitable, in some unimagined way, as handsomely as another.
At all events, for these three miraculous years, it has been expedient heaped on expedient; till now, with such cumulation and height, the pile topples perilous.