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of a falling off, though but slightly, in the public favour, were unheeded by both parties, though, to say truth, the exact state of things was never disclosed to Scott, it being Ballantyne's notion that it would prove a damper, and that the true course was "to press on more sail as the wind lulled." In these sanguine calculations, not only enormous sums, or, to speak correctly, bills, were given for what had been written, but the author's draughts, to the amount of many thousand pounds, were accepted by Constable in favour of works, the very embryos of which lay, not only unformed, but unimagined in the womb of time. In return for this singular accommodation, Scott was induced to endorse the draughts of his publisher, and in this way an amount of liabilities was incurred, which, considering the character of the house and its transactions, it is altogether inexplicable that a person in the independent position of Sir Walter Scott should have subjected himself to for a moment. He seems to have had entire confidence in the stability of the firm, a confidence to which it seems, from Mr. Gillies's account, not to have been entitled from the first moment of his connexion with it. The great reputation of the house, however, the success and magnitude of some of its transactions, especially the publication of these novels, gave it a large credit, which enabled it to go forward with a great show of prosperity in ordinary times, and veiled its tottering state probably from Constable's own eyes. It is but the tale of yesterday. The ease of Constable and Co, is, unhappily,