The Grumkow-NOSTI Cipher Correspondence might be reckoned as
another efficient cause; though, in fact, it was only a big
concomitant symptom, much depended on by both parties, and much
disappointing both. In the way of persuading or perverting
Friedrich Wilhelm's judgment about England, this deep-laid piece
of machinery does not seem to have done much, if anything;
and Hotham, who with the English Court had calculated on it (on
their detection of it) as the grand means of blowing Grumkow out
of the field, produced a far opposite result on trying, as we
shall see! That was a bit of heavy ordnance which disappointed
everybody. Seized by the enemy before it could do any mischief;
enemy turned it round on the inventor; fired it off on the
inventor, and--it exploded through the touch-hole; singeing some
people's whiskers: nothing more!--


A PEEP INTO THE NOSTI-GRUMKOW CORRESPONDENCE CAUGHT UP IN ST. MARY AXE.

Would the reader wish to look into this Nosti-Grumkow
Correspondence at all? I advise him, not. Good part of it still
lies in the Paper-Office here; [Prussian Despatches, vols. xl.
xli.: in a fragmentary state; so much of it as they had caught up,
and tried to make use of;--far too much.] likely to be published
by the Prussian Dryasdust in coming time: but a more sordid mass
of eavesdroppings, kitchen-ashes and floor-sweepings, collected
and interchanged by a pair of treacherous Flunkies (big bullying
Flunky and little trembling cringing one, Grumkow and
Reichenbach), was never got together out of a gentleman's
household. To no idlest reader, armed even with barnacles, and
holding mouth and nose, can the stirring-up of such a dust-bin be