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floors down to the cellar, as if it had been plain ground." When in the country, they in like manner used to occupy themselves in trigonometrical surveys, observing which, the country people sagaciously took them for conjurors, "pretending to survey a ground by views at two stations, without measuring a side or any part, but from one station to another."

All this while, although he had retired from commercial life, he still retained the punctual habits of a man of business, and even gave a considerable part of his time to occupations connected with his former calling. He had several laborious trusts, in particular, to superintend as executor, in the management of which he was as scrupulously exact and painstaking as ever he had been in keeping his own mercantile books. For these purposes he had one apartment in his house fitted up as a counting-room, where he reckoned with his tradesmen, paid and received money, and kept a servant or clerk, who was constantly employed, chiefly in copying, while he used another above it, as his brother expresses it, "to wilder in his accounts; and his wife used to wonder how it could be that he had so much to do there." At one time, we are told, when the Custom-house books, having got into disorder, were brought there for him to arrange, "he wallowed so much in them, and with so much application, that his wife was afraid he would have run mad." "There also," adds his gossiping but lively and graphic biographer, "he read such books as pleased him; and (though he was a kind of a dunce at school) in his manhood he recovered so much Latin as to make him take pleasure in the best classics; especially in Tully's Philosophics, which I recommended to him."

We cannot afford, however, to accompany our active merchant through the long catalogue of his employments and amusements; his vinegarmaking, and his other "operations and natural experiments;" his travelling through the country on a "grave pad" of his brother's, with his predilection for the “very sure and casy, but slow," pace of that "sage animal;" his "hewing and framing of wood works;" his ingenious construction of a pair of bellows, for a smithy, out of a leather skin and a few pieces of elder; and his toils at the anvil, which he "followed so constantly and close," that, when his wife "came to call him to dinner, she found him as black as a tinker," and "he," says his brother, 66 coming out sometimes with a red short waistcoat, red cap, and black face, the country people began to talk as if we used some unlawful trades there, clipping at least; and, it might be, coining of moneyupon which we were forced to call in the blacksmith and some of the neighbours, that it might be known there was neither damage nor danger to the state by our operations." For a full account of all these matters, as well as of the turning and planing," which formed the more refined afternoon's employment of the two brothers, and for which they "sequestered a low closet," and a description of the "way-wiser,"

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or road-measurer, which Roger invented, we must refer the reader to the latter's own faithful and amusing pages. We must find room, however, for the concluding sentences of the narrative, conveying as they do a forcible lesson to vulgar ambition, and an illustration of how easily happiness may be found even in the narrowest sphere, and at the humblest employment, if it be but sought for in a right spirit. "In our laboratories," Roger remarks, "it was not a little strange to see with what earnestness and pains we worked, sweating most immoderately, and scarce allowing ourselves time to eat. At the lighter works in the afternoon, he hath sat, perhaps, scraping a stick or turning a piece of wood, and this for many afternoons together, all the while singing like a cobbler, incomparably better pleased than he had been in all the stages of his life before. And it is a mortifying speculation, that of the different characters of this man's enjoyments, separated one from the other, and exposed to an indifferent choice, there is scarce any one but this I have here described really worth taking up. And yet the slavery of our nature is such, that this must be despised, and all the rest, with the attendant evils of vexation, disappointments, dangers, loss of health, disgraces, envy, and what not of torment, be admired. It was well said of the philosopher to Pyrrhus: What follows after all your victories ? To sit down and make merry. And cannot you do so now?" This is a little rhetorically, perhaps, and somewhat too strongly spoken to be taken literally; and, certainly, to spend life in nothing but trivial employments would not be to spend it either happily or worthily; but if it be understood as merely expressing and inculcating the real superiority of an active and healthy exercise of mind and body, in individual or domestic industry, the pursuit of knowledge, and such simple, and generally accessible enjoyments as we have been contemplating, over the hot and exhausting chase after wealth or power in which it is usual for men to waste their strength, it will not be far from a correct appreciation of the constituents of human happiness.

We have dwelt the longer on the life and character of Sir Dudley North, both because he affords us one of the very best examples to which we can refer, of the successful pursuit, by the same individual, of business and of philosophy, and because, fortunately, his history and habits have been transmitted to us with unusual fidelity and fulness. To his name might be added those of many others of his countrymen, eminent like him at once in the walks both of commerce and of literature. We will only mention that of the late Mr. RICARDO. This gentleman, in the course of not a long life, for he died at the age of fifty-one, amassed a large fortune by his mercantile skill, activity, and attention to business, after having begun the world with little except a character for integrity and talent; and secured for himself not merely a respectable reputation as a writer, but, in the important science to

which he devoted himself, a place among the very first of his age. We cannot here enter upon any examination of his peculiar doctrines, and we express no opinion respecting the extent to which they may be well founded or may require limitation. But, whatever difference of sentiment may exist as to this point, there can be none as to the ability and ingenuity which their author always displays in unfolding and supporting them, and that originality of view which marks all his works, and has placed him at the head of a new and distinct school of inquirers in this department of philosophy. It has been said that Mr. Ricardo's attention was not directed to political economy till somewhat late in life; and a story has been told about his accidentally finding a copy of the "Wealth of Nations" one day at the country-house of a friend, and immediately purchasing the book, reading it through with great eagerness, and resolving to dedicate himself thenceforth exclusively to the study of the subject with which he had thus for the first time become acquainted. But this anecdote has been contradicted on better authority, and is not in itself very probable; for it is not likely that a mind, such as that of Ricardo, occupied as it was every day among the very matters to which the science in question especially refers, would be long in having its attention drawn to the principles of that science. Be this, however, as it may, he did not appear as an author till 1809, when he published his pamphlet entitled "The High Price of Bullion, a Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes," which immediately excited general attention and went eventually through four editions. He was at this time in the thirty-seventh year of his age, and, we believe, actively engaged in the pursuits of business. He continued to write and give to the world a succession of productions on his favourite subject till his death in 1823. His great work, "The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation," appeared in 1817, two years after which time he was returned to parliament, where he highly distinguished himself, especially in all discussions relating to finance and commerce.

CHAPTER X.

LITERARY PURSUITS OF BOOKSELLERS AND PRINTERS :-SOLOMON GESNER; ALDUS MANUTIUS, PAUL, AND ALDUS THE YOUNGER; R. STEPHENS; H. STEPHENS; SCAPULA; COLINEUS; BADIUS; FROBEN; OPORINUS; RUDDIMAN; BOWYER; NICHOLS; RICHARDSON.

MANY of our readers are probably familiar with the English translation of the popular German work, the "Death of Abel." SOLOMON GESNER, the celebrated author of this production, and of others written in a

similar style, that rank high in the literature of his native country, carried on the business of a bookseller, as his father had done before him, in his native town of Zürich, in Switzerland. In his case, however, as in that of the Dutch poet, Vondel, whom we have already mentioned, the cares and interruptions of business were, during the latter part of his life, rendered less annoying by the attention of his wife, who charged herself with the principal management of his commercial concerns, that he might have more leisure for literature. But it was amid the drudgery of the shop that almost all his earliest studies were carried on, and his literary taste nourished. We are told that Gesner was accounted a dunce by his first schoolmaster, who predicted that he would never get beyond reading and writing; and yet the person who was thus unsuccessful in developing, or even discerning, the talents of the future poet, was no other than the celebrated Bodmer, who afterwards became an eminent poet himself. This anecdote shows that even genius will not always discover genius in another; although possibly some may think that Bodmer must have been but an indifferent teacher, whatever he was in another capacity. Young Gesner was afterwards sent by his father to the house of a clergyman in the neighbourhood, who, having probably no poetical faculty of his own, had more leisure to attend to the intellectual character of his pupil, and soon drew forth from the condemned dunce no doubtful indications of the light that was hidden within. But the young poet was after some time removed from the care of this congenial or judicious instructor, and despatched to Berlin, to take up his abode with a bookseller of that city in quality of his apprentice or shop-boy. Here he was of course surrounded by books; but either disliking the business, or not finding that it left him sufficient leisure to derive much advantage from the treasuries of knowledge that were within his reach, he soon abandoned it, and went into lodgings, with the view of supporting himself by poetry and painting-for he had already, without having any one to give him lessons, begun to apply himself also to the latter art. In this scheme he encountered at the outset the difficulties which naturally beset one circumstanced as he was. There was no deficiency of talent, but a sad lack of experience, and ignorance of many things that a person more regularly instructed could not have failed to know. Having shown his verses to some of his literary acquaintances, he was told that they were so awkwardly constructed that he certainly never would be a poet. His paintings were still more literally the efforts of his own unaided genius than even his poetry. Here he had neither any model to imitate, nor was even acquainted with the elementary rules and most common methods and processes of the art. He had covered the walls of his humble lodging with landscapes, and he one day prevailed upon a painter of some reputation and talent, who resided in the city, to come

and see what he had done. His visitor had taste enough to discern the genius that animated many parts of his strange and lawless performances; but was not at all surprised, when, upon asking him after what models he worked, he was told that he had no models, and that the whole was merely the inspiration of his own invention. He was somewhat amused, however, when Gesner, in his ignorance of the way of managing his oil-colours, complained to him that his pictures never dried. The end of all this was, as might have been anticipated, that the runaway was soon forced to throw himself once more upon the protection of his friends, and to return to the business for which he had been originally intended, in which he became first the partner, and eventually the successor of his father. He did not, however, relinquish literature; and, although his first productions were not very flatteringly received, he persevered in writing and publishing until he had established for himself a distinguished reputation. He began, too, after some years, to add to his other employments that of an engraver, having already improved his taste and skill in painting by the study of the great masters of the Flemish school, of whose works his father-in-law possessed a valuable collection, the inspection of which had had the effect of strongly exciting his early ardour. The remainder of Gesner's life was divided between his business, his duties as a public man (for he had now become a member of the legislative council of his native city), and those several intellectual occupations and elegant arts in each of which he had attained so honourable a celebrity. His works were not only in general published by himself, but often embellished with engravings by his own hand from his own designs. Many of them were still more popular in other parts of Europe, especially in France, than even in Germany; and, among other testimonies of affection and respect which he received from his foreign admirers, he was presented with a gold medal by the Empress Catherine of Russia. He died of an attack of apoplexy in 1788, in the fifty-eighth year of his age.

A pretty long catalogue, indeed, might be given of literary booksellers and printers, among whom, in former times especially, even profound learning was not uncommon. At the head of this list would stand the celebrated ALDUS MANUTIUS (properly ALDO MANUZIO), one of the earliest of the Italian printers, whose services to literature, and we may add to civilization, it is scarcely possible to overrate. Manutius, who was born in 1447, received a learned education, and passed the early part of his life in literary pursuits, and in the society of some of the most distinguished scholars of his time. He was forty years old before he set about the establishment of his printing-office at Venice; and it was some years later before the first production of his press made its appearance. The period therefore of his labours as a printer, as he died at the age of sixty-eight, only extended over about twenty

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