not fail to possess. Such was his idea, ignorant as he was that, if poetry, science, and the fine arts number their unsuccessful, starving, broken hearted victims by hundreds, commerce numbers hers by thousands. Ignorant that as virtue must be practised for what it is in itself, the means appointed by God of happiness between man and man, not a means of happiness for a few men independent of others,-ignorant that as virtue must be adopted in the spirit of love, the love of our humanity, so must we in the same spirit follow poetry, science, artso must we follow commerce, the bounteous. civilizer of men, would they but permit her. Hardy then, the next morning, set about laying the foundation stone of his fortune without any useless delays for meditation. He prepared to call on the merchants in one of whose vessels his poor brother, Ned, had sailed; and he determined to obtain for himself in their counting house, if possible, the situation of clerk. His sanguine expecta tions on the matter may appear absurd to any one acquainted with our great commercial towns, knowing how many thousand. hungry waiters for such posts they contain. It would almost seem as if there could never be a vacancy; and that the high stool at a desk is like the throne of England-neither seat being ever without an occupant, though kings and clerks die out of the way of aspirants like other men. As however, the aspirants to a high stool are so much more numerous than those to a throne, it was hardly to be suspected that the newly arrived country lad was heir unapparent to the former, when crowds of heirs expectant were anxiously watching "the various turns of fate below," in counting houses. upstart Napoleons seize now and then on thrones which nobody intended for them, finding them hard and uneasy enough; and new clerks, coming like him from some little hole or corner of the world, perch themselves in defiance of all rule, on high seats, hard But and uneasy also, and intended by others for themselves. Hardy was one of this kind of interlopers. Perhaps some of the old established clerks looked as much askance on him as the old established kings did on Napoleon; if it were so, to the honour of clerk-craft against king-craft, it is to be recorded that the feeling very soon died away, and he became a general favorite. But this is anticipating. First, it should have been told that a clerk died the day before that on which Hardy presented himself. Indeed, he was dying just about the time that his then unknown succession was crossing the Mersey from Cheshire, listening to the denunciations of the Radical, and gazing on the long extent of the docks of Liverpool. Next, should be told that the young stranger presented himself without any mauvaise honte before the great men of commerce; that from a letter of his brother to himself, he clearly proved to them that they must have been in his debt rather more than they said they were when he first made his claim against them. He got all the money owing to Ned; and, in obtaining it, obtained what the payers of a disputed account seldom give, their favorable opinion. They thought him a fine, sharp lad,—and when he mentioned his wish for a clerk's situation, he was desired at once to take the empty stool. In Napoleon's case, the capricious lady Fortune did something for him; his own well sharpened faculties, something more, and the favorable opinion of men, something more, so, in Hardy's case all these three instruments of success were brought into play. But one thing besides, he had in his favour which the Corsican had not, this was, the excellent character which poor Ned left behind him. His captain had told the merchants that for honesty, hard work, and sobriety, he could not be surpassed. And here it is to be acknowledged that our young soldier of fortune,-soldier, though |