was not an oyster which he could open with any instrument he pleased. In his desperate mood he looked upon all his former notions as only fit to be put on a level with those of the braggadocio Pistol, and he turned from his own portrait of himself with disgust.

The fit lasted some days, and while it lasted, ambition was altogether annihilated in his bosom. What then? Back to that bosom came the image of Miss Aveley in all the simple loveliness which made it so charming. Overpowered by the omnipotence of wealth in the great place of traffic in which he lived, he had persuaded himself that he should give up his soul to a man's true vocation, that of making a fortunein the end, he might return to his village, and, win her love-if it so pleased him.

One Sunday evening, as he sat alone, however, about this time, he began humbly, honestly, to question whether he should ever be worthy of Harriet Aveley's love. As he

VOL. I.

E

so questioned, there rose up beside her fair semblance, some shadowings of the Hannahs and Arabellas of Liverpool whom he had chanced to meet. "This the abode that we must change for heaven," said then the lost archangel ;-whom, by the way, my friend resembled in some great qualities. "These the girls that I must take for her," said our now melancholy youth. And he would, in "the conversation of his thoughts" have said more, but he was interrupted by the entrance of a friend of the counting-house,-Angus Gordon, a young Scotchman.

Gordon began to rally him, asserting that by his looks, he should take him to be in love.

"Nothing of the kind, I assure you," Hardy replied, "What should a poor devil of a clerk have to do with love? Could he marry on his pittance?"—and here with that strange incongruousness which is often to be found between our unspoken thoughts, and our spoken ones, he laid before his

friend most cogent reasons for the line of conduct which he had pursued, and for which he had, not many minutes before, looked on himself as a fool and a coxcomb.

-

"You have argued very forcibly," said Gordon, "only it has been with yourself, I think I should certainly not think of advising you to marry on your present splendid income, nor even whilst you are a merchant's clerk, though you should have a much higher salary."

"Ah, but how long will it be before I can be anything else!-I shall have learnt to do without a wife before I shall have saved a little to emancipate myself from thraldom and begin business."

"True-if you only think of remaining a clerk until you are able to be a merchant." "But if this were not my idea, why learn so painfully the merchant's business?"

"Just what I have said to myself!—and therefore think of giving up this degrading struggle with the world for what it will not give me or only give, when too late."

"But some of our wealthy men have begun as you and I are beginning?"

"I am inclined to think not many of them. The sea-captain who has an opportunity of making ventures on his own account, the youth sent out to some of the colonies, who can open a connexion with a house here, the plodder in a ship who turns merchant on his savings; all these have a better chance than we."

"You may be right-I see also how they would have a better chance of success than we. They acquire more of the practice of business, more quickness in discovering what is for their interest, more boldness in carrying it into effect-we but repeat, and re-repeat, the routine of the counting-house. But I am sorry to be thus convinced and discouraged by you. Sometimes, as you know, I have speculated on our establishing, some half-dozen years hence, the firm of Gordon and Hardy, on a respectable footing."

"Half-a-dozen years hence ?-Say, six

and twenty years, rather! But believe me, Hardy, nothing could induce me to begin the life of torturing uncertainty, of dishonest shifts, which the poor merchant has to undergo. If you will carry out your scheme, you must get some one who has already made some way, to take you as partner, not one who is beginning like yourself. For me, not even an offer of that kind could tempt me. I have, after counting all costs, made up my mind to have done with commerce."

"Then you must have in view a means of living which will enable you to take to your hearth some fair companion who is to warm and enlighten it!"

"By the bye, Hardy, your fire is nearly out," said Gordon, laughing-and he went on, as his friend was stirring it and putting coals on, to assure him that he was as little in love as he was-he had never yet seen the woman he could love. But he imagined

very well what he could love

made such a description of his

and then he

fancied pro