a smile that I thought meaning,) 'how often I have implied to you that I have no vulgar ambition for Ellinor. Her portion must be very small, for my estate is strictly entailed, and I have lived too much up to my income all my life to hope to save much now. But her tastes do not require expense; and while I live, at least, there need be no change. She can only prefer a man whose talents, congenial to hers, will win their own career, and ere I die that career may be made.' Lord Rainsforth paused, and then-how, in what words I know not, but out all burst!-my long-suppressed, timid, anxious, doubtful, fearful love. The strange energy it had given to a nature till then so retiring and calm! My recent devotion to the law,-my confidence that, with such a prize, I could succeed, it was but a transfer of labour from one study to another. Labour could conquer all things, and custom sweeten them in the conquest. The bar was a less brilliant career than the senate. But the first aim of the poor man should be independence. In short, Pisistratus, wretched egotist that I was, I forgot Roland in that moment; and I spoke as one who felt his life was in his words.

"Lord Rainsforth looked at me, when I had done, with a countenance full of affection-but it was not cheerful.

"My dear Caxton,' said he, tremulously, I own that I once wished this-wished it from the hour I knew you; but why did you so long-I never suspected that-nor I am sure did Ellinor.' He stopped short, and added quickly-'However, go and speak, as you have spoken to me, to Ellinor. Go, it may not yet be too late. And yet-but go.'

"Too late what meant those words? Lord Rainsforth had turned hastily down another walk, and left me alone, to ponder over an answer which concealed a riddle. Slowly I took my way towards the house, and sought Lady Ellinor, half hoping, half dreading to find her alone. There was a little room communicating with a conservatory, where she usually sat in the morning. Thither I took my

course.

"That room, I see it still!-the walls covered with pictures from her own

hand, many were sketches of the haunts we had visited together-the simple ornaments, womanly but not effeminate -the very books on the table that had been made familiar by dear associations. Yes, there the Tasso in which we had read together the episode of Clorinda-there the Eschylus in which I translated to her the Prometheus. Pedantries these might seem to some: pedantries, perhaps, they were; but they were proofs of that congeniality which had knit the man of books to the daughter of the world. That room-it was the home of my heart! Such, in my vanity of spirit, methought would be the air round a home to come. I looked about me, troubled and confused, and, halting timidly, I saw Ellinor before me, leaning her face on her hand, her cheek more flushed than usual, and tears in her eyes. I approached in silence, and as I drew my chair to the table, my eye fell on a glove on the floor. It was a man's glove. Do you know," said my father, "that once, when I was very young, I saw a Dutch picture called The Glove, and the subject was of murder. There was a weed-grown marshy pool, a desolate dismal landscape, that of itself inspired thoughts of ill deeds and terror. And two men, as if walking by chance, came to this pool, the finger of one pointed to a blood-stained glove, and the eyes of both were fixed on each other, as if there were no need of words. That glove told its tale! The picture had long haunted me in my boyhood, but it never gave me so uneasy and fearful a feeling as did that real glove upon the floor. Why? My dear Pisistratus, the theory of forebodings involves one of those questions on which we may ask why' for ever. More chilled than I had been in speaking to her father, I took heart at last and spoke to Ellinor"

My father stopped short; the moon had risen, and was shining full into the room and on his face. And by that light the face was changed; young emotions had brought back youthmy father looked a young man. But what pain was there! If the memory alone could raise what, after all, was but the ghost of suffering, what had been its living reality! Involuntarily I seized his hand: my father pressed

it convulsively, and said, with a deep breath, "It was too late; Trevanion was Lady Ellinor's accepted, plighted,

happy lover. My dear Katherine, I do not envy him now; look up, sweet wife, look up!"

"Ellinor (let me do her justice) was shocked at my silent emotion. No human lip could utter more tender sympathy, more noble self-reproach; but that was no balm to my wound. So I left the house-so I never returned to the law-so all impetus, all motive for exertion, seemed taken from my being-so I went back into books. And so, a moping, despondent, worthless mourner might I have been to the end of my days, but that heaven, in its mercy, sent thy mother, Pisistratus, across my path; and day and night I bless God and her, for I have been, and am-oh, indeed, I am, a happy man!"

My mother threw herself on my father's breast, sobbing violently, and then turned from the room without a word, my father's eye, swimming in tears, followed her; and then, after pacing the room for some moments in silence, he came up to me, and leaning his arm on my shoulder, whispered, "Can you guess why I have now told you all this, my son ?"

:

"Yes, partly thank you, father," I faltered, and sate down, for I felt faint.

"Some sons," said my father, seating himself beside me, "would find in their father's follies and errors an excuse for their own: not so will you, Pisistratus."

"I see no folly, no error, sir-only nature and sorrow."

"Pause, ere you thus think," said

my father. "Great was the folly, and great the error of indulging imagination that had no basis-of linking the whole usefulness of my life to the will of a human creature like myself. Heaven did not design the passion of love to be this tyrant; nor is it so with the mass and multitude of human life. We dreamers, solitary students like me, or half poets like poor Roland, make our own disease. How many years, even after I had regained serenity, as your mother gave me a home long not appreciated, have I wasted. The mainspring of my existence was snapped -I took no note of time. And therefore now, you see, late in life the Nemesis wakes. I look back with regret at powers neglected, opportunities gone. Galvanically I brace up energies half palsied by disuse, and you see me, rather than rest quiet and good for nothing, talked into what, I dare say, are sad follies, by an Uncle Jack! And now I behold Ellinor again; and I say, in wonder, All this-all this-all this agony, all this torpor for that haggard face, that worldly spirit! So is it ever in life. Mortal things fade; immortal things spring more freshly with every step to the tomb.

"Ah!" continued my father, with a sigh, "it would not have been so, if at your age I had found out the secret of the saffron bag!"

"And Roland, sir," said I; "how did he take it?

"With all the indignation of a proud unreasonable man. More indignant, poor fellow, for me than himself. And so did he wound and gall me by what he said of Ellinor, -and so did he rage against me because I would not share his rage, -that again we quarrelled. We parted, and did not meet for many

years. We came into sudden posses

sion of our little fortunes. His he devoted (as you may know) to the purchase of the old ruins, and the commission in the army, which had always been his dream-and so went his way, wrathful. My share gave me an excuse for indolence,—it satisfied all my wants; and when my old tutor died, and his young child became my ward, and, somehow or other, from my ward

my wife, it allowed me to resign my fellowship, and live amongst my books --still as a book myself. One comfort, long before my marriage, I had conceived; and that, too, Roland has since said was comfort to him. Ellinor became an heiress-her poor brother died; and all of the estate that did not pass in the male line devolved on her. That fortune made a gulf between us almost as wide as her marriage. For Ellinor, poor and portionless, in spite of her rank, I could have worked, striven, slaved. But Ellinor RICH! it would have crushed me. This was a comfort. But still, still the past-that perpetual aching sense of something that had seemed the essential of life withdrawn from life, evermore, evermore. What was left was not sorrow, it was a void. Had I lived more with men, and less with dreams and books, I should have made my nature large enough to bear the loss of a single passion. But in solitude we shrink up. No plant so much as man needs the sun and the air. I comprehend now why most of our best and wisest men have lived in capitals; and therefore again I say,

that one scholar in a family is enough. Confiding in your sound heart and strong honour, I turn you thus betimes on the world. Have I done wrong? Prove that I have not, my child. Do you know what a very good man has said-Listen and follow my precept, not example.

"The state of the world is such, and so much depends on action, that every thing seems to say aloud to every man, 'Do something-do it—do it !'” * I was profoundly touched, and I rose refreshed and hopeful, when suddenly the door opened, and who or what in the world should come in; but certainly he, she, it, or they, shall not come into this chapter!-On that point I am resolved. No, my dear young lady, I am extremely flattered;-I feel for your curiosity; but really not a peep-not one! And yet-well then, if you will have it, and look so coaxingly-who, or what I say, should come in abrupt, unexpected-taking away one's breath, not giving one time to say, "By your leave, or with your leave," but making one's mouth stand open with surprise, and one's eyes fix in a big round stupid stare, but

IN the old feud between the man of experience and the man of theory, it sometimes happens that the former obtains a triumph by the mere activity of the latter. Cases have been known where the theorist, in the clarifying and perfecting his own theory, has argued himself round to those very truths which his empirical antagonist had held to with a firm though less reasoning faith. He stood to his post; the stream of knowledge seemed to be flowing past him, and those who floated on it laughed at his stationary figure as they left him behind. Nevertheless he stood still; and by-andby this meandering stream, with the busy crew that navigated it, after many a turn and many a curve, have returned to the very spot who he had made his obstinate halt.

This has been illustrated, and we venture to say will be illustrated still further, in the progress of the science of political economy. The man of experience has been taunted for his obstinacy and blindness in adhering to something which he called common sense and matter of fact; and behold! the scientific economist, in the course of his own theorising, is returning to those very positions from which he has been endeavouring to drive his opponent. The present work of Mr J. S. Mill, the latest and most complete exposition of the most advanced doctrines of the political economists, manifests, on more than one occasion, this retrograde progress,-demolishing, on the ground of still more scientific principles-the value of which time, however, must test-those arguments by which his scientific predecessors had attempted to mislead the man of experience or of empirical knowledge.

When, moreover, we consider, that the errors of the political economist are not allowed to remain mere errors of theory, but are pushed forward into practice, thrust immediately into the vital interests of the community, we must admit that never was the man

of experience and common sense more fully justified in holding back and looking long before he yielded assent to his new teachers. Stranger paradoxes were never broached than some that have lived their day in this science; and paradoxes as they were, they claimed immediately their share of influence in our legislative measures. A learned professor, a luminary of the science, demonstrated that absenteeism could have nothing whatever to do with the poverty of Ireland. So the Greek sophist demonstrated that Achilles could never catch the tortoise. But the Greek was the more reasonable of the two: he required of no one to stake his fortune on the issue of the race. The professor of political economy not only teaches his sophism-he would have us back his tortoise.

Although it has been our irksome task to oppose the application to practice of half-formed theories, ill made up, and most dangerously incomplete, yet we surely need not say that we take a genuine interest in the approximation to a sound and trustworthy state of the science of political economy. That, notwithstanding its obliquities, the new science has rendered a substantial service to mankind, and is calculated, when thoroughly understood, to render still greater service that it embraces topics of the widest and most permanent interest, and that intellects of the highest order have been worthily occupied in their investigation this, let no strain of observation in which from time to time we have indulged, be thought to deny or contravert. explain the complicate machinery of a modern commercial state, is assuredly one of the most useful tasks, and by no means the most easy, to which a reflective mind could address itself. When Adam Smith, leaving the arena of metaphysical inquiry, in which he had honourably distinguished himself, turned his analytic powers to the examination of the common-place yet

To

intricate affairs of that commercial community in which he lived, he acted in the same enlightened spirit which led Bacon to demand of philosophy, that she should leave listening to the echoes of the school-room, and walk abroad into nature, amongst things and realities. The author of The Wealth of Nations, like him of the Novum Organum, struck out a new path of wisely utilitarian thinking. If the one led philosophy into the real world of nature and her daily phenomena, the other conducted her into a world still more novel to her footsteps-the world of commerce, of buying and selling, of manufacture and exchange. It may, indeed, be said of both these men, that in their leading and most valuable tenets, they were but announcing the claims of common sense; and that, in doing this, they had from time to time, and in utterances more or less distinct, been anticipated by others. But the cause of common sense is, after all, the very last which obtains a fair and potent advocacy; and the philosophy of one age is always destined, if it be true, to become the common sense of succeeding ages; and it detracts very little from the merit of an eminent writer who has been the means of impressing any great truth upon the minds of men, either at home or abroad, that others had obtained a view of it also, and given to it an imperfect and less effec tive enunciation. Let due honour, therefore, be paid to our countryman Adam Smith, the founder, on this side of the Channel at least, of the science of political economy-honour to him who turned a most keen intellect, sharpened by those metaphysical studies for which his fragmentary Essays, as well as and still more than his Theory of Moral Sentiments, prove him to have been eminently qualified

turned it from these captivating subtleties to inquiries into the causes, actually in operation, of the prosperity of a commercial people. He left these regions of mazy labyrinthine thought, which, if not as beautiful as the enchanted gardens in which Tasso imprisoned his knight, are, to a certain order of spirits, quite as ensnaring, to look into the mystery of bills of exchange, of systems of banking, customs, and the currency.

Be it admitted at once, and ungrudgingly, that Adam Smith and some of his successors have done a substantial service in assisting to explain the machinery of society-the organisation, so to speak, of a commercial body. Until this is done, and done thoroughly, no proposed measure of legislation, and no course of conduct voluntarily adopted by the people, can be seen in all its bearings; the true causes of the most immediate and pressing evils can never be certainly known, and, of course, the efficient remedies can never be applied. Our main quarrel-though we have manywith the political economists is on this ground-that, having constructed a theory explanatory of the wealth of nations, they have wished to enforce this upon our legislature, as if it had embraced all the causes which conspire to the wellbeing of nations; as wealth and wellbeing were synonymous. Having determined the state of things best fitted to procure, in general, the greatest aggregate amount of riches, they have proceeded to deal with a people as if it were a corporate body, whose sole object was to increase the total amount of its possessions. They have overlooked the equally vital questions concerning the distribution of these possessions, and of the various employments of mankind. Full of their leading idea, and accustomed to abstractions and generalities, they forget the individual, and appear to treat their subject as if the aggregate wealth of a community were to be enjoyed in some aggregate manner, and a sum-total of possessions would represent the comforts and enjoyments of its several members. To know what measures tend to increase the national wealth is undoubtedly of great importance, but it is not all; the theory of riches, or of commerce, is not the theory of society.

As political economy arose with a metaphysician, and has been prosecuted by men of the same abstract turn of mind, it very soon aspired to the philosophical character of a science. It laid down its laws. But it has not always been seen that the harmonious and systematic form it has been able to assume was owing to an arbitrary division of social topics, which in their nature, and in