him to transact, and yet not by anything of great importance. The letters which he received from his partner he should have called decidedly unsatisfactory had he supposed they contained the whole statement of how matters were going; but, as when anything was unfavourable, he was led to believe there was something untold as a set-off against it, he was obliged, in those days of dear postage and no railroads, to be contented.

At last he returned to Liverpool. He hurried to his counting-house-his partner was not to be found-his clerks looked amazed that Hardy was to be found.

But there he was-and he stood firm against the shock which awaited him. A very short time unfolded all-simply, that all was lost! He bore this with the determination which belongs to the ignorant boldness of a young man, experience of an old one.

or the hardened

His partner was

a middle-aged man-he did not face out the ruin which he had brought on himself and others. He crossed the Mersey, and in a lonely part of those broad sands which lie between that river and the Dee he blew out his brains. It was many days before his remains were discovered. They lay

Upon the beached verge of the salt flood,
Which once a day with his embossed froth
The troubled surge did cover.

The waves had indeed beaten over the unburied body, as they did over the grave of Timon, the ruined man of Athens-he who played a main with fortune also, and lost, though in a different way from our merchant.

Of the latter for they talk little of Timon in Liverpool-of the latter it was immediately said, with some shaking of the head, “Ah, he was never a religious man!"

Very true! But, unfortunately, it hap

pened that a very religious man, an unfailing prayer-maker and church-goer, involved at the same time and by the same unfortunate speculations, drowned himself in despair at his losses.

Oh! cursed lust of wealth, when for thy sake,
The soul throws up her interest in both worlds!

And so on-for poetry supplies much on this subject. The prose of the matter is, that the one man could not, with all his efforts, serve only mammon-the other found it harder still to serve God and mammon-and both, in disgust, threw up the unprofitable task.

But what of him who had determined to do this thing and find it profitable? What of Benjamin? He stood unshaken, as I have said, and won golden opinions of all men-to whom the firm owed nothing-by his conduct. It was apparent to the creditors that he had been sacrificed by his partner, who must have known that he was insolvent

at the time he induced Hardy to join him. But what was not apparent to the creditors was, how cruelly Benjamin had been made the instrument of his uncle's ruin. YesJohn Hardy was ruined!

My pen refuses to write the downfall of the golden castle in the air which the old man had built for Harriet. Alas! alas! why will fate treat us with this sad indifference to our good or evil intentions in what we do? Why should the generous, loving purposes of John Hardy be decreed to remain unaccomplished, with the selfish ones of some half-dozen Liverpool speculators?

CHAPTER XIX.

"Que sea mi vida mucha, que sea poca
Importa poco; solo el que bien muere
Pude decir que tuvo larga vida.

A la adversa fotuna alegre cara

Debe mostrar el pecho generoso,

Que a qualquier mal buen animo repara."

CERVANTES.

I PASS over months, necessary for winding up the affairs of my bankrupt hero, and the details of that process are not very interesting. Suffice it, that it is legally accomplished; and he stands erect, the most unembarrassed of men; "the world before him where to choose," his own clear head