use of your fingers by transcribing Greek manuscripts, or to be a seal engraver and pore yourself blind; or to go upon the stage, or try some of the fine arts; with all your pains, anxiety, and hopes, most probably to fail; or, if you succeed, after the exertions of years, and undergoing constant distress of mind and fortune, to be assailed on every side with envy, back-biting, and falsehood, or to be a favourite with the public for a while, and then thrown into the back-ground-or a jail, by the fickle ness of taste and some new favourite; to be full of enthusiasm and extravagance in youth, of chagrin and disappointment in after-life; to be jostled by the rabble because you do not ride in your coach, or avoided by those who know your worth and shrink from it as a claim on their respect or their purse; to be a burden to your relations, or unable to do anything for them; to be ashamed to venture into crowds; to have cold comfort at home; to lose by degrees your confidence and any talent you might possess; to grow crabbed, morose, and querulous, dissatisfied with every one, but most so with yourself; and plagued out of your life, to look about for a place to die in, and quit the world without any one's asking after your will. The wiseacres will possibly, however, crowd round your coffin, and raise a monument at a considerable expense, and after a lapse of time, to commemorate your genius and your misfortunes! know they can remedy their poverty when they set about it. No one is sorry for them. The French emigrants were formerly peculiarly situated in England. The priests were obnoxious to the common people on account of their religion; both they and the nobles, for their politics. Their poverty and dirt subjected them to many rebuffs; but their privations being voluntarily incurred, and also borne with the characteristic patience and good-humour of the nation, screened them from contempt. I little thought, when I used to meet them walking out in the summer evenings at Somers' Town, in their long great-coats, their beards covered with snuff, and their eyes gleaming with mingled hope and regret in the rays of the setting sun, and regarded them with pity bordering on respect, as the last filmy vestige of the ancient regime, as shadows of loyalty and superstition still flitting about the earth and shortly to disappear from it for ever, that they would one day return over the bleeding corpse of their country, and sit like harpies, a polluted triumph, over the tomb of human liberty! To be a lord, a papist, and poor, is perhaps to some temperaments a consummation devoutly to be wished. There is all the subdued splendour of external rank, the pride of self-opinion, irritated and goaded on by petty privations and vulgar obloquy to a degree of morbid acuteness. Private and public annoyances must perpetually remind him of what he is, of what his ancestors were (a circumstance which might otherwise be forgotten); must narrow the circle of conscious dignity more and more, and the sense of personal worth and pretention must be exalted by habit and contrast into a refined abstraction -"pure in the last recesses of the mind "unmixed with, or unalloyed by "baser matter!" -It was an hypothesis of the late Mr. Thomas Wedgewood, that there is a principle of compensation in the human mind which equalizes all situations, and by which the absence of anything only gives us a more intense and intimate The only reason why I am disposed to envy the professions of the church or army is, that men can afford to be poor in them without being subjected to insult. A girl with a handsome fortune in a country town may marry a poor lieutenant without degrading herself. An officer is always a gentleman; a clergyman is something more. Echard's book On the Contempt of the Clergy is unfounded. It is surely sufficient for any set of individuals raised above actual want, that their characters are not merely respectable, but sacred. Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect. What are the beg-perception of the reality; that insult adds to ging friars? Have they not put their base feet upon the necks of princes? Money as a luxury is valuable only as a passport to respect. It is one instrument of power. Where there are other admitted and ostensible claims to this, it becomes superfluous, and the neglect of it is even admired and looked up to as a mark of superiority over it. Even a strolling beggar is a popular character, who makes an open profession of his craft and calling, and who is neither worth a doit nor in want of one. The Scots are proverbially poor and proud: we VOL. II. pride, that pain looks forward to ease with delight, that hunger already enjoys the unsavoury morsel that is to save it from perishing, that want is surrounded with imaginary riches, like the poor poet in Hogarth, who has a map of the mines of Peru hanging on his garret walls; in short, that "we can hold a fire in our hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus"-but this hypothesis, though ingenious and to a certain point true, is to be admittted only in a limited and qualified sense. 49 There are two classes of people that I have observed who are not so distinct as might be imagined those who cannot keep their own money in their hands, and those who cannot keep their hands from other people's. The first are always in want of money, though they do not know what they do with it. They muddle it away, without method or object, and without having anything to show for it. They have not, for instance, a fine house, but they hire two houses at a time; they have not a hot-house in their garden, but a shrubbery within doors; they do not gamble, but they purchase a library, and dispose of it when they move house. A princely benefactor provides them with lodgings, where, for a time, you are sure to find them at home: and they furnish them in a handsome style for those who are to come after them. With all this sieve-like economy they can only afford a leg of mutton and a bottle of wine, and are glad to get a lift in a common stage; whereas with a little management and the same disbursements, they might entertain a round of company and drive a smart tilbury. But they set no value upon money, and throw it away on any object or in any manner that first presents itself, merely to have it off their hands, so that you wonder what has become of it. The second class above spoken of not only make away with what belongs to themselves, but you cannot keep anything you have from their rapacious grasp. If you refuse to lend them what you want, they insist that you must; if you let them have anything to take charge of for a time (a print or a bust) they swear that you have given it them, and that they have too great a regard for the donor ever to part with it. You express surprise at their having run so largely in debt; but where is the singularity while others continue to lend? And how is this to be helped, when the manner of these sturdy beggars amounts to dragooning you out of your money, and they will not go away without your purse, any more than if If they came with a pistol in their hand. a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power, for you necessarily feel some towards him; and since he will take no denial, you must comply with his peremptory demands, or send for a constable, which out of respect for his character you will not do. These persons are also poor-light come, light go-and the bubble bursts at last. Yet if they had employed the same time and pains in any laudable art or study that they have in raising a surreptitious livelihood, they would have been respectable, if not rich. It is their facility in bor rowing money that has ruined them. No one will set heartily to work who has the face to enter a strange house, ask the master of it for a considerable loan, on some plausible and pompous pretext, and walk off with it in his pocket. You might as well suspect a highway. man of addicting himself to hard study in the intervals of his profession. There is only one other class of persons I can think of in connection with the subject of this essay--those who are always in want of money from the want of spirit to make use of it. Such persons are perhaps more to be pitied than all the rest. They live in want, in the midst of plenty, dare not touch what belongs to them, are afraid to say that their soul is their own, have their wealth locked up from them by fear and meanness as effectually as by bolts and bars, scarcely allow themselves a coat to their backs or a morsel to eat, are in dread of coming to the parish all their lives, and are not sorry, when they die, to think that they shall no longer be an expense to themselves— according to the old epigram: "Here lies Father Clarges, PET'S PUNISHMENTS. O if my love offended me, And we had words together, To show her I would master be, I'd whip her with a feather. If then she, like a naughty girl, Would tyranny declare it, I'd give my love a cross of pearl, And make her always bear it. If still she tried to sulk and sigh, But should she clench her dimpled fists, And if she dared her lips to pout, Like many pert young misses, I'd wind my arm her waist about And punish her with kisses! J. ASHBY STERRY. GASCON STORIES. I. BERNADOTTE; OR, WHITE HANDS. A man and his wife had an only daughter, and they were so proud of her that she had scarcely come into the world when they began to think about her marriage. The man, labouring with the greatest perseverance, sought to accumulate for her one of those attractive dowries which fascinate rich young bachelors; the wife seconded his efforts so courageously, grubbing in the ground all day, and stitching all night, constantly preparing the bride's outfit, that she fell sick and died, not being willing to call in the doctor, that she might save the cost of the remedies. Father Hugh, left alone with his daughter, was only the more anxious to have a son-inlaw, some sturdy labourer possessing a competence, one who would insure both the prosperity of his house and the happiness of his beloved Bernadotte. When she got to be eighteen years of age there was no lack of suitors. Father Hugh owed to his avarice the reputation of a man in easy circumstances, one who had cleverly turned his pennies to account by making short loans at a rate of interest not sanctioned by the Code; but all young men wishing to marry took very good care not to reproach him with an infraction of the statute; the sin would remain with the father-in law and the profits with the grandchildren, so they rubbed their hands and repeated the proverb: "Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good!" Bernadotte, worthy of her sire in economy and in activity, trudged to town every forenoon to sell her chickens, eggs, and fruit. She frequently encountered young Micoutet, the ploughman, who would drive up his oxen to the end of the furrow by the roadside and keep them standing a long time to bid the young girl good-morning, and chat with her about the rain, and the fine weather, and the chickens, and the cows, and the growing corn, and the beans that were about drying. Bernadotte, no matter what might be her haste to get to market, always had a few moments to spare for her talkative friend, and even after leaving him to go back repeatedly to answer, as far as he could make her hear them, the last kind words which he sent after her over the hedge. Arrived at the market-place, the first cus tomer whom Bernadotte usually found there was the young baker, Casterez, who, under the pretext of examining her eggs and fruit, prolonged the conversation a full hour, praising the bright feathers of the chickens, their remarkable plumpness, and bestowing a thousand compliments upon the clever housekeeper who knew how to get them into such nice condition. Passing from words to acts, he would bargain for the entire lot, appear perfectly satisfied with the price, and carry the basket off to his shop, where the fair merchant always found some refreshment and a couple of nice tarts garnished with sweetmeats. Bernadotte, on returning home from market lightened of her load, passed before the shop of the hairdresser Firmin, a young dandy as frizzled and smoothly shaved as the little Saint John in the procession of the Fête Dieu. Monsieur Firmin had just completed his tour through France, as stated on a handsome sign in big letters adorned with a pair of scissors and a razor, after the fashion of a heraldic shield stamped with a double device. "Heigh! Bernadotte," exclaimed the artistic barber, "have you any eggs to sell me to-day?" Bernadotte nodded affirmatively. She had been careful to conceal a dozen from the wholesale buyer Casterez, purposely to have some left for Monsieur Firmin. Prudence is the mother of certainty. Micoutet was undoubtedly very attentive, Casterez very devoted, but Monsieur Firmin was no less agreeable, and nobody knew what might happen. The eggs were accordingly handed to Monsieur Firmin, who found their freshness quite worthy of her who brought them. Far from attempting to abate the price, he added to the money he gave her a small flask of lavender water or a cake of scented soap. He wanted to know how Father Hugh was, and all about Braquette, the cow whose excellent milk maintained the rosy hue of the milker's cheeks, and about the sheep providing the wool with which to knit those pretty stockings so snugly fitting those little feet. Monsieur Firman, in his tour through France, had become very impertinent; his presumption might have offended the young rustic had not her interests obliged her to dissimulate and to be somewhat tolerant. He asked her to bring him eggs the next day, butter every time she emptied her churn; and notwithstanding his impertinence, a fault in young men which young girls often complain of to satisfy their consciences, Bernadotte found the hairdresser quite as agreeable as he was attentive. Micoutet, the ploughman, daily in the field, no matter what might be the state of the weather, and at the earliest hour, because he could not sleep in his anxiety to see daylight and Bernadotte, became so worn out by this way of living that he resolved to get back both his sleep and his usual tranquillity. He betook himself to the house of the father of her who had robbed him of his repose, and, cap in hand, with downcast eyes and a stammering voice, spoke to him a long time about Bernadotte, praising her vigorous arms, made for work, and the good health apparent in every form and feature, and finally demanded her hand. Father Hugh did not say yes, and still less no. He knew the full value of those little words of few letters; like his coins, he would not let them go without certain guarantees of their being properly placed. He put off the young man to the following Sunday, and meanwhile communicated the proposal to his daughter. "Micoutet is a very nice young man," said Bernadotte. "I stop and talk with him every morning on passing his farm. He has fine oxen, good fields, and an excellent vineyard. Casterez, the baker, however, appears also to good advantage; would it not be well" | her to decide quickly which of the two it would be best for her to marry. "The baker is a very nice young man," added Bernadotte, the same as she had said of the ploughman Micoutet, "but there is another, the hairdresser Firmin. He buys something of me every day, and keeps me an hour talking about his tour through France, the yarn my stockings are made of, and my good milch-cow. He assures me that he has never seen any one more engaging than she whom he has the pleasure of looking at when he looks at me." "The compliments of a barber!" interposed Father Hugh. "Everybody knows what they are worth. No matter, the affair progresses; competition among three makes the profit all the greater. We will see the hairdresser, my dear, and find out what to expect from his admiration." Hugh again returned to town, where he had an interview with Monsieur Firmin; and as he knew that the larger the company of buyers the more active the bidding, he invited each of the competitors to come to his house the following Sunday after mass. "Humph!" he muttered to himself, as he canvassed the situation, "the ploughman courts my daughter, but without neglecting his work or spending a farthing; the baker is doing the same thing, loitering about the market-place, and spending his money to "And tarts on the dinner-table!" added win the saleswoman; the barber overwhelms Bernadotte. "Casterez the baker!" replied Father Hugh, in a reflective mood. 66 'By our Lady, there is always bread on a baker's counter!" "I will find out, my child, what the baker means before deciding." "His meaning, father, is plain enough. He buys every morning all that I take to town, and without higgling about the price, please you. If I were to ask him double, he would not make the slightest objection." "Without higgling about the price!" repeated Father Hugh, who did not do business in that fashion. "That young fellow is very much smitten. We will look into the matter, Bernadotte; and if his granary and his purse are as well stocked with flour and cash as his heart seems to be with love, we will try to make some arrangement." Father Hugh strode off to town to see the baker, who, delighted with this proceeding, showed himself deeply enamoured. "Which of the two?" exclaimed Father Hugh to himself. "The thing works well. We will set them to competing; goods in demand increase in value." He returned home, and, communicating the baker's sentiments to his daughter, promised Bernadotte with fulsome compliments and trifling presents. There is no hurry. Things can be cleared up, and the characters of these gallants tested, to make them solve one of my riddles." When Sunday came, Bernadotte made herself look as beautiful as the virgin queen of a May-day festival; she put on her best starched muslin cap, calico petticoat, red cotton handkerchief, and morocco shoes, and awaited the appearance of her three suitors, whom, on presenting themselves, the father welcomed in these terms:— "You three wish to provide a husband for my daughter, and you all cherish the same object. As custom obliges her to reject two in the selection of one, she must proceed cautiously in this ever-uncertain lottery. Every scholar who goes to college passes five or six years in ascertaining whether he will wear the uniform of a soldier, the robe of a lawyer, or that of a doctor. A young girl may be excused if she asks eight days to decide what kind of a noose she will put round her neck. Come back here next Sunday, my friends, in your |