He tries to carry on trade by a sort of slight-of-hand, or by being up to every thing. Yet, somehow, he finds all will not do. His friends turn out unsubstantial visions : his elegant appearance fails entirely in gaining him either credit or respect: his means vanish in schemes which are proved to be unutterably ridiculous; and he at length makes the notable discovery, that other people are just as wise and as clever as himself. Thus, every succeeding year of his life, the young man thinks less and less of his own abilities, or power of swaying the world to his wishes. He learns, by dreary experience, that, after all, dullness with prudence gets on much better than activity and heedlessness. Above all, he finds that there is no possibility of attaining any great and profitable end without accommodating himself to a thousand petty circumstances that occur without ministering to the prejudices or prepossessions of others without submitting, perhaps, to many supposed contumelies and neglects-without manfully breasting every succeeding wave of adversity that threatens to swallow him up.

So common is the fallacy of self-sufficient cleverness among the youthful, and the corresponding disregard of advice from the aged, that it would almost appear as if our race were, in this manner, by a provision of nature, doomed to be retarded in its advancement towards perfection. If each generation were to start with the full advantage of the experience of the one which preceded it, it is impossible to conceive the height of prosperity and happiness at which mankind would have already arrived. But it seems to be nearly as difficult to endow with the wisdom of threescore the youth of five and twenty, as it is to train the muscles of a child of six years old to the energy and endurance of a full-grown man. As the body acquires strength in a regular gradation, so the mind also attains improvement by degrees. Nevertheless, we do not despond over the case of those who naturally repel admonition from their predecessors. There is at least one form in which good

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council presents itself without any circumstance which predisposes men to despise it, and that is, the writings which the industry and learning of ages have now largely accumulated, and which the art of printing is daily extending. It is from the reiterated efforts of the press that we are principally to look for melioration in the tempers and in the behaviour of the people. In proportion as the young indulge in judicious reading, they will learn to reflect soundly to see the absurdity of closing their understandings against the deductions drawn from familiar examples of ruin produced by self-conceit and impassioned heedlessness. They will thus, to a certain degree, acquire that which will stand them in the stead of experience in life-a dependence on the experience of those who have gone before them. In the same measure, by being made extensively acquainted with the abilities of others the cleverness of their predecessors as well as of their neighbours they will profitably be led to think much less of their own acquirements, and to put considerably less value on their own capabilities of action.

Occasionally we see young men who are less headstrong at the outset than those we have pointed out. A few seem to step at once, as it were, into the sagacity of the aged, and it is always seen that they prosper in proportion as their conduct is regulated by the admonitions of prudence. The success of these entrants on the stage of human life is found to have depended principally on the due regulation of their passions-for in this mainly lies the secret of advancement in society. They engage in their occupations with coolness and deliberation, warily lying in wait for opportunities of well-doing, and taking advantage of those false steps which precipitate others from the eminence they have partially gained. While the greater proportion of the young and thoughtless are dropping aside out of the ranks, and disappearing, and the aged are naturally falling away from amongst them, they are steadily pursuing their way, shutting their eyes and their ears

against the various allurements that beset them against the pretended friendships of the vicious or the simply contemptible against, perhaps, the turbulence of their own appetites and passions and so, by the time they have reached a mature manhood, they are already in the possession of those comforts and that honourable station that are the reward of virtue.

HOUSE-MONEY.

THE surprise with which Goldsmith's club learns that the reckoning is drunk out, will be fresh in the memory of almost all our readers. "Drunk out!" cried they all; "impossible!" The landlord they thought must be mistaken; or he must be cheating them; or there must have been a sudden rise in the price of liquors; or there must be some other mystery in the case, to account for so sudden an evanishment of all the sixpences originally deposited to defray the charges of their festivity. And yet the landlord

was correct and honest; liquor was as it had been, and there was no mystery in the matter, but, simply, that people drink a great deal faster, when a few meet together, than they are apt to imagine. So it is with that wonderful thing called "house-money;" a thing that "mocks married men," if ever any thing mocked them; a thing of the most illusory and unascertainable character; a thing bottomless; an abyss. House-money, in the general acceptation of the word, is that sum which men in the middle ranks of life are accustomed to disburse weekly or monthly for the discharge of their household expenses during an ensuing space of time, and which is generally administered by the sage head and fair hands of the individual called the Lady of the House. A husband may have paid this sum for twenty or thirty years for it must be paid-and yet the thing will be as great a mystery to him at the end as

at the beginning. It goes away from his hands, like the arrow of the Arabian prince, which was carried on and on by genii, and never was found again on earth: it passes from him, and he sees it no more: on Saturday he looked, and it was there, snug in the bottom of his pocket; but on Monday, when he looked again, the place knew it not; it had vanished for ever. What is the strangest thing of all, he never becomes in the least degree reconciled to the wonder. Instead of tamely sitting down, and saying to himself, "Well, I fairly give up the question of housemoney; it is a mystery beyond me, and I only misspend time in thinking of it," he is perpetually starting up, during the course of some half century of married life, with the vain inquiry, "But, my dear, where does all that money go? 'Pon my honour, I don't understand how so much should be required to keep our small family. Are you satisfied yourself that all is quite right; that there is no buttery-spirit secretly devouring our substance,* no strange error in your reckonings, no unheard-of overcharges in those passbooks that I see flying about like evil spirits? I really wish you would see after it." Mrs Balderstone, who has had the same questions asked of her once every month for the last ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years, immediately takes fire at what she conceives to be an indirect charge against her housekeeping, and opens thus: "I really wonder, Mr Balderstone, that you will always be thus accusing me of extravagance. How often have I assured you that I am just as economical as I possibly can be? In fact, it is wonderful how I can make the money go so far as I do; and if it were not that I am so excessively careful, it would be quite impossible. You can have no idea of the number of things required for a house, and

A superstition of our forefathers, which represented a gluttonous fiend as haunting larders, and fattening himself up, without, in general, being visible to mortal eyes. Sir Walter Scott somewhere tells a story of a butteryspirit surprised at its morning meal in the pantry of an innkeeper.

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how they mount up even in a weekly account. tea and sugar, butcher-meat and bread-tremendous articles! We consume no fewer than nine quarter loaves a-week. [Here Mr Balderstone raises his eye-brows in perfect astonishment.] And then there is beer and porter, and wines and spirits-all to be had, for you know you won't do without something of the kind every night. [Here the gentleman winces a little.] And coal-the single article of coal is dreadful." Only in winter," interjects Mr Balderstone, glad to get a little flaw in his wife's argument. "Yes," resumes she; "but if I were not to lay by in summer, I never could stand the expense of this article in winter."

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"Still," says Mr Balderstone, doggedly, "I cannot see how all these articles, even allowing the great quantity we use, and their high prices, should require such a very large sum as that which you get from me weekly, under the denomination of house-money."

"But do you think these are all? I wish they were. It is the little things that mount up-things that you have no idea of at all, but which, nevertheless, are as indispensable as any of the larger articles. If you only knew what a vast quantity of these we require, you would never call in question the way I lay out my money. There's soap,

for instance, if that can be called a little article. We do not use less than two pounds every week of even the commonest kind. And there's pearl ashes-I lay out threepence every fortnight on that article-even although we have to give out most of our washing; for you know you won't let me have that additional servant I have been so long wanting, and of course we can't get every thing of that kind done at home. [Another dreadful wince on the part of the gentleman.] And there's such a sum every week for vegetables-things I don't care for, but you know you won't want them, and of course they are to be got. And pepper, and vinegar, and pickles, and salt-a shilling a month for salt alone. In fact, it is quite endless, and my