FOOTNOTES:

"I could adduce a fact derived from my own experience that would illustrate the heavy losses to which manufacturers were exposed in their operations, by those fluctuations (in 1837) in the value of money. I am a calico printer. I purchase the cloth, which is my raw material, in the market; and have usually in warehouse three or four months' supply of material. I must necessarily proceed in my operations, whatever change there may be—whether a rise or a fall in the market. I employ six hundred hands; and those hands must be employed. I have fixed machinery and capital whichmustalso be kept going; and, therefore, whatever the prospects of a rise or fall in price may be, I am constantly obliged to be purchasing the material, and contracting for the material on which I operate. In 1837 I lost by my stock in hand L.20,000, as compared with the stock-taking in 1835, 1836, and 1838; the average of those three years, when compared with 1837, shows that I lost L.20,000 bymy business in 1837; and what I wish to add is, that the whole of this loss arose from the depreciation in the value of my stock."My business was as prosperous; we stood as high as printers as we did previously; our business since that has been as good, and there was no other cause for the losses I then sustained, but the depreciation of the value of the articles in warehouse in my hands. What I wish particularly to show, is the defenceless condition in which we manufacturers are placed, and how completely we are at the mercy of these unnatural fluctuations. Although I was aware that the losses were coming, it was impossible I could do otherwise than proceed onward—with the certainty of suffering a loss on the stock; to stop the work of six hundred hands, and to fail to supply our customers, would have been altogether ruinous; that is a fact drawn from my own experience. I wish to point to another example of a most striking kind, showing the effect of these fluctuations on merchants. I hold in my hand a list of thirty-six articles which were imported in 1837, by the house of Butterworth and Brookes of Manchester, a house very well known; Mr Brookes is now borough-reeve of Manchester. Here is a list of thirty-six articles imported in the year 1837, in the regular way of business, and opposite to each article there is the rate of loss upon it as it arrived, and as it was sold. The average loss is 37½ per cent on those thirty-six articles, and they were imported from Canton, Trieste, Bombay, Bahia, Alexandria, Lima, and, in fact, all the intermediate places almost. This, I presume, is a fair guide to show the losses which other merchants incurred on similar articles."

"My business was as prosperous; we stood as high as printers as we did previously; our business since that has been as good, and there was no other cause for the losses I then sustained, but the depreciation of the value of the articles in warehouse in my hands. What I wish particularly to show, is the defenceless condition in which we manufacturers are placed, and how completely we are at the mercy of these unnatural fluctuations. Although I was aware that the losses were coming, it was impossible I could do otherwise than proceed onward—with the certainty of suffering a loss on the stock; to stop the work of six hundred hands, and to fail to supply our customers, would have been altogether ruinous; that is a fact drawn from my own experience. I wish to point to another example of a most striking kind, showing the effect of these fluctuations on merchants. I hold in my hand a list of thirty-six articles which were imported in 1837, by the house of Butterworth and Brookes of Manchester, a house very well known; Mr Brookes is now borough-reeve of Manchester. Here is a list of thirty-six articles imported in the year 1837, in the regular way of business, and opposite to each article there is the rate of loss upon it as it arrived, and as it was sold. The average loss is 37½ per cent on those thirty-six articles, and they were imported from Canton, Trieste, Bombay, Bahia, Alexandria, Lima, and, in fact, all the intermediate places almost. This, I presume, is a fair guide to show the losses which other merchants incurred on similar articles."

It was these disastrous losses which made Mr Cobden a Free-trader. He wished to cheapen everything as his own produce had been cheapened. The contraction of the currency, and its being made dependent on the retention of gold, was the origin and root of the whole evil and all the disasters the nation has since undergone.

Such a change, however, the reverse of all this, like all those produced by nature, is so gradual as to the vast majority of men to be imperceptible. Like the gradual extension of the day in spring, or the change of temperature, the change is so slight from day to day that it eludes even the closest observation. From one month to another, however, the alteration is great and striking. The addition, first, of six or eight millions of gold, annually raised, rising by degrees to sixteen or eighteen millions—which doubles the annual supply of the precious metals for the use of the globe—being diffused over an immense surface, and finding its way more or less into the coffers of all nations, may not produce a great or even visible start of prices at any one time. But the change will be incessant; and before many years have elapsed, the result, if the increased supply continues, will be great and apparent. In the first instance, the effect will appear in arresting the fall of prices which has so long been going on, and which our legislative measures have all been calculated to increase. But after arresting the fall, it will speedily induce a rise; and this rise will for a long period be so steady and considerable as to produce a very great increase in the remuneration of the labouring classes, and immensely to benefit them. There is no speculation in this: it is only supposing that the increase of gold is to produce the same effect as the increase of silver, from the discovery of the South American mines, did three centuries ago.

The effect of the same change, by diminishing the weight of debt and taxes, will be still more signal and beneficial. Among the many and appalling evils of which a rise in the value of the circulating medium, and consequent fall in that of everything else, is productive, there is perhaps none so widespread and calamitous in its effects, as the adding to the weight of debts and taxes, and thus weighing down the energies of the productive classes, upon whose efforts the whole prosperity of society depends. It is that which has been the great cause of the long-continued depression and agony, interrupted only by fleeting gleams of prosperity, of the last thirty years, as the sudden expansion and contraction of the currency consequent on its being made dependent on the presence or absence of the precious metals, has been of its frightful oscillations. The taxes now paid by the nation, as measured by the price of wheat—the true measure—are, after, five-and-thirty yearsof peace, twice as heavy as they were in 1815, after twenty years of a costly war. This is what renders it so difficult for any government to maintain armaments, either at sea or land, at all commensurate to the public necessities; which has weakened our national influence, and degraded our national character, and exposed us to the deplorable state of weakness against foreign aggression, to the dangers of which, the Duke of Wellington has said he has found it impossible to awaken any Administration for thirty years. The Government see the public dangers, but they are disabled from guarding against them, because Parliament, stimulated by suffering constituencies whom the fall of prices has involved in constant difficulties, will not vote the necessary supplies. It is the same with the weight of mortgages, jointures, family provisions, bonds, bills, and debts of every description. They have all been doubled in weight since the bill of 1819 contracted the currency; and hence the inextricable embarrassments into which nearly all classes of the community have been precipitated, except the moneyed, whose fortunes have every day been increasing in real amount, from the same cause which has spread ruin so generally around them.

When it is said that the effect of Californian gold will be to reverse all this—to reduce gradually, and probably before twenty years have elapsed,half the weight of debt and taxesnow felt as so grievous a burden by the community—it is affirmed that it will confer, perhaps, the greatest blessing which a beneficent Providence could confer on a suffering world. In England it will gradually and to a certain extent, so far as average prices are concerned, undo all that the Bullionists and Free-traders have been doing for the last thirty years. It will remove a large part of the frightful evils consequent on the monetary measures of Sir Robert Peel; and if seconded by a revision of our import duties, and a moderate tax for fiscal purposes on all foreign articles brought into the country, it would go far to repair the devastation produced by the selfish legislation of the last thirty years. In France it will arrest that dreadful fall of wages which, ever since the peace, has been felt to be increasing, from the constant reduction of prices arising from the destruction of the South American mines, and the simultaneous measures adopted for the contraction of the currency in Great Britain. The unjust monopoly of realised capital will be arrested, at least for a long period. The unjust depression of industry, by the continued fall of prices, will be gradually terminated. But so gradual will be the change, and so unseen the operation of the vivifying element thus let into society, that even the classes most benefited by it will, for the most part, be ignorant of the cause to which their improved circumstances have been owing. They will be blessed by the hand of Nature, they know not how or by whom, as, under the former system, they were cursed by the hand of man, they knew not how or by whom.

Already the beneficial effects of Californian gold have been felt over the whole world, and nowhere more strongly than in this country. It is well known that prices of all articles of commerce, except corn and sugar, have risen twenty or thirty per cent within the last year; and the Free-traders consider that as being entirely owing to their measures. If so, it is singular howcorn and sugar, on which the inundation of Free Trade has been chiefly let in since 1846, should be theonly exceptionsto the general rise. It is singular what contradictory effects they ascribe to their system: at one time it is lauded to the skies, because it tends to lower prices, and cheapen every article of consumption; at another, because it is said to raise prices, and encourage every branch of industry. Both effects cannot be owing to the same system: to ascribe them both to it is to say that a certain combination of gases produces alternately fire and water. At all events, if Free Trade brings about a rise of prices, what comes of all the arguments which went to recommend it on the score of reducing them? The truth is, however, Free Trade has nothing whatever to do with the recent rise of prices of manufactured articles, nor with the extension of the nationalexports which has taken place. These happy results, the passing gleam of sunshine, have been entirely owing to other causes, among which Californian gold bears a prominent place. Free Trade has tended only to continue and perpetuate the misery and depression which attended its first introduction.

This argument of the increase of our exports last year (1850) having been owing to Free Trade, has been so admirably disposed of by that able and intrepid man to whom the nation is under such obligations for the light he has thrown on these subjects, and the courageous way in which he has everywhere asserted them, in a late public meeting at Rugby, that we cannot do better than quote his words:—

"The Free-traders had boasted much of their system as having increased the amount of our exports; and he (Mr Young) had been continually trying for a long period to get from them the names of the countries to which those increased imports went. At length he had the fact; and the result would be most startling as applied to the arguments and predictions of that party before the corn law was repealed. The countries he would take were Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Prussia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France; and he found that in the year 1845 the quantity of corn imported from all these countries, comprising, as they did, the whole of northern and central Europe, amounted to 1,741,730 quarters, whilst the declared value of British and Irish manufactures exported to those countries was L.17,504,417. But last year the corn imported from those countries had increased in quantity to 6,857,530 quarters, whilst our exports to them had decreased to L.15,274,639. These figures showed that from the whole of northern and central Europe we took last year no less than 5,115,800 quarters of corn more than in 1845, and that there was a decrease in the value of our exports of L.2,229,778. Again, last year the declared value of ourgrossexports amounted to L.63,596,025, but in 1845 it reached the sum of L.60,111,082; so that in the course of these four years the increase was only L.3,484,943. He found also that our exports in 1830 were L.35,842,623, and in 1835, L.47,372,270, being an increase on the five years of L.11,529,647, or 32 2-10ths per cent. That was an increase under the operation of protection. In 1840 the exports amounted to L.51,406,430, or an increase upon 1835 of L.4,634,160, or 8 5-10ths per cent. In 1845 they were L.60,111,082—an increase on 1840 of L.8,704,652, or 16 9-10ths per cent. In 1849, L.63,596,025, an increase on 1845 of L.3,484,943; and in the present year, supposing the increase continued in the same ratio, he calculated that that increase would on the year 1845 be about L.4,350,000, or 7 2-10ths per cent. Would Free-traders boast of their exports after that? They talked upon this question as if the country had, under the system of protection, been in a perfectly dead and stagnant condition, and that the agriculturists were like the clods of the earth, and less capable of improvement. Why, it was under protection that our ships were employed to go to the island of Ichaboe, from which guano was first imported into this country; and it was under protection that that island had disappeared from the face of the ocean, and every cwt. of its guano had been brought here and spread upon the soil. He rejoiced and exulted in the march of science as much as any man; but it was an arrogant and an unfounded assumption on the part of the Free-traders to monopolise to themselves, as the result of their system, those improvements in agriculture which were going on under protection with railroad speed, and to which, in truth, their measures had only given a check, and not an impetus. But then he was asked, what have you to say to the United States? He would tell them. He found that the exports to the United States amounted to L.11,971,028 in 1849; but in 1836 they were not less than L.12,425,605; so that the exports in the former exceeded those in the latter year by L.454,577. Surely facts like these would dispose of a few of the Free-trade fallacies, and we should not hear them again repeated, at all events."—Morning Herald, Nov. 28, 1850.

The restoration of peace on the Continent was the principal cause which again raised the amount of our exports to the Old World. This appears decisively in the returns: the exports of Great Britain to Germany alone, which, in 1848, had sunk to less than £4,000,000, rose, in 1850, to £6,078,355. The cessation of purchases to the Continent, during the two preceding years, in consequence of the alarm consequent on the French and German revolutions, only made the rush for English manufactures greater when the restoration of tranquillityreopened the Continent to our industry. In America the change was equally great, and equally irrespective of Free Trade: our exports to the United States, in 1850, exceeded £12,000,000. This extension arose from the general rise of prices, and extension of credit, from the opening of the treasures of California. It not only created a new market for exports on the reverse of the Rocky Mountains, but so vivified and animated every part of the Union, as rendered them capable of purchasing a much larger quantity of the manufactured articles of this country than they had done for a great number of years.[6]

But by far the most important and beneficial effect of Californian gold hitherto experienced has been in the extension of credit and increase of accommodation at home. This effect is obvious and important. The notes of the Bank of England in circulation, have risen in the last year to L.20,000,000 or L.21,000,000 from L.16,500,000, which they had fallen to during the panic. The circulation of every other bank has, as a matter of course, been proportionably augmented. What produced this great increase in the circulating medium? The influx of bullion into the country, which augmented the treasure in the Bank of England to above L.16,000,000. There is the secret of the whole thing; of the activity in the manufacturing districts, and the general extension of credit and rise of prices through the districts. It is Californian gold which has done the whole; for it has at once filled to overflowing the vaults of the Bank of England, and relieved its officers, and those of all similar establishments, from all dread of a drain of specie setting in. Gold was abundant; the banks no longer feared a collapse: therefore notes were abundant also; the terrors of the holders of them were abated. Prices rose, and credit was extended. We are far from thinking that it is a wise and judicious system to make credit of every kind entirely dependent on the amount of metallic treasure in the vaults of the Bank of England: we only say, having done this by Sir R. Peel's monetary system, we have to thank California for having put at leasta temporary stop to the evils with which it was pregnant. It is not surprising that the addition of even so small a sum to the metallic circulation of the commercial world should produce, in a single year, so great a result. The discovery of two millions of bank-notes, in an old chest of the Bank of England, stopped the panic of December 1825; the mere issuing of Lord J. Russell's letter, announcing the temporary repeal of the Bank Charter Act, put a period to the far severer crash of 1847. The addition of five millions to the metallic treasure of this country is quite sufficient to vivify every branch of industry, for it will probably put fifty millions, in bank-notes and private bills, into circulation.

As the influx of Californian gold, however, is an element of such immense importance thus let into the social world, it is material to observe what evils it is adequate to remedy, and to what social diseases it can be regarded as a panacea. This is the more necessary, because, while it tends by its beneficent influence to conceal for a time the pernicious effects of other measures, it is by no means a remedy for them; nor has it a tendency even, in the long run, to lessen their danger. It induces immediate prosperity, by the extension of credit and rise of prices with which it is attended; but it has no tendency to diminish the dreadful evils of Free-Trade and a currency mainly dependent on the retention of the precious metals at all times in the country.

On the contrary, it may, under many circumstances, materially aggravate them.

As the effect produced by a great addition of the metallic treasures of the earth isuniversal, it must affect prices equally in every part of the world. The largest part of the bullion, indeed, will be brought to the richest country, which is best able to buy it, and has most need of it to form the basis of its transactions. But still, some part will find its way into every country; prices will be everywhere raised, andthe relative proportion between them in different countries will remain the same, or even be rendered more unfavourable to the richer state. That is the material circumstance; for it shows that it must leave the greatest and most lasting evils of Free Trade untouched. Supposing gold to become so plentiful that the sovereign is only worth ten shillings, and the effect on general prices to be such that the average price of the quarter of wheat is raised from forty to sixty shillings—which, in a course of years, is by no means improbable—still the relative position of the British with the Polish and American cultivator will remain the same. The price of the wheat may be raised from 15s. to 25s. a-quarter, on the banks of the Vistula or the Mississippi; but still theability of their cultivators to undersell our farmers will remain the same, or rather be augmented. Prices will still be so much higher in the old rich and heavily-taxed country, which absorbs the largest part of the metallic circulation of the earth, than in the young poor and untaxed one, that in the production of the fruits of the earth, to which machinery can never be made applicable, the inability to carry on the competition will only be rendered the more apparent by the increasing, or at all events, permanent difference of the prices.

In the next place, how cheap soever gold, from its augmented plenty, may become, there will be no cessation, as long as our paper circulation remains on its present footing, of those dreadful monetary crises which now, at stated periods recurring every five or six years, spread such unheard-of ruin through the industrious classes. Let gold, from its greater plenty, become of only half its value, or a sovereign be only worth ten shillings, and prices, in consequence, rise to double their present amount, the danger of a monetary crisis, as long as our currency is based on its present footing, will remain the same. Still, any considerable drain of the metallic treasure of the country, such as it is—either from the necessities of foreign war, the adverse state of foreign exchanges, or a great importation, occasioned by a deficient home harvest—will send the specie headlong out, and, by suddenly contracting the currency, ruin half of the persons engaged in business undertakings. It is theinconceivable follyof making the paper circulation dependent on the retention of the metallic; the enormous error of enacting, that, for every five sovereigns that are drawn out of the country, a five-pound note shall be drawn in by the bankers; the infatuated self-immolation arising from the gratuitous negation of the greatest blessing of a paper circulation—that of supplying, during the temporary absence of the metallic currency, its want, and obviating all the evils thence arising—which is the real source of the evils under which we have suffered so severely since the disastrous epoch of 1819, when the system was introduced. The increased supply of gold, so far from tending to obviate this danger, has a directly opposite effect; for, by augmenting the metallic treasures of the country, and thus raising credit during periods of prosperity, it engages the nation in a vast variety of undertakings, the completion of which is rendered impossible when the wind of adversity blows, by the sudden contraction of its currency and credit. And to this dangerthe mercantile classes are exposed beyond any other; for as their undertakings are always far beyond their realised capital, and supported entirely by credit, every periodical contraction of the currency, recurring every five or six years, exposes one-half of them to inevitable ruin.

Let not the Free-traders, therefore, lay the flattering unction to their souls, that California is to get themout of all their difficulties, and that after having, by their ruinous measures, brought the nation to the very brink of ruin, and destroyed one-half of its wealth engaged in commerce, they are to escape the deserved execration of ages, by the effects of an accidental discovery of metallic treasures on the shores of the Pacific. Californian gold, a gift of Providence to a suffering world, will arrest the general and calamitous fall of prices which the Free-traders have laboured so assiduously to introduce, and thus diminish in a most material degree the weight of debts and taxes. So far it will undoubtedly tend to relieve the industrious classes,especially in the rural districts, from much of the misery induced on them by their oppressors; but it cannot work impossibilities. It will leave industry in all classes, and in none more than the manufacturing, exposed to the ruinous competition of foreigners, working, whatever the value of money may be, at a cheaper rate than we can ever do, because in poorer and comparatively untaxed countries. It will leave the commercial classes permanently exposed to the periodical recurrence of monetary storms, arising out of the very plenty of the currency when credit is high, and its sudden withdrawal from the effect of adverse exchanges, or the drain consequent on vast importations of food. It will leave the British navy, and with it the British colonial empire and our national independence, gradually sinking from the competition, in shipping, of poorer states. Nature will do much to counteract the disasters induced by human folly; but the punishment of guilty selfishness is as much a part of her system as the relief of innocent suffering; and to the end of the world those who seek to enrich themselves by the ruin of their neighbours will work out, in the very success of their measures, their own deserved and memorable punishment.

FOOTNOTES:[1]See "Fall of Rome," Alison'sEssays, vol. iii. p. 440.[2]See a very able article on California,Quarterly Review, Oct. 1850.[3]"Quum Censores ob inopiam ærarii, se jam locationibus abstinerent ædium sacrarum tuendarum, curuliumque equorum præbendorum, ac similium his rerum: convenere ad eos frequentes, qui hastæ hujus generis assueverant; hortatique censores,ut omnia perinde agerent, locarent, ac si pecunia in ærario esset.Neminem, nisi bello confecto, pecuniam ab ærario petiturum esse."—Livy, lib. xxiv. c. 19. "The censors," says Arnold, "found the treasury unable to supply the public services. Upon this, trust monies belonging to widows and minors, or to widows and unmarried women, were deposited in the treasury; and whatever sums the trustees had to draw for, were paid by the quarterin bills on the banking commissioners, ortriumvirs mensarii. It is probable that these bills were actually apaper currency, and that they circulated as money on the security of the public faith. In the same waythe government contracts were also paid in paper; for the contractors came forward in a body to the censors, and begged them to make their contracts as usual,promising not to demand payment till the end of the war. This must mean, I conceive, that they were to be paid in orders upon the treasury, which orders were to be converted into cash when the present difficulties of the government should be at an end."—Arnold'sHistory of Rome, ii. 207, 208. This was just an inconvertible paper currency; and its issue immediately after the battle of Cannæ saved the Roman empire. We have heard, from a gentleman who was present, that, in a political Whig party many years ago, when the conversation turned on the service of a paper currency in bringing a state through a pecuniary crisis, and some one said it was that which enabled the Romans to surmount the Second Punic war, Lord Melbourne, who was present, immediately repeated, from memory, the words above quoted from Livy in capitals.[4]Quarterly Review, October 1850.[5]Average Prices of Wheat:—s.d.1792,4711793,4961794,5401795,8161796,8031809,10601810,11201811,10801812,11801813,1200[6]Exports to the United States from Great Britain:—1837,£4,695,2251838,7,585,7601839,8,839,2041840,5,283,0201841,7,098,8421842,3,528,8071849,11,971,028

[1]See "Fall of Rome," Alison'sEssays, vol. iii. p. 440.

[2]See a very able article on California,Quarterly Review, Oct. 1850.

[3]"Quum Censores ob inopiam ærarii, se jam locationibus abstinerent ædium sacrarum tuendarum, curuliumque equorum præbendorum, ac similium his rerum: convenere ad eos frequentes, qui hastæ hujus generis assueverant; hortatique censores,ut omnia perinde agerent, locarent, ac si pecunia in ærario esset.Neminem, nisi bello confecto, pecuniam ab ærario petiturum esse."—Livy, lib. xxiv. c. 19. "The censors," says Arnold, "found the treasury unable to supply the public services. Upon this, trust monies belonging to widows and minors, or to widows and unmarried women, were deposited in the treasury; and whatever sums the trustees had to draw for, were paid by the quarterin bills on the banking commissioners, ortriumvirs mensarii. It is probable that these bills were actually apaper currency, and that they circulated as money on the security of the public faith. In the same waythe government contracts were also paid in paper; for the contractors came forward in a body to the censors, and begged them to make their contracts as usual,promising not to demand payment till the end of the war. This must mean, I conceive, that they were to be paid in orders upon the treasury, which orders were to be converted into cash when the present difficulties of the government should be at an end."—Arnold'sHistory of Rome, ii. 207, 208. This was just an inconvertible paper currency; and its issue immediately after the battle of Cannæ saved the Roman empire. We have heard, from a gentleman who was present, that, in a political Whig party many years ago, when the conversation turned on the service of a paper currency in bringing a state through a pecuniary crisis, and some one said it was that which enabled the Romans to surmount the Second Punic war, Lord Melbourne, who was present, immediately repeated, from memory, the words above quoted from Livy in capitals.

[4]Quarterly Review, October 1850.

[5]Average Prices of Wheat:—s.d.1792,4711793,4961794,5401795,8161796,8031809,10601810,11201811,10801812,11801813,1200

[5]Average Prices of Wheat:—

[6]Exports to the United States from Great Britain:—1837,£4,695,2251838,7,585,7601839,8,839,2041840,5,283,0201841,7,098,8421842,3,528,8071849,11,971,028

[6]Exports to the United States from Great Britain:—

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

"I am not displeased with your novel, so far as it has gone," said my father graciously; "though as for The Sermon—"

Here I trembled; but the ladies, Heaven bless them! had taken Parson Dale under their special protection; and, observing that my father was puckering up his brows critically, they rushed boldly forward in defence of The Sermon, and Mr Caxton was forced to beat a retreat. However, like a skilful general, he renewed the assault upon outposts less gallantly guarded. But as it is not my business to betray my weak points, I leave it to the ingenuity of cavillers to discover the places at which the Author ofHuman Errordirected his great guns.

"But," said the Captain, "you are a lad of too much spirit, Pisistratus, to keep us always in the obscure country quarters of Hazeldean—you will march us out into open service before you have done with us?"

Pisistratus, magisterially, for he has been somewhat nettled by Mr Caxton's remarks—and he puts on an air of dignity, in order to awe away minor assailants.—"Yes, Captain Roland—not yet awhile, but all in good time. I have not stinted myself in canvass, and behind my foreground of the Hall and the Parsonage I propose, hereafter, to open some lengthened perspective of the varieties of English life—"

Mr Caxton.—"Hum!"

Blanche, putting her hand on my father's lip.—"We shall know better the design, perhaps, when we know the title. Pray, Mr Author, what is the title?"

My Mother, with more animation than usual.—"Ay, Sisty—the title?"

Pisistratus, startled.—"The title! By the soul of Cervantes! I have never yet thought of a title!"

Captain Roland, solemnly.—"There is a great deal in a good title. As a novel reader, I know that by experience."

Mr Squills.—"Certainly; there is not a catchpenny in the world but what goes down, if the title be apt and seductive. Witness 'Old Parr's Life Pills.' Sell by the thousand, sir, when my 'Pills for Weak Stomachs,' which I believe to be just the same compound, never paid for the advertising."

Mr Caxton.—"Parr's Life Pills! a fine stroke of genius! It is not every one who has a weak stomach, or time to attend to it, if he have. But who would not swallow a pill to live to a hundred and fifty-two?"

Pisistratus, stirring the fire in great excitement.—"My title! my title!—what shall be my title!"

Mr Caxton, thrusting his hand into his waistcoat, and in his most didactic of tones.—"From a remote period, the choice of a title has perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind. We may guess how their invention has been racked by the strange contortions it has produced. To begin with the Hebrews. 'The Lips of the Sleeping,' (Labia Dormientium)—what book do you suppose that title to designate?—A Catalogue of Rabbinical writers! Again, imagine some young lady of old captivated by the sentimental title of 'The Pomegranate with its Flower,' and opening on a treatise on the Jewish Ceremonials! Let us turn to the Romans. Aulus Gellius commences his pleasant gossiping 'Noctes' with a list of the titles in fashion in his day. For instance, 'The Muses' and 'The Veil,' 'The Cornucopia,' 'The Beehive,' and 'The Meadow.' Some titles, indeed, were more truculent, and promised food to those who love to sup upon horrors—such as 'The Torch,' 'The Poniard,' 'The Stiletto'—"

Pisistratus, impatiently.—"Yes, sir; but to come to My Novel."

Mr Caxton, unheeding the interruption.—"You see, you have a fine choice here, and of a nature pleasing, and not unfamiliar to a classicalreader; or you may borrow a hint from the early Dramatic Writers."

Pisistratus, more hopefully.—"Ay! there is something in the Drama akin to the Novel. Now, perhaps, I may catch an idea."

Mr Caxton.—"For instance, the author of theCuriosities of Literature(from whom, by the way, I am plagiarising much of the information I bestow upon you) tells us of a Spanish gentleman who wrote a Comedy, by which he intended to serve what he took for Moral Philosophy."

Pisistratus, eagerly.—"Well, sir?"

Mr Caxton.—"And called it 'The Pain of the Sleep of the World.'"

Pisistratus.—"Very comic indeed, sir."

Mr Caxton.—"Grave things were then called Comedies, as old things are now called Novels. Then there are all the titles of early Romance itself at your disposal—'Theagenes and Chariclea,' or 'The Ass' of Longus, or 'The Golden Ass' of Apuleius, or the titles of Gothic Romance, such as 'The most elegant, delicious, mellifluous, and delightful History of Perceforest, King of Great Britain,'"—And therewith my father ran over a list of names as long as the Directory, and about as amusing.

"Well, to my taste," said my mother, "the novels I used to read when a girl, (for I have not read many since, I am ashamed to say,)—"

Mr Caxton.—"No, you need not be at all ashamed of it, Kitty."

My Mother, proceeding.—"Were much more inviting than any you mention, Austin."

The Captain.—"True."

Mr Squills.—"Certainly. Nothing like them now-a-days!"

My Mother.—"'Says she to her Neighbour, What?'"

The Captain.—"'The Unknown, or the Northern Gallery'—"

Mr Squills.—"'There is a Secret; Find it Out!'"

Pisistratus, pushed to the verge of human endurance, and upsetting tongs, poker, and fire-shovel.—"What nonsense you are talking, all of you! For heaven's sake, consider what an important matter we are called upon to decide. It is not now the titles of those very respectable works which issued from the Minerva Press that I ask you to remember—it is to invent a title for mine—My Novel!"

Mr Caxton, clapping his hands gently.—"Excellent—capital! Nothing can be better; simple, natural, pertinent, concise—"

Pisistratus.—"What is it, sir—what is it! Have you really thought of a title to My Novel?"

Mr Caxton.—"You have hit it yourself—'My Novel.' It is your Novel—people will know it is your Novel. Turn and twist the English language as you will—be as allegorical as Hebrew, Greek, Roman—Fabulist or Puritan—still, after all, it is your Novel, and nothing more nor less than your Novel."

Pisistratus, thoughtfully, and sounding the words various ways.—"'My Novel'—um—um! 'My Novel!' rather bald—and curt, eh?"

Mr Caxton.—"Add what you say you intend it to depict—Varieties in English Life."

My Mother.—"'My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life'—I don't think it sounds amiss. What say you, Roland? Would it attract you in a catalogue?"

My Uncle hesitates, when Mr Caxton exclaims imperiously—

"The thing is settled! Don't disturb Camarina."

Squills.—"If it be not too great a liberty, pray who or what is Camarina?"

Mr Caxton.—"Camarina, Mr Squills, was a lake, apt to be low, and then liable to be muddy; and 'Don't disturb Camarina' was a Greek proverb derived from an Oracle of Apollo; and from that Greek proverb, no doubt, comes the origin of the injunction, 'Quieta non movere,' which became the favourite maxim of Sir Robert Walpole and Parson Dale. The Greek line, Mr Squills, (here my father's memory began to warm,) is preserved byStephanus Byzantinus, deUrbibus—

'Μὴ κίνει Καμάριναν, ἀκίνητος γὰρ ἀμείνων.'

Zenobiusexplains it in his Proverbs;SuidasrepeatsZenobius;Lucianalludes to it; so doesVirgilin the Third Book of theÆneid; andSilius Italicusimitates Virgil—

'Et cui non licitum fatis Camarina moveri.'

Parson Dale, as a clergyman and a scholar, had, no doubt, these authorities at his fingers' end. And I wonder he did not quote them," quoth my father; "but, to be sure, he is represented as a mild man, and so might not wish to humble the Squire over much in the presence of his family. Meanwhile, My Novel is My Novel; and now that that matter is settled, perhaps the tongs, poker, and shovel may be picked up, the children may go to bed, Blanche and Kitty may speculate apart upon the future dignities of the Neogilos, taking care, nevertheless, to finish the new pinbefores he requires for the present; Roland may cast up his account-book, Mr Squills have his brandy and water, and all the world be comfortable, each in his own way. Blanche, come away from the screen, get me my slippers, and leave Pisistratus to himself. Μὴ κίνει Καμάριναν—don't disturb Camarina. You see, my dear," added my father kindly, as, after settling himself into his slippers, he detained Blanche's hand in his own—"you see, my dear, every house has its Camarina. Man, who is a lazy animal, is quite content to let it alone; but woman, being the more active, bustling, curious creature, is always for giving it a sly stir."

Blanche, with female dignity.—"I assure you, that if Pisistratus had not called me, I should not have—"

Mr Caxton, interrupting her, without lifting his eyes from the book he has already taken.—"Certainly you would not. I am now in the midst of the great Puseyite Controversy. Μὴ κίνει Καμάριναν—don't disturb Camarina."

A dead silence for half an hour, at the end of which

Pisistratus, from behind the screen.—"Blanche, my dear, I want to consult you."

Blanche does not stir.

Pisistratus.—"Blanche, I say."

Blanche glances in triumph towards Mr Caxton.

Mr Caxton, laying down his theological tract, and rubbing his spectacles mournfully.—"I hear him, child; I hear him. I retract my vindication of Man. Oracles warn in vain: so long as there is a woman on the other side of the screen,—it is all up with Camarina!"

It is greatly to be regretted that Mr Stirn was not present at the Parson's Discourse—but that valuable functionary was far otherwise engaged—indeed, during the summer months he was rarely seen at the afternoon service. Not that he cared for being preached at—not he: Mr Stirn would have snapped his finger at the thunders of the Vatican. But the fact was, that Mr Stirn chose to do a great deal of gratuitous business upon the day of rest. The Squire allowed all persons, who chose, to walk about the park on a Sunday; and many came from a distance to stroll by the lake, or recline under the elms. These visitors were objects of great suspicion, nay, of positive annoyance, to Mr Stirn—and, indeed, not altogether without reason, for we English have a natural love of liberty, which we are even more apt to display in the grounds of other people than in those which we cultivate ourselves. Sometimes, to his inexpressible and fierce satisfaction, Mr Stirn fell upon a knot of boys pelting the swans; sometimes he missed a young sapling, and found it in felonious hands, converted into a walking-stick; sometimes he caught a hulking fellow scrambling up the ha-ha! to gather a nosegay for his sweetheart from one of poor Mrs Hazeldean's pet parterres; not unfrequently, indeed, when all the family were fairly at church, some curious impertinents forced or sneaked their way into the gardens, in order to peep in at the windows. For these, and various other offences of like magnitude, Mr Stirn had long, but vainly, sought to induce the Squire to withdraw a permission so villanously abused. But though there were times when Mr Hazeldean grunted and growled, and swore "that he would shut up the park, and fill it (illegally) with man-traps and spring-guns," his anger always evaporated in words. The park wasstill open to all the world on a Sunday; and that blessed day was therefore converted into a day of travail and wrath to Mr Stirn. But it was from the last chime of the afternoon service bell until dusk that the spirit of this vigilant functionary was most perturbed; for, amidst the flocks that gathered from the little hamlets round to the voice of the Pastor, there were always some stray sheep, or rather climbing desultory vagabond goats, who struck off in all perverse directions, as if for the special purpose of distracting the energetic watchfulness of Mr Stirn. As soon as church was over, if the day were fine, the whole park became a scene animated with red cloaks, or lively shawls, Sunday waistcoats, and hats stuck full of wild-flowers—which last Mr Stirn often stoutly maintained to be Mrs Hazeldean's newest geraniums. Now, on this Sunday especially, there was an imperative call upon an extra exertion of vigilance on the part of the superintendent—he had not only to detect ordinary depredators and trespassers; but, first, to discover the authors of the conspiracy against the Stocks; and secondly, to "make an example."

He had begun his rounds, therefore, from the early morning; and just as the afternoon bell was sounding its final peal, he emerged upon the village green from a hedgerow, behind which he had been at watch to observe who had the most suspiciously gathered round the stocks. At that moment the place was deserted. At a distance, the superintendent saw the fast disappearing forms of some belated groups hastening towards the church; in front, the Stocks stood staring at him mournfully from its four great eyes, which had been cleansed from the mud, but still looked bleared and stained with the marks of the recent outrage. Here Mr Stirn paused, took off his hat, and wiped his brows.

"If I had sum un, to watch here," thought he, "while I takes a turn by the water-side, praps summat might come out; praps them as did it ben't gone to church, but will come sneaking round to look on their willany! as they says murderers are always led back to the place where they ha' left the body. But in this here willage there ben't a man, woman, nor child, as has any consarn for Squire or Parish, barring myself." It was just as he arrived at that misanthropical conclusion that Mr Stirn beheld Leonard Fairfield walking very fast from his own home. The superintendent clapped on his hat, and stuck his right arm akimbo. "Hollo, you sir," said he, as Lenny now came in hearing, "where be you going at that rate?"

"Please, sir, I be going to church."

"Stop, sir—stop, Master Lenny. Going to church!—why, the bell's done; and you knows the Parson is very angry at them as comes in late, disturbing the congregation. You can't go to church now!"

"Please, sir"—

"I says you can't go to church now. You must learn to think a little of others, lad. You sees how I sweats to serve the Squire! and you must serve him too. Why, your mother's got the house and premishes almost rent free: you ought to have a grateful heart, Leonard Fairfield, and feel for his honour! Poor man!hisheart is wellnigh bruk, I am sure, with the goings on."

Leonard opened his innocent blue eyes, while Mr Stirn dolorously wiped his own.

"Look at that ere dumb cretur," said Stirn suddenly, pointing to the Stocks—"look at it. If it could speak, what would it say, Leonard Fairfield? Answer me that!—'Damn the Stocks, indeed!'"

"It was very bad in them to write such naughty words," said Lenny gravely. "Mother was quite shocked when she heard of it, this morning."

Mr Stirn.—"I dare she was, considering what she pays for the premishes: (insinuatingly,) you does not know who did it—eh, Lenny?"

Lenny.—"No, sir; indeed I does not!"

Mr Stirn.—"Well, you see, you can't go to church—prayers half over by this time. You recollex that I put them stocks under your 'sponsibility,' and see the way you's done your duty by 'em. I've half a mind to,"—

Mr Stirn cast his eyes on the eyes of the Stocks.

"Please, sir," began Lenny again, rather frightened.

"No, I won't please; it ben't pleasing at all. But I forgives you this time, only keep a sharp look-out, lad, in future. Now you just stay here—no, there,—under the hedge, and you watches if any persons come to loiter about or looks at the Stocks, or laughs to hisself, while I go my rounds. I shall be back either afore church is over or just arter; so you stay till I comes, and give me your report. Be sharp, boy, or it will be worse for you and your mother: I can let the premishes for four pounds a year more, to-morrow."

Concluding with that somewhat menacing and very significant remark, and not staying for an answer, Mr Stirn waved his hand, and walked off.

Poor Lenny remained by the Stocks, very much dejected, and greatly disliking the neighbourhood to which he was consigned. At length he slowly crept off to the hedge, and sate himself down in the place of espionage pointed out to him. Now, philosophers tell us that what is called the point of honour is a barbarous feudal prejudice. Amongst the higher classes, wherein those feudal prejudices may be supposed to prevail, Lenny Fairfield's occupation would not have been considered peculiarly honourable; neither would it have seemed so to the more turbulent spirits among the humbler orders, who have a point of honour of their own, which consists in the adherence to each other in defiance of all lawful authority. But to Lenny Fairfield, brought up much apart from other boys, and with a profound and grateful reverence for the Squire instilled into all his habits of thought, notions of honour bounded themselves to simple honesty and straightforward truth; and as he cherished an unquestioning awe of order and constitutional authority, so it did not appear to him that there was anything derogatory and debasing in being thus set to watch for an offender. On the contrary, as he began to reconcile himself to the loss of the church service, and to enjoy the cool of the summer shade, and the occasional chirp of the birds, he got to look on the bright side of the commission to which he was deputed. In youth, at least, everything has its bright side—even the appointment of Protector to the Parish Stocks. For the Stocks, themselves, Leonard had no affection, it is true; but he had no sympathy with their aggressors, and he could well conceive that the Squire would be very much hurt at the revolutionary event of the night. "So," thought poor Leonard in his simple heart—"so if I can serve his honour, by keeping off mischievous boys, or letting him know who did the thing, I'm sure it would be a proud day for mother." Then he began to consider that, however ungraciously Mr Stirn had bestowed on him the appointment, still it was a compliment to him—showed trust and confidence in him, picked him out from his contemporaries as the sober moral pattern boy; and Lenny had a great deal of pride in him, especially in matters of repute and character.

All these things considered, I say, Leonard Fairfield reclined in his lurking-place, if not with positive delight and intoxicating rapture, at least with tolerable content and some complacency.

Mr Stirn might have been gone a quarter of an hour, when a boy came through a little gate in the park, just opposite to Lenny's retreat in the hedge, and, as if fatigued with walking, or oppressed by the heat of the day, paused on the green for a moment or so, and then advanced under the shade of the great tree which overhung the Stocks.

Lenny pricked up his ears, and peeped out jealously.

He had never seen the boy before: it was a strange face to him.

Leonard Fairfield was not fond of strangers; moreover, he had a vague belief that strangers were at the bottom of that desecration of the Stocks. The boy, then, was a stranger; but what was his rank? Was he of that grade in society in which the natural offences are or are not consonant to, or harmonious with, outrages upon Stocks? On that Lenny Fairfield did not feel quite assured. According to all the experience of the villager, the boy was not dressed like a young gentleman. Leonard's notions of such aristocratic costume were naturally fashioned upon themodel of Frank Hazeldean. They represented to him a dazzling vision of snow-white trousers, and beautiful blue coats, and incomparable cravats. Now the dress of this stranger, though not that of a peasant nor of a farmer, did not in any way correspond with Lenny's notions of the costume of a young gentleman: it looked to him highly disreputable; the coat was covered with mud, and the hat was all manner of shapes, with a gap between the side and crown.

Lenny was puzzled, till it suddenly occurred to him that the gate through which the boy had passed was in the direct path across the park from a small town, the inhabitants of which were in very bad odour at the Hall—they had immemorially furnished the most daring poachers to the preserves, the most troublesome trespassers on the park, the most unprincipled orchard-robbers, and the most disputatious assertors of various problematical rights of way, which, according to the Town, were public, and, according to the Hall, had been private since the Conquest. It was true that the same path led also directly from the Squire's house, but it was not probable that the wearer of attire so equivocal had been visiting there. All things considered, Lenny had no doubt in his mind but that the stranger was a shop-boy or 'prentice from the town of Thorndyke; and the notorious repute of that town, coupled with this presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw before him one of the midnight desecrators of the Stocks. As if to confirm the suspicion, which passed through Lenny's mind with a rapidity wholly disproportionate to the number of lines it costs me to convey it, the boy, now standing right before the Stocks, bent down and read that pithy anathema with which it was defaced. And having read it, he repeated it aloud, and Lenny actually saw him smile—such a smile!—so disagreeable and sinister! Lenny had never before seen the smile Sardonic.

But what were Lenny's pious horror and dismay when this ominous stranger fairly seated himself on the Stocks, rested his heels profanely on the lids of two of the four round eyes, and, taking out a pencil and a pocket-book, began to write. Was this audacious Unknown taking an inventory of the church and the Hall for the purposes of conflagration? He looked at one, and at the other, with a strange, fixed stare as he wrote—not keeping his eyes on the paper, as Lenny had been taught to do when he sate down to his copy-book. The fact is, that Randal Leslie was tired and faint, and he felt the shock of his fall the more, after the few paces he had walked, so that he was glad to rest himself a few moments; and he took that opportunity to write a line to Frank, to excuse himself for not calling again, intending to tear the leaf on which he wrote out of his pocket-book, and leave it at the first cottage he passed, with instructions to take it to the Hall.

While Randal was thus innocently engaged, Lenny came up to him, with the firm and measured pace of one who has resolved, cost what it may, to do his duty. And as Lenny, though brave, was not ferocious, so the anger he felt, and the suspicions he entertained, only exhibited themselves in the following solemn appeal to the offender's sense of propriety,—

"Ben't you ashamed of yourself? Sitting on the Squire's new Stocks! Do get up, and go along with you!"

Randal turned round sharply; and though, at any other moment, he would have had sense enough to extricate himself very easily from his false position, yet,Nemo mortalium, &c. No one is always wise. And Randal was in an exceedingly bad humour. The affability towards his inferiors, for which I lately praised him, was entirely lost in the contempt for impertinent snobs natural to an insulted Etonian.

Therefore, eyeing Lenny with great disdain, Randal answered briefly,—

"You are an insolent young blackguard."

So curt a rejoinder made Lenny's blood fly to his face. Persuaded before that the intruder was some lawless apprentice or shop-lad, he was now more confirmed in that judgment, not only by language so uncivil, but by the truculent glance which accompanied it, and which certainly did not derive any imposing dignity from the mutilated, rakish, hang-dog, ruinous hat, under which it shot its sullen and menacing fire.

Of all the various articles of which our male attire is composed, there is perhaps not one which has so much character and expression as the top-covering. A neat, well-brushed, short-napped, gentlemanlike hat, put on with a certain air, gives a distinction and respectability to the whole exterior; whereas a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy sort of a hat, such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards transforming the stateliest gentleman that ever walked down St James's Street into the ideal of a ruffianly scamp.

Now, it is well known that there is nothing more antipathetic to your peasant-boy than a shop-boy. Even on grand political occasions, the rural working-class can rarely be coaxed into sympathy with the trading town-class. Your true English peasant is always an aristocrat. Moreover, and irrespectively of this immemorial grudge of class, there is something peculiarly hostile in the relationship between boy and boy when their backs are once up, and they are alone on a quiet bit of green. Something of the game-cock feeling—something that tends to keep alive, in the population of this island, (otherwise so lamb-like and peaceful,) the martial propensity to double the thumb tightly over the four fingers, and make what is called "a fist of it." Dangerous symptoms of these mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in Lenny Fairfield at the words and the look of the unprepossessing stranger. And the stranger seemed aware of them; for his pale face grew more pale, and his sullen eye more fixed and more vigilant.

"You get off them Stocks," said Lenny, disdaining to reply to the coarse expressions bestowed on him; and, suiting the action to the word, he gave the intruder what he meant for a shove, but which Randal took for a blow. The Etonian sprang up, and the quickness of his movement, aided but by a slight touch of his hand, made Lenny lose his balance, and sent him neck-and-crop over the Stocks. Burning with rage, the young villager rose alertly, and, flying at Randal, struck out right and left.

Aid me, O ye Nine! whom the incomparable Persius satirised his contemporaries for invoking, and then, all of a sudden, invoked on his own behalf—aid me to describe that famous battle by the Stocks, and in defence of the Stocks, which was waged by the two representatives of Saxon and Norman England. Here, sober support of law and duty and delegated trust—pro aris et focis; there, haughty invasion, and bellicose spirit of knighthood, and that respect for name and person, which we call honour. Here, too, hardy physical force—there, skilful discipline. Here—The Nine are as deaf as a post, and as cold as a stone! Plague take the jades!—I can do better without them.

Randal was a year older than Lenny, but he was not so tall nor so strong, nor even so active; and after the first blind rush, when the two boys paused, and drew back to breathe, Lenny, eyeing the slight form and hueless cheek of his opponent, and seeing blood trickling from Randal's lip, was seized with an instantaneous and generous remorse. "It was not fair," he thought, "to fight one whom he could beat so easily." So, retreating still farther, and letting his arms fall to his side, he said mildly—"There, let's have no more of it; but go home and be good."

Randal Leslie had no remarkable degree of that constitutional quality called physical courage; but he had all those moral qualities which supply its place. He was proud—he was vindictive—he had high self-esteem—he had the destructive organ more than the combative;—what had once provoked his wrath it became his instinct to sweep away. Therefore, though all his nerves were quivering, and hot tears were in his eyes, he approached Lenny with the sternness of a gladiator, and said between his teeth, which he set hard, choking back the sob of rage and pain—

"You have struck me—and you shall not stir from this ground—till I have made you repent it. Put upyour hands—I will not strike you so—defend yourself."

Lenny mechanically obeyed; and he had good need of the admonition: for if before he had had the advantage, now that Randal had recovered the surprise to his nerves, the battle was not to the strong.

Though Leslie had not been a fighting boy at Eton, still his temper had involved him in some conflicts when he was in the lower forms, and he had learned something of the art as well as the practice in pugilism—an excellent thing, too, I am barbarous enough to believe, and which I hope will never quite die out of our public schools. Ah, many a young duke has been a better fellow for life from a fair set-to with a trader's son; and many a trader's son has learned to look a lord more manfully in the face on the hustings, from the recollection of the sound thrashing he once gave to some little Lord Leopold Dawdle.

So Randal now brought his experience and art to bear; put aside those heavy roundabout blows, and darted in his own, quick and sharp—supplying the due momentum of pugilistic mechanics to the natural feebleness of his arm. Ay, and the arm, too, was no longer so feeble: so strange is the strength that comes from passion and pluck!

Poor Lenny, who had never fought before, was bewildered; his sensations grew so entangled that he could never recall them distinctly: he had a dim reminiscence of some breathless impotent rush—of a sudden blindness followed by quick flashes of intolerable light—of a deadly faintness, from which he was roused by sharp pangs—here—there—everywhere; and then all he could remember was, that he was lying on the ground, huddled up and panting hard, while his adversary bent over him with a countenance as dark and livid as Lara himself might have bent over the fallen Otho. For Randal Leslie was not one who, by impulse and nature, subscribed to the noble English maxim—"Never hit a foe when he is down;" and it cost him a strong if brief self-struggle, not to set his heel on that prostrate form. It was the mind, not the heart, that subdued the savage within him, as, muttering something inwardly—certainly not Christian forgiveness—the victor turned gloomily away.

Just at that precise moment, who should appear but Mr Stirn! For, in fact, being extremely anxious to get Lenny into disgrace, he had hoped that he should have found the young villager had shirked the commission intrusted to him; and the Right-hand Man had slily come back, to see if that amiable expectation were realised. He now beheld Lenny rising with some difficulty—still panting hard—and with hysterical sounds akin to what is vulgarly called blubbering—his fine new waistcoat sprinkled with his own blood, which flowed from his nose—nose that seemed to Lenny Fairfield's feelings to be a nose no more, but a swollen, gigantic, mountainous Slawkenbergian excrescence,—in fact, he felt all nose! Turning aghast from this spectacle, Mr Stirn surveyed, with no more respect than Lenny had manifested, the stranger boy, who had again seated himself on the Stocks (whether to recover his breath, or whether to show that his victory was consummated, and that he was in his rights of possession.) "Hollo," said Mr Stirn, "what is all this?—what's the matter, Lenny, you blockhead?"

"Hewillsit there," answered Lenny, in broken gasps, "and he has beat me because I would not let him; but I doesn't mind that," added the villager, trying hard to suppress his tears, "and I'm ready again for him—that I am."

"And what do you do, lolloping, there on them blessed Stocks?"

"Looking at the landscape: out of my light, man!"

This tone instantly inspired Mr Stirn with misgivings: it was a tone so disrespectful to him that he was seized with involuntary respect: who but a gentleman could speak so to Mr Stirn?

"And may I ask who you be?"said Stirn, falteringly, and half inclined to touch his hat. "What's your name, pray, and what's your bizness?"

"My name is Randal Leslie, and my business was to visit your master's family—that is, if you are, as I guess from your manner, Mr Hazeldean's ploughman!"

So saying, Randal rose; and, moving on a few paces, turned, and throwing half-a-crown on the road, said to Lenny,—"Let that pay you for your bruises, and remember another time how you speak to a gentleman. As for you, fellow,"—and he pointed his scornful hand towards Mr Stirn, who, with his mouth open, and his hat now fairly off, stood bowing to the earth—"as for you, give my compliments to Mr Hazeldean, and say that, when he does us the honour to visit us at Rood Hall, I trust that the manners of our villagers will make him ashamed of Hazeldean."

O my poor Squire! Rood Hall ashamed of Hazeldean! If that message had ever been delivered to you, you would never have looked up again!

With those bitter words, Randal swung himself over the stile that led into the parson's glebe, and left Lenny Fairfield still feeling his nose, and Mr Stirn still bowing to the earth.

Randal Leslie had a very long walk home: he was bruised and sore from head to foot, and his mind was still more sore and more bruised than his body. But if Randal Leslie had rested himself in the Squire's gardens, without walking backwards, and indulging in speculations suggested by Marat, and warranted by my Lord Bacon, he would have passed a most agreeable evening, and really availed himself of the Squire's wealth by going home in the Squire's carriage. But because he chose to take so intellectual a view of property, he tumbled into a ditch; because he tumbled into a ditch, he spoiled his clothes; because he spoiled his clothes, he gave up his visit; because he gave up his visit, he got into the village green, and sate on the Stocks with a hat that gave him the air of a fugitive from the treadmill; because he sate on the Stocks—with that hat, and a cross face under it—he had been forced into the most discreditable squabble with a clodhopper, and was now limping home, at war with gods and men;—ergo, (this is a moral that will bear repetition)—ergo, when you walk in a rich man's grounds, be contented to enjoy what is yours, namely, the prospect;—I dare say you will enjoy it more than he does.

If, in the simplicity of his heart, and the crudeness of his experience, Lenny Fairfield had conceived it probable that Mr Stirn would address to him some words in approbation of his gallantry, and in sympathy for his bruises, he soon found himself wofully mistaken. That truly great man, worthy prime-minister of Hazeldean, might, perhaps, pardon a dereliction from his orders, if such dereliction proved advantageous to the interests of the service, or redounded to the credit of the chief; but he was inexorable to that worst of diplomatic offences—an ill-timed, stupid, overzealous obedience to orders, which, if it established the devotion of theemployé, got the employer into what is popularly called a scrape! And though, by those unversed in the intricacies of the human heart, and unacquainted with the especial hearts of prime-ministers and Right-hand men, it might have seemed natural that Mr Stirn, as he stood still, hat in hand, in the middle of the road, stung, humbled, and exasperated by the mortification he had received from the lips of Randal Leslie, would have felt that that young gentleman was the proper object of his resentment; yet such a breach of all the etiquette of diplomatic life as resentmenttowards a superior power was the last idea that would have suggested itself to the profound intellect of the Premier of Hazeldean. Still, as rage like steam must escape somewhere, Mr Stirn, on feeling—as he afterwards expressed it to his wife—that his "buzzom was a burstin," turned with the natural instinct of self-preservation to the safety-valve provided for the explosion; and the vapours within him rushed into vent upon Lenny Fairfield. He clapped his hat on his head fiercely, and thus relieved his "buzzom."

"You young willain! you howdacious wiper! and so all this blessed Sabbath afternoon, when you ought to have been in church on your marrow bones, a-praying for your betters, you has been a-fitting with a young gentleman, and a wisiter to your master, on the werry place of the parridge hinstitution that you was to guard and pertect; and a-bloodying it all over, I declares, with your blaggard little nose!" Thus saying, and as if to mend the matter, Mr Stirn aimed an additional stroke at the offending member; but, Lenny mechanically putting up both his arms to defend his face, Mr Stirn struck his knuckles against the large brass buttons that adorned the cuff of the boy's coat-sleeve—an incident which considerably aggravated his indignation. And Lenny, whose spirit was fairly roused at what the narrowness of his education conceived to be a signal injustice, placing the trunk of the tree between Mr Stirn and himself, began that task of self-justification which it was equally impolitic to conceive and imprudent to execute, since, in such a case, to justify was to recriminate.

"I wonder at you, Master Stirn,—if mother could hear you! You know it was you who would not let me go to church; it was you who told me to—"

"Fit a young gentleman, and break the Sabbath," said Mr Stirn, interrupting him with a withering sneer. "O yes! I told you to disgrace his honour the Squire, and me, and the parridge, and bring us all into trouble. But the Squire told me to make an example, and I will!" With those words, quick as lightning flashed upon Mr Stirn's mind the luminous idea of setting Lenny in the very Stocks which he had too faithfully guarded. Eureka! the "example" was before him! Here, he could gratify his long grudge against the pattern boy; here, by such a selection of the very best lad in the parish, he could strike terror into the worst; here he could appease the offended dignity of Randal Leslie; here was a practical apology to the Squire for the affront put upon his young visitor; here, too, there was prompt obedience to the Squire's own wish that the Stocks should be provided as soon as possible with a tenant. Suiting the action to the thought, Mr Stirn made a rapid plunge at his victim, caught him by the skirt of his jacket, and, in a few seconds more, the jaws of the Stocks had opened, and Lenny Fairfield was thrust therein—a sad spectacle of the reverses of fortune. This done, and while the boy was too astounded, too stupefied by the suddenness of the calamity for the resistance he might otherwise have made—nay, for more than a few inaudible words—Mr Stirn hurried from the spot, but not without first picking up and pocketing the half-crown designed for Lenny, and which, so great had been his first emotions, he had hitherto even almost forgotten. He then made his way towards the church, with the intention to place himself close by the door, catch the Squire as he came out, whisper to him what had passed, and lead him, with the whole congregation at his heels, to gaze upon the sacrifice offered up to the joint Powers of Nemesis and Themis.

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