the saying is," from hand to mouth," just tilling his own little patch of ground, enough to keep him alive, and not daring to lay by anything; because, if he were supposed to be rich, he would be in danger of having his property taken away and divided.

And if a bad crop, or a sickly family, brought any one into distress, which would soon be the case with many, what could he do after he had spent his little property? He would be willing to work for hire; but no one could afford to employ him, except in something that would bring in a very speedy return. For even these few who might have saved a little money would be afraid to have it known, for fear of being forced to part with it. They would hide it somewhere in a hole in the ground, which used formerly to be a common practice in this country, and still is, in some others, where property is very insecure. Under such a state of things, the whole country would become poorer and poorer every year; for each man would labour no more than just enough for his immediate supply, and would also employ his labour less profitably than now, for want of a proper division of labour; and no one would attempt to lay by any thing, because he would not be sure of being allowed to keep it. In consequence of all this, the whole produce of the land and labour of the country would become much less than it is now; and we should soon be reduced to the same general wretchedness and distress which prevails in many half-savage nations. The rich, indeed, would have become poor; but the poor, instead of improving their condition, would be much worse off than before. All would soon be as miserably poor as the most destitute beggars are now. Indeed, so far worse, there would be nobody to beg of.

It is best for all parties, the rich, the poor, and the middling, that property should be secure, and that every one should be allowed to possess what is his own, and to gain whatever he can by honest means, and to keep it or spend it as he thinks fit-provided he does no one any injury.

Some rich men, indeed, make a much better use of their fortunes than others; but one who is ever so selfish in his disposition can hardly help spending it on his neighbours. If a man has an income of five thousand pounds a year, some people might think, at first sight, that if his estate were divided among one hundred poor families, which would give each of them fifty pounds a year, there would thus be, by such a division, one hundred poor families the more enabled to subsist in the country. But this is quite a mistake. Such would, indeed, be the case if the rich man had been used to eat as much food as one hundred poor families, and to wear out as much clothing as all of them. But we know this is not the case. He pays away his income to servants, and labourers, and tradesmen, and manufacturers of different articles, who lay out the money in food and clothing for their families. So that, in reality, the same sort of division of it is made as if it had been taken away from him. He may, perhaps, if he be a selfish mau, care nothing for the maintaining of all these families, but still he does maintain them. For if he should choose to spend one thousand pounds a year in fine pictures, the painters who are employed in those pictures are as well maintained as if he had made them a present of the money, and left them to sit idle. The only difference is, that they feel they are honestly earning their living, instead of subsisting on charity; but the total quantity of food and clothing in the country is neither the greater nor the less in the one case than in the other.

But if a rich man, instead of spending all his income, saves a great part of it, this saving will almost always be the means of maintaining a still greater number of industrious people. For a man who saves, hardly ever, in these days at least, hoards up gold and silver in a box; but lends it out on good security, that he may receive interest on it. Suppose, instead of spending one thousand pounds a year on paintings, he saves that sum every year. Then, this money is generally borrowed by farmers or manufacturers, or merchants, who can make a profit by it in the way of their business, over and above the interest they pay for the use of it. And in order to

do this, they lay it out in employing labourers to till the ground, or to manufacture cloth and other articles, or to import foreign, goods, by which means the corn and cloth, and other commodities of the country are increased.

The rich man, therefore, though he appears to have so much larger a share allotted to him, does not really consume it; but is only the channel through which it flows to others. And it is by this means much better distributed than it could have been otherwise.

CAPITAL.

We have seen that a rich man who spends on himself his income of one thousand pounds or ten thousand pounds a year, does not diminish the wealth of the whole country by so much; but only by what he actually eats and wears, or otherwise consumes himself. The rest he hands over to those who work for him or wait on him; paying them either in food and clothes, or (what comes to the same thing) in money to buy what they want. And if he were to give to the same persons what he now pays, leaving them to continue idle, there could not be the more food or clothes in the country; only these people would sit still, or lounge about and do nothing, instead of earning their bread.

But they are the happier and the better for being employed, instead of being idle, even though their labour should be only in planting flowers, or building a palace to please their employer's fancy.

Most of the money that is spent, however, is laid out in employing labourers on some work that is profitable; that is, in doing something which brings back more than is spent on it, and thus goes to increase the whole wealth of the country. Thus, if instead of employing labourers to cultivate a flower-garden, or build me a summerhouse, for my pleasure, I employ them in raising corn, or building a mill to grind it, the price of that corn, or the price paid for grinding by those who bring corn to the mill, will be more (if I have conducted the business prudently) than what I had spent on those works. So that instead of having parted with my money for ever (as when it is spent on a pleasure-garden or summer-house), it comes back to me with addition. This addition is called profit! and the money so laid out is called capital.

A man who lays out his money in this manner, may do the same over again, as soon as it comes back to him, so that he may go on supporting labourers year after year. And if he saves each year a part of his profit, and adds it to his capital (as a thriving farmer or manufac turer generally does), he will be continually employing more and more labourers, and increasing the wealth of the country. He himself, indeed, is perhaps not thinking of his country, but is only seeking to enrich himself; but this is the best and surest way he could take for enriching the country. For, every man in the nation, who adds to his own wealth, without lessening the wealth of others, must, it is plain, be adding just so much to the wealth of the nation. Sometimes, indeed, one man gains by another's loss, and then, of course, nothing is added to the whole wealth of the country. If a man gets rich by gambling, or begging, or robbery, others lose at least as much as he gains. But if he gets rich by his skill in farming, or manufactures, or mining, all that he gains is so much added to the wealth of the whole country, since it is not lost by any one else.

Many persons dispose of their property in this way, though they are not themselves engaged in business, but lend their money to others who are. Suppose you were a labouring man, and had one hundred pounds left you as a legacy, or had saved up that sum from your earnings, you might not know how to trade with the money to advantage, and if you kept it in a strong box, for the use of your children, you would not be the better for it all your life; and at the end of twenty or thirty years, your children would find just the same sum that you first put in. Or if you took out five pounds every year to spend, at the end of twenty years it would be all gone. But you might lend it to some person engaged in business, who would give you security for the repayment of the principal (as

it is called), that is the sum borrowed, and would pay you four or five pounds every year for the use of it, which it called interest. This he would be glad to do, if he knew that he could employ this hundred pounds in buying materials, and paying workmen to weave cloth, for instance, or make tables and chairs, which would bring in, by the end of the year, one hundred and ten pounds. For out of this increase of ten pounds, after paying you five pounds for the use of your money, he would have gained five pounds for himself.

In this way, great part of the capital that is engaged in trades and manufactures is employed, by persons who are not themselves the owners of it.

The more capital there is in a country the better for the labourers; for the poorer the master is, the fewer labourers he can afford to employ, and the less sure he can be of being able to pay them.

Suppose you were a poor man, in a newly-settled country, and asked your neighbour to help you to dig a piece of fertile ground, promising him a share of the produce for his pains, he might say, I have nothing to live on in the meantime; if you want me to dig for you, you must pay me daily wages. But if you have nothing before-hand, except bare necessaries for yourself--that is, if you have no capital-you cannot pay him till harvest. Your land, therefore, will remain half-tilled; and he will be forced to go into the woods to seek for wild berries, or to hunt and fish, to provide himself food. Indeed, all would be forced to begin in this manner, if you suppose a number of men left to themselves, even on the most fertile land, without any property to set out withthat is, without capital. They would have great difficulties to struggle against for a long time; but when they had advanced some way in acquiring wealth, they would find it easier to obtain more.

For, as it is, you may observe that wealth is always obtained by means of wealth; that is, it is gained by the help of capital; without which labour can hardly be carried on. Corn is raised by labour; but a previous stock of corn is needed, both to sow the ground, and to maintain the labourer till the harvest is ripe. The tools with which he works are made with tools. The handle of the axe with which he cuts wood, is made of wood; the iron of it was dug from the mine with iron instruments; and it is the same with almost every kind of labour. You may judge, therefore, how difficult and slow men's first advances must have been, when they had to work with their bare hands, or with stakes and sharp stones for

their tools.

Accordingly, in countries that are ill-provided with capital, though the inhabitants are few in number, and all of them are forced to labour for the necessaries of life, they are worse fed, clothed, and lodged, than even the poorest are in a richer country, though that be much more thickly peopled, and though many of the inhabitants of it are not obliged to labour with their hands at all.

The wages in money, the provisions, and the other things which a farmer spends on the labourers, and on the horses, which cultivate his land, or a clothier on his weavers, is called circulating capital, because he parts with it, from time to time, and it returns to him, as in a circle, in the shape of corn or cloth. The farmer's barns, ploughs, carts, and horses, and the clothier's looms and warehouses, are called fixed capital, because they bring in a profit, not by being parted with, but by being kept as long as they are fit for use.

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

IN Scotland, more than in any other country, have its poets and song writers sprung from the humbler classes; and with the latter especially has this been the case. Allan Ramsay was a barber's apprentice; John Lowe, the author of "Mary's Dream," was a gardener's son; Alexander Wilson, a distinguished naturalist as well as good poet, who wrote "Watty and Meg," was a weaver; Burns was a ploughman; Tannahill, like Wilson, a Paisley weaver; Hogg, a

shepherd, and Allan Cunningham a stone mason. Yet are these men revered throughout the whole of "braid Scotland," and their names have become as household words; for to each has it been given "That he, for poor auld Scotland's sake, Some usefu' plan, or book micht make, Or sing a sang at least."

Allan Cunningham was born on the 7th of December 1784, at Blackwood, a lovely mansion on the Nith, in Dumfriesshire, eight miles above the town of Dumfries, and some two or three miles from Ellisland, the farm of which Burns soon after became tenant. His father was at the time gardener to Mr Copeland of Blackwood; but, being a man of good education for his class, and of superior natural talents, shortly after Allan's birth he was appointed factor to Mr Miller of Dalswinton, a situation which lifted him but little above the general peasantry of Scotland. His ancestors, however, could boast of considerable property in Ayrshire, which they lost through their adherence to the cause of the gallant Montrose. The elder Cunningham had a numerous family, Allan being the fourth son. Thomas, who was Allan's senior by some years, had written both Wilkie had been even heard of, and afterwards bein prose and verse before the future biographer of came foreman to Mr Rennie, the engineer; while his brother Peter, a surgeon in the navy, has added to our acquaintance with our Australian possessions, by an excellent work, entitled "Two Years in New South Wales."

Between Burns and our hero's father a warm friendship existed, and the poet was no unfrequent visitor at Dalswinton. On one of these visits, when o' Shanter;" and in after years Allan used often to Allan was only six years of age, Burns recited" Tam tell of the surprise and delight with which he listened to it. Can this little incident have had any effect in determining his future career? Evidently the impression produced at the time was no transient one, and other concurring circumstances to bend his mind to literature, there seems to be none. True, he was born and bred in a highly romantic district, abounding with old legends, and there has been some mention of traditions current in his family, and of Scotland generally possesses the same character that some books that he got hold of early in life; but Nithsdale has in particular; and, although the legendary lore was likely to stir up an imaginative mind like Allan's, the mere possession of books will not account for the love of them. Besides, these causes and these incidents do not seem to have occurred with much force to his own mind, while his recollection of the scene with Burns was indelibly impressed on his memory, and the evident pleasure he took in referring to it told of associations connected with it "tender and holy."

Like most of the children of our Scottish peasantry, Allan Cunningham was sent at a very early age to school. Young, however, as he was, he was not allowed to spend much time on education; nor were his teachers, two sturdy austere Cameronians, likely to discover, or, if they did, to foster and expand his infant poetical powers. When only eleven, he was apprenticed to his uncle, a country builder, being then possessed of but a scanty knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Read, however, he could; and although busily employed with his uncle from six in the morning till six at night, he still found time to pursue his studies, and even contrived to read Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope,-his earliest favourites among the British poets.

The literary bent of Allan's mind was now suffi

ciently apparent. Even when very young, he had scribbled rhymes; but it was not, we believe, till he was twenty-three that he ventured to " appear in print." A circumstance, however, soon after occurred, which gave him increased boldness, and no little encouragement. A Mr R. H. Cromek, an engraver, and an ardent admirer of Scotch poetry, having come down from London for the express purpose of collecting such fragments of Nithsdale and Galloway song as might be floating through "the kintra side," Allan Cunningham was recommended to him as an able assistant. How efficient Mr Cromek considered Allan's services may be gathered from his preface to the volume of " Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song," published in 1810, which was the product of their joint labours. He says,-" He (Allan) entered into my design with the enthusiasm of a poet, and was my guide through the rural haunts of Nithsdale and Galloway, where his variously interesting and animated conversation beguiled the tediousness of the toil; while his local knowledge, his refined taste, and his indefatigable industry, drew from obscurity many pieces which adorn this collection, and which, without his aid, would have eluded my research." We verily believe it! The truth being, that most of the pieces palmed by Cunningham on the worthy engraver as ancient reliques were in reality original songs written by himself. The great care taken to give these compositions a "local habitation and a name," and the minuteness with which the incidents on which they were said to be founded are detailed, are really, now that the deception practised on Mr Cromek is known, sufficiently amusing. However, if the Londoner was gulled, there were others "smelt the rat," and both Sir Walter Scott and Professor Wilson invariably ascribed them to Cunningham. Of the morale of the transaction, little can be said in defence-the example of Chatterton is no excuse. But before passing too harsh a sentence, we should remember the temptations. It is always difficult for a young author to get fairly before the public-and here was an opening at once. There was, too, no risk; if they failed, Allan would not be held accountable. Besides, Cromek had treated slightingly some compositions of Cunningham's, which had been shown to him as originals, and perhaps a spark of wounded self-love helped to persuade to the attempt.

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In the year 1810, Allan, induced perhaps by the success of his songs, then just published in Cromek's collection, left Dumfriesshire for London. On his route he put in" for a short time at Edinburgh, and we have heard that he assisted in hewing the stones used in the building of Charlotte Square. Arrived in London, he got an appointment, as reporter, on the staff of the "Day," morning paper, where he had not long been, when Mr Perry, anxious, as he always was, for the welfare of a brother Scotchman, offered him a reportership for the "Morning Chronicle," which he accepted of. The physical and mental labours of a reporter being very onerous, Mr Cunningham, on being offered the situation of foreman to Mr Budd, the sculptor, resigned his connexion with the Chronicle, although he still continued occasionally to contribute to the periodical

Chantrey, for a superintendent of his works, caught his eye, and, having applied for the vacant situation, he was almost immediately appointed. This was a happy change for Cunningham, who was quite at home in his new berth. Chantrey modelled, and Allan overlooked the workmen : nay, the great sculptor found his foreman's imaginative powers and poetic feeling serviceable as regarded the designs and models, while his practical knowledge was most useful in superintending the men, and his habits of writing well qualified him to act as amanuensis. About this time, too, Cunningham's name began to get well known in the literary world. He wrote a series of tales for Blackwood's Magazine, then in its youth and strength, and was also a regular contributor, along with Hazlitt, De Quincey, Lamb, and other master spirits, to the London Magazine, during its brief but glorious career. In 1822, he published his " Sir Marmaduke Maxwell," a dramatic tale of border life. This was succeeded by two volumes of "Traditionary Tales;" three novels-" Paul Jones," a tale of the sea; "Michael Scott," one of diablerie; and "Lord Roldan," a romance; with "The Songs of Scotland," in four volumes;-and a "Life of Burns," next issued from his fertile pen. And he was still further recommended to the public by Sir Walter Scott making honourable mention of him in his preface to the "Fortunes of Nigel," which, as Allan himself said, " gave his name to fame."

Cunningham's employment in the studio of Sir Francis Chantrey of course threw him into the society of, and ultimately made him intimately acquainted with, most of the men of genius of the age; and this no doubt led to the idea of his next work, the "Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects of Great Britain," in five volumes, which was published in 1829 in "Murray's Family Library," and of which, by the period of the author's death in 1842, 12,000 copies are said to have been sold. His succeeding effort, and the last he made in the regions of poesy, was the "Maid of Elvar," a poem in twelve parts, founded on a border legend of the sixteenth century, and which was published in 1832. Although on this work he bestowed much time and care, and looked forward to its proving the most successful offspring of his muse, yet it fell from the press almost still-born; and that, too, although it certainly does contain many separate beauties, and is throughout pervaded by a gentle sweetness, which, perhaps, however, is more pleasing than striking. So very true is it that,

"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises."

In the service of Sir Francis Chantrey, Cunningham continued till the period of the sculptor's death; and he was afterwards employed by the executors, at Chantrey's own request, to wind up the affairs. During this long period of nearly thirty years, his time, from six till six, was occupied in his employer's service how the remaining portion of his evenings were spent, let his published works testify. Had he been a man of independent fortune, these works would have borne honourable testimony to his application, and would have amply rebutted any charge of time misspent. But to have been the production of an almost self-educated man, of one who all his life was accustomed to the hard toil and labour of the working classes in this busy nation,--they speak volumes for the indomitable nature of the spirit that pursued the thorny paths of literature, through good report and through bad report, with a zeal so indefatigable. But, alas! the human frame is not made