so. One sentence will suffice for narrative before we commence our task. belonged to the People-to Mankind; and that the things. His imagination, already occupied and tendency of all his writings has been to enlighten filled with the past, has ever belonged to that and expand the minds of men, by enlarging their period: his understanding stretching boldly foraffections; by making them neither Whig nor Tory, ward into the future, is often seen sporting with the but something infinitely better than both. Of the heraldic tags and silken fetters, which yet hung so perpetual, and undeviating tendency of Sir WAL-lightly and gracefully about him, that no one wished TER SCOTT's writings, to exalt humanity at the ex- to see him cast them off. This is nearly the key pense of high caste, he may, and, we believe, often to the character of Sir WALTER SCOTT as a writer. must have been unconscious. That signifies little. Had he not in youth been previously a Jacobite, His mind was formed to sympathize with the true, the he would assuredly have been, with SOUTHEY and pure, and the noble; and the stream of truth bore CAMPBELL, COLERIDGE and MOORE, a Jacobin, or at him triumphantly onward, in spite of all the little least a Bonupartist-which he half was at any rate, eddies, and cross currents, and stones, and rubbish, until in manhood he had fallen back on that uniwhich prejudice, and habit, and time, and circum-versal and catholic faith in which he lived and died, stance, threw in his way. He could neither long whatever little sect may think to number him as of resist, nor ever once conquer that power which its votaries. Sir WALTER SCOTT was in nothing prestruggled in his understanding, and triumphed in cocious. Good sense and innate modesty preserved his heart, and made him what he is, always a Li-him in youth, as through life, from the manifold beral, and often a Radical writer, differing only in absurdities, pretensions, vanities, and presumptions shadows and modes from many who are avowedly of authorship. His first literary attempt was a translation from Goethe; this was followed by the Border Minstrelsy, in which, in the secondary rank of editor, he imped his wings for a bolder All the world knows that Sir WALTER SCOTT was flight. The LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL was deborn in Edinburgh, and received his learned and cisive of his reputation. We shall not speak of professional education there. The better part of his the sensation it made, nor of the censure and praise, early education was gathered here and there, through alike foolish, senseless, ignorant, or purely idiall Scotland, in huts and halls; in ancient bat-otical, that was heaped upon so "strange a poem." tle fields and at old covenanting stations; from Sir WALTER SCOTT was by this time Sheriff of gipsies at fairs, and Highland chieftains on their Selkirkshire, a married man, and by courtesy, and hills; from legendary Jacobite ladies, and grayhaired Cameronian farmers; from the rudest ballad, recording the exploits of the Border reaver, to the sublimity of the Hebrew Scriptures. No young mind ever fed on more varied elements, or turned them all to healthier aliment, The father of Sir WALTER was that well known character in Edin-ceedingly popular; but only on the false principles burgh, a W.S., and a thriving one. He was also a Whig and Presbyterian; but Whiggery was, in his young days, the thriving side. Like every other imaginative man, born in the last century, his son, Sir WALTER, was poetically a Jacobite. There was nothing remarkable about the Author of Waverley, as a youth, save a huge frame, great fondness for old stories and solitary rambling, modesty, and invincible good temper. How soon he began to pore on the musty and neglected volumes of the Advocates' and College Library, no one, save himself, could tell. But readers in the same track, and they alone, will often perceive to what felicitous use he has turned strange and apparently worthless materials. "Industry and patience," says the eastern proverb, "change the mulberry leaf to satin;" but it is industry and patience applied by a creature of peculiar and wonderful instincts. The time in which the world opened upon Sir WALTER SCOTT was critical. His vivid youthful mind had just taken strong hold on the past, flitting rapidly away, with its long train of broken but gorgeous images, when the crash of the French Revolution opened the dark chasm, revealing the mighty future, and discovering the conflict already commenced between the old and the new order of the ordinary understanding in these affairs, allied of fashionable fame can we explain why Rokeby and war unloving and unloved George the Fourth, would profession in Scotland, is the butt of the constant have been as faithful to the true character of the sly hits and direct thrusts of this universal levelman, as that which he has traced, in Quentin Dur-ler. No man understood lawyers better; no one ward, of that laughing hyena-the cruel, rapacious, has described them, from the pettifogging attor superstitious, and basely deceitful Louis XI.; or, ney to the corrupt judge, with half the truth and in Ivanhoe, of the weak, cowardly, perfidious, severity, veiled, as it may be, under humour and profligate, and despicable royal poltroon, Prince jest. The mass of corruption, intrigue, selfish amJohn. Need we instance that yet uglier blot on bition, sycophancy, cruelty, arrogance, perfidy, and the escutcheons of monarchy, and truer portrai-loathsome baseness which he has exposed among ture of a modern king, the gossiping, prying, churchmen, but especially statesmen, in courts and prating pedant-the buffoon and old wife con- cabinets, and among those that hang on or lurk in joined the uncouth, awkward, cowardly James,* their purlieus, is sufficient to turn the world Radiwho made king-craft as contemptible, as till then cal without further argument. Nor has this Tory it had been hateful, and who certainly loses no-writer spared the Bench. The seat of justice is thing in Sir WALTER SCOTT's hands. These, with shewn to be the stronghold of oppression. We the virago Elizabeth, and Queen Mary, to whom need not instance the monstrous iniquities of LauSir WALTER perhaps does injustice, in represent- derdale and his coadjutors, in the reign of Charles ing her as a spiteful abigail, studying all pitiful II., but let us contemplate the Scotch Judges in and waspish means of petty annoyance, forgetting the Bride of Lammermoor. Was ever satire so keen the self-respect due by a rational creature to her- as the truth we have here. The smooth, plausible, self, and laying aside the dignity ascribed to supple, wary, and calmly ambitious Lord Keeper, princes-these are the royal personages whose is, in part, a creation of fancy; but the originals portraits this Tory writer, the imagined champion of the other "reverend seniors" may be found in a of his party, has drawn with astonishing accuracy less distant day. The parallel of Turntippet, shrewd, and fidelity; and has bequeathed to the study and brutal, bigoted, and time-serving, may be found judgment of his countrymen, when they shall come without looking farther back than that dark and to weigh the merits and demerits of monarchy. foul period in the annals of the political justice of Has the railing of the most violent Radical, or Scotland, with which the early manhood of Sir the strongest arguments of Paine, struck a more WALTER SCOTT was contemporary. fatal blow at monarchy than the popular narratives of Scort? • Let us turn to his Peers, to the higher orders generally, as they are depicted in his works. Is it on his masterly delineations of the cruel ambition of Leicester, the profligacy of Buckingham, the atrocity of Morton, the cunning brutality and utter baseness of Lauderdale, that we are to found our admiration of the aristocracy? Is there not one worthy, or honest, or strictly honourable man to be found in the living catalogue,—that Sir WALTER is forced to create, when he would picture a truly generous and patriotic nobleman, in histories embracing centuries? It did not suit Sir WALTER to meddle with "My Lords, the Bishops," and the Buck Parsons, as they have descended to our happy times; but we have in Friar Tuck and Prior Aylmer a fair prototype of the best among themthose who are least hypocrites. The Prior was "a free and jovial priest, who loved the wine-cup and the bugle-horn better than book or bell," and was as delicate a critic on the points of a fine damosel or a good horse, as any churchman that ever haunted Windsor Castle or the Pavilion, from 1825 to 1830. What a scene for the pen of Sir WALTER Scort, had he lived a century later, the sycophant, court-haunting churchmen, courtiers, and harridans of the latter years of the late reign! The law, as a profession generally, at least as a We have often wondered how a sensible Tory Lord Chamberlain could ever have licensed a play, which burlesques monarchy more egregiously than Tom Thumb the Great as Gentle King Jamie is a real royal personage. This piece was exceedingly popular, solely from the grotesque figure, and absurd character of the King. To the modern country gentry, the lower ranks of the rural aristocracy, and the worshipful members of the county quorum, he shows little more mercy. We have the ignorant and blackguard Balmawhapple, the shallow and pompous Sir Arthur Wardour, the ruffianly, blasphemous elder Dum.. biedykes, and the half-idiot, harmless junior or that Ilk; the modern variety of Conservative Goose in Sir Robert Hazlewood of Hazlewood, and the fierce, reckless, ruthless, turbulent Scottish baron in old Redgauntlet. As if such delineations of kings, peers, statesmen, judges, and gentry, were not enough, he has drawn nearly all his noble or perfect characters from the great storehouse of humanity, and from the basis classes. It is among them, the poor or the unregarded, that we are taught to look for shrewdness, intelligence, generosity, fidelity, disinterested attachment, religion that is not hypocrisy or mummery, and patriotism which is not ambition in flimsy disguise. We have from among the very offscourings of the degraded castes, spae * How can we forget his speech,—or that inimitable scene between the Conservative Baronet and Mr. Gilbert Glossin. "These are dreadful days, indeed, my worthy neighbour; days when the bulwarks of society are shaken to their mighty base; and that rank which forms, as it were, its highest grace and ornament, is mingled and confused with the viler part of the architecture. O, my good Mr. Gilbert Glossin! in my time, sir, &c. &c. But now, sir, the clouted shoe of the peasant galls the kibe of the courtier. The lower ranks, sir, have their quarrels, sir, and their points of honour, and their revenges, &c. &c. But well, well, it will last my time!" This we call the best refutation of Burke's Alarm that ever was written. There are still better things of this sort in the Antiquary, among the towncouncil of Fair-Port. sense of duty, and sending forth, and exhorting her beloved Cuddie, "to fight the good fight, to remain faithful unto the death, and not to sully his wedding garment." We have lingered too long on Mause, who has undeservedly, as we think, drawn much censure on him who presented her to us. This censure is ridiculous and overstrained. The Tory party have quite as much reason to resent Lady Bellenden as the old Whigs wives and gaberlunzies, who, by the grandeur of | affections of nature, in obedience to an ennobling their elementary character, their generosity, eloquence, and enthusiasm, make gentles and nobles look small in the comparison. There is no need to run over the catalogue of poor schoolmasters, post-boys, fish-wives, idiots, and such tag-rag, whose prepossessing qualities, steady virtues, and redeeming points, it is the study and delight of this truthful writer to bring out. We might travel over all these novels one by one for proofs of our assertion.-Who, for example, is the hero-have to think Mause Headrigg a burlesque. the really noble fellow of Guy Mannering?— It would be idle to run through all Sir WALTER Dandy Dinmont for certain, the princely yeoman SCOTT's characters. Take Jeanie Deans, the simof Liddisdale, the frank, loyal, brave, and gene-ple sublime of moral virtue,―or her father; and rous. In this work even poor Dominie Sampson, which of all the great personages delineated in though his wits are always wool-gathering, is sure- these works, will, in the qualities which, when ly a very superior being to his patron, the worthy driven to the wall, all men acknowledge to be and far-descended successor of the Bold Ber- the alone sterling and enduring-which will take trams; and with Meg Merrilies, the "commoner place before David Deans, the cow-feeder of St. of air," and gipsy vagrant, what fine lady shall Leonards? We remember when the Heart of Midcope withal? If Sir WALTER SCOTT has gone to Lothian appeared, of an Edinburgh lady, a great his grave in the belief that he is a Tory writer, admirer of Sir WALTER SCOTT-as who was not—an no man was ever the dupe of so gross self-delu- excellent and sensible person besides, saying, with sion. Where next shall we look for proofs of Tory- much appearance of grief and disappointmentism? In Old Mortality, where we have worthy Tory and of real disgust too, "He is at these low creaLady Bellenden, with her high-flown and fantastic tures again-cow-feeders!" Now cow-feeder was loyalty, and her "Throne," contrasted with the old the last step of low life then, when we had very blind widow, sitting, like her of Zareptha, alone by few Irish helots among us; and in Guy Manthe wayside, to warn the people of God from the nering, Sir WALTER had recently given " prosnares of the oppressor,-she who had seen both per people" serious alarm about vulgarity and her sons fall in defence of the purity of the Church a grovelling taste. It is not quite certain if of Christ, and of the independence of Scotland, some of these low propensities smelt altogether she, from whose aged eyes, dazzled by the flash of sweetly in the nostrils of the Edinburgh Review. the shot which struck down her last child, light Many of its Whig disciples loathed them, and had gradually faded, yet who possessed her soul would have been at some loss to settle whether in patience, sustained by the love and the hope of Dandy Dinmont and Davy Deans were entitled that Cause in which her all had perished. If all to the honour of dining at this be evidence of Toryism, it is the Toryism after But how, asks the reader, could Sir WALour own hearts. Here, too, we have honest Mause TER SCOTT, if a Radical or levelling writer, be Headrigg, "that precious woman," who, with her so very popular with the Tories? Why, many really noble sentiments and inflexible principles, of the nominal or accidental adherents of that requires only a Spartan name, and a little better party were no more Tories in grain than Sir keeping, to equal in dignity a Spartan matron. WALTER himself. Others, like those of the We smile at Don Quixote, and the Baron of Brad- higher nobility of France, who, up to the Revoluwardine, even while we dearly love their persons, tion, countenanced and supported the more distinand feel their enthusiasm. But the illusions guished individuals among the men of letters-the of chivalry, and loyalty, and feudalism, are naught, economists and philosophers-from the spirit of weighed in the balance against the high spirit of contradiction, thought it all a good joke. Dandy Covenanted Scotland ;—and we are prouder of our Dinmont and Bailie Jarvie were capital, honest country, that in her hour of trial and peril, she could fellows-to laugh at; and Jeanie Deans was send a Mause Headrigg from the cot..house to good creature," and really deserved the patronage testify," than a Vich Ian Vhor from his halls, of the Duke of Argyle; but that such scenes and to draw his sword for his Prince. It had not been characters did more to spread true Liberalism (that given to any writer to conceive the character which has its foundation in sound moral sentiment, of Mause Headrigg, had its nobler points, and and pure and warm affections) than the most elathe nobler points of his land's history, not deep-borate discourses of the Whig teachers, no one ly touched his own heart. One may blamelessly ever dreamed. laugh at our favourite Mause, as one does at the If we shall ever have any opportunity to humorous absurdities of a venerated grandmother, or dearest old aunt; but they must be of cold or shallow natures who can only laugh, and never once rise to sympathy with her heroic patriotism and sustaining faith, conquering the strongest a resume this subject, it shall be, with the moral tendency of Sir WALTER SCOTT's writings. In an age prone to deep and vehement emotion, arising from whatever polluted source; and surrounded by popular writers, whose pleasure and pride it was to awaken false and dangerous sympathies, his works, without the slightest exception, and with perfect contempt of cant, prudery and false delicacy, have been safe, corrective, or directly stimulative of all manly virtues and qualities:-to women they have throughout been ennobling! And here, in concluding this rambling article, it may be remarked, in proof of our original position, that Sir WALTER's heroines are all Revolutionists, or in the Opposition. Flora MacIvor wishes to overturn the Hanoverian line. Minna Troil is bewildered into a dangerous maze, by a grand but visionary scheme of revolutionizing the isles of Zetland. Edith Bellenden is in love with a fugitive leader of the party of the Covenant. Rebecca, the high-souled Jewess, is the alone, and elo. quent, and bold defender of her oppressed race, against the rapacious and dissolute aristocracy of that dark and tyrannical age. SIR WALTER SCOTT'S CHILDHOOD. The following interesting particulars have just reached us from a source which guarantees their authenticity : I cannot help saying, that the ruling trait in Sir WALTER SCOTT's character was his great benevolence and kindheartedness, not only towards all around him, but to every living thing, of which many beautiful instances could be given. Nothing could induce him to give way to angry or unpleasant feelings towards any of his neighbours. It may be right to inform some of our readers that Sir WALTER SCOTT, who was born on the 15th August, 1771, died in his sixty-second year; and that his death was caused by a paralytic affection, and probably hastened by anxiety of mind, and the fatigue of foreign travel in pursuit of health. He had been for several years a widower, and has left two sons and two daughters. MORAL AND PHYSICAL CONDITION OF THE BY A BENTHAMITE. UNDER similar titles, in a recent number, you favoured the public with two valuable extracts on the above subject; and without detracting from the merit or philanthropy of such The Grandfather of SIR WALTER SCOTT was ROBERT endeavours, it is much to be lamented, no popular information is anywhere to be had on the subject of their intellecSCOTT, & distant relation of SCOTT of Harden, from whom he held the farm of Sandy Knowe, a short distance from the tual disease; the which, in truth, is the prime cause of nearly all disease. This is also chargeable upon the true family residence, Mertoun House, in Berwickshire. He was pabulum of its health being withheld-a due supply of that a man of singular activity and energy, and was highly respected; and held, beside Sandy Knowe, large sheep farms mental aliment so profusely everywhere spread around us, in Eskdale. His son WALTER, was bred a Writer to the evidently designed by nature as food for the constitution of the mind. By the title of this article I mean the labourSignet. Sir WALTER SCOTT was born in George's Square. He was a very weak, puny child, and, owing to a falling parts of the professions. These may more properly be briefly treated of separately. from his keeper's arms, became lame. His mother was a daughter of the celebrated Dr. RUTHERFORD, Physician in Edinburgh, and his great-grandfather, the Doctor's father, was minister of Yarrow, and died there in 1707. Sir WALTER was sent to reside at Sandy Knowe with his grandfather, with very small hopes of his recovery. He used to be carried out in a fine day, and laid on a plaid on the brae, that he might enjoy the air and the sun. The view from this situation is one of the finest— The Lady sat in mournful mood, Looked over hill and dale; O'er Tweed's fair flood, and Mertoun's wood, And all down Teviotdale. The boy was now under the watchful care of a maiden aunt, who used to sing old ballads to sooth him to sleep in his illness, and to amuse him in the confinement unsuitable to his infant years. When he was fit to attend school, he resided for some time with his uncle, Capt. ROBERT SCOTT, at Rosebank, close by Kelso; and there JAMES and JOHN BALLANTYNE were among his companions. When he had gained sufficient health to be trusted at the High School, he was brought to Edinburgh; but he spent his vacations always with his grandfather at Sandy Knowe, or at Rosebank with his uncle. There was hardly a sheep farmer in Teviotdale, Liddisdale, or Selkirkshire, in whose house he had not been at one time or other a most welcome guest. Many of our readers will recollect an incidental notice of this "grandsire" in Marmion, which contains frequent allusions to the author's boyhood. ✦ His aunt Jenny, whom he held in tender and grateful remembrance. For the most part, lads who go to shop-keeping as apprentices, are the children of those in the most difficult sphere of life-in that grade where respectable appearance is considered indispensable from the society in which the parents necessarily mix, where "a decent outside" must be supported, in deference to the ruinous, though current policy of concealing narrow circumstances, by a forced appearance of means. Doubtless there are others, but this class forms a large majority; and, as may be naturally supposed, the pressure of this vulgar error, with which gentility is attempted to be nursed, affords but a very limited period for the education of the poor, because ignorant, offspring of the "shabby genteeel," who, from twelve years of age, are trammelled by the shackles of a five year's bon dage, of from 14 to 16 hours a-day servitude, in preference to other occupations of shorter duration, for the sake of empty shew. During this period, the little education (under the existing system information is scarcely comprised in this term) obtained in their boyhood, has nearly left them, except, indeed, that only staple part embraced by this highsounding term, viz. reading, writing, and the simple rules of Arithmetic; and, as to read or improve the mind in the hours of idleness, is so "unbusiness-like" as to be almost criminal in the eyes of masters, at the close of their apprenticeship, the lads are set out into the world, nearly quite ignorant of the first principles upon which their success depends, and total strangers to the more valuable knowledge of which, as moral agents, they ought to be possessed. This is the general rule; the exception is, where he for whom "it is well his father was before him," enters our nature, and moral precept which He taught who commanded us to "love one another," all of which, as professing Chistians, they have sworn to observe. upon this era in search of further mercantile knowledge, merely that, in the field of business, he may apply the longer scholastic and more intricate arithmetical tuition which it has been his good fortune to obtain, to the accuLet all masters, then, of whatever profession or branch of mulation of what the world calls riches, without one grain written, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every trade, which excludes time for study, remember that it is of that precious wealth which feels for the situation of word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God;" and that others. In these two classes, it is to be observed, intellec- it is therefore their duty to themselves and others, by a contual starvation prevails to an incredible extent, concealed siderable abridgment of the hours of ill-paid employment, in a great measure by the frothy loquacity, professionally spoliators of those forts of immorality, reckless wretched. to lend their hitherto-abused influence and power to the attained, which, coupled with the little information de- ness, and mental apathy, which, by protracted and exclurived from the necessarily few minutes they can devote to sive labour, have been reared upon deplorable ignorance reading periodicals, enables them to skim the surface of an and misery, and by affording the employed opportunity to occasionally leading topic of every-day talk, and thereby increase their knowledge, build upon their ruins that enhide from the galling inquisition of knowledge, the deep-gence, which are clearly the divinely-instituted principles lightened economy, social dependence, and general intellifelt ignorance and painful vacuum of their minds. of that moral structure, which has been inscribed "the Now all these desiderata, and that too in much more temple of the living God." This most certainly can be efaggravated forms and degrees, generally attend the actual fected only by an extended intimacy with those eternal remanufacturer or operative. Driven by necessity to work at by expanding the mind, fit us for the reception, cultivation, lations, dependencies, and principles of divine truth, which, a very early age, for the simple elements of nutrition, he and more extensive enjoyment of the inexhaustible pleaenters upon a life of close and laborious duration, without even that manual instruction which renders knowledge acsures of the present, and those spiritual delights of the fucessible; and the lamentable state which society conse-conceive." Expositions of these principles everywhere perture, which" it hath not entered into the heart of man to quently presents, although so loud and universal in its vade the wide field of Divine Knowledge around us. Time groans as to be heard in every corner of the mechanical exclusively for such a purpose is indispensable to a survey world, is yet so unheeded or misunderstood as, until even now, scarcely to have produced one responding sympathy perience goes to establish the doctrine in abstract," that of an extent and variety so unmeasured, as every-day's exfrom sleeping humanity, or called forth one effective step those precepts which learned men have committed to writtowards its amelioration. The exceptions are those, who, ing, transcribing them from the common reason and comfrom some happier circumstances in their situation, have been permitted to obey the natural laws of their constitu- divine than those contained in the Tables given to Moses ;" mon feelings of our nature, are to be accounted as not less tion, by availing themselves of those antidotes to such a state, disseminated by Mechanics' Institutions, Schools of as it could not be the intention of our Maker to superArts, and Libraries, the which appear to be destined ulti-sede, by a law graven upon stone, that which is written mately to grow from the real "Balm in Gilead," to the with his own finger on the table of the heart." Physician there," or, in other words, from the salve to the saving agency of application. But it is unnecessary to inquire further into the various other grades or genera of these orders, as our present purpose more particularly is to IT is amusing to look into the statute-book-at least that proclaim the fact, that both these call loudly for change of this ancient kingdom of Scotland—and to observe with a sweeping reform in the false policy by which their hours, how much gravity enactments are made, on the most ridiwe might say lives, of unintermitting labour are meted out. From the present system of employment, it is clear that culous and unimportant occasions, and the singular juxtalittle or no time can be applied to the cultivation of the position of statutes on the most opposite and contradictory mind; for, goaded by the parsimony of others, or the atten- subjects. An act appointing certain days for the "lepperdant necessities of a starving home, the latest hours avail- folk" to enter within burgh, and particular stations where able to avarice on the one part, and on the other sustenable by human nature, are exacted for labour, or merely animal they are to be "tholed to thig ;"—for restraining the preoperations; and to this treasonable system alone of conti- pensity for fine dress, by which the state "is greatumlie nued ignorance, is to be attributed the debased passions of pured "_" that na woman cum to the kirk musselled" nature thus degraded, so appalling and injurious to the [masked ;]-"that all beggars suld begge within their swin commonweal of man, and disturbative and ruinous to the true interests of society. In short, the order of both classes paroch, and have the mark thereof;"_" that na man ride bot forces upon the mind of humanity the great necessity of in sober maner ;" and "that nane be foundin in tauernis, abridging the hours of labour; its eye is disgusted with after nine houris," will be found side by side with one the practice, which proceeds as if man were mere animate "for observing trewes [truce] on the borders :"-" for plantmechanism, and revolts at the principle which governs as ing of wooddes, forests, and orchardis;"-for the institution if the Great Creator and Ruler of the Universe had consti- of the College of Justice; and others on subjects of the last tuted the world with relation only to physical and animal operations and feelings, while He has peopled it with moral importance to the well-being of the community. Our anand intellectual beings, as if His moral policy were sub-cestors, indeed-and we believe the observation will be versive of His holy law, and, by the fixed order of things, His characteristic and infinite benevolence and justice were shown forth in the golden but false security of those few callous victims of sordid sensuality, who, for the sake of "the things which perish," daily sacrifice upon the altar of preclusion, the best present and eternal interests of thonsands,-depriving them of all those opportunities and means of improving their stewardship,-shutting them out from every employment of those "talents" which shall be required again" with increase," and in fact crowding into their own criminal line of conduct, and setting an example to others to do so, not only every selfish act of despite to the golden rule, but also to the every divine institution of THE WISDOM OF OUR ANCESTORS. found to hold true of all communities little advanced in civilization-seem to have imagined that not only was it necessary to legislate on subjects of importance, but that the most trivial abuse should be met by a special enact ment. Such a record, indeed, as the ancient code of laws of a kingdom-the very source of history, as it may be called— throws much light not only on the public transactions, but also on the social habits and domestic condition of its inhabitants. As it is to the latter only that we wish at present to direct the attention of our readers, we will confine the |