millions sterling, three fourths of which in silver and one fourth in gold. That of the United Kingdom, in circulation and in the coffers of the banks, is thought not generally to exceed forty millions. And yet the external commerce of France is scarcely equal to one half that of England; and even the internal movement of trade of the first, with a population greater by eight millions, is not of equal amount with that of the latter.

With reference to this and other objects, which we have hinted at previously, involving a vital reform of the currency, the expediency of certain organic changes in the composition and statutes of the Bank of England, and more especially in its executive department, might perhaps merit consideration. Although, during the late money crisis, the Directors have in the main discharged their painful duties ably and courageously, yet we take leave to doubt whether, viewed collectively or individually, the Board has not deteriorated materially and progressively for several years past in the quality and fitness of its members, and in the high character of its administration. A seat in the Direc

tion was formerly the topmost ambition of the most eminent of the mercantile class. To judge from the lists of late years and the present, the case, with some few exceptions, is altered—not for the better. In the wielding of so tremendous an agency as a controling power over the whole currency of the empire, we do not think, and it is said without any feeling of disrespect, that second and third rate merchants, respectable of their standing as they may be, but necessarily as incessantly engaged in concerns upon whose regular course they are themselves entirely dependent, present those guarantees which for the responsible discharge of duties of import so transcendantly consequential are, not desirable only but, indispensable. In the determination of questions so serious as the expansion and contraction of the circulation, for example, the bias of selfinterest may, in a collision with the sense of public duty, prevail in the mind, imperceptibly even to the func tionary. The expansion may be ad. vocated as tending to facilitate extended speculations with smaller means; the contraction deprecated as leading to lower prices, as endanger

Resulting balance only,

L.1,300,000

490,000

130,000

L.360,000

VOL. XLI. NO, CCLVI.

L

ing commercial combinations already advanced, as impairing or narrowing credit not rooted in larger capitals. We have no intention here to press the subject farther, nor shall we do more than hazard a suggestion for the remedy of inconveniences which will be appreciated. We are not sure that it will not be found advisable to invest the Bank with even more of a national character for the nation to enter into partnership with the Bank-to intervene direct by qualified representatives in the board of direction. The coinage of money is one of the highest of royal prerogatives-can it with propriety, ought it to be delegated to a joint stock corporation-acting upon, guided by, the profit and loss principle, chiefly if not wholly, and whose checks the most stringent resolve themselves finally into little more than a moral, and therefore an inadequate responsibility? Why should not the Governor be nominated by or placed in direct communication with, or made answerable to the Government-and therefore armed with certain powers and an absolute veto in the administration of the affairs of the Bank?

The monetary and commercial excitement, if not created, has at least been largely administered to, by the previous and corresponding intensity of political agitation, fomented by a Whig-Radical Government from the love of place, and to ensure a permanency of rule. In troubled waters the shoals and perils of unskilful pilotage are least liable to discovery-the lazy incapacity of Lord Melbourne, and the shallow wit of Lord John, may escape more ready penetration, when floating along a mud-thick stream, impervious to the rays of light below, and powerless therefore to reflect above the bladder-puffed emptiness of the things which affect to guide the current along which, with other rubbish, they are helplessly borne. Lord Glenelg repaid his late public entertainment at Inverness with a glowing delineation of the progress, the industrial progress more especially, of Great Britain during the six years of Whig and " juvenile Whig" sway. "It is proved that the resources of this country have been developed, that commercial enterprise

has been called forth to new enterprise and exertions; that science, and intellect, and reason, and all the efforts of the mind, have been called forth to their utmost expansion, in order to meet the growing demands of a mighty people, calling forth every vigorous energy of the mind in the career of power and substantial greatness. (Immense cheering.) This cannot be denied.

But is it true that human

agency has had no part in these transactions and in these blessings, and which, eminent as they are, we no doubt must ascribe to that great Providence which dictates the fate of nations? But then we know that there are secondary agents and instruments to carry into effect those designs, and to these is to be ascribed the existing state of things." The secondary agents then have inflated the great balloon of national prosperity-be it so. The gas-swollen machine is now rapidly on the descent-the elementary exhalation with which it was bloated is bursting its cerements-with downward inclination' the gaily bedizened envelope of painted silk in all its sides and circumference is collapsing. The affrighted voyagers to lunar realms, glancing below for the hope of escape, behold destruction on either hand, here rocks and preci. pices, there an oceanic gulf. grappling irons, in hands skilled and resolute, might yet clinch with unfailing gripe the threatening cliffs, and achieve a landing-place of safety. Is the sensually enervated and graceful Melbourne endowed with that steelnerved arm? Or Palmerston, the man of gait and speech so mincing and tripping? Or Russell, pigmy in body as puny in mind? Or Glenelg, buried in profound lethargy amidst piles of despatches with seals unbroken?

The

Amidst the wilderness of doubt and darkness, on one point alone we are assured. The secondary agents, who boast of national prosperity as their exclusive creation-false and hollow as that prosperity appears--are bound, now and hereafter, to accept all the responsibility of national reverses and national degradation.

A WIT once defined celibacy to be a vow by which the priesthood, in certain countries of Europe, bound themselves to be content with other men's wives. In England the terror of having a wife of one's own is confined chiefly to those brilliant personages who, after having flourished in the world of fashion in search of an heiress, whose return for her tens of thousands was to be the simple monopoly of their Bond Street elegance, find that fifty years are no addition to their charms, whatever they may be to their existence; that the most exquisite dexterity of the tailor cannot conceal the increasing rotundity of the form, nor all the art of the bootmaker retard the departing elasticity of the leg; that there is a time for all things, and among those things for ceasing to be irresistible and for beginning to be ridiculous. After fifty the doors of the matrimonial paradise are fast closing, and unless the man of fashion suddenly abjures the charms of blue eyes, native ringlets, and the lovebreathing smiles of the generation from seventeen to the anxious age of seven-and-twenty, and discover the superior captivations of well-portioned widowhood, no man stands a fairer chance of dying that lonesome and unloved incumbrance of the earth, an old bachelor.

But these follies are for the region of high life. These pains are for the purgatory which the "supreme bon ton" make for themselves beyond the visible diurnal sphere of common sense. Those privations are the inheritance of the superfine race who see mankind only out of the window at Brookes's, are unconscious of the existence of any man under ten thousand a-year, know no other fragment of London than the lounge from Regent Street to Piccadilly, learn the passage of the seasons only from the hunting at Melton or the racing at Newmarket, and augur the prosperity or decline of the empire from the greater or less number of invitations on their table to my lord's battue and my lady's ball.

England actually contains a vast number of individuals, however unacquainted with the fact those pre-eminent personages may be, who marry and are given in marriage at much less rates than fashion on one side, and fortune on the other. The marriages are not much less than 100,000 a-year. Still there are crowds, either too timid or too tongueless, too busy or too bashful to "tell their love," and thus their savings go to the winds in the parish club, or are watched for by a whole grim generation of cousins, who grasp at the will with the voracity of so many vultures; or, in default of even the cousins, go to the King's Attorney-General, the widest-throated vulture of all. To obviate the difficulties of approach, an advertisement in the newspapers is the established way; but this is but a poor contrivance after all. The fair sex have been so often disappointed by the comparison of the original with the portrait, the gentleman himself being the limner, that no woman who boasts of her own teeth, and looks in her glass without terror, will take the trouble of following the prize. In the published correspondence of some of those Damons and Phylisses--for when the gentleman is hanged, or the lady under sentence of transportation, the seals of the heart have been sometimes too lightly broken-all the answers were from the vicinity of Billingsgate and Coldbathfields. In fact, this mode has fallen into the "sere, the yellow leaf," and the temple of Hymen is at one entrance completely blocked up. They manage those matters, as they do every thing, better in France. There they have "Bureaux Matrimonielles," where all arrangements for wedded bliss are made by experienced officials. The gentleman sends in his credentials, the lady sends in hers. After those preliminaries are adjusted, the introduction follows, satisfies the parties that neither has emerged from the galleys, or is likely to be consigned to them, within the year. The "contract" receives the signature, the priest of the Faubourg

attends, the ceremonial is punctiliously performed, and Monsieur and Madame are made happy.

Still the failure of the advertisement system has arisen rather from the proverbial fallacy of its statements than from the original deficiency of its means. They have aimed too much at cloquence, they have rivalled too ardently the Packwood razorstrop, and the Warren's liquid blacking style. The marriage garden has been so teeming with imaginary flowers, so redolent of sweets on paper, that disappointment was the irresistible consequence. But we give one advertisement, which appeared a short time since in the papers, and which, from its touching the true string, neither fearfully repulsive nor impossibly rapturous, was formed to succeed. We have no doubt that its honest writer has already found a mate to his mind.

"I hereby give notice to all unmarried women, that I, John Hobnail, am at this writing five-and-forty, a widower, and in want of a wife. As I wish no one to be mistaken, I have a good cottage, with a couple of acres of land, for which I pay L.2 a-year. I have five children, four of them old enough to be in employment; three sides of bacon, and some pigs ready for market. I should like to have a woman fit to take care of her house when I am out. I want no second family. She may be between forty and fifty, if she likes. A good stirring woman would be preferred, who could take care of the pigs."

We give this as a specimen of the true style. It has no affected elegance, it puzzles none by prodigality of promises. The dairymaid who reads may run, and probably will to the threshold of Hobnail, and if that man dies a widower we shall abandon our faith in the power of the pen.

Knavery, like snow, condenses in our streets on the coming of winter, and scarcely a day passes in which the little Magisterial Courts do not give their tribute to the genius of the pickpocket mind. But our affairs of this kind are vulgar. It is on the Continent that the pickpocket studies the picturesque. The reason of this difference is simply that the trade there is in higher hands-that the Exquisite with whom the daughter of an Eng

lish peer may have danced at the Ridotto this evening, may be practising the art of " ways and means on the public purse at the theatre the next; and that where every human being, from the prince to the peasant, plays at the same hazard-table, the lower race quickly adopt the style of the superior, and raise swindling to the dignity of a profession.

Some time since, an extremely clever thing of this species was done in Vienna. A young count, with some prodigiously high-blood name, an officer in the Imperial Hulans, was sitting on his horse, waiting outside the gate of the cathedral for the return of their Majestics. A watch set with brilliants, which he took out from time to time, showed that he was weary of the ceremony. A vastly sparkling snuff-box, to which he frequently applied, showed that he required a stimulus: in fact, the handsome Hulan was evidently falling asleep. He was roused by a welldressed person's making his way to him, and with a very low bow begging of him" to preserve that attitude." He explained this odd request, by saying, that one of the archduchesses was desperately smitten with him, and desired to have his picture; but that, no opportunity having hitherto occurred, and etiquette being altogether against her asking it in person, she had employed an eminent artist to sketch his likeness as he mounted guard. The count, notorious for a good opinion of his own charms, was infinitely delighted; but he affected to laugh at the idea, and threw himself into an attitude which he conceived to be much more captivating. His friend in the mob again begged of him to remain steady for a moment, and pointed out to him, in an opposite window, an artist busy in sketching a crayon drawing. The man's eyes

were fixed on him. It was undeniable that he was sketching the count, and the handsome Hulan was too generous to make an archduchess wretched for want of his picture. Two or three slight changes of attitude were required to complete the performance; they were gently recommended by the count's new friend, and approved of by the nod of the artist in the window. At length the operation was completed. The artist made a low bow, and retired from the window. His friend

on the pavé did the same. The count was enchanted with having captivated a princess. But what was the time which this interesting performance had occupied? He felt for his watch -no watch was there; for his snuffbox-it had disappeared. His purse had followed them. He was now thoroughly awake. The worst of the matter was, that the unkind pickpockets were so proud of their having plucked the young dupe, that they told the story at the first roulette-table they came to. Thence, of course, it spread like wild-fire through the Court, the capital, and the country.

it."

Secretary King, in his Memoirs, says, that having had opportunities of sceing a good deal of all the most remarkable men of his time, he had come to the conclusion, that presence of mind, implying quick decision, was the rarest, as it is undoubtedly the most important quality in the emergencies of public life. It was for this quality that Themistocles was celebrated by the historian as the most extraordinary man of his time" That no man of all the Greeks saw so rapidly where the difficulty lay, or was so quick in discovering the way out of A large part of this fine quality depends on the avoidance of haste on the sober view of events as they are, and on waiting till things are ripe. William the First, Prince of Orange, was memorable for this faculty, and it conducted him in triumph to the freedom of Holland. If, in the earlier years of those perpetual provocations which he suffered from the Spanish viceroys of the Netherlands, and the still more stimulating demands of the people to place himself at their head, he had raised the standard, he must have been crushed. "But the pear was not ripe." Though one of the bravest men alive, and resolved on finally hazarding life and fortune in the cause, he waited until he saw the Continent prepared to take a direct interest in the war-the German princes outraged, and eager for the fall of the Spanish domination, and the people of the Netherlands, roused by the double sense of persecuted religion and insulted freedom, to strike the blow with all their strength, and be successful, or be undone.

This was the great quality of Cromwell. It is idle to say, as has been so

often said, that he was unconscious of the chances which the Revolution opened before him. His nature was to love power; his spirit was to scorn rivalry; and his ambition was to be at the head of the country. A man of his penetration must have known that the time of public confusion was the time for his obscure but powerful faculties to rise. A man of his education must have known the historic examples of ancient and modern Republicanism. And from the moment when the sword was drawn by the Parliament, he must have felt that the first soldier of the country might become the sovereign. "But the pear was not ripe." If after the most celebrated of his early histories he had openly aimed at the supremacy, he must have been crushed. The power of the Parliament was still in its vigour. It was not till the palpable success of the struggle, and the returning security of the popular cause had.enabled the people to turn their eyes on the Parliament, that the public discontents had time to grow, that Parliament fell into disrepute, that the contest seemed to be carried on for nothing but the aggrandizement of the House of Commons, and finally, that the nation felt eager to change the oligarchy, whom they began to despise, for any form of government which promised novelty. The pear was then ripening. But a single premature step even then would have sent Cromwell to the scaffold. The army at length assumed the power. The pear was then ripe. And Cromwell, never in more imminent danger than at the moment when his foot was about to ascend the throne, left London in the critical instant, and was dictator.

Napoleon's early career was marked by this memorable sagacity. No man was nearer perishing in its commencement. If he had joined Robespierre in Paris, there can scarcely be a doubt that he would have been joined with him at the guillotine. The offer was made to him to take the command of the garrison of Paris. Nothing could be more tempting to a young officer, poor, conscious of talent, and encumbered with a crowd of brothers and sisters, who all seem to have looked up to him for a place in society, if not for bread. Robespierre at that hour was virtual monarch of France. All the parties of the Legislature had open!