cessful tradesman, not altogether to retire as he intended, but to leave his confidential foreman and practised staff, and come in to business one or two days a week. His reply throws no little light on amateur trading or shopkeeping by deputy: You are not aware that capital so casually looked after will hardly pay five per cent. The aggregation of little profits, "the pounds made out of pennies" alone make the difference between failure and success.'

Another proof of the same thing is found in this-that the tradesman who tries a second shop generally finds that while the shop within his own personal superintendence answers, the other comparatively fails. The conclusion therefore is, that if amateur shopkeepers do succeed, they accomplish that in which even experienced and practical shopkeepers could expect to fail. To find the man who will feel the same interest as the master is too much to hope for. Some say, Pay your manager in proportion to his success; but you must pay heavily indeed-in short you must give him the profits of a partner before you can expect in him another self. A manager who has proved his fitness by success will hardly serve you for a salary, and without such proof of eligibility what can you expect him to be worth? Besides, if such a manager could be found, your committee are in no mood to find him, for qualification and merit never have and never will be found to outweigh partiality, self-interest, and caprice, when a dozen men in committee come to decide on an appointment.

Now, suppose the manager appointed, can you trust him to buy in the cheapest market? Does not every wholesale dealer offer a commission or some advantage to the agent who gives his firm a preference? So well is this understood, that no sooner does an agent apply for terms of contract, than he commonly receives two letters, one a formal invoice of prices, and the other a private memorandum that there shall be a percentage for himself. Here is at least two and a half

per cent. off the profits of the business; and if we consider that such an agent is in no position to look hard at quality, a loss of five per cent. in all would be a moderate calculation of the first share from amateur profits. Add for waste, deterioration of stock, peculation, and other results of want of interest and neglect -losses which only extreme vigilance can reduce to their lowest terms--and if for the sum total we set down seven per cent. as the dead weight with which every amateur trader starts in the race commercial, we shall be still below the mark.

Some persons, to justify their economical inventions, maintain that tradesmen make good custom pay for bad. They say, Granted that competition rules prices, bad debts being a charge which, like rent and taxes, weighs on all alike, the tradesman adds proportionally to his prices, knowing that his competitor must do the same.

We admit the principle but deny the fact.-If bad debts were a constant amount, and a regular charge on all alike, this conclusion would be true. But the old and cautious tradesman who makes very few bad debts-perhaps not one per cent. -will hardly be ruled by the young and reckless competitor for custom who loses ten. The custom of discount varying from two and a half to ten per cent., according to the nature of the business, is virtually an insurance against bad debts, and one which it is at the customer's option to pay.

Many a retired tradesman has borne his independent witness that a man does not raise his prices in anticipation of bad debts, for the simple reason that he does not mean to make any. He assumes his customer will pay, or he does not deal with him at all. The extra business pays for risk, not the extra prices. When he finds himself committed to a long-suffering account, most persons must have heard of instances where the tradesman indemnifies himself by prices exceptionally high to meet such particular instances. Even Oxford tradesmen in our college days, we remember, had two prices, one for

men who paid every term, the other for the risk and loss of booking, perhaps, till the creditor had taken his degree. The expression of making good business pay for bad, we believe to be a senseless expression. Competition rules the ready-money tradesman and the tradesman who gives long credit both alike. Only cach competes with his class, and, as we said of the tradesman of the City and of the West End-the members of each class stop at the same point, though that point ranges higher with the latter than the former. We contend, therefore, that no amateur trading and no co-operative stores are required on these grounds.

There is one point only in which the co-operative principle can be supposed to succeed.-At present custom is so divided, that instead of one shop supplying a thousand families, we have (say) ten shops, with nearly ten times the cost of carts, horses, servants, rent, taxes, and other fixed expenses, and profit on capital-all which must be a charge on the thousand customers. This is one point in which the Rochdale co-operatives are gainers; but there is so much caprice among private families, that we can hardly hope to see any economy effected by supporting only a few shops on the Rochdale principle.

be born in a state of luck. The ancient Romans, towards whom I early imbibed a well-sustained feeling of aversion, reckoned good luck among the highest qualifications of a general. To be considered lucky by the world is the highest stroke of luck that can befall a man; for to be considered lucky in commercial circles is tantamount to the possession of vast credit; and through credit there have been vast operations effected, infinite scratchings on mercantile paper, and the construction of splendid fortunes. The history of successful commerce is the history of the marvels of credit, as such a house as Jones, Loyd, and Co., can testify. As I go to and fro on the earth I hear of divers slices of luck, and I wonder when a slice, thick and juicy, of that description of viand, will ever come to my watering mouth.

For one really does hear of extraordinary things which set the most unselfish and carefully-balanced mind into an envious attitude of wishing to 'get something.' The only kind of an El Dorado that suggests itself to me is to take shares in a mine-a Peruvian mine if you like-but instead of stumbling upon golden ore or caves lighted up with precious stones, I have a presentiment that the first dividend would be paid out of capital; that we should fall to one per cent.; and that the shareholders would be placed under most unpleasing contributories towards making good all sorts of defalcations. Whereas there is a Iman in the West of England-the story is well known there-who took a thousand shares in a mine, and never had to pay more than a pound a piece for them; and on those shares he lived sumptuously, and out of the income of those shares he bought an estate for a hundred thousand pounds, and, finally, he sold those shares for half a million of money. There is a man in Berkshire who

has got a park with a walled frontage of seven miles, and he tells of a beautiful little operation which made a nice little addition to his fortune. He was in Australia when the first discoveries of gold were made. The miners brought in their nuggets, and took them to the local banks. The bankers were a little nervous about the business, uncertain about the quality of the gold, and waiting to see its character established. This man had a taste for natural sciences, and knew something about metallurgy. He tried each test, solid and fluid, satisfied himself of the quality of the gold, and then, with all the money he had, or could borrow, he bought as much gold as might be, and showed a protit of a hundred thousand pounds in the course of a day or two. It is to be observed here that what we call luck is resolvable very often into what is really observation and knowledge, and a happy tact in applying them when a sudden opportunity arises. The late Joseph Hume was a happy instance of this. He went out to India, and while he was still a young man he accumulated a considerable fortune. He saw that hardly any about him knew the native languages, so he applied himself to the hard work of mastering them, and turned the knowledge to most profitable account. On one occasion, when all the gunpowder had failed the British army, he succeeded in scraping together a large amount of the necessary materials, and manufactured it for our troops. When he returned to England he canvassed with so much ability and earnestness for a seat in the East India Directorate, that he might carry out his scheme of reform, that though he failed to get the vote of a certain large proprietor of stock, he won his daughter's heart, and made a prosperous marriage. Ah! marriage is, after all, the luckiest bit of luck when it is all it should be. When Henry Baring, the late Lord Ashburton, travelled in America-not

merely dilettante travelling, but like Lord Milton in our days, piercing into untravelled wilds, meeting only a stray, enthusiastic naturalist, lile Audubon - he made his marriage with Miss Bingham, and so consolidated the American business of the great house of Baring. In an international point of view this was a happy marriage, for in after years it gave him a peculiar facility for concluding the great Ashburton treaty. We have just seen with universal satisfaction a great lady added to the peerage of Great Britain. Mr. Disraeli dedicated one of his works to the 'severest of critics, but a perfect wife;' and at the Edinburgh banquet he told the guests how much he owed to his matchless wife. It is no secret how much of his fortunes he owed to her help, and how greatly he benefited by her sympathy and wisdom. The husband whom she so helped in his youthful struggles for fortune has in return made her a peeress, and we all wish happiness and long life to the Viscountess Beaconsfield. So lucky has Mr. Disraeli been in his wife, that it is hardly worth while alluding to the minor and subordinate circumstance that an old lady, a stranger, some years ago left him a legacy of thirty or forty thousand pounds, through admiration of his public character.

Yet it is hard to know when a man is lucky or when unlucky. If a man is going to lose a fortune in gambling he generally has some strokes of luck at the commencement. If poor Lord Hastings had not made those lucky hits when he first went on the turf, perhaps he would not have verified the family motto in a new, sad sense, and 'scattered his arrows' so freely. What a world of meaning there is in the Sparsimus tela motto of the extinct house of Hastings. Oh, hollow glades and bowery loveliness of Castle Donington! what weird, sad whispers will next seem to sound for me when I may revisit those old ancestral haunts! There is a very distinguished nobleman who first tried his luck at sea before he became what men at sea call a land-shark. When young Thesiger gave up the

trade of midshipman I dare say some kind friends pronounced him a failure; but no one would say that of Lord Chancellor Chelmsford. There was another man who became a British peer through circumstances full of luck for the country, but which he doubtless always considered of direst unluck to himself. A quiet, happy country gentleman was Mr. Graham, with abundant means and healthful tastes, a handsome estate and a handsome wife. There is a tale of his prowess related about his wife. They were at Edinburgh, and were going to a great ball, when, to her infinite annoyance, she found that she had left her jewel-case behind her. The distance was sixty or seventy miles, and it was not many hours before the ball was to come off. Graham took a fleet horse, and at the top of his speed rode away homewards in search of the jewel-case. did his ride of a hundred and fifty miles in marvellously short time, and the ornaments were in time for the ball. When the wife, for whose comfort and pleasure he had so chivalrously acted, died, Mr. Graham was inconsolable. To alleviate his deep-seated melancholy he joined the army as a volunteer. Then commenced his splendid career as a soldier, in which he proved himself one of the most efficient and gallant of Wellington's lieutenants, and fought his way to pension and peerage. Such was the turning point in the history of the late Lord Lynedoch.

He

It has always struck me that the career of the late Baron Ward, who, from a stable-boy, became Prime Minister of Parma, was a remarkable instance of the union of luck and desert. I abridge an account of him by one who knew him well.

I cannot tell the exact year in which Ward entered the Duke of Lucca's service-it must have been between 1825 and 1830. He was for some years in the ducal stables, when his cleverness and good conduct attracted the favourable notice of his master. And as he was very fond of the English, he wished to attach Ward more closely to his

..

immediate service; and notwithstanding his equestrian skill, he decided upon removing him from his stables, and making him his under valet de chambre. Ward owed this promotion entirely to his high character, integrity, and scrupulous English cleanliness... Ward's rise in the service of the Duke of Lucca was extremely gradual, and was the result, not of capricious favour, but of the most well-grounded appreciation of his long-tried worth and his rare intelligence. . . . His extraordinary good sense and practical ability became gradually more and more apparent. The Duke soon began to see that his advice was good in matters far beyond the departments of his stable and of his wardrobe. He accordingly consulted him in many perplexed and difficult cases as they happened to occur; and he invariably found such benefit from the advice of his new counsellor, that he began to regard him as almost infallible. The zeal and address which Ward displayed in the arrangement of some affair procured for him an unbounded influence with his master, who, soon after this, strongly urged him to accept of a portfolio, and to assume the public position of a Minister of State. This proposition Ward refused point blank. . . . The groom was elevated to the post of personal attendant, then of intendant of his stables and household, then of comptroller of his privy purse, then of Minister of State, and, in fact, Prime Minister, with baronial titles and manifold knightly decorations. Such was the elevation to which Ward had ascended at the present epoch of his history. He was the trusted adviser of his master in the knottiest questions of foreign politics, the arbiter of the most difficult points of international policy with other states, and the highest authority in all home affairs. He was one of those men of action who speedily distinguish themselves wherever the game of life is to be played; quick to discern the character of those around him, and prompt to avail himself of their knowledge. Little hampered by the conventionalities which impose

trammels on men born in an elevated station, and refined by elegant breeding, he generally attained his object by a coup de main before others had arranged their plans to oppose him. To these qualities, so instrumental to his success, he added a most rugged, unyielding honesty, and a loyal, single-hearted attachment to the person of his prince. Strong in his own conscious rectitude, and in the confiding regard of his sovereign, Ward stood alone and fearless against all the wiles and machinations of his formidable rivals, who, although armed against counter wiles and counter machinations, were quite unprepared against straightforward honesty.

.. One

day about this time, when he entered the Duke's room, he found him occupied with a pencil and paper. "Ward," said his Royal Highness, "I am drawing a coat of arms for you. As a mark of the esteem in which you are held by the Duchess as well as myself, you shall have armorial bearings compounded of her arms and my own. I will give you the silver cross of Savoy with the golden fleur de lys of France in dexter chief." With many expressions of gratitude for the honour which was about to be conferred upon him, he asked permission to add something emblematical of his native country; and as he had heard that coats of arms sometimes had supporters, he would like to have the cross of Savoy and the lily of Bourbon supported by English John Bulls. "So be it," said the Duke. "You shall have two bulls regardant for your supporters;" and thus the arms of Baron Ward may be found in "Burke's Peerage among those of Englishmen who have obtained foreign titles:-On a field gules, a cross argent, in the dexter chief, a shield azure, surmounted by a royal crown, and charged with a fleur de lys or; supporters, two bulls regardant proper. . . In the beginning of the year 1854, Charles III., Duke of Parma, was suddenly removed from this world by a mysterious and violent death. One of the first acts of the Duchess, his widow, forced by its popularity among the subjects of her infant son,

...