sickness he is relieved from the general stock; all disputes about wages are settled by a directing committee, to whose decisions, unless where manifestly unreasonable, masters themselves find it convenient to submit; in short, our provincial snip, instead of shuffling through London streets a mere redundancy, now, by the magic of association, boasts himself the fraction of a man, and holds up his head accordingly. The same rule holds in almost every instance of men in their integrity, as of the aforesaid fragments of humanity. Chimney-sweepers even have their protective association, and each year celebrate the anniversary of their foundation at Highbury Barn Tavern with great solemnity; Rhadamanthus Wakley, the coroner, Old Byng, Tom Duncombe, and sundry other exalted patriots, always then and there assisting the solemnities of the sooty fraternity.

You have as many protective associations as there are trades, nor is there the slightest chance of success for any man who refuses to become a member of his associated profession. He may perhaps be employed in a contraband way by some recusant master, but in general he is forced to quit; they call him a colt, in their technical slang, and although-unlike provincial artisans, who have a knack of bludgeoning among this stamp they seldom resort to violence, they rarely fail to starve out the unlucky wight who would stand alone, and work his way through life without the assistance, guidance, and protection of his fellows. Not alone for the protection of trade are societies organized: social reunions are even more numerous; hardly any person in the humbler walks of life, with good character and ostensible occupation, excludes himself from a friendly society, burial society, or mutual assistance society of one sort or other. Clubs of various sorts are instituted for the purpose of purchasing articles by weekly small subscriptions of the members, and on every Saturday evening drawing lots. In this way are formed hat clubs, watch and clock clubs, and even portrait clubs. This system, however, being in the nature of a lottery, is not in request with the more prudent or respectable, appertaining chiefly to the frequenters of sporting houses, which abound in every quarter of London.

The ladies, too, are not behind in associating for mutual protection and support; you will see, in the poorer neighbourhoods, advertisements in the windows of coffee-shops, and, we are sorry to be obliged to add, in those of public-houses also, UNITED SOCIETY OF SISTERS OF INDUSTRY HELD HERE; FEMALE FRIENDLY ASSOCIATION; WORKING WOMEN'S COAL CLUB; and a hundred other notices of the like description.

Of this power of association thus . practically carried into effect among high and low, rich and poor, it is impossible to estimate too highly the manifold advantages. To this we owe the gigantic undertakings that make the enterprize of Londoners the world's wonder; to this we owe that stability of mercantile credit, which is the basis and foundation of our enterprize; to this we owe the extension of our national influence and power beyond the narrow limits of our isle ; to this we owe much of that solidity and stability of character which results from the minute divisions of property among all industrious classes.

What can be more wonderful, for example, than the power of association manifested in joint-stock banking companies, shipping companies, steam and railway companies? The immensity and apparent inexhaustibility of their resources, astonish less than the rapidity with which their gigantic undertakings approach completion, alike defying competition and opposi tion. Ere in a provincial town the preliminaries of action could be adjusted, the London speculator has invested his thousands or his millions, as the case may be, and begins to receive slowly first, then quicker, the returns of his investment. Philosophic doctors demonstrate to a moral certainty that the great Atlantic may not be traversed by steam ships; and even while philosophic doctors' throats are hoarse with their demonstration of the physical impossibility of crossing the ocean by steam, your Londoner sends out a steamer, does the trick, and gives the philosophic doctor the lie direct. Geological savans insist that tunnels of a couple of miles in length through lofty hills are out of the question, be cause of greywacke, quartz, old red sandstone, hornblende, and the devil knows what; your London shareholder employs a contractor, orders him to bore through thick and thin until he

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comes out at the other side, which he does without more ceremony, to the undisguised chagrin of the geologist, who discovers, notwithstanding all his science, that the London speculator is perfectly up to trap." The impossible-mongering, cold water-throwing, wet-blanketing fellows, howled in this way about the Thames tunnel; there was a bed of quicksand, and another bed of dead sand, and a bed of quicksand again, and it couldn't be done, and all the workmen, as well as the work, would be drowned, and it was a bad job, and no use, and so on; similar howling was heard respecting the gigantic tunnel of Box on the Great Western Railway, and yet both the one and the other have been carried to a successful issue: there they stand, durable monuments of the ignorance of the learned, and the possibility of every thing to money and

Brunel.

In truth, the Londoner is not to be deterred from any work, however gigantic, by the timidity of theorists. He knows, by experience, that few difficulties are insurmountable by mind, muscle, and machinery, and he has money to buy all three; difficul ties and discouragements only call forth his unbounded resources, and his unrivalled energy. He goes to war with the whole world, and not only finds money to pay his expenses, but can spare plenty more to set other nations by the ears: in peace he is at war, tyrannizing over the rebellious ocean, or rending the bowels of the reluctant earth. He is not only enterpriz ing in himself, but the cause of enter prize in others; his capital is sunk in the coal mines of Northumberland, and the gold mines of Brazil; his capital, like his own steam-engine, propels the great and little wheels of industry, at all corners of the earth. Nothing is too great for his enterprize, or too little; he dashes at all in the ring-to-day investing his thousands in settling colonies for the living, tomorrow sporting a few thousands more in providing genteel and airy suburban accommodation for the dead!

The root of the enterprize of a Londoner, is in having a correct idea of the use and value of money, in which he differs chiefly from provincial people. When he accumulates a trifle of thousands, say a hundred or two, he begins to think himself able

to earn a little; instead of buying land, enclosing a park, stopping up public footpaths, and sitting at quarter sessions, he sets his wits at work to double his capital: money, he will tell you, is like muscle, growing by exercise, and wasting by repose; and he puts his money in training accordingly. The more money he has he is not a richer man, but only a larger adventurer: his thousands are not the end of his industry, but the means to an end, and that end is extended speculation. In country places, on the contrary, men fail from having an erroneous idea that money, that is to say, coin, is positive wealth; that a certain number of guineas keeps him from starvation, a certain number in addition renders him comfortable: doubling this sum, he becomes, as it is called, respectable; and doubling this again, he may be considered wealthy: thus he forms his rule of life upon putting every guinea he can lay his hands on into an old stocking, and keeping it there. It need hardly be added, that this is fatal to enterprize, and consequently to the rapid return of profits and speedy multiplication of wealth.

Wherever this hoarding principle is strong, commerce is little, and credit none: it is clear that the first principle of commercial enterprize is wanting; money, which is its life and soul, being considered not the means, but the end. In town, a guinea is considered a little machine, which, properly set agoing, may reproduce itself with sixpence or a shilling to boot: in the country, a guinea is a guinea; and unless, by taking it out of the stocking, another guinea can be made, the proprietor of the (per se) worthless dross will not part with it for a moment.

When we talk of the commercial enterprize of Londoners, we must be understood to speak as well of all other places imbued with the liberal principles upon which metropolitan traders have been long accustomed to act: the analysis of these principles, and a description of the rules of business practice in the metropolis, we do not purpose to pursue: speculations of this sort demand a depth of thought, and a comprehensiveness of view, better suited to the political economist than to the cursory observer of men and

manners.

A FAT man, with a very red face, rushed distractedly into the lobby of Pigston Hall, in Leicestershire; and after succeeding, with great difficulty, in getting into a huge livery-coat, which was yet a good deal too small for him-throwing forward first one` arm, then the other, then both together-sinking his head and raising his shoulders-and in short going through all the evolutions consequent on a tight fit, he listened attentively for a minute or two, with his ear at the very key-hole of the front door, and, finally, as if satisfied with the result of his observation, threw himself into an arm-chair; and said, with a sigh, which evidently gave him great relief, "It wasn't nobody after all! Sich a set of lazy hounds them houseservants is!" pursued our frienddeterging his scarlet brow with a still more scarlet cotton. "I remembers when I was in Sir Charles's stables, afore I became master's butler, we managed the stable boys wery different. And I thinks I may say, without any wanity, that I never spoke to a under-helper in my life, without either a slap over the head with a pitchfork, or a good dig in the ribs with my fist; but them footmen wont stand it, and that's the reason the brutes is never in time. Thomas !leave off a palavering with that 'ere Marianne, will ye, and come here? I 'spects the company every minute."

But Thomas seemed to prefer palavering with Marianne to cooling his heels in the hall.

"Time enough ?" continued the impatient butler, as if in answer to some response of the dilatory Thomas. "Time enough? how is a man in the country to know whether it's time enough or not? Did you ever hear of any two clocks being in the same story? Why, it's perhaps seven o'clock at Sheepsbury now, and only half after five at Swanfield. You come up here, I tell ye, or somebody's sure to play a tune on the knocker afore we're ready to dance to it. Dang it!" he added, in a lower note, "if I had sich a feller as that in the stable, wouldn't I stick

a two-prong into his shoulder-that's all!"

Whether awed by the magisterial voice of his superior, or rejected by the aforesaid Marianne, we cannot say, but Thomas at last made his appearance his hair thickly powdered, and tremendously curled-his coat white and yellow his waistcoat blue velvet

"Did

his continuations of the same splendid colour and material- and his stockings flesh-coloured silk: a breathing condensation of all that is hateful and disgusting in human nature—an overfed and over-dressed flunky. you require my assistance particularly, Mr Tippings?" said Thomas, as he lounged towards the door; "for at that moment I was somewhat more deliciously engaged?"

"Making love and"

"Pardon me, Mr Tippings; other people, perhaps, make love, and a dismal manufacture I should think it was; but somehow or other, it always happens that whenever I begin speaking to a pretty girl, 'tis ready made"

"Well, well, never mind about that," said Mr Tippings, evidently regretting the abolition of corporal punishments, which used to be the pride and buckler of the stable service. "Where's David?"

"Here I are, and no mistakethough crickey, I feels as if I wasn't quite myself neither in these here oudacious breeches-I never was out of fustians before."

"Now, then, let's be ready," said Mr Tippings. "You, Thomas, go and stand near the drawing-room door; you, David, be near me, and take the gentlemen's hats—if they don't take'm in with them, and the ladies's scarfs. I'll give the name, and Thomas is sure to hear it without your bawling it out too-so do nothing but bow as the company passes. Then as soon as they're all arrived, off I goes and gets into my plain coat-for a real butler is a cut above livery-and you get the dinner on the table as hard as you can. Most of the strangers will bring their own men, so there'll be lots of waiting. Now then, steady-I hears wheels."

But as this last declaration of Mr Tipping's proved to be unfounded, we conclude it was a ruse of that worthy functionary to get quit of Thomas. Thomas proceeded to the other end of the lobby, David ranged himself beside Mr Tippings, and that gentleman was on the very point of opening his mouth to illuminate David's understanding, when his attention was arrested by a noise at one of the side doors, and his eye rested—inflated with anger and surprise-on three or four of the female domestics, who had taken up that position to have a peep of the company as they passed: it was against all Mr Tippings' notions of propriety and etiquette. "Well, if this ain't a shindy all the petticoats in the house come up to look at the arrivals, as if it was a trial-run for the Derby! I say, you gals! you must be off every one of ye.-Ha'n't you got your own business to attend to ?"

The three other domestics tossed their heads as if disgusted at being reminded that they had any thing to do but to amuse themselves; but this demonstration did not suffice for the injured dignity of Marianne. tripped across the hall, to the increased dismay of Mr Tippings, and said, in not the pleasantest tones that a lady'smaid can assume,

She

said Mr Tippings, waxing warm. "By dad!-if I could tie up hair".

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Why don't you try ?" said Marianne, with a sneer. But a poor curate's orphan daughter should not hold her head so high."

"Her head-poor dear lady!" said the butler; "she never seems to hold up her head at all; and such a head it is to hold up-small ears, large eyes, broad front, long neck. She's regular thorough-bred,—and master's sister was a lucky woman to marry such a true gentleman as Mr Welby."

"A curate!" again repeated Miss Marianne, with a toss. "A man in

a threadbare coat, making a small perquisite to his wages by keeping pooples!"

Sir

"He was my old master, Sir Charles' younger brother, and the best judge of a horse in the county; and as to them pooples, how could he help it, when it was all he had to do? Charles was ruined; the old hall mortgaged; nobody gave him a living; he couldn't go into service, where he might have been comfortable, and saved a little for his old age; and so you see, he was forced to take in three or four young gentlemen to fit them for college-and a hard enough work he found it; at least I remembers when all the strappers and stable-boys was my pooples at Sir Charles's, they led me the life of a dog. But never let me hear you say a word against Miss Helen, she's the beautifullest angel on earth, and would come in very near the winning post against most of them in heaven. So be off-be off,-the company's coming at last!"

And wheels gritted on the gravel in front of the hall door. Marianne flew across the hall, David drew near to be ready to receive the visiters. Rattat-tat, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, tat-tattat! The door flew open, and down the steps of a plain yellow chariot skipped an old gentleman, a little overdressed, with bright green waistcoat crossed by two or three gold chainslarge gold seals dangling from his watch pocket-and an appearance of having paid extraordinary attention to his toilet.

"Mr Bagsby!" said Mr Tippings, when the gentleman had fairly entered the hall."

"Mr Bagsby !" repeated Thomas, throwing open the drawing-room door, and in a short time the ancient dandy