It was the endeavour of the firm that no British dealer should touch a single yard of these samples -they were all for the Levant market.

Take another instance, where the subtlety of manufacturing and trading influence had been exampled by an article at the other extremity in the scale of beauty and costliness. Several years ago-before the cotton famine-persons who took a theoretical interest in the quotations of the markets noticed that the commerce in "domestics" was enlarging, and argued from it an increase in our capacity for home or domestic consumption. Now the history of domestics was this: In the struggle to keep up in the Northern States of America a conquering rivalship with British manufactures, certain cotton fabrics were called "domestics." They were heavy fabrics-strong and lasting, as it was said, but certainly of a character of structure far from the finish of the Manchester school of manufactures. The patriotism of the citizen was appealed to for the support of this manufacture, and it was understood that the clumsiness of the fabric would aid the patriotic spirit in enabling it infallibly to recognise its own child. Well, the British "domestics" were made in imitation of this article with a due amount of factitious clumsiness; and the manufacture prospered in Lancashire, because the fabric could be carried to America at a rate underselling the local commodity. Now, in such instances as these-especially in that of the oriental silks-it would be curious to know, as I have already hinted, how long the commodity maintained that absolute identity with the native produce that had gained its admission to the market; and whether, perhaps by some subtle and almost imper

ceptible transformation, it gradually emerged from its oriental characteristics, creeping towards those of common fashionable textures, and accordingly corrupting the taste of the weavers into that of the pushing, commercial gent who travels in a crack article for a first-class house in the soft line.

Has it ever happened to you, after a long and interesting conversation with a casual inmate of the commercial room, whose intelligence and politeness have recommended him to your distinguished favour,

that, suddenly changing his bland aspect of gentlemanly politeness, he has lapsed into a different order of politeness sacred to certain classes of commercial transactions, and producing an open box, introduces its contents to your notice with something like this: "Charming article, sir.

First appearance, sir, of the great novelty of the season! serve what a perfect combination of chasteness with richness! pattern strictly geometrical, yet luxuriously free; colours alike contrasted and harmonious. Now, sir, I can let your good lady and her amiable daughters have that article a day before the retail trade, and so your family would be the first to display it in Poppleton Magna. I know I ought not to do this. It is a risk; but then I stand well with my firm, and can serve a friend, and was so charmed with your sound opinion on a currency at once expansive and secure." ."?

I put the question to you, because I have been speaking so much about trade, and so practically as I hope, that as I get on in the same strain, I think it not impossible that a suspicion may arise in the reader's mind that I am insinuating into his notice something like a long advertisement. I therefore take the opportunity of assuring you and him, that if I admitted

myself to have anything to do with trade, I would be a gross impostor. No one who knows me would trust me with a transaction or a commission. I cannot expect the reader to remember my announcement that I have had a deal of wandering in my day-wandering after a definite purpose and that I have thus been carried, as it were, through the strata which retain the tourist. But this definite object of mine is

as far apart from commerce as the differential calculus is from the quantification of the predicate. I have been capable of preserving the most placid equanimity when I have seen the whole population of the commercial room thrown into wild excitement by an announcement that pigs have suddenly become lively in the Black Country, and hence many of the damped furnaces have been blasted.

I LOOK with some covetousness on the indefatigable energy of that man who is always working his muscles when he is not asleep. It is to be suspected that he in his turn regards with contempt one at all given to musing and the encouragement of fancy. Meditation seems to him but an excuse for idleness for, saith he, only be doing something in earnest, and your mind will be employed as well as your body; but when your body is idle you simply dream. I have known a man go forth into the snow-drift or the storm because I he could not bear to be left to his own thoughts; and I have known a man go round his whole fraternity, begging votes for the advancement of dinner by a couple of hours or so, because the circumstances of the day forbade exercise or amusement. With all deference to my active friends, I think that a book or the indulgence of fancy for an hour or two would be a less evil than being impelled by one's vigour to encounter tempests or to vex the cook. That musing may be enjoyed too often and too much, is certain; but not to possess the faculty of musing must be a defect of incalculable magnitude. Imagi

nation will gratify when nothing else can; when the elements are not to be braved or the cook inexorable, or haply when sickness or other durance may cruelly deny bodily exercise, and throw the sufferer back upon the resources of his own mind. I desire, I say, to have ready for the occasion that may require it, some of the energy of my active friends; but I would not purchase it at the price of my imagination, such as that is. Even when the sky is blue and the air soft, I must sometimes loiter in the shade; but in the frowning days and long uneventful nights of a Northern winter, life would be intolerable if the brain did not hold a world which can be adventurous and full of moving accidents-while the actual world, its sights and noises, its struggles and changes, are shut out and as though they were not. The winter's day may attract one abroad, and have its short-lived enjoyments in perfection; but the winter's night-then it is that one draws upon the fund within, and delights to have the call answered.

"Come, ev'ning, once again, season of peace;

Return, sweet ev'ning, and continue long!

Methinks I see thee in the streaky west, With matron step slow moving, while the night

Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed

In letting fall the curtain of repose
On bird and beast, the other charged for

man

With sweet oblivion of the cares of day."

But gentle and delightful as is Cowper's song about the long evening, conceived in the plenitude of the enjoyment of home, his heart seems to have been altogether with the busy world beyond him, though he was absent from that world in the body. The parliamentary debate, the news from the seat of war, the advertisements, the theatres and other shows, are what amuse him at second-hand, while he sits at his tea-table and his fireside. He finds considerable pleasure, too, in condemning the ways in which people less appreciative than he of domestic joys choose to pass their evenings-is, in fact, very intolerant of all the agents who have contributed to his entertainment, their chief offence appearing to be that they don't prefer a dish of tea to a bowl of punch, and can find some faster way of passing their time than sitting in an easy-chair by the fire in a nightcap and slippers. The man who cannot on occasion enjoy his otium by the fireside is much to be pitied; but his neighbour who does appreciate that enjoyment has no right to sneer down every other. Cowper, however, though he has helped me to express my welcome of the evening-tide, does not help me at all as to description of the manner of enjoying an evening (or any other quiet) hour which I had in view when I just now began to write. I was not then thinking of newspapers or denunciations of harmless recreations or of tea-cups, but of the pleasure of reverie-of the joy of looking into a world which I

people myself for my own gratification. No care of what the outer world may be doing now, nor of printed accounts of what it did yesterday, but a commerce with airy nothings and boundless excursions of fancy, while

"Glowing embers through the room, Teach light to counterfeit a gloom ; Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth."

That last scrap has guided me to the poet who has expressed my present feeling. I am thinking of old legends, old experiences, old imaginations which were never facts, scenes which were never acted in the flesh, dreams that will never be fulfilled, adventures, passions, virtues, such as great bards

"In sage and solemn tunes have sung Of turneys and of trophies hung; Of forests and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear."

Milton calls contemplation a cherub, proving by that expression alone, if he had not spread out his gorgeous thoughts on the subject, how he regarded this power. While pretending to no more than catalogue the principal fields in which imagination disports herself, he has, by his choice of words and images, raised up a marvellous tribute to her excellences. How ready is every reader when he reaches the concluding lines of "Il Penseroso" to subscribe the same sentiment which they contain! how entirely has his mind been charmed into the confession which the poet has expressed for him

"These pleasures, Melancholy, give, And I with thee will choose to live!"

What I am writing now under the rays of my lamp, I dreamt this winter in a chamber without a lamp or any other light save the "glowing embers," amid lurid shadows, in silent, legendary hours.

Some

times I have awaked to notice the ticking of the clock or the beating of the hail-a pleasant interval, followed, haply, by a dream more absorbing than before; generally I have been companionless, except when my cat (never exhibited, but safe to take a prize at any show) may have stolen in, noiseless as a ghost, and a rotatory mist has seemed to settle itself opposite me on a footstool after emitting two rather dull flashes in each revolution. But the hours so spent have not been dull: contrariwise, I have generally returned from my solitude to the work-a-day world "creeping like a snail, unwillingly." Just now I came with an effort into the lamplight, with blinking eyes that did not glisten at the sight of pen and ink. I had been trying (not quite successfully) to remember Milton's piece from which I had been quoting, and my halting memory forced me to a consideration of each particular word as I picked it up. One can hardly make this scrutiny of one of Milton's poems without being convinced of that power of mere words, aptly used, to stir up emotions of which Burke speaks in his essay on the "Sublime and Beautiful." It came home to me with such new force when I thus slowly joined the lines, that I had written a page or two on the suggestive properties of the phrases in "Il Penseroso," when, by great good luck, I bethought me of turning to Macaulay's celebrated essay on the poet. There I found all that I had been trying to express, and a great deal more that I had not thought of at all, set forth with a mastercritic's skill; so thereupon the sponge was applied to my fine observations, for which act of selfmutilation the reader, I hope, will give me thanks. In case, however, it may have happened to the said reader, as it did to me, to have let

slip Macaulay's exposition (owing, probably, to having read and admired it generally, but without testing it by a study of some particular passages of Milton), he cannot, I think, do better than turn to that page (near the beginning) of the essay where "the most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton" is described and illustrated, at the same time placing a volume of Milton, open at the "Penseroso," on his desk. I am much mistaken if, without turning a leaf of either book, he will not find amusement for a good part of an evening. I recollect reading how Dr Johnson, in speaking of his self-culture, said that he had always, from very early times, studied how to deliver what he had to say in the most forcible terms he could invent. And surely the great Samuel is forcible enough; but his is the force of the lexicographer or the pedagogue, who does not leave you a chance of misunderstanding him, and whose ferula seems to be upraised for the benefit of any dunce who may not imbibe the proffered instruction. Very different is the force, the charm rather, with which Milton's words operate. They are not addressed to the understanding, but to the heart; every one has affinity with some profound feeling of our natures-every one can make us see visions and dream dreams.

What Macaulay has explained concerning Milton's power in phrases helps to settle another question which, I perceive, has exercised critics and biographers not a little. It is the question whether Milton, with all his learning and majesty and sublimity, possessed that tenderness of feeling, that sensibility of the ordinary passions, which in most cases are chief ingredients of the poetic temperament. Now, if he knew how, by the merest hint, to excite these ordinary passions, he

must have understood them; and, if he understood, he must have experienced them. He had not the softer feelings of humanity, say some; he had them, but the grander subjects of poetry were more congenial to him, and he would not stoop to the minor passions, say others; he could be as pathetic as Philomel, maintain a third party, but he was master of so many modes of the lyre that he could not be for ever inditing stories or strains of passion. The two first-mentioned classes of critics say much the same thing, because it matters little whether the poet was destitute of sensibility, or whether his sensibility was overpowered and extinguished by his grandeur of conception-in either case it was not his congenial vein. These, of course, go to his epics for support of their opinions. But the third class will point to the lyrical pieces in proof of what Milton could do with the affections when he chose. His biography shows how from his youth he educated himself to be not only a heroic poet but a superior man-how all his life long he was gaining the mastery over his earthly feelings and endeavouring to fix his mind on things eternal. In his springtime he not only felt acutely, but he discovered the very sources of feeling. As he ripened, he turned from this to him exhausted field, and aspired, at last exclusively, to those walks wherein only the most excellent poets have made good their footing. He went into a higher form, and left the subjects and the language of the lower, in which he had shown himself a proficient while he followed them. He had no defect; but when he found that he could scale heaven and sound hell, he did not care to occupy himself longer with the accidents of terrestrial life.

I have one more observation to make about Milton, and that is in answer to those who say that, although he could imagine and describe the volcanic passions of demons, he had never taken the pains to investigate the intricacies of the human mind. That he did not occupy himself with the portraiture of character as his great contemporary did, is sufficiently patent; but that he understood something of the art, may easily be proved from his works. What, for instance, can be more profound than the workings of Eve's mind, which at last decide her to involve Adam in the punishment which she had incurred? At first she inclines to keep secret from her husband the knowledge she has acquired, pleased with the idea that she may now become his equal-possibly his superior in some things; at any rate, that she may always know how to retain his love. Then it occurs to her that the threatened punishment of death may yet be carried into effect; and the horrible thought rises, that if she should suffer alone, after she is no more another Eve may be created to take her place in Adam's affections "a death to think," as she says. After this she hesitates no longer, but resolves that Adam shall die with her. Adam's voluntary sacrifice for her sake is also worth studying when the poet's power to probe the springs of human actions is being investigated.

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To descend a little from Milton's level, but not to leave yet the subject of poetry, are we not again and again told, by the lawgivers in that province, that contrasts are necessary in the characters of the story, for without variety of dispositions it will be tedious and insipid? I ask the question because my eye has lighted on a volume of poetry (seldom very distant from me), en