children spend them. The prudent carefully gather and accumulate; their descendants scatter and waste. Prudence is the virtue of the father; prodigality the vice of the son. The former possesses a clear idea of the value of money; because, all he has saved being the product of labour and industry, he spends it with proportionate care; but the son, merely inheriting property, values it only by the amount of luxury, or the number of pleasures it can purchase. The prospective ideas in the mind of the parent of making a provision for futurity; or securing to himself an old age of ease and competence; or advancing himself to the independence which wealth secures, rarely influence the mind or conduct of the son. He neither reflects, reasons, nor calculates, in the same way as his parent. The cause and effect in this case operate so generally as to attract observation; and from frequent observation it has become proverbial. From this we may infer (not only as a speculative idea), that nature has so designed it, for the purpose of correcting or diminishing an evil which has reached a gigantic magnitude in this country-the undue accumulation of property in a few hands.

3. When a man is known to inherit wealth from an ancestor, he is often more esteemed than those who make it. Perhaps for the reasons above. He is instantly surrounded by friends and flatterers; and receives as much praise and honour, as if all the wealth he enjoys were of his own creation; whereas, his possession of it appears to have no higher merit than accident. Those friends and flatterers discover, too, in the rich man, what riches cannot give-honour and virtue-and a host of good qualities, that have no more real existence than the allusions of a dream. For, as Sydney sarcastically remarks of the

power of gold, "that it can gild a rotten stick, while dirt can sully an ingot."

"Aurea nunc vere sunt sæcula;

Plurimus auro venit honos."

4. It is certain that wealth, so inherited, in the generality of cases, inflicts those evils on the possessor to which Pythagoras alludes. The stimulus of industry is uprooted; all motive for an active life is taken away; every incentive, every spur to virtues such as moderation, self-denial, and economy, are either weakened or destroyed. The energy and vigour of the mind, from which great deeds spring, hardly rise above the supply of a luxury, or the pursuit of a pleasure. The frame of the body and the strength of the mind are relaxed by perpetual enjoyment; and he who might have done some good, or acquired some influence, or earned a reputation in a state of comparative poverty, sinks, as a rich man, into nothingness; when the grave closes over him he is forgotten and despised even by the adulators who were enriched by his bounty, and who reaped the benefit of his extravagance.

5. To rise above the enervating power of wealth demands a mind with more vigour than often falls to the lot of such men. Before he can drive off this baneful influence he must become attached to objects of higher importance; he must, in a manner, exalt his mind above the level it tends to, and consider his position as a moral agent

as a rational and responsible being. Acting in accordance with these views, riches will in no way interfere with the fulfilment of every duty in life; while riches put within his reach, first, the command of independence (no small thing), and, secondly, the power of extending his sphere of action. With a mind thus alive to its real position,

wealth cannot enslave to indolence, or dissolve him to the softness and carelessness of pleasure.

6. It may be said with truth now of riches what was formerly said of knowledge-riches are power. Without riches a man is a cypher in the world; he is not respected, for he has not that which gives power and consequence. In England, of all countries which most pretends to religious zeal, it is acknowledged that poverty is a crime; and, shame be it said, it is that country in particular, where gold is found always to "gild a rotten stick."

It is obvious, if riches give power, there is an advantage, a supreme advantage, in their possession; for so long as they maintain their influence in the world, they are great instruments of action either for good or evil. In the hands of a fool, a voluptuary, or a profligate, they are instruments of pleasure merely; but in the hands of good men they give a power of "doing good," which, perhaps,/ nothing else can equal.

7. He who has wealth left to him has no need to labour. He need not work by the sweat of his brow-that law to the power of which man was doomed at the beginning of the world. He need not want for any pleasure or luxury. He has the power of possessing every thing pleasing to the taste, or desirable to the eye. His whole life may be one smooth current of enjoyment, if not of happiness. If he is indolent by habit, there is no need for exertion; if he would indulge in sloth, laziness, or idleness, he can indulge, and yet all his wants be amply, prodigally supplied. These pleasures and indulgences, moreover, are not enjoyed by any merit of his; they are commanded by the wealth carefully and anxiously made by another, who, with all this wealth, his own by right, did not, perhaps, indulge him

self to one tythe the extent of his successor.

To sum up all, this man by mere accident of birth becomes rich, while others around him of superior merit are pinched by poverty, and to whom the means of living cause a continual struggle. The fool rolls in wealth; the wise man, like Diogenes, seeks shelter in a tub.

8. The clear inference from this apparent anomaly, that at first sight seems to set at nought the agency of moral justice in the world, is the responsibility of the rich man; a responsibility the wise man would do well to shun. Riches are "the wise man's cumbrance, if not snare," says Milton. If riches command all those pleasures—all that ease mentioned above, their possession demands far more than the enjoyment of those pleasures, or the indulgence of that ease. It demands the exercise of virtues more difficult in proportion to the amount of riches-such as moderation, temperance, and self-denial; for although all things can be enjoyed, all things may not be enjoyed. It demands a consideration for the welfare of others which the selfishness caused by riches blunts, and an active zeal in extending human happiness by the encouragement of benevolence and the relief of poverty; it demands the sacrifice of time and ease as a compensation; it demands a life of active virtues as a return, in which wealth shall be turned to higher and nobler purposes than mere ostentation or selfish enjoyment.

ON HONESTY AND DISHONESTY; AND THE LOVE OF RICHES.

Symbol LXI.-Sinistra cibum ne sumito.

Take not food with the left hand.

1. CATULLUS, writing to Asinius, who had stole his handkerchief, says,

"Mauricine Asini, manu sinistra

Non bene uteris, in joco atque vino:
Tollis lintea negligentiorum."

For, according to Dacier, the left hand has always been the hand suspected of thievery. And we are enjoined not to use it, therefore, but to live on what has been honestly obtained by labour, and not by rapine and dishonesty. The symbol forbids it; all laws, moral and religious, are against it. For the protection of property human laws condemn and punish dishonest acts; to obey those laws is the wisest policy; but moral and religious laws assume a loftier aim, and condemn those acts without reference to detection or ulterior punishment. The human law can only punish where it detects; it attempts not to pierce the inward thoughts or the secret actions of men. All men, therefore, who pass undetected are presumed to be honest. Not so, however, with the moral law in its reli