Little thought I, when I joined in the laugh against _The Capitalist_, that I ought rather to have followed it to its grave, in black crape and weepers,--unfeeling wretch that I was! But, like a poet, O _Capitalist_! thou wert not discovered, and appreciated, and prized, and mourned, till thou wert dead and buried, and the bill came in for thy monument! The first term of my college life was just expiring, when I received a letter from my mother, so agitated, so alarming, at first reading so unintelligible, that I could only see that some great misfortune had befallen us; and I stopped short and dropped on my knees, to pray for the life and health of those whom that misfortune more specially seemed to menace; and then--and then, towards the end of the last blurred sentence--read twice, thrice, over--I could cry, "Thank Heaven, thank Heaven! it is only, then, money after all!" STATISTICAL ACCOUNTS OF SCOTLAND. It is a term of very wide application, this of statistics--extending to everything in the state of a country subject to variation either from the energies and fancies of men, or from the operations of nature, in so far as these, or the knowledge of them, has any tendency to occasion change in the condition of the country. Its elements must be either changeable in themselves, or the cause of change; because the use of the whole matter is to direct men what to do for their advantage, moral or physical--by legislation, when the case is of sufficient magnitude--or otherwise by the wisdom and enterprise of individuals. Governments, it is plain, must have the greatest interest in possessing knowledge of this sort; but they have not been the first to engage very earnestly in obtaining it. It would seem that, in all countries, the first very noticeable efforts in this way have been made by individuals.