Many of our readers will recollect a passage in Cicero, (_Off._ i. 42,) in which he reprobates, more or less, all commercial pursuits, in respect of their operations on the moral insight of man, and finishes with the praise of the culture of the soil, in these words: "Omnium rerum ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est agriculturâ meliùs, nihil uberiùs, nihil dulciùs, nihil homine libero digniùs." In this country we should find it difficult to go along with the feelings of the old Roman republican on these points. But though we have already expressed our high sense of the social and domestic virtues of the middle or trading classes, yet we are most confident in the truth of our position, that the shop is the worst possible preparation for the senate. We know that there is a talk abroad about earnest workers, drones of the hive, and so forth. By all means, let every man work who is fit to work. But it is not necessary, nor is it desirable, that every man should work for gain. On the contrary, we hold that a class endowed with leisure is indispensable, not only for the grace and civilisation, but even for the moral well-being of a community. That money should become the one grand loadstar of thought and action is the bane of those societies where the pursuit of money is the general employment; but where there is such a leisure-class as we have spoken of, forming the topmost rank of a nation otherwise chiefly mercantile, there are numberless influences derived from it which percolate through the underlying masses, and check or modify the exclusive reverence for wealth to which they would otherwise be prone. Even a mere blind respect for rank or title exalts the mind immeasurably as compared with mammon-worship. While on the subject of our leisure-class, which is pretty nearly synonymous with the landed gentry, we must not pass over in silence a subject in connexion with which the outcry against "the drones of the hive" is frequently introduced. We refer to the Game-Laws. The whole question of these laws has been so fully discussed in a recent Number of this magazine, that we will not attempt in any way to open that controversy. But they are so commonly coupled with the Laws of Entail as "feudalities," and as interfering with the transmission of land according to "commercial principles," that we could not altogether omit the mention of them. We will at this time only observe, that the denunciation of the Game-Laws is a part of the crusade which Hard-Cash, that arrogant monopolist who bears no brother near his throne, is waging against all other objects of interest or devotion. Let it not be supposed that laws are of minor importance because they relate to the amusements of any portion of the community. They may derive their importance from that circumstance as tending to raise up something which shall cope with the lust of gold. The game-preserving interest is worth maintenance if only as clashing with mammonism.