stole to the stables, saddled his horse with his own hands, just called to tell his wife that he could not at present say whether he should send for her, or whether she might never see or hear from him more, and turned his back on Briery Creek for ever. Whether his wife would choose to go to him was a question which did not seem to occur to his mind. A passing traveller, looking down upon Briery Creek from the neighbouring ridge, might perhaps ask the name of the social benefactor who had ornamented the district with yon splendid mansion, presented the village with a place of worship, and the shell, at least, of a parsonage; had reclaimed those green lawns from the wild prairie, and cleared the woodland in the rear so as to leave, conspicuous in beauty, clumps of the noblest forest trees. Such a stranger ought not to use the term “benefactor” till he knew whence came the means by which all this work was wrought. If from a revenue which could supply these graces after all needful purposes had been fulfilled, well and good. Such an expenditure would then have been truly beneficent. It is a benignant act to embellish God’s earth for the use and delight of man. But if there is not revenue enough for such objects,—if they are attained by the sacrifice of those funds on whose reproduction society depends for subsistence, the act, from being beneficent, becomes criminal. The mansion is built out of the maintenance of the labourer; and that which should have been bread to the next generation is turned into barren stone. Temple was a criminal before he committed fraud. He injured society by exhausting its material resources, and leaving no adequate substitute for them. If he had lavished his capital, as Dr. Sneyd laid out his revenue, in the pursuit of science, it is very possible that, though such an expenditure might require justification in comparison with Dr. Sneyd’s, the good he would effect might have so superabounded above the harm as to have made society his debtor,—(as in many a case where philosophers have expended all their substance in perfecting a discovery or invention,)—but Temple had done nothing like this. The beauty of his estate, however desirable in itself, was no equivalent for the cost of happiness through which it was produced. He had no claim to a share of the almost unlimited credit allowed, by the common consent of society, to its highest class of benefactors,—the explorers of Providence.