of men together, their sufferings and advantages, we cannot observe an equal mixture, and a like assortment of good and evil, which settles them on an equality, or at least makes one as desirable as the other: the rich and powerful man, who wants nothing, may put the question, but a poor man must answer it.") The hoarding habits of the miser remind one of a device of American boatmen, at an early day, before the steamboat was invented, and when the forest was infested with savages and robbers. Receiving specie at New Orleans for their produce, they deposited it in a wet buckskin belt, of sufficient length to surround the body, which, as it dried, contracted and shrunk round the coin, till no amount of shaking would cause it to jingle. So may the heart and soul of the avaricious man shrink round his little heap of gold, until all healthy circulation ceases, and his heart never jingles with a genuine, generous, manly impulse. Disraeli, in his Curiosities, gives an interesting philosophical sketch of Audley,--the great Audley, as he was called in his time,--who concentrated all the powers of a vigorous intellect in the accumulation of wealth. He lived in England in the beginning of the seventeenth century, through the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and, beginning life with almost nothing, died worth four hundred thousand pounds sterling. He "lived to view his mortgages, his statutes, and his judgments so numerous, that it was observed, his papers would have made a good map of England. This philosophical usurer never pressed hard for his debts; like the fowler, he never shook his nets lest he might startle, satisfied to have them, without appearing to hold them. With great fondness he compared his 'bonds to infants, which battle best by sleeping.' To battle is to be nourished, a term still retained at the University of Oxford. His familiar companions were all subordinate actors in the great piece he was performing; he too had his part in the scene. When not taken by surprise, on his table usually laid open a great Bible, with Bishop Andrews' folio Sermons, which often gave him an opportunity of railing at the covetousness of the clergy! declaring their religion was a 'mere preach,' and that 'the time would never be well till we had Queen Elizabeth's Protestants again in fashion.' He was aware of all the evils arising out of a population beyond the means of subsistence, and dreaded an inundation of man, spreading like the spawn of a cod. Hence he considered marriage, with a modern political economist, as very dangerous; bitterly censuring the clergy, whose children, he said, never thrived, and whose widows were left destitute. An apostolic life, according to Audley, required only books, meat, and drink, to be had for fifty pounds a year! Celibacy, voluntary poverty, and all the mortifications of a primitive Christian, were the virtues practiced by this Puritan among his money bags. Audley's was that