_Mr. Forester._ The arithmetic of futurity has been found in a more than equal number of instances to baffle human skill. The rapid and sudden mutations of fortune are the inexhaustible theme of history, poetry, and romance; and they are found in forms as various and surprising, in the scenes of daily life, as on the stage of Drury Lane. _Mr. Fax._ That the best prospects are often overshadowed, is most certainly true; but there are degrees and modes of well-grounded reliance on futurity, sufficient to justify the enterprises of prudence, and equally well-grounded prospiciences of hopelessness and helplessness, that should check the steps of rashness and passion, in their headlong progress to perdition. _Mr. Forester._ You have little cause to complain of the present age. It is calculating enough to gratify the most determined votary of moral and political arithmetic. This certainly is not the time When unrevenged stalks Cocker’s injured ghost. What is friendship—except in some most rare and miraculous instances—but the fictitious bond of interest, or the heartless intercourse of idleness and vanity? What is love, but the most venal of all venal commodities? What is marriage, but the most sordid of bargains, the most cold and slavish of all the forms of commerce? We want no philosophical ice-rock, towed into the Dead Sea of modern society, to freeze that which is too cold already. We want rather the torch of Prometheus to revivify our frozen spirits. We are a degenerate race, half-reasoning developments of the principle of infinite littleness, ‘with hearts in our bodies no bigger than pins’ heads.’ We are in no danger of forgetting that two and two make four. There is no fear that the warm impulses of feeling will ever overpower, with us, the tangible eloquence of the pocket. _Mr. Fax._ With relation to the middle and higher classes, you are right in a great measure as to fact, but wrong, as I think, in the asperity of your censure. But among the lower orders the case is quite different. The baleful influence of the poor laws has utterly destroyed the principle of calculation in them. They marry by wholesale, without scruple or compunction, and commit the future care of their family to Providence and the overseer. They marry even in the workhouse, and convert the intended asylum of age and infirmity into a flourishing manufactory of young beggars and vagabonds. Sir Telegraph’s barouche rolled up gracefully to the door. Mr. Forester pressed him to stay another day, but Sir Telegraph’s plea of urgency was not to be overcome. He promised very shortly to revisit Redrose Abbey, shook hands with Mr. Forester and Sir Oran, bowed politely to Mr. Fax, mounted his box, and disappeared among the trees. ‘Those four horses,’ said Mr. Fax, as the carriage rolled away, ‘consume the subsistence of eight human beings, for the foolish amusement of one. As Solomon observes: “This is vanity, and a great evil.”’