Our English proverbs are not frequently to our taste; for many of them want point, not a few are destitute of truth, and most of those which are correct are cold common-place truisms. There is, however, one which occurs at the present juncture, not indeed very graceful in its expression or profound in its observation, but having in its meaning and application a moral lesson which cannot be too frequently or too earnestly inculcated on the misery-loving and ever-grumbling people of this most highly-favored land. The proverb to which our allusion points is as follows, “It is an ill wind that blows nobody good.” Certainly it was not pleasant to the father of Horatio Markham to be so situated that he must be within a little of bankruptcy. Certainly it was not pleasant to the young man to find that his professional success should in its earliest stages be destined to repair the ravages which untoward circumstances had made in his father’s property. Certainly it was very painful to see that after this calamity had been partially healed, or at least palliated, his poor father had so taken to heart the unexpected affliction, as to suffer from its influences a severe bodily illness. Certainly it was mortifying to the young man who was looking upwards in society, and was in the way of what is called making his fortune, to have this sudden and unforeseen blight coming over his fair hopes. Certainly also there was something sorrowful to his soul in the consideration that at the very moment in which there seemed a probability that his attachment to Clara might be honorably avowed, he should be called away from scenes of hope and brightness and opulence, to a house of fear, of gloom, of poverty.