The present writer entertains some different ideas respecting original humility of circumstances from what are generally prevalent. The common notion is, that humble circumstances are a great obstruction at the outset of life, and that the more difference between a man’s origin and his eventual condition, the greater is the wonder, and the greater his merit. Since it appears, however, that so large a proportion of distinguished men were poor at the beginning, a question may naturally arise, are not men just the more apt, on that account, to become eminent? Although we are all familiar as possible with instances of fortunes made from nothing, it will be found, on recollection, that cases are comparatively rare of men who began with fortunes having ended by greatly increasing them. Many a poor boy has made twenty thousand pounds before he was forty years of age; but few who had ten thousand at the age of majority are found to double it with their years. Here—here is a reason for hope. The fact is, large sums are not to be acquired without an appreciation and an understanding of the meanest financial details. To make pounds, we must know the value of shillings; we must have felt before how much good could sometimes be done, how much evil could sometimes be avoided, _by the possession of a single penny_! For want of this knowledge, the opulent youth squanders or otherwise loses more, perhaps, than he gains. But he who has risen from the ranks knows the value and powers of every sum, from the lowest upwards, and, _as saving is the better part of the art of acquiring money_, he never goes back a step—his whole march is ONWARD. At the very worst, it is only a question of time. Say one man begins at twenty with a good capital, and another at the same age with none. For want of experience, and through other causes above mentioned, it is not likely that the former person has made much advance within the first ten years. Now, ten years is an immense space to the individual who only commenced with good resolutions. In that time, if he has not accumulated actual money, he may quite well have secured good reputation and credit, which, prudently managed, is just money of another kind. And so, while still a young man, he is pretty much upon a par with him who seemed to start with such superior advantages. In fact, fortune, or original good circumstances, appear to the present writer as requisites of a very unimportant character, compared with talent, power of application, self-denial, and honourable intentions. The _fortunate_—to use the erroneous language of common life—are selected from those who have possessed the latter indispensable qualifications in their best combinations: and as it is obvious that young men of fortune (necessarily the smaller class) have only a chance, according to their numbers, of possessing them, it follows, as a clear induction, that the great mass of the prosperous were originally poor.