The power of gold to inflict pain on its possessor suggests deep philosophical inquiry. Even at a superficial view, one can not but be struck by the fatal facility which it affords to vice on the one hand, while on the other, how many suffer untold distress from the miser's self-inflicted poverty? There are multitudes of ruined youth, who, had they been bound to labor instead of being reared to a life of affluent ease, would have become useful men. Indeed, by merely changing the costume of Hogarth's _Rake's Progress_, we may see it enacted by scores of young men in any of our leading cities. The writer once knew a worn-out debauchee of thirty, who, even at that early age, had got rid of an inheritance of a half-million. The miseries of poverty are severe, and such men as Johnson and De Quincey have painted them in colors drawn from their own experience; but what scenes vastly more terrible might they not have sketched had they held that master-key which unlocks the abodes of pleasure and summons the dreadful crew of temptation? One can not but pity the former of these, as he thinks of his wandering the live-long night through the streets of London, unable to buy a lodging, and eating each occasional meal, not knowing when he would get another. Yet, had as this might have been, how vastly more pitiable would his case have been, had he fulfilled the infernal career of some of his rich cotemporaries, such as Lord Lyttelton or Lord Euston, whose dying horrors Young has so thrillingly described in his _Altamont_. Horace, who had so thoroughly studied the philosophy of life, could refer to his lowly condition: 'Saeva paupertas et avitus apto Cum lare fundus:' and then cite the race reared in poverty as those who saved the commonwealth, by defeating Hannibal. His deep-toned objurgations at the degeneracy of Rome are brought to mind by the increased dissipation and licentiousness of American youth. Who can read lines like these without thinking of our concert-saloons and other facilities of vice? (the former happily suppressed.) Damnasa quid non immmuit dies. The history of capitalists would be interesting, if only as showing this single feature, namely, that the secret of great success lies in one's placing himself in some channel where the stream must soon flow, and thus anticipating the future. Johnson, in the midst of his cheerless poverty, had some golden dreams, was sensible of this fact, and illustrates it in one of those Oriental apologues which occur in the _Rambler_, where he shows the tiny rivulet gradually filling a lake. With the same idea permeating his mind, he exclaims, when Thrale's brewery was to be sold: 'Here are the means of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.'