Trade in Mr. Allison's days was a school of thrift and probity, as much as of profit and loss; such his shop had been when he succeeded to it upon his uncle's decease, and such it continued to be when he transmitted it to his son. Old Mr. Strahan the printer (the founder of his typarchical dynasty) said to Dr. Johnson, that “there are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money;” and he added, that “the more one thinks of this, the juster it will appear.” Johnson agreed with him; and though it was a money-maker's observation, and though the more it is considered now, the more fallacious it will be found, the general system of trade might have justified it at that time. The entrance of an Exciseman never occasioned any alarm or apprehension at No. 113, Bishopsgate Street-Within, nor any uncomfortable feeling, unless the officer happened to be one, who, by giving unnecessary trouble, and by gratuitous incivility in the exercise of authority, made an equitable law odious in its execution. They never there mixed weeds with their tobacco, nor adulterated it in any worse way; and their snuff was never rendered more pungent by stirring into it a certain proportion of pounded glass. The duties were honestly paid, with a clear perception that the impost fell lightly upon all whom it affected, and affected those only who chose to indulge themselves in a pleasure which was still cheap, and which, without any injurious privation, they might forego. Nay, when our good man expatiated upon the uses of tobacco, which Mr. Bacon demurred at, and the Doctor sometimes playfully disputed, he ventured an opinion that among the final causes for which so excellent an herb had been created, the facilities afforded by it toward raising the revenue in a well-governed country like our own, might be one. There was a strong family likeness between him and his sister, both in countenance and disposition. Elizabeth Allison was a person for whom the best and wisest man might have thanked Providence, if she had been allotted to him for help-mate. But though she had, in Shakspeare's language, “withered on the virgin thorn,” hers had not been a life of single blessedness: she had been a blessing first to her parents; then to her brother and her brother's family, where she relieved an amiable, but sickly sister-in-law, from those domestic offices which require activity and forethought; lastly, after the dispersion of his sons, the transfer of the business to the eldest, and the breaking up of his old establishment, to the widower and his daughter, the only child who cleaved to him,—not like Ruth to Naomi, by a meritorious act of duty, for in her case it was in the ordinary course of things, without either sacrifice or choice; but the effect in endearing her to him was the same.