It cannot but be interesting to inquire to what this tendency may be owing, and what remedy it might be useful to apply to the evil. Now, it strikes me that the great cause is the exclusive attention which people pay to the great prizes, and their total inconsideration of the number of blanks which accompany them. Life itself has been compared to a lottery; but in some departments the scheme may be so particularly bad, that it is nothing short of absolute gambling to purchase a share in it. So it is in the professions. A few arrive at great eminence, and these few excite the envy and admiration of all beholders; but they are only a few compared with the number of those who linger in the shade, and, however anxious to enjoy the sport, never once get a rap at the ball. Again, parents are apt to look upon the mere name of a profession as a provision for their children. They calculate all the expenses of general education, professional education, and then of admission to “liberty to practise;” and finding all these items amount to a tolerably large sum, they conceive they have bestowed an ample portion on the son who has cost them “thus much monies.” But unfortunately they soon learn by experience that the elevation of a profession, great as it is, does not always possess that homely recommendation of causing the “pot to boil,” and that the individual for whom this costly provision has been made, cannot be so soon left to shift for himself. Here then is another cause of this evil, namely, that people do not adequately and fairly calculate the whole cost. Of our liberal professions, the army is the only one that yields a certain income as the produce of the purchase money, But in these “piping times of peace,” a private soldier in the ranks might as well attempt to verify the old song, and “Spend half a crown out of sixpence a-day,” as an ensign to pay mess-money and band-money, and all other regulation monies, keep himself in dress coat and epaulettes, and all the other et ceteras, upon his mere pay. The thing cannot be done. To live in any comfort in the army, a subaltern should have an income from some other source, equal at least in amount to that which he receives through the hands of the paymaster. The army is, in fact, an expensive profession, and of all others the least agreeable to one who is prevented, by circumscribed means, from doing as his brother officers do. Yet the mistake of venturing to meet all these difficulties is not unfrequently admitted, with what vain expectation it is needless to inquire. The usual result is such as one would anticipate, namely, that the rash adventurer, after incurring debts, or putting his friends to unlooked-for charges, is obliged after a short time to sell out, and bid farewell for ever to the unprofitable profession of arms.