As a good theorising spirit in philosophy is the very soul of all progress in science, and the creatures that dabble in experiments with crucibles and retorts are no better than pioneers to the great geniuses that combine and generalise, so some think it an undoubted truth that speculation is the great spirit of commerce (including, of course, in the articles of that commerce, _wives_), and that those who do not make a bold stroke seldom make an effectual one. In no department of commerce is speculation held of greater importance than in that of marriage; and how rare is it to find a man who thoroughly understands it--if, indeed, it may not be said that ninety-nine out of a hundred do not know even the difference between buying and selling. The women marriage-traders, indeed, form a very creditable exception, because every one of them--knowing very well, for a surety, that they have on hand a stock that does not improve by keeping--are sellers, out and out; while the males again are almost all buyers, though, if they had the sense of a tortoise, they might know that they have just as good a stock to dispose of as their fair customers. There are, doubtless, some exceptions in our sex that go far to retrieve our characters; but, alas! they are very few; and it is just on that very account that we think it proper to give some account of Mr Caleb Crabbin, hosier in the Lawn-market in Edinburgh--so great a genius in the department to which we have alluded, that he discovered that all mongering in blankets and stockings was a perfect bagatelle in comparison of the profitable disposal of his own person; and no sooner did he make the discovery than he acted upon it, with all the boldness that belongs to original thinkers.