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for a season, rather than pay that price to which they would be elevated by a demand as intense as all must have for the necessaries of existence. Men cannot live without necessaries, and will not be so content to put up with a reduced allowance of them, as they would of the mere comforts or expensive gratifications of luxury. It is thus that the same proportional lack in each class of commodities gives rise to such a difference of effect in augmenting the price of each of them; and it is just the more earnest demand, in the one case than in the other, that explains the difference.

A failure in the general supply of esculents to the extent of one-half would more than quadruple the price of the first necessaries of life, and would fall with very aggravated pressure on the lower orders. A failure to the same extent in all the vineyards of the world would most assuredly not raise the price of wine to any thing near this proportion. Rather than pay four times the wonted price for Burgundy, there would be a general descent, on the part of its consumers in high life, to claret, or from that to port, or from that to the home-made wines of our own country, or from that to its spirituous, or from that to its fermented liquors. And the facility of thus substituting one indulgence for another, is not the only refuge against an enormous charge upon these articles. There is also the facility of limiting the amount of the indulgence, or of withdrawing from it altogether—a refuge that is not so open to the population under a famine of the first necessaries of existence. There is much of shifting and of substitution certainly among families when such a calamity visits them-as from animal to vegetable food, from flour to meal, from meal to potatoes. But, on the supposition of a general short-coming in the yearly produce of the land, the price of each of these articles rises successively with the run of purchasers towards them. On the one hand, the eagerness of demand after all the varieties of food will enhance the price of all, and greatly beyond the proportion of the deficiency in the supply of them; and, on the other hand, this enhanced price is necessary so to restrain the consumption of the families as to make the deficient stock of provisions stand out till the coming of the next harvest. It is thus, by the way, that a population survive so well those years of famine, when the prices, perhaps, are tripled. This does not argue, as is obvious from the explanations which we have now given, that they must therefore be three times worse fed than usual. The food of the country may only, for aught we know, have been lessened by a fourth part of its usual supply; or, in other words, the families may, at an average, be served with three-fourths of their usual subsistence, at the very time that the cost of it is three times greater than usual. And, to make out this larger payment, they have just for a year to retrench in other articlesaltogether, it is likely, to give up the use of comforts, and to limit themselves more largely in the second than they can possibly do in the first necessaries of life—to forego, perhaps, many of the little seasonings wherewith they were wont to impart a relish to their coarse and humble fare, to husband more strictly their fuel, and be satisfied for awhile with vestments more threadbare, and even more tattered, than what, in better times, they would choose to appear in. It is thus that, even although the first necessaries of life should be tripled in price for a season, and although the pecuniary income of the labouring classes should not at all be increased, yet they are found to weather the hardships of such a visitation. The food is still served out to them in a much larger proportion than the cost of it would, in the first instance, appear to indicate. And in the second instance they are enabled to purchase at this cost; because, and more especially if they be a well-habited and a well-conditioned peasantry, with a pretty high standard of enjoyment in ordinary years, they have the more that they can save and retrench upon in a year of severe scarcity. They can disengage much of that revenue which before went to the pur

chase of dress, and of various luxuries that might, for a season, be dispensed with --and so have the more to expend on the materials of subsistence. It is this which explains how roughly a population can bear to be handled, both by adverse seasons and by the vicissitudes of trade-and how, after all, there is a stability about a people's means which will keep its ground against many shocks, and amidst many fluctuations. It is a mystery and a marvel to many an observer, how the seemingly frail and precarious interest of the labouring classes should, after all, have the stamina of such endurance, as to weather the most fearful reverses both of commerce and of the seasons; and that, somehow or other, you find, after an interval of gloomy suffering and still gloomier fears, that the families do emerge again into the same state of sufficiency as before. We know not a fitter study for the philanthropist than the workings of that mechanism by which a process so gratifying is caused, or in which he will find greater reason to admire the exquisite skill of those various adaptions, that must be referred to the providence of Him who framed society, and suited so wisely to each other the elements whereof it is composed.

186.-CHARACTERS.

SIR THOMAS OVERBURY. [SIR THOMAS OVERBURY has been described as "one of the most accomplished gentlemen about the Court of James the First." He was poisoned in the Tower, as is well known to every reader of English history. This horrible event, brought about by a woman as wicked as she was beautiful, the Countess of Essex, took place in 1613. His Miscellaneous Works are comprised in a little volume, which has often been reprinted; and of that volume his 'Characters or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry Persons' form the greatest portion. The extracts which we give are amongst those characters which are most universal in their application.]

A FAIR AND HAPPY MILKMAID

Is a country wench, that is so far from making herself beautiful by art, that one look of hers is able to put all face-physic out of countenance. She knows a fair look is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not. All her excellences stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge. The lining of her apparel, which is herself, is far better than outsides of tissue; for, though she be not arrayed in the spoil of the silkworm, she is decked in innocence, a far better wearing. She doth not, with lying long in bed, spoil both her complexion and conditions: nature hath taught her, too, immoderate sleep is rust to the soul; she rises therefore with Chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night makes the lamb her curfew. In milking a cow, and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk-press makes the milk whiter or sweeter; for never came almond-glore or aromatic ointment on her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that felled them. Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new-made haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft with pity; and when winter evenings fall early, sitting at her merry wheel, she sings defiance to the giddy wheel of fortune. She doth all things with so sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, being her mind is to do well. She bestows her year's wages at next fair, and in choosing her garments counts no bravery in the world like decency. The garden and bec-hive are all her physic and surgery, and she lives the longer for it. She dares go alone, and unfold sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none; yet, to say truth, she is never alone, but is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones; yet they have their efficacy in that they are not palled with ensuing idle cogitations. Lastly, as are so chaste that she dare tell them; only a Friday's dream is all her

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superstition; that she conceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she; and all her care is she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her windingsheet.

A NOBLE SPIRIT

Hath surveyed and fortified his disposition, and converts all occurrences into experience, between which experience and his reason there is marriage, the issue are his actions. He circuits his intents, and seeth the end before he shoots. Men are the instruments of his art, and there is no man without his use; occasion incites him, none exciteth him, and he moves by affection, not for affection; he loves glory, scorns shame, and governeth and obeyeth with one countenance, for it comes from one consideration. He calls not the variety of the world chances, for his meditation hath travelled over them, and his eyes, mounted upon his understanding, seeth them as things underneath. He covers not his body with delicacies, nor excuseth these delicacies by his body, but teacheth it, since it is not able to defend its own imbecility, to show or suffer. He licenseth not his weakness to wear fate, but, knowing reason to be no idle gift of nature, he is the steersman of his own destiny. Truth is his goddess, and he takes pains to get her, not to look like her; he knows the condition of the world, that he must act one thing, like another, and then another; to these he carries his desires, and not his desires him, and sticks not fast by the way, (for that contentment is repentance,) but knowing the circle of all courses, of all intents, of all things, to have but one centre or period, without all distraction he hasteth thither, and ends there as his true natural element. He doth not contemn fortune, but not confess her; he is no gamester of the world, (which only complain and praise her,) but, being only sensible of the honesty of actions, contemns a particular profit as the excrement or scum. Unto the society of men he is a sun, whose clearness directs their steps in a regular motion. When he is more particular, he is the wise man's friend, the example of the indifferent, the medicine of the vicious. Thus time goeth not from him, but with him, and he feels age more by the strength of his soul than the weakness of his body. Thus feels he no pain, but esteems all such things as friends, that desire to file off his fetters, and help him out of prison.

A NOBLE AND RETIRED HOUSEKEEPER

Is one whose bounty is limited by reason, not ostentation; and, to make it last, he deals it discreetly as we sow the furrow, not by the sack, but by the handful. His word and his meaning never shake hands and part, but always go together. He can survey and love it, for he loves to do it himself, for its own sake, not for thanks. He knows there is no such misery as to outlive a good name, nor no such folly as to put it in practice. His mind is so secure, that thunder rocks him to sleep, which breaks other men's slumbers; nobility lightens in his eyes, and in his face and gesture is painted the God of hospitality. His great houses bear in their front more durance than state, unless this add the greater state to them, that they promise to outlast much of our new fantastical building. His heart grows old no more than his memory, whether at his book, or on horseback: he passes his time in such noble exercise; a man cannot say any time is lost by him, nor hath he only years to approve he hath lived till he be old, but virtues. His thoughts have a high aim, though their dwelling be in the vale of an humble heart, whence, as by an engine (that raises water to fall, that it may rise higher) he is heightened in his humility. The adamant serves not for all seas, but his doth, for he hath, as it were, put a gird about the whole world, and sounded all her quicksands. He hath his hand over fortune, that her injuries, how violent or sudden soever, do not haunt him; for, whether his time call him to live or die, he can do both nobly; if to fall, his descent

is breast to breast with virtue, and even then, like the sun near his set, he shows unto the world his clearest countenance.

A FRANKLIN.

His outside is an ancient yeoman of England, though his inside may give arms (with the best gentleman) and never fee the herald. There is no truer servant in the house than himself. Though he be master, he says not to his servants, go to field, but let us go; and with his own eye doth both fatten his flock, and set forward all manner of husbandry. He is taught by nature to be contented with a little; his own fold yields him both food and raiment, he is pleased with any nourishment God sends, whilst curious gluttony ransacks, as it were, Noah's ark for food, only to feed the riot of one meal. He is never known to go to law; understanding to be law-bound among men is like to be hide-bound among his beasts; they thrive not under it, and that such men sleep as unquietly, as if their pillows were stuffed with lawyers' penknives. When he builds, no poor tenant's cottage hinders his prospect: they are, indeed, his alms-houses, though there be painted on them no such superscription. He never sits up late, but when he hunts the badger, the vowed foe of his lambs; nor uses he any cruelty, but when he hunts the hare; nor subtilty, but when he setteth snares for the snipe, or pitfalls for the blackbird; nor oppression, but when in the month of July he goes to the next river and shears his sheep. He allows of honest pastime, and thinks not the bones of the dead any thing bruised, or the worse for it, though the country lasses dance in the churchyard after even-song. Rock-Monday, and the wake in summer, shrovings, the wakeful catches on Christmas-eve, the hokey, or seed-cake, these he yearly keeps, yet holds them no relics of popery. He is not so inquisitive after news derived from the privy closet, when the finding an eyry of hawks in his own ground, or the foaling of a colt come of a good strain, are tidings more pleasant and more profitable. He is lord paramount within himself, though he hold by never so mean a tenure, and dies the more contentedly, (though he leave his heir young,) in regard he leaves him not liable to a covetous guardian. Lastly, to end him, he cares not when his end comes; he needs not fear his audit, for his quietus is in heaven.

187.-JOHN LOCKE AND WILLIAM PENN.

BANCROFT. [GEORGE BANCROFT, late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States to Great Britain, was born in Massachusetts in 1800. The work by which he is principally known as an author is his 'History of the Colonization of the United States. The following extract is from that work.

Penn, despairing of relief in Europe, bent the whole energy of his mind to accomplish the establishment of a free government in the New World. For that "heavenly end," he was prepared by the severe discipline of life, and the love, without dissimulation, which formed the basis of his character. The sentiment of cheerful humanity was irrepressibly strong in his bosom as with John Elliot and Der Williams, benevolence gushed prodigally from his ever-flowing heart; and

, in his late old age, his intellect was impaired, and his reason prostrated by lexy, his sweetness of disposition rose serenely over the clouds of disease. ssing an extraordinary greatness of mind, vast conceptions, remarkable for universality and precision, and "surpassing in speculative endowments;" rsant with men, and books, and governments, with various languages, and the of political combinations, as they existed in England and France, in Holland, the principalities and free cities of Germany, he yet sought the source of wisdom his own soul. Humane by nature and by suffering; familiar with the royal nil intimate with Sunderland and Sydney; acquainted with Russell, Halifax,

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Shaftesbury, and Buckingham; as a member of the Royal Society, the peer of Newton and the great scholars of his age-he valued the promptings of a free mind more than the awards of learning, and reverenced the single minded sincerity of the Nottingham Shepherd, more than the authority of colleges and the wisdom of philosophers. And now, being in the meridian of life, but a year older than was Locke, when, twelve years before, he had framed a constitution for Carolina, the Quaker legislator was come to the New World to lay the foundations of states. Would he imitate the vaunted system of the great philosopher? Locke, like William Penn, was tolerant; both loved freedom; both cherished truth in sincerity. But Locke kindled the torch of liberty at the fires of tradition; Penn at the living light in the soul. Locke sought truth through the senses and the outward world; Penn looked inward to the divine revelations in every mind. Locke compared the soul to a sheet of white paper, just as Hobbes had compared it to a slate, on which time and chance might scrawl their experience; to Penn, the soul was an organ which instinctively breathes divine harmonies, like those musical instruments which are so curiously and so perfectly framed, that, when once set in motion, they of themselves give forth all the melodies designed by the artist that made them. To Locke, "Conscience is nothing else than our own opinion of our own actions;" to Penn, it is the image of God, and his oracle in the soul. Locke, who never was a father, esteemed the duty of parents to preserve their children not to be understood without rewards and punishments;" Penn loved his children, with not a thought for the consequences. Locke, who was never married, declares marriage an affair of the senses; Penn reverenced women as the object of fervent, inward affection, made, not for lust, but for love. In studying the understanding, Locke begins with the sources of knowledge; Penn with the inventory of our intellectual treasures. Locke deduces government from Noah and Adam, rests it upon contract, and announces its end to be the security of property; Penn, far from going back to Adam, or even to Noah, declares that "there must be a people before a government," and, deducing the right to institute government from man's moral nature, seeks its fundamental rules in the immutable dictates "of universal reason," its end in freedom and happiness. The system of Locke lends itself to contendings of factions of most opposite interests and purposes; the doctrine of Fox and Penn, being but the common creed of humanity, forbids division, and insures the highest moral unity. To Locke, happiness is pleasure; things are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain; and to "inquire after the highest good is as absurd as to dispute whether the best relish be in apples, plums, or nuts;" Penn esteemed happiness to lie in the subjection of the baser instincts to the instinct of Deity in the breast, good and evil to be eternally and always as unlike as truth and falsehood, and the inquiry after the highest good to involve the purpose of existence. Locke says plainly, that, but for rewards and punishments beyond the grave, "it is certainly right to eat and drink, and to enjoy what we delight in;" Penn, like Plato and Fenelon, maintained the doctrine so terrible to despots, that God is to be loved for his own sake, and virtue practised for its intrinsic loveliness. Locke derives the idea of infinity from the senses, describes it as purely negative, and attributes it to nothing but space, duration, and number; Penn derived the idea from the soul, and ascribed it to truth, and virtue, and God. Locke declares immortality a matter with which reason has nothing to do, and that revealed truth must be sustained by outward signs and visible acts of power; Penn saw truth by its own light, and summoned the soul to bear witness to its own glory. Locke believed "not so many men in wrong opinions as is commonly supposed, because the greatest part have no opinions at all, and do not know what they contend for ;" Penn likewise vindicated the many, but it was truth was the common inheritance of the race. Locke, in his love of tolerance,

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