quiet and troublesome in him: for as those that have money but seldom are always shaking their pockets when they have it, so does he when he thinks he has got something that will make him appear. He is a perpetual talker; and you may know by the freedom of his discourse that he came lightly by it, as thieves spend freely what they get. He is like an Italian thief that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery; so sure is he to cry down the men from whom he purloins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsuspected. He appears so overconcerned in all men's wit, as if they were but disparagements of his own; and cries down all they do as if they were encroachments upon him. He takes jests from the owners and breaks them, as justices do false weights, and pots that want measure. When he meets with anything that is very good, he changes it into small money, like three goats for a shilling, to serve several occasions. He disclaims study, pretends to take things in motion, and to shoot flying, which appears to be true from his often missing the mark. As for epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense. Such matches are unlawful and not fit to be made by a Christian poet; and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two; and if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of supererogation. For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure the best; for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did; for contraries are best set off with contraries. He has found a new set of poetical Georgics, a trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects, which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, when some men say, there is no room left for new invention. He will take three grains of wit, like the elixir, and, projecting it upon the iron age, turn it immediately into gold. All the business of mankind has presently vanished, the whole world has kept holiday; there have been no men but heroes and poets, no women but nymphs and shepherdesses; trees have borne fritters, and rivers flowed plum-porridge. When he writes he commonly steers the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made one line which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases. There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry: a whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them: for there is hardly a pond, or sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit, in all Greece, but the ancient name of it has become a term of art in poetry. By this means, small poets have such a stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryades, hamadryades, aönides, fauni, nymphae, sylvani, &c., that signify nothing at all; and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and thorough reformations that can happen between this time and Plato's great year.

The Pedant-is a dwarf scholar, that never outgrows the mode and fashion of the school where he should have been taught. He wears his little learning unmade up, puts it on before it was half finished, without pressing or smoothing. He studies and uses hard words with the greatest respect possible, merely for their own sakes, like an honest man, without any regard of interest, as they are

useful and serviceable to things; and among these he is kindest to strangers,—like a civil gentleman,-that are far from their own country and most unknown. He collects old sayings and ends of verses, as antiquarians do old coins, and is glad to produce them on all occasions. He has sentences ready lying by him for all purposes, though to no one, and talks of authors as familiarly as of his fellow collegiates. He handles arts and sciences like those that can play a little upon an instrument, but do not know whether it be in tune or not. He converses by the book, and does not talk but quote. If he can screw in something that an ancient writer said, he believes it to be much better than if he had something of himself to the purpose. His brain is not able to concoct what it takes in, and therefore brings things up as they were swallowed, crude and undigested, in whole sentences, not assimilated sense, which he rather affects; for his want of judgment like want of health, renders his appetite preposterous. He is worse than one that is utterly ignorant, as a cock that sees a little, fights worse than one that is stark blind. He speaks in a different dialect from other men, and much affects forced expressions, forgetting that hard words, as well as evil ones, corrupt good If he professes physic, he gives his patient sound hard words for their money, as cheap as he can afford; for they cost him money and study, too, before he came by them, and he has reasons to make as much of them as he can.

manners....

Besides the above we mention also, 1. John la Bruyère, 1640-1696, of whose work Voltaire says, "its rapid, concise, and nervous style struck the public at first, and the allusions to living men which are crowded in every page, completed its success." 2. Ben Jonson's "Timber, or Discoveries upon Men and Matter," written near the close of his life, and full of sound sense. 3. The Characters of Francis Osborne. 4. John Stephens's Satyrical Essays. 5. Brithwait's "Whimsies; or a New Cast of Characters." 6. Cyrano Bergerac's "Satyrica Characters "-and very agreeable pictures they are. 7. Richard Flecknoe's Enigmatical Characters. 8. Some half-dozen characters, by various authors, that are to be found in the Harleian Miscellany.

We had prepared several pages on the Bibliography of Character Writing, which embraced all the characters and all the editions that have appeared in our language,-but this we are obliged to omit.

Reluctantly we leave these agreeable authors with the single remark to our readers that those who have not yet read them, have much pleasure in store for themselves. We would remind our readers also that most of the works we have mentioned are hard to be obtained, having only, after a diligent search of several years, made our own collection as complete as it is.

ARTICLE IV.-FINANCIAL ASPECTS OF THE REBELLION.

Or the many Southern delusions which the present war is destined, we trust, to dissipate forever, none is more remarkable than the expectations of utter financial ruin at the North, which secession was to accomplish.

Northern industry was to be paralyzed; Northern looms were to be stopped; Northern ships were to rot at the wharves; Northern merchants and banks were to suspend payment. The crowd of greedy Northern parasites, which had long fattened upon Southern wealth, were to be ejected forever from their posts and deprived of their ill-gotten gains. Universal bankruptcy and general impoverishment would break up the foundations of social order. Anarchy would reign in Northern cities, and grass would grow in their streets.

Such absurdities are the legitimate fruit of those false social, political, and economical theories, which claim for a single product the monopoly of wealth, and for a small privileged class the monopoly of liberty and power; in other words, the two great Southern heresies are comprised in the two great Southern axioms: "Cotton is King," and Slavery is the "cornerstone" of the highest civilization.

In a certain limited sense cotton is King; not absolutely, like food or metals, which we must have, but as it were during good behavior. In other words, so long as cotton furnishes the best and cheapest material for certain necessary purposes, it will be used for those purposes. When it ceases to be such a material, others will take its place, or new fields will be found for its production, or those who refuse to produce it will be compelled to do so, or to give place to others. The history of other staple product corroborates these general statements.

But if cotton has thus no absolute control over the consumption of the world, neither has it such enormous inherent value as to preeminently enrich its producers. Except the overgrown wealth of a few planters, and the nominal market value.

of a host of slaves, there is absolutely nothing to indicate in the whole cotton region any large production, still less accumulation of wealth. All the ordinary forms of capital-houses, cities, railroads, canals, a large and rapidly increasing population, general abundance of money, comfort, and luxury—are miserably deficient there. The annual hay crop, a mere fragment of the production of the Northern half of the Union, has hitherto exceeded in value the cotton which forms so large a portion of the annual production of the other half!

the

But if cotton be not essential to the comfort of the world, or if essential can be supplied abundantly from other quarters than our Southern States, and if its power in the production and accumulation of wealth is at best so moderate, whence arises the unquestioned homage it has hitherto received at the South? It proceeds, we apprehend, from two causes. First, arrangements of the world, social, commercial, and industrial, are adjusted to it; and though they could be easily modified to conform to its permanent displacement, yet so long as it continues to fill its present place, or withdraws but for a time, with the certainty of soon returning, it necessarily retains all its importance. Secondly, being now an article of universal use, it possesses like gold the prerogative of universal exchange throughout the civilized world. And it is easy to see that a bag of gold or an invoice of cotton, which can be exchanged at will for any species of foreign merchandise, may look much more valuable than a larger amount of wealth in the shape of bundles of hay, fit only to be consumed by vulgar cattle at home.

Yet these vulgar products of hay and grain and cattle are in fact the real wealth of the nation, and the sinews of its power. They are the food of men; and the labor and skill of men have developed the hidden forces of nature, till the whole land has become one vast magazine of accumulated wealth and power, compared with which bags of gold or bales of cotton are but as the rich man's well-filled purse, and bank balances, compared with the amount of his bonds and mortgages, his houses, lands, and merchandise.

These considerations may enable us to expose some of the

preposterous fallacies of Southern political economists. If we understand Mr. Calhoun's favorite theory aright, it was to this effect. All the imports of the country are paid for by the export of Southern cotton; consequently the nation is indebted to Southern cotton for all the foreign articles of necessity, comfort, and luxury which it is enabled to purchase. But more than this: the expenses of the Federal government are defrayed, mainly, by taxes upon imports; and as without cotton there could be no imports, it follows that the South, which produces cotton, thereby supplies nearly the whole revenue of the government, the greater portion of which goes to swell the wealth of Northern cities. But even this is not all. The effect of duties on imports is of course to enhance the price of similar articles produced at home, and these articles are produced exclusively at the North. It follows, of course, that the South, besides paying for imports consumed at the North, and besides furnishing the whole revenue of the government, is in addition taxed indirectly to an enormous amount for the benefit of Northern manufacturers.

The whole of this specious fabric of misrepresentation is based upon assertions demonstrably false and unfounded. It is true that of late years our imports have been chiefly paid for by cotton, because cotton was the most available merchandise for the purpose. If it had been wanting, other merchandise would have been exported in its place, or the amount of imports would have been curtailed. The balance of trade and exchanges will adjust itself, with or without cotton, to any conceivable circumstances. A civilized and industrious people will always be able to procure what it needs from abroad, or to provide substitutes at home. Indeed it may well be questioned whether we have not, as a nation, been greatly injured and demoralized by the enormous importations of every conceivable foreign luxury, which have been so facilitated, and almost necessitated by our exports of cotton and gold.

The notion that cotton not only pays for imports, but pays the duties on them also, is hardly worthy of a serious refutation. We might as well say that a turnpike gate pays the toll of the passenger. The taxes levied by the government upon