what they could get at half-price with ready money in the autumn. They promise to pay, and really do pay for the stamp on which the promise is written. Then follow law-expenses, and these soon leave mere double payments far in the distance. When the prison-door is double-locked upon them, they find that they have been paying both in money and repute, destroying their credit for probity, by actually giving forty shillings for a sovereign. If they can raise the wind high enough to blow them over the walls, they turn out to be rigid economists; and call a hackney-coach to drive to a cheap shop two miles off for a half-crown pair of gloves.

"Misfortunes never come single;" and if there be people, as some think there are, who deem the payment of debts a misfortune, they must of course pay double. We have heard of persons who pay beforehand, and who, being looked upon as the worst of paymasters, are made to pay again. This species of liquidator is fast dwindling away, and will soon be as extinct as Old Double himself, who died in the time of Shallow.

But Money (Heaven be praised!) is not the only substantial thing in this world of debtor and creditor. There is such an article as Love; but with the desperate determination of securing it, men, corrupted by habit in pecuniary affairs, will not scruple now and then to pay double; paying their addresses, that is to say, to two ladies at a time, or to one rather rapidly after the other. Then there is the social principle, which involves the paying of visits; and these are sometimes paid double, by guests who linger with the door in their hand an unconscionable time; promising, when they do go, to return speedily and spend a long day with you.

So, too, there are other purchases than those made in the cheap markets, which rich and poor have such difficulty in finding. Men buy fame and glory appa

rently at a marvellously cheap rate; by the mere expenditure of sixty years of their lives, or at the total cost of their domestic happiness and quiet. But when they have bought fame and glory, they find themselves imperatively obliged to expend whatever may remain of liver or intellect, of worldly ease or moral energy, in protecting their purchases from the libeller, the detractor, the assassin. What a painful, what a sickening exhibition have we here, of the common lot, to pay double!

Self-love, no less than enmity, often enforces the double payment. The irascible and the obstinate, for example, inflict the evil upon themselves. The hasty unjust expression, at once recalled, seldom re-acts with fearful echoes in the breast of the utterer. But he has spoken it, and pride forbids him to retract; the summons to unsay it only irritates him to a fiercer extent; the consciousness that he is wrong galls him into a resolution to make bad worse; and the little word, the honourable admission, which frankly offered at first would have been received as an atonement, and have purchased him peace, deepens into the abject apology, a jury's verdict against a slanderer, or the dying groan of a duellist.

To obviate a gloomy ending, which our little essay needs not, we shall offer a simple suggestion. The surest way to prepare ourselves for a just and necessary resentment of injuries, is to cultivate a faith in kindliness, and to yield to instincts of generosity. There is at least one situation in life, and it is by no means of rare occurrence to any man, in which with immense advantage to ourselves we may liquidate a debt as it were by double entry, and savingly discharge a claim twice over. Reader, as often as you may experience that invaluable blessing, a liberal and timely opportunity of returning a kindness-PAY Double,

223

ANYTHING FOR A QUIET LIFE.

WHENEVER you meet with a poor wretch whose fate it is to be cuffed continually; buffeted by his betters, abused by his fellows, and halloed after in the streets by those free-born Britons, the little boys; tossed up and down like a crazy hull on a rough sea; driven to and fro like a canine lunatic, and assailed from morning to night with thoughts that scold, and words that hit; whenever you meet with this poor fellow, depend upon it, he is one who, from his very cradle, was fond of a quiet life.

Is he a fag in a factory when the world of machinery is all at work; is he a porter stationed in the rotunda of the Bank, a waiter at a London chop-house, an usher in a genteel seminary, a drudge to a letter of lodgings, a prime-minister, a curate in a populous metropolitan parish, a clown in the comic pantomime, an engineer on a railway, a cab-driver, or a queen's counsel in full practice;-be sure that his maxim ever has been and ever will be, anything for a quiet life!

The lovers of quiet lives are rarely to be found at the lakes, or among the hills; in the solitudes of the land, the rustic paradises of nature, amid simple dreamy scenes, far from the noisy haunts of the populace, with all their rabid passions and riotous pursuits; no, but they are to be met with constantly in Cheapside. They spend their days in a great Babel, hungering after quiet, and fancying eternally that they are just securing it.

The doctrine laid down in their ever-ready exclamation, "anything for a quiet life," implies the wisdom of making continual sacrifices to attain a desired end,

but not the wisdom of previously ascertaining whether it be possible by sacrifices ever to attain it at all.

It is clear that what seems the shortest road to an object is often no road to it at all. There is an example in the story which the witty moralist relates of the false expedient adopted by a mournful son to procure sorrowful faces at his father's funeral. He gave the mutes crownpieces, to purchase their sad looks; but they seemed now livelier than before, and he accordingly advanced their pay to half-guineas; whereat, instead of sighs and mourning airs, they smiled outright; when, to buy their deepest gloom, he paid them down guineas, at sight of which every vestige of sorrow vanished-and indeed he found that the more money he gave them to look gloomy the more merriment was in their faces.

In like manner, we may cite the popular practice of calling out in public assemblies, "Silence!" and "Hear, hear!" with sufficient loudness and constancy to ensure the vast and regular increase of the tumult; and it may happen that a continual struggle to secure a quiet life, is the very reason why it is invariably missed. A constant endeavour of any kind is scarcely compatible with the idea of quiet; and a life spent in sacrificing, in giving up every bit of ground, in yielding every point, and in beating an incessant retreat, for the sake of quiet, can hardly perhaps be called a quiet life.

Squalls was the person who of all others used to act most doggedly upon the principle of sacrifices for the sake of tranquillity. When he first entered the world, he set out on a journey in search of Quiet, and a precious noise he always made about it. His life was a pilgrimage to the shrine of Peace, but he was for ever getting into a "jolly row" on the road; and getting out of it, by a sacrifice that was sure to come too late; a surrender that purchased no quarter; a desire for

pacification that only provoked the enemy to further hostilities.

He never in all his days avoided a quarrel for the sake of quiet; he only avoided, for the sake of quiet, the sole means of bringing the quarrel to a peaceful end. He would begin a contest, but would never fight it out; content, when it was at the highest, when victory was all but his, and the desired calm could be commanded, to give in philosophically, to put on the air of a martyr, and to re-nerve his adversary by an exasperating panegyric on quiet. When the prize contended for was within reach, he would infallibly run away, but not in time to save himself. After an hour's yelping and barking, the dog would lie down, expecting to be allowed to repose because he left off.

How pleasant it was to obey his social summons, to take one's seat at his round table, and prepare, with three or four kindred spirits, to enjoy what he used to call a quiet evening! What a rare notion Squalls had of a quiet evening! After the toil and hubbub of a day of business, delicious indeed it was to settle down, all peace-lovers together, for a quiet evening!

The only misfortune was, that Squalls would wrangle; and it is not surprising, therefore, that the instant we had finished the prelude, the little discussion upon the weather, and had agreed that it was a delightfully calm night, a stiff breeze sprang up, and the storm opened upon us. In other words, the moment the contemplated quiet chat commenced, the "argument" began. Start what subject you might, Squalls had just one quiet observation to make, totally objecting. Remind him that the point might hardly be worth a dispute, and he would beg leave quietly to remark that a more vitally important point never could be pointed out. He would advance from an opinion to an allegation, meekly