to him. Will you believe us too, reader, that he was in constant communication with certain government authorities as an informer, being well paid either for plausible stories without foundation, or for betraying quietly any other bodies of labourers, except those of his own society, who might be disposed, tempted by the success of those he managed, to try for a few analogous results; and of these, from the extensive ramifications of his own society, he had early and always unsuspected intelligence.

Thus the men being happier now than they were before his supremacy, and filled with hope of being happier still, seeing, moreover, all things of the kind fail in which he had not a hand, began to look upon him with reverence, pride, and affection, considering him the very prophet of their class, and often paying, out of sheer gratitude, double the usual monthly subscription.

Money was thus flowing in upon Mark, for we presume you will be aware there was no such thing as any established fund, every penny he received being at once appropriated to his own uses. His continence and temperance seemed now also to have undergone a wonderful change. He dressed, ate, drank, and did other things, as closely like a gentleman as he could, and with the complete abandonment of a professed voluptuary, stinting no appetite that the money so freely flowing into his coffers could afford the gratification of. Moreover, the masters knowing that his mysterious power over their workmen not only existed, but could be regulated, and was to be purchased, showed him every attention, invited him into their society, and he was even not a little courted. But here again the contrast was singular between him and his brother. He affected pride of his origin-practised no affectation-talked of the working class with the greatest respect, and in place of an affable manner, a musical voice, and a winning tongue, preserved and seemed to pride himself in his forbidding demeanour, and his few and harsh, but forcibly expressed sentences, all bearing upon some important particular of commerce, politics, or the like, while he had ever a sneer for any of the little bits of refinement he could not help observing among the wealthy and sometimes well educated proprietors. Those blunders too that a person suddenly raised from the lowest caste to a comparatively high one cannot help committing, and which drew from his brother such blushes of shame, did not at all incommode him; indeed the sneer of utter contempt that would on such occasions glide over his dark and harsh physiognomy effectually prevented any thing approaching to that unfeeling laughter which, so mortified Edmund.

But while Mark was thus become a menied and influential man, popular and powerful, loved by the majority, and courted by the minority who hated him, Edmund continued to draw a small but still respectable salary upon the truck business of Mr. Hasteleigh. He envied his brother, it is true. "However," he would say, "he is my senior by eleven years; when I am of his present age, what shall I not be."

But in the meantime he had been progressing further and further into the favour of Miss Hasteleigh, when an event that for a year or two had certainly not been unexpected took place; Mr. Hasteleigh died, having first settled on his daughter, Miss Joan, and her issue only, all his property.

In fact, though she was at the time but twenty years of age, for the

year or two previous the whole vast business of her father had been bona fide under her management; for he suffered from a painful chronic ailment that confined him to the house, and was glad to acquiesce in, and give the sanction of his name to, any measure she pleased, and with the assistance of the various confidential clerks, &c., and especially of Edmund Vaspar, who acted as a kind of private clerk, she conducted all affairs with the greatest ability and success. She was now to be the independent mistress of a great and flourishing business, and to be disposed of at her own caprice alone. She was, moreover, a woman of much beauty, and of a character remarkable for masculine judgment and energy.

"She is mine!" thought Edmund-" she must be-I know she loves me-but more, she knows my talent, and that, great as her fortune is, I am the man that can double it in ten years."

"Poor fellow!" thought Joan, "he loves me I believe, but however good, amiable, talented, and, latterly, polished, he is still only a miner's son. His career has been remarkable, but what is intellect, enterprise, any thing, if their possessor be low-born. I make no doubt he thinks to have me, but that cannot be; however, I will help him on in life as far as I can.'

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In the meantime Edmund did his utmost to render himself pleasing to her, and once or twice was convinced he would win her. He devoted himself with his whole energy to the task, considered no labour too great, and often after a long day's work at the counting-house, would sit up half, or all the night, balancing and squaring different portions of the business, to please her, or lessen her trouble, or perhaps arranging the returns sent by the different commercial travellers, or making up abstracts of the state of the coal and iron markets at different periods, to guide her speculations. And when she saw the pale cheek and lustrous eye, produced as much by this labour as by having the all-exciting thought of making a fortune continually before the mind, she laid it to his consuming passion, and while she pitied him, regretted that he was of a rank so low. But she did not love him-no, as yet she did not -he was merely the favourite servant of the firm of Hasteleigh and Co.

She became now the great toast of the district-the very pet of its society-the cynosure of all ball-rooms, and the like places of resort. Her name and fortune were the conversation of all the young men who thought their rank (they all thought their persons) offered pretensions to her favour. Moreover, her habits and disposition were a frequent theme of discourse, and those who were wise enough to see themselves altogether shut out from any chance of her, were pretty well agreed upon the point, that whoever got her would get something to keep his wits in exercise without any mistake.

Edmund was not surprised that with all her talent she should thus take delight in pursuits so frivolous in the eyes of those incapable of enjoying them. He could enjoy them himself, and panted for that time when his money and influence would allow him to take his natural place in the bright circle wherein she took such pleasure in holding her own eminent position. And yet this circle was that of the commercial and mining aristocracy of a district; there was not a lord mixed with it, save at election time, and the landed gentry affected to keep aloof from it. Sept.-VOL. LXXII. No. CCLXXXV.

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Probably the cause of this was that few of them had money enough to keep up in it the consideration they deemed their due.

But shortly there appeared in this circle a class of persons who probably are the proudest, the poorest, the worst educated, the most polished, and most privileged, of all orders of people above the rank of mere bodily labour. We mean military officers-not generals, colonels, and other master officers, but the majors, captains, lieutenants, ensigns, &c., who tramp with their regiments, and may therefore be styled the journeymen officers. These personages in all provincial towns have an entrée at once unquestioned into the wealthiest circles, and a poor ensign, whose father's pay could not afford him more education than he could pick up about the barracks-who has some six or seven shillings a day, and out of that must find a glittering uniform and a man to keep it clean, will find himself more courted than the university-educated head of a mercantile house who sends a dozen men through the kingdom to puff his goods, giving each of them four or five times his rival's income. How this comes we need not delay our story to investigate; suffice it to say that the regiment that had for a year or so been at the barracks of the large town in which the principal business of Hasteleigh and Co. was transacted, marched away one fine morning, to the great grief all the young ladies, which was changed to smiles when, on the following morning, another regiment, with younger officers, marched in.

In this second regiment was Lieutenant Peeche, a young man of about twenty-five years of age, remarkable for a tall and very fine figure (partly the gift of the tailor), handsome features, a good complexion, rather stolid blue eyes, a receding forehead, and a beautiful head of hair. His connexions were as follows:-his father was a lieutenant-colonel on half-pay, and with about two thousand pounds in the funds, and on the produce of these he had to live himself, and educate and provide for six sons. The two eldest of them he managed to get into the army, the next into the navy, leaving them to shift for themselves when there, while the fourth had to struggle into the church, and with much ado got a situation as chaplain to a travelling nobleman, whose means required him to reside abroad, while his religious predilections needed the service of the Church of England. The fifth son having no admiration for pride and poverty, broke away at a tangent and opened a hat shop in Dublin, and soon made money enough to console him for being disowned by his relations. The sixth was our present Lieutenant Peeche, and was considered, both personally and mentally, the flower of the flock, was encouraged to look out for a fortune, and told that his brother the hatter's fate would be his if he threw himself away. He used to be told at home, by his anxious mother, that though when he joined his regimen the would have to live on his pay, he might consider himself at any time worth ten thousand pounds worth of face, and the same amount of figure (if clothed in red).

The above being his personal stock in speculating for a fortune, let us see what was his mental. He could read English, and write a note on occasion, though imperfect in the spelling department; he recollected the first five rules of arithmetic, had a vagueidea that some people bothered their heads about squares, triangles, and other odd figures, had learnt the first half of the French grammar, and was nearly perfect in the arts of carving, dancing, and talking charming frivolity. In society he had a fine bold

bearing, let the ghost of a strangled oath haunt the conversation now and then, and had a way of leading the opinions and directing the ridicule of fair auditors that was surprising; as, for instance, a young gentleman in black remarking that he had heard that mathematics were a branch of knowledge highly essential to a soldier, and that Bonaparte was deep in it-"Yes," replied Peeche, "I have heard that engineer officers work at it, but none of ours-none of ours. For my own part I never could manage dry studies of any sort." This sentence, and the air with which it was uttered, were convincing-the ladies at once agreed that dry studies were very stupid and low things, and altogether beneath the rank and mind of Lieutenant Peeche, indeed, only fit for engineer officers, Bonaparte, and the young gentleman in black, who, feeling his discomfiture, shrunk out of the conversation, and was dumb, whilst his vanquisher, leaning back, showed the extreme edges of his fine teeth in a scarcely cognisable smile of self-complaisance.

But we are tired of the fool. Let us say at once that he made a conquest of Miss Hasteleigh, and married her and her money. We believe she loved him very deeply. His personal prettiness (what a quality for a man!) easy manners, art of talking much and soft, and the grace of his attentions to her, won her heart suddenly and for a time, and during that time he proposed, and on her learning that he was the son of Colonel Peeche, of Dublin, and had two brothers in the army, and one in the navy, being thus of most respectable connections she surrendered at once.

This event struck a blow at Edmund which nearly prostrated him completely, and he was all but giving up his speculations in despair, and turning his talents to some more promising pursuits. Indeed, he bitterly envied his brother, whose long endeavours and disappointments had at length been crowned with success complete and unequivocal, and so strong did this feeling run, and so humbled was he by his own disappointments, that he determined to pay him a visit.

On going to the place, drooping and dispirited, he could not but admire the pretty little cottage, with the garden behind, which Mark had provided for himself, and when he compared them with his own lodgings, for he was on a comparatively limited salary, he could not but see that the balance of happiness was altogether on his brother's side. A boy in livery admitted him, and shortly ushered him into a neat little room opening upon the garden, fitted up with books all round, thickly carpetted, and every way comfortable. Here he found Mark, seated in a library chair of the latest and most luxurious kind, busily engaged, pen in hand, among a lot of books, pamphlets, and written papers.

They talked for a little calmly and quietly, there being nothing about the manner of either of them indicating their being more than strangers conversing on some unimportant matter, save the humbled aspect of Edmund, and the subdued exultation and slight sneering smile of Mark. After a little,

"Well, you have had it your own way," said the latter; "had you lent your aid to me I might have been what I am now a year or two earlier; or, in other words, at this time my wealth and influence might have been the square of their present amount, while you might have shared in proportion to your years. But you could not relish an apprenticeship-you wanted to jump at fortune all of a sudden; and now I sup

pose you are come to join with me after the long toil, humiliation, and imprisonment are over, and reap a little of their good fruits."

me.

"Oh no, no, I merely came to see ᎥᏝ you were well."

you

“I am well, Edmund, and I can see you are ill. I'll tell you why-I educated you and deserted me I was persecuted and you disowned Now I am independent-the absolute ruler of ten thousand strong men, who love and implicitly obey me, for they know that the sole motive of all my actions--the only thing I have striven for-is their welfare-"

Here Edmund smiled so significantly, at the same time with so much contemptuousness at his brother's attempt to palm a canting lie upon him, that the latter was altogether put out, and the lurid indication of a blush rose over his swarthy physiognomy. In a moment he resumed more loudly, and in a tone that claimed not to be trifled with.

"I can make the proudest of our old tyrants sneak and bend and smile, though they wish me in hell, for I could break half of them within a fortnight. I have money, influence, and, in a measure, fame, and can command all happiness;--you are poor, disappointed, considered and treated as an amusing inferior-a parasite in that society which I enter on terms of equality. You had a scheme of your own which has broken beneath you like a rotten staff, and you come to make a claim upon me,-you who have never done me a particle of good, but much harm, in return for all the benefits have had from me."

you

"You are wrong, Mark; I have done you good negatively if not positively, for at any time when you were building this great scientific combination system of yours, which yields you such a revenue, I might have betrayed you to the law, exploded the whole fabric, and had you banished, or worse. You recollect the nob*-shooting business. This would have been my duty to my employers; and besides great immediate reward, might have led to the ultimate establishment of my fortune. How do you know that when one scheme has, as you say, miserably failed, I may not be tempted to try the other, even so late as now ?"

A deadly pallor, and an expression which coupled with it made Mark's countenance, forbidding at the best of times, positively terrific, preceded his reply. He sat calmly the while, with the top of his pen in his mouth, as if subduing by effort his emotion. At length he said, "If I thought you would, I would take immediate steps to prevent you, and you know what they would be"-here he laughed a short, harsh, grating "ha, ha !" which had a sort of interrogative sound, as his dark gray eye flashed upon his brother's, searching as it were his very soul. "But as I know you dare not, brother, -so--" here stretching his arm he rang the bell-"I wish you a good morning I will do nothing for you. Grey, show Mr. Vaspar out."And thus the brothers parted.

But to return to Lieutenant Peeche. No sooner had he got his hands on a little of his wife's money, or "the plunder," as one of his brothers (a wag) called it, than the fortunes of his whole family took a remark

*We presume we need hardly inform the reader that nobs are men who take the place of labourers who have struck work for increase of wages, shortening of hours, or other objects, thus rendering null the endeavours of the workmen. Being workmen themselves, and thus betraying the cause of their class, they are generally objects of the bitterest enmity.