Morgan, after being the terror of the tropical seas, hang or pardon his former comrades in his capacity of deputy governor of Jamaica, and ultimately die in the odor of respectability, a knight of considerable landed property? But although the spirit of enterprise may still be alive in England, it is idle sighing for the opportunities of that golden time. It is long since buccaneers and "gentlemen adventurers" were bluntly designated as pirates; for all their cruising, however successful it might be, could only bring them up in an Execution Dock. Even irregularly honorable soldiering was discouraged with the institution of a standing army. Nevertheless, for long the marvellous "expansion of England" offered wonderful chances to the young and energetic. There were pagoda-trees to be shaken in India, by soldiers as well as civilians. In fact, the one calling was confounded with the other, for a critical emergency might turn a clerk into a commander-in-chief. Clive left his stool in the Company's offices at Madras to take a seat in the House of Lords after his campaigns, and in the mean time he had passed through the treasury of Moorshedabad, where, after filling his pockets pretty freely, he had gone away "astonished at his own moderation." Men of inferior talents, without being Clives, found easy roads to wealth in the laxity of public morals. Underpaid civilians, after longer or shorter exile, came home to the old country as full-blown nabobs, to build palaces, to order round "more curricles "for their guests, and to raise the price of everything, from “ eggs to rotton boroughs," on the old county families, who regarded them jealously. Even after the reforms in the Indian administration, there was still romance in the career. The Company had set its face against corruption, but the pay was enormously increased. Sybarites like Jos. Sedley had only to keep reasonably steady, and they dropped into a succession of fat appoint ments. A collector of Boglywallah might indulge himself in the luxuries within his reach, and nevertheless could hardly help saving largely. Then half the quick-witted soldiers were sent "upon the staff;" or, detached from the regiments they seldom saw, drew large pay and allowances as independent political agents. At that time, we repeat, there was still romance in an Indian career, but ruthless retrenchment and radical military reforms have gone far towards reducing the prizes in the profession. And now, instead of getting a lift over the walls from the shoulder of some influential connection, men are only admitted through the narrow wicket gate after the preliminaries of searching competitive examinations. But before the emoluments of the Indian Civil Service had been cut down, pushing young men of small means had golden opportunities elsewhere. Australia was really at the other side of the world,— except at some such penal settlement as Botany Bay, the English had hardly touched it. But the English flag was set up over a vast continent, which was open to the dashing adventurers who chose to take their lives in their hands. When the young Englishman landed at Port Philip or Port Jackson, the good of all the country was before him. When he had bought the beginnings of his flocks and herds, he was much in the position of the patriarchs Lot and Abraham. Without paying up any cash to speak of, without transfer of title-deeds or dealings with the lawyers, he might settle and squat down in any district that pleased him. As in the case of Lot, the first thing to be considered was to find a district that was fertile and well-watered, for droughts are the curse of Australia as of Canaan. But then there was ample elbow-room, and it was only a question of going further into the interior. It is true that in Australia as in Canaan there were other difficulties to be overcome. The natives, from an absurd notion that they had some right to their hereditary possessions, were apt to be troublesome. But the Australian blacks were neither very numerous nor very warlike: they were amenable, besides, to the unfamiliar seductions of strong drink, and we fear the pioneers of our civilization, as a rule, were by no means particular in their dealings. We suspect that many of them came to class "the black fellows" with the emus and kangaroos, knocking one and the other over indiscriminately. Be that as it may, the savages soon had a wholesome terror of the guns that carried further and straighter than their boomerangs; and withdrawing to the recesses of the scrub, they wisely gave a wide berth to the intruders, merely knocking an occasional bush shepherd on the headoffences which were generally avenged on principles of vicarious justice. These were happy days, when with slack compe tition and ready markets for the fleeces of the fast-multiplying flocks, the squatters, in spite of epidemics and droughts, extended their domains and accumulated fortunes. At first it was nothing out of the way for a man to come home after an absence of twelve or fifteen years with more than an easy competency. He either retained a share in the run he he had established, or realizing his gains, he left them lucra tively invested in a country where the normal rate of interest was from eight to ten per cent.; while those who chose to make a home of their adopted country, were quickly and steadily developing into millionaires. But the droughts and desserts of Australia set limits to the pasturage, and the time came when even the broad, grassy skirts of that great continent were to be crowded up. The democracy of the towns rose into the ascendant under a popular representative system, and the squatting aristocracy fell on comparatively evil times. "Cockatoos" had permission to perch on small land lots, which they naturally chose near available water; and though capital might some times protect itself by pre-emption against these encroachments, new colonists with a mere trifle of a thousand or two were being steadily pushed to the wall. But often as one door shuts another would seem to open opportunely; and so the discoveries of gold in California and Australia set all the adventurers of Europe and the New World agog. Without any pretensions to the gift of prophecy, we may say that such openings will hardly occur again; for the diamond diggings in South Africa were merely an episode in speculation, since precious stones must cease to be precious when they are no longer the luxuries of the rich. But the wants of the world in respect of gold seem, for all practical purposes, to be in exhaustible; and though the river of Pactolus may be fed from a thousand fresh sources, thanks to steady evaporation it never seems to overflow any more than the Dead Sea. So while the gold fevers ran their course, there were grand chances for penniless scapegraces. The sole stock in trade was strength and pluck; the outfit a pickaxe, a shovel, a revolver, and a pocketful of cartridges. Fathers could get rid of troublesome children for a trifle : for a steerage passage across the ocean cost very little; and they were sent out not merely in the hope of securing a competency, but to the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Cynically regarded, the gold-fields were for the time an inexhaustible resource and an unmitigated blessing. They might not be the safest of moral schools, but they sifted and somehow disposed of their scholars. Incorrigible scamps who would have done little good anywhere were beset by all manner of temptations, to which those who were weak, either physically or morally, succumbed. If they took to spend. ing their days, or even the days' wages, in the drinking-bars, they fell victims to sunstroke and villanous spirits: or possibly they got mixed up in a free-shooting affair, and were carried out to be sat upon by the coroner. But if they were steady and resisted temptation, they were sure to do more or less good. They might work hard and make little: they might be worried and half lose heart as their hopes sank over unsuccessful "claims." But they generally found dust enough to keep body and soul together, with something more; and in the mean time the stern discipline was doing them inestimable service. Possibly many of those graduates in the school of adversity were better off in the end than the few who had a wonderful run of luck, and "realized the stakes" in pure gold of Ophir. With not a few of the miners it was a case of "lightly come, lightly go," and the chief results of their gold ventures were wasteful habits of squandering. But there were many of the shrewder sort, who soon came to understand that the shortest cut to wealth was by speculating on the gains of others. When they had gathered a little capital, if they attended personally to its practical investment, with tolerably clear heads they could hardly go wrong. They set up spirit-shops, refreshment rooms, or general stores: they dealt in gold-dust, and came to dabble in bills. The retail trade was all for ready money, so they needed to make no bad debts; they charged pretty nearly anything they pleased; adulterated pale ale was dearer than Heidsieck or Cliquot; and boots went for the weight of their soles in gold. Those who were early in the field, before competition became keen, rolled up little fortunes, hand over hand; though, of course, they had to count with the chances of a knife-thrust or of being knocked over by some casual bullet. Then they invested their savings in building-lots or sheep-runs, so that nowadays they or their heirs stand high among the colonial aristocracy. Unhappily, however, such opportunities are over, and, as we have said, they are unlikely to recur. Now, unless you have considerable capital to begin with, which is an ironical begging of the question in large families, there is little to be hoped for in the colonies beyond bare subsis agreeably checkered by hardships and some daily drudgery. If we meant to expatriate a boy permanently, sending him where the struggle for existence could be only smoothed, we should send him for choice to a genial climate, where mere existence might be enjoyable all the year round. Shell." It is true that the soft climate may be somewhat sensuous, and predis pose the settler to indolence, but that is a mere matter of detail. But the young adventurer in Florida, who may answer any one of those advertisements that have been so frequent of late, is hardly likely to make his home on the sunny coast or among islands and keys where the tropical heat is tempered by the sea-breezes. He must buy his strip of soil up some swampy river, stealing snake-like beneath the black shadows of the jungle, and if he gives no more thar. the value, it may be cheap enough. But he must proceed to clear it, stirring the seeds of the fevers that lie in the slime and the leaf-mould, all ready to fructify: the very wild pigs that will come grubbing round his log but seem wasted down to skin and sinew by the malaria; and if he hope to hold on to gather his orange-crops, he should start with an iron constitution and unlimited supplies of quinine. tence, after serving a long and hard apprenticeship. We have seen that the fertile districts of Australia have been settled up, and the great squatters have been fencing themselves within their runs, by leagues upon leagues of iron fencing. That alone shows the amount of capital indispensable for the business, putting the necessity of stocking and get- Talking of genial climates, Florida sug. ting land out of the question. As for the gests itself; and Florida has been "conmines, they are being worked by syndi- siderably cracked up" of late, and is becates or companies (limited), with great come the fashion with North American employment of labor, and a vast expendi- consumptives. Well, we fancy that the ture on machinery. There is hardly a seaports and watering places of Florida place for the poor educated man even in are all that can be desired in point of the cities where clerks and shop-keep- brightness and balmy atmosphere; while ers are perhaps as plentiful as in England, the orange-groves, planted by the orange. and where they have taken to "raising" "farmers, remind one of the gardens of their own professional men, who start Atlantis, or the glories of "the Golden with the advantage of local connections. The Cape! With the exception of that episode of the diamond-fields, there was never much probability of making more than a living there; and now that the game is being crowded back beyond the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, those who would follow in the wagon-ruts of the Harrises and Gordon Cummings must go elsewhere in the Dark Continent. Were it not for the scarcely explored re. gions between the Upper Congo and the Upper Nile, the African elephant would be almost as rare as old English wild cattle, and our "ivory" would be bone or vegetable imitations. Canada! We are always hearing a great deal of Canadian immigration, and of the riches of the virgin soil between the Saskatchewan and the Pacific. Granting the fertility of the "Fertile Belt" and other districts; granting the magnificence of the timber on the great western rivers, and the fact that blasting reefs in the river beds, and laying down rails by the thousand miles, must Mining enterprise in the western terri. facilitate the transmission of the produce tories of the Union has been pretty pearly to markets, we can recall hardly an in-" played out," at least for small men; but stance of a Canadian settler who has come back with a fortune. Any prizes drawn out there that we happen to have heard of have been fished out of shipping companies and financial speculations. To rise above the lot of the laborer or lumberer, in British America more than elsewhere, you must command a moderate sum of money; and the life of the ordinary farmer is as dreary as can well be conceived. He has fewer comforts, of course, than his brother in England, for he is farther removed from anything like educated society; he toils at high pressure through the short spring and the summer, and in the long winter his life is a blank, dis cattle-raising has come very much into favor. Companies with large capital have been forming, and the cry is "still they come." We believe that those who were first in the field, or rather in the prairie, have been fairly successful: there can be no question that some boards of directors show highly respectable names. But the business is apparently being overdone; and though we see no reason to suspect the honesty of the newer companies, we are inclined to doubt the glowing prom ises of the prospectuses. The presump tion is that American vendors are fully alive to the value of the lands; nor are they likely to accept anything less than handsome prices for their herds. Then | cases as that of the Rev. Amos Barton, capable and trustworthy managers are who starved, with his wife and six chil always difficult to procure; and in such dren, on a pittance of 80 per annum. cases everything must depend on the The curate nowadays can calculate on management. It is easy enough for a £150, and, choosing his rector, may inyoung man to get a place as employé on dulge his particular sectarian prepossesa ranche or in other words, to be arti- sions, and range from Roman Catholic cled to an apprenticeship as cowboy. We ritualism to the lowest of the Low Church. have conversed with more than one of There is the danger that preferment may those young fellows - favorable speci- be indefinitely postponed; but then as mens too - when home for a short holi- compensation he enjoys extraordinary adday, and we cannot think theirs is a suit- vantages in the way of matrimony. A able life for a gentleman. Most of them young divine of personable appearance seem content to revel in the enjoyment of and mildly dignified manners and it is magnificent health, in a climate that un- all the better if he be something of an doubtedly is delightfully invigorating. athlete, with a weakness for lawn tennisThey rise early, and go early to bed; they should have half his fair female parishionpass long days in the saddle, tiring out ers at his feet. We say nothing of his hav two or three of their sturdy horses, and ing the persuasive gifts of an orator, and varying the monotony of the cattle-driving of his lips dropping honey and launching with a little shooting. Their digestions thunderbolts from the pulpit; because, in are perfect, as they ought to be, for the that case, he should certainly make his fare is as rough as the fellowship. But way by other roads than that of marriage. they have no leisure to think, they don't Then the pleasant-mannered clerk in holy think, and the mind lies fallow. They orders may secure a lucrative appointlearn to live in the present, in forgetful- ment as travelling tutor, where the pupil, ness of the future; they become indiffer- or the pupil's grateful friends, may have ent to ambition even in their particular family livings in their gift. The tutor is line, and so are seldom ready to rise to pretty sure to hold good trumps in his such rare opportunities as may offer them- hand, and he must be a fool if he does not selves. A man who has influence with play them to some purpose. And still the board or the manager, as well as more magnificent prizes are to be found brains, aptitude, and energy, may rise in a career which, in former days, was one from the rnks to a situation of greater of the humblest. In Goldsmith's days, as trust, in which his services are more lib- we know from "The Vicar of Wakefield," erally remunerated. Otherwise the ap- an usher was supposed to be ready" to prenticeship leads on to little, except an lie three in a bed," to have had the smalloccasion for investing any money of your pox, and a capacity for digesting any. own; and then you are a minnow sent thing. There are ushers and ushers afloat among leviathans. now; and the lot of many of these gentleIn short, it cannot be denied that, in men must be trying enough. But highthe present day, the prospect of a parent class schools have been multiplying, and with several boys to send out into the steadily growing in reputation. An asworld is a gloomy one. Were he to sit sistant master of cultivation, who unites down deliberately to forecast the chances the fortiter to the suaviter who can of success or failure in each case, he "command the respect and secure the atwould be almost tempted to despair. And tachment of his pupils is very sure to the end of the whole matter seems to be rise to distinction. Head-masterships are that, barring any singular stroke of good enviable berths; and unless a head-masluck, some money is indispensable, sooner ter deliberately run his head against some or later. The recognized professions are stone wall, he should look forward to dyso much overstocked, that the inclination ing on the bench of bishops — unless he of the man with straitened means is natu- dislikes the labor of the episcopacy and rally to avoid them. Indeed law, physic, despises the emoluments. Then if a clerand divinity, would be almost debarred, gyman and tutor have the special talent, were it not for a certain number of side- and desires to become a wealthy man with paths that diverge from the beaten high-little personal trouble, he has only to di roads. There is one pull in holy orders rect a staff of capable but underpaid nowadays that curates are far better assistants, and drive a manufacturing es paid than they used to be; and the sup-tablishment for the competitive examinaply seems generally to fall short of the tions as an advertising crammer. demand. There are no such lamentable Feeling the way towards a handsome knocked up at all the hours of the night. Then there are the sea-going steamers and emigrant ships, which must be provided with surgeons. In the one case the doctors are well paid by companies; and it must be the aspirant's own fault if, in his peculiar circumstances, he does not avail himself of serviceable connections. We can hardly conceive a more advan tageous opening than soothing the fears of a nervous old woman of either sex, when sea-sickness has brought her to the verge of despair, and the rest of the passengers keep selfishly aloof. The surgeon of an emigrant vessel has no such chances; but being paid so much per head, the profits are considerable, seeing that emi grant ships are almost invariably overcrowded, while the opportunities of extending his experience are unrivalled, as nobody knows or greatly cares what may be the results of empirical treatment. Then agreeable young doctors have other opportunities, now that travelling and ocean yachting are so much the fashion. We are sorry to think that few million. aires carry chaplains in their suite; and knowing the invariable delays of the law, there is no need for them to have consult ing lawyers at their elbow. But life is as precious as health is uncertain; and it is income in medicine is perhaps more heartbreaking work than in the Church. There are,no tolerably paid curacies of the body, to begin with. The hospitals and lecture rooms are far from being schools of the graces, recommending their élèves to the favor of the fair sex. Flirtations with the curacy come as matters of course: the curate even in the bloom of his youth is half a father confessor, and is necessarily in double sympathy with the females of his flock. There is popular prejudice to be overcome in the case of the young doctor. However unjust the suspicion may be, the taint of dissipation and recollections of Bob Sawyer are supposed to cling to him, and the routine of his daily duties is unromantic, or even repulsive. It is one thing to come to a lawn-tennis party from the oratory or ministrations at the altar; quite another to come from some curious anatomical investigation. Yet even more in medicine than in the Church, is the young practitioner bound to marry. A married doctor may make his way, where the bachelor will be brought up at each turn by the convenances and obstacles of delicacy. And poverty is a tradition of the primitive church, which worthy and well-to-do women in all ages have felt it a sacred duty to alleviate; while a poor doctor is popularly though|well worth paying a trifling insurance most unfairly presumed to have no skill to recommend him. So that practitioners in the metropolis and in the great towns are bound to set up a brougham as soon as possible; and if they desire to drive on swiftly and smoothly, a jobbed pair of horses is all the better. We do not pretend to be in the secrets of the profession; but we suspect that advertising at the start must often be a dangerous speculation. Solicitors or bankers, if not the thorough-paced usurers, must surely often be in the secret of it. Be that as it may, the regular mediciner needs money, for in any case he must have a respectable house and a consulting-room, where he may sit in expectation sickening amid the "pleasures of hope." But even in medicine there are side tracks that may be trod with satisfaction, though they may stop short at a competency instead of leading to a position. Certain diseases are per haps more common than elsewhere in thinly settled countries, where serious accidents besides may be irremediable evils. The colonists are said to pay liberally, though the work is hard-harder even than that of the country doctor at home, whose duties may take him about half-adozen parishes, and who is liable to be against the risks of sudden and severe illness. And as we remarked in reference to passenger steamers, the doctor companion must be worse than a fool, if he does not get more out of such a connection than simply his salary and some sightseeing. The law has always cast its nets for many sorts and conditions of men. “Mad Shallow" was a member of an Inn of Court, when he listened to the chimes at midnight; and in the dissipated days of the Stuarts, the Templars were a distinguished community, who drank, diced, and drabbed with the best, and waged civil wars with the denizens of Alsatia. The law was a favorite education for elder sons, who, as their parents fondly hoped, might learn to manage their own properties; while younger sons were sent to study it, as a preliminary to sinecures or profitable appointments. Should any of them take to study seriously, and turn out a Coke or a Bacon, so much the better. But again the Temple was the resort of the plodding and hard-working, who were prepared to make sacrifices, and to go through a great deal, so that they succeeded in the end. An educated student, resident in the great metropolis, could |