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From Blackwood's Magazine.
ROMANCE IN BUSINESS.

moneyed minority of the helpless middle class went in perpetual terror of violence and exactions. In the way of personal adventure, think what yarns the forecastle men in the Phoenician fleets must have had to spin, when, after their interminable cruises to Tarshish and elsewhere, they came home with their holds full of apes and ivory. Everything seen by those primitive navigators and their successors was new and strange: ruthless savages were everywhere in waiting for them on the inhospitable coasts they skirted without a compass; monsters were known to lurk in the currents and whirlpools of the ocean; and rumor, distorted by unfamiliar tongues, magnified mysterious perils till the wildest tales took form and substance. As to the feats of the seamen of antiquity, fancy might have to fill in the meagre outlines supplied by sacred or secular writers; but if we leave the hazes of semi-mythical story for the adventures of the Middle Ages, we emerge into the clear light of history. The Italians, succeeding the Greeks and their Roman ancestors, have inherited the empire of the seas.

THERE is more romance in the world than ever there was, though it changes its aspects and becomes popularized as society grows older. Any keen-sighted bystander at one of the great London railway stations can hardly doubt it, as he watches the crowded morning trains discharging their loads on the bustling plat forms, and traces the deep-worn signs of the never-ending struggle for existence on faces sharpened by intelligence, that are sickly, anxious, or excited. And what a freight of hopes and cares, of doubts and eager ambitions, is carried out of port in each ocean steamer that puts forth from our shores for America or the colonies! Material might be found in the feelings or passions of the passengers to say nothing of the actual stories of the older of them for any number of sensational studies of character by such an analyst of human nature as George Eliot. The emigrants who go abroad to seek their fortunes are of all ranks; and the more ignorant or unsophisticated they may happen to be, the more apprehensive they may feel of the unknown that lies before them; while enterprise goes hand in hand with education, and the great majority of the middle classes are forced into a battle of life in which the prizes are to the intelligent, the enduring, and the fortunate. Most of them, it is true, must be content to scrape along as best they can. Yet even careers that are apparently the most uneventful are often sufficiently checkered; while to counterbalance some brilliant triumphs, there are failures which are simply unmit-ism. But it was the policy of their States igated tragedy.

We see the men of Pisa and Amalfi, the Venetians and the Genoese, fitting out expedition after expedition for the gorgeous East, storming cities, settling colonies, making wars and alliances with kings and emperors, and all, be it remembered, in the way of trade. Chivalrous soldiers, like the "blind old Dandolo," or Embriaco, the dashing crusader of Genoa, might be carried away by the thirst for fame, and seek to emulate the exploits of the martial heroes of feudal

that furnished them with the means of As for the stirring romance of the olden fighting, and that policy was steadily time, it chiefly took the form of warlike directed to opening up profitable markets. adventures. Yet even then there were The Genoese in particular, warlike as striking exceptions, and the story of trad- they showed themselves, were traders par ing under difficulties from the earliest excellence so much so, that when the ages might furnish abundant material for fanaticism of the Crusades, fanned by a most fascinating work. Great gains by the preaching of zealots, was plunging commerce were only to be got at extreme half western Europe into insolvency, they personal risk. Any peaceful trader with never lost their heads for a moment. the reputation of wealth was likely enough | Peter the Hermit would have thundered to lead the life of the lucky digger among to heedless ears had he set up his pulpit the roughs and refugees of a mining in a Genoese piazza. They sent their camp in the Sierra Nevada; and the fleets to Palestine, it is true, but only to

carry freights of Crusaders; and the leaders who chartered their galleys had to pay handsomely, either in hard cash, or concessions of mercantile privileges. So it was all in the way of business that they hired out the famous crossbowmen who served against the Montforts in Brittany, and fought for the unfortunate French monarchy at Crecy.

fond of indulging. Then, where there was a Jewish colony in a city, the inhabitants were locked up like wild beasts in their quarter after certain hours. Nor was the humiliating confinement altogether unwelcome, since in a measure it assured their safety. Yet every now and then would come an outbreak of popular fanaticism, when the mob insisted on We have merely indicated some of the having their share in the spoil, which was most stirring episodes in mediæval trade; ordinarily monopolized by their betters. and its chronicles of active adventure are Any improbable fable of Jewish bigotry scarcely so thrilling as the stories of sus- served for the pretext; and the general tained endurance by money-getters. The form of these fables showed that churchwhole history of the Jews is sensational, men were more or less at the bottom of from the time they were singled out as the movement. It was a Christian child the chosen people; but nothing concern- stolen and sacrificed with horrible rites, ing them seems more wonderful than the or an insult to the sacred wafer that had tenacity of resolution with which they been sanctified in transubstantiation. would persist in growing rich, though The ready credence given to those matheir reputation for wealth and their help- lignant reports showed the horror with lessness must have made their lives well- which the infidel Jew was regarded; and nigh intolerable. The Jew had no protec- yet the people who held him practically at tion from the Church, which was almost their mercy, had more substantial griev the sole shelter of the feeble from the ances against him. For he throve by tyranny of the strong. On the contrary, usury, more than by ordinary trade; and the superstition of the age, which other-we may be sure that his terms were suffiwise put some check on violence and ciently extortionate. In the first place, exactions, was all enlisted against him. Kings curried favor with the clergy by plundering the common victim, and, by consecrating a share of the spoil, made easier terms with their confessors. Each rapacious baron and robber knight was always on the look-out to lay hands on the wandering Israelitish trader, and to hold him to ransom. If the Jew were rich, he had to bleed his money-bags freely before the castle gates were unbolted for him. He might be penniless and an object of charity to his kinsfolk, but no one believed his asseverations of poverty: he was put to the torture all the same, till possibly he expired in agony. The scene in the dungeons of Torquilstone, which Scott has depicted so vividly, was no imaginary one. In the cities, the Jew had to wear the meanest clothing when he went abroad; though probably at family festivals, when the house was shut up, his women were dressed in the most costly garments and jewellery. So he had not even that vain satisfaction of display in which his enfranchised descendants are

having monopolized the medieval loan and discount business, he could deal with the impecunious very much as he pleased. He knew that he made an enemy when he placed a loan, and the speculations on which he staked his life were risky enough to justify him in charging usurious interest. The acquisitive and greatly enduring race had just as much precarious protection as it chose to pay for; it had to resign itself to a fluctuating percentage of sacrifices; and the perpetual apprehension of ruthless exactions must have been more trying to covetousness than the bitter reality. Yet they persisted in the worship of Mammon with the same constancy with which they clung to their creed, and suffered for the sake of their money with the sublime heroism of martyrs.

Passing on to times comparatively recent, we have the romantic perils of the southern trade, when Moorish corsairs swept the Mediterranean, and when the captive merchant or mariner had to languish in captivity till his friends could

blood of Indians and Spaniards, or with the more infamous gains of the coldblooded slave-trade.

But modern joint-stock enterprise may be said to have been fairly floated with the gigantic bubble companies of the eighteenth century. Strangely enough, the sums risked in the infancy of those undertakings were relatively out of all proportion to anything that has been witnessed in our own times, which are generally believed to be the days of speculation par excellence. Nor, so far as the romance of widespread suffering and ruin was con

forward the amount of his ransom; when | tions of some family of landed gentry with
the ailing succumbed to the hardships of the gold that had been stained with the
the bagnio, and the strong who were unre-
deemed were chained to the benches of
the galleys, and had to face the Christian
shot while mercilessly flogged to their
tasks. Many a fiction that falls far short
of the reality has been composed on the
miseries of these floating hells; on the
desperate sea-fights of the pirates with
the cruisers of the Christian powers, and
those that were manned by the warlike
knights of Malta; on the scenes that were
witnessed when the church-bells and the
signal-fires announced a descent on some
unguarded bay of the Mediterranean.
Not that the Grand Turk and his Moorish cerned, are they ever likely to be sur-
tributaries had a monopoly of piratical passed. The Scotch, though energetic
trading. The buccaneers, who succeeded and enterprising enough, have a well-
the gentlemen adventurers, and were the earned reputation for "canniness," - yet
precursors of the modern privateersmen, Scotland actually went mad over the Da-
called themselves traders after a fashion. rien scheme; and the difficulties inter-
The money they invested in swift-sailing posed in the way of the enterprise, only
ships brought them in great profits and urged the Scots to foolhardy and desper-
quick returns, though the risks were pro- ate persistence in it. Disowned by the
portionate. With a courage worthy of king who had granted their charter; in-
nobler objects, they made it their business trigued against by his servile represen-
to seize the harvests that others had gath- tatives abroad, who closed the foreign
ered in. In their own wild way, like the bourses and our colonial markets to them;
vindictive Frenchman De Montbar, they deserted by the wealthy subscribers in
set up for redressers of wrong and minis- England, Holland, and the Hanseatic cit-
ters of righteous vengeance; and so they ies, they still pressed forward the Da-
speculated in the capture of Spanish gal- rien venture on their own account, sending
leons, and of the strongly fortified sea- expedition after expedition on forlorn
ports that were the treasure-houses of the hopes to a pestilential territory infested
Indies. And some of these early adven- by savages and menaced by a powerful
turers may be said to have been among civilized enemy. We may measure the
the original promoters of joint-stock enter- hopes that were doomed to crushing dis-
prise. Not only did they club their appointment by the fact that half the coin
means to fit out their ships, associating then circulating in the northern kingdom
their crews with them on the co-operative had passed into the coffers of the ill-fated
system, but they found sleeping partners company; while the mortality among the
among respectable merchants, who were miserable adventurers shows figures still
content to pocket a handsome though un- more melancholy.
certain percentage, while closing their
eyes to questionable proceedings. Non
olet was the British Solomon's "most
princely answer "when informed by Mas-
ter George Heriot that the money pro-
cured for his necessities came from an
Alsatian usurer of indifferent repute.
Non olet was the motto of many a decent
church-goer in the good cities of London
or Bristol when he built up the founda-

When Patterson dazzled his countrypeople with visions of his Darien Él Dorado, he addressed himself to their intelligence as well as to their cupidity. The site of the proposed colony had commanding commercial advantages; and had it not been for an outbreak of English jealousy, the scheme might have been a grand success. Even the English "South Sea bubble" had a certain solid founda