Nothing nobler, nothing higher
Than the unappeased desire,

The quenchless thirst for gold!"

Money is a very good servant, but a bad master. It may be accused of injustice towards mankind, inasmuch as there are only a few who make false money, whereas money makes many

false men.

Mammon is the largest slaveholder in the world-it is a composition for taking stains out of character-it is an altar on which self sacrifices to self.

"How many a man, from love of pelf,
To stuff his coffers, starves himself;
Labors, accumulates, and spares,
To lay up ruin for his heirs;
Grudges the poor their scanty dole,
Saves every thing except his soul;
And always anxious, always vexed,
Loses both this world and the next !??

e defines the sordid passion as—

"Worse poison to men's souls,

Doing more murders in this loathsome wor..
Than any 'mortal drug."

In the words of Johnson, it is the

"Wide wasting pest! that rages unconfined,
And crowds with crimes the records of mankind :

For gold, his sword the hireling ruffian draws,
For gold, the hireling judge distorts the laws;
Wealth heaped on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys,
The dangers gather as the treasures rise."

"A miser," observes Hazlitt, "is the true alchemist, the magician in his cell, who overlooks a mighty experiment, who

sees dazzling visions, and who wields the will of others at his nod, but to whom all other hopes and pleasures are dead, and who is cut off from all connection with his kind. He lives in a splendid hallucination, a waking trance, and so far it is well; but if he thinks he has any other need or use for all this endless store (any more than to swell the ocean) he deceives himself, and is no conjuror after all. He goes on, however, mechanically adding to his stock, and fancying that great riches is great gain-that every particle that swells the heap is something in reserve against the evil day, and a defence against that poverty which he dreads more the further he is removed from it, as the more giddy the height to which we have attained, the more frightful does the gulf yawn below easily does habit get the mastery of reason, and so nearly is passion allied to madness." This is the turn the love of money takes in cautious, dry, recluse, and speculative minds. If it were the pure and abstract love of money, it could take no other turn but this.

"The wretch concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored and unsung."

SO

"A miser grows rich by seeming poor," says Shenstone, an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.”

Wealth usually ministers to the baser passions of our nature -it engenders selfishness, feeds arrogance, and inspires selfsecurity, and deadens and stultifies the nobler feelings and holier aspirations of the heart. Wealth is a source of endless discontent ; it creates more wants than it supplies, and keeps its incumbent constantly craving, crafty, and covetous. Lord Bacon says, “I cannot call riches by a better name than the 'baggage' of virtue: the Roman word is better-' impedi

ment.' For as baggage is to an army, so are riches to virtue. It cannot be spared or left behind, and yet it hindereth the march." "Misery assails riches, as lightning does the highest towers or as a tree that is heavy laden with fruit, breaks its own boughs, so do riches destroy the virtue of their possessor."

Old Burton quaintly but forcibly observes-"Worldly wealth is the devil's bait; and those whose minds feed upon riches, recede in general, from real happiness, in proportion as their stores increase; as the moon, when she is fullest of light, is furthest from the sun."

A miser is, moreover, the most oblivious, as well as the most vindictive of mortals; he is said to be always for-getting, and never for-giving. He lives unloved, and dies unlamented. His self-denial is only surpassed by his denial of the poor and destitute. The miser starves himself in the midst of plenty, that he may feast his imagination on his useless hoards. Avarice, unlike most other passions, becomes more exacting as its victim increases in age. Fielding speaks of a miser, who consoled himself on his death-bed "by making a crafty and advantageous bargain concerning his funeral, with an undertaker who had married his only child." There have been examples of misers who have died in the dark to save the cost of a candle. How debasing the passion which can survive every other feeling, sear the conscience, and deaden the moral sense! "Of all creatures upon earth none is so despicable as the miser. He meets with no sympathy. Even the nurse who is hired to attend him in his latest hours, loathes the ghastly occupation, and longs for the moment of her release, for although the death-damp is already gathering on his brow, the thoughts of the departing sinner are still upon his gold; and, at the mere jingle of a key, he starts from his torpor in a paroxysm of terror, lest a surreptitious attempt is being made upon the sanctity of his strong box. There are no prayers of the orphan or widow for him-not a solitary voice has ever breathed his name to heaven as a benefactor. One poor penny

:

given away in the spirit of true charity would now be worth more to him than all the world contains; but notwithstanding that he was a church-going man, and from his infancy familiar with those texts in which the worship of Mammon is denounced, and the punishment of Dives told, he has never yet been able to divorce himself from his solitary love of lucre, or to part with one atom of his pelf. And so, from a miserable life-deserted, despised, he passes into a dread eternity; and those whom he has neglected or misused, make merry with the hoards of the miser "*

"The aged man that coffers up his gold,

Is plagued with cramps, and gouts, and painful fits,
And scarce has eyes his treasure to behold;

But like still pining Tantalus he sits,
And useless barns the harvest of his wits;

Having no other pleasure of his gain

But torment that it cannot cure his pain."t

The ingenious author of the Tin Trumpet remarks—that a miser is one who, though he loves himself better than all the world, uses himself worse: for he lives like a pauper in order that he may enrich his heirs, whom he naturally hates, because he knows they hate him.

Perhaps the severest reproach ever made to a miser, was uttered by Voltaire. At a subscription of the French Academy for some charitable object, each contributor putting in a louis d'or, the collector, by mistake, made a second application to a member noted for his penuriousness-"I have already paid," exclaimed the latter with some asperity. "I beg your pardon," said the applicant, "I have no doubt but you paid; I believe it though I did not see it." "And I saw it, and do not believe it," whispered Voltaire.

Misers have been compared to many strange things; some

*Blackwood.

+ Shakspeare.

liken them to oysters with a pearl in the shell; others style them amateur paupers.

Again, misers have been supposed to resemble the hog; a resemblance between them, it has been suggested, has long been recognized by popular tradition; and if we examine the subject closely, we shall find they have more points of likeness than we should at first suppose. The hog is omnivorous and voracious-so the miser grows rich by gathering and converting into money those odds and ends which others throw away. The hog is the scavenger of nature; the miser is the scavenger of society. Both, also, benefit mankind only after their death--the fat of the hog and the wealth of the miser, which they have spent their lives in accumulating, being of no use during their existence.

The animating principle of both miser and hog is, of course, selfishness. Both are delvers of the grovelling sort, both are ill-tempered and sometimes cruel. It is noticed, by a Swedish writer, that “the hog does not enjoy the society of man, as the dog does. He likes going about by himself, grunting in an undertone, which he prefers to raising his voice to its highest pitch." This is eminently true of the miser. He is thoroughly unsocial in his disposition, burrows by himself, and mutters to himself, not daring to raise his voice in manly tones, lest it should draw attention to his ill-gotten gains.

The wretched victim of avarice is ever striving to amass wealth by every expedient that will not subject him to the criminal laws, and to place it in security, is the great and ultimate object of his pursuit. Mammon is the great idol he worships, and whatever the specious and plausible pretexts he may assume, he pays homage at no other shrine. In his selfish isolation, he surrenders himself up to the domination of his debasing passion-a voluntary exile from the endearing offices. of friendship, and the gentle charities of domestic and social life. The benign and blessed influence of heaven-born Peace sheds not her halcyon rays upon his dark and desolate heart.