Twelfthly. Their Law Merchants, by which all Controversies between Merchant and Tradesmen are decided in three or four days time, and that not at the fourtieth part (I might say in many cases not the hundredth part) of the charge they are with us.

Seventhly, The Education of their Chil- Countries, that dissent from the Estab dren, as well Daughters as Sons; all of lished Government of their own Churches, rewhich, be they of never so great Quality sort to them with their Families and Estate or Estate they always take care to bring and after a few years co-habitation with them, up to write perfect good Hands, and to become of the same common Interest. have the full knowledge and use of Arithmetick and Merchants Accounts; the well understanding and practice whereof,, doth strangely infuse into most that are the owners of that Quality of either Sex, not only an ability for Commerce of all kinds, but a strong aptitude, love and delight in it; and in regard the women are as knowing therein as the Men, it doth incourage their Husbands to hold on in their Trades till their dying days, knowing the capacity of their wives to get in their Estates, and carry on their Trades after their Death; Whereas if a Merchant in England arrive at any considerable Estate, he commonly withdraws his Estate from Trade, before he comes near the confines of old Age; reckoning that if God should call him out of the World while the main of his Estate is engaged abroad in Trade, he must lose one third of it, through the unexperience and unaptness of his Wife to such Affairs; and so it usually falls

out.

Besides, it hath been observed in the nature of Arithmetick, that like other parts of the Mathematicks, it doth not only improve the Rational Faculties, but inclines those that are expert in it to Thriftiness and good Husbandry, and prevents both Husbands and Wives in some measure from running out of their Estates, when they have it always ready in their Heads what their expences do amount to, and how soon by that course their ruin must overtake them.

Eighthly, The lowness of their Customs and the height of their Excise, which is certainly the most equal and indifferent Tax in the World, and less prejudicial to any people as might be made appear, were it the subject of this Discourse.

Ninthly, The careful providing for and employing their Poor, which, it is easie to demonstrate, can never be done in England comparatively to what it is with them, while it's left to the care of every Parish to look after their own only.

Tenthly, Their use of Banks, which are of so immense advantage to them, that some not without good grounds have estimated the Profit of them to the Publick, to amount to at least one Million of Pounds Sterling per Annum.

Eleventhly, Their Tolleration of different Opinions in matters of Religion; by reason whereof many Industrious People of other

Thirteenthly. The Law that is in use among them for Transferrence of Bills for Debt from one Man to another: This is extraordinary advantage to them in their Commerce; by means whereof, they can turn their Stocks twice or thrice in Trade, for once that we can in England; for that having sold our Foreign Goods here, we cannot buy again to advantage, till we are possest of our Money; which it may be we shall be six, nine, or twelve Months in recovering; and if what we sell be considerable, it is a good Man's work all the Year to be following Vintners and Shop keepers for Money. Whereas, were the Law for Transferring Bills in practice with us, we could presently after Sale of our Goods dispose of our Bills and close up our Accounts. To do which the Advantage, Ease, and Accommodations it would be to Trade, is so great that none but Merchants that have lived where that custom is in use can value to its due proportion.

Fourteenthly, Their keeping up PUBLICK REGISTERS of all Lands and Houses, Sold or Mortgaged, whereby many chargeable Law-Suits are prevented, and the Securities of Lands and Houses rendred indeed, such as we commonly call them, REAL SECURITY.

with them, which in Peaceable Times exLastly. The lowness of Interest of Money ceeds not 3 per cent per annum; and is now during this war with England, not above 4 per cent at most.

Some more Particulars might be added, and those aforesaid further improved, were it my Purpose to Discourse at large of Trade.

From The Pall Mall Gazette. PHILO-TEUTONIC ITALY. FLORENCE, Feb. 20.

THE gulf between the "liberators and the liberated" of 1859 is widening daily, and discussions like those in the Paris

PHIPO-TEUTONIC ITALY.

The whole education of Liberal Italy, both public and private, has been during this century essentially French. There is no Italian, even of the lower middleclasses, who does not speak and read French as fluently as his own language. The French press was for many years the only press the Italians knew, and indeed took the place of a journalism of their own, which was forbidden them. scarcely a cultivated Italian to be found There is who does not know his Victor Hugo and Lamartine quite as well as his Manzoni and Leopardi. Almost all Italians of the middle classes have lived in Paris for some time. They acquired their notions of recent and contemporary history exclusively from French sources, and were more familiar with Thier's and Mignet's writings than with Bocca's and Coletta's. Their philosophical and literary ideas were entirely French, and all their political life took a French shape; their conception of constitutional liberty, justice, administration, were entirely French, and in fact, their Statuto and their Parliament, their army and their National Guard, their tri-statesmen, in and out of Parliament, supbunals and their new prefectures, are all ported the same cause; and, when the organized on the French pattern. The patriotic movement broke out in Nice, the help given to Italy in 1859 did a good Government, in spite of the instances of deal towards strengthening this feeling of the German Ambassador, could not be insolidarity with France; and, although duced to encourage it, nor to take advanthey had to pay for the "idea" with the tage of it. The only paper and the only solid cash of Savoy and Nice, although political character of the Liberal moderate they were checked by France in the fulfil- party who did take the German side were ment of their national programme, the im- the Nazione of Florence and its eminent mense majority of political men in Italy young editor Civinini. He was shunned still remained stanchly attached to France. by his whole party in consequence; and his Even the two parties apparently most op- posthumous letter posed to the "Latin sister," parties which most touching one can peruse one of the noblest and form an insignificant minority in the of- to his electors, and published a few days ficial political life of the kingdom, leaned ago by the Nuova Antologia, eloquently addressed upon France after all for support. The expresses his desire to withdraw from poclericals knew that the Catholic Church litical life, not only from weariness, disnowhere possessed more vitality and pow- gust, and physical exhaustion, but also er than in France, and never ceased to re- and especially because "he feels himself ly upon the eldest daughter of the Church. obliged, in order to remain true to him

press and Versailles Assembly concerning The Republicans and Radicals, opposed to the French Legation in Rome are certain-Napoleon III., Legitimism, and Orleanism, ly not calculated to narrow it. To give nevertheless saw their aim, their pattern, every one his due, the estrangement and and their guiding star in the revolutionary subsequent hostility are not the work of traditions of Paris and in the French Dem"ungrateful" Italy. It is France parently thinking herself too well off to -ap-ocratic party. need friends and allies - who has done ly altered by the events of 1866. All the These feelings had not even been greateverything to extinguish the remaining moderate Italians brought the fact of the sparks of gratitude as well as natural liberation of Venice home to Napoleon III. sympathy which still lingered in Italian and not to Bismarck, and the gratitude, breasts, in spite of all the provocations far from being diminished by division, was from the other side the Alps; and there on the contrary increased, in the governwas more than one reason for this. broke out the Italians could of course not ing party at least. When the war of 1870 help seeing that this provocation of "la guerre sans motifs," as M. Thiers has it, was a criminal folly, nor did they carry their gratitude far enough to follow such an example and leap out of the window after their friend. They even took advantage of his momentary embarrassment to free themselves from his guardianship, and themselves, not without reason apparenttake what belonged to them-deeming ly, arrived at years of discretion, and thinking that their tutor would certainly not interpret a natural wish to be masters of their own house as an act of ingratitude and hostility towards him. During the whole war, Italy, with the exception of the Radicals, took the part of the French. Not only the most important organs of public opinion, the Perseveranza and the Opinione, and the first Italian review, the Nuova Antologia, eloquently and warmly sustained the so-called solidarity of the Latin races, and violently attacked Germany for not aceepting and applying the modern principle of plébiscites, but all the

burg has never chosen to hide anything on principle, as his enemy, Jules Favre, himself acknowledges. When it comes to the best, they apply to him and Prussia Franklin's words, "If villains only knew how profitable it is to be honest, they would be honest out of sheer villany." As for a frank and open co-operation, alliance, and solidarity, that is therefore not to be thought of yet, although in the present state of the struggle with the Church it would be eminently in Italy's interest.

self, to separate from his party; he alone | word and every step of the German statesin this party being convinced that new man who since Frankfort and St. PetersItaly will have to break with spiritual as well as temporal Papacy, to give up the French alliance and rely exclusively upon Germany." Now, the moderate Liberal party means all official Italy. Official, I say, for there is another Italy besides. There is, firstly, the powerful clerical party, who as yet follow the principles of nè elettori nè eletti (neither electors nor elected), but who, if they ever condescend to come on the stage, would play a most important part; and this part would certainly not be that of an ally of Prince Bismarck, after his recent speeches in the Prussian Parlia ment. Secondly, there is the Radical party, which thought to become masters of the State as soon as the capital was established in Rome and transferred from that nest of Liberal Consorti, Florence, but which has remained exactly where it was before and has been ever since 1860, act-perceive that the French civilization, as ing the part of the personages in the Ciceronian dialogues necessary to give the principal interlocutor an opportunity of speaking, but devoid of any active influence whatsoever, since conspiracy has become an anachronism in free and open Italy. There is, moreover, a third Italy which is now dawning on the horizon, and of which poor Civinini was, if I may say so, the precursory symptom, the first grey light-I mean young, Philoteutonic Italy.

French passion, recklessness, and the desire to be revenged on the weak for defeats suffered from the strong, her impudence and provoking insolence towards Italy, have driven even the Liberal party, which for the last thirteen years has been in power, into the arms of Germany. But this Liberal party is as yet represented by men of from fifty to sixty, all therefore of mature age men who have not only grown up in the influence of French ideas, but also in a fanatical hatred to the German name: for Tedesco and Austriaco were of course identical for them. It is excessively difficult for them to enter into sincere friendship with the new ally into whose arms their old friend forces them against their will. They cannot understand his language; his ideas are new and not clear to them. They have no trust in his character, because they see in him the tyrant or the gaoler of yore. His history, and particularly the history of his ideas, is unknown to them, and, like all Southern nations, they see far-fetched intentions, plans, intrigues, arrières pensées, in every

Meanwhile, there is another generation growing up-happily for Italy little oecupied with politics; a generation of young men who, born between 1840 and 1850, did not witness the reign of the Tedeschi, and therefore bear them no malice; who, having taken a glance at the German world, begin to take an interest in it; who

theoretically framed by Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, and practically realized by the Revolution, the First Empire and the Orleanists, has been followed by another civilization, the principles of which were established by Herder and Kant, which has renovated every branch of hu man knowledge, and finally succeeded in gaining external power and brilliancy. They have been nurtured with the ideas of this civilization: they have studied, and are still studying, philosophy in Hegel and Schopenhauer, philology in A. F. Wolf and Otfried Müller, history in Niebuhr and Mommsen, law in Savigny, language in Wilhelm von Humboldt and Bopp, nay, their own idiom of the middle ages in Dietz, and even what Italy was wont to consider as her exclusive possession, music, in Beethoven and Wagner. Many of these go to Germany; still more learn the German language in Italy, speaking and reading it fluently. In Naples and Pisa, professors are re-echoing German ideas, and German scientific methods are to be found at every Italian university. This is only a beginning, but it is the necessary base and preliminary condition of a political party which, sooner or later, will spring up out of such a ground and replace in perhaps ten or fifteen years the generation of political men educated in French ideas and habits of thought, who already begin, reluctantly it is true, and forced by the very friends of their youth, to prepare the way for their younger successors; and this way leads over the St. Gothard, not through the Mont Cenis.

From Good Words.

HINTS FOR ESSAYS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "FRIENDS IN COUNCIL."

In studying the sayings or the writings of remarkable men, one of the principal things to observe is their repetition of the same idea. There is often an impatience of this THE great labour of life, that which repetition. "How often he says the same tends more to exhaust men than anything thing," is the exclamation of unthoughtful else, is deciding. There are people who people, whereas what he repeats is what is will suffer any other pain readily, but best worth noting. It is not a notion taken shrink from the pain of coming to a de-up at first from fancifulness, or the love cision. Now this is supposed to be wholly of novelty; but it is what experience, as an evil and disadvantageous thing for the interpreted by his nature, has engrained world; but, like most other tendencies of upon him. If he is worth studying at all, the human mind, it is a very beneficent ar- he is chiefly worth studying in order to rangement. There would be no stability ascertain what he continues to think. How in the world if the making of decisions valuable are the repetitions of the same were not a very difficult thing. What was idea which are to be found in such a writer decided yesterday would be upset to-day; as Goethe! and there would be no long and fair expeThere is so vast an effluence of thought rience of anything. Whereas, in the pres- and observation in Shakespeare's works ent state of human affairs, even if a great that it is difficult to infer with any cerevil exists, and many people have recog-tainty from his repetitions what were his nized this evil, it requires an immense continuous ideas and impressions. If one amount of decision and decisiveness before may venture to have an opinion in this the evil can be uprooted. This bring matter, I would say that tolerance is one into play many high qualities of human na- of the principal ideas expressed by Shakesture, such as long suffering, patience with peare in a thousand forms. I cannot imopponents, and the exhaustion of reason-agine a man remaining intolerant, or even ing powers brought to bear upon the evil which is sought to be destroyed.

I have added the word decisiveness to that of decision. It implies a continuance of decision. One of the reasons why responsibility is avoided, is because responsibility requires decisiveness as well as decision. If a man has resolved to take his just responsibility in any matter, he must continue to show decisiveness; and it is comparatively easy for him to come to the one decision to have nothing whatever to do with it.

It is supposed that decision has become much more difficult as civilization has advanced. There is some truth in this, but not so much as is imagined. It will be found, I think, upon observation, that to decide is an inherent difficulty in the human mind; and both amongst savages, and young children, it may be observed that there is a normal amount of suffering in coming to any decision, upon any matter, however serious or trifling.

Favouritism is often nothing more than an exercise of faith. The favourite does not exhibit the qualities or character which we especially approve of; but, somehow or other, he calls out our faith, and makes us believe that there is latent in him the nature which we should most admire. And we are rather proud of our supposed discovery, and of the vigour of our faith.

censorious, who had thoroughly studied, and so become imbued with the spirit of, his Shakespeare.

They talk about happiness being meted out to men in equal portions! But think of the difference between the man who has the gift of always hearing pleasant things said of himself behind his back, and the man who has the disease of always listening to ill-natured things said about himself in his absence. In neither case do I mean that these are real utterances; but, by the aid of fancy, we hear a great deal about ourselves that has never been spoken by mortal tongue.

If imagination, by some divine addition to its power, could do the work of experience, the whole world would be at once revivified. For instance, no one, who has not had large experience, seems to be able to conceive or appreciate the enormous amount of misery in the world. The young read about the sad lives of great men ; but, somehow or other, they fancy that these lives represent the past-that there is nothing quite analogous to them in the present day. Whereas the world is full of misery at all times; and perhaps the amount of it is nearly a constant quantity, or varies only according to the number of people on the earth, in all ages. If the fact of this large extent of suffering and misfortune were fully recognized by all of

us, each one would feel that there was no ness in approving of decisions made for occasion to add to it by his own doings, them by representatives. and the social relations would inevitably become more tender aud forbearing. It is, It will always be a nice and difficult therefore, a great mistake to omit initiating question to decide who are the most disathe young into this great mystery of evil greeable people to live with. Our first and suffering. Instead of keeping them thoughts in framing an answer to this quesaway from the observation and the knowl- tion, will be directed to the more ugly and edge of suffering of all kinds, they should venomous passions-such as hatred, envy, be taught to observe it, and, if possible, to jealousy, and the like. It will probably comprehend it; for there is not any knowl- be found, however, that those qualities edge which may be turned into so much which come under the head of foibles usefulness for their fellows, and so much rather than of vices, render people most improvement of their own characters. The intolerable as companions and coadjutors. greatest men that have ever lived have For example, it may be observed that those been those in whom the sentiment of pity persons have a more worn, jaded, and disfor their fellow men has been most devel-pirited look than any others, who have to oped. On the other hand, the distinguish- live with people who make difficulties on ing characteristic of brutes is the unconsciousness of, or indifference to, all suffering, but that which touches themselves.

every occasion, great or small. It is astonishing to see how this practice of making difficulties grows into a confirmed habit of mind, and what disheartenment it occasions. The savour of life is taken out of it when you know that nothing you propose, or do, or suggest hope for or endeavor-will meet with any response but an enumeration of the difficulties that will lie in the path you wish to travel. The difficulty-monger is to be met with not only in domestic and social life, but also in business. It not unfrequently occurs in business relations that the chief will never by any chance receive, without many objections and much bringing forward of possible difficulties, anything that is brought to him by his subordinates. They at last cease to take pains, knowing that no amount of pains will prevent their work being dealt with in a spirit of ingenious objectiveness. At last they say to themselves, "The better the thing we present, the more opportunity he will have for developing his unpleasant talent of objectiveness and his imaginative power of invent

There is nothing which requires more generosity, and in which men are often less generous, than in pronouncing upon the conduct of their agents, when these have to settle some difficult matter without reference to their employers. For, consider the problem which the agent has to solve. He has to consider not only what is right in itself to be said or done, but he has to consider what another man, his chief, will consider to be right. And this complicates the problem amazingly. Moreover, he has generally to speak, or to act, on the spur of the moment, for if there were time he would but too readily seek to have the instructions of his chief. The greatest forbearance should be shown to any one who is obliged to take responsibility of such a difficult character upon him, when afterwards comment has to be made upon the course that he has fearfully resolved to pursue. Responsibility is one of the heaviest bur-ing difficulties." dens laid upon mankind, and the weight is often more than doubled when responsibility has to be taken on behalf of another

a third party being thus introduced; for there are not only the responsibilities affecting the persons concerned in the decision and the decider himself, but also those affecting the chief for whom this vicarious responsibility is undertaken.

It is a curious reflection to make, but probably a just one, that scandal flourishes all the more because scandal-mongers receive no gain from their proceedings. Many other crimes are attended by personal gain; and what is gained often furnishes the means of detection and of punishment. If, by a merciful provision of The responsibility in question is of the nature, it was arranged that a portion of most general character, and is often put the character taken away by scandal not merely on official persons, and on men should attach itself to those who invent or in command in dist ant regions, but upon propagate the scandal, the world, like the the humblest domestic servants; and most birds in the fable, would be very ready to persons in the course of their lives have fly upon the scandal-mongers and deprive opportunities of showing a generous for- those daws of the plumes thus gained. bearance in disapproving, or a just hearti-But in the present state of affairs, these