who were not so high up on the family-tree,
but who still were in possession of some of
the ancestral jewels, and had inherited
portions of the family plate. But, uncle or cousin,
he was equally a relative, and, therefore, when
in eighteen hundred and fifteen, to mark the
country's appreciation of his services in having
amassed a fortune of half a million of
money, he was created a baronet, by the style
and title of Sir Douglas Brand, there was a
pretty general feeling that the days of chivalry
were restored, and that Britannia had less to
fear than ever on the subject of slavery, or of
any interruption in her hereditary occupation
of ruling the waves.

Among the strongest believers in the
stability of his country and the perfection
of all her institutions, was Sir Douglas
Brand himself. A nation which gave such
an open career to all her sons—which
enabled a person, as he said at public
dinners, to rise from obscurity and insignificance
to the highest positions in church and
state,—a nation that did this was the glory
of her own children and the envy of
surrounding states. It was a clearly
demonstrated fact, therefore, to him and others of
his class, that the dignity and power of
England consisted in the number of people who, by
dint of lucky contracts and judicious
purchases in the funds, rose to wealth and
eminence. They looked, accordingly, on the
Helder Expedition of seventeen hundred and
ninety-nine, where the commissariat was
enriched though the army was forced to capitulate;
and the still more brilliant expedition
to Walcheren in eighteen hundred and nine,
when the army was exterminated, but the
variations of the funds doubled the fortunes
of fifteen or twenty jobbers in Wapping and
elsewhere,—as the noblest trophies of a free
constitution, and they rolled off to church in.
their respective carriages on the day of fast
and humiliation (which was appointed by
authority) to throw upon Providence the
blame for the want of quinine in the marshes
of Holland, and of military skill in the Earl of
Chatham. Waterloo was a sad day for
Lombard Street and nearly shut up the counting-
houses in Wapping. Sir Douglas withdrew
his capital from the food-market, and nursed
it in mortgages and loans. He came to an
arrangement with Brand, Bustle, and Co., by
which he bereft them of the glory of his name,
and retired from any responsibility. He
left, however, a considerable amount of capital
in their hands, and stipulated for a weekly
inspection of their books, and a voice in the
conduct of their business. Money in this
manner accumulating—rank secured—friends
gathered round him—and a long career
apparently open before him if he chose to
enter Parliament, by the purchase of half-a-
dozen boroughs,—it is curious to say that by
one of those odd eccentricities of the human
mind for which nobody can account, the
honourable baronet sickened of the grandeurs
of Grosvenor Square, neglected sometimes for
a whole week the alternations of the funds,
and the sales of exchange, and kept his mind
perpetually fixed on a vision of the Lanarkshire
hills, and a young horseman who had
been useful to him on a certain interesting
occasion. He recalled the features and the
form; the name, if he had ever known it, he
had entirely forgotten. Thirty-five years had
passed, and such thirty-five years of war and
struggle, and hopes and fears, and rises and
falls, and eventual success, as were sufficient,
one would think, to have buried the
transaction altogether. But no—clear as if before
his bodily eyes, arose the outline of Falder
Hill,—the long high road, bordered with a
strip of grass,—the coal-black horse,—the
kind-faced cavalier,—the four golden guineas!
And one day there appeared in the Times
newspaper an advertisement, stating that,
"If the gentleman who, in seventeen hundred
and eighty, bestowed his generous aid on an
unfortunate pedlar boy, was still alive, and
would apply at Messrs. Dot and Carry's,
Broad Street, London, he would hear of
something to his advantage."

Ah! Charlie Harburn, why don't you read
the Times newspaper? but what use would
there be in reading it from end to end? Has
your life been less adventurous than Sir
Douglas Brand's? Has your memory
retained its freshness more than his? Alas!
not the faintest line remains of pedlar boy or
generous aid; you might hear the story told
and never recognise yourself as the performer
of that good deed. Many a good deed have
you performed since then; much generous
trust you have shown; many a friend you
have helped, and met with little gratitude
in return; and now your heart has got
rather hard,—you don't believe in the fresh
impulses of youth and the tender sympathy
of the yet unwasted feelings. You would say,
if you heard of a young man dividing his
moderately-filled purse with a weeping pedlar
boy, "What a fool the fellow was! I'll bet
you he came to poverty in his old age, and he
deserved it, the thoughtless coxcomb!" Is
that the way you teach your own son—
another Charles Harburn, now eighteen years
of age, a cadet at Woolwich, and handsomer,
if possible, than his father, nearly as kind to
all, and as radiant and full of hope as you
yourself were on that August day in seventeen
hundred and eighty, when you rode black
Angus, and were so filled with admiration for
Nancy Cleghorn?

Major Harburn lived the life of a hermit in
his poor old dwelling of Glen Bara. His wife,
the daughter of his colonel, had died some
sixteen years before, and as he sat over the
fire on winter nights, a confusion sometimes
came into his head between the maiden
he had loved so ardently at home, and the
gentle Canadian girl, whom he had married,
and who had left him so soon. Their features
got mixed on the wondrous canvas, whereon