been always, and will continue to be, two distinct classes of men-the high and the low-between which lies a great gulf, almost altogether impassable, and whose conditions are widely different in respect of enjoyment, the portion of one being poverty, hard labour, ungratified appetites, humiliation, early death; that of the other, wealth, idleness, gratification of every desire, honour, and life prolonged to the utmost by care and nursing; and this too arising from no moral merit or demerit in the individuals of either class. He perceived it, and also that he himself was of that class doomed from birth to toil and disease, to every privation and all disrespect, whose sole comfort was said by the humane of the higher class to lie in contentment with its miseries, and an attempt to form a kind of negative happiness, by teaching the mind not to pine after the positive and real, which these humane had set apart for themselves.

He never thought there was the least political or moral injustice in this state of things; but knowing himself to be born of the low or miserable class, and feeling his mind capable of appreciating the enjoyments of the high or happy one, his whole thought was to discover a means of quitting the one and finding his way to the other, a course which he knew that a few had successfully followed out. And first on considering the careers of these latter, he became aware that no man ever raised himself in the world by ignorance, idleness, or drunkenness, but that the steps whereby to ascend were intelligence, activity, sobriety, prudence, perseverance. That knowledge is power he soon perceived, although he had never heard of the aphorism, or the mighty mind from whom it first emanated.

It was therefore with an engrossing enthusiasm that Mark, the mining-boy, set himself to the acquirement of knowledge, as one of the steps whereby he might make himself a gentleman,-coveting that rank and condition, solely because he believed they afforded all facilities for the gratification of the appetites and desires, and in this consisted all the happiness he had any idea of.

The slothful or incapable may make extreme poverty or constant toil an excuse for ignorance and debasement-where there is a will there is a way, and the enthusiast after knowledge, however great his poverty, or apparently unceasing his labour, will find ten thousand means, and opportunities of mental cultivation. Believing this, you will not be surprised that in three or four years Vaspar was a highly intelligent young man, and on the death of the engine-keeper, was found best qualified of any about the works to take his place. This was the most advantageous thing for him that could have occurred. He had now good wages, plenty of leisure, the respectability of having a charge, and the power of keeping himself personally clean. All these but whetted his appetite for further advancement, and for those great pleasures which money, and influence over the actions of others, could place within his grasp. Wealth and power were the deities he worshipped with all the fervour of youthful enthusiasm, and the possession of them the only paradise he looked forward to; and so ardent was his pursuit, that no obstacle could turn him from the path he had shaped out for himself, as the most direct to this goal of his hopes and wishes. Crime in his eyes was no obstacle, that is, if it could be perpetrated without chance of punishment. The worst crimes he would freely have committed if they helped him forward on his

way to wealth, and could be done without discovery-for of moral right and wrong he took a most extensive and "philosophical view." A crime that could not be punished, he considered no evil, and he saw that in the world many horrible crimes are continually being committed, which, from the criminals not being punishable, are even considered as laudable actions, and sent down as such through history to posterity. You will at once see our drift when we state that in his eyes, conquest and robbery were the same thing, war in no ways different from murder, and fraud identical with diplomacy, and when we tell you further that he believed religion to be a contemptible imposition, which showed little genius in its inventors, and less penetration in its dupes, you will be able to take a fuller view of his character on the whole. He saw the world to be one vast struggle in which every body of men strove for their own interest; and again, each individual of every body for his own particular advantage; and this interest and advantage he finally fixed to be the gratification of mental desires and bodily appetites, the summum bonum, to attain which, it was right to use every means, be they commonly called good, bad, or indifferent. You will begin to think that this hero of ours looks very like a villain. True, he was one; but he was not the only one in this world.

When he was about twenty-one years of age, and his brother eleven, he got for the latter employment in the engine-room, similar to what he had himself first held. This added a few shillings to their weekly income, and brought the youngster more closely under his eye; for though he could not but look upon his brother as somewhat of a drawback at that age, yet he intended by proper instruction to make him a valuable adjutant in his own schemes of advancement to money and influence. He had, from the earliest years at which the boy was susceptible of instruction, laboured to impart to him the knowledge, taste, and general mental ability he himself had acquired, and to implant in his mind the same views of men and morality as he entertained; nor were his efforts unavailing, for Edmund at the age of sixteen, in the merely ornamental branches of knowledge, far excelled him-more than this-began to show a desire to follow out a career in life according to his own judgment, and altogether independent of that of his brother.

And this was the first cause of disagreement between them, and a heavy cause it was; for at the means Mark adopted to acquire wealth and influence, Edmund showed disgust, while those proposed by the latter were treated by the former with contempt, as hopeless folly.

But we may as well give a sketch of the person and habits of each, when we can better éxplain their separate speculations of advancement in

life.

Mark was a tall, exceedingly muscular, harsh-featured, bristle-haired, lowering browed man, whom no process of dressing or setting off could ever make to look like a gentleman. He was decidedly repulsive in person, and his manners (for he was conscious of his appearance) were distant and haughty, approaching to rudeness. Edmund again, was of slight and elegant figure, and though his face too much resembled his brother's to be any thing like handsome, still there was nothing about it positively disagreeable-indeed there was an expression of intellect pervading the whole features, and something like a poetic glance about the eye, that to some persons would have made him highly interesting. He was

a poet, too, in a measure-read, in spite of his brother, all works of fiction in verse or prose-made verses himself, and took pride in a tongue whose persuasiveness to evil not. Belial's could surpass. In conversation, his knowledge, however he had picked it up, seemed inexhaustible, and his manners were so winning, his voice so sweet in its sound, at the same time there seemed so much earnestness, so much enthusiasm in all his views, and so much force and originality in his ways of expressing them, that no one could avoid being pleased with him, and entertaining a desire to please him in return. Indeed, the truth of this was triumphantly proven by the ruin of two poor girls, miners' daughters, who tearfully laid at his door their moral death.

At the age of seventeen, he applied to Mr. Hasteleigh for a situation as clerk in the counting-house attached to the mines. His master, pleased with his handwriting, and the smart but respectful style of the application, gave him the situation he required, and he forthwith bade adieu to the miners, and all sympathy with them, talking for ever after with supreme contempt of the class from which he sprung.

Before the death of Mr. Hasteleigh, which took place about three years afterwards, he had risen high in his confidence, and had been en trusted with several important duties, the latest of which was the superintendence of a truck store, where the workmen were paid their wages, not in money but in provisions, and other necessaries on which the master took a most respectable profit, thus grinding out of the poor creatures the uttermost farthing. So respectably did he acquit himself in this, that he rose daily higher in his employer's esteem, and was even honoured once or twice with invitations to his table, where he shone with equal lustre in his eyes, and those of Miss Joan, his daughter. It is true, there were a few awkwardnesses about his presence and manners at first, at which Miss Hasteleigh did not scruple to laugh, not caring much about the pain she gave her guest, whose burning blushes bore witness to the acuteness of his feelings. Yet at each laugh Edmund wished and hoped for a rich revenge, and he had it ultimately. But all this soon was over, and his natural genius shone forth in his conversation with such power, that the young lady, who had erewhile laughed so heartily at his blunders, forgot them all, and won by his gentleness and grace of manner, word and thought, felt not only always happier when with him than at other times, but also upon his taking leave, strangely anxious for a future

visit.

Now this only daughter and heiress of Mr. Hasteleigh must have seemed a very lofty and satisfactory summit to the hopes and speculations of Edmund, and to afford as short a cut to great wealth and influence as could be supposed. As such did he look on her, and he laboured with his whole endeavour to render himself agreeable in her eyes. And certainly no man could be possessed of a more bewitching presence, or more calculated to win the heart of a woman, herself of some judgment, and for this he could not help giving her credit.

And this was the scheme which Mark Vaspar looked on as hopeless folly. Now what was his own, in which Edmund did not care to abet?

It was, we have said before, the time of the old combination laws. The workmen, wrought to the last drop of sweat, ill-fed and ill-clothed, through the operation of the truck system-kept in ignorance and

wretchedness, and when mentioned by their superiors, only mentioned with the contempt wherewith a Brazil merchant speaks of negroeswere driven to the greatest exasperation against their employers. Any person combining, as it was called, with another to withhold their labour, so as to raise wages, was severely punishable by law, and the ringleaders of combinations have been known to suffer banishment, long periods of imprisonment, whipping, and other inflictions, suited, no doubt, to the heinousness of the offence. Consequently when a strike was in contemplation, it required to be organised with so much nicety and secrecy, that on the day fixed, every man seemed to throw up work as if from his own opinion of the propriety of the measure, without previously conferring or combining with others. In such a case the masters would be altogether unaware till the very morning when the men struck work, that such a thing was to occur, and quite unable to fix upon any as the ringleaders, as they were called, or getters-up of the strike.

But in order to bring such an affair as this to perfect completion, it required in the organiser a genius of no mean order, and such a genius was that of Mark Vaspar.

From his twentieth year he had been sedulously going about among the men, endeavouring to persuade them he was the very man best capable of guarding their interests, and lecturing to them in knots of two or three, mingling among them at the few sports for which their overwrought frames allowed them inclination, doing for them, gratis, any thing in the way of letter-writing that might be wanted-nay, even teaching some of them that desired it, to read and write.

The continual burden of his song to them, on all occasions, was the iniquitous injustice of the fact, that they whose labour created the money, enjoyed such a miserable proportion of it, while such a vast share fell to the luxurious, oppressive, and do-nothing masters. The doctrines of equality among mankind, Agrarian division of property, limited labour, and all other doctrines of the French school, he disseminated, advocated, and explained among them to his utmost. And when the people, over a wide district, saw his great muscular strength, indomitable courage, and his talent and information, which appeared to them almost superhuman-his continence, sobriety, benevolence, and apparent entire devotion to their interests-they began in a year or two to place implicit confidence in him, and to take any advice or command from him with the same reliance as if it were a mandate from on high.

Now Mark, in the course of his extensive reading, had met with accounts of secret societies for various purposes-political, religious, and of other descriptions, and knew of Orangeism, Ribbonism, the secret tribunals of the middle ages, and the Carbonarism and Calderarism of Italy. Upon the basis of what he knew of these, aided by his own invention, he built a confederation among the mining workmen, for the purposes of combination, so secretly and so perfectly organised, that he had at once every individual in it under his cognizance, and was enabled to completely baffle all the efforts of the masters, aided by the minions of the law by bribes and espionage, either to discover its nature, or who were its originators or directors. This society had oaths, penalties, ceremonies, tribunals of judgment, signs verbal and by gesture, and certain apparently unmeaning marks which, chalked on wall or tree, indicated to the initiated of the neighbourhood particular understood commands.

But this perfection was the result, not of a few days thought, but of years of study, experiment, and failure-for once having been convicted of an active share in an abortive strike to procure certain alleviations in the truck system, he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, with hard labour, which was rigorously inflicted. But this failure was perhaps the thing that contributed most to his ultimate success, for he had now the testimony, as it were, of martyrdom to his honesty; and the able way in which he had conducted his defence, and that of his fellow-workmen, and kept up their spirits under punishment, made those of them the most disposed to be independent, at once knock under, and acknowledge him as their master-spirit. Several letters, too, which he began to show them, and which he stated were in foreign languages, understood by him, and came from high personages disposed to sympathise with and aid them, threw an air of vast and hidden power about him, that made them regard him with a kind of awe.

After his conviction and imprisonment, he, of course, lost his situation as engine-keeper, and was disowned in public by his brother, now in high favour with his own and the neighbouring masters. He removed to a small mining town, nearly in the centre of the district, where, after idling about for half-a-year or so, he took on lease, and furnished a small but pretty respectable house, and put on his door a plate bearing the inscription Mark Vaspar, Agent; though in what line the agency lay it would be difficult for a stranger to guess. But when we tell you, reader, that from each member of this body, containing as it did nearly all the adult population of an extensive district, he received sixpence every month as contributions to a common fund, of which he was the treasurer, along with one penny as his own salary, in compensation for having lost, on their account, his means of living, and devoted all his energies to their cause, then, perhaps, you will perceive the agency in its proper light. For this money he knew there was no fear of those who contributed it ever calling him to account; for so well was the society arranged, that the number at large could not communicate with him, except through inferior officers, whom he led them to change, or arbitrarily changed himself every six months, thus allowing them no time, even had they been possessed of intelligence sufficient to see through his character or measures; keeping also even from those nearest him in its ranks, a sort of mysterious distance on all points connected with his own proceedings.

By means of this society, he could in a morning throw every mine out of work, as the expression is, and that, too, at a moment totally unexpected and unprovided for by the masters, and for such moments, too, he was constantly on the look out, rendering himself as complete a thorn in their sides as could well be supposed, and materially affecting the state of markets. In fact, he wielded with admirable skill, dexterity, and success the engine of labour against that of capital, and so secret and well-concerted were his measures, so baffling to the ingenuity of the masters and their myrmidons, that at last they succumbed, allowed reasonable wages, and the workmen their own choice between truck and free shops for provisions, clothing, and general goods; and to conclude, at any time when they desired constant labour for any push in trade, they were glad to bribe Mr. Vaspar, the agent, with large sums of money. These he contrived to receive, Jonathan Wild fashion-that is, in such a way that the givers could not positively bring the criminality of the receipt home