t this world could afford him. I, however, had passed the evening
with him, and was better informed. Mr Treherne requested me to ring the
bell. I did so, and his servant speedily appeared with a tray of garnished
dainties, of which I was invited to partake, with many expressions of
kindness uttered by my man-of-business, without a look at me, or a
movement of his mind and eye from the pile of paper with which he was
busy. In the course of half an hour, I had brought my repast to a close,
and Mr Treherne was primed for the conflict of the day. His engagements
did not permit him to give me his assistance in my own matters until the
following morning. He begged me to excuse him until dinner-time--to make
myself perfectly at home--to wile away an hour or so in his library--and,
when I got tired of that, to take what amusement I could amongst the lions
of the town--offering which advice, he quitted me and his house with a
head much more heavily laden, I am sure, than any that ever groaned
beneath the hard and aching knot. Would that the labourer could be taught
to think so!

After having passed an unsatisfactory hour in Mr Treherne's library, in
which the only books which I cared to look at were very wisely locked up,
on account of their rich binding, too beautiful to be touched, I sauntered
once more through the broad streets of the city, and, in my solitary walk,
philosophized upon the busy spirit of trade which pervaded them. It is at
such a time and place that the quiet and observant mind is startled by the
stern and settled appearance of reality and continuance which all things
take. If the world were the abiding-place of man, and life eternity, such
earnestness, such vigour, such intensity of purpose and of action as I saw
stamped upon the harassed brows of men, would be in harmony with such a
scene and destination. HERE such concentration of the glorious energies of
man is mockery, delusion, and robs the human soul of--who shall say how
much? Look at the stream of life pouring through the streets of commerce,
from morn till night, and mark the young and old--yes, the youngest and
the oldest--and discover, if you can, the expression of any thought but
that of traffic and of gain, as if the aim and end of living were summed
up in these. And are they? Yes, if we may trust the evidence of age, of
him who creeps and totters on his way, who has told his threescore years
and ten, and on the threshold of eternity has found the