s would
change places with him for all that? Is not the unbought deference
to his opinion, the respect to his acquirements, the obedience to his
counsel, something in the contract he makes with the world? Does he
not recognise, every day of his life, that he is not measured by the
dimensions of the small house he resides in, or the humble qualities
of the hack he rides, but that he has an acceptance in society totally
removed from every question of his fortune?

In the great lottery we call life, the prizes differ in many things
besides degree. If the man of high ambition determine to strain every
nerve to attain a station of eminence and power, it may be that his
intellectual equal, fonder of ease, more disposed to tranquillity, will
settle down with a career that at the very best will only remove him a
step above poverty; and shall we dare to say that either is wrong? My
brother the Lord Chancellor is a great man, no doubt. The mace is a
splendid club, and the woolsack a most luxurious sofa; but as I walk
my village rounds of a summer's morning, inhaling perfume of earth
and plant, following with my eye the ever-mounting lark, have I not
a lighter heart, a freer step, a less wearied head? Have I not risen
refreshed from sleep? not nightmared by the cutting sarcasms of some
noble earl on my fresh-gilt coronet, some slighting allusion to my
"newness in that place"? Depend upon it, the grand law of compensation
which we recognise throughout universal nature extends to the artificial
conditions of daily life, and regulates the action and adjusts the
inequalities of our social state.

What is a viceroy or a colonial governor? A man of eminence and ability,
doubtless, but who is satisfied to estrange himself from home and
country, and occupy himself with cares and interests totally new and
strange to him, for some five or fifteen thousand pounds a-year, plus
a great variety of other things, which to certain minds unquestionably
represent high value--the--station, the power, the prestige of a great
position, with all its surroundings of deference and homage. Large as
his salary is, it is the least distinctive feature of his high office.
In every attribute of rank the man is a king. In his presence the wisest
and the most gifted do no more than insinuate the words of their wisdom,
and beauty retires curtsying, after a few commonplaces from his lips.
Why, through all the employments of life, who ever attains to the like
of t