scanty food, he were desirous of amassing the means of acquiring the softest couches, the most splendid robes, the richest fare, the most magnificent palaces? Even this inconsistency is not all which the world exhibits. There are human beings, anchorets of a more ignoble order, who submit voluntarily to all these privations, and who feel at the same time this very desire of wealth, which such privations render absolutely superfluous, who have the still greater inconsistency of desiring to possess means of luxurious enjoyment, while they already have these means in their possession, -who sleep on the earth, not because they think that God has prohibited every sensual indulgence, but because they fear that their couches, if they were to lie upon them, would be sooner worn out,-who clothe themselves in rags, not from humility, but from pride, that trembles lest it should afterwards have to appear in rags, and who, in the midst of inexhaustible abundance, starve, because they do not know how soon, if a thousand improbable things should happen, they may afterwards be obliged to starve. Poverty, it has been said, has many wants,-but avarice is in want of every thing.

"Desunt inopiæ multa, avaritiæ omnia."

"The wealth which the miser calls his own," says Cyprian, "he guards in his coffers with the same anxiety of watchfulness, as if it were the money of another committed to his charge; he has no other possession of it, than as hindering others to possess it."— "Pecuniam suam dicunt, quam, velut alienam, domi clausam, sollicito labore custodiunt. Possident ad hoc tantum, ne possidere

alteri liceat."

The picture which Pope gives us of a celebrated miser, in one of his Moral Essays, absurd, and almost inconsistent with human reason as the character may seem to be, is yet a picture of no small number of mankind; and when the character, in all its deformity, is not to be traced, there are still some features of it that present themselves to the observer, in many individuals who are misers only in certain circumstances, or at certain moments, and who would be astonished, if we were to attach to them so disgrace

ful a name.

After describing the miserable flock-bed, in the worst inn's worst room, in which the Duke of Buckingham, once that “life

of pleasure, and that soul of whim," closed his wretched existence the poet continues,

"His Grace's fate, sage Cutler could foresee;

And well, he thought, advised him, 'Live like me.'-
As well his Grace replied, Like you, Sir John!
That I can do when all I have is gone.'
Resolve me, Reason, which of these is worse,
Want with a full, or with an empty purse?
Thy life, more wretched Cutler, was confess'd—
Arise and tell me, was thy death more bless'd?
Cutler saw tenants break, and houses fall,
For very want-he could not build a wall.
His only daughter in a stranger's power,
For very want, he could not pay a dower.
A few grey hairs his reverend temples crown'd;
'Twas very want that sold them for two pound.
What even denied a cordial at his end,

Banish'd the doctor, and expell'd the friend?

What, but a want,—which you perhaps, think mad,
Yet thousands feel,-the want of what he had.”*

I have already said, that, if avarice consisted merely in the desire of obtaining the wealth by which we might command the gratification of our direct desires, there would be nothing in it at all mysterious, since it would be only another form of these very desires; and that the mystery of this strange passion arises only when the enjoyments which it could command are sacrificed to the mere possession of the means of commanding them. It then, indeed, presents phenomena truly worthy of being analysed, not merely as striking in themselves, but as illustrative of some of the most important general principles of our mental constitution.

It is in the first place, sufficiently evident, that the avarice does not arise from any essential quality of the wealth itself as a mere substance. You cannot suppose, that, independent of the relative value which the comparative scarcity of these two metals has produced, a mass of gold would be much more desirable than a mass of iron. It must originally, then in the eyes of the miser, as of every other person, have derived its high value from the command over the labour of others or the actual possessions of

* Pope's Moral Essays, Ep. III. v. 315–332.

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hers, which it was capable of transferring to every one into hose bands it might pass, or from the distinction which the possession of what is rare and universally desired always confers.

The common theory of the value attached by the miser to the mere symbol of enjoyment, is that the symbol, by the influence of the general laws of association, becomes representative of the enjoyment itself. We have so frequently considered money as that which affords us various pleasures, that the value which we attach to the pleasures themselves, is transferred to that which we know will always produce them when exchanged for the enjoyIment; and there can be no question, that such an association does truly take place, and must take place, though not in a few individuals only, but in all mankind, as long as this well known principle of the general mental constitution continues to operate. But still it must be remembered, that the mystery in this case remains very nearly the same as before. The theory accounts, indeed, and accounts most satisfactorily, for a value beyond its intrinsic use, which the miser, like every one else, may attach to gold; but it does not explain the peculiar associations in his mind, which form the very difficulty in question, that very high value which he alone discovers in it,-a value so far surpassing that of the quantity of enjoyment which it may command, that the miser seldom thinks of spending, that is to say, of exchanging the mere symbol of enjoyment for the enjoyment itself, while he thinks, with insatiable avidity, of accumulating what is not to be spent. The common theory, therefore, is manifestly defective. Let us inquire, then, whether a nicer analysis may not afford us a solution.

No one, I conceive, originally, and without regard to its value in exchange, could prize a piece of gold much more than an equal bulk of any thing else that had physical properties of equal direct utility; and originally, too, I conceive, from the indisputable influence of time in all our desires, that, if all other circumstances were the same, no one would prefer to a present pleasure, a pleasure of exactly the same intensity and duration at any distant period. For both these reasons, avarice, as it exists in maturer life, could not be an immediate passion, but must have required certain circumstances to produce or foster it.

The circumstances which I conceive to have most effect in heightening the value of the symbol or instrument of enjoyment

above the enjoyment itself, is the comparative permanence of the one, and the very fugitive nature of the other. Before the boy lays out his penny in the purchase of an apple or orange, it appears to him valuable chiefly as the mode of obtaining the apple or orange. But the fruit, agreeable as it may have been while it lasted, is soon devoured,-its value, with respect to him, has wholly ceased, and the penny, he knows, is still in existence, and would have been still his own, if the fruit had not been purchased. He thinks of the penny, therefore, as existing now, and existing without anything which he can oppose to it as equivalent; and the feeling of regret arises,-the wish that he had not made the purchase, and that the penny, as still existing, and equally capable as before of procuring some new enjoyment, had continued in his pocket. The feeling of regret, thus associated with the loss of his penny, will, by frequent repetition, be still more intimately combined with the very conception of those little purchases to which his appetites otherwise might lead him. It will seem a serious evil to part with that, the pain of having parted with which was a serious evil before. The regret of course must vary with the mode in which the boy has most frequently laid out the contents of his little purse, so as to present, or not to present to his mind the equivalent enjoyment for which the power of obtaining afterwards a similar amount of enjoyment was resigned. If he has purchased anything which retains a permanent value, the regret will be less likely to arise, while the pleasure received from the purchase, as frequently presented to his mind during the permanent possession, will, on the contrary, accustom him to value money, only as the instrument of obtaining what he feels to be so valuable. It will be the same if he have given it away for the relief of distress, since in this case, though nothing absolutely permanent is possessed by him, the pleasure of the thought itself, as often as the thought recurs, may almost be considered as something permanent. It is impossible for him to think of his penny without thinking of this also, not as a pleasure wholly past, like that of fruit or sweetmeats devoured, but as a pleasure still present and never fading, and accompanied therefore with a feeling of satisfaction, which precludes all regret. Our first expenses, then, like all the subsequent expenses of our maturer years, may be attended, according to circumstances, either with

=gret or satisfaction; and it is not easy to say, how much of the f ature avarice of the man may depend on the nature of a few purchases made by the boy, according as these may have been of a

ind to give greater or less occasion to the feeling of regret, and to the subsequent association of this feeling with the very notion f any little expense.

I may remark, by the way, the very early connection which, in this manner, takes place between prodigality and avarice,-a Connection which continues to subsist, as I have already said, almost universally in maturer life.

But, to return to our little miser,-it must not be supposed, that the regret which is easily associated with expense, approaches the nature of that extreme fear of parting with money which constitutes the avarice of manhood. All that is necessary, is to produce a slight terror of expense, which the habits of many years may strengthen into parsimony. In the boy, it may be scarcely more than what is counted only frugality in a man, and ranked among the virtues; but a boy that is frugal, as man is frugal, is a miser of other years.

When the feeling of regret has been frequently blended, in a very lively manner, with the conception of expense, it is, of course, readily suggested again in similar circumstances. In every purchase there must be something given away, as well as something received; and, according as the mind is led more to the one or to the other of these, it will be more or less ready to make the exchange. If its thought have turned chiefly to the agreeable object which it wishes to acquire,-as, where the object is very pleasing, it will naturally do, unless counteracted by opposite suggestions, it will gladly make the purchase; but if, when any such wish arises, its thought be turned, in consequence of former feelings of regret, chiefly to that which it must give to obtain the object, and if the principal reflection be, "How many other things as valuable, or more valuable, could this money procure; and what regret therefore, shall I afterwards feel, if I have parted with it for this one," the very desire of making the purchase may cease altogether, from the mere suggestion of the various other agreeable objects, the acquisition of which the purchase of this one would preclude. The frequent repetition of this deliberate rejection will, of course, connect more and more