gold.  The portrait is clearly no frontispiece of his qualities.  He married an accomplished and charitable lady, and she did not spoil the stock in refining it.  His life passed quietly; his death shook the country:  for though it had been known that he had been one of our potentates, how mightily he was one had not entered into the calculations of the public until the will of the late Ezra Mattock, cited in our prints, received comments from various newspaper articles.  A chuckle of collateral satisfaction ran through the empire.  All England and her dependencies felt the state of cousinship with the fruits of energy; and it was an agreeable sentiment, coming opportunely, as it did, at the tail of articles that had been discussing a curious manifestation of late—­to-wit, the awakening energy of the foreigner—­a prodigious apparition on our horizon.  Others were energetic too!  We were not, the sermon ran, to imagine we were without rivals in the field.  We were possessed of certain positive advantages; we had coal, iron, and an industrious population, but we were, it was to be feared, by no means a thrifty race, and there was reason for doubt whether in the matter of industry we were quite up to the mark of our forefathers.  No deterioration of the stock was apprehended, still the nation must be accused of a lack of vigilance.  We must look round us, and accept the facts as they stood.  So accustomed had we become to the predominance of our position that it was difficult at first to realise a position of rivalry that threatened our manufacturing interests in their hitherto undisputed lead in the world’s markets.  The tale of our exports for the last five years conveys at once its moral and its warning.  Statistics were then cited.

As when the gloomy pedagogue has concluded his exhortation, statistics birched the land.  They were started at our dinner-tables, and scourged the social converse.  Not less than in the articles, they were perhaps livelier than in the preface; they were distressing nevertheless; they led invariably to the question of our decadence.  Carthage was named; a great mercantile community absolutely obliterated!  Senatorial men were led to propose in their thoughtfullest tones that we should turn our attention to Art.  Why should we not learn to excel in Art?  We excelled in Poetry.  Our Poets were cited:  not that there was a notion that poems would pay as an export but to show that if we excel in one of the Arts we may in others of them.  The poetry was not cited, nor was it necessary, the object being to inflate the balloon of paradox with a light-flying gas, and prove a poem-producing people to be of their nature born artists; if they did but know it.  The explosion of a particular trade points to your taking up another.  Energy is adapted to flourish equally in every branch of labour.