the Germans got possession of the equipments of the defeated French, they found an ample supply of maps, plans, and directions for penetrating into Germany, but none to give any aid in a retreat back through France. With us the corresponding characteristics take an opposite character. How often do we hear of the possibility, or even probability, of Hermann marching to London? but who gives utterance to a whisper of Britannia marching to Berlin ? Of course there is nothing further from our thoughts than any attempt to perform such a feat as a spontaneous act. The man who should contemplate it would be socially adjudged to be a lunatic. But a war is that great exterminator of all prejudices and traditions and general ideas, that renders all things that are physically possible also morally possible. It will not fit us in projecting a journey to the moon, but it may render a march to Berlin an act of wise precaution or even a necessity. In Queen Anne's wars our soldiers had as easy access to Germany through Holland as any one province of Germany had to another, They were as much at home among the Dutch as among their own countrymen. Then perhaps Denmark is not so much beholden to Prussia that she would sternly refuse us a path through her territory. The path that way is still more open-in fact there is scarce a hedge or ditch to interrupt an army marching to Berlin. The defenceless nature of those plains makes one absolutely nervous as in sympathetic interest about some one in peril; and you are ever reminded by the strong barns of the granges and the heavily-stanchioned windows, that the soldier has already been an unwelcome guest there. One would scarcely desire the On thing to come to pass; but there is no doubt that fighting in our enclosed grounds on any great scale would afford a new precedent in warfare, and an opportunity for original tactics. Even in the great battle of Waterloo the contest round the small chateau of Hougomont is full of intense separate interests. We have had at home some instances of fighting among enclosures, but of small dimensions. There was one at Worcester, and two at Preston, upwards of sixty years separated from each other-Cromwell gaining the one, and the army sent from England to suppress the affair of the '15 the other. In the affair at Clifton, in their retreat from Derby, the Highlanders of the '45 escaped apparently by less than half an hour-escaped absolute extinction, by getting among enclosures. the other hand, the English troops at Prestonpans mismanaged the possession of enclosures. They got entangled among them, so that they could not form for charging, and were pushed against the walls and slaughtered. It was a mistake of the same kind on a larger scale by the French and Bavarians that made our victory at Blenheim so complete. More than twenty thou sand men were comfortably packed into a village where they effectually barricaded themselves, waiting in safety for their opportunity. At a moment preposterously unconformable to the calculations of a commander trained in all the rules of war, they found themselves surrounded by an enemy flushed with success in other parts of the field. They could neither assail that enemy nor could they get out, whether to fight or to run away. Having a prejudice against being pounded to a jelly by cannon-balls and crashing houses, there was consequently no alternative for them but an unconditional surrender. 1 SPECULATIVE INVESTMENTS. WE are safe in saying that speculative investors have seldom had more disastrous experiences than lately, and we should be sorry to hazard any reassuring predictions as to what may be awaiting them in the immediate future. We are aware that it is the habit to speak of them as a class who are entitled to little sympathy; as publicans who were born to point a moral for the satisfaction of moneyed Pharisees. Whenever they are caught in a squall on the stream as the tide of fortune sets against them while they are tossing their damaged property overboard, or clinging to its dangerous dead-weight in imminent peril of swamping altogether -they are howled at by the onlookers who are standing safe on the shore or have been paddling ankledeep in the shallows. That the old proverb of "Fools and their money" is perpetually finding fresh illustrations is a fact we are not concerned to deny; and we should be glad if the offenders who hastened to be unrighteously rich came more swiftly and invariably to well-merited retribution. But we have at least as little sympathy with the uncharitable denunciation of those who have been removed beyond reach of temptation, or who pride themselves virtuously on the unreasoning timidity that would be the bane of all action and enterprise. The parable of the talent in the napkin applies as forcibly to commercial and financial Europe in the nineteenth century as to agricultural Syria in the beginning of the first. The rayah of Hindustan who builds his rupees into the mud walls of his hovel; the French peasant who invests his five-franc. pieces in the thatch of his cottage or among the roots of his cabbagebeds, may live on rice or maize, as the case may be, and go jogging along from the cradle to the grave as mildly useful members of society. But what would become of the movement of the world if everybody were to imitate their passive prudence? and we should remember in fairness that there are conditions of existence where bare necessities are only to be obtained by running a risk of falling back on charity. There are men who delight in excitement for its own sake, and who would never be content in the repose of the lotus-eater, for all the lusciousness of the insidious fruit or the soothing languor of the drowsy atmosphere. But most people, if they might choose their lots, would undoubtedly elect to be landed to the lips or "consolled up to the eyes;" to be blessed with such a superabundance of riches, that they should be practically relieved of their accompanying cares. There are very few who are so fortunate, and perhaps the number is relatively diminishing. For although great fortunes are becoming far more common, and although they are rolled up with a rapidity which would have seemed fabulous to the plodding toilers of former generations, yet habits of profuse expenditure have been increasing even faster. Great noblemen, with half-a-dozen costly seats or as many domains, in as many counties, unless they are happy enough to be the possessors of deposits of coal or veins of metal, find themselves eclipsed in display by ostentatious nouveaux riches. They may despise these new men, and yet all the same they are goaded on to a race of competition in which the pace every year becomes more distressing. Mortgages of landowners are accumulating in unsuspected quarters, while industrial millionaires may be sinking their incomings in expenditure, instead of placing them away in an insurance fund against the vicissitudes of their business. As for the old-fashioned squires with their moderate rent-rolls, they find themselves nowhere nowadays, if they are once possessed by the demon of fashion. The railway tempts them up to town for the season, to cramp themselves in some third-class residence in Belgravia or Mayfair; to see themselves lost in the crowds that lock their carriage-wheels in crushes in the parks and throng the suites of modern reception rooms. Hereditary acres, descent, and high connections have their influence still; but apart from brilliant talents, money is becoming the essential requisite to achieving an average social success. If you are to hold your own, you must make a certain show, and do to others in the way of hospitality as you would that others should do unto you. The display and the hospitality cost more and more every year, while society grows more exacting in its demands on the habits and purses of its members. As fortunes are made faster and faster, as incomes are dissipated more and more furiously, an impulse is given to extravagance which reacts on the remotest parishes, and makes the quietest people conscious of the pressure, when it does not send them staggering to the wall. It is not only that if you strive to cut such a figure in the world as your father did before you, you must make up your mind to spend as much again. But if you are to have sound security for the sums that would have yielded you a decent competence in the last generation, it can only be at the cost of sacrifices and self-re straint, and very possibly of actual privation. No doubt those moneyed Pharisees we have alluded to may object, with a stern show of justice, that the circumstance of your being straitened or poverty-stricken makes it the more incumbent on you to be prudent: that if there is so little of a margin left between you and destitution, it is positively dishonest running any risks; and that in such cases, more than any other, the coat should be cut according to the cloth. But what if the cloth, when you have cut it, and patched it, and dragged at it, will barely serve the purposes of decency? while you see those who are nearest and dearest to you shivering in scanty raiment upon short commons. To drop metaphor, we can easily conceive of instances where some amount of calculated imprudence may appear a duty. Take a mother who has been left a widow with £5000 and a rising family. "Put your money safely away in the funds; it would be sheer insanity to do anything else with it," says one friend of the family whom she asks for advice as to its disposal; and he steps complacently into his carriage and is driven smilingly away. Another gentleman, a shade less scrupulous, is disposed to admit of first-class railway debentures, although he takes care to dwell on possible fluctuations to the extent of two to three per cent. Very good! The lady acts on the advice of one or the other. she finds that with her £150 to £220, she is not only embarrassed as to providing food, clothing, and houseroom for her growing family, but that she is compromising their future beyond remedy, from better fortunes. She is falling out of the circle of family acquaintance where her boys would be likely to find helpful friends and her girls to But make happy marriages. She is unable to give them the education indispensable to their taking advantage of future opportunities. If she is to persevere in pinching, she condemus them to sink to an inferior grade of life, unless something in the nature of a miracle come to save them. So, sorely against the grain, and at first in mortal apprehension, she has recourse to some of those more highly-priced stocks which are the refuge of the widow, the clergyman, and the reckless. Ten to one she acts thus with her eyes open; perhaps she may morbidly exaggerate the risks she runs, and it is not the fault of her family advisers if she does not. But the clouds that hang over the future begin to dissipate, as the shadows are lifted from her everyday life. Cheerfulness and serenity are restored to the little household, now that the heart of its mistress does not jump into her mouth at each rattle of the knocker or each peal of the bell. Now that she can afford them occasionally a fly, or a dress, or a bit of ribbon, the girls can be indulged in a little innocent gaiety; she sees them merry and light-hearted once more, instead of being insensibly embittered with the life that had scarcely begun for them. The boys are sent to a decent school, with a fair chance of gaining exhibitions, and getting on so as to be able to retrieve their position and lend a helping hand to their sisters. She may have been foolish in changing her investments. She may even feel bitter reproach and remorse when she is caught in some panic that suspends her interest and dissipates her principal. Yet she may be excused for having congratulated herself on her wisdom during those critical years of sunshine, when a doubled income brought her unspeakable relief, giving her family the advantages day after day that subsequent misfortunes can scarcely deprive them of. That is no doubt an extreme case; but similar arguments apply with more or less force to innumerable other people, who, if they do come to trouble in the end, may at least plead extenuating circumstances. Then there is the great class who are thoughtless and somewhat greedy, and the predestined prey of promoters-victims who swim together in shoals like herrings, to be swooped down on by the cormorants of the Stock Exchange. Many of those who prove the greatest fools financially, are intelligent or even eminent in their own walks of life. Lawyers and doctors whose children have formed exaggerated ideas of their means, and whose wives will insist on setting up their carriages, go in for sleeping partnerships in banks and credit companies, although their utmost experience of the business they embark in has been the drawing of cheques or the paying in of fees. Young officers with a thousand or so besides their pay, sensible enough not to tamper with the principal of their little patrimonies, have been in the habit of lending it to the Sultan or the Khedive, and luxuriating in the rate of interest that indicated a remote danger. And we understand that Spanish stocks and second-rate South American loans have been exceedingly popular securities with retired butlers and superannuated ladies'-maids, whose savings have gone beyond the account at the savings bank. These worthy people see glimpses of Golcondas in stocks that are so low that they must certainly be cheap, since they promise their purchaser thirty per cent for his money. And it must be remembered, after all, that in this seductive lottery of the Stock Exchange there are nearly as many prizes as blanks. Could men distinguish between what is sound and what is rotten by some light of supernatural revelation, they might stick to remunerative speculations, which are sufficiently legitimate, and will be carried out safely to the end. The averagely wellinformed Englishman, had he seen anything to choose between Chili and Peru when they came first into our markets as borrowers, would probably have given the preference to the latter, in memory of the famous mines of Potosi. No doubt the original prospectuses in either case were equally enticing. As matter of fact at the present moment, Chilian 5 per cents stand steadily at something like 80; while Peruvians have had "the bottom knocked out of them" by the subsidence of the guano deposits, and have been bandied between bears and bulls till they have fallen to fluctuate between 10 and 15. Take our home joint-stock banks. Those in Scotland, and many of the leading provincial establishments in England, are quoted at steady and enormous premiums; while the moderate rate of interest on their shares at current prices, shows the serene confidence that is felt in their management. In London, original holders in the "London and Westminster," the "London and County," and the "London and Joint-Stock," in spite of such occasional indiscretions as have opened too liberal credits to the Collies and the Liardis, might plume themselves with reason on their foresight and judgment. Yet many similar associations, launched under almost equally promising auspices, came to the ground with a crash in the great collapse of 1866. There are numerous industrial undertakings in the English counties, working under limited liability, but never quoted on the metropolitan share - lists, which have regularly been paying their fortunate share At holders from 20 to 40 per cent, and which seem liable to nothing more serious than such vicissitudes in trade as may press upon the steadiestgoing linen-draper or grocer. the same time, it is impossible to surmise how many others, apparently as plausible, have turned out to be failures or swindles. People must invest, but they must form their own opinion on statements and statistics which may be as honest as they seem, or which may conceal or distort the most material facts. Damaging disclosures have made it evident enough that the names of those sponsors who promise and vow in prospectuses, and on boards of direction, offer no sort of reliable guarantee. Yet, without more or less venturesome speculations of the kind, what would become of the prosperity of the country? although it is true that we should not be troubled with the disposal of these floods of surplus economies which have long ago overflowed the surest channels of investment. Individuals may choose according to their necessities or their temperaments; but many of them must be forced into partnerships in concerns which they can only judge by appearances, and which they are practically powerless to influence. So far as the question of caution is concerned, it may come to much the same in the end, whether they lend their money to a dozen of respectable gentlemen who undertake the administration of some native enterprise, or whether they advance it on the guarantee of some foreign Government, that professes the intention of developing its resources, and which has every interest in paying its way. It is a question of deciding on the capacity of the administration or the solvency of the borrower. If investors act on an impulse or suffer themselves to be deceived, they must pay the |