THE ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN, AN OXFORD FRESHMAN. By CUTHBERT BEDE, B.A.; with numerous Illustrations, designed and drawn on the Wood by the Author. Complete Edition. Sixtieth Thousand. Crown 8vo., cloth, price 3s. 6d.; or Railway Edition, 3s. CONTENTS OF PART I: CHAP. I. Mr. Verdant Green's VIII. Mr. Verdant Green's MornRelatives and Antecedents. II. Mr. Verdant Green is to be an III. Mr. Verdant Green leaves the Home of his Ancestors. ing Reflections are not so pleasant as his Evening Diversions. IX. Mr. V. Green attends Lectures, and, in despite of Sermons, has dealings with Filthy Lucre. IV. Mr. Verdant Green becomes X. Mr. Verdant Green reforms his an Oxford Undergraduate. V. Mr. Verdant Green matriculates and makes a sensation. VI. Mr. Verdant Green dines, breakfasts, and goes to Chapel. VII. Mr. Verdant Green calls on a Gentleman who "is licensed to sell." Tailor's Bills and runs up others; he also appears in a rapid act of Horsemanship, and finds Isis cool in Summer. XI. Mr. Verdant Green's Sports and Pastimes. XII. Mr. V.Green terminates his existence as an Oxford-Freshman. CONTENTS OF PART II : CHAP. I. Mr. Verdant Green re- | VI. Mr. Verdant Green feathers commences his existence as an Oxford Undergraduate. II. Mr. Verdant Green does as he his oars with skill and dexterity. VII. Mr. Verdant Green partakes of a Dove-tart and a Spread eagle. VIII. Mr. Verdant Green spends a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. IX. Mr. Verdant Green makes his first appearance on any Boards. Mr. Verdant Green enjoys a real Cigar. X. Mr. Verdant Green gets ence between Town and Gown. V. Mr. Verdant Green is favoured with Mr. Bouncer's Opinions | XI. regarding an Undergraduate's Epistolary Communications to XII. Mr. V. Green and his Friends his Maternal Relative. through his Smalls. enjoy the Commemoration. CONTENTS OF PART III: CHAP. I. Mr. V. Green travels North. | VII. Mr. Verdant Green has an II. Mr. Verdant Green delivers Inkling of the Future. Miss Patty Honeywood from the Horns of a Dilemma. III. Mr. Verdant Green studies ye Manners and Customs of ye Natyves. IV. Mr. Verdant Green endeavours to say Snip to some one's Snap. V. Mr. Verdant Green meets with the Green-eyed Monster. VIII. Mr. Verdant Green crosses the Rubicon. IX. Mr. Verdant Green asks Papa. XI. Mr. Verdant Green breakfasts XII. Mr. V. Green takes his Degree. VI. Mr. Verdant Green joins a Chapter the Last. Mr. Verdant Northumberland Pic-Nic. Green is Married and Done for. London: JAMES BLACKWOOD, Paternoster Row. MEN OF CAPITAL. BY MRS. GORE, AUTHORESS OF "PREFERMENT," LONDON: JAMES BLACKWOOD, PATERNOSTER ROW. MDCCCLVII. 249.7.626. PREFACE. FEW will deny that the age we live in is the age of Moneyworship; or that foremost among the votaries of Mammon are our own country-people. In Great Britain, however vehement the disputes between High Church and Low, the Molten Calf remains the predominant idol. That this passion for gold constitutes a fertile source of national greatness, is equally indisputable. But for our appetite for enrichment, our colonies had never been founded, our foreign enterprises never attempted. Mephitic climates had not been braved or perilous seas navigated, in order to extract from more favoured soils the precious products denied to our northern clime. If content, like the indolent Italians, with the enjoyment of unsophisticated nature, or absorbed, like the cloud-skimming Germans, in intellectual speculations, India had not been conquered or Australia civilized; whereas, the lust of gold, which defies the fevers of Sierra Leone and the knives of the Bush Rangers, has placed the island, of such small account in the Commentaries Cæsar writ, foremost in the rank of European powers. But the passions advantageous to a nation may be injurious to an individual. Ambition and Money-love, if they tend to ennoble a country, reduce to insignificance the human particles of which the nation is composed. In their pursuit of riches, the English are gradually losing sight of higher characteristics. In every political contest, whether for the maintenance of parliamentary influence in the shape of rotten boroughs, or of high rent under the name of the Corn Laws, the claws of Avarice become frightfully apparent. Our pursuit of railway bubbles, and every other frantic speculation of the hour, affords sufficient evidence of the craving after capital superseding every better aspiration, whether for this world or the next. The very sound of a sum in millions tickles the ear of an Englishman! He loves it so much, indeed, that it all but reconciles him to the National Debt; and, when applied to private proprietorship, it secures deference for lowness of mind, birth, habits, and pursuits. No man so rich, but endeavours to become richer: the fine gentleman, by gambling on the turf or the hazard-table; the country gentleman, by theoretical farming; the man of business, by speculation. All that part of the population which is not occupied in toiling for its bread, consecrates its time and intellects to the alchemic enterprise of converting silver into gold. One of the chief causes which render this pursuit a bitterer as well as more pardonable struggle in England than on the Continent, is the unequal and capricious distribution of family property. The abolition, by the Code Napoleon, of the law of primogeniture, was one of the most effective aids ever afforded towards the greatest happiness of the greatest number;-the foreign countries where this reform prevails being secure against the demoralizing spectacle of the younger sons of the nobility, reared in the enjoyment of luxury, and turned adrift, on attaining man's estate, to gratify, at the cost of other people, the factitious appetites they have acquired; for no species of honest industry enables a poor honourable to supply himself with a tithe part of the comforts which, so long as he abided under his father's roof, it would have been a reproach to him had he failed to enjoy. But it is not alone the creation of majorats for the maintenance of the Order which, in its turn, confers benefits on the country, that tends to produce a class of strugglers after enrichment to maintain themselves on a level with their caste. Country gentlemen and professional men,-nay, men without the pretension of being gentlemen,-are scarcely less smitten with the mania of creating "an eldest son," to the exclusion and degradation of their younger children; and by the individuals thus defrauded by their nearest and dearest, is the idolatry of Mammon pursued with least regard to self-respect or the rights of their fellow-creatures. Injured, they injure in their turn. Their days are devoted to a campaign for the recovery of their birthright. Interested marriages, shabby bargains, and political jobbery, may often be traced to the vile system of things which converts the elder son into a Dives, and makes a Lazarus of his brother. The first of the two following stories is related nearly in the terms in which it was told me by one of the actors in a drama sadly illustrative of the evil influence of mercenary motives. But, lest the title should appear to elevate a mere narrative of facts into the exemplification of an exclusive principle, a second tale is subjoined, exhibiting the Man of Capital in his nobler phases, as well as the difficulties arrayed against his progress in his seemingly velvet career. The inhabitants of a metropolis like London, where speculators occasionally ascend by a single stride from the counter to the gorgeous palace of Aladdin, may deny the truth of the picture. But more than one country neighbourhood will have to confess that little exaggeration has been used in delineating the opposition of its ancient county families to the intrusion and wholesome innovations of a MAN OF CAPITAL. |