Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440, page 9 by Various Authors
<< Return to Title Details & Download10
might have been avoided by a simple and inexpensive precaution, one could not but feel that it stood up as a sore charge against human wisdom. That so huge a danger should have been treated so lightly; that men should have gone on squabbling about who should pay a mere trifle of money, when such large interests and so many lives were threatened by its non-expenditure, certainly presents our mercantile laissez-faire system in a most disagreeable light. But, then, view the other side. When once the calamity had taken place, and the idea of the consequent extensive suffering had got abroad amongst the public, thousands of pounds came pouring in for the relief of that suffering. The large sum of L.60,000 was collected for the unfortunates; and it is an undoubted, though surprising fact, that the collectors had at last to intimate that they required no more. It is thus that human nature often appears unworthy and contemptible when contemplated with regard to some isolated circumstance, as misanthropes, poets, and such like, are apt to regard it. But take it in wider relations, take it in the totality of its action, and the lineaments of its divine origin and inherent dignity are sure to shine out.
REMINISCENCES OF AN ATTORNEY.
THE INCENDIARY.
I knew James Dutton, as I shall call him, at an early period of life, when my present scanty locks of iron-gray were thick and dark, my now pale and furrowed cheeks were fresh and ruddy, like his own. Time, circumstance, and natural bent of mind, have done their work on both of us; and if his course of life has been less equable than mine, it has been chiefly so because the original impulse, the first start on the great journey, upon which so much depends, was directed by wiser heads in my case than in his. We were school-fellows for a considerable time; and if I acquired--as I certainly did--a larger stock of knowledge than he, it was by no means from any superior capacity on my part, but that his mind was bent on other pursuits. He was a born