of Elia” is as admirable as their fancy.  The author hated a formal sentence as much as he disliked stately and insipid society.  Unlike Thomas Carlyle, in avoiding the faults of rhetorical culture, he did not become a literary barbarian.  In refusing to comb his hair like a prig, he did not go to the extreme of making himself horridly uncomely.  His sentences are unsurpassed for neatness, are as graceful as they are quaint and clear.  The writings of Sydney Smith rarely attain the perfect grace which uniformly distinguishes Elia; yet he never attempts magnificence, and he so unites brilliancy and plainness as to make his statements seem equally felicitous to the rude and the scholarly ear.  His Peter Plymley letters are remarkable examples of the way in which one yeoman speaks to another.  His literary bequest, however, is neither so valuable nor so charming as that of Charles Lamb.  His powers were too various, and he engaged in too many fields of labor, to attain supreme success in any direction.  The best result of his life is his own exuberant and unresting character, which harmonized all the diversities in his career; and adequately to behold this there is needed a fuller and more philosophical biography of him than has yet been written.

BULLS AND BEARS.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER XV.

On the morning of the day which brought the downfall of Stearine and his indorsers, Sandford and Fayerweather, with the Vortex, whose funds they had misappropriated, Monroe came to the counting-room unusually cheerful.  His anxiety respecting his little property was relieved, for he thought the monetary crisis was past, and that thenceforth affairs would improve.  He had reasoned with himself that such a pressure could not last always, and that this had certainly reached its limit.  The clear, bracing air of the morning had its full influence over his sensitive nature.  All Nature seemed to rejoice, and he, for the time, forgot the universal distress, and sympathized with it.  But the thermometer fell rapidly as he caught the expression which the face of his employer wore.  Mr. Lindsay, of the house of Lindsay & Co., was usually a reserved, silent man—­in business almost a machine, honest both from instinct and habit, and proud, in his quiet way, of his position and his stainless name.  He had a wife and daughter, and therefore was presumed to have affections; but those whom he met in the market never thought of him, save as the systematic merchant.  Well as Monroe knew him, being his confidential clerk, he never had seen more than the case in which the buying, selling, and note-paying machinery was inclosed.  He respected the evident integrity and worth of the head of the house, but never dreamed of a different feeling; he could as easily have persuaded himself into cherishing an affection for the counting-house clock.