to buy goods; if the currency become inadequate in amount, then money is more needed to buy goods. The latter evil is quite as great as the former. The former of these defects of a currency is disadvantageous to the capitalists and moneyed classes, the latter to the community at large, especially to the trading and manufacturing classes.

All banks should be equal in the eye of the law. All banks should have the power to issue bankingcurrency. Each bank alike, subject to the same restrictions, should have the power to issue notes. The Bank of England is allowed to issue fifteen millions of banking-currency upon the security of Government securities. Why should it alone have this privilege? A bankingcurrency based upon Government securities (leaving a wide margin for all possible variations in the value of these securities), would always maintain its full value. It would of necessity be a legal tender in payment of taxes or other dues to the State. The advantage of such a system during the late crisis would have been twofold. In the first place, the banks would have had the means of meeting the run upon them instantaneously, by converting their consols into currency (simply by depositing them with the State), whereas, when the panic was at its height, even consols became inconvertible into currency of any kind. Moreover, during a run upon them, banks would have the means of at once converting their other assets into consols in the open market, and supplying themselves with a State-secured currency by depositing these consols with the Government. This would be really a much sounder species of bankingcurrency than that which at present exists in this country. It is a fallacy to suppose that the notes even of the Bank of England are secured either by gold or by State securities. Although a certain amount of gold and Government securities is kept in the Issue Department, not a single

particle of that gold or of that Government stock is a special security for the note-holders. In the event of bankruptcy, the depositors have an equal claim with the note-holders upon the assets in the Issue Department. The same is true of the gold held, under the Acts of 1844-45, by the Scotch and Irish banks. And as regards the 200 provincial banks of issue in England, there is not even a shadow of legislative security for the note-circulation. On the other hand, under the system which we propose (and which we have fully developed in former articles), the substantial value of the whole note-circulation of the country would be fully secured. But, whatsoever be the system adopted, the present one cannot be maintained. It is perfectly monstrous that the London banks, and indeed all the banks throughout the country, should, in the time of exceptional panic, be dependent for their very existence upon a single privileged bank like the Bank of England-a rival establishment which gains by every embarrassment or downfall which overtakes the other banks-and a bank which, however favoured by the State, regards itself

as

a private establishment, and which expressly repudiates any other rule of conduct save that of increasing its own gains.

London

One word in conclusion. has suffered grievously from the events of the last two months, and a large portion of the blame falls upon the London banks themselves. During the late terrible panic each of these establishments has pursued a policy of jealousy and isolation under circumstances which urgently called for mutual understanding and co-operation. Although the late panic, with its organised "bearing" operations, is in its leading features a novelty in this country, it had an almost exact parallel in New York in 1857. The initial event in the terrible American crisis of that year was the downfall of the Ohio Life and Trust Company (an establish

ment which held upwards of a million sterling of deposits, and which made advances upon financial securities), just as the late panic was initiated by the collapse of the JointStock Discount Company. Thereupon, as in our own case, an organised system of "bearing" operations commenced, and one monetary establishment after another was attacked, till the distrust swelled into panic. The Times' correctly described the state of matters when it said "There is actually a powerful combination for the avowed purpose of bringing all the principal undertakings to ruin. A large body of active persons are known to be associated for the purpose; they influence the press to work out their views, and are alleged not merely to operate with a joint capital, but to hold regular meetings, and permanently retain legal advisers, whose chief vocation, it may be assumed, is to discover points that may enable the validity of each kind of security to be called in question, and thus to create universal distrust." A run for deposits in specie commenced on all the banks of New York; and what did these establishments do? They knew each other's positionthey knew that they were all perfectly solvent: but they knew also that it was impossible to meet the run for deposits made upon them, and by common arrangement they all suspended specie-payments simultaneously. The effect was the same as that which attended the vastly more serious suspension of cash-payments in this country in 1797; the panic at once subsided. Neither did the slightest depreciation of the notes of the New York

or

banks ensue. During the few weeks that the suspension lasted, the notes circulated freely at par: indeed, by a curious accident, they even rose to a premium compared with gold. † The same year, owing to the panic created by the fall of the Western Bank of Scotland, a serious run for deposits in specie took place in Scotland. How was it met by the Scotch banks? They knew that it was impossible for any bank banks to meet a continuous run for deposits in the form of specie; and, instead of each standing aloof, in the hope of seeing its neighbours fall and yet escaping itself, they promptly made common cause with one another, and the gold which was withdrawn from the menaced banks was immediately returned to them (as a loan) by the other banks to which it was taken. This prompt community of action at once terminated the panic and crisis. The recent run upon the banks and monetary establishments was a far less difficulty than that which befell the Scotch banks in 1857, seeing that payment in specie was never demanded of them. But what has happened once may happen again, and in a still worse form; and we think it will be well for the London banks themselves, and certainly it would be of iminense advantage to the community, if, in any future panic like that through which they have just passed, they will meet it by a system of co-operation, as the only effectual method of baffling the determined onset of the shameful and wicked conspiracy of speculators, who of late have been fattening on the spoils of the community.

THE ever-spreading circle of English readers--whose appetite for fiction only grows by indulgence - will cordially welcome (( George Eliot" once more with an English story. Romola,' with all its undoubted power and beauty, was in some sense a disappointment to a considerable section of the great audience who had hung so eagerly on the teachings of this new interpreter of their common life, who could throw round the most prosaic facts and ordinary personages the charm of such intense interest and pathos, a fine humor that was far removed from ridicule or cynicism, and a sentiment that had nothing forced or mawkish. Romola,' with its delicate pictures of Italian character and Italian life, found a charmed circle of its own, who warmly appreciated the touches of the consummate artist. It is no derogation to any artist's work that it appeals to the sympathies of the few rather than of the many. On the other hand, it is surely the highest tribute to a great novelist of any nation, that nowhere are his powers so fully developed as when he takes his stand upon his own country, and speaks through the common interests of the national life.

6

So we return gladly from the banks of the Arno to those of the Avon and the Trent, and, under such guidance, find more than compensation for all the glories of fair Florence in the quiet market-towns and slow-moving life of "North Loamshire." The story takes us there five-and-thirty years ago, when railways as yet were only possibilities, and "the glory had not yet departed from the old coach-roads; "when the first Reform Bill had just been carried, and had not given every man the clean shirt and the leg of mutton

that had been expected. The date seems happily enough chosen, as bringing the characters sufficiently near to our own day to give us a present sympathy with their sayings and doings, while it preserves some characteristics of a past or passing generation, which have an interest both for those who can remember them and for those who cannot, and which have never been so faithfully recorded by any other writer. The habits of thought and speech amongst those who form what we now call the lower middle class, if they were touched upon at all by writers of fiction, were more or less caricatured and vulgarised; and now, very much of what was distinctive and original is being gradually obliterated by the spread of education and the readier means of communication between class and class. This levelling process does a good deal to smooth away those prominent individualities which must be the staple of the characters of fiction. A moderately close acquaintance with our rural population will lead to a conclusion which might be worth the consideration of educational philosophers: that the arts of reading and writing, whatever their civilising influence may be, do not encourage originality of thought; and that the power of shrewd observation, natural mour, and even true courtesy (the truer because unconventional), are found most commonly amongst the older people who have had no book education at all, and who have all kinds of uncomplimentary adjectives applied to them by theorists. If a competitive examination for the franchise should ever educate all men up to one mark, the field of individual character will be very much narrowed for the novelist who deals with humble life.

hu

to that; for I've gone without my bit of meat to make broth for a sick neighbour and if there's any of the church members say they've done the same, I'd ask them if they had the sinking at the stomach as I have; for I've ever strove to do the right thing, and more, for good-natured I always was; and I little thought, after being respected by everybody, I should come to be reproached by my own son."

Mr. Lyon suggests that he should see and talk to the young man.

"That was what I wanted to ask you, Mr. Lyon. For perhaps he'll listen to you, and not talk you down as he does his poor mother. For after we'd been to chapel, he spoke better of you than he does of most: he said you was a fine old fellow, and an old-fashioned Puritan-he uses dreadful language, Mr. Lyon; but I saw he didn't mean you ill, for all that. He calls most folk's religion rottenness; and yet another time he'll tell me I ought to feel myself a sinner, and do God's will and not my own. But it's my belief he says first one thing and then another only to abuse his mother. Or else he's going off his head, and must be sent to a 'sylum. But if he writes to the North Loamshire Herald first, to tell everybody the medicines are good for nothing, how can I ever keep him and myself?" The minister ventures to suggest prayer-especially for the graces of "humility and submission."

"I'm not proud or obstinate, Mr. Lyon. I never did say I was every thing that was bad, and I never will. And why this trouble should be sent on me above everybody else for I haven't told you all. He's made himself a journeyman to Mr. Prowd the watchmaker -after all this learning-and he says he'll go with patches on his knees, and he shall like himself the better. And as for his having little boys to teach, they'll come in all weathers with dirty shoes. If it's madness, Mr. Lyon, it's no use your talking to him."

"We shall see. Perhaps it may even be the disguised working of grace within him. We must not judge rashly. Many eminent servants of God have been led by ways as strange."

"Then I'm sorry for their mothers, that's all, Mr. Lyon; and all the more if they'd been well-spoken-on women. For not my biggest enemy, whether it's he or she, if they'll speak the truth,

?

can turn round and say I've deserved this trouble. And when everybody get's their due, and people's doings are spoke of on the house-tops, as the Bible says they will be, it'll be known what I've gone through with those medicines

the pounding, and the pouring, and the letting stand, and the weighing-up early and down late-there's nobody knows yet but One that's worthy to know; and the pasting o' the printed labels right side upwards. There's few women would have gone through with it; and it's reasonable to think it'll be made up to me; for if there's promised and purchased blessings, I should think this trouble is purchasing 'em. For if my son Felix doesn't have a straitwaistcoat put on him, he'll have his way. But I say no more. I wish you good morning, Mr. Lyon, and thank you, though I well know it's your duty to act as you're doing. And I never troubled you about my own soul, as some do who look down on me for not being a church member."

I

"Farewell, Mistress Holt, farewell. pray that a more powerful teacher than I am may instruct you."

The door was closed, and the muchtried Rufus walked about again, saying aloud, groaningly,

"This woman has sat under the Gos

pel all her life, and she is as blind as a heathen, and as proud and stiff-necked as a Pharisee; yet she is one of the souls I watch for. 'Tis true that even Sara, the chosen mother of God's people, showed a spirit of unbelief, and perhaps of selfish anger; and it is a passage that bears the unmistakable signet, 'doing honour to the wife or woman, as unto

the weaker vessel.' For therein is the

greatest check put on the ready scorn of the natural man."

The character of the simple and earnest-minded preacher is one of the most beautiful in the book, and may take its place as a portrait by the side of those of Seth Bede and Dinah Morris, though perfectly individual and distinct. There is nothing of a sectarian or uncharitable

tone in the contrast which is here drawn-or rather left to be drawn

between the orthodox Rectors of Great and Little Treby, and the man whom they look upon as an unauthorised intruder into their fold; but the Church is left at a