a modern standard of social value. A civil engineer, an architect, an author, or a merchant who clears £2000 a year by his calling, can live in a much better style than a clergyman, a physician, or a lawyer who does not realise £500; and you need hardly be told that popular appreciation largely depends on considerations of this kind.

Neglect on this score produces no little discomfort. Influenced by traditional notions about the dignity of the church, law, and medicine, parents make an extraordinary effort to put their sons into these honourable but often ill-paid professions. Nor, in point of investment, are the expenses of preparation for these professions usually well laid out. Reckoning the cost of schooling and college instruction, the time spent in studies, and the time lost afterwards until a return is made, the money sunk in preparing to be a medical practitioner cannot be estimated at less than £1000-equal to a permanent loss of £50 per annum. The same thing can be said of law, with this additional drawback, that the chances of lucrative employment are still more precarious. As regards the church, unless the youthful aspirant be singularly adapted for his holy calling, and have a good prospect of preferment, the entering of this profession is least of all to be recommended. We happen to know clergymen with scholarly and other acquirements, which fit them to move in the highest circles of society, and yet whose livings are not respectively above £150 per annum. In other words, all their learning, and good qualities generally, have not commanded a higher money-remuneration than that of a third-rate clerk in a merchant's counting-house. Of course, money is not the sole reward to which these persons look forward; but let us not disguise the fact, that a want of means necessarily implies the abridgment of comforts and an inferior local standing. On this account, a vast number of clergymen with fixed and moderate incomes, must see that the world with its growing wealth is gradually passing them by. At one

time enjoying a position equal to that of merchants, and even of many country gentlemen, clerical incumbents cannot now, as a general rule, cope with an ordinary class of tradesmen, and every year adds to the difficulty of doing so. In half a century hence, the ecclesiastical body will, to all appearance, occupy a position relatively lower than that which it has now reached the benefices of thousands not enabling them to live in the society of gentlemen. Demonstrable results of this kind ought not to escape notice, in making choice of a profession.

When we reflect on the repinings, the humiliations, the struggles to which a large number of unemployed or but partially employed professional men are subject, and the slight chance of their rising to either wealth or eminence, the wonder is how so many young men of talent throw themselves away. There may be some good prizes, but how numerous the blanks. To take the law for a fresh example-what a number of barristers never get a brief, and to what meannesses do many persons of this class stoop to get into office. At the Scottish bar, political and sectarian subserviency appear to be essential to secure office; while only a mere handful of men among the general mass attain distinction by regular practice. At the common-law and equity bars of England, out of 4000 qualified individuals, only about 500 are able to live by their profession, a few hundreds are installed in office, and the remainder being, as is believed, only advocates in name. Assuming the unsuccessful at only 1500, consider the anxiety to rise; each contending for the next opening to practice that may occur by the promotion, retirement, or death of any senior member. Amidst such a crowd, disappointment of cherished hopes of early life is far more common than success; nor is the competition for the other class of legal prizes—namely, legal appointments-less keen. Here the candidate has to contend not only with the practising body, but with the whole mass of barristers. Standing and interest are nearly the only qualifications

in the struggle, and the contest is carried on with great keenness. Very lately, there were no less than forty candidates for the office of police magistrate to a provincial town, the annual salary being only £800; and the numbers would doubtless be much greater, were not the notification of vacancies occurring kept tolerably quiet by the departments in whose hands the appointments lie. Often the first notice of a vacancy is learned simultaneously with the appointment of the minister's friend, not seldom a gentleman unknown to the courts.' *

Of the military and naval services, little need be said. It is well known that the situation of an officer in the army is procured by purchase, along with interest; and after all, the pay is so poor, in comparison to the expenses incurred, that no young officer can exist without drawing on private resources, or getting into debt. Admission to the office of midshipman and assistant-surgeon in the royal navy, is also a matter of interest, while the chances of promotion are exceedingly precarious. By entering either the army or navy, young men necessarily abandon all hope of marrying till in middle life, if even then; and the most they can reasonably look forward to at the close of their career is a pension of some two or three hundred per annum-a miserable requital for an expensive education, lost time, and all the fatigues and casualties to which they have exposed themselves.

Everything considered, we can counsel no young man to enter what are styled the learned professions, the drawbacks in which greatly outnumber the advantages; and as regards the profession of arms, some very considerable reform must take place before the sons of persons in the middle classes can think of betaking themselves to it for a livelihood.

Some thousands of offices in the civil service as the Postoffice, Inland Revenue, Customs, and other departments-are

*The Choice of a Profession. By H. B. Thomson. London. 1857.

open to youths properly qualified, and who possess in the first instance sufficient interest to be proposed for examination. Suppose, for example, a young man wishes a situation in the Post-office, he must first secure the interest of a member of parliament, or some other influential party, by whom he will be put on the list of candidates. Without this preliminary interest, an appointment is unattainable. Now, to procure this interest, political partisanship is almost indispensable; in a word, the father of a family must stick through thick and thin to a certain political leadership in order to get his sons on the list of nominations; and you are left to judge whether practices of this kind are always consistent with independence of mind.

Presuming that this difficulty is got over, the next thing to consider is qualification. Latterly, the British government has insisted on a rigorous examination of all who are proposed as junior candidates, and, accordingly, accomplishment in various branches of learning is now indispensable for entering the civil service. We shall present a few examples of what is wanted.

For clerkships in the Colonial Office. Preliminary examination: Exercises to test handwriting and orthography; Arithmetic, including vulgar and decimal fractions; Geography; Translation from one of the following languages at the option of the candidates-Greek, Latin, French, German, Spanish, Italian; Précis or abstract of official papers. Final examination: Languages and Literature of Greece and Rome; Languages and Literature of France, Germany, and Italy; Modern History, including that of the British colonies; Exercises in English Composition, designed to test purity and elegance of style; Elements of Constitutional and International Law; Elements of Political Economy; Pure and Mixed Mathematics, not including the highest branches; with Accounts and Bookkeeping.

For the Foreign Office, the routine is similar; mathematics,

however, not being required; but ability to write and speak French is indispensable. As regards the Customs, clerks in the solicitor's office, searchers, landing-waiters, &c., are examined in Writing from dictation; Arithmetic, including vulgar and decimal fractions; Orthography; and English Composition. For the Inland Revenue Office: Reading; Writing from dictation; Arithmetic, including vulgar and decimal fractions; Book-keeping by double entry; Correspondence; Geography; History of the British Empire. Latin in the solicitor's office.

In these examinations, no high standard of scholarship is evidently required; but so far as the examinations go, they are understood to be rigorous.

Situations in banks and government offices afford a certainty as to livelihood. Step by step, the junior clerk rises to higher trust and emolument. But at best, many long years must be sacrificed before acquiring a competence; and all situations of this kind being necessarily servile, and calculated to dwarf the understanding, no one can feel happy in them who aspires to independent thought and action.

On the whole, then, we would counsel the young to shun the learned professions, also the army and navy-all overdone-and betake themselves to some kind of manufacturing, commercial, or agricultural pursuit, in which ability with perseverance will be almost certain to command success, either at home or abroad. The colonies alone offer a boundless field of useful exertion for nearly every kind of handicraft, the business of agriculture and sheep-husbandry included. Avoid, if possible, sinking professions, or, at least, such as do not address themselves to great and permanent wants of the community. If a business be respectable, and offer a fair chance of success, it would be unwise to be particular about its supposed gentility. Better to be comfortable in a position of no great mark, than live a life of elegant dependence. It matters little the kind of business