satisfied with mere wealth. He desired also place and
station, and gracious countenance among the great ones of the earth.
Hence had come his adherence to the de Courcys; hence his seat in
Parliament; and hence, also, his perhaps ill-considered match with
Miss Gresham.

There is no doubt but that the privilege of matrimony offers
opportunities to money-loving young men which ought not to be lightly
abused. Too many young men marry without giving any consideration to
the matter whatever. It is not that they are indifferent to money,
but that they recklessly miscalculate their own value, and omit to
look around and see how much is done by those who are more careful.
A man can be young but once, and, except in cases of a special
interposition of Providence, can marry but once. The chance once
thrown away may be said to be irrevocable! How, in after-life, do
men toil and turmoil through long years to attain some prospect of
doubtful advancement! Half that trouble, half that care, a tithe of
that circumspection would, in early youth, have probably secured to
them the enduring comfort of a wife's wealth.

You will see men labouring night and day to become bank directors;
and even a bank direction may only be the road to ruin. Others will
spend years in degrading subserviency to obtain a niche in a will;
and the niche, when at last obtained and enjoyed, is but a sorry
payment for all that has been endured. Others, again, struggle
harder still, and go through even deeper waters: they make wills for
themselves, forge stock-shares, and fight with unremitting, painful
labour to appear to be the thing that they are not. Now, in many
of these cases, all this might have been spared had the men made
adequate use of those opportunities which youth and youthful charms
afford once--and once only. There is no road to wealth so easy and
respectable as that of matrimony; that, is of course, provided that
the aspirant declines the slow course of honest work. But then, we
can so seldom put old heads on young shoulders!

In the case of Mr Moffat, we may perhaps say that a specimen was
produced of this bird, so rare in the land. His shoulders were
certainly young, seeing that he was not yet six-and-twenty; but
his head had ever been old. From the moment when he was first put
forth to go alone--at the age of twenty-one--his life had been one
calculation how he could make the most of himself. He had allowed
himself to be betrayed into no fol