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words upon the effects of the cotton business on the mind.

There appeared in one of the newspapers a little time since a most
interesting and evidently genuine letter from an Etonian, who had
actually entered business in a cotton factory, and devoted himself to it
so as to earn the confidence of his employers and a salary of 400_l_. a
year as manager. He had waited some time uselessly for a diplomatic
appointment which did not arrive, and so, rather than lose the best
years of early manhood, as a more indolent fellow would have done very
willingly, in pure idleness, he took the resolution of entering
business, and carried out his determination with admirable persistence.
At first nobody would believe that the "swell" could be serious; people
thought that his idea of manufacturing was a mere freak, and expected
him to abandon it when he had to face the tedium of the daily work; but
the swell _was_ serious--went to the mill at six in the morning and
stayed there till six at night, from Monday till Saturday inclusive.
After a year of this, his new companions believed in him.

Now, all this is very admirable indeed as a manifestation of energy, and
that truest independence which looks to fortune as the reward of its own
manly effort, but it may be permitted to me to make a few observations
on this young gentleman's resolve. What he did seems to me rather the
act of an energetic nature seeking an outlet for energy, than of an
intellectual nature seeking pasture and exercise for the intellect. I am
far indeed from desiring, by this comparison, to cast any disparaging
light on the young gentleman's natural endowments, which appear to have
been valuable in their order and robust in their degree, nor do I
question the wisdom of his choice; all I mean to imply is, that although
he had chosen a fine large field for simple energy, it was a poor and
barren field for the intellect to pasture in. Consider for one moment
the difference in this respect between the career which he had abandoned
and the trade he had embraced. As an _attache_ he would have lived in
capital cities, have had the best opportunities for perfecting himself
in modern languages, and for meeting the most varied and the most
interesting society. In every day there would have been precious hours
of leisure, to be employed in the increase of his culture. If an
intellectual man, having to choose between diplomacy and
cotton-spinning, preferred cotton-spinning it w