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. 17, 1861.] shrewdness, when Napoleon overran Germany. How he left a large fortune and a commercial character of the highest order, and how his five sons settled in five of the great cities of Europe, and have had more authority over war and peace, and the destinies of nations than the sovereigns themselves, the world pretty well knows. Despotic monarchs must be dependent on money-lenders, unless they are free from debt, and can command unlimited revenues for untold purposes,—which is never true of despotic sovereigns. Constitutional rulers are free from the responsibility and the difficulty, and our sovereigns are supplied by parliamentary vote, and need not stoop to borrow. Yet, there is room for a Rothschild in London, where loans are negotiated for all countries, and which is a kind of central office for the financial news of all the world. In London, then, one of the sons—Nathan—settled. Anselm remained at Frankfort, Solomon went to Vienna, Charles to Naples, and James to Paris. Nathan was the leader, to whom the others looked up with reverence and confidence. He had assisted his father by his admirable ways of investing the moneys lodged in his father’s hands; and he enriched his brothers by his wise guidance, and his generous extension to them of his knowledge and opportunities. He paid and provisioned our troops in the Peninsular War, and reaped the large profits which were his due for such a service; and from that time his fortune became colossal. He will be remembered in the financial history of the empire by his having introduced foreign loans into this country as a financial feature, as Gresham opened to our sovereigns the resource of domestic loans. Before the days of the Rothschilds, an Englishman here and there had invested his money abroad; but the difficulty of receiving the dividends, and the uncertainties caused by fluctuations in the exchange had confined the speculation to a very small number. Nathan Rothschild made the arrangements perfectly easy and regular, to the convenience of borrowers and lenders alike. Sovereigns and empires competed for his countenance, as his opinion decided their credit; and Spain has not yet got over the effects of his quiet steady refusal to enter into any money contracts with her or her dependencies. He was ennobled in Austria; but he preferred his personal consideration to any adventitious rank, and never used his title of Baron. The Member for London is his eldest son. Everywhere in Europe the Rothschilds are regarded as exemplars of the commercial character in its loftiest phase, in an advanced stage of civilisation. Their honour is proverbial, like the word of a king, or the gage of a soldier; their intellectual range is wide; their faculties are keen and sound; and their charities are in proportion to their wealth. Such are the results of a German boy having left the priestly calling to be “engaged in trade.”

The romance of the vocation has not vanished from society with the progress of civilisation. We find in America now the personal adventurousness of three or four centuries ago, combined with the speculative ability which is the common form of commercial courage in our own day. If any reader should here neglect geographical and other distinctions, and confound all American commercial speculators together, I must remind him that the merchants of New England enjoy as high a character for probity, in the widest sense, as any commercial class in Europe. There is an order of merchants in other Atlantic States of the same moral rank, though afflicted with neighbours more fit for a repudiating region, on the frontiers of barbarism: but seats of commerce which have the highest reputation for the virtues and accomplishments of their traders are still in New England. Salem, in Massachusetts, for instance, known in Europe chiefly for the hanging of witches, seems like a European port of three or four centuries ago. There a ship-master puts his elder children to school, and carries his wife and infants on board, to go round the world, seeking their fortune. He starts with his ship in ballast, and steers for some wild place, to see what commodity he can pick up; and he sells his first cargo where he can buy a second; and so goes trafficking round the world, coming home with a fortune in his hold. It entered the head of one of these men to carry ice instead of ballast, and run to Calcutta. The Calcutta people were so taken by surprise that before the ice could be distributed, one-fourth was melted; but the rest brought six cents per lb., which was better than ballast. The next time the customers were more ready; and the price rose to ten cents. Since that time, the exportation of ice has become a lucrative trade; and the lovely “ponds” of Massachusetts afford a field of industry in winter, as striking as the scene of pleasure when the young people go sleighing. The pick and the saw are heard on the ice, as well as the bells of the sleighs, and the laughter of human voices. The celebrated Salem Museum carries one back to old times. It is the pride of every skipper and supercargo to bring home something worthy of a place in the museum; and it used to be the aspiration of every master of a ship to become a member of the Museum Company by having doubled the Capes of Good Hope and Horn. That feat is now so common that some other qualification is probably added by this time. The Salem houses are peculiar in their adornments; rare and fantastic shells, Polynesian matting, shining hempen fabrics from the eastern archipelago, Chinese products in greater variety than the English have supposed to exist, Chinese caricatures of the Dutch in metal, Hindoo idols, and so on, without end.

The great Representative Man among American merchants was, however, not from New England; and we are accustomed to associate his name with New York. He was, however, a German by birth, though his reputation is altogether American.

John Jacob Astor was born near Heidelberg; and there seemed no reason why he should not live and die a German peasant farmer, except his own strong impression that he should be a great man some day. He was one of Nature’s speculators; and his mind shaped his destiny. He went, while still a youth, to London, and earned enough to purchase a handful of commodities with which to cross to America, at the close of the revolution,—a brother being already there. The particular direction of his enterprise was determined by his being delayed, like the passengers of