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Capital conduces greatly to increase the power of productive industry; and the different branches of it are more or less productive, in proportion as capital is made to perform more or less of the work in the process of production.

In agriculture, the fertility of the soil and the implements of husbandry ;-in the fisheries, the vessels, boats, and fishingtackle ;-in manufactures, the machinery and the powers of nature, by which it is made to work ;-in the mechanic arts, the tools of the workmen ;-and in commerce, the money which takes off the surplus products of the preceding branches, and replaces to them the cost of production with a profit, together with the shipping employed in the transport and distribution of these products-all afford exemplifications of the manner in which capital operates to facilitate and accelerate production.

With the increase of production, circulating capital is first increased; and as this increases, so does the income, and with that the value of fixed capital increases.

These two kinds of capital are not convertible into each other by the simple exchange of one for the other. When a merchant quits trade and enters into manufacture, he does not thereby convert his circulating capital into fixed; his circulating capital goes into other hands, and he gets a fixed capital in manufacture in exchange for it. So when a farmer enters into trade, or a trader into agriculture, they do not transfer their capitals from one employment to the other; but their capitals acquire other owners, and remain as before, while they acquire other capitals in exchange.

It is not by exchanging capital in one employment for capital in another that the profits of capital in different employments are equalized; but it is through the employment of labour, by which the relative quantities of the different capitals are changed, that the profits on the different employments of them find their level. When capital in manufacture yields more income than capital in commerce, the commercial capital is employed through the means of labour to increase the manufacturing capital, until the incomes from both become equal. But though the manufacturing capital is augmented by these means, the general circulating capital is not thereby diminished. The money paid for labour is not consumed; and the necessary consumption of the labourer is the same as though he were not thus employed.

The income from fixed capital is increased by the increase in quantity of all those commodities of which the circulating capital is composed, and it is reduced by the reduction of these commodities.

The value of fixed capital, or its nominal amount, rises and falls with the rise and fall of its income.

It therefore follows that every person, whose capital is in real estate, or fixed property, is interested in encouraging the production of exchangeable commodities in all branches of industry, as the only means by which the incomes of their estates can be increased, and, with the increase of the incomes, the value of the estates enhanced.

And the most effectual means of encouraging to increased production in existing branches, are by promoting the establishment of new ones, which will excite to greater activity in all.

(To be continued.)

H. C.

THE LAY MONASTERY.

Valentine Writing.

Many precious rites

And customs of our rural ancestry

Are gone, or stealing from us; this I hope

Will last forever.

WORDSWORTH.

I HAVE always been a curious inquirer into the origin of the pleasantries and quaint customs of ancient holydays. As often as the merry festival of Christmas comes round, and "in the hinder end of harvest" the cheerful joys of All-Hallowmas Eve, I love to sit down and think whence sprung the superstitions connected with these festive times, of which so little is known in our country. My childish fancy was long ago awakened by reading of the funeral procession of St Mark's Eve, when the forms of those, who are to die within the year walk at midnight through the church-yard and disappear one by one in the chancel. The strange little ballads, too, and old tales of Robin Goodfellow, and fairies, and hobgoblins have been familiar to me from my schoolboy days. I believed in their moonlight revels and in the faint circle left upon the green grass under the copse, where their feet had trodden;-and I gave my solemn faith to the opinion, that the only way to sleep secure from them was to lie crosslegged, like the effigies of Knights Templars and Crusaders. This was a childish credulity, and has passed away from me; but the spirit of curiosity, which then led me to peep into those mysterious things, has not passed away with it. I still love to indulge in conjectures upon the superstitious beliefs and observances of mankind,—not only because it carries me back again to the fulness and freshness of youthful feelings, but because those feelings are not so effaced within me, as to retain no longing and sighing after their first love. Having thus been from my youth up a kind of arrant poacher in the rich fields of legend and romance,

it is not strange that I should find it a pleasure even now,-when riper years have made me sceptical upon many points of my former belief,-to look into those ancient things, which I should be looking and searching into, were I young again.

There is something about St Valentine's day which always pleased me. The Old Winter festival comes round to us in a comfortless season,-warming our hearts with kindly feelings and generous love. There is something so pleasant, too, in its simple ceremonies-so full of sweet pastime as they are- -keeping our feelings in cheerful play, and uniting in themselves the romance of poetry with the true love of real life. Poetry, like love, is a passion in young hearts. It is the first bursting forth of holy and happy feelings,-the first language of that affectionate enthusiasm which has sprung up within them. It may be that a familiarity with the beautiful semblances of poetry can lead the hearts of the young to love what is nearest allied to these forms on earth. It is no marvel then, that the lineaments of female beauty, and the changing shades of meaning which pass over the human countenance, should have drawn forth the sweet music of poetry from those who were happy enough to find within themselves deep springs of feeling and of language. Nor is it strange that such a rich-toned instrument should have won the ear of beauty. But the world has said of poets,

"The silent heavens have goings-on;

The stars have tasks,-but these have none !

It may be so at times; but it is not so on Valentine's day. The pleasant ceremonies of that season are well described by Hurdis, as follows:

The day Saint Valentine,
When maids are brisk, and at the break of day
Start up and turn their pillows, curious all
To know what happy swain the fates provide,
A mate for life. Then follows thick discharge
Of true-love knots and sonnets nicely penned,
But to the learned critic's eye no verse,
But prose distracted.

In respect to the origin of these observances, little can be said that is worth saying. Valentine was an ancient Presbyter of the Christian Church, and suffered martyrdom at Rome, under Claudius II. in the third century, being beaten with clubs, and afterwards beheaded. Some persons, who probably think with Lord Shaftesbury that "we can admire nothing profoundly without a kind of religious veneration"-have associated the holy devotion of the day with the feelings and expressions of an earthly love, and trace back its yearly commemoration to the times of the martyr's death;-as if the songs of our modern Troubadours

had any thing to do with martyrdom. Poor Pegasus is indeed most sadly beaten on Parnassus, and many a muse beheaded in the immolating spirit of that day!-This is the martyrdom of modern times.

Speaking of the custom of writing billets-doux on this day, Mr Hutchinson says, "The first inventor of this custom must have been some benevolent female, who studied to encourage the intercourse of the sexes; for by such means intimacies might arise productive of love and marriage engagements." This explanation of the origin of the ceremonies attending Valentine's day is neither full nor satisfactory; but as I have not room to pursue these speculations farther in this paper, I shall close with a specimen or two of these "sonnets nicely penned," which were given me by the ladies to whom they were addressed. The first is from a slighted wooer, who evidently had a dash of enthusiasm in his composition. The lady from whom I received it, assured me that it was a very melancholy and dolorous little ditty, and an old friend of mine-a bachelor-thought it quite too solemn for so joyful an occasion, as that of a man's getting well out of one of love's by-paths.

Lady! if a poor child of song
May ask awhile thy serious ear,
And he that wooed thy love so long,
Can find a willing listener here,—
I have a tale to tell thee now
Of blighted heart and broken vow.
Aye, of a heart in bright hours cleft,
As cities sacked by day are left;-
A life, that wearing to a close
Low in its socket starts and glows :-
Of one whose love should merit thine,
Dying, a slighted Valentine.
Lady!-tomorrow's sun will see
Life's cheerful banquet closed for me;
But changing sun and shower shall long
Pass o'er the voiceless child of song,
Ere carved stone where he sleeps secure

Shall say "Here rests a Troubadour."

The grave!-the grave!-'t is the last altar
To which our weary feet can falter !

Its fire gone out-its censer cold-
Its ashes mingling with earth's mould!
Farewell!-for me 't is sweet to die,

When thine own life is blessed thereby.

To me there seems to be more jingle than common-sense in these things;-I shall therefore add but one more piece from the collection before me. The following would not, in the orthodoxy of poetical gallants, be considered a Valentine; and I do not

transcribe it as a specimen of this kind of writing; but rather because I can trace in it a greater beauty and delicacy of sentiment than is generally wrought into the texture of modern love-songs,

ON A LOCK OF HAIR.

As from his shrine the pilgrim brings
Some relic of its holy things,
That it may keep on memory's page
The record of his pilgrimage,—
So he who holier days remembers,-
Till life is quenched in its own embers
Will cherish, with religious zeal,
The gift, where love has set his zeal.

The purple robe,-the bright rich gem,-
The sceptre-throne-and diadem,—
Yes-all life's pomp and pageantry
Are but poor things for one like me :-
But this sweet gift,-this little token
Of love that never will be broken,
This frail memorial of bright days
I'll keep till life itself decays!

It is time to close these desultory speculations; and I do it with a
hope, that when Valentine's day comes round again, its bards will
celebrate it with more of the true feeling of love, and less of an
affected devotion.
THE LAY MONK.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

INSCRIPTION.

Stranger, if thou hast ever blessed the shade,
That lent thee shelter from the sun or rain,
Thou wilt not rest thee underneath this elm
Without a sense of gratitude. The boughs,
That overshadow thee, have borne the brunt
Of centuries, and have records of the past
In all their whispering leaves. We cannot hear them
Telling their tales, through the long summer day,
To the cool west-wind, and have other thoughts,

Than of the generations, who have sat,

In long succession, on the mossy turf

That beds these twisted roots. Sunshine and calm,
Darkness and storm, have been around these boughs,
And they have smiled to the unclouded sky,

And rocked in the rude tempest, but have stood
Unbroken, while the stream of human life

Has ebbed and flowed like the perpetual tide,
And hardly left a trace upon its shores,

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