MERCANTILE PROBITY.

THERE is no figure more common and expressive by which the experiences of human life are grouped and portrayed, than that which represents it as a sea, or as a voyage across a turbulent ocean. We know not how many centuries old this simile may be, or with what generation or race it originated. Trite as it may sound to the ear, or seem to the eye on paper, it bids fair to go down to the last year of time, carrying with it unchanged, every feature of its original significance. As the sea, to the last pulsation of its mighty bosom, shall be subject to all the alternations of calm and tempest, to midnight winds and breezeless noons, so human life, to its last heartbeat on earth, shall encounter the old, swift vicissitudes, that have swept across the uncharted waters of man's experience from the beginning. Unseen dangers, like sunken rocks, will lie in his course to the last; quick storms will arise which the barometer of his best wisdom will be too slow to indicate; the lee-ward drift of temptation will draw him toward shipwreck

and ruin; calms anon will collapse his sails and leave him motionless on a still flood of indolence. These analogies are so numerous and so fully recognised and established by the observation and testimony of a hundred generations, that they may sound in the ears of the multitude as truisms too hackneyed by use to please a refined literary taste, or to comport with an elegant style or diction. But there is one of these analogies that should be pressed, with all its pointed lessons of instruction, upon every class of the community, especially upon that great and influential section of it which stands at the helm of the mercantile and financial interests of the country. There never was a moment in the history of this nation when these lessons were more needed than now, or when so many auxiliary influences were ready and working, to give them invaluable and permanent effect upon the life of business men. Sudden and swift as the typhoon or tornado, came the whirlwind that wrecked and scattered the earthly fortunes and hopes of thousands, at their full spread and promise. Like as the subtle infusion of some