Douglas Jerrold, in his amusing book, "Cakes and Ale," quotes an exquisite essay written to prove the sufficiency of thirty pounds a-year for all a man's daily wants and comforts--allowing at least five shillings a quarter for the conversion of the Jews--and in which every outlay is so nicely calculated, that it must be wilful eccentricity if the pauper gentleman, at the end of the year, either owes a shilling or has one. To say the least of it, this is close shaving; and, as I detest experimental philosophy, I'd rather not try it. At the same time, in this age of general glut, when all professions are overstocked--when you might pave the Strand with parsons' skulls, and thatch your barn with the surplus of the college of physicians; when there are neither waste lands to till and give us ague and typhus, nor war to thin us--what are we to do? The subdivision of labour in every walk in life has been carried to its utmost limits: if it takes nine tailors to make a man, it takes nine men to make a needle. Even in the learned professions, as they are called, this system is carried out; and as you have a lawyer for equity, another for the Common Pleas, a third for the Old Bailey, &c, so your doctor, now-a-days, has split up his art, and one man takes charge of your teeth, another has the eye department, another the ear, a fourth looks after your corns; so that, in fact, the complex machinery of your structure strikes you as admirably adapted to give employment to an ingenious and anxious population, who, until our present civilization, never dreamed of morselling out mankind for their benefit.
As to commerce, our late experiences have chiefly pointed to the pleasure of trading with nations who will not pay their debts,--like the Yankees. There is, then, little encouragement in that quarter. What then remains I scarcely know. The United Services are pleasant, but poor things by way of a provision for life. Coach-driving, that admirable refuge for the destitute, has been smashed by the railroads; and there is a kind of prejudice against a man of family sweeping the crossings. For my own part, I lean to something dignified and respectable--something that does not compromise "the cloth," and which, without being absolutely a sinecure, never exacts any undue or extraordinary exertion,--driving a hearse, for instance: even this, however, is greatly run upon; and the cholera, at its departure, threw very many out of employment. However, the question is, what can a man of small means do with his son? Short whist is a very snug thing--if a man have natural gifts,--that happy conformation of the fingers, that ample range of vision, that takes in everything around. But I must not suppose these by any means general--and I legislate for the mass. The turf has also the same difficulties,--so has toad-eating; indeed these three walks might be included among the learned professions.