frequent changes in the rate of discount are among the most serious of misfortunes. We have however arrived at a time when the wonderful development of our banking system, the complete organisation for the collection and clearing not only of cheques on London but on country banks, and the consequent extension of banking accounts among traders and private persons of small means, has reduced the bank-note, whether metropolitan or local, into a place of very inferior importance compared with Deposits and the employment of cheques. The banking obligations on deposits in the United Kingdom are several hundred times greater than the obligations on bank-notes; and the time has come for specially considering and recognising this change. It is one of the gravest defects of the scheme of 1844, as it effects both London and the country -especially in Scotland and Ireland-that it exalts and protects the bank-note at the expense of the depositors. It is not to be denied that the bank-note as passing from hand to hand is entitled to some privilege. It has for example been suggested that, in the event of the insolvency of the issuer of bank-notes, the holders of them should have a pre-emptive claim on his estate before all other creditors to the extent of perhaps ten shillings in the pound. And this is precisely one of the points which could be best dealt with by a Commission. In the progress and development of credit and banking organisation in a small compact trading country like our own, it is wholesome and natural that inferior and primitive forms of circulation and circulating credit should be thrown into the shade by inventions and appliances more powerful and efficacious. It is little more than two hundred years since we thoroughly established an efficient and honest metallic coinage. We then gradually and with much caution set up the bank-note. About a hundred years ago we began to use cheques or orders on bankers; but it was only within the last fifteen years that the law relating to this class of negotiable instruments-the most admirable and elastic of all of our contrivances-has been consistently settled. The order of our progress has been therefore in this wise-first coin, rude, dishonest, and subject to perpetual debasement by the sovereign; then coin of admitted integrity, and consisting of the most convenient denominations; then bank-notes; then current accounts and deposits with bankers, operated upon by orders or cheques. Each step was a great economical advance upon the preceding one; and by means of the Clearing House we are making rapid approaches to a state of things in which nearly every important payment is accomplished by a mere book transfer. Bills Bills of exchange have grown in extent and completeness pari passu with the banking system. There is one other special point which should be dealt with at an early period-we mean the practice (for there is no law on the subject) of the Bank of England only changing its minimum rate of discount in pursuance of a public notice promulgated most usually on the Thursday after the meeting of the Court. To suppose that any minimum rate proclaimed on particular days and left unchanged very often for months together can accurately represent the value of the most sensitive of all commodities-floating capital seeking employment in discounts in London-is so foolish that it cannot be discussed. The rates vary from day to day and from hour to hour, and the whole problem would be much simplified if the Bank of England would conform to the practice of its competitors great and small, and abandon a usage which originated in accident, and has been kept up because it has become a tradition to keep it up. Let the Bank of England fix its terms as much above the market as it pleases, -that is a question which it must decide for itself; but let the formula of a published rate be abandoned. During October and November last the published rate was utterly at variance with the market rate, and the confusion and misunderstanding were endless. The open market in London has now become so much more powerful than the Bank of England, except in critical times, that a delusion is only kept alive by the Bank affecting even to regulate that which it certainly cannot control-and delusions in banking and finance carry with them an active principle of mischief. The natural index of the value of capital in London for mercantile purposes are the rates which bankers and bill-brokers will give on deposits; and as these establishments carry on a perfectly open trade, subject to competition from all quarters, there is no danger of the public suffering from the extortions of monopoly. If the formula of the published minimum rate was given up, the bankers and brokers, imitating examples elsewhere, would from time to time settle, by means of a committee or meeting, a schedule of rates to be allowed till further notice; and this schedule would be employed for all the questions at present determined on the basis of the official rate. We have by design confined this discussion to purely practical purposes, to the avoidance of controversies and theories. We entertain a deep sense of the urgent necessity for an official investigation by competent persons under definite responsibility; for we are convinced that the very groundwork of the present state state of things has become radically shifted and undermined by the organic changes of the nearly thirty years which have elapsed since it was put in force, in spite of the remonstrances and arguments of some of the ablest and most independent financial authorities that ever lived in this or any other country. ART. VI.-The Life of Charles Dickens. FOR By John Forster. London, 1872. NOR upwards of three-and-thirty years Mr. Forster was the incessant companion and confidential adviser of Dickens, the friend to whom he had recourse in every difficulty, personal and literary, and before whom he spread without reserve every fold of his mind. No man's life can ever have been better known to a biographer. The book has appeared while numerous intimates and acquaintances of Dickens survive who can pronounce on the use Mr. Forster has made of his advantages, and say whether any significant feature is omitted, exaggerated, or softened. To us it appears that a more faithful biography could not be written. The testimony which Sir Joshua Reynolds bore to 'Boswell's Life of Johnson,' that every word of it might be depended upon as if given on oath,' is true of Mr. Forster's work. Dickens is seen in his pages precisely as he showed in his ordinary intercourse, with the accession of honour which accrues to him from the story of his boyhood and youth. It was always. supposed that he had told much of his early history in 'David Copperfield.' Mr. Forster has separated the facts from the fiction, and completely as the two coincide for a while the real life had a sequel to which there is nothing comparable in the tale. Since the annals of literature contain few more remarkable narratives, we shall endeavour to extract from Mr. Forster's volume the leading incidents which fashioned the genius of Dickens. In epitomising the opening portion of his career we shall keep to his essential qualities, without regard to the accidental adjuncts which had no root in his nature. Many youthful traits in all persons appertain to their years, and not to their disposition. Careless observers frequently mistake the attributes of childhood for the bent of the particular child, and are severe upon foibles, which are as certain to be shed with time as the first set of teeth. Sometimes a circumstance belongs jointly to the era of life and the custom of the generation. The young contemporaries of Dickens resembled their successors in seasoning their talk and letters with familiar expressions for which no authority authority can be found in Johnson's Dictionary.' The usage breaks out in the early letters of Dickens, and in a few years it ceases. Such passing habits are the conventional practice of a period, and do not throw any light upon the tastes of the individual. 'I am no more ashamed,' said Southey, of having been a republican than of having been a boy,' and the lively remark has a wide application. Characters would often be absolutely falsified if we were to judge them by the grave belief or playful absurdity which is born of the time, and dies with it. Charles Dickens, the son of John Dickens, a clerk in the navy pay-office, was born at Landport in Portsea, February 7, 1812. His father, then stationed at Portsmouth, was removed to London when Charles was two years old, and, when he was between four and five, to Chatham. The lad was taught English and a little Latin by his mother; was next sent to a day-school kept by a mistress, and, at the age of seven, to an academy kept by a Baptist minister, Mr. Giles. He remained there till he was nine. At this period his father was transferred from Chatham to Somerset House, and the schooling came to an end. The few years of childhood which had passed over Charles had already determined the direction of his mind. His genius had been put upon its proper track, and in the particulars which constituted his peculiar distinction the training for his future eminence proceeded without a pause. Two things in childhood met happily together in him—a natural faculty, and the external influences which were best adapted to develop and enrich it. One predominant element in this faculty was a habit of observation singularly keen, and which was awakened in him so early that, in his manhood, he remembered the scenes he had left when he was two years old. Dr. Johnson's memory stretched back to the age of two years and a half; but of particular events he says, 'I know not whether I remember the thing, or the talk of it.' Some of the circumstances which Dickens noticed in his infancy were too exclusively incidental to his own feelings to have been picked up at second hand. They were, beyond doubt, the genuine recollections of a mind which began to take intelligent cognisance of surrounding objects at a time when they mostly flit lightly over the senses, and are too little heeded to leave any permanent trace. His scrutinising instinct went on enlarging its range of operations with his growth, and before he was taken from Chatham he had become an indefatigable investigator of human nature, noting with ceaseless watchfulness the virtues, foibles, and oddities, of the people around him. He was none the less a student in the science which fell to his province that his pursuit was was an intuitive propensity, carried on without any settled intention or conscious end. His education suited his natural gifts. He was sickly, and incapable of sharing much in games. A government clerk with several children could not indulge him in expensive forms of recreation, and he had to depend for nearly the whole of his amusement upon reading. The genius of fiction, watching over his destiny, could not have selected for him more appropriate works than filled his father's book-shelf, on which were ranged the masterpieces of Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith, and De Foe; the Arabian Nights,' Don Quixote,' and 'Gil Blas;' the essays of Addison and Johnson, and the collection of farces edited by Mrs. Inchbald. He devoured this library once and again. The characters were to him a living world, and he peopled the actual world with the phantoms. The church, the barn, the alehouse of Chatham, and its environs, appeared in his fancy to be the very scene of the adventures told in 'Tom Jones,''Peregrine Pickle,' Roderick Random,' and the rest. He loved in his day-dreams to imagine himself one or other of these heroes, and he invested the rigours of his school-boy life with the radiant colours he borrowed from fiction. Thus the books which were the companions of his play-hours came to the aid of his precocious observation, and rendered it more precocious still. He looked at the people amongst whom he lived through the searching eyes of De Foe, and Fielding, and Smollett, and Cervantes. He could not yet comprehend all their profound and subtle traits, but they taught him to see both further and deeper. He did more than extend his knowledge of human nature. In blending the fictions of his favourite novelists with the localities and facts of his personal history he was learning to use the materials he accumulated. He was daily constructing miniature romances, composed in part of his own experience, and in part of the stories which had captivated his imagination. There could be no more effectual method than this intermixture to teach him the mature skill of his predecessors. Their style alone would have made them invaluable instructors, for most of his authors were models of pure, easy, vigorous, or graceful English. The first stage of his life terminated with his removal from Chatham to London in 1821. His fortuitous education had hitherto turned out as propitious as if he had been bound a regular apprentice to his craft. The second stage was sorrowful and chilling, but in some respects was signally advantageous. The Government clerk had six children, and needed to practise severe economy. He was, on the contrary, free in his expendi ture, |