Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: https://books.google.com/books/about/
The_Forgery.html?id=vZAVAAAAYAAJ
(Harvard College)
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].

THE FORGERY;

OR,

BEST INTENTIONS.

BY G. P. E. JAMES, ESQ.

LONDON:

SIMMS AND M'INTYRE,

PATERNOSTER ROW; AND DONEGALL STREET, BELFAST.

1853.

THE FORGERY.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

One of the finest characters in the world was the old English merchant. We may and have improved upon many things, but not upon that. A different spirit reigns in commerce from that which ruled it long ago, and not a better one. We are more the shopkeeper, as a celebrated but not a great man called us, and less the merchant. As a people, our commerce is more extended, but the separate transactions are smaller; and minute dealings almost always produce paltry minds. Not at all do I mean to say that the old English merchant is without his representatives; but they are fewer than in other times, both with reference to our numbers and to our extended trade.

There are many still, however, whose notions are as vast and as just as those of any of our ancestors; and amongst them, not very long ago, was a gentleman of the name of Humphrey Scriven. He was a highly-educated and naturally-gifted man, the son of wealthy and respectable parents in a class of society peculiar to England--the untitled country gentry; and he had been originally intended for the church. Circumstances, however, are to most men fate. He became acquainted, by some mere accident, with the only daughter of a rich merchant--admired, loved her, and won her love in return. He was a younger son; but, nevertheless, her father was a kind and liberal man, and he consented to their marriage upon one condition: that Mr. Scriven should abandon his intention of entering the church, and become a merchant like himself. He fancied that he had perceived in the young man a peculiar aptitude for business, and he was not mistaken. Mr. Scriven became his son-in-law, his partner, and his successor; and well did he bear up the name and honour of the house.

It was a fine thing to see him, some twenty years after his marriage, when, with the business of the day over, he sat in his splendid house in St. James's Square, surrounded by his family, and often associated with the noblest and the proudest of the land. His wife was no longer living, but she had left him four very handsome children. She had herself been remarkably beautiful, and her husband was as fine a looking man as eye could see--tall, graceful, vigorous, and possessing that air of dignity which springs from dignity of mind. From the moment that five o'clock struck, Mr. Scriven cast off all thought and care of business; for, though there were, of course, with him as with other men engaged in similar pursuits, fluctuations and changes, bad speculations, failing debtors, and wrecked ships, still his transactions were too extensive for the loss of a few thousand pounds here or there to weigh upon his mind; and, being of a cheerful and happy disposition, he spread sunshine through his dwelling.

His family, at the time of which I speak, consisted of three daughters and one son, who was born some four or five years after the youngest sister. The daughters were all lovely, kind, affectionate, and gentle in disposition, very much alike in person, and so nearly of an age that it was difficult to tell which was the eldest. There was indeed some difference in character, in point of force and vigour of reason, but the spirit and the heart were the same. Maria, the eldest, was a girl of much good sense, but of a very humble appreciation of her own qualities and advantages. She thought little of her beauty and less of her wealth, and her humility mere worldly-minded people looked upon as weakness. Isabella, the second, though neither haughty nor presuming, was of a far more decided and independent nature; but Margaret, the third, was all gentle kindness, with much less mere intellect than either of her sisters. She had sense enough and principle enough never to do anything that was wrong, but not enough worldly wisdom to guard her own interests against her affections. The son was at this time a boy of fifteen--a sharp, clever lad, who had been a good deal petted by his mother, and had been taught by circumstances to attach more importance to the possession of wealth than it deserves.

In great things Mr. Scriven seldom made mistakes; in small ones he often did; and one of his mistakes was in not looking upon trifles in education as important. Perhaps it is there alone that they really are important; for every idea received in youth has a vast development in maturity. The seed may be small and insignificant in appearance; but, once sown, it is sure to grow, and may spread to a great tree.

The father destined his boy to succeed him in his counting-house. Though very wealthy, he had no inclination that his son should spend the fruit of his ancestors' labours in idleness. He had a great idea of the dignity of commerce; and Henry Scriven was taught from his earliest years that he was to be a merchant. He was educated with that view, and early initiated into business matters. Could Mr. Scriven himself have given up his time and attention to the lad, he might have acquired, with all the practical details, great views and noble purposes; but his father's time was necessarily greatly occupied, and he also felt some doubts as to his parental fondness leaving his judgment room to act in the case of his own child. At the age of fifteen, then, he sent him to receive the rudiments of a mercantile education with the correspondent of his house at Hamburg. This correspondent was known to be a good man of business, but he was no more than that; and pinning his pupil down to small details, and accustoming him to his own limited views of commerce, he narrowed all his habits of thought, while he gave vast development to certain germs of selfishness which were in the boy's own nature. His principles were always to gain something off every transaction; never to leave a penny unproductive; to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market; to look to his pence, knowing that his pounds would take care of themselves; and, being a merchant, to regard everything with a mercantile eye. He held that no merchant should marry till he could retire from business. Indeed, he regarded marriage, like everything else, as "a transaction," and one quite incompatible with the conduct of a great commercial house. Such lessons always have their effect--the pupil sometimes going beyond, sometimes falling short of his master.

What were the impressions produced upon Henry Scriven will be seen very soon; but, in the mean time, his eldest sister, Maria, married. She made her own choice, and that without ambition having any share in it. The gentleman whom she selected was amiable, somewhat eccentric, but a man of high honour and much feeling. He was the second son of one of Mr. Scriven's oldest friends and fellow-merchants, and Maria's father had but one objection. It had been arranged that Mr. Henry Marston was to go out to India, with a sufficient capital to establish a house in relation with that of his father in London. Mr. Scriven did not like the idea of his daughter going to India at all; but he knew that people are the only judges of their own happiness; and, as Maria had made up her mind, he threw no impediment in the way. Shortly after Henry