'THE SUCCESSFUL MERCHANT.'


Under this title has lately been produced a novelty in our literature,
the memoirs of an eminent commercial man.[2] Samuel Budgett died in
May 1851, at the age of fifty-seven. Though starting in life without
capital or credit, he had, by the sheer exercise of his own innate
qualities, risen to the head of one of the most colossal _concerns_ in
England. Had he been merely a clever bargainer, and a skilful
organiser of business arrangements, there might have been some value
in his memoirs, as a guidance to young mercantile aspirants; but
Budgett was something more than all this, and his biography serves the
far higher purpose of shewing how a man may be at once a most adroit
merchandiser, and a man of liberal practice, and a true lover of his
kind. Let it not be supposed that he was a _soft_ man, who had
prospered through some lucky accident. He really was a thorough-paced
follower of the maxim which recommends buying in the cheapest and
selling in the dearest market: he was reputed as _keen_ in business.
But he was also kind-hearted and high-principled, and it is this union
of remarkable qualities which gives his memoirs their best value.

Mr Budgett was a general provision-merchant at Bristol, with also a
large warehouse at Kingswood Hill, where his private residence was.
His biographer presents him as he came daily into town to attend to
business. 'You might have often seen driving into Bristol, a man under
the middle size, verging towards sixty, wrapped up in a coat of deep
olive, with gray hair, an open countenance, a quick brown eye, and an
air less expressive of polish than of push. He drives a phaeton, with
a first-rate horse, at full speed. He looks as if he had work to do,
and had the art of doing it. On the way, he overtakes a woman carrying