THE ACADEMIC PROGRESSIVE READER. SIXTH BOOK. ROBERT AND WILLIAM CHAMBERS. PART I. THIS worthy pair of brothers were born in Peebles, of a family who had lived there from time immemorial. Latterly the heads of the family had been woollen manufacturers, substantial and respectable people, although living in a very plain way. The father of the brothers carried on the business of a cotton-spinner rather extensively, "having sometimes as many as 100 looms in his employment.' "Peebles, in the early years of this century," says Robert Chambers, 66 was eminently a quiet place." "As quiet as the grave or Peebles" is a phrase used by Cockburn. It had an old town and a new town, and the inhabitants were a simple race, living in "buts and bens," and sleeping in "box-beds" so close as almost to stifle their inmates. It was in a small burgh with such original inhabitants, that the father of the brothers began housekeeping in 1799, having just married Miss Jean Gibson, a woman of whom it is the best praise to say "that both in appearance and manners she was by nature a lady, and that circumstances made her a heroine. Though delicate in frame and with generally poor health, such," says her son, "was her tact and dexterity as well as her determined resolution, that she bore and overcame trials under which other women would have sunk." As for their father, he can best be described as always waiting for something to "turn up," and ever finding it "turn up," through his own weakness, the wrong way. Like many other characters who bring ruin on themselves and others, he was not undeserving of regard. He possessed numerous estimable qualities, but in association with these a pliancy of disposition which renders a man his own worst enemy. He was "conscientious, but inconsiderate, easily misled, lacking fortitude, and constantly exposed to imposition." He was an untiring performer on the German flute, which divided his affections with a telescope. His convivial turn led him into such society as the burgh afforded, and it is hardly to be wondered at, that, between this and his flute and his telescope, his cotton business began to go to the dogs, and, once going, rapidly came to nothing. Besides these shortcomings of the man, there were other agencies at work sufficient to cause ruin; the introduction of the power-loom revolutionized the cotton trade; down and down sank handloom weaving, and with it a lucrative commission business which the elder Chambers carried on. Ever sanguine, he alienated some house property, and set up as a draper, when the finishing blow to his success in Peebles was dealt by the departure of a large number of French prisoners, to whom he had given unjustifiable credit. On the eve of their return to their native country, those light-hearted sons of France swore that nothing could give them more pleasure than to pay their debts when they got home. We need scarcely say that they went, but not one of them ever paid a farthing. Then came a crisis in the affairs of Mr. Chambers; his estate was wound up, to the small benefit of either his creditors or himself, the lawyers getting, as usual, the |