• 
 
 
 
 
 v^ 
 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BJ1611 .S64 1886 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029053713 
 
The Author's Revised and Enlarged Edition. 
 
 SELF-HELP; 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS OF 
 
 CHARACTER, CONDUCT, AND PERSEVERANCE. 
 
 By Samuel ^miles, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the LIFE OF GEORGE STEPHENSON AND OF HIS SON ROBERT 
 STEPHENSON," "THE HUGUENOTS," ETC 
 
 **This above all — To thine own self be true ; 
 And it must follow, as the night the day. 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 " Might I give counsel to any young man, I would say to him, try to frequent 
 the company of your betters. In books and in life, that is the most wholesome so- 
 ciety ; learn to admire rightly ; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what great 
 men admired ; they admired great things ; narrow spirits admire basely, and war- 
 ship meanly." — W, M. Thackeray. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
 
 Hi- 
 
By SAMUEL SMILES. 
 
 SELF-HELP ; with lllasWationB of Character, Condnct, and Perseverance. A 
 
 New Edition. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00 ; 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 
 OHABACTER. 12mo, Cloth, $1 00. 
 THRIFT. 12mo, Cloth, $100. 
 
 D0TT ; with Illastrations of Conrage, Patience, and Endurance. 12mo, Cloth, 
 $1 00 ; 4to, Paper, IS cents. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE HUGUENOTS. The Hngnenots: their Settlements, 
 Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland. With an Appendix 
 relating to the Huguenots in America. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 00. 
 
 THE HU&UBNOTS AFTER THE REVOCATION. The Hngnenots in 
 France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes : with a Visit to the 
 Country of the Vaudois. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $3 00. 
 
 LIFE OF THE STEPHEKSONS. The Life of George Stephenson, and of 
 his Son Robert Stephenson ; comprising, also, a History of the Invention 
 and Introduction of the Railway Locomotive, With Portraits and nu- 
 merous Illustrations. 8vo, Cloth, $3 00. 
 
 ROUND THE WORLD; including a Residence in Victoria, and a Journey 
 by Rail across North America. By a Boy. Edited by Saueel Suiles. 
 With Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, $1 SO. 
 
 LIFE OF A SCOTCH NATURALIST : Thomas Edward, Associate of the 
 Liunsean Society. 12mo, Cloth, $1 SO. 
 
 ROBERT DIOK. Robert Dick, Baker of Tlinrso ; Geologist and Botanist 
 Portrait and Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, $1 60. 
 
 JAMES NASMTTH. James Nasmyth, Engineer. An Autobiography. Ed- 
 ited by Sauuei. S.uili!b. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50 ; 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 
 
 PnBLiSHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 Sent by mail, postage pr^aid, to any part of the United States or Canada, 
 on receipt of the price. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THIS is a revised edition of a book which has al- 
 ready been received with considerable favor at 
 home and abroad. It has been reprinted in various 
 forms in America, translations have appeared in Dutch 
 and French, and others are about to appear in German 
 and Danish. The book has, doubtless, proved attract- 
 ive to readers in diflferent countries by reason of the 
 variety of anecdotal illustrations of life and character 
 which it contains, and the interest which all more or 
 less feel in the labors, the trials, the struggles, and the 
 achievements of others. No one can be better aware 
 than the author of its fragmentary character, 'arising 
 from the manner in which it was for the most part orig- 
 inally composed — having been put together princi- 
 pally from jottings made during many years — intend- 
 ed as readings for young men, and without any view 
 to publication. The appearance of this edition has fur- 
 nished an opportunity for pruning the volume of some 
 superfluous matter, and introducing various new illus- 
 trations, which will probably be found of general in- 
 terest. 
 
 In one' respect the title of the book, which it is now 
 too late to altei', has proved unfortunate, as it has led 
 soiae, who have judged it merely by the title, to sup- 
 pose that it consists of a eulogy of selfi^hji'jss : the 
 
VI Preface. 
 
 very opposite of what it really is — or at least of what 
 the author intended it to be. Although its chief ob- 
 ject unquestionably is to stimulate youths to apply 
 themselves diligently to right pursuits — sparing nei- 
 ther labor, pains, nor self-denial in prosecuting them — 
 and to rely upon their own efforts in life, rather than 
 depend upon the help or patronage of others, it will 
 also be found, from the examples given of literary and 
 scientific men, artists, inventors, educators, philanthro- 
 pists, missionaries, and martyrs, that the duty of lielp- 
 ing one's self in the highest sense involves the helping 
 of one's neighbors. 
 
 It has also been objected to the book, that too much 
 notice is taken in it of men who have succeeded in life 
 by helping themselves, and too little of the multitude 
 of men who liave failed. " Why should not Failure," 
 it has been asked, "have its Plutarch as well as Suc- 
 cess ?" There is, indeed, no reason why Failure should 
 not have its Plutarch, except that a record of mere 
 failure would probably be found excessively depressing 
 as well as uninstructive reading. It is, however, shown 
 in the following pages that Failure is the best disci- 
 pline of the true worker, by stimulating him to renew- 
 ed efforts, evoking his best powers, and carrying him 
 onward in self - culture, self-control, and growth in 
 knowledge and wisdom. Viewed in this light. Failure, 
 conquered by Perseverance, is always full of interest 
 and instruction, and this Ave have endeavored to illus- 
 trate by many examples. 
 
 As for Failure per se, although it may be well to find 
 consolations for it at the close of life, there is reason to 
 doubt whether it is an object that ought to be set be- 
 fore youth at the beginning of it. Indeed, " how 7iot 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 to do it " is of all things the easiest learnt : it needs 
 neither teaching, effort, self- denial, industry, patience, 
 perseverance, nor judgment. Besides, readers do not 
 care to know about the general who lost his battles, 
 the engineer -whose engines blew up, the architect who 
 designed only deformities, the painter who never got 
 beyond daubs, the schemer who did not invent his ma- 
 chine, the merchant who could not keep out of the Gar 
 zette. It is true, the best of men may fail, in the best 
 of causes. But even these best of men did not try to 
 fail, or regard their failure as meritorious ; on the con- 
 trary, they tried to succeed, and looked upon failure as 
 misfortune. Failure in any good cause is, however, 
 honorable, whilst success in any bad cause is merely 
 infamous. At the same time, success in the good cause 
 is unquestionably better than failure. But it is not 
 the result in any case that is to be regarded so much 
 as the aim and the effort, the patience, the courage, 
 and the endeavor with which desirable and worthy ob- 
 jects are pursued : — 
 
 " 'Tis not in mortals to command success ; 
 We will do more — desene it." 
 
 The object of the book briefly is, to re-inculcate these 
 old-fashioned but wholesome lessons — which perhaps 
 can not be too often urged — that youth must work in 
 order to enjoy — that nothing creditable can be accom- 
 plished without application and diligence — that the 
 student must not be daunted by difficulties, but con- 
 quer them by patience and perseverance — and that, 
 above all, he must seek elevation of character, without 
 which capacity is worthless and worldly success is 
 naught. If the author has not succeeded in illustra- 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 ting these lessons, he can only say that he has failed in 
 bis object. 
 
 Among the new passages introduced in the present 
 edition, may be mentioned the following : — Illustrious 
 Foreigners of humble origin (p. 32), French Generals 
 and Marshals risen from the ranks (34), De Tocqueville 
 on Mutual Help (46), William Lee, M.A., and the 
 -Stocking-loom (64), John Heathcoat, M.F., and the 
 Bobbin-net machine (69), Jacquard and his Loom (78), 
 Vaucanson (81), Joshua Heilmann and the Combing- 
 machine (85), Bernard Palissy and his struggles (92), 
 Bottgher, discoverer of Hard Porcelain (104), Count 
 de Buffon as Student (130), Cuvier (155), Ambrose 
 Pare (161), Claude Lorraine (189), Jacques Callot 
 (191), Benvenuto Cellini (192), Nicholas Poussin (197), 
 Ary Scheffer (200), the Strutts of Belper (245), Francis 
 Xavier (269), Napoleon as a man of business (807), In- 
 trepidity of Deal Boatmen (435), besides numerous oth- 
 er passages which it is unnecessary to specify. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 r |">HE origin of this book may be briefly told. 
 -'- Some fifteen years since, the author was request 
 ed to deliver an address before the members of some 
 evening classes, which had been formed in a northern 
 town for mutual improvement, under the following cir- 
 cumstances : — 
 
 Two or three young men of the humblest rank re- 
 solved to meet in the winter evenings, for the purpose 
 of improving themselves by exchanging knowledge 
 with each other. Their first meetings were held in the 
 room of a cottage in which one of the members lived ; 
 and, as others shortly joined them, the place soon be- 
 came inconveniently filled. When summer set in, they 
 adjourned to the cottage garden outside ; and the class- 
 es were then held in the open air, round a little board- 
 ed hut used as a garden-house, in which those who of- 
 ficiated as teachers set the sums and gave forth the 
 lessons of the evening. When the weather was fine, 
 the youths might be seen, until a late hour, hanging 
 round the door of the hut like a cluster of bees ; but 
 sometimes a sudden shower of rain would dash the 
 sums from their slates, and disperse them for the even- 
 ing unsatisfied. 
 
 Winter, with its cold nights, was drawing near, and 
 what were they to do for shelter ? Their numbers had 
 
 1* 
 
X 
 
 Introduction to the First Edition. 
 
 \iY this time so increased, that no room of an ordinary 
 cottage could accommodate them. Though they were 
 for the most part young men earning comparatively 
 small weekly wages, they resolved to incur the risk of 
 hiring a room ; and, on making inquiry, they found a 
 large dingy apartment to let, which had been used as 
 a temporary Cholera Hospital. No tenant could be 
 found for the place, which was avoided as if a plague 
 still clung to it. But the mutual-improvement youths, 
 nothing daunted, hired the cholera-room at so much a 
 week, lit it up, placed a few benches and a deal table 
 in it, and began their winter classes. The place soon 
 presented a busy and cheerful appearance in the even- 
 ings. The teaching may have been, as no doubt it 
 was, of a very rude and imperfect sort ; but it was 
 done with a will. Those who knew a little taught 
 those who knew less — improving themselves while they 
 improved the others ; and, at all events, setting before 
 them a good working example. Thus these youths — 
 and there were also grown men amongst them — pro- 
 ceeded to teach themselves and each other reading and 
 writing, arithmetic and geography ; and even mathe- 
 matics, chemistry, and some of the modern languages. 
 About a hundred young men had thus come togeth- 
 er, when, growing ambitious, they desired to have lec- 
 tures delivered to them ; and then it was that the au- 
 thor became acquainted with their proceedings. A 
 party of them waited on him for the purpose of invit- 
 ing him to deliver an introductory address, or, as they 
 expressed it, "to talk to them a bit;" prefacing the 
 request by a modest statement of what they had done 
 and what they were doing. He could not fail to be 
 touched by the admirable self-helping spirit Avhich they 
 
Introduction to the First Edition. xi 
 
 had displayed ; and, though entertaining but slight 
 faith in popular lecturing, he felt that a few words of 
 encouragement, honestly and sincerely uttered, might 
 not be without some good eifect And in this spirit 
 he addressed Ihem on more than one occasion, citing 
 examples of what other men had done, as illustrations 
 of what each might, in a greater or less degree, do for 
 himself; and pointing out that their happiness and 
 well-being as individuals in after-life, must necessarily 
 depend mainly upon themselves — iipon their own dili- 
 gent self-culture, self-discipline, and self-control — and, 
 above all, on that honest and upright performance of 
 individual duty which is the glory of manly character. 
 
 There was nothing in the slightest degree new or 
 original in this counsel, which was as Old as the Proverbs 
 of Solomon, and possibly quite as familiar. But old- 
 fashioned though the advice tnay have been, it was 
 welcomed. The youths went forward in their course ; 
 worked on with energy and resolution; and, reaching 
 manliood, they went forth in various directions into the 
 world, where many of them now occupy positions of 
 trust and usefulness. Several years after the inci- 
 dents referred to, the subject was unexpectedly recalled 
 to the author's recollection by an evening visit from a 
 young man — apparently fresh from the work of a foun- 
 dry — who explained that he was now an employer of 
 labor and a thriving man ; and he was pleased to re- 
 member with gratitude the words spoken in all honesty 
 to him and to his fellow-pupils years before, and even 
 to attribute some measure of his success in life to the 
 endeavors which he had made to work up to their 
 Bpirit. 
 
 The author's personal interest having in this way 
 
xii Introduction to the First Editwn. 
 
 been attracted to the subject of Self-Help, he was ac- 
 customed to add to the memoranda from which he had 
 addressed these young men ; and to note down occa- 
 sionally in his leisure evening moments, after the hours 
 of business, the results of such reading, observation, and 
 experience of life, as he conceived to bear upon it. One 
 of the most prominent illustrations cited in his earlier 
 addresses, was that of George Stephenson, the engi- 
 neer ; and the original interest of the subject, as well as 
 the special facilities and opportunities which the au- 
 thor possessed for illustrating Mr. Stephenson's life and 
 career, induced him to prosecute it at his leisure, and 
 eventually to publish his biography. The present vol- 
 ume is written in a similar spirit, as it has been similar 
 in its origin. The illustrative sketches of character in- 
 troduced are, however, necessarily less elaborately treat- 
 ed — ^bfeing busts rather than full-length portraits, and, 
 in many of the cases, only some striking feature has 
 been noted ; the lives of individuals, as indeed of na- 
 tions, often concentrating their lustre and interest in a 
 few passages. Such as the book is, the author now 
 leaves it in the hands of the reader ; in the hopes that 
 the lessons of industiy, perseverance, and self-culture, 
 which it contains, will be found useful and instructive^ 
 RB well as generally interesting. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SELF-HELP — ^NATIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 Spirit of Self-help. — Institutions and Men. — Government a Reflex of 
 the Individualism of a Nation. — Csesarism and Self-help. — ^William 
 Dargan on Independence. — ^Patient Laborers in all Ranks. — Self- 
 help a Feature in the English Character. — ^Power of Example and 
 of Work in practical Education. — Value of Biographies. — Great 
 Men belong to no exclusive Class or Rank. — Illustrious Men sprung 
 from the Ranks. — Shakspeare. — Various humble Origin of many 
 eminent Men. — Distinguished Astronomers. — Eminent Sons of 
 Clergymen. — Of Attorneys. — Illustrious Foreigners of htunble Or- 
 igin. — ^Vauquelin, the Chemist. — Promotions from the Ranks in the 
 French Army. — Instances of persevering Application and Energy. — 
 Joseph Brotherton. — W. J. Fox. — W. S. Lindsay. — ^William Jack- 
 son. — Richard Cobden. — Diligence indispensable to Usefulness and 
 Distinction. — The wealthier Ranks not all Idlers. — Examples. — Mil- 
 itary Men. — Philosophers. — Men of Science. — Politicians. — Lite- 
 rary Men.— Sir Robert Peel. — Lord Brougham. — Ljrtton. — Dis- 
 raeli. — Wordsworth on Self-reliance. — ^De Tocqueville : his Indus- 
 try and Recognition of the Help of Others. — Men their own test 
 Helpers Page 21 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 LBADEES OP INDUSTRY — INVENTORS AND PRODUCERS. 
 
 Iidustiy of the English People. — Work the best Educator. — Hugh 
 Miller. — Poverty and Toil not insurmountable Obstacles. — ^Work- 
 ing-men as Inventors. — Invention of the Steam-engine. — James 
 Watt : his Industry and Habit of Attention. — Matthew Boulton. — 
 Applications of the Steam-engine, — The Cotton Manufacture. — The 
 early Inventors. — Paul and Highs. — Arkwright : his early Life. — 
 Barber, Inventor and Manufacturer. — His Influence and Character.,!" 
 
XIV 
 
 Contents. 
 
 —The Peels of South Lancashire.— The Founder of the FamUy." 
 The first Sir Robert Peel, Cotton-printer.— Lady Peel.- Rev. Wil- 
 liam Lee, Inventor of the Stocking-frame.— Dies abroad in Miseiy. 
 —James Lee.— The Nottingham Lace Manufacture.— John Heath- 
 coat, Inventor of the Bobbin-net Machine.— His early Life, his In- 
 genuity, and plodding Perseverance.— Invention of his Machine. — 
 Anecdote of Lord Lyndhurst. — Progress of the Lace- trade. — Heath- 
 coat's Machines destroyed by the Luddites. — His Character. — Jac- 
 quard : his Inventions and Adventures. — ^Vaucanson : his mechan- 
 ical Genius, Improvements in Silk Manufacture. — Jacquard improve* 
 Vaucanson's Machine. — The Jacquard Loom adopted. — Joshua 
 Heilmann, Inventor of the Combing-machine. — History of the In- 
 vention. — Its Value Page 48 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THKEE GREAT POTTEBS — PALISSY, EOITGHEIl, WEDGWOOD. 
 
 Ancient Pottery. — Etruscan Ware. — ^Luca della Kobbia, the Floren- 
 tine Sculptor : re-discovers the Art of Enamelling. — ^Bernard Pa- 
 lissy : Sketch of his Life and Labors. — Inflamed by the Sight of an 
 Italisn Cup. — His Search after the Secret of the Enamel. — His Ex- 
 periments during Years of unproductive ToiL — His personal and 
 family Privations. — ^Indomitable Perseverance; bums his Fomiture 
 to heat the Furnace, and Success at last. — Reduced to Destitution. 
 — Condemned to Death, and Release. — His Writings. — Dies in the 
 Bastille.— John Frederick Bottgher, the Berlin " Gold Cook." — His 
 Trick in Alchemy, and consequent Troubles. — Flight into Saxony. 
 — His Detention at Dresden. — Diseovere how to make red and 
 white Porcelain. — ^The Manufacture taken up by the Saxon Govern- 
 ment. — Bottgher treated as a Prisoner and a Slave. — His unhappy 
 End. — The Sfevres porcelain Manufactory. — Josiah Wedgwood, the 
 English Potter. — Early State of English earthenware Manufacture. 
 — Wedg\vood's Indefatigable Industry, Skill, and Perseverance. — 
 His Success.— The Barberini Vase.— Wedgwood a national Bene- 
 factor. — Industrial Heroes 90 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 APPUCATIOU AND PEKSEVEKANCE. 
 
 Great Results attained by simple Means.— Fortune favors the Indus- 
 trious.—" Genius is Patience."— Newton and Kepler.— Industry of 
 eminent Men.— Power acquired by repeated Effort.- Anecdote of 
 
Cbntents. 
 
 .XV 
 
 Sir Robert Peel's Cultivation of Memory.— Facility comes by Prac- 
 tice. — Importance of Patience. — Clieerfulness. — Sydney Smith. — 
 Dr. Hook. — Hope an important Element in Character. — Carey the 
 Missionary. — ^Anecdote of Dr. Young. — ^Anecdote of Audubon the 
 Ornithologist. — Anecdote of Mr. Carlyle and his MS. of the 
 "French Revolution." — Perseverance of Watt and Stephenson. 
 — Perseverance displayed in the Discovery of the Nineveh Mar- 
 bles by Rawlinson and Layard. — Comte de Buffon as Student. — 
 His continuous and unremitting Labors. — Sir Walter Scott's Per- 
 severance. — Jolm Britton. — Loudon. — Samuel Drew. — Joseph 
 Hume Page 119 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HELPS AMD OPPORTUNITIES — SCIENTIFIC PUKSUITS. 
 
 No great Result achieved by Accident. — ^Newton's Discoveries. — Dr. 
 Young. — Habit of observing with Intelligence. — Galileo. — Inven- 
 tions of Brown, Watt, and Brunei, accidentally suggested. — Philos- 
 ophy in little Things. — Apollonius Pergseus and Conic Sections. — 
 Franklin and Galvani. — Discovery of Steam-power. — Opportunities 
 seized or made. — Simple and rude Tools of great Workers. — Lee and 
 Stone's Opportunities for learning. — Sir Walter Scott's. — Dr. Priest- 
 ley. — Sir Humphry Davy. — Faraday. — Davy and Coleridge. — 
 Cuvier. — Dalton's Industiy. — Examples of Improvement of Time. 
 — ^Daguesseau and Bentham. — Melancthoa and Baxter. — Writing 
 down ObseiTations. — Great Note-makers. — Dr. Pye Smith. — ^John 
 Hunter: his patient Study of little Things. — His great labors. — 
 Ambrose Pare, the French Surgeon. — Harvey. — Jenner. — Sir 
 Charles Bell.— Dr. MarshaU Hall.— Sir William Herschel.— Wil- 
 liam Smith, the Geologist : his Discoveries, his geological Map. — 
 Hugh Miller: his obsei-vant Faculties. — John Brown and Robert 
 Dick, Geologists. — Sir Roderick Murchison, his Industi-y and At- 
 tainments Hi 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 WOBKEES IN AKT, 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds on the Power of Industry in Art. — Humble Or- 
 igin of eminent Artists. — Acquisition of Wealth not the ruling Mo- 
 tive with Artists. — Michael An geloon Riches. — ^PatientLabors ofMi- 
 chael Angelo and Titian. — West's early Success a Disadvantage.— 
 
xvi Contents. 
 
 Eichard Wilson and Zucearelli.— Sir Joshua Reynolds, Blake, Bird, 
 Gainsborough, and Hogarth, as boy Artists. — Hogarth a keen Ob- 
 server. — Banks -and Mulready. — Claude Lorraine and Tumor: 
 their indefatigable Industiy. — Penier and Jacques Callot, and their 
 Visits to Rome. — Callot and the Gypsies. — Benvenuto Cellini, Gold- 
 smith and Musician : his Ambition to excel. — Casting of his Statue 
 of Perseus. — Nicolas Poussin, a sedulous Student and Worker. — 
 Duquesnoi. — Poussin's Fame. — Ary Scheffer: his Hindrances and 
 Success. — John Plaxman : his Genius and Perseverance. — His 
 brave Wife. — Their Visit to Borne. — ^Francis Chantrey : his Indus- 
 try and Energy. — David Wilkie and William Etty, unflagging 
 Workers. — Privations endured by Artists. — ^Martin. — Pugin. — 
 George Kemp, Architect of the Scott Monument. — John Gibson, 
 Robert Thorbum, NoelPaton. — James Sharpies, the blacksmith Art^ 
 ist: his Autobiography. — ^Industry of Musicians. — Handel, Haydn, 
 Beethoven, Bach, Meyerbeer. — Dr. Ame. — William Jackson, the 
 self-taught Composer Page 182 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 INDUSTRY AND THE PEEKAGE. 
 
 The Peerage fed from the industrial Ranks. — ^Fall of old Families: 
 Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantagenets. — ^The Peerage comparative- 
 ly Modem. — Peerages originating with Traders and Merchants. 
 
 Richard Foley, Nail-maker, Founder of the Foley Peerage. Ad- 
 venturous Career of WilUam Phipps, Founder of the Noi-manby 
 Peerage : his Recovery of sunken Treasure.— Sir William Petty, 
 Founder of the Lansdowne Peerage.— Jedediah Stmtt, Founder of 
 the Belper Peerage. —William and Edward Strutt. —Naval and 
 Military Peers.— Peerages founded by La^vyers.— Lords Tenterden 
 and CampbeU.- Lord Eldon : his early Struggles and eventual Suc- 
 cess.— Baron Langdale.— Rewards of Persevei-ance 233 
 
 CHAPTER Vin. 
 
 ENEEGT AND COUKAGE. 
 
 Energy Characteristic of the Teutonic Race.-The Foundations of 
 strength of Charax:ter.— Force of Purpose. -Concentration.— Cour- 
 ageous Working.— Words of Hugh Miller and FowcU Bu-ton - 
 Power and Freedom of Will.-Words of Lamennais.-SuwaiTow - 
 Napoleon and " Glory."-Wellington and "Duty."-Promptitudo 
 
Contents. xvii 
 
 in Action. — Energy displayed by the British in India. — ^Warren 
 Hastings. — Sir Charles Napier : his Adventure with the Indian 
 Swordsman. — The Rebellion in India. — The Lawrences. — ^Nichol- 
 son. — The Siege of Delhi. — Captain Hodson. — Missionary Labor- 
 ers. — Francis Xavier's Missions in the East. — John Williams. — Dr. 
 Livingstone. — John Howard. — Jonas Hanway: his Career. — The 
 philanthropic Labors of Granville Shaip. — Position of Slaves in 
 England. — Eesult of Sharp's Efforts. — Clarkson's Labors. — Fow- 
 ell Buxton : his resolute Purpose and Energy. — ^Abolition of Slav- 
 ery Page 253 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MEN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 Hazlitt's Definition of the Man of Business. — The chief requisite 
 Qualities. — Men of Genius Men of Business. — Shakspeare, Chaucer, 
 Spenser, MUton, Newton, Cowper, Wordsworth, Scott, Ricardo, 
 Grote, J. S. Mill. — ^Labor and Application necessary to Success. — 
 Lord Melbourne's Advice. — The School of Difficulty a good School. 
 — Conditions of Success in Law.— The industrious Architect. — The 
 - salutary Influence of Work. — Consequences of Contempt for Arith- 
 metic. — Dr. Johnson on the alleged Injustice of "the World." — 
 Washington Irving's Views. — Practical Qualities necessary in Busi- 
 ness. — Importance of Accuracy. — Charles James Fox. — ^Method. — 
 Richard Cecil and De Witt : their Dispatch of Business. — Value of 
 Time. — Sir Walter Scott's Advice. — ^Promptitude. — ^Economy of 
 Time. — Punctuality. — Firmness. — Tact. — Napoleon and Welling- 
 ton, as Men of Business. — Napoleon's Attention to Details. — The 
 "Napoleon Correspondence." — Wellington's business Faculty. — 
 Wellington in the Peninsula. — "Honesty the best Policy." — Trade 
 tries Character. — Dishonest Gains. — ^David Barclay a model Man 
 of Business : 294 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MONET — ^ITS USB AND ABUSE. 
 
 The right Use of Money a Test of Wisdom.— The Virtue of Self-de- 
 nial. -^Self-imposed Taxes. — Economy necessary to Independence. 
 — Helplessness of the Improvident.— Frugality an important Public 
 Question. — Counsels of Richard Cobden and John Bright. — The 
 Bondage of the Improvident. — Independence attainable by Wo'k' 
 
xviii Contents. 
 
 ing Men.— Francis Homer's Advice from his Father. — Eobert 
 Bums.— Living within the Means.— Bacon's Maxim.— Wasters.— 
 Running into Debt.— Haydon's Debts.— Fichte.— Dr. Johnson on 
 Debt.— John Locke.— The Duke of WeUington on Debt.— Wash- 
 ington.— Earl St. Vincent: his protested Bill— Joseph Hume on 
 living too high.— Ambition after Gentility. — Napier's Order to his 
 OflScers in India.— Resistance to Temptation. — Hugh Miller's Case. 
 —High Standard of Life necessary.— Proverbs on Money-making 
 and Thrift. — Thomas Wright and the Reclamation of Criminals. — ■ 
 Mere Money-making. — John Foster. — ^Riches no Proof of Worth. — . 
 All honest Industry honorable. — The Power of Money over-esti- 
 mated. — Joseph Brotherton. — True Respectability. — ^Lord Colling- 
 wood Page 321 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 SELF-CtTLTUKE — FACILITIES AND DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 Sir W. Scott and Su- B. Brodie on Self-cnltuie. — ^Dr. Arnold's Spirit. 
 — Active Employment salutary. — Malthns's Advice to his Son. — ^Im- 
 portance of physical Health. — Hodson, of "Hodson's Horse." — Dr. 
 Channing. — Early Labor. — Training in Use of Tools. — Healthiness 
 of Great Men. — Sir Walter Scott's athletic Sports.^Barrow, Faller, 
 Clarke. — ^Labor conquers all Things. — Words of Chatterton, Fergu- 
 son, Stone, Drew. — ^Well-directed Labor. — Opinions of Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds, Fowell Buxton, Dr. Ross, F. Homer, Loyola, and Lord 
 St. Leonards. — Thoroughness, Accuracy, Decision, and Prompti- 
 tude. — The Virtue of patient Labor. — The mischievous Effects of 
 "Cramming" in labor-saving Processes and multifarious Reading. 
 — The right Use of Knowledge. — ^Books may impart Learning, but 
 well-applied Knowledge and Experience only exhibit Wisdom. — 
 The Magna Charta Men. — ^Brindley, Stephenson, Hunter, and oth- 
 ers, not book-leamed yet. great. — Self-respect. — Jean Paul Eichter. 
 — Knowledge as a Means of Rising. — Base Views of the Value of 
 Knowledge. — Ideas of Bacon and Soutliey. — Donglas JeiTold on 
 comic Literature. — Danger of immoderate Love of Pleasure. — Ben- 
 jamin Constant : his high Thinking and low Living. — Thierry : his 
 noble Character.— Coleridge and Southey. — Robert Nicoll on Cole- 
 ridge. -^Charles Janies Fox on Pevssverance. — ^The Wisdom and 
 Strength acquired through Failure. — Hunter, Rossini, Davy, Men- 
 delssohn. — The Uses of Difficulty and Adversity. — Lyndhurst, 
 D'Alembert, Carissimi, Reynolds, and Henry Clay on Persistency. 
 — Curran on honest Poverty.— Struggles with Difficulties : Alexan- 
 
Contents. xix 
 
 der Murray, William Chambers, Cobbett. — The French Stone-ma- 
 son turned Professor. — Sir Samuel Eomilly as a Self-cultivator. — 
 John Leyden's Perseverance. — Professor Lee : his Perseverance 
 and his Attainments as a Linguist. — Late Learners: Spelman, 
 Prankhn, Dryden, Scott, Boccaccio, Arnold, and others. — Illustri- 
 ous Dunces : Generals Grant, Stonewall Jackson, John Howard, 
 Davy, and others. — Story of a Dunce. — Success depends on Perse- 
 Terance Page 346 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 EXAMPLE — MODELS. 
 
 Example a potent Instructor. — ^Influence of Conduct. — ^Parental Ex- 
 ample. — AU Acts have their Train of Consequences. — ^Disraeli on 
 Cobden. — ^Wordsof Babbage. — Human Responsibility. — ^Every Per- 
 son owes a good Example to others. — Doing, not Saying. — Mrs. 
 Chisholm. — Dr. Guthrie and John Pounds. — Good Models of Con- 
 duct. — The Company of our Betters. — Francis Horner's Views on 
 personal Intercourse. — The Marquis of Lausdowne and Malesherbes. 
 — Fowell Buxton and the Gumey Family. — Personal Influence of 
 John Sterling. — Influence of artistic Genius upon others. — Example 
 of the brave an Inspiration to the timid. — ^Biography valuable as 
 forming high Models of Character. — Lives influenced by Biography. 
 — Romilly, Franklin, Drew, Alfieri, Loyola, WolflF, Homer, Rey- 
 nolds. — Examples of Cheerfulness. — ^Dr. Arnold's Influence over 
 others. — Career of Sir John Sinclair 393 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 CHAKACTEK — THE TKUE GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Character a Man's best Possession. — Character of Francis Homer. — 
 Franklin. — Character is Power. — The higher Qualities of Character. 
 — Lord Erskine's Rules of Conduct. — A high Standard of Life nec- 
 essary. — Truthfulness. — Wellington's Character of Peel. — Be what 
 you seem. — Integrity and Honesty of Action. — Importance of Hab- 
 its. — Habits constitute Character. — Growth of Habit in Youth. — 
 Words of Robertson of Brighton.— Manners and Morals. — Civility 
 and Kindness. — Anecdote of Abeniethy. — True Politeness. — Great- 
 hearted Men of no exclusive Rank or Class. — William and Charles 
 Grant, the " Brothers Cheeiyble." — The true Gentleman. — Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald. — Honor, Probity, Rectitude. — ^The Gentlemaa 
 
XX Contents. 
 
 will not be bribed.— Anecdotes of Hanway, Wellington, Wellesley, 
 and Sir C. Napier.— The poor in Purse may be rich in Spirit.— A no- 
 ble Peasant.— Intrepidity of Deal Boatmen. — Anecdotes of the Em- 
 peror of Austria and of two English Navvies. — Tmtfa makes the 
 Success of the Gentleman. — Courage and Gentleness. — Gentlemen 
 in India. — Outram, Henry Lawrence. — Lord Clyde. — The private 
 Soldiers at Agra. — The Wreck of the Birkenhead. — Use of Power, 
 the Test of the Gentleman. — Sir Balph Abercrombie. — Fuller's Char- 
 acter of Sir Francis Drake Page 416 
 
 IXDEX 143 
 
SELF-HELP, Etc. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SELF-HELP — ^NATIONAL AND IXDIVIDUAL. 
 
 " The worth of a State, in the long run, Is the worth of the indl. 
 viduals composing it." — J. S. Mill. 
 
 " We put too niuch faith in systems, and look too liltle to men."— ■ 
 B. Disraeli. 
 
 *'TTEAVEN helps those who help themselves" is 
 JLJ- a well-tried maxim, embodying in a small com^ 
 pass the results of vast human experience. The spirit 
 of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the in- 
 dividual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it consti- 
 tutes the true source of national vigor and strength. 
 Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but 
 help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is 
 done yb?" men or classes, to a certain extent takes away 
 the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; 
 and where men are subjected to over-guidance and 
 over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render 
 them comparatively helpless. 
 
 Even the best institutions can give a man no active 
 help. Perhaps the most they can do is, to leave him 
 free to develop himself and improve his individual con- 
 dition. But in all times men have been prone to be- 
 lieve that their happiness and well-being were to be se- 
 cured by means of institutions rather than by their 
 
22 Government and the Individual. 
 
 OWE jionduct. Hence the value of legislation as an 
 agent in human advancement has usually been ranch 
 over-estimated. To constitute the millionth part of a 
 Legislature, by voting for one or two men once in 
 three or five years, however conscientiously this duty 
 may be performed, can exercise but little active in- 
 fluence upon any man's life and character. Moreover, 
 it is every' day becoming more clearly understood, that 
 the function of Government is negative and restrictive, 
 rather than positive and active ; being resolvable prin- 
 cipally into protection — protection of life, liberty, and 
 property. Laws, wisely administered, will secure men 
 in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor, whether of 
 mind or body, at a comparatively small personal sacri- 
 fice ; but no laws, however stringent, can make the idle 
 industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken so- 
 ber. Such reforms can only be effected by means of 
 individual action, economy, and self-denial ; by better 
 habits, rather than by greater rights. 
 
 The Government of a nation itself is usually found 
 to be but the reflex of the individuals composing it. 
 The Government that is ahead of the people will inev- 
 itably be dragged down to their level, as the Govern- 
 ment that is beliimi them will in the long run be drag- 
 ged up. In the order of nature, the collective charac- 
 ter of a nation will as surely find its befitting results in 
 its law and government, as water finds its own level. 
 The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant 
 and corrupt ignobly. Indeed, all experience serves to 
 prove that the worth and strength of a State depend 
 far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the 
 character of its men. For the nation is only an aggre- 
 gate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is 
 but a question of the personal improvement of the 
 men, women, and children of whom society is composed. 
 
 National progress is the sum of individual industry. 
 
National Progress. 23 
 
 energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individ- 
 ual idleness, selfishness, and vice. What we are accus- 
 tomed to decry as great social evils, will for the most 
 part be found to be but the outgrowth of man's own 
 perverted life ; and though we may endeavor to cut 
 them down and extirpate them by means of Law, they 
 will only spring up again with fresh luxuriance in some 
 Other form, unless the conditions of. personal life and 
 character are radically improved. If this view be cor- 
 rect, then it follows that the highest patriotism snd 
 philanthropy consist, not so much in altering laws and 
 modifying institutions, as in helping and stimulating 
 men to elevate and improve themselves by their own 
 fj-ee and independent individual action. 
 
 It may be of comparatively little consequence how a 
 man is governed from without, whilst every thing de- 
 pends upon how he governs himself from within. The 
 greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great 
 though that evil be, but he who is the thrall of his own 
 moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice. Nations who 
 are thus enslaved at heart can not be freed by any mere 
 changes of masters or of institutions ;• and so long as 
 the fatal delusion prevails, that liberty solely depends 
 upon and consists in government, so long will such 
 changes, no matter at what cost they may be efiected, 
 have as little practical and lasting result as the shifting 
 of the figures in a phantasmagoria. The solid founda- 
 tions of liberty must rest upon individual character ; 
 which is also the only sure guaranty for social security 
 and national progress. John Stuart Mill truly observes 
 that " even despotism does not produce its worst effects 
 so long as individuality exists under it ; and whatever 
 crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name 
 it be called." 
 
 Old fallacies as to human progress are constantly 
 turning up. Some call for Csesars, others for jSTational' 
 
24 Oasarism — Independence. 
 
 ities, and others for Acts of Parliament. "We are to 
 wait for Caesars, and when they are found, " happy the 
 people who recognize and follow them."* This doc- 
 trine shortly means, every thing /or the people, nothbg 
 by them — a doctrine which, if taken as a guide, must, 
 by destroying the free conscience of a community, 
 speedily prepare the way for any form of despotism. 
 Cffisarisra is human idolatry in its worst form — a wor- 
 ship of mere power, as degrading in its effects as the 
 worship of mere wealth would be. A far healthier 
 doctrine to inculcate among the nations would be that 
 of Self-Help ; and so soon as it is thoroughly understood 
 and carried into action, Csesarism will be no more. The 
 two principles are directly antagonistic ; and what Vic- 
 tor Hugo said of the Pen and the Sword alike applies 
 to them, " Ceci tuera cela." 
 
 The power of Nationalities and Acts of Parliament 
 is also a prevalent superstition. What William Dar- 
 gan, one of Ireland's truest patriots, said at the closing 
 of the first Dublin Industrial Exhibition, may well be 
 quoted now. " To tell the truth," he said, " I never 
 heard the word independence mentioned that my own 
 country and my own fellow-townsmen did not occur to 
 my mind. I have heard a great deal about the inde- 
 pendence that we were to get from this, that, and the 
 other place, and of the great expectations we were to 
 have from persons from other countries coming amongst 
 us. Whilst I value as much as any man the great ad- 
 vantages that must result to us from that intercourse, 
 I have always been deeply impressed with the feeling 
 that our industrial independence is dependent upon our- 
 selves. I believe "that with simple industry and care- 
 ful exactness in the utilization of our energies, we 
 never had a fairer chance nor a brighter prospect than 
 the present. We have made a step, but perseverance 
 ♦ Napoleon III., " Life of Ctesai-." 
 
Life, "a Soldier's Batik." 25 
 
 is the great agent of success ; and if we but go on zeal- 
 ously, I believe in my conscience that in a short period 
 we shall arrive at a position of equal comfort, of equal 
 happiness, and of equal independence, with that of 
 any other people." 
 
 All nations have been made what they are by the 
 thirtking and the working of many generations of men. 
 Patient and persevering laborers in all ranks and con- 
 ditions of life, cultivators of the soil and explorers of 
 the mine, inventoi's and discoverers, manufacturers, 
 mechanics and artisans, poets, philosophers and politi- 
 cians, all have contributed towards the grand result, 
 one generation building upon another's labors, and car- 
 rying them forward to still higher stages. This con- 
 stant succession of noble workers — the artisans of civ- 
 ilization — has served to create order out of chaos in in- 
 dustry, science, and art ; and the living race has thus, in 
 the course of nature, become the inheritor of the rich 
 estate provided by the skill and industry of our fore- 
 fathers, which is placed in our hands to cultivate, and 
 to hand down, not only unimpaired but improved, to 
 our successors. 
 
 The spirit of self-help, as exhibited in the energetic 
 action of individuals, has in all times been a marked 
 feature in the English character, and furnishes the true 
 measure of our power as a nation. Rising above the 
 heads of the mass, there were always to be found a 
 series of individuals distinguished beyond others, who 
 commanded the public homage. But our progress has 
 also been owing to multitudes of smaller and less known 
 men. Thougli only the generals' names may be re- 
 membered in the history of any great campaign, it has 
 been in a great measure through the individual valor 
 and heroism of the privates that victories have been 
 won. And life, too, is " a' soldier's battle " — men in the 
 ranks having in all times been amongst the greatest of 
 
 2 
 
26 The best Practical Uducation. 
 
 workers. Many are the lives of men unwritten, which 
 have nevertheless as powerfully influenced civilization 
 and progress as the more fortunate Great whose names 
 are recorded in biography. Even the humblest person, 
 who sets before his fellows an example of industry, so- 
 briety, and upright honesty of purpose in life, has a 
 present as well as a future influence upon the well-be- 
 ing of his country ; for his life and character pass un- 
 consciously into the lives of others, and propagate good 
 example for all time to come. 
 
 Daily experience shows that it is energetic individu- 
 alism which produces the most powerful effects upon 
 the life and action of others, and really constitutes the 
 best practical education. Schools, academies, and col- 
 leges, give but the merest beginnings of culture in com- 
 parison with it. Far more influential is the life-educBr 
 tion daily given in our homes, in the streets, behind 
 counters, in workshops, at the loom and the plough, in 
 counting-houses and manufactories, and in the busy 
 haunts of men. This is that finishing instruction as 
 members of society, which Schiller designated " the edu- 
 cation of the human race," consisting in action, conduct, 
 self-culture, self-control — all that tends to discipline 
 a man truly, and fit him for the proper performance of 
 the duties and business of life — a kind of education not 
 to be learned from books, or acquired by any amount 
 of mere literary training. With his usual weight of 
 words Bacon observes, that " Studies teach not their 
 own use ; but that is a' wisdom without them, and 
 above them, won by observation ;" a remark that holds 
 true of actual life, as well as of the cultivation of the in- 
 tellect itself. For all experience serves to illustrate and 
 enforce the lesson, that a man perfects himself by work 
 more than by reading— that it is life rather than litera- 
 ture, action rather than study, and character rather than 
 biography, which tend perpetually to renovate mankind. 
 
Difficulties the best Helpers. 27 
 
 Biographies of great, bxit especially of good men, are 
 nevertheless most instructive and useful, as helps, 
 guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best arc 
 almost equivalent to gospels — teaching high living, high 
 thinking, and energetic action for their own. and the 
 world's good. The valuable examples which they fur- 
 nish of the power of self-help,, of patient purpose, reso- 
 lute working, and steadfast integrity, issuing in the for- 
 mation of truly noble and manly character, exhibit in 
 language not to be misunderstood, what it is in the 
 power of each to accomplish for himself; and eloquent- 
 ly illustrate the eflScacy of self-respect and self-reliance 
 in enabling men of even the humblest rank to work out 
 for themselves an honorable competency and a solid 
 reputation. , 
 
 Great men of science, literature, and art — apostles of 
 great thoughts and lords of the great heart — have be- 
 longed to no exclusive class or rank in life. They have 
 come alike from colleges, workshops, and farm-houses 
 — from the huts of poor men and the mansions of the 
 rich. Some of God's greatest apostles have come from 
 "the ranks." The poorest have sometimes taken the 
 highest places, nor have dilBculties apparently the most 
 insuperable proved obstacles in their way. Those very 
 difficulties, in 'many instances, would even seem to have 
 been their best helpers, by evoking their powers of 
 labor and endurance, and stimulating into life faculties 
 which might otherwise have lain dormant. The in- 
 stances of obstacles thus surmounted, and of triumphs 
 thus achieved, are indeed so numerous, as almost to jus- 
 tify the proverb that " with Will one can do any thing." 
 Take, for instance, the remai-kable fact, that from the 
 barber's shop came Jeremy Taylor, the most poetical 
 of divines ; Sir Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the 
 spinning-jenny and founder of the cotton manufacture ; 
 Lord Tenterden, one of the most distinguished of Lord 
 
28 Some of the Greatest Men. 
 
 Chief Justices ; and Turner, the greatest among land- 
 scape painters. , 
 
 No one knows to a certainty what Shakspeare was ; 
 but it is unquestionable that he sprang from a hum- 
 ble rank. His father was a butcher and grazier ; and 
 Shakspeare himself is supposed to have been in early 
 life a wool-comber ; whilst others aver that he was an 
 usher in a school, and afterwards a scrivener's clerk. 
 He truly seems to have been " not one, but all mankind's 
 epitome." For such is the accuracy of his sea-phrases 
 that a naval writer alleges that he must have been a 
 sailor ; whilst a clergyman infers, from internal evidence 
 in his writings, that lie was probably a parson's clerk ; 
 and a distinguished judge of horse-flesh insists that he 
 must have been a horse-dealer. Sha^jspeare was certain- 
 ly an actor, and in the course of his life " played many 
 palts," gathering his wonderful stores of knowledge 
 from a wide field of experience and observation. In 
 any event, he must have been a close student and a 
 hard worker, and to this day his writings continue to 
 exercise a powerful influence on the formation of Eng- 
 lish character. 
 
 The common class of day-laborers has given us Brind- 
 ley the engineer. Cook the navigator, and Bums the 
 poet. Masons and bricklayers can boast of Ben Jon- 
 son, who worked at the building of Lincoln's Inn, with 
 a trowel in his hand and a book in his pocket, Edwards 
 and Telford the engineers, Hugh Miller the geologist, 
 and Allan Cunningham the writer and sculptor ; whilst 
 aniong distinguished carpenters we find the names of 
 Inigo Jones the architect, Hart-ison the chronometer- 
 maker, John Hunter the physiologist, Romney and Opie 
 the painters," Professor Lee the Orientalist, and John 
 Gibson the sculptor. 
 
 From the weaver class have sprung Simson the mathe- 
 matician. Bacon the sculptor, the two Milners, Adam 
 
Have come from "the Ranlcsr 29 
 
 Walker, John Foster, Wilson the ornithologist, Dr. Liv- 
 ingstone the missionary traveller, and Tannahill the 
 poet. Shoemakers have given us Sir Cloudesley Shovel 
 the great Admiral, Sturgeon the electrician, Samuel 
 Drew the essayist, Gilford the editor of the " Quarterly 
 Review," Bloomfield the poet, and William Carey the 
 missionary ; whilst Morrison, another laborious mission- 
 ary, was a maker of shoe-lasts. Within the last few 
 years, a profound naturalist has bieen discovered in the 
 person of a shoemaker at Banff, named Thomas Ed- 
 wards, who, while maintaining himself by hia trade, 
 has devoted his leisure to the study of natural science 
 in all its branches, his researches in connection with 
 the smaller crustacesE having been rewarded by the 
 discovery of a new species, to which the name of " Pra- 
 niza Edwardsii " has been given by naturalists. 
 
 Nor have tailors been undistinguished. John Stow, 
 the historian, worked at the trade during some part of 
 his life. Jackson, the painter, made clothes until he 
 reached manhood. The brave Sir John Hawkswood, 
 who so greatly distinguished himself at Poictiers, and 
 was knighted by Edward III. for his valor, was in ear- 
 ly life apprenticed to a London tailor. Admiral Hob- 
 son, who broke the boom at Vigo in 1 '702, belonged to 
 the same calling. He was working as a tailor's ap- 
 prentice near Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, when 
 the news flew through the village that a squadron of 
 men-of-war was sailing off the island. He sprang from 
 the shop-board, and ran down with his comrades to the 
 beach, to gaze upon the glorious sight. The boy was 
 suddenly inflamed with the ambition to be a sailor; 
 and springing into a boat, he rowed off to the squadron, 
 gained the admiral's ship, and was accepted as a vol- 
 unteer. Years after, he returned to his native village 
 fiill of honors, and dined off bacon and eggs in the cot- 
 tage where he had worked as an apprentice. But tha 
 
80 Men of Science. 
 
 greatest tailor of all is unquestionably Andrew John- 
 son, the present President of the United States — a man 
 of extraordinary force of character and vigor of intel- 
 lect. In his great speech at Washington, when descrih- 
 ing himself as having begun his political career as an 
 alderman, and run through all the branches of the leg- 
 islatui-e, a voice in the crowd cried, " From a tailor up." 
 It was characteristic of Johnson to take the intended 
 sarcasm in good part, and even to turn it to account. 
 " Some gentleman says I have been a tailoi". That does 
 not disconcert me in the least ; for when I was a tailor 
 I had the reputation of being a good one, and making 
 close fits ; I was always punctual with my customers, 
 and always did good work." 
 
 Cardinal Wolsey, De Foe, Akenside, and Kirke White 
 were the sons of butchers ; Bunyan was a tinker, and 
 Joseph Lancaster a basket-maker. Among the great 
 names identified with the invention of the steam-engine 
 are those of Newcomen, Watt, and Stephenson ; the 
 first a blacksmith, the second a maker of mathematicai 
 instruments, and the third an engine-fireman. Hunt- 
 ingdon the preacher was originally a coal-heaver, and 
 Bewick, the father of wood-engraving, a coal-miner. 
 Dodsley was a footman, and Holcroft a groom. Bafiia 
 the navigator began his seafaring career as a man be- 
 fore the mast, and Sir Cloudesley Shovel as a cabin-boy. 
 Herschel played the oboe in a military band. Chautrey 
 was a journeyman carver, Etty a journeyman printer, 
 and Sir Thomas Lawrence the son of a tavern-keeper. 
 Michael Faraday, the son of a blacksmith, was in early 
 life apprenticed to a book-binder, and worked at that 
 trade until he reached his twenty-second year ; he now 
 occupies the very first rank as a philosopher, excelling 
 even his master, Sir Humphry Davy, in the art of lucid- 
 ly expounding the most difficult and abstruse points in 
 natural science. 
 
Eminent Middle-class Men. 31 
 
 Among those who have given the greatest impulse 
 to the sublime science of astronomy, we find Copernicus, 
 the son of a Polish baker ; Kepler, the son of a German 
 pnblic-house keepei-, and himself the " gargon de caba- 
 ret ;" d'Alembert, a foundling picked up one winter's 
 night on the steps of the church of St. Jean le Rond at 
 Paris, and brought up by the wife of a glazier ; and 
 Newton and Laplace, the one the son of a small free- 
 holder near Grantham, the other the son of a poor peas- 
 ant of Beaumont-en-Auge, near Honfleur. Notwith- 
 standing their comparatively adverse circumstances in 
 early life, these distinguished men achieved a solid and 
 enduring reputation by the exercise of their geniuSj 
 which all the wealth in the world could not have pur- 
 chased. The very possession of wealth might indeed 
 have proved an obstacle greater even than the hum- 
 ble means to which they were born. The father of La- 
 grange, the astronomer and mathematician, held the of- 
 fice of Treasurer of War at Turin ; but having ruined 
 himself by speculations, his family were reduced to com- 
 parative poverty. To this circumstance Lagrange was 
 in after-life accustomed partly to attribute his own 
 fame and happiness. "Had I been rich," said he, "I 
 should probably not have become a mathematician." 
 
 The sons of clergymen and ministers of religion gen- 
 erally have particularly distinguished themselves in 
 our country's history. Amongst them we find the 
 names of Drake and Nelson, celebrated in naval hero- 
 ism ; of Wollaston, Young, Playfair, and Bell, in sci- 
 ence ; of Wren, Reynolds, Wilson, and Wilkie, in art ; 
 of Thurlow and Campbell, in law; and of Addison, 
 Thompson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, and Tennyson, in lit- 
 erature. Lord Hardinge, Colonel Edwardes, and Ma- 
 jor Hodson, so honorably known in Indian warfare,^ 
 were also the sons of clergymen. Indeed, the "empire 
 of England in India was won and held chiefly by men 
 
32 - Ilhistrious Foreigners 
 
 of the middle class— such as Clive, Warren Hastings, 
 and their successors— men for the most part bred in 
 factories and trained to habits of business. 
 
 Among the sons of attorneys we find Edmund Burke, 
 Smeaton the engineer, Scott and "Wordsworth, and 
 Lords Somers, Hardwick, and Dunning. Sir William 
 Plackstone was the posthumous son of a silk-mercer. 
 Lord Gifford's father was a grocer at Dover; Lord 
 Denham's a physician ; Judge Talfourd's _ a country 
 brewer ; and Lord Chief Baron Pollock's a celebrated 
 saddler at Charing Cross. Layard, the discoverer of 
 the monuments of Nineveh, was an articled clerk in a 
 London solicitor's ofSce ; and Sir William Annstrong, 
 the inventor of hydraulic machinery and of the Arm- 
 strong ordnance, was also trained to the law and prac- 
 tised for some time as an attorney. Milton was the 
 son of a London scrivener, and Pope and Southey were 
 the sons of linen-drapers. Professor Wilson was the 
 son of a Paisley manufacturer, and Lord Macaulay of an 
 African merchant. Keats was a druggist, and Sir 
 Humphry Davy a country apothecary's apprentice. 
 Speaking of himself, Davy once said, " What I am I 
 have made myself: I say this without vanity, and in 
 pure simplicity of heart." Richard Owen, the Newton 
 of Natural History, began life as a midshipman, and did 
 not enter upon the line of scientific research in which 
 he has since become so distinguished, until compara- 
 tively late in life. He laid the foundations j>i his great 
 knowledge while occupied in cataloguing the magnifi- 
 cent museum accumulated by the industry of John 
 Hunter, a work which occupied him at the College of 
 Surgeons during a period of about ten years. 
 
 Foreign not less than English biography abounds in 
 illustrations of men who have glorified the lot of pov- 
 erty by their labors and their genius. In Art we find 
 Claude, the son of a pastry-cook; Geefs, of a baker j 
 
0/ humble Origin. 83 
 
 Leopold Robert, of a watchmaker ; and Haydn, of a 
 wheelwright ; whilst Daguerre was a scene-painter at 
 the opera. The father of Gregory VII. was a carpen- 
 ter; of Sextils V.,ashepherd; andof Adrian VI., a poor 
 bargeman. When a boy, Adrian, unable to pay for a 
 light by which to study, was accustomed to prepare 
 his lessons by the light of the lamps in the streets and 
 the church porches, exhibiting a degree of patience and 
 industry which were the certain forerunners of his fu- 
 ture distinction. Of like humble origin were Hauy, the 
 mineralogist, who was the son of a weaver of Saint- 
 Just ; Hautefeuille, the mechanician, of a baker at Or- 
 leans ; Joseph Fourier, the mathematician, of a tailor 
 at Auxerre ; Durand, the architect, of a Paris shoemak- 
 er ; and Gesner, the naturalist, of a skinner or worker 
 in hides, at Zurich. This last began his career under 
 all the disadvantages attendant on poverty, sickness, 
 and domestic calamity ; none of which, however, were 
 sufficient to damp his courage or hinder his progress. 
 His life was indeed an eminent illustration of the truth 
 of the saying, that those who have most to do and are 
 willing to work, will find the most time. Pierre Ramus 
 was another man of like character. He was the son of 
 poor parents in Picardy, and when a boy was employed 
 to tend sheep. But not liking the occupation he ran 
 away to Paris. After encountering much misery, he 
 succeeded in entering the College of Navarre as a serv- 
 ant. The situation, however, opened for him the road 
 to learning, and he shortly became one of the most dis- 
 tinguished men of his time. 
 
 The chemist Vauquelin was the son of a peasant of 
 St. Andre-d'Herbetot, in the Calvados. When a boy 
 at school, though poorly clad, he was full of bright in- 
 telligence; and the master, who taught him to read 
 and write, when praising him for his diligence, used to 
 say, " Go on, my boy ; work, study, Colin, and one day 
 
 2* 
 
34 Proraotions from the Ranks 
 
 you will-go as well dressed as the parish churchward- 
 en 1" A country apothecary who visited the school 
 admired the robust boy's arms, and offered to take him 
 into his laboratory to pound his drugs, to which Vau- 
 quelin assented, in the hope of being able to contmue 
 his lessons. But the apothecary would not permit him 
 to spend any part of his time in learning ; and on asr 
 certaining this, the youth immediately determined to 
 quit his service. He therefore left St, Andre and took 
 the road for Paris with his haversack on his back. Ar^ 
 rived there, he searched for a place as apothecary's boy, 
 but could not find one. Worn out by fatigue and des- 
 titution, Yauquelin fell ill, and in that state was taken 
 to the hospital, where he thought he should die, But 
 better things were in store for the poor boy. He recov- 
 ered, and again proceeded in his search of employment, 
 which he at length found with an apothecary. Shorts 
 ly after, he became known to Fourcroy the eminent 
 chemist, who was so pleased with the youth that lifi' 
 made him his private secretary ; and many years after, 
 on the death of that great philosopher, Vauquelin suc- 
 ceeded him as Professor of Chemistry. Finally, in 
 1829, the electors of the district of Calvados appointed 
 him their repi-esentative in the Chamber of Deputies, 
 and he re-entered in triumph the village which he had 
 left so many years before, so poor and so obscure. 
 
 England has no parallel instances to show, of promor 
 tions from the ranks of the army to the highest mili- 
 tary oflSces, which have been so common in France since 
 the first Revolution. " La carri^re ouverte aux ta- 
 lents" has there received many striking illustrations, 
 which would doubtless be matched among ourselves 
 were the road to promotion as open. Hoche, Hum- 
 bert, and Pichegru, began their respective careers as 
 private soldiers. Hoche, while in the King's army, was 
 accustomed to embroider waistcoats to enable him to 
 
In ike French Army. 85 
 
 earn money wherewith to purchase books on military 
 science. Humbert was a scapegrace when a youth ; 
 at sixteen he ran away from home, and was by turns 
 servant, to a tradesman at Nancy, a workman at Lyons, 
 and a hawker of rabbit-skins. In 1 "792, he enlisted as 
 a volunteer ; and in a year he was General of Brigade. 
 Kleber, Lefevre, Suchet, Victor, Lannes, Soult, Massena, 
 St. Cyr, D'Erlon, Murat, Augereau, Bessiferes, and Ney, 
 all rose from the ranks. ■ In some cases promotion was 
 rapid, in others it was slow. St. Cyr, the son of a tan- 
 ner of Toul, began life as an actor, after which he en- 
 listed in the Chasseurs; and was promoted to a captain- 
 cy within a year. Victor, Due de Belluno, enlisted in 
 the Artillery in 1781 : during the events preceding the 
 Revolution he was dischai-ged ; but immediately on 
 the outbreak of war he re-enlisted, and in the course of 
 a few months his inti-epidity and ability secured his 
 promotion as Adjutant-Major and chief of battalion. 
 Murat, " le beau sabreur," was the son of a village inn- 
 keeper in Perigord, where he looked after the horses. 
 He first enlisted in a regiment of Chasseurs, from which 
 he was dismissed for insubordination ; but again enlist- 
 ing he shortly rose to the rank of Colonel. N"ey enlist- 
 ed at eighteen in a hussar regiment, and gradually ad- 
 vanced step by step : Kleber soon discovered his mer- 
 its, surnaming him " The Indefatigable," and promoted 
 him to be Adjutant-General when only twenty-five. 
 On the other hand, Soult* was six years from the date 
 of his enlistment before he reached the rank of sergeant. 
 But Soult's advancement was rapid compared with that 
 of Massena, who served for fourteen years before he 
 
 * Soult received but little education in his youtli, and learned next 
 to no geography until he became foreign minister of France, when the 
 study of this branch of knowledge is said to have given him the great- 
 est pleasure. — "CEuvi-es, etc., d' Alexis de Tocqne^ille. Par G. de 
 Beaumont" (Paris, 1861), i. 52. 
 
36 Persevering Application and Energy. 
 
 vvas made sergeant ; and though he afterwards rosa 
 successively, step by step, to the grades of Colonel, 
 General of Division, and Marshal, he declared that the 
 post of sergeant was the step which of all others had 
 cost him the most labor to win. Similar promotions 
 from the ranks, in the French army, have continued 
 down to our own day. Changarnier entered the King's 
 bodyguard as a private in 1815. Marshal Bugeaud 
 served four years in the ranks, after which he was made 
 an oflScer. Marshal Randon, the present Fi-ench Min- 
 ister of War, began his military career as a drummei-* 
 boy ; and in the portrait of him in the gallery at Ver- 
 sailles, his hand rests upon a drum-head, the picture be- 
 ing thus painted at his own request. Instances such 
 as these inspire French soldiers with enthusiasm for 
 their service, as each private feels that he may possibly 
 carry the baton of a marshal in his knapsack. 
 
 The instances of men, in this and other countries, 
 who, by dint of persevering application and energy, 
 have raised themselves from the humblest ranks of in- 
 dustry to eminent positions of usefulness and influence 
 in society, are indeed so numerous that they have long 
 ceased ' to be regarded as exceptional. Looking at 
 some of the more remarkable, it might almost be said 
 that early, encounter with difficulty and advei-se cir- 
 cumstances was the necessary and indispensable con- 
 dition of success. The British House of Commons has 
 always contained a considerable number of such self- 
 raised men — fitting representatives of the industrial 
 character of the people ; and it is to the credit of our 
 Legislature that they have been welcomed and honoi- 
 ed there. When the late Joseph Brotherton, membei 
 for'Salford, in the course of the discussion on the Ten 
 Hours' Bill, detailed with true pathos the hardships 
 and fatigues to Avhich he had been subjected when 
 working as a factory -boy in a cotton -mill, and de- 
 
Mr. Lindsay. 37 
 
 scribed the resolution which he had then formed, that 
 if ever it was in his power he would endeavor to ame- 
 liorate the condition of that class, Sir James Graham 
 rose immediately after him, and declared, amidst the 
 cheers of the House, that he did not before know that 
 Mr. Brotherton's origin had been so humble, but that it 
 rendered him more proud than he had ever before been 
 of the House of Commons, to think that a person risen 
 from that condition should be able to sit side by side, 
 on equal terms, with the hereditary gentry of the land. 
 The late Mr. Fox, member for Oldham, was accus- 
 tomed to introduce his recollections of past times with 
 the words, '" when I was working as a weaver-boy at 
 Norwich;" and there are other members of parlia- 
 ment, still living, whose origin has been equally hum- 
 ble. Mr. Lindsay, the well-known ship-ownei-, until re- 
 cently member for Sunderland, once told the simple 
 story of his life to the electors of Weymouth, in an- 
 swer to an attack made upon him by his political op- 
 ponents. He had been left an orphan at fourteen, and 
 when he left Glasgow for Liverpool to push his way in 
 the world, not being able to pay the usual fare, the 
 captain of the steamer agreed to take his labor in ex- 
 change, and the boy worked his passage by trimming 
 the coals in the coal-hole. At Liverpool he remained 
 for seven weeks before ho could obtain employment, 
 during which time he lived in sheds and fared hardly; 
 until at last he found shelter on board a West India- 
 man. He entered as a boy, and before he was nine- 
 teen, by steady good conduct he had risen to the com- 
 mand of a ship. At twenty-three he retired from the 
 sea, and settled on shore, after which his progress was 
 rapid : " he had prospered," he said, " by steady indus- 
 try, by constant work, and by ever keeping in view 
 the great principle of doing to others as you would bo 
 done by." 
 
38 William Jadlcson — Richard Gohden. 
 
 The career of Mr. William Jackson, of Birkenhead, 
 the present member for North Derbyshire, bears con- 
 siderable resemblance to that of Mr. Lindsay. His fa- 
 ther, a surgeon at Lancaster, died, leaving a family of 
 ele.ven children, of whom William Jackson was the sev- 
 enth son. The elder boys had been well educated while 
 the father lived, but at his death the younger members 
 had to shift for themselves. William, when under 
 twelve years old, was taken from school, and put to 
 hard work at a ship's side from six in the morning till 
 nine at night. His master falling ill, the boy was taken 
 into the countiug-house, where he had more leisure. 
 This gave him an opportunity of reading, and having 
 obtained access to a set of the " Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 nica," he read the volumes through from A to Z, part- 
 ly by day, but chiefly at night. He afterwards put 
 liimself to a trade, was diligent, and succeeded in it. 
 Now he has ships sailing on almost every sea, and holdi) 
 commercial relations with nearly every country on tho 
 globe. 
 
 Among like men of the same class may be ranked the 
 late Richard Cobden, whose start in life was equally 
 humble. The son of a small farmer at Midhurst in Sus- 
 sex, he was sent at an early age to London and em- 
 ployed as a boy in a warehouse in the City. He was 
 diligent, well conducted, and eager for information. 
 His master, a man of the old school, warned him against 
 too much reading; but the boy went on in his own 
 course, storing his mind with the wealth found in books. 
 He was promoted from one position of trust to another 
 — became a traveller for his house — secui-ed a large con- 
 nection, and eventually started in business as a calico- 
 printer at Manchester. Taking an interest in public 
 questions, more especially in popular education, his at- 
 tention was gradually drawn to the subject of the Corn 
 Laws, to the repeal of which he may be said to liave 
 
Diligence Indispensabk. 39 
 
 devoted his foirtune and his life. It may be mentioned 
 as a curious fact, that the first speech he delivered in 
 public was a total failure. But he had great persever- 
 ance, application, and energy ; and with persistency and 
 practice, he became at length one of the most persuas- 
 ive and effective of public speakers, extorting the disin- 
 terested eulogy of even Sir Robert Peel himself. M. 
 Drouyn de Lhuys, the French Ambassador, has elo- 
 quently said of Mr. Cobden, that he was " a living 
 proof of what merit, perseverance, and labor can accom- 
 plish ; one of the most complete- examples of those men 
 who, sprung from the humblest ranks of society, raise 
 themselves to the highest rank in public estimation by 
 the effect of their own worth and of their personal serv- 
 ices ; fiuaUy, one of the rarest examples of the solid 
 qualities inherent in the English character." 
 
 In all these cases, strenuous individual application 
 was the price paid for distinction ; excellence of any 
 sort being invariably placed beyond the reach of indo. 
 lence. It is the diligent hand and head alone that 
 maketh rich — in self-culture, growth in wisdom, and in 
 business. Even when men are born to wealth and high 
 social position, any solid reputation which they may in- 
 dividually achieve can only be attained by energetic 
 application ; for though an inheritance of acres may be 
 bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom 
 can not. The wealthy man may pay others for doing 
 his work for him, but it is impossible to get his think- 
 ing done for him by another, or to purchase any kind 
 of self-culture. Indeed, the doctrine that excellence in 
 any pursuit is only to be achieved by laborious appli- 
 cation, holds as true in the case of the man of wealth as 
 in that of Drew and Gifford, whose only school was- a 
 cobbler's stall, or Hugh Miller, whose only college was 
 a Cromarty stone quarry. 
 
 Riches and ease, it is perfectly clear,, are not neces- 
 
40 The wealthier Banks not Idlers. 
 
 sary for man's highest cultui-e, else had not the world 
 been so largely indebted in all times to those who have 
 sprung from the humbler ranks. An easy and luxuri- 
 ous existence does not train men to effort or encounter 
 with difficulty ; nor does it awaken that consciousness 
 of power which is so necessary for energetic and effect- 
 ive action in life. Indeed, so far from poverty being a 
 misfortune, it may, by vigorous self-help, be converted 
 even intoi a blessing ; rousing a man to that struggle 
 with the world in which, though some may purchase 
 ease by degradation, the right-minded and true-hearted 
 find strength, confidence, and triumph. Bacon says, 
 " Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their 
 strength : of the former they believe greater things 
 than they should ; of the latter much less. Self-reli- 
 ance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of 
 his own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to 
 learn and labor truly to get his living, and care- 
 fully to expend the good things committed to his 
 trust." 
 
 Riches are so gi-eat a temptation to ease and self-in- 
 dulgence, to which men are by nature prone, that the 
 glory is all the greater of those who, born to ample for- 
 tunes, nevertheless take an active pai't in the work of 
 their generation — who " scorn delights and live labori- 
 ous days." It is to the honor of the wealthier ranks in 
 this country that they are not idlers ; for they do their 
 fair share of the work of the state, and usually take 
 more than their fair share of its dangers. It was a fine 
 thing said of a subaltern officer in the Peninsular cam- 
 paigns, observed trudging alone through mud and mire 
 by the side of his regiment, " There goes £15,000 a 
 year !" and in our own day, the bleak slopes of Sebas- 
 topol and the burning soil of India have borne witness 
 to the like noble self-denial and devotion on the part 
 of our gentler classes ; many a gallant and noble fel- 
 
Sir Bobert Peel. 41 
 
 low, of rank and estate, having risked his life, or lost it, 
 in one or other of those fields of action, in the service 
 of his country. 
 
 Nor have the wealthier classes been undistinguished 
 in the more peaceful pursuits of philosophy and science. 
 Take, for instance, the great names of Bacon, the fathe? 
 of modern philosophy, and of Worcester, Boyle, Cav- 
 endish, Talbot, and Rosse, in science. The last named 
 may be regarded as the gi'eat mechanic of the peerage ; 
 a man who, if he had not been born a peei-, would prob- 
 ably have taken the highest rank as an inventor. So 
 thorough is his knowledge of smith-work that he is said 
 to have been pressed on one occasion to accept the 
 foremanship of a large workship, by a manufacturer 
 to whom his rank was unknown. The great Rosse tel- 
 escope, of his own fabrication, is certainly the most ex. 
 traordinary instrument of the kind that has yet been 
 constructed. 
 
 But it is principally in the departments of politics 
 and literature that we find the most energetic laborers 
 amongst our higher classes. Success in these lines of 
 action, as in all others, can only be achieved through in- 
 dustry, practice, and study ; and the great Minister, or 
 parliamentary leader, must necessarily be amongst the 
 very hardest of workers. Such was Palmerston ; and 
 such are Derby and Russell, Disraeli and Gladstone. 
 These men have had the benefit of no Ten Hours' Bill, 
 but have often, during the busy season of Parliament, 
 worked " double shift," almost day and night. One of 
 the most illustrious of such workers in modern times 
 was unquestionably the late Sir Robert Peel. He pos- 
 sessed in an extraordinary degree the power of contin- 
 uous intellectual labor, nor did he spare himself. His 
 career indeed presented a remarkable example of how 
 much a man of comparatively moderate powers can ac- 
 complish by means of assiduous application and inde- 
 
42 L(yrd BrowgTiam. 
 
 fatigal)le industry. During the forty years that he 
 held a seat in Parliament, his labors were prodigious. 
 He was a most conscientious man, and whatever he un- 
 dertook to do, he did thoroughly. All his speeches 
 bear evidence of his careful study of every thing that 
 had been spoken or written on the subject under con- 
 sideration. He was elaborate almost to excess; and 
 spared no pains to adapt himself to the various capaci- 
 ties of his audience. Withal, -he possessed much prac- 
 tical sagacity, great strength of purpose, and power to 
 direct the issues of action with steady hand and eye. 
 In one respect he surpassed most men : his principles 
 broadened and enlarged with time ; and age, instead 
 of contracting, only served to mellow and ripen his na- 
 ture. To the last he continued open to the reception 
 of new views, and, though many thought him cautious 
 to excess, he did not allow himself to fall into that in- 
 discriminating admiration of the past, which is the palsy 
 of many minds similarly educated, and renders the old 
 age of many nothing but a pity. 
 
 The indefatigable industry of Lord Brougham has be- 
 come almost proverbial. His public labors have ex- 
 tended over a period of upwards of sixty years, during 
 which he has ranged over many fields — of law, litera- 
 ture, politics, and science — and achieved distinction in 
 them all. How he contrived it, has been' to many a 
 mystery. Once, when Sir Samuel Romilly was request- 
 ed to undertake some new work, he excused himself by 
 saying that he had no time ; " but," he added, " go with 
 it to that fellow Brougham ; he seems to have time for 
 every thing." The secret of it was, that he never left a 
 minute unemployed ; withal he possessed a constitution 
 of iron. When arrived at an age at which most men 
 would have retired from the world to enjoy their hard- 
 earned leisure, perhaps to doze away their time in an 
 easy-chair, Lord Brougham commenced and prosecuted 
 
Sir M Biilwer. Lytton. 
 
 a series of elaborate investigations as to the laws oi 
 Light, and he submitted the results to the most scien- 
 tific audiences that Paris and Londoa could muster. 
 About the same time, he was passing through the press 
 his admirable sketches of the "Men of Science and 
 Literature of the Reign of George IIL," and taking his 
 full share of the law business and the political discus- 
 sions in the House of Lords. Sydney Smith once rec- 
 ommended him to confine himself to only the transac- 
 tion of so much business as three strong men could 
 get through. But such was Brougham's love of work 
 — long become a habit — that no amount of application 
 seems to have been too great for him ; and such was 
 his love of excellence, that it has been said of him that 
 if his station in life had been only that of a shoeblack, 
 he would never have rested satisfied until he had be- 
 come the bee^ shoeblack in England. 
 
 Another hard-working man of the same class is Sir 
 E. Bulwer Lytton. Few writers have done moi"e, or 
 achieved higher distinction in various walks — as a novel- 
 ist, poet, dramatist, historian, essayist, oi-ator, and poli- 
 tician. He has worked his way step by step, disdainful 
 of ease, and animated throughout by the ardent desire 
 to excel. On the score of mere industry, there are few 
 living English writers who have written so much, and 
 none that have produced so much of high quality. The 
 industry of Bulwer is entitled to all the greater praise 
 that it has been entirely self-imposed. To hunt, and 
 shoot, and live at ease — to frequent the clubs and en- 
 joy the opera, with the variety of London visiting and 
 sight-seeing during the "season," and then off to the 
 country mansion, with its well-stocked preserves, and 
 its thousand delightful out-door pleasures — to travel 
 abroad, to Paris, Vienna, or Rome— all this is excessive- 
 ly attractive to a lover of pleasure and a man of fortune, 
 and by no means calculated to make him voluntarily' 
 
44 Mr. Disraeli. 
 
 undertake continuous labor of any kind. Yet these 
 pleasures, all within his reach, Bulwer must, as compar- 
 ed with men born to similar estate, have denied himself 
 in assuming the position and pursuing the career of a 
 literary man. Like Byron, his first eifort was poetical 
 (" Weeds and Wild Flowers "), and a failure. His second 
 was a novel ("Falkland"), and it proved a failure too. 
 A man of weaker nerve would have dropped author- 
 ship ; but Bulwer had pluck and perseverance ; and he 
 worked on, determined to succeed. He was incessant- 
 ly industrious, read extensively, and from failure went 
 courageously onward to success. " Pelham " followed 
 " Falkland " within a year, and the remainder of Bul- 
 wer's literary life, now extending over a period of thirty 
 years, has been a succession of triumphs. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli affords a similar instance of the power 
 of industry and application in working out an eminent 
 public career. His first achievements were, like Bul- 
 wer's,in literature; and he reached success only through 
 a succession of failures. His " Wondrous Tale of Al- 
 roy " and "Revolutionary Epic" were laughed at, and 
 regarded as indications of literary lunacy. But he 
 worked on in other directions, and his " Coningsby," 
 " Sybil," and " Tancred," proved the sterling stuff of 
 which he was made. As an orator, too, his first appear- 
 ance in the House of Commons was a failure. It was 
 spoken of as " more screaming than an Adelphi fai-ce." 
 Though composed in a grand and ambitious strain, ev- 
 ery sentence was hailed with " loud laughter." " Ham- 
 let " played as a comedy were nothing to it. But he 
 concluded with a sentence which embodied a prophecy. 
 Writhing under the laughter with which his studied el- 
 oquence had been received, he exclaimed, " I have begun 
 several times many things, and have succeeded in them 
 at last. I will sit down now, but the time will come when 
 you will hear me." The time did come: and how Dig- 
 
Alexis de Tocqueville. 45 
 
 raeli succeeded in at length commanding the attention 
 of the first assembly of gentlemen in the world, affords a 
 striking illustration of what energy and determination 
 will do ; for Disraeli earned his position by dint of pa- 
 tient industry. He did not, as many young men do, 
 having once failed, retire dejected, to mope and whine 
 in a corner, but diligently set himself to work. He 
 carefully unlearnt his faults, studied the character of 
 his audience, practised sedulously the art of speech, and 
 industriously filled his mind with the elements of par- 
 liamentary knowledge. Pie worked patiently for suc- 
 cess ; and it came, but slowly ; then the House laughed 
 with him, instead of at him. The recollection of his 
 early failure was effaced, and by general consent he 
 was at length admitted to be one of the most finished 
 and effective of parliamentary speakers. 
 
 Although much may be accomplished by means of 
 individual industry and energy, as these and other in- 
 stances set forth in the following pages serve to illus- 
 trate, it must at the same, time be acknowledged that 
 the help which we derive from others in the journey of 
 life is . of very great importance. The poet "Words- 
 worth has well said that ." these two things, contradic-; 
 tory though they may seemj inust go together — manly 
 dependence and manly independence, manly reliance 
 and manly self-reliance." From infancy to old age, all 
 are more or less indebted to others for nurture and cul- 
 ture ; and the best and strongest are usually found the 
 readiest to acknowledge such help. Take, for example, 
 the career of the late Alexis de Tocqueville, a man 
 doubly well-born, for his father was a distinguished 
 peer of France, and his mother a grand-daughter of 
 Malesherbes. Through powerful family influence, he 
 was appointed Judge Auditor of Versailles when only 
 twenty-one; but probably feeling that he had not fair- 
 ly won the position by merit, he determined to give it 
 
46 De Tocqueville on Mutual Help. 
 
 tip and owe his future advanceraeftt in life to himseli 
 alone. " A foolish resolution," some will saj^ ; but De 
 Tocqueville bravely acted it out. He resigned his a,p- 
 pointment, and made arrangements to leave France for 
 the purpose of travelling through the United States, 
 the results of which were published in his great book 
 on "Democracy in America." His friend and travel- 
 ling companion, Gustave de Beaumont, has described 
 his indefatigable industry during this journey. " His 
 nature," he says, "was wholly averse to idleness, and 
 whether he was travelling or resting, his mind was al- 
 ways at work. . . . With Alexis, the most agreeable 
 conversation was that which was the most useful. The 
 worst day was the lost day, or the day ill spent ; the 
 least loss of time annoyed him." Tocqueville himself 
 wrote to a friend — ^" There is no time of life at which 
 one can wholly cease from action ; for effort without 
 one's self, and still more, effort within, is equally neces- 
 sary, if not more so, when we grow old, as it is in youth. 
 I compare man in this world to a traveller journeying 
 without ceasing towards a colder and colder region; 
 the higher he goes, the faster he ought to walk. The 
 great malady of the soul is cold. And in resisting this 
 formidable evil, one needs not only to be sustained 
 by the action of a mind employed, but also by contact 
 with one's fellows in the business of life."* 
 
 Notwithstanding de Tocqueville's decided views as 
 to the necessity of exercising individual energy and 
 self-dependence, no one could be more ready than he 
 was to recognize the value of that help and support for 
 which all men are indebted to others in a greater or 
 less degree. Thus, he often acknowledged, with grati- 
 tude, his obligations to his friends De Kergorlay and 
 Stofells — to the former for intellectual assistance, and 
 
 * "CEuvres et Conespondence ine'dite d' Alexis de Tocqueville, 
 Par Guatave de Beaumont," i. 398. 
 
Men their own best Helpers. 47 
 
 to the latter for moral support and sympathy. To De 
 Kergorlay he wrote — " Thine is the only soul in which 
 I have confidence, and whose influence exercises a gen- 
 uine effect upon my own. Many others have influence 
 upon the details of my actions, but no one has so much 
 influence as thou on the origination of fundamental 
 ideas, and of those principles which are the rule of con- 
 duct." De Tocqueville was not less ready to confess 
 the great obligations which he owed to his wife, Maria, 
 for the preservation of that temper and frame of mind 
 which enabled him to prosecute his studies with suc- 
 cess. He believed that a noble-minded woman insensi- 
 bly elevated the character of her husband, while one of 
 a grovelling nature as certainly tended to degrade it.* 
 In fine, human character is moulded by a thousand 
 subtle influences ; by example and precept ; by life 
 and literature; by friends and neighbors; by the 
 world we live in as well as by the spirits of our forefa- 
 thers, whose legacy of good words and deeds we inher- 
 it. But great, unquestionably, though these influences 
 are acknowledged to be, it is nevertheless equally 
 clear that men must necessarily be the active agents 
 of their own well-being and well-doing ; and that, how- 
 ever much the wise and the good may owe to others, 
 they themselves must in the very nature of things be 
 their own best helpers. 
 
 * " I bave seen," said he, " a hundred times in the course of my 
 life, a weak man exhibit genuine public virtue, because supported by 
 a wife who sustained him in his course, not so much by advising him 
 to such and such acts, as by exercising a strengthening influence over 
 the manner in which duty or even ambition was to be regarded. 
 Much oftener, however, it must be confessed, have I seen private and 
 domestic hfe gradually transform a man to whom nature had given 
 generosity, disinterestedness, and even some capacity for greatness, 
 into an ambitious, mean-spirited, vulgar, and selfish creature, who, in 
 matters relating to his countiy, ended by considering them only in so 
 far as they rendered his own particular condition more comfortable 
 and easy." — " CEiivres de Tocqueville," ii. 349. 
 
CHAPTER n. 
 
 LBADEES of industry — IKTENTOKS AND PEODT7CEE8. 
 
 " Le travail et la Science sont desormais les maitres du monde."— 
 De Salvandt. 
 
 " Deduct all that men of the humbler classes have done for England 
 In the way of inventions only, and see where she would have been but 
 for them." — Akthuk Helps. 
 
 ONE of the most strongly marked features of the 
 English people is their spirit of industry, standing 
 out prominent and distinct in their past history, and as 
 strikingly characteristic of them now as at any former 
 period. It is this spirit, displayed by the commons of 
 England, which has laid the foundations and built up 
 the industrial greatness of the empire. This vigorous 
 growth of the nation has been mainly the result of the 
 free energy of individuals, and it has been contingent 
 upon the number of hands and minds from time to time 
 actively employed within it, whether as cultivators of 
 the soil, producers of articles of utility, contrivers of 
 tools and machines, writers of books, or creatore of 
 works of art. And while this spirit of active industry 
 has been the vital principle of the nation, it has also 
 been its saving and remedial one, counteracting from 
 time to time the effects of errors in our laws and im- 
 perfections in our constitution. 
 
 The career of industry which the nation has pur- 
 sued, has also proved its best education. As steady 
 application to work is the healthiest trainins for 
 
Toil the best School. 49 
 
 every individual, so is it the best discipline of a 
 state. Honorable industry travels the same road with 
 duty; and Providence has closely linked both with 
 happiness. The gods, says the poet, have placed la- 
 bor and toil on the way leading to the Elysian fields. 
 Certain it is that no bread eaten by man is so sweet as 
 that earned by his own labor, whether bodily or men- 
 tal. By labor the earth has been subdued, and man re- 
 deemed from barbarism ; nor has a single step in civili- 
 zation been made without it. Labor is not only a ne- 
 cessity and a duty, but a blessing : only the idler feels 
 it to be a curse. The duty of work is written on the 
 thews and muscles of the limbs, the mechanism of the 
 hand, the nerves and lobes of the brain — the sum of 
 whose healthy action is satisfaction and enjoyment. In 
 the school of labor is taught the best practical wisdom ; 
 nor is a life of manual employment, as we shall hereaf- 
 ter find, incompatible with high mental culture. 
 
 Hugh Miller, than whom none knew better the 
 strength and the weakness belonging to the lot of la- 
 bor, stated the result of his experience to be, that 
 Work, even the hardest, is full of pleasure and materi- 
 als for self-improvement. He held honest labor to be 
 the best of teachers, and that the school of toil is the 
 noblest of schools — save only the Christian one — that 
 it is a school in which the ability of being useful is im- 
 parted, the spirit of independence learnt, and the habit 
 of persevering effort acquired. He was even of opin- 
 ion that the training of the mechanic — by the exercise 
 which it gives to his observant faculties, from his daily 
 dealing with things actual and practical, and the close 
 experience of life which he acquires — better fits him 
 for picking his way along the jouraey of life, and is 
 more favorable to his growth as a Man, emphatically 
 speaking, than the training afibrded by any other con- 
 dition. 
 
 3 
 
50 Invention of the Steam-engine. 
 
 The array of great names which we have already 
 cursorily cited, of men springing from the ranks of the 
 industrial classes, who have achieved distinction in 
 various walks of life— in science, commerce, literature, 
 and art— shows that at all events the difficulties inter- 
 posed by poverty and labor are not insurmountable. 
 
 As respects the great contrivances and inventions 
 which have conferred so much power and wealth upon 
 the nation, it is unquestionable that for the greater 
 part of them we have been indebted to men of the hum- 
 blest rank. Deduct what they have done in this partic- 
 ular line of action, and it will be found that very little 
 indeed remains for other men to have accomplished. 
 
 Inventors have set in motion some of the greatest in- 
 dustries of the world. To them society owes many of 
 its chief necessaries, comforts, and luxuries ; and by 
 their genius and labor daily life has been rendered in 
 all respects more easy as well as enjoyable. Our food, 
 our clothing, the furniture of our homes, the glass which 
 admits the light to our dwellings at the same time that 
 it excludes the cold, the gas which illuminates our 
 streets, our means of locomotion by land and by sea, 
 the tools by which our various articles of necessity and 
 luxury are fabricated, have been the result of the labot 
 and ingenuity of many men and many minds. Man- 
 kind at large are all the happier for such inventions, 
 and are every day reaping the benefit of them in an in- 
 crease of individual well-being as well as of public en- 
 joyment. 
 
 Though the invention of the working steam-engine-— 
 the king of machines — belongs, comparatively speaking, 
 to our own epoch, the idea of it was born many cen- 
 turies ago. Like other contrivances and discoveries, it 
 was efiected step by step — one man transmitting the 
 result of his labors, at the time apparently useless, to 
 his successors, who took it up and carried it forward an- 
 
James Watt. 51 
 
 other stage — the prosecution of the inquiry extending 
 over many generations. Thus the idea promulgated 
 by Hero of Alexandria was never altogether lost ; but, 
 like the grain of wheat hid in the hand of the Egyptian 
 mummy, it sprouted, and again grew vigorously when 
 brought into the full light of modern science. The 
 steam-engine was nothing, however, until it emerged 
 from the state of theory, and was taken in hand by 
 practical mechanics ; and what a noble story of patient, 
 laborious investigation, of difficulties encountfered and 
 overcome by heroic industry, does not that marvellous 
 machine tell of ! It is indeed, in itself, a monument of 
 the power of self-help in man. Grouped around it we 
 find Savary, the military engineer; Newcomen, the 
 Dartmouth blacksmith ; Cawley, the glazier ; Potter, 
 the engine-boy ; Smeaton, the civil engineer ; and, tow- 
 ering . above all, the laborious, patient, never-tiring 
 James Watt, the mathematical-instrument maker. 
 
 Watt was one of the most industrious of men ; and 
 the story of his life proves, what all experience confirms, 
 that it is not the man of the greatest natural vigor and 
 capacity who achieves the highest results, but he who 
 employs his powers with the greatest industry and the 
 most carefully disciplined skill — the skill that comes 
 by labor, application, and experience. Many men in his 
 time knew far more than Watt, but none labored so 
 assiduously as he did to turn all that he did know to 
 useful practical purposes. He was, above all .things, 
 most persevering in the pursuit of facts. • He cultivated 
 carefully that habit of active attention on which all the 
 higher working qualities of the mind mainly depend. 
 Indeed, Mr. Edgeworth entertained the opinion, that 
 the diiference of intellect in men depends more upon 
 the early cultivation of this habit of attention, than 
 upon any great disparity betweep the powers of one 
 individual and another. 
 
62 A;pj}liaatia')xs of the Stmm-engine. 
 
 Even when a boy, Watt found science in his toys. 
 The quadrants lying about his father's carpenteV's shop 
 led him to the study of optics and astronomy ; his ill 
 health induced him to pry into the secrets of physiolo- 
 gy; and his solitary walks through the country at- 
 tracted him to the study of botany and history. While 
 carrying on the business of a mathematical-instrument 
 maker, he received an order to build an organ ; and, 
 though without an ear for music, he undertook the 
 study of harmonics, and successfully constructed the 
 instrument. And, in like manner, when the little mod- 
 el of N"ewcomen's steam-engine, belonging to the Uni- 
 versity of Glasgow, was placed in his hands to repair, 
 he forthwith set himself to learn all that was then known 
 about heat, evapoi-ation, and condensation — at the same 
 time plodding his way in mechanics and the science of 
 Construction — the results of which he at length embod- 
 ied in his condensing steam-engine. 
 
 For ten years he went on contriving and inventing 
 ■ — with little hope to cheer him, and with few friends 
 to encourage him. He went on, meanwhile, earning 
 bread for his family by making and selling quadrants, 
 making and mending fiddles, flutes, and musical instru- 
 ments ; measuring mason- woi-k, surveying roads, super- 
 intending the construction of canals, or doing any thing 
 that turned up and offered a prospect of honest gain. 
 At length Watt found a fit partner in another eminent 
 leader of industry — ^Matthew Boulton, of Birmingham ; 
 a skillful, energetic, and far-seeing man, who vigorously 
 undertook the enterprise of introducing the condens- 
 ing-engine into general use as a working power ; and 
 the success of both is now matter of history.* 
 
 * Since the original publication of this book, the author has in an. 
 other work, " The Lives of Boulton and Watt," endeavored to portray 
 in greater detail the character and achievements of these two remarka^ 
 ble men. 
 
The Cotton Manufacture. 53 
 
 Many skillful inventors have from time to time sidd- 
 ed new power to the steam-engine ; and, by numerous 
 m.odiiications, rendered it capable of being applied to 
 nearly all the purposes of manufacture — driving ma< 
 chinery, impelling ships, grinding corn, printing books, 
 stamping money, hammering, plauiug, and turning 
 iron ; in short, of performing every description of me. 
 chanical labor where power is rtquired. One of the 
 most useful modifications in the engine was that de^ 
 vised by Trevithick, and eventually perfected by Geoi-ge 
 Stephenson and his son, in the form of the railway loco- 
 motive, by which social clij,nges of immense importance 
 have been brought about, of even greater consequence, 
 considered in their results on human progress and civ- 
 ilization, than the condensing-engine of Watt. 
 
 One of the first grand results of Watt's invention — 
 which placed aa almost unlimited power at the com- 
 mand of the )^,roducing classes — was the establishment 
 of the cotton-manufacture. The pcrspri most closely 
 identified with the foundation of this great branch of 
 industry was unquestionably Sir Richard Arkwright, 
 whose pi'actical energy and sagacity were perhaps even 
 moT'fe remarkable than his mechanical inventiveness. 
 His originality as an inventor has indeed been called in 
 question, like that of Watt and Stephenson. Arkwright 
 probably stood in the same relation to the spinning- 
 machine that Watt did to the steam-engine and Ste- 
 phenson to the locomotive. He gathered together the 
 siiattered threads of ingenuity which already existed, 
 and wove them, after his own design, into a new and 
 original fabric. Though Lewis Paul, of Birmingham, 
 patented the invention of spinning by rollers thirty 
 years before Arkwright, the machines constructed by 
 him were so imperfect in their details, that they could 
 not be profitably worked, and the invention was prac- 
 tically a failure. Another obscure mechanic, a reed- 
 
54 Richard Arhwright, Barber. 
 
 maker of Leigh, named Thomas Highs, is also said to 
 have invented the water -frame and spinning -jenny ; 
 but they, too, proved unsuccessful. 
 
 When the demands of industry are found to press 
 upon the resources of inventors, the same idea is usu- 
 ally found floating about in many minds ; — such has 
 been the case with the steam-engine, the safety-lamp, 
 the electric telegraph, and other inventions. Many in- 
 genious minds are found laboring in the throes of inven- 
 tion, until at length the master-mind, the strong practi- 
 cal man, steps forward, and straightway delivers them 
 of their idea, applies the principle successfully, and the 
 thing is done. Then there is a loud outcry among all 
 the smaller contrivers, who see themselves distanced in 
 the race ; and hence men such as Watt, Stephenson, 
 and Arkwright, have usually to defend their reputa- 
 tion and their rights as practical and successful invent- 
 ors. 
 
 Richard Arkwright, like most of our great mechan- 
 icians, sprang from the ranks. He was born in Preston 
 in 1732. His parents were very poor, and he was the 
 youngest of thirteen children. He was never at school : 
 the only educatioa he received he gave to himself; and 
 to the last he was only able to write with difficulty. 
 When a boy, he was apprenticed to a barber, and after 
 learning the business, he set up for himself in Bolton, 
 where he occupied an underground cellar, over which 
 he put up the sign, " Come to the subterraneous barber 
 — ^he shaves for a penny." The other barbers found 
 their customers leaving them, and reduced their prices 
 to his standard, when Arkwright, determined to push 
 his trade, announced his determination to give "A clean 
 shave for a halfpenny." After a few years he quitted 
 his cellar, and became an itinerant dealer in hair. At 
 that time wigs were worn, and wig-making formed an 
 important branch of the barbering business. Ark- 
 
Bichard Arkwright, Inventor. 55 
 
 Wright -went about buying hair for the wigs. He was 
 accustomed to attend the hiring-fairs throughout Lan- 
 cashire resorted to by young women, for the purpose 
 of securing their long tresses ; and it is said that in 
 negotiations of this sort he was very successful. He 
 also dealt in a chemical hair-dye, which he used adroit- 
 ly, and thereby secured a considerable trade. But he 
 does not seem, notwithstanding his pushing character, 
 to have done more than earn a bare living. 
 
 The fashion of wig-wearing having undergone a 
 change, distress fell upon the wig-makers ; and Ark- 
 wright, being of a mechanical turn, was consequently 
 induced to turn machine inventor or " conjurer," as the 
 pursuit was then popularly termed. Many attempts 
 were made about that time to invent a spinning-ma- 
 chine, and our barber determined to launch his little 
 bark on the sea of invention with the rest. Like other 
 self-taught men of the same bias, he had already been 
 devoting his spare time to the invention of a perpetual- 
 motion machine ; and from that the transition to a spin- 
 ning-machine was easy. He followed his experiments 
 so assiduously that he neglected his business, lost the 
 little money he had saved, and was reduced to great 
 poverty. His wife— for he had by this time married — ■ 
 was impatient at what she conceived to be a wanton 
 waste of time and money, and in a moment of sudden 
 wrath she seized upon and destroyed his models, hop- 
 ing thus to remove the cause of the family privations. 
 Ai'kwright was a stubborn and enthusiastic man, and 
 he was provoked beyond measure by this conduct of 
 his wife, from whom he immediately separated. 
 
 In travelling about the country, Arkwright had be- 
 come acquainted with a person named Kay, a clock- 
 maker at Warrington, who assisted him in constructing 
 some of the parts of his perpetual-motion machinery. 
 It is supposed that he was informed by Kay of the 
 
56 Ricliard Arhvrright, Inventor. 
 
 principle of spinning by rollers ; but it is also said that 
 the idea was first suggested to him by accidentally 
 observing a red-hot piece of iron become elongated by 
 passing between iron rollers. However this may be, 
 the idea at once took firm possession of his mind, and 
 he proceeded to devise the process by which it was to 
 be accomplished, Kay being able to tell him nothing on 
 this point. Arkwright now abandoned his business of 
 hair-collecting, and devoted himself to the perfecting 
 of his machine, a model of which, constructed by Kay 
 under his directions, he set up in the parlor of the Free 
 Grammar-school at Preston. Being a burgess of the 
 town, he voted at the contested election at which Gen- 
 eral Burgoyne was returned ; but such was his poverty, 
 and such the tattered state of his dress, that a number 
 of persons subscribed a sum sufficient to have him put 
 in a state fit to appear in the poll-room. The exhibi 
 tion of his machine in a town where so many work- 
 people lived by the exercise of manual labor proved a 
 dangerous experiment ; ominous growlings were heard 
 outside the school-room from time to time, and Ark- 
 wright — remembering the fate of Kay, who was mob- 
 bed and compelled to fly from Lancashire because of 
 his invention of the fly-shuttle, and of poor Hargreaves, 
 whose spinning-jenny had been pulled to pieces only a 
 short time before by a Blackburn mob — wisely deter- 
 mined on packing up his model and removing to a less 
 dangerous locality. He went accordingly to Notting- 
 ham, where he applied to some of the local bankers for 
 pecuniary assistance ; and the Messrs. Wright consent- 
 ed to advance him a sum of money on condition of shar- 
 ing in the profits of the invention. The machine, how- 
 ever, not being perfected so soon as they had anticipa- 
 ted, the bankers recommended Arkwright to apply to 
 Messrs. Strutt and Need, the former of whom was the 
 ingenious) inventor and patentee of the stocking-frame. 
 
Richard Arkwright, Manufacturer. 57 
 
 Mr. Strutt at once appreciated the merits of the inven- 
 tion, and a partnership was entered into with Arkwright, 
 whose road to fortune was now clear. The patent was 
 secured in the name of " Richard Arkwright, of Not- 
 tingham, clockmaker," and it is a circumstance worthy 
 of note, that it was taken out in 1 769, the same year in 
 which Watt secured the patent for his steam-engine. 
 A cotton-mill was first erected at Nottingham, driven 
 by horses ; and another was shortly after built, on a 
 much larger scale, at Cromford, in Derbyshire, turned 
 by a water-wheel, from which circumstance the spin- 
 ning-machine came to be called the water-frame. 
 
 Arkwright's labors, however, were, comparatively 
 speaking, only begun. He had still to perfect all the 
 working details of his machine. It was in his hands 
 the subject of constant modification and improvement, 
 until eventually it was rendered practicable and prof- 
 itable in an eminent degree. But success was only se- 
 cui-ed by long and patient labor : for some years, in- 
 deed, the speculation was disheartening and unprofita- 
 ble, swallowing up a very large amount of capital 
 without any result. When success began to appear 
 more certain, then the Lancashire manufacturers fell 
 upon Arkwright's patent to pull it in pieces, as the 
 Cornish miners fell upon Boulton and Watt to rob 
 them of the profits of their steam-engine. Arkwright 
 was even denounced as the enendy of the working peo- 
 ple ; and a mill which he built near Chorley was de- 
 stroyed by a mob in the presence of a strong force of 
 police and military. The Lancashire men refused to 
 buy his materials, though they were confessedly the 
 best in the market. Then they refused to pay patent- 
 right for the use of his machines, and combined to 
 crush him in the courts of law. To the disgust of 
 right-minded people, Arkwright's patent was upset. 
 After the trial, when passing the hotel at which his op 
 
 3* 
 
55 liichard Arkwright, Manufacturer. 
 
 ponents were staying, one of them said, loud enough to 
 be heard by him, " Well, we've done the old shaver at 
 last ;" to which he coolly replied, " ]N^ever mind, I've a 
 razor left that will shave you all." He established 
 new mills in Lancashire, Derbyshire, and at New Lan- 
 ark, in Scotland. The mills of Cromford also came 
 into his hands at the expiry of his partnership with 
 Strutt, and the amount and the excellence of his pro- 
 ducts were such, that in a short time lie obtained so 
 complete a control of the trade, that the prices were 
 fixed by him, and he governed the main operations of 
 the other cotton-spinners. 
 
 Arkwright was a man of great force of character, in- 
 domitable courage, much worldly shrewdness, with a 
 business faculty almost amounting to genius. At one 
 period his time was engrossed by severe and continu- 
 ous labor, occasioned by the organizing and conduct- 
 ing of his numerous manufactories, sometimes from 
 four in the morning till nine at night. At fifty years 
 of age he set to work to learn English grammar, and 
 improve himself in writing and orthography. After 
 overcoming every obstacle, he had the satisfaction of 
 reaping the reward of his enterprise. Eighteen years 
 after he had constructed his, first machine, he rose to 
 such estimation in Derbyshire that he was appointed 
 High Sheriff of the county, and shortly after George 
 in. conferred upon him the honor of knighthood. He 
 died in 1792. Be it for good or for evil, Arkwright 
 was the founder in England of the modern factory s'ys- 
 tem, a branch of industry which has unquestionably 
 proved a source of immense wealth to individuals and 
 to the nation. 
 
 All the other great branches of industry in Britain 
 furnish like examples of energetic men of business, the 
 source of much benefit to the neighborhoods in which 
 they have labored, and of increased power and wealth 
 
The Peel Family. 59 
 
 to the community at large. Amongst such mignt be 
 cited the Strutts of Belper ; the Tennants of Glasgow ; 
 the Marshalls and Gotts of Leeds ; the Peels, Ash- 
 worths, Birleys, Fieldens, Ashtons, Hey woods, and Ains- 
 worths of South Lancashire, some of whose descendants 
 have since become distinguished in connection with the 
 political history of England. Such pre-eminently were 
 the Peels of South Lancashire. 
 
 The founder of the Peel family, about the middle of 
 last century, was a small yeoman, occupying the Hole 
 House Fai"m, near Blackburn, from which he afterwards 
 removed to a house situated in Fish Lane in that town. 
 Robert Peel, as he advanced in life, saw a large family 
 of sons and daughters growing up about him; but 
 the land about Blackburn being somewhat barren, it 
 did not appear to him that agricultural pursuits offered 
 a very encouraging prospect for their industry. The 
 place had, however, long been the seat of a domestic 
 manufacture — the fabric called " Blackburn grays," 
 consisting of linen weft and cotton warp, being chiefly 
 made in that town and its neighborhood. It was then 
 customary — previous to the introduction of the factory 
 system — for industrious yeomen with families to em- 
 ploy the time not occupied in the fields in weaving at 
 home; and Robert Peel accordingly began the domes- 
 tic trade of calico-making. He was honest, and made 
 an honest article ; thrifty and hard-working, and his 
 trade prospered. He was also enterprising, and was 
 one of the first to adopt the carding cylinder, then re- 
 cently invented. 
 
 But Robert Peel's attention was principally directed 
 to the printing of calico — then a comparatively un- 
 known art — and for some time he carried on a series of 
 experiments with the object of printing by machinery. 
 The experiments were secretly conducted in his own 
 house, the cloth being ironed for the purpose by one of 
 
60 The first Robert Peel. 
 
 the women of the family. It was then customary, 
 in such houses as the Peels, to use pewter plates at 
 dinner. Having sketched a figure or pattern on one 
 of the plates, the thought struck him that an impres- 
 sion might be got from it in reverse, and printed on 
 calico with color. In a cottage at the end of the 
 farm-house lived a woman who kept a calendering ma- 
 chine, and going into her cottage, he put the plate with 
 color rubbed into the figured part and some calico aver 
 it, through the machine, when it was found to leave a 
 satisfactory impression. Such is said to have been the 
 origin of roller-printing on calico. Robert Peel short- 
 ly perfected his process, and the first pattern he brought 
 out was a parsley-leaf; hence he is spoken of in the 
 neighborhood of Blackburn to this day as " Parsley 
 Peel." The process of calico-printing by what is call- 
 ed the mule machine — that is, by means of a wooden 
 cylinder in relief, with an engraved copper cylinder — 
 was afterwards brought to perfection by one of his sons, 
 the head of the firm of Messrs. Peel and Co., of Church. 
 Stimulated by his success,'Robert Peel shortly gave up 
 farming, and removing to Brookside, a village about 
 two miles from Blackburn, he devoted himself exclu- 
 sively to the printing business. There, with the aid of 
 his sons, who were as energetic as himself, he successful- 
 ly carried on the trade for several years; and as the 
 young men grew up towards manhood, the concern 
 branched out into various firms of Peels, each of which, 
 became a centre of industrial activity and a source of 
 remunerative employment to large numbers of people. 
 From what can now be learned of the character of 
 the original and untitled Robert Peel, he must have been 
 a remarkable man — shrewd, sagacious, and far-seeing. 
 But little is known of him excepting from tradition, and 
 the sons of those who knew him are fast passing away. 
 His son, Sir Robert, thus modestly spoke of him ;—■ 
 
The first Sir Edbert Peel 6 1 
 
 " My father may be truly said to have been the founder 
 of our familj' ; and he so accurately appreciated the 
 importance of commercial wealth in a national point of 
 view, that he was often heard to say that the gains to 
 individuals were small compared with the national 
 gains arising from trade.'' 
 
 Sir Robert Peel, the first baronet and the second man- 
 ufacturer of the name, inherited all his father's enter- 
 prise, ability, and industry. His position, at starting 
 in life, was little above that of an ordinary working 
 man ; for his father, though laying the foundations of 
 future prosperity, was still struggling with the difficul- 
 ties arising from insufficient capital. When Robert was 
 only twenty years of age, he determined to begin the 
 business of cotton-printing, which he had by this time 
 learned from his father, on his own account. His un- 
 cle, James Haworth, and William Yates of Blackburn, 
 joined him in his enterprise ; the whole capital which 
 they could raise amongst them amounting to only about 
 £500, the principal part of which was supplied by Wil- 
 liam Yates. The father of the latter was a householder 
 in Blackburn, where he was well known and much re- 
 spected ; and having saved money by his business, he 
 was willing to advance sufficient to give his son a start 
 in the lucrative trade of cotton-printing, then in its 
 infancy. Robert Peel, though comparatively a mere 
 youth, supplied the practical knowledge of the busi- 
 ness ; but it was said of him, and proved true, that he 
 " carried an old head on young shoulders." A ruined 
 corn-mill, with its adjoining fields, was purchased for a 
 comparatively small sum, near the then insignificant 
 town of Bury, where the works long after continued to 
 be known as " The Ground ;" and a few wooden sheds 
 having been run up, the firm commenced their cotton- 
 printing business in a very humble way in the year 
 I'T'TO, adding to it that of cotton-spinning a few years 
 
62 Tales, Peel, and Co. 
 
 later. The fragal style in -which the partners lived 
 may he inferred from the following incident in their 
 early career. William Yates being a married man with 
 a family, commenced housekeeping on a small scale, 
 and, to oblige Peel, who was single, he agreed to take 
 him as a lodger. The sum which the latter first paid 
 for board and lodging was only 8s. a week ; but Yates, 
 considering this too little, insisted on the weekly pay- 
 ment being increased a shilling, to which Peel at first 
 demurred, and a difference between the partners took 
 place, which was eventually compromised by the lodger 
 paying an advance of sixpence a week. William Yates's 
 eldest child was a girl named Ellen, and she very soon 
 became an especial favorite with the young lodger. On 
 returning from his hard day's work at " The Ground," 
 he would take the little girl upon his knee, and say to 
 her, " Nelly, thou bonny little dear, wilt be my wife ?" 
 to which the child would readily answer, " Yes," as any 
 child would do. " Then I'll wait for thee, Nelly ; I'll 
 wed thee, and none else." And Robert Peel did wait. 
 As tlie girl grew in beauty towards womanhood, his de- 
 termination to wait for her was strengthened ; and after 
 the lapse of ten years— years of close application to bus- 
 iness and rapidly increasing prosperity — Robert Peel 
 married Ellen Yates when she had completed her sev- 
 enteenth year ; and the pretty child, whom her moth- 
 er's lodger and father's partner had nursed upon his 
 knee, became Mrs. Peel, and eventually Lady Peel, the 
 mother of the future Prime Minister of England. Lady 
 Peel was a noble and beautiful woman, fitted to grace 
 any station in life. She possessed rare powers of mind, 
 and was, on every emergency, the high-souled and faith- 
 ful counsellor of her husband. For many years after 
 their marriage, she acted as his amanuensis, conduct- 
 ing the principal part of his business correspondence, 
 for Mr. Peel himself was an indifferent and almost uoin- 
 
Lady Peel 63 
 
 telligible writer. She died in 1803, only three years 
 after the Baronetcy had been conferred upon her hus- 
 band. It is said that London fashionable life — so un- 
 like what she had been accustomed to at home — proved 
 injurious to her health ; and old Mr. Yates afterwards 
 used to say, " If Robert hadn't made our Nelly a ' lady,' 
 she might ha' been living yet." 
 
 The career of Yates, Peel, and Co. was throughout 
 one of great and rininterrupted prosperity. Sir Robert 
 Peel himself was the soul of the firm ; to great energy 
 and application uniting much practical sagacity, and 
 first-rate mercantile abilities — qualities in which many 
 of the early cotton-spinners were exceedingly deficient. 
 He was a man of iron mind and frame, and toiled 
 unceasingly. In short, he was to cotton-printing what 
 Arkwright was to cotton-spinning, and his success 
 was equally great. The excellence of the articles pro- 
 duced by the firm secured the command of the market, 
 and the character of the firm stood pre-eminent in Lan- 
 cashire. Besides greatly benefitting Bury, the part- 
 nership planted similar extensive works in the neigh- 
 borhood, on the If well and the Roch ; and it was cited 
 to their honor, that, while they sought to raise to. the 
 highest pei-fection the quality of their manufactures, 
 they also endeavored, in all ways, to ])romote the well- 
 being and comfort of their work-people ; for whom they 
 contrived to provide remunerative employment even in 
 the least pi-osperous times. 
 
 Sir Robert Peel readily appreciated the value of all 
 new processes and inventions ; in illustration of which 
 we may allude to his adoption of the process for produ- 
 cing what is called resist v;orh in calico-printing. This 
 is accomplished by the use of a paste, or resist, on such 
 parts of the cloth as were intended to remain white. 
 The person who discovered the paste was a traveller 
 for a London house, who sold it to Mr. Peel for an in- 
 
64 William Lee. 
 
 considerable sum. It required the experience of a year 
 or two to perfect the system and make it practically 
 useful; but the beauty of its effect, and the extreme 
 precision of outline in the pattern produced, at once 
 placed the Bury establishment at the head of all the 
 factories for calico-printing in the country. Other 
 firms, conducted with like spirit, were established by 
 members of the same family at Burnley, Foxhill bank, 
 and Altham, in Lancashire; Salley Abbey, in York- 
 shire ; and afterwards at Burton-on-Trent, in Stafford- 
 shire ; these various establishments, whilst they brought 
 wealth to their projiiietors, setting an example to the 
 whole cotton trade, and training up many of the most 
 successful printers and manufacturers in Lancashire. 
 
 Among other distinguished founders of industry, the 
 Rev. William Lee, inventor of the Stocking-frame, and 
 John Heathcoat, inventor of the Bobbin-net Machine, 
 are worthy of notice, as men of great mechanical skill 
 and perseverance, through whose laboi-s a vast amount 
 of remunerative employment has been provided for the 
 laboring population of Nottingham and the adjacent 
 districts. The accounts which have been preserved of 
 the circumstances connected with the invention of the 
 Stocking -frame are very confused, and in many re- 
 spects contradictory, though there is no donbt as to 
 the name of the inventor. This was William Lee, born 
 at Woodborough, a village some seven miles from Not- 
 tingham, about the year 1563. According to some ac- 
 counts,* he was the heir to a small freehold, while ac- 
 
 * The following entry, which occurs in the acconnt of moneys dis- 
 biu-sed by the burgesses of Sheffield in 1573 [?] is supposed by some to 
 refer to the inventor of the stocking-frame:—" Item gy\'en to Will™ 
 Lee, a poor scholler in Sheafield, towards the settyng him to the Uni- 
 versitie of Chambi-ydge, and buying him bookes and other fumytura 
 [which money was afterwards returned] xiii iiii [13s. 4rf.] —Hunter 
 "History of Hallamshire," 141. ' ' 
 
Origin of the Stocking-loom. 65 
 
 cording to others he was a poor scholar, and had to 
 struggle with poverty from his earliest years. He en- 
 tered as a sizar at Christ College, Cambridge, in May, 
 1579, and subsequently removed to St. John's, taking 
 his degree of B.A. in 1582, '83. It is believed that he 
 commenced M.A. in 1586 ; but on this point there ap- 
 pears to be some confusion in the records of the Uni- 
 versity. The statement usually made that he was ex- 
 pelled for marrying contrary to the statutes, is incor- 
 rect, as he was never a fellow of the University, and 
 therefore could not be prejudiced by taking such a step. 
 At the time when Lee invented the Stocking-frame 
 he was officiating as curate of Calverton, near Notting- 
 ham ; and it is alleged by some writers that the inven- 
 tion had its origin in disappointed affecticin. The cu- 
 rate is said to have fallen deeply in love with a young 
 lady of the village, who failed to reciprocate his affec- 
 tions ; and when he visited her, she was accustomed to 
 pay much more attention to the process of knitting 
 stockings and instructing her pupils in the art, than to 
 the addresses of her admirer. This slight is said to 
 have created in his mind such an aversion to knitting 
 by hand, that he formed the determination to invent a 
 machine that should supersede it and render it a gain- 
 less employment. For three years he devoted himself 
 to the prosecution of the invention, sacrificing every 
 thing to his new idea. As the prospect of success 
 opened before him, he abandoned his curacy, and de- 
 voted himself to the art of stocking making by ma- 
 chinery. This is the version of the story given by 
 Henson* on the authority of an old stocking maker, 
 who died in Collins's Hospital, Nottingham, aged nine- 
 ty-two, and was' apprenticed in the town during the 
 reign of Queen Anne. It is also given by Deering and 
 Blackner as the traditional account in the neighljor- 
 • "Histoiy of the Framework Knitters." 
 
66 William Lee. 
 
 hood, and it is in some measure borne out by. the arms 
 of the London Company of Framework Knitters, 
 which consists of a stocking-frame without the wood- 
 work, with a clergyman on one side and a woman on 
 the other as supporters.* 
 
 Whatever may have been the actual facts as to the 
 origin of the invention of the Stocking-loom, there 
 can be no doubt as to the extraordinary mechanical 
 genius displayed by its inventor. That a clergyman 
 living in a remote village, whose life had for the most 
 part been spent with books, should contrive a machine 
 of such delicate and complicated movements, and at 
 once advance the art of knitting from the tedious pro- 
 cess of linking threads in a chain of loops by three 
 skewers in the fingers of a woman to the beautiful and 
 rapid process of weaving by the stocking-frame, was in- 
 deed an astonishing achievement, which may be pro- 
 nounced almost unequalled in the history of mechani- 
 cal invention. Lee's merit was all the greater, as the 
 handicraft arts were then in their infancy, and little at- 
 tention had as yet been given to the contrivance of 
 
 * Tliere are, however, other and different accounts. One is to the 
 effect that Lee set about studying the contrivance of the stocking-loom 
 for the purpose of lessening the labor of a young country-girl to whom 
 he was attached, whose occupation was knitting ; another, that being 
 married and poor, his wife was under the necessity of contributing to 
 their joint support by knitting ; and that Lee, while watching the mo- 
 tion of his wife's fingers, conceived the idea of imitating their move- 
 ments by a machine. The latter story seems to have been invented by 
 Aai-on Hill, Esq., in his "Account of the Rise and Progress of the 
 Beech Oil Manufacture " [London, 171.5] ; but his statement is alto- 
 gether unreliable. Thus he makes Lee to have been a fellow of a col- 
 lege at Oxford, from which he was expelled for marrying an innkeeper's 
 daughter ; whilst Lee neither studied at Oxford, nor married there, nor 
 was a fellow of any college ; and he concludes by alleging that the re- 
 sult of his invention was to "make Lee and his family happy ;" where. 
 as the invention brought him only a heritage of nusery, and he died 
 \broad destitute. 
 
Invention of the Stocking-loom. 67 
 
 machinery for the purposes of manufacture. He was 
 under the necessity of extemporising the parts of liis 
 machine as he best could, and adopting various expedi- 
 ents to overcome difficulties as tliey arose. His tools 
 were imperfect, and his materials imperfect ; and he 
 had no skilled workmen to assist him. According to 
 tradition, the first frame he made was a twelve gauge, 
 without lead sinkers, and it was almost wholly of 
 wood ; the needles being also stuck in bits of wood. 
 One of Lee's principal difficulties consisted in the form- 
 ation of the stitch, for want of needle eyes ; but this he 
 eventually overcame by forming eyes to the needles 
 with a three-square file.* At length, one difficulty af 
 ter another was successfully overcome, and after three 
 years' labor the machine was sufficiently complete to 
 be fit for use. The quondam curate, full of enthusiasm 
 for his art, now began stocking-weaving in the village 
 of Calverton, and he continued to work there for sever- 
 al years, instructing his brother James and several of 
 his relations in the practice of the art. 
 
 Having brought his frame to a considerable degree 
 of perfection, and being desirous of securing the patron- 
 age of Queen Elizabeth, whose partiality for knitted 
 silk stockings was well known, Lee proceeded to Lon- 
 don to exhibit the loom before her Majesty. He first 
 showed it to several members of the court, among oth- 
 ers to Sir William (afterwards Lord) Hunsdon, whom 
 he taught to work it with success ; and Lee was, 
 through theifinstrumentality, at length admitted to an 
 
 * Blackner, "History of Nottingham." The author adds, "We 
 have infonnation, handed down in direct succession from father to son. 
 that it was not till late in the seventeenth century that one man could 
 manage the working of a frame. The man who was considered the 
 workman employed a laborer, who stood behind the frame to work 
 the slur and pressing motions ; but the application of traddles and of 
 the feet eventually rendered the labor unnecessaiy." 
 
William Lee. 
 
 interview with the Queen, and worked the machine in 
 her presence. Elizabeth, however, did not give him 
 the encouragement that he had expected ; and she ig 
 said to have opposed the invention on the ground that it 
 was calculated to deprive a large number of poor people 
 of their employment of hand-knitting. Lee was no more 
 successful in finding other patrons; and considering 
 himself and his invention treated with contempt, he 
 embraced the offer mad© to him by Sully, the sagacious 
 minister of Henry IV., to proceed to Rouen and instruct 
 the operatives of that town — then one of the most im- 
 portant manufacturing centres of France — in the con- 
 struction and use of the stocking-frame. Lee accord- 
 ingly transferred himself and his machines to France, in 
 1605, taking with him his brother and seven workmen. 
 He met with a cordial reception at Rouen, and was 
 proceeding with the manufacture of stockings on a 
 large scale — having nine of his frames in full work — 
 when unhappily ill fortune again overtook him. Hen- 
 ry IV., his protector, on whom he had relied for the re- 
 wards, honors, and promised grant of privileges, which 
 had induced Lee to settle in France, was murdered by 
 the fanatic Ravaillac, and the encouragement and pro- 
 tection which had heretofore been extended to him 
 were at once withdrawn. To press his claims at court, 
 Lee proceeded to Paris ; but being a Protestant as well 
 as a foreigner, his representations were treated with 
 neglect ; and worn out with vexation and grief, this 
 distinguished inventor .shortly after died at Paris, in a 
 state of extreme poverty and distress. 
 
 Lee's brother, with seven of tlie workmen, succeeded 
 in escaping from France with their frames, leaving two 
 behind. On James Lee's return to Nottinghamshire, 
 he was joined by one Ashton,a miller of Thoroton, 
 who had been instructed in the art of framework knit- 
 ting by the inventor himself before he left England. 
 
John Heaihcoat. 69 
 
 These two, witli the -workmen and their frames, began 
 the stocking manufacture at Thoroton, and carried it 
 on with considerable success. The place was favor- 
 ably situated for the purpose, as the sheep pastured in 
 the neighboring district of Sherwood yielded a kind of 
 wool of the longest staple. Ashton is said to have in- 
 troduced the method of making the frames with lead 
 sinkers, which was a great improvement. The number 
 of looms employed in different parts of England grad- 
 ually increased ; and the machine manufacture of stock- 
 ings eventually became an important branch of the na- 
 tional industry. 
 
 One of the most important modifications in the 
 Stocking-frame was that which enabled it to be ap- 
 plied to the manufacture of "lace on a large scale. In 
 1777, two workmen. Frost and Holmes, were both en- 
 gaged making point-net by means of the modifications 
 they had introduced in the stocking frame; and in 
 the course of about thirty years, so rapid was the 
 growth of this branch of production, that 1500 point- 
 net frames were at work, giving employment to up- 
 wards of 15,000 people. Owing, however, to the war, 
 to change of fashion, and to other circumstances, the 
 Nottingham lace manufacture rapidly fell off; and it 
 continued in a decaying state until the invention of the 
 bobbin-net machine by John Heathcoat, late M.P. for 
 Tiverton, which had the effect of at once re-establish- 
 ing the manufacture on solid foundations. 
 
 John Heathcoat was the son of a cottage farmer at 
 Long Whalton, Leicestershire, where he was born in 
 1784. He was taught to read and write at the village 
 school, but was shortly removed from it to be put ap- 
 prentice to a framesmith in a neighboring village. The 
 boy soon learnt to handle tools with dexterity, and he 
 acquired a minute knowledge of the parts of which the 
 Btocking-frame was composed, as well as of the more 
 
70 John Heathcoat. 
 
 intricate warp-machine. At his leisure he studied hoW 
 to introduce improvements in them, and his friend Mr. 
 Bazley, M.P., states that as early as the age of sixteen 
 he conceived the idea of inventing a machine by which 
 lace might be made similar to Buckingham or French 
 lace, then all made by hand. The first practical im. 
 provement he succeeded in introducing was in the 
 warp-frame ; when, by means of an ingenious appara- 
 tus, he succeeded in producing. "mitts" of a lacey ap- 
 pearance; and it was this success which determined 
 him to pursue the study of mechanical lace-making. 
 The stocking -frame had already, in a modified form, 
 been applied to the manufacture of point-net lace, in 
 which the mesh was looped, as in a stocking ; but the 
 work was slight and frail,'and therefore unsatisfactory. 
 Many ingenious Ifottinghara mechanics had during a 
 long succession of years been laboring at the problem 
 of inventing a machine by which the mesh of threads 
 should be twisted round each other on the formation of 
 the net. Some of these men died in poverty, some were 
 driven insane, and all alike failed in the object of their 
 search. The old warp-machine held its ground. 
 
 When a little over twenty-one years of age, Heath- 
 coat married, and went to Nottingham in search of 
 work. He there found employment as a smith and 
 " setter-up " of hosiery and warp-frames. He also con- 
 tinued to pursue the subject on which his mind had be- 
 fore been occupied, and labored to compass the contriv- 
 ance of a twist traverse-net machine. He first Btiidied 
 the art of making the Buckingham or pillow-lace by 
 hand, with the object of efiecting the same motions by 
 mechanical means. It was a long and laborious task, 
 requiring the exercise of great perseverance and no little 
 ingenuity. His master, Elliott, described him at that 
 lime as plodding, patient, self-denying, and taciturn, un- 
 daunted by failures and mistakes, full of resources and 
 
The Bobbin-net Machine. 71 
 
 expedients, and entertaining the most perfect confi- 
 dence that his application of mechanical principles 
 would eventually be crowned with success.* During 
 this time his wife was kept in almost as great anxiety 
 ,as himself. She well knew of his struggles and difficul- 
 ties, and she even began to feel the pressure of poverty 
 on her household ; for while he was laboring at his 
 invention, he was frequently under the necessity of 
 laying aside the work that brought in the weekly 
 wage. Many years after, when all difficulties had been 
 successfully overcome, the conversation which took 
 place between husband and wife one eventful Saturday 
 evening was vividly remembered. " Well, John," said 
 the anxious wife, looking in her husband's face, " will iJ 
 work ?" " No, Anne," was the sad answer, " I have had 
 to take it all in pieces again." Though he could still 
 speak hopefully and cheerfully, his poor wife could re- 
 strain her feelings no longer, but sat down and cried bit- 
 terly. She had, however, only a few more Weeks to 
 wait ; for success, long labored for and richly deserved, 
 came at last ; and a proud and happy man was John 
 Heathcoat when he brought home the first narrow strip 
 of bobbin-net made by his machine, and placed it in the 
 hands of his wife. 
 
 It is difficult to describe in words an invention so 
 complicated as the bobbin-net machine. It was indeed 
 a mechanical pillow for making lace; imitating in an 
 iiigeniOus manner the motions of the lace-maker's fin- 
 gers in intersecting or tying the meshes of the lace 
 upon her pillow. On analyzing the component parts 
 of a piece of hand-made lace, Heathcoat was enabled 
 to classify the threads into longitudinal and diagonal. 
 
 * Memoir by Mr. FelMn in the "Nottingham Journal," to which, 
 Ks well as to Mr. Bazley, M.P., we are indebted for most of the abov« 
 facts. We are glad to learn that Mr. Felkin is preparing a complet* 
 history of the branches of industry above referred to. 
 
72 Heafhcoafs Patent disputed. 
 
 He began his experiments by stretching common pack- 
 ing-threads across his room for the warp, and then pass- 
 ing the weft-threads between them by common plyers, 
 delivering them to other plyers on the opposite side ; 
 then, after giving them a sideways motion and twist, the 
 threads were repassed back between the next adjoining 
 cords, the meshes being thus tied in the same way as 
 upon pillows by hand. He had then to contrive a mech- 
 anism that should accomplish all these nice and delicate 
 movements ; and to do this cost him no small amount of 
 bodily and mental toil. Long after, he said : " The sin- 
 gle difficulty of getting the diagonal threads to twist in 
 the allotted space was so great, that if it had now to be 
 done, I should probably not attempt its accomplish- 
 ment."* His next step was to provide thin metallic 
 discs, to be used as bobbins for conducting the thread 
 backward and forward through the warp. These discs, 
 being arranged in carrier-frames, placed on each side 
 of the warp, were moved by suitable machinery, so as 
 to conduct the threads from side to side in forming the 
 lace. He eventually succeeded in working out his 
 principle with extraordinary skill and success, and at 
 the age of twenty-four he was enabled to secure his in- 
 vention by a patent. 
 
 As in the case of nearly all inventions which have 
 proved productive, Heathcoat's rights as a patentee 
 were disputed, and his claims as an inventor called in 
 question. On the supposed invalidity of the patent, 
 the lace-makers boldly adopted the bobbin-net machine, 
 and set the inventor at defiance. But other patents 
 Were taken out for alleged improvements and adapta- 
 tions ; and it was only when these new patentees fell 
 out and went to law with each other that Heathcoat's 
 rights became established. One lace manufacturer hav- 
 ing brought an action against another for an alleged 
 * Mr. ITelkin's Memoir. 
 
Defended by Sir John Copley. 73 
 
 infringement of his patent, the jury brought in a ver- 
 dict for the defendant, in which the judge concurred, 
 on the ground that both the machines in question were 
 infringements of Heathcoat's patent. It was on the 
 occasion of this trial, " Boville vs. Moore," that Sir 
 John Copley (afterwards Lord Lyndhurst), who was 
 retained for the defense in the interest of Mr. Heath- 
 coat, learnt to work the hobhin-net machine in order 
 that he might master the details of the invention. On 
 reading oyer his brief, he confessed that he did not 
 quite understand the merits of the case ; but, as it 
 seemed to him to be one of great importance, he offered 
 to go down into the country forthwith and study the 
 machine until he understood it ; " and then," said he, 
 " I will defend you to the best of my ability." He ac- 
 cordingly put himself into that night's mail, and went 
 down to Nottingham to get up his case as perhaps, 
 counsel never got it up before. Next morning the 
 learned sergeant placed himself in a lace-loom, and he 
 did not leave it until he could deftly make a piece of. 
 bobbin-net with his own hands, and thoroughly under- 
 stood the principle as well as the details of the ma- 
 chine. When the case came on for trial, the learned 
 sergeant was enabled to work the model on the table 
 with such ease and skill, and to explain the precise 
 nature of the invention with such felicitous clearness, 
 as to astonish alike judge, jury, and spectators; and 
 the thorough conscientiousness and mastery with which 
 he handled the case had, no doubt, its influence upon 
 the decision of the court. 
 
 After the trial was over, Mr. Heathcoat, on inquiry, 
 found about six hundred machines at work after his 
 patent, and he proceeded to levy royalty upon the own- 
 ers of them, which amounted to a large sum. But the 
 profits realized by the manufacturers of lace were very 
 great, and the use of the machines rapidly extended ; 
 
 4 
 
74: 'Destructkm of Machine 
 
 while the price of the article was reduced from five 
 pounds the square yard to about five pence in the course 
 of twenty-five years. During the same period the av- 
 erage annual returns of the lace-trade have been at least 
 four millions sterling, and it gives remunerative em- 
 ployment to about 150,000 workpeople. 
 
 To return to the personal history of Mr. Hcathcoat. 
 In 1809 we find him established as a lace-manufacturer 
 at Loughborough, in Leicestershire. There he carried 
 on a prosperous business for several years, giving em- 
 ployment to a large number of operatives, at wages 
 varying from £5 to £10 a week. Notwithstanding the 
 great increase in the number of hands employed in lace, 
 making through the introduction of the new machines, 
 it began to be whispered about among the workpeople 
 that they were superseding labor, and an extensive con- 
 spiracy was formed for the purpose of destroying them 
 wherever found. As early as the year 1811 disputes 
 arose between the masters and rnen engaged in the 
 stocking and lace trades in the south-western parts of 
 Nottinghamshire and the adjacent parts of Derbyshire 
 and Leicestershire, the result of which was the assem- 
 bly of a mob at Sutton, in Ashfield, who proceeded ic 
 open day to break the stocking and lace-frames of the 
 manufacturers. Some of the ringleaders having been 
 seized and punished, the disafiected learnt caution ; but 
 the destruction of the machines was nevertheless car- 
 ried on secretly wherever a safe opportunity presented 
 itself. As the machines were of so delicate a construc- 
 tion that a single blow of a hammer rendered them use- 
 less, and as the manufacture was can-ied on for the 
 most part in detached buildings, often in private dwell- 
 ings remote from towns, the opportunities of destroy- 
 ing them were unusually easy. In the neighborhood of 
 Nottingham, which was the focus of turbuJepce, the ma- 
 chine-breakers organized themselves in regalar bodies. 
 
By the Luddites. 75 
 
 and held nocturnal meetings at which their plans were 
 arranged. Probably with the view of inspiring confi- 
 dence, they gave out that they were under the command 
 of a leader named Ned Ludd, or General Ludd, and 
 hence, their designation of Luddites. Under this or- 
 ganization machine-breaking was carried on with great 
 vigor during the winter of 1811, occasioning great dis- 
 tress, and throwing large numbers of workpeople out 
 of employment. Meanwhile, the owners of the frames 
 proceeded to remove them from the villages and lone 
 dwellings in the country, and brought them into ware- 
 houses in the towns for their better protection. 
 
 The Luddites seem to have been encouraged by the 
 lenity of the sentences pronounced on siich of their 
 confederates as had been apprehended and tried ; and, 
 shortly after, the mania broke out afresh, and rapidly 
 extended over the northern and midland manufacturing 
 districts. The organization became more secret ; an 
 oath was administered to the members binding them 
 to obedience to the orders issued by the heads of the 
 confederacy; and the betrayal of their designs was 
 decreed to be death. All machines were doomed by 
 them to destruction, whether employed in the manufac- 
 ture of cloth, calico, or lace; and a reign of terror be- 
 gan which lasted for years. In Yorkshire and Lanca- 
 shire mills were boldly attacked by armed rioters, and in 
 many cases they were wrecked or burnt ; so that it be- 
 came necessary to guard them by soldiers and yeoman- 
 ry. The masters themselves were doomed to death ; 
 many of them were assaulted, and some were murdered. 
 At length the law was vigorously set in motion ; num- 
 bers of the misguided Luddites were apprehended ; 
 some were executed ; and after several years' violent 
 commotion from this cause, the machine-breaking riots 
 (Jt-ere at length quelled. 
 
 Among the numerous manufacturers wbose worka 
 
76 Eeathcoat at Tiverton. 
 
 were attacked by the Luddites, was the inventor of the 
 bobbin-net machine himself. One bright sunny day, 
 in the summer of 1816, a body of rioters entered his 
 factory at Loughborough with torches, and set fire to 
 it, destroying thirty-seven lace-machines, and above 
 £10,000 worth of property. Ten of the men were ap- 
 prehended for the felony, and eight of them were ex- 
 ecuted. Mr. Heathcoat made a claim upon the county 
 for compensation, and it was resisted ; but the Court 
 of Queen's Bench decided in his favor, and decreed 
 that the county must make good his loss of £10,000. 
 The magistrates sought to couple with the payment of 
 the dainage the condition that Mr. Heathcoat should 
 expend the money in the county of Leicester; but to 
 this he would not assent, having already resolved on 
 removing his manufacture elsewhere. At Tiverton, in 
 Devonshire, he found a large building which had been 
 formerly used as a woollen manufactory ; but the Tiv- 
 erton cloth trade having fallen into decay, the building 
 remained unoccupied, and the town itself was generally 
 in a very poverty-stricken condition. Mr. Heathcoat 
 bought the old mill, renovated and enlarged it, and there 
 recommenced the manufacture of lace on a larger scale 
 than before; keeping in full work as many as three 
 hundred machines, and employing a large number of 
 artisans at good wages. Not only did he carry on the 
 manufacture of lace, but the various bi-anches of busi- 
 ness connected with it — yarn-doubling, silk-spinning, 
 net-making, and finishing. He also established at Tiver- 
 ton an iron-foundery and works for the manufacture of 
 agricultural implements, which proved of great con- 
 venience to the disti-ict. It was a favorite idea of his 
 that steam power was capable of being applied to perr 
 form all the heavy, drudgery of life, and he labored for 
 a long time at the invention of a steam-plough. In 
 1832 he so far completed his invention as to be enabled 
 
Ileathcoat at Tiverton. 77 
 
 to take out a patent for it ; and Heathcoat's steam- 
 plough, though it has since been superseded by Fow- 
 ler's, was considered the best machine of the kind that 
 had up to tiiat time been invented. 
 
 Mr. Heathcoat was a man of great natural gifts. He 
 possessed a sound understanding, quick perception, and 
 a genius for business of the highest order. With these, 
 he combined uprightness, honesty, and integrity — qual- 
 ities which are the true glory of human character. 
 Himself a diligent self-educator, he gave ready encour- 
 agement to deserving youths in his employment, stim- 
 ulating their talents and fostering their energies. Dur- 
 ing his own busy life, he contrived to save time to mas- 
 ter French and Italian, of which he acquired an accu- 
 rate and grammatical knowledge. His mind was large- 
 ly stored with the results of a careful study of the best 
 literature, and there were few subjects on which he 
 had not formed for himself shrewd and accurate views. 
 The two thousand workpeople in his employment re- 
 garded him almost as a father, and he carefully provi- 
 ded for their comfort and improvement. Prosperity 
 did not spoil him, as it does so many ; nor close his 
 heart against the claims of the poor and struggling, who 
 were always sure of his sympathy and help. To pro- 
 vide for the education of the children of his workpeo- 
 ple, he built schools for them at a cost of about £6000. 
 He was also a man of singularly cheerful and buoyant 
 disposition, a favorite with men of all classes, and most 
 admired and beloved by those who knew him best. 
 
 In 1831 the electors of Tiverton, of which town Mr. 
 Heathcoat had proved himself so genuine a benefactor, 
 returned him to represent them in Parliament, and he 
 continued their member for nearly thirty years. Dur- 
 ing a great part of that time he had Lord Palmerston 
 for his colleague, and the noble lord, on more than one 
 public, occasion, expressed the high regard which he en- 
 
78 Jacquard. 
 
 tertained for his venerable friend. On retiring froni the 
 representation in 1859, owing to advancing age and in- 
 creasing infirmities, thirteen hundred of his workmen 
 presented him with a silver inkstand and gold pen, in 
 token of their esteem. He enjoyed his leisure for only- 
 two more years, dying in January, 1861, at the age of 
 eeventy-seven, and leaving behind him a character for 
 probity, virtue, manliness, and mechanical genius, of 
 which his descendants may well be proud. 
 
 We next turn to a career of a very diflferent kind, 
 that of the illustrious but unfortunate Jacquard, whose 
 life also illustrates in a remarkable manner the influence 
 which ingenious men, even of the humblest rank, may 
 exercise upon the industry of a nation. Jacquard was 
 the son of a hard-working couple of Lyons, his father 
 being a weaver, and his mother a pattern-reader. They 
 were too poor to give him any but the most meagre ed- 
 ucation. When he was of age to learn a trade, his fa- 
 ther placed him with a book-binder. An old clerk, who 
 made up the master's accounts, gave Jacquard som«] 
 lessons in mathematics. He very shortly began to dis- 
 play a remarkable turn for mechanics, and some of his 
 contrivances quite astonished the old clerk, who ad- 
 vised Jacquard's father to put him to some other trade, 
 in which his peculiar abilities might have better scope 
 than in book-binding. He was accordingly put appren- 
 tice to a cutler ; but he was so badly treated by his 
 master that he shortly afterwards left his employment, 
 on which he was placed with a type-founder. 
 
 His parents dying, Jacquard found himself in a meas- 
 ure compelled to take to his father's two looms, and 
 carry on the trade of a weaver. He immediately pro- 
 ceeded to improve the looms, and became so engrossed 
 with his inventions that he forgot his work, and very 
 soon found himself at the end of his means. He then 
 sold the looms to pay his debts, at the same time that 
 
The Draw-loom, 79 
 
 he took upon himself the burden of supporting a wife. 
 He became still poorer, and to satisfy his ci'editors Iiq 
 next sold his cottage. He tried to find employment, 
 but in vain, people believing him to be an idler, occu- 
 pied with mere dreams about his inventions. At length 
 he obtained employment with a line-maker of Bresse, 
 whither he went, his wife remaining at Lyons, earning 
 a precarious living by making straw bonnets. 
 
 We hear nothing further of Jacquard for some years, 
 but in the interval he seems to have prosecuted his im- 
 provement in the draw-loom for the better manufacture 
 of figured fabrics ; for, in 1790, he brought out his con- 
 trivance for selecting the warp threads, which, when 
 added to the loom, superseded the services of a draw- 
 boy. The adoption of this machine was slow but 
 steady, and in ten years after its introduction, 4000 of 
 them were found at work in Lyons. Jacquard's pur- 
 suits were rudely interrupted by the Revolution, and, 
 in 1792, we find him fighting in the ranks of the Lyon- 
 naise Volunteers against the Army of the Convention 
 under the command of Dubois Cranc6. The city was 
 taken ; Jacquard fled and joined the Army of the Rhine, 
 where he rose to the rank of sergeant. He might have 
 remained a soldier, but that, his only son having been 
 ehot dead at his side, he deserted and returned to Lyons 
 to recover his. wife. He found her in a garret, still em- 
 ployed at her old trade of straw-bonnet making. While 
 living in concealment with her, his mind reverted to the 
 inventions over which he had so long brooded in for- 
 mer years ; but he had no means wherewith to prose- 
 cute them. Jacquard found it necessary, however, to 
 emerge from his hiding-place and try to find some em- 
 ployment. He succeeded in obtaining it with an intel- 
 ligent manufacturer, and while working by day he went 
 on inventing by night. It had occurred to him that 
 great improvements might still be introduced in looma 
 
80 JaxquaroUs other Inventions. 
 
 for figured goods, and he incidentally mentioned the 
 subject one day to his master, regretting at the same 
 time that his limited means prevented him from carry- 
 ing out his ideas. Happily his master appreciated the 
 value of the suggestions, and with laudable generosity 
 placed a sum of money at his disposal, that he might 
 prosecute the proposed improvements at his leisure. 
 
 In three months Jacquard had invented a loom to 
 substitute mechanical action for the irksome and toil- 
 some labor of the workman. The loom was exhibited 
 at the Exposition of National Industry at Paris, in 1801, 
 and obtained a bronze medal. Jacquard was further 
 honored by a visit at Lyons from the Minister Caniot, 
 who desired to congratulate him in person on the suc- 
 cess of his invention. In the following year the Society 
 of Arts in London offered a prize for the invention of a 
 machine for manufacturing fishing-nets and boarding- 
 netting for ships. Jacquard heard of this, and while 
 walking one day in the fields, according to his custom, 
 he turned the subject over in his mind, and contrived 
 the plan of a machine for the purpose. His friend, the 
 manufacturer, again furnished him with the means of 
 carrying out his idea, and in three weeks Jacquard had 
 completed his invention. 
 
 Jacquard's achievement having come to the knowl- 
 edge of the Prefect of the Department, he was summon- 
 ed before that functionary, and, on his explanation of 
 the working of the machine, a report on the subject was 
 forwarded to the Emperor. The inventor was forthwith 
 summoned to Paris with his machine, and brought into 
 the presence of the Emperor, who received him with 
 the consideration due to his genius. The interview 
 lasted two hours, during which Jacquard, placed at his 
 ease by the Emperor's affability, explained to him the 
 improvements which he proposed to make in the looms 
 for weaving figured goods. The result was. that he 
 
J'acquard — Yaucanson. 81 
 
 was provided with apartments in the Conservatoire des 
 Arts et Metiers, where he had the use of the workshop 
 during his stay, and was provided with a suitable al- 
 lowance for his maintenance. 
 
 Installed in the Conservatoire, Jacquard proceeded 
 to complet'C the details of his improved loom. He had 
 the advantage of minutely inspecting the various ex- 
 quisite pieces of mechanism contained in that great 
 treasury of human ingenuity. Among the machines 
 which more particularly attracted his attention, and 
 eventually set him upon the track of his discovery, was 
 a loom for weaving flowered silk, made by Vaucanson, 
 the celebrated automaton-maker. 
 
 Vaucanson was a man of the highest order of con- 
 structive genius. The inventive faculty was so strong 
 in him that it may almost be said to have amounted to 
 a passion, and could not be restrained. The saying that 
 the poet is born, not made, applies with equal force to 
 the inventor, who, though indebted, like the other, to 
 culture and improved opportunities, nevertheless con- 
 trives and constructs new combinations of machinery 
 mainly to gratify his own instinct. This was peculiar- 
 ly the case with Vaucanson ; for his most elaborate 
 works were not so much distinguished for their utility 
 as for the curious ingenuity which they displayed. 
 While a mere boy, attending Sunday conversations with 
 his mother, he amused himself by watching, through 
 the chinks of a partition wall, part of the movements 
 of a clock in the adjoining apartment. He endeavored 
 to understand them, and, by brooding over the subject, 
 after several months he discovered the principle of the 
 escapement. 
 
 From that time the subject of mechanical invention 
 took complete possession of him. "With some rude 
 tools which he contrived, he made a wooden clock that 
 marked the hours with remarkable exactness; while ha 
 
 4* 
 
82 Vaucanson's Automata. 
 
 made for a miniature chapel the figures of some angels 
 which waved their wings, and some priests that made 
 several ecclesiastical movements. With the view of 
 executing some other automata he had designed, he 
 proceeded to study anatomy, music, and mechanics, 
 which occupied him for several years. The sight of the 
 flute-player in the Gardens of the Tuileries inspired him 
 with the resolution to invent a similar figure that 
 should jotoy/ and after several years' study and labor, 
 though struggling with illness, he succeeded in accom- 
 plishing his object. He next produced a flageolet-play- 
 er, which was succeeded by a duck — the most ingenious 
 of his contrivances — which swam, dabbled, drank, and 
 quacked like a real duck. He next invented an asp, 
 employed in the tragedy of " Cleopatre," which hissed 
 and darted at the bosom of the actress. 
 
 Vaucanson, however, did not confine himself merely 
 to the making of automata. By reason of his ingenui- 
 ty. Cardinal de Fleury appointed him inspector of the 
 silk manufactories of France ; and he was no sooner in 
 office, than with his usual irrepressible instinct to in- 
 vent, he proceeded to introduce improvements in silk 
 machinery. One of these was his mill for thrown silk, 
 which so excited the anger of the Lyons operatives, 
 who feared the loss of employment through its means, 
 that they pelted him with stones and had nearly killed 
 him. He nevertheless went on inventing, and next 
 produced a machine for weaving flowered silks, with a 
 contrivance for giving a dressing to the thread, so as to 
 render that of each bobbin or skein of an equal thick- 
 ness. 
 
 When Vaucanson died in 1 782, after a long illness, he 
 bequeathed his collection of machines to the Queen, 
 who seems to have set but small value on them, and 
 they were shortly after dispersed. But his machine for 
 weaving flowered silks was happily preserved in the 
 
Jacquard: His Loom. 83 
 
 Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and there Jacquard 
 found it among the many curious and interesting arti- 
 cles in the collection. It proved of the utmost value 
 to him, for it immediately set him on the track of the 
 principal modification which he introduced in his im 
 proved loom. 
 
 One of the chief features of Vaucanson's machine was 
 a pierced cylinder, which, according to the holes it pre- 
 sented when revolved, regulated the movement of cer- 
 tain needles, and caused the threads of the warp to de- 
 viate in such a manner as to produce a given design, 
 though only of a simple character. Jacquai-d seized 
 upon the suggestion with avidity, and, with the 
 genius of the true inventor, at once proceeded to im- 
 prove upon it. At the end of a month his weaving 
 machine was completed. To the cylinder of Vaucan- 
 son he added an endless piece of pasteboard pierced 
 with a number of holes, through which the threads of 
 the warp were presented to the weaver ; while anoth- 
 er piece of mechanism indicated to the workman the 
 color of the shuttle which he ought to throw. Thus 
 the drawboy and the reader of designs were both at 
 once superseded. The first use Jacquard made of his 
 new loom was to weave with it several yards of rich 
 stuff which he presented to the Empress Josephine. 
 Napoleon was highly gratified with the result of the 
 inventor's labors, and ordei-ed a number of the looms 
 to be constructed by the best workmen, after Jacquard's 
 model, and presented to him ; after which he returned 
 to Lyons. 
 
 There he experienced the frequent fate of inventors. 
 He was regarded by his townsmen as an enemy, and 
 treated by them as Kay, Hargreaves, and Arkwright 
 had been in Lancashire. The workmen looked upon 
 the new loom as fatal to their trade, and feared lest it 
 should at once take the bread from their mouths. A 
 
84 Value of the Jacquard Loom. 
 
 tumultuous meeting was held on the Place des Ter. 
 reaux, when it was determined to destroy the machines 
 This was however prevented by the military. But 
 Jacquard was denounced and hanged in eflBgy. The 
 " Conseil defe prud'hommes " in vain endeavored to allay 
 the excitement, and they were themselves denounced. 
 At length, carried away by the popular impulse, the 
 ■ prud'hommes, most of whom had been workmen and 
 sympathized with the class, had one of Jacquard's looms 
 carried off and publicly broken in pieces. Riots fol- 
 lowed, in one of which Jacquard was dragged along the 
 quay by an infuriated mob intending to drown him, but 
 he was rescued. 
 
 The great value of the Jacquard loom, however, 
 could not be denied, and its success was only a ques- 
 tion of time. Jacquard was urged by some English 
 silk manufacturers to pass over into England and set- 
 tle there. But notwithstanding the harsh and cruel 
 treatment he had received at the hands of his towns- 
 people, his patriotism was too strong to permit him to 
 accept their offer. The English manufactui-ers, how- 
 ever, adopted his loom. Then it was, and only then, 
 that Lyons, threatened to be beaten out of the field, 
 adopted it with eagerness ; and before long the Jac- 
 quard machine was employed in nearly all kinds of 
 weaving. The result proved that the fears of the work- 
 people had been entirely unfounded. Instead of dimin- 
 ishing employment, the Jacquard loom increased it at 
 least tenfold. The number of persons occupied in the 
 manufacture of figured goods in Lyons, was stated by 
 M. Leon Faucher to have been 60,000 in 1833; and 
 that number has since been considerably increased. 
 
 As for Jacquard himself, the rest of his life passed 
 peacefully, excepting that the workpeople who dragged 
 him along the quay to drown him were shortly after 
 found eager to bear him in triumph along the same 
 
Jacquard's Death. 85 
 
 route in celebration of his birthday. But his modesty 
 would not permit him to take part in such a demon- 
 stration. The Municipal Council of Lyons proposed to 
 him that he should devote himself to improving his 
 machine for the benefit of the local industry, to which 
 Jacquard agreed in consideration of a moderate pen- 
 sion, the amount of which was fixed by himself! After 
 perfecting his invention accordingly, he retired at sixty 
 to end his days at Oullins, his father's native place. It 
 was there that he received, in 1820, the decoration of 
 the Legion of Honor ; and it was there that he died 
 and was buried in 1834. A statue was erected to his 
 memory, but his relatives remained in poverty ; and 
 twenty years after his death, his two nieces were under 
 the necessity of selling for a few hundred francs the 
 gold medal bestowed upon their uncle by Louis XVIIL 
 " Such," says a French writer, " was the gratitude of 
 the manufacturing interests of Lyons to the man to 
 whom it owes so large a portion of its splendor." 
 
 It would be easy to extend the martyrology of in- 
 ventors, and to cite the names of other equally distin- 
 guished men who have, without any corresponding ad- 
 vantage to themselves, contributed to the industrial 
 progress of the age — for it has too often happened that 
 genius has planted the tree, of which patient dullness 
 has gathered the fruit ; but we will confine ourselves 
 • for the present to a brief accoiint of an inventor of 
 comparatively recent date, by way of illustration of the 
 difficulties and privations which it is so frequently the 
 lot of mechanical genius to surmount. We allude to 
 Joshua Heilmann, the inventor of the combing-ma- 
 chine. 
 
 Heilmann was born in 1 796, at Mulhouse, the principal 
 seat of the Alsace cotton manufacture. His father was 
 engaged in that business, and Joshua entered his office 
 at fifteen. He remained there for two years, employing 
 
, 86 Joshua Hdlmann. 
 
 his spare time in mechanical drawing, He afterwards 
 spent two years in his uncle's banking-house in Paris, 
 prosecuting the study of mathematics in the evenings. 
 Some of his relatives having established a small cotton- 
 spinning factory at Mulhouse, young Heilmann was 
 placed with Messrs. Tissot and Rey, at Paris, to learn 
 the practice of that firm. At the same time he became 
 a student at the Conseryatpire des Arts et Metiers, 
 where he attended the lectures, and studied the machines 
 in the museum. He also took practical lessons \x\ turn- 
 ing from a toy-maker.. After some time thus diligently 
 occupied, he returned to Alsace, to superintend the con- 
 struction of the machinery for the new factory at Vieux- 
 Thann, which was shortly finished and set to work. 
 The operations of the manufactory were, however, seri- 
 ously afiected by a commercial crisis which occurred, 
 and it passed into other hands, on which Heilmann re- 
 turned to his family at Mulhouse. 
 
 He had in the mean time been occupying much of 
 his leisure with inventions, more particularly in connec- 
 tion with the weaving of cotton and the preparation of 
 the staple for spinning. One of his earliest contriv- 
 ances was an embroidering-machine, in which twenty 
 needles were employed, working simultaneously ; and 
 he succeeded in accomplishing his object after about six 
 months' labor. For this invention, which he exhibited 
 at the Exposition of 1834, he received a gold medal, and 
 was decorated with the Legion of Honor. Other inven- 
 tions quickly followed — an improved loom, a machine 
 for measuring and folding fabrics, an improvement of 
 the " bobbin and fly-frames " of the English spinners, 
 and a weft winding-machine, Avith various improve- 
 ments in the machinery for preparing, spinning, and 
 weaving silk and cotton. One of his most ingenious 
 contrivances was his loom for weaving simultaneously 
 two pieces of velvet or other piled fabric, united by the 
 
Joshua Seilmann. 87 
 
 pile common to both, with a knife and traversing appa- 
 ratus for separating the two fabrics when woven. But 
 by far the most beautiful and ingenious of his inventions 
 was the combing-machine, the history of which we now 
 proceed shortly to describe. 
 
 Heilmanu had for some years been diligently studying 
 the contrivance of a machine for combing long-stapled 
 cotton, the ordinary carding-machine being found inef- 
 fective in preparing the raw material for spinning, es- 
 pecially the finer sorts of yarn, besides causing consid- 
 erable waste. To avoid these imperfections, the cotton- 
 spinnei-s of Alsace offered a prize of 5000 francs for an 
 improved combing-machine, and Heilmann immediately 
 proceeded to compete for the reward. He was not stim- 
 ulated by the desire of gain, for he was comparatively 
 rich, having acquired a considerable fortune by his 
 wife. It was a saying of his that " one will never ac- 
 complish great things who is constantly asking himself, 
 how much gain will this bring me ?" What mainly 
 impelled him was the irrepressible instinct of the invent^ 
 or, who no sooner has a mechanical problem set before 
 him than he feels impelled to undertake its solution. 
 The problem in this case was, however, much more dif- 
 ficult than he had anticipated. The close study of the 
 subject occupied him for several years, and the expenses 
 in which he became involved in connection with it 
 were so great, that his wife's fortune was shortly swal- 
 lowed up, and he was reduced to poverty, without be- 
 ing able to bring his machine to perfection. From that 
 time he was under the necessity of relying mainly on 
 the help of his friends to enable him to prosecute the 
 invention. 
 
 While still struggling with poverty and difficulties, 
 Heilmann's wife died, believing her husband ruined ; and 
 shortly after he proceeded to England and settled for a 
 time at Manchester, still laboring at his machine. He 
 
The Gomhing-machine. 
 
 had a model made for him by the eminent machine- 
 makers, Sharpe, Roberts, and Company ; but still he 
 could not make it work satisfactorily, and he was at 
 length brought almost to the verge of despair. He re- 
 turned to France to visit his family, still pursuing his 
 idea, which had obtained complete possession of his 
 mind. While sitting by his hearth one evening, medi- 
 tating upon the hard fate of inventors and the misfor- 
 tunes in which their families so often become involved, 
 he found himself almost unconsciously watching his 
 daughters combing their long hair and drawing it out 
 at full length between their fingers. The thought sud- 
 denly struck him that if he could successfully imitate 
 in a machine the process of combing out the longest 
 hair and forcing back the short by reversing the ac- 
 tion of the comb, it might serve to extricate him from 
 his difficulty. It may be remembered that this inci- 
 •ient in the life of Heilmann has been made the sub- 
 ject of a beautiful picture by Mr. Elmore, R. A., which 
 'vas exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 
 3.862. 
 
 Upon this idea he proceeded, introduced the appar- 
 ently simple but really most intricate process of ma- 
 jhine-combing, and after great labor he succeeded in 
 perfecting the invention. The singular beauty of the 
 process can only be appreciated by those who have 
 witnessed the machine at work, when the similarity of 
 its movements to that of combing the hair, which sug- 
 gested the invention, is at once apparent. The ma- 
 chine has been described as " acting with almost the 
 delicacy of touch of the human fingers." It combs the 
 lock of cotton at both ends, places the fibres exactly 
 parallel with each other, separates the long from the 
 short, and unites the long fibres in one sliver and 
 the short ones in another. In fine, the machine not 
 only acts with the delicate accuracy of the humap 
 
HeUmamis Death. 89 
 
 fingers, but apparently ■with the delicate intelligence 
 of the human mind. 
 
 The chief commercial value of the invention consist- 
 ed in its rendering the commoner sorts of cotton avail- 
 able for fine spinning. The man ufacturers were there- 
 by enabled to select the most suitable fibres for high- 
 priced fabrics, and to produce the finer sorts of yarn in 
 much larger quantities. It became possible by its 
 means to make thread so fine that a length of 334 
 miles might be spun from a single pound weight of 
 the prepared cotton, and, worked up into the finer sorts 
 of lace, the original shilling's worth of cotton-wool, be- 
 fore it passed into the hands of the consumer, might 
 thus be increased to the value of between £300 and 
 £400 sterling. 
 
 The beauty and utility of Heilmann's invention were 
 at once appreciated by the English cotton-spinners. 
 Six Lancashire firms united and purchased the patent 
 for cotton-spinning for England for the sum of £30,000 ; 
 the wool-spinners paid the same sum for, the privilege 
 of applying the process to wool ; and the Messrs. Mar- 
 shall, of Leeds, £20,000 for the privilege of applying it 
 to flax. Thus wealth suddenly flowed in upon pooi 
 Heilmann at last. But he did not live to enjoy it. 
 Scarcely had his long labors been crowned by success 
 than he died, and his son, who had shared in his priva- 
 tions, shortly followed him. 
 
 It is at the price of lives such as these that tha won- 
 ders of civilization are achieved. 
 
CHAPTER HL 
 
 THEBE GEEAT POTTEES PAUSST, BOTTGHEE, WEDG- 
 WOOD. 
 
 "Patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the 
 rarest too. . . Patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of 
 all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness when Impatiencs 
 companions her," — John RnsKisr. 
 
 "II y a vingt et cinq ans passez qu'il ne me fat monstr^ une coupe 
 de terre, toum^e et esmaillee d'une telle beaute que . . . dfeslors, sans 
 avoir esgard que je n'avois nulle connoissance des terres argilenses, je 
 me mis a chercher les emaux, conune un homme qui taste en t£n&- 
 ores." — ^Beknaed Palisst. 
 
 IT SO happens that the history of Pottery furnishes 
 some of the most remarkahle instances of patient 
 perseverance to be found in the whole range of biogra. 
 phy. Of these we select three of the most striking, as 
 exhibited in the lives of Bernard Palissy, the French- 
 man ; Johann Friedrich Bottgher, the German ; and 
 Josiah Wedgwood, the Englishman. 
 
 Though the art of making common vessels of clay 
 was known to most of the ancient nations, that of 
 manufacturing enamelled earthenware was much less 
 common. It was, however, practised by the ancient 
 Etruscans, specimens of whose ware are still to be 
 found in antiquarian collections. But it became a lost 
 art, and was only recovered at a comparatively recent 
 date. The Etruscan ware was very valuable in ancient 
 times, a vase being worth its weight in gold in the 
 time of Augustus. The Moors seem to have preserved 
 amongst them a knowledge of the art, which they were 
 
Luca della Rohhia. 91 
 
 found practising in the island of Majorca when it was 
 taken by the Pisans in 1115. Among the spoil car- 
 ried away were many plates of Moorish earthenware, 
 which, in token of triumph, were, embedded in the walls 
 of several of the ancient churches of Pisa, where they 
 are to be seen to this day. About two centuries later 
 the Italians began to make an imitation enamelled 
 ware, which they named Majolica, after the Moorish 
 place of manufacture. 
 
 The reviver or re-discoverer of the art of enamelling 
 in Italy was Luca della Robbia, a Florentine sculptor. 
 Vasari describes him as a man of indefatigable per- 
 severance, working with his chisel all day and practis- 
 ing drawing during the greater part of the night. He 
 pursued the latter art with so much assiduity, that when 
 working late, to prevent his feet from freezing with 
 the cold, he was accustomed to provide himself with a 
 basket of shavings, in which he placed them to keep 
 himself warm and enable him to proceed with his draw- 
 ings. " Nor," says Vasari, " am I in the least astonish- 
 ed at this, since no man ever becomes distinguished in 
 any art whatsoever who does not early begin to ac- 
 quire the power of supporting heat, cold, hunger, thirst, 
 and other discomforts ; whereas those persons deceive 
 themselves altogether who suppose that when taking 
 their ease and surrounded by all the enjoyments of the 
 world they may still attain to honorable distinction — 
 for it is not by sleeping, but by waking, watching, and 
 laboring continually, that proficiency is attained and 
 reputation acquired." 
 
 But Luca, notwithstanding all his application and in- 
 dustry, did not succeed in earning enough money by 
 sculpture to enable him to live by the art, and the idea 
 occurred to him that he might nevertheless be able to 
 pursue hia modelling in some material more facile and 
 less dear than marble. Hence it was that he began to 
 
92 Bernard Palissy. 
 
 make his models in clay, and to endeavor by experi- 
 ment so to coat and bake the clay as to render those 
 models durable. After many trials he at length dis- 
 covered a method of covering the clay with a material, 
 which, when exposed to the intense heat of a furnace, 
 became converted into an almost imperishable enamel. 
 He afterwards made the further discovery of a method 
 of imparting color to the enamel, thus greatly adding 
 to its beauty. 
 
 The fame of Luca's work extended throughout Eu- 
 rope, and specimens of his art became widely diffused. 
 Many of them were sent into France and Spain, where 
 they were greatly prized. At that time coarse brown 
 jars and pipkins were almost the only articles of earth- 
 enware produced in France ; and this continued to be 
 the case, with comparatively small improvement, until 
 the time of Palissy — a man who toiled and fought 
 against stupendous difficulties with a heroism that 
 sheds a glow almost of romance over the events of his 
 chequered life. 
 
 Bernard Palissy is supposed to have been born in the 
 south of France, in the diocese of Agen, about the year 
 1510. His father was probably a worker in glass, to 
 which trade Bernard was brought up. His parents 
 were poor people — too poor to give him the benefit of 
 any school education. " I had no other books," said he 
 afterwards, " than heaven and earth, which are open to 
 all." Jle learnt, however, the art of glass-painting, to 
 which he added that of drawing, and afterwards read- 
 ing and writing. 
 
 When about eighteen years old, the glass trade be- 
 coming decayed, Palissy left his father's house, with 
 his wallet on his back, and went out into the world to 
 search whether there was any place in it fot him. He 
 first travelled towards Gascony, working at his trade 
 where he could find employment, and occasionally oc- 
 
Search for the Enamel. 93 
 
 cupying part of his time in land-measuring. Then he 
 travelled northwards, sojourning for various periods at 
 different places in France, Flanders, and Lower Ger- 
 many. 
 
 Thus Palissy occupied about ten more years of his 
 life, after which he married, and ceased from his wan- 
 derings, settling down to practice glass-painting and 
 land-measuring at the small town of Saintes, in the 
 Lower Charente. There children were born to him; 
 and not only his responsibilities but his expenses in- 
 creased, while, do what he could, his earnings remained 
 too small for his needs. It was therefore necessary for 
 him to bestir himself. Probably he felt. capable of bet- 
 ter things than drudging in an employment so preca- 
 rious as glass-painting ; and hence he was induced to 
 turn his attention to the kindred art of painting and 
 enamelling earthenware. Yet on this subject he was 
 wTiolly ignorant ; for he had never seen earth baked be- 
 fore he began his operations. He had therefore every 
 thing to learn by himself, without any helper. But he 
 was full of hope, eager to learn, of unbounded persever- 
 ance and inexhaustible patience. 
 
 It was the sight of an elegant cup of Italian manufac- 
 ture — most probably one of Luca della Robbia's make 
 : — which first set Palissy a-thinking about the new art. 
 A cn-cumstance so apparently insignificant would have 
 produced no effect upon an ordinary mind, or even upon 
 Palissy himself at an ordinary time ; but occurring as 
 it did when he was meditating a change of calling, he 
 at once became inflamed with the desire of imitating it. 
 The sight of this cup disturbed his whole existence ; 
 and the determination to discover the enamel with 
 which it was glazed thenceforward possessed him like 
 a passion. Had he been a single man he might have . 
 travelled into Italy in search of the secret; but he was 
 bound to his wife and his children, and could not leave 
 
94 Bernard Palissy. 
 
 them ; so he remained by their side groping in the 
 dark, in tlie hope of finding out the process of making 
 and enamelling earthenware. 
 
 At first he could merely guess the materials of which 
 the enamel was composed, and he proceeded to try all 
 manner of experiments to ascertain what they really 
 were. He pounded all the substances which he sup- 
 posed were likely to produce it. Then he bought com- 
 mon earthen pots, broke them into pieces, and, spread- 
 ing his compounds over them, subjected them to the 
 heat of a furnace which he erected for the purpose of 
 baking them. His experiments failed; and the results 
 Avere broken pots and a waste of fuel, drugs, time, and 
 labor. Women do not readily sympathize with experi- 
 ments whose only tangible efiect is to dissipate the 
 means of buying clothes and food for their children ; 
 and Palissy's wife, however dutiful in other respects, 
 could not be reconciled to the purchase of more earth- 
 en pots, which seemed to her to be bought only to be 
 broken. Yet she must needs submit ; for Palissy had 
 become thoroughly possessed by the determination to 
 master the secret of the enamel, and would not leave it 
 alone. 
 
 For many successive months and years Palissy pur- 
 sued his experiments. The first furnace having proved 
 a failure, he proceeded to erect another out of doors. 
 There he burnt more wood, spoiled more drugs and 
 pots, and lost more time, until poverty stared him and 
 his family in the face. " Thus," said he, " I fooled away 
 several years, with sorrow and sighs, because I could 
 not at all arrive at my intention." In the intervals of 
 his experiments he occasionally worked at his former 
 callings— painting on glass, drawing portraits, and meas- 
 uring land ; but his earnings from these sources were 
 very small. At length he was no longer able to carry 
 on his experiments in his own furnace because of the 
 
Search for the Enamel. §5 
 
 heavy cost of fuel ; but he bought more potsherds, broke 
 them up as before into three or four hundred pieces, and, 
 covering them with chemicals, carried them to a tile- 
 work a league and a half distant from Saintes, there to 
 be baked in an ordinary furnace. After the operation 
 he went to see the pieces taken out ; and, to his dismay, 
 the whole of the experiments were failures. But though 
 Jisappointed, he was not yet defeated ; for he deter- 
 mined on the very spot to " begin afresh." 
 
 His business as a land-measurer called him away for 
 a brief season from the pursuit of his experiments. In 
 conformity with an edict of the State, it became neces- 
 sary to survey the salt-marshes in the neighborhood of 
 Saintes for the purpose of levying the land-tax. Palissy 
 was employed to make this survey, and prepare the re- 
 quisite map. The work occupied him some time, and 
 he was doubtless well paid for it ; but no sooner was it 
 completed than he proceeded, with redoubled zeal, to 
 follow up his old investigations " in the track of the 
 enamels." He began by breaking three dozen new 
 earthen pots, the pieces of which he covered with dif- 
 ferent materials which he had compounded, and then 
 took them to a neighboring glass-furnace to be baked. 
 The results gave him a glimmer of hope. The greater 
 heat of the glass-furnace had melted some of the com- 
 pounds ; but though Palissy searched diligently for the 
 white enamel he could find none. 
 
 For two more years he went on experimenting with- 
 out any satisfactory result, until the proceeds of his sur- 
 vey of the salt-marshes having become nearly spent, 
 he was reduced to poverty again. But he resolved to 
 make a last great efibrt; and he began by breaking 
 more pots than ever. More than three hundred pieces 
 of pottery covered with his compounds were sent to the 
 glass-furnace ; and thither he himself went to watch the 
 results of the baking. Four hours passed, during which 
 
96 Bernard PaMssy. 
 
 he watched ; and then the furnace was opened. The 
 material on one only of the three hundred pieces of pot- 
 sherd had melted, and it was taken out to cool. As it 
 hardened, it grew white — white and polished ! The 
 piece of potsherd was covered with white enamel, de- 
 scribed by Palissy as " singularly beautiful !" And 
 beautiful it must no doubt have been in his eyes after 
 all his weary waiting. He ran home with it to his 
 wife, feeling himself, as he expressed it, quite a new 
 creature. But the prize was not yet won — far from it. 
 The partial success of this intended last effort merely 
 had the effect of luring him on to a succession of fur- 
 ther experiments and failures. 
 
 In order that he might complete the invention, which 
 he now believed to be at hand, he resolved to build for 
 himself a glass-furnace near his dwelling, where he 
 might carry on his operations in secret. He proceed- 
 ed to build the furnace with his own hands, carrying 
 the bricks from the brickfield upon his back. He was 
 bricklayer, laborer, and all. From seven to eight more 
 months passed. At last the furnace was built and ready 
 for use. Palissy had in the mean time fashioned a 
 number of vessels of clay in readiness for the laying on 
 of the enamel. After being subjected to a preliminary 
 process of baking, they were covered with the en- 
 amel compound, and again placed in the furnace for 
 the grand crucial experiment. Although his means 
 were nearly exhausted, Palissy had been for some time 
 accumulating a great store of fuel for the final effort, 
 and he thought it was enough. At last the fire was 
 lit, and tlie operation proceeded. All day he sat by 
 the furnace, feeding it with fuel. He sat thei-e watch- 
 ing and feeding all through the long night. But the 
 enamel did not melt. The sun rose upon his labors. 
 His wife brought him a portion of the scanty morning 
 meal — ^for he would not stir from the furnace, into 
 
His desperate Determination. 97 
 
 which he continued from time to time to heave more 
 fuel. The second day passed, and still the enamel did 
 not melt. The sun set, and another night passed. The 
 pale, haggard, unshorn, baffled yet not heaten Palissy 
 sat by his furnace eagerly looking for the melting of 
 the enamel. A third day and night passed — a fourth, 
 a fifth, and even a sixth — yes, for six long days and 
 nights did the unconquerable Palissy watch and toil, 
 fighting against hope ; and still the enamel would not 
 melt. 
 
 It then occurred to him that there might be some 
 defect in the materials for the enamel — perhaps some- 
 thing wanting in the flux ; so he set to work to pound 
 and compound fresh materials for a new experiment. 
 Thus two or three more weeks passed. But how to 
 buy more pots ? — for those which he had made with 
 his own hands for the purposes of the first experiment 
 were by long baking irretrievably spoiled for the pur- 
 poses of a second. His money was now all spent ; but 
 he could borrow. His chai-acter was still goodj though 
 his wife and the neighbors thought him foolishly 
 wasting his means in futile experiments. Never- 
 theless he succeeded. He borrowed suifioient from 
 a friend to enable him to buy more fuel and more 
 pots, and he was again ready for a further experiment. 
 The pots were covered with the new compound, placed 
 in the furnace, and the fire was again lit. 
 
 It was the last and most desperate experiment of 
 the whole. The fire blazed up ; the heat became in- 
 tense ; but still the enamel did not melt. The fuel be- 
 gan to run short ! How to keep up the fire ? There 
 were the garden palings : these would burn. They 
 must be sacrificed rather than that the great experi- 
 ment should fail. The garden palings were pulled up 
 and cast into the furnace. They were burnt in vain ! The 
 enamel had not yet melted. Ten minutes more heat 
 
 5 
 
98 Bernard Pdiissy. 
 
 might do it. Fuel must be had at whatever cost. 
 There remained the household furniture and shelving. 
 A crashing noise was heard in the house ; and amidst 
 the screams of his wife and children, who now feared 
 Palissy's reason was giving way, the tables were seized, 
 broken up, and heaved into the furnace. The enamel 
 had not melted yet ! There remained the shelving. 
 Another noise of the wrenching of timber was heard 
 within the house, and the shelves were torn down and 
 hurled after the furniture into the fire. Wife and chil- 
 dren then rushed from the house, and went frantically 
 through the town, calling out that poor Palissy had 
 gone mad, and was breaking up his very furniture for 
 firewood ! * 
 
 For an entire month his shirt had not been off his back, 
 and he was utterly worn out — wasted with toil, anxi- 
 ety, watching, and want of food. He was in debt, and 
 seemed on the verge of ruin. But he had at length 
 mastered the secret ; for the last great burst of heat 
 had melted the enamel. The common brown house- 
 
 * Palissy's own words are :— " Le bois m'ayant failli, je fus contraint 
 brusler les estapes (e'taies) qui soustenoyent les tallies de mon jardin, 
 lesquelles estant bruslees, je fus contraint brusler les tables et plancher 
 de la maison, afin de faire fondre la seconde composition. Testois en 
 une telle angoisse que je ne S9aurois dire : car j'estois tout tari et de- 
 seche' k cause du labeur et de la chaleur du foumeau ; il y avoit plus 
 d'un mois que ma chemise n'avoit seiche sur moy, encores pour me 
 consoler on se moquoit de moy, et mesme ceux qui me devoient secourir 
 alloient crier par la ville que je faisois brusler le plancher : et par tel 
 moyen Ton me faisoit perdre mon credit et m'estimoit-on estre fol. 
 Les autres disoient que je cherchois ^ faire la fausse monnoye, qui 
 estoit un mal qui me faisoit seicher sur les pieds ; et m'en allois par 
 les rues tout baisse comme un homme hontenx : . . . . personne no 
 me secouroit : Mais au contraire ils se mocquoyent de moy, en disant : 
 II luy appartient Men de mourir de faim, par ce qu'il delaisse son 
 mestier. Toutes ces nouvelles venoyent k mes aureilles quand je pas- 
 sois pai- la me."— "CEuiTes Completes de Palissy " (Paris, 1844) ; 
 De I'Art de Terre, p. 315. 
 
Discovers the Enamel. 99 
 
 hold jars, when taken out of the furnace after it had 
 become cool, were found covered with a white glaze ! 
 For this he could endure reproach, contumely, and 
 Bcorn, and wait patiently for the opportunity of putting 
 his discovery into practice as better days came round. 
 
 Palissy next hired a potter to make some earthen 
 vessels after the designs which he furnished ; while he 
 himself proceeded to model some medallions in clay for 
 the purpose of enamelling them. But how to maintain 
 himself and his family until the wares were made and 
 ready for sale ? Fortunately there remained one man 
 in Saintes who still believed in the integrity, if not in 
 the judgment, of Palissy — an inn-keeper, who agreed 
 to feed and lodge him for six months, while he went 
 on with his manufacture. As for the working potter 
 whom he had hired, Palissy soon found that he could 
 not pay him the stipulated wages.- Having already 
 stripped his dwelling, he could but strip himself; and 
 he accordingly parted with some of his clothes to the 
 potter, in part payment of the wages which he owed 
 him. 
 
 Palissy next erected an improved furnace, but he was 
 so unfortunate as to build part of the inside with flints. 
 When it was heated these flints cracked and burst, and 
 the spiculae were scattered over the pieces of pottery, 
 sticking to them. Though the enamel came out right, 
 the work was irretrievably spoilt, and thus six more 
 months' labor was lost. Persons were found willing 
 to buy the articles at a low price, notwithstanding the 
 injury they had sustained ; but Palissy would not sell 
 them, considering that to have done so would be to 
 " decry and abase his honor ;" and so he broke in pieces 
 the entire batch. " ISTevertheless," says he, " hope con- 
 tinued to inspire me, and I held on manfully ; some- 
 times, when visitors called, I entertained them with 
 pleasantry, while I was really sad at heart. . . . Worst 
 
100 Bernard Palissy. 
 
 of all the sufferings I had to endure, were the mock- 
 eries and persecutions of those of my own household, 
 who were so unreasonable as to expect me to execute 
 work without the means of doing so. For years my 
 furnaces were without any covering or protection, and 
 while attending them I have been for nights at the 
 mercy of the wind and the rain, without help or con* 
 Eolation, save it might be the wailing of cats on the 
 one^ide and the howling of doga on the other. Some- 
 times the tempest would beat so furiously against the 
 furnaces that I was compelled to leave them and seek 
 shelter within doors. Drenched by rain, and in no bet- 
 ter plight than if I had been dragged through mire, I 
 have gone to lie down at midnight or at daybreak, 
 stumbling into the house without a light, and reeling 
 from one side to another as if I had been drunken, but 
 really weary with watching and filled with sorrow at 
 the loss of my labor after such long toiling. But alas ! 
 my home proved no refuge ; for, drenched and be- 
 smeared as I was, I found in my chamber a second per- 
 secution worse than the first, which makes me even now 
 jnarvel that I was not utterly consumed by my many 
 sorrows." 
 
 At this stage of his affairs, Palissy became melan- 
 choly and almost hopeless, and seems to have all but 
 broken dpwn. He wandered gloomily about the fields 
 near Saintes, his clothes hanging in tatters, and himself 
 ^vorn to a skeleton. In a curious passage in his writings 
 be describes how that the calves of his legs had disap- 
 peared, and were no longer able with the help of garters 
 to hold up his stockings, which fell about his heels when 
 he walked.* The family continued to reproach him for 
 
 * " Toutes ces fantes jn'ont cause un tel lasseur et tristesse d'esprit, 
 qu'auparavant que j'aye rendu mes c'maux fusible k un mesme degre 
 de feu, jay cuid^ entrer jusques Si la porte du sepulchre : aussi en me 
 travaillant i tels affaires je me suis trouve I'espage de plus se dix ans si 
 
Perfects the Enamel. 101 
 
 his recklessness, and his neighbors cried shame upon him 
 for his obstinate folly. So he returned for a time to his 
 former calling ; and after about a year's diligent labor, 
 during which he earned bread for his household and some- 
 what recovered his character among his neighbors, he 
 again resumed his darling enterprise. But though he 
 had already spent about ten years in the search for the 
 enamel, it cost him nearly eight more years of experi- 
 mental plodding before he perfected his invention. Ho 
 gradually learnt dexterity and certainty of result by 
 experience, gathering practical knowledge out of many 
 failures. Every mishap was a fresh lesson to him, teach- 
 ing him something new about the nature of enamels, 
 the qualities of argillaceous earths, the tempering of" 
 clays, and the construction and management of fur- 
 naces. 
 
 At last, after about sixteen years' labor, Palissy took 
 heart, and called himself Potter. These sixteen years 
 had been his term of apprenticeship to the art, during 
 which he had wholly to teach himself, beginning at the 
 very beginning. He was now able to sell his wares and 
 thereby maintain his family in comfort. But he never 
 rested satisfied with what he had accomplished. He 
 proceeded from one step of improvement to another ; 
 always aiming at the greatest perfection possible: He 
 studied natural objects for patterns, and with such 
 success that the great Buffon spoke of him. as " so great 
 a naturalist as Nature only can produce." His orna- 
 mental pieces are now regarded as rare, gems in the 
 cabiaets of virtuosi, and sell at almost fabulous prices.* 
 
 fort escoule en ma personne, qu'il n'y avoit aucune fprme ny apparenca 
 de bosse aux bras ny aux jambes : ains estoyent mes dites jambes 
 toutes d'une venue: de sorte que les liens de quoy j'attachois mes bas 
 de chausses estoyent, soudain que je cheminois, sur les talons avec le 
 resida de mes chausses." — " OSuvTes," 319, 320. 
 • At the sale of Mr. Bemal's articles- of vertu in London a few years 
 
102 Bernard Palissy. 
 
 The ornaments on them are for the most part accurate 
 models from life, of wild animals, lizards, and plants, 
 found in the fields about Saintes, and tastefully com- 
 bined as ornaments into the texture of a plate or vase. 
 When Palissy had reached the height of his art he 
 styled himself " Ouvrier de Terra et Inventeur des 
 Rustics Figulines." 
 
 We have not, however, come to an end of the suffer- 
 ings of Palissy, .respecting which a few words remain 
 to be said. Being a Protestant at a time when relig- 
 ious persecution waxed hot in the south of France, and 
 expressing his views without fear, he was regarded as 
 a dangerous heretic. His enemies having informed 
 against him, his house at Saintes was entered by the 
 officers of "justice," and his workshop was thrown 
 open to the rabble, who entered and smashed his pot- 
 tery, while he himself was hurried off by night and 
 cast into a dungeon at Bordeaux, to wait his turn 
 at the stake or the scaffold. He was condemned to be 
 burnt, but a powerful noble, the Constable de Montmo- 
 rency, interposed to save his life — not because he had 
 any special regard for Palissy or his religion, but be- 
 cause no other artist could be found capable of execu- 
 ting the enamelled pavement for his magnificent cha- 
 teau then in course of erection at Ecouen, about four 
 leagues from Paris. By his influence an edict was is- 
 sued appointing Palissy Inventor of Rustic Figulines to 
 the King and to the Constable, which had the effect 
 of immediately removing him from the jurisdiction of 
 Bordeaux. He was accordingly liberated, and return- 
 ed to his home at Saintes only to find it devastated 
 and broken up. His workshop was open to the sky, 
 and his works lay in ruins. Shaking the dust of Saintes 
 from his feet he left the place never to return to it, and 
 
 since, one of Palissy's small dishes, 12 inches in diamater, with a liz. 
 ard in the centre, sold for jei62. 
 
Palissy, the Potter. 103 
 
 removed to Paris to carry on the works ordered of him 
 by the Constable and the Queen-Mother, being lodged 
 in the Tuileries* while so occupied. 
 
 Besides carrying on the manufacture of pottery, with 
 the aid of his two sons, Palissy, during the latter part of 
 his life, wrote and published several books on the pot- 
 ter's art, with a view to the instruction of his country- 
 men, and in order that they might avoid the many mis- 
 takes which he himself had made. He "also wrote on 
 agriculture, on fortification, and natural history, on 
 which latter subject he even delivered lectures to a lim- 
 ited number of persons. He waged war against astrol- 
 ogy, alchemy, witchcraft, and like impostures. This 
 stirred up against him many enemies, who pointed the 
 finger at him as a heretic, and he was again arrested for 
 his religion and imprisoned in the Bastille. He was 
 now an old man of seventy-eight, trembling on the 
 verge of the grave, but his spirit was as brave as ever. 
 He was threatened with death unless he recanted ; but 
 he was as obstinate in holding to his religion as he had 
 been in hunting out the secret of the enamel. The 
 king, Henry IH., even went to see him in prison to in- 
 duce him to abjure his faith. " My good man," said 
 the King, " you have now served my mother and my- 
 self for forty-five years. We have put up with your 
 adhering to your religion amidst fires and massacres : 
 now I am so pressed by the Guise party as well as by 
 my own people, that I am constrained to leave you in 
 the hands of your enemies, and to-morrow you will be 
 burnt unless you become converted." " Sire," answer- 
 
 * Within the last few months, Mr. Charles Read, a gentleman curi- 
 ous in matters of Protestant antiquarianism in France, has discovered 
 one of the ovens in which Palissy baked his chefs-d'oeuvre. Several 
 moulds of faces, plants, animals, etc., were dug up in a good state of 
 preservation, bearing his well-known stamp. It is situated under tha 
 gallery of the Louvre, in the Place du Carrousel. 
 
104 John Frederick Bottgher. 
 
 ed the unconquerable old man, " I am ready to give my 
 life for the glory of God. You have said many times, 
 that you have pity on me ; and now I have pity on you, 
 who have pronounced the words lam constrained! It 
 is not spoken like a king ; it is what you, and those who 
 constrain you, the Guisards and all your people, can 
 never effect upon me, for I know how to die." * Palissy 
 did indeed die shortly after, a martyr, though not at 
 the stake. He died in the Bastille, after enduring 
 ahout a year's imprisonment — there peacefully termin- 
 ating a life distinguished for heroic labor, extraordinary 
 endurance, inflexible rectitude, and the exhibition of 
 many rare and noble virtues.f 
 
 The life of John Frederick Bottgher, the inventor of 
 hard porcelain, presents a remarkable contrast to that 
 of Palissy ; though it also contains many points of sin- 
 gular and almost romantic interest. Bottgher was 
 born at Schleiz, in the Voightland, in 1685, and at 
 twelve years of age was placed apprentice with an 
 apothecary at Berlin. He seems to have been early 
 fascinated by chemistry, and occupied most of his leis- 
 ure in making experiments. These for the most part 
 tended in one direction — the art of converting common 
 metals into gold. At the end of several years, Bottgher 
 pretended to have discovered the universal solvent of 
 the alchemists, and professed that he had made gold 
 by its means. He exhibited its powers before his mas- 
 ter, the apothecary Zorn, and by some trick or other 
 succeeded in making him and several other witnesses 
 
 * D'Aubign^, ' ' Histoire Universelle. " The historian adds, ' ' Voyez 
 rimpudence de ce bilisti-e! vous diriez qu'il auroit lu ce vers de Senfe- 
 que : ' On ne peut contraindre celui qui salt mourir : Qui mori scit, 
 cogl nescit.'" 
 
 t The subject of Palissy's life and labors has been ably and elabo- 
 rately treated by Professor Morley in his well-known work. In the 
 above brief naraative we hare for the most part followed Palissy's own 
 account of his experiments as given in his "Art de Terre." 
 
Boltgher, the "Gold-cook'" 105 
 
 believe that he had actually converted copper into 
 gold. 
 
 The news spread abroad that the apothecary's, ap- 
 prentice had discovered the grand secret, and crowds 
 collected, about the shop to get a sight of the wondei'" 
 ful young " gold-cook." The king himself expressed a 
 wish to see and converse with him, and when Frederick 
 I. was presented with a piece of the gold pi-etended to 
 have been converted from copper, he was so dazzled 
 with the prospect of securing an infinite quantity of it 
 — Prussia being then in great straits for money — that 
 he determined to secure Bottgher and employ him to 
 make gold for him within the strong fortress of Span- 
 dau. But the young apothecary, suspecting the king's 
 intention, and probably fearing detection, at once re- 
 solved on flight, and he succeeded in getting across the 
 frontier into Saxony. 
 
 A reward of a thousand thalers was offered for Bott- 
 gher's apprehension, but in vain. He arrived at Wit- 
 tenberg, and appealed for protection to the Elector of 
 Saxony, Frederick Augustus I. (King of Poland), sur- 
 named "the Strong." Frederick was himself very 
 much in want of money at the time, and he was over- 
 joyed at the prospect of obtaining gold in any quantity 
 by the aid of the young alchemist. Bottgher was ac- 
 cordingly conveyed in secret to Dresden, accompanied 
 by a royal escort. He had scarcely left Wittenberg 
 when a battalion of Prussian grenadiers appeared be- 
 fore the gates demanding the gold-maker's extradition. 
 But it was too late : Bottgher had already arrived in 
 Dresden, where he was lodged in the Golden House, 
 and treated with every consideration, though strictly 
 watched and kept under guard. 
 
 The Elector, however, must needs leave him there 
 for a time, having to depart forthwith to Poland, then 
 almost in a state of anarchy. But, impatient for gold, 
 
 5* 
 
106 John.FredericJc Bollgher. 
 
 he wrote Bottglier from Warsaw, urging him to com- 
 municate the secret, so that he himself might practice 
 the art of commutation. The young " gold-cook," thus 
 pressed, forwarded to Frederick a email vial contain- 
 ing " a reddish fluid," which, it was asserted, changed 
 all metals, when in a molten state, into gold. This im- 
 portant vial was taken in charge by the Prince Furst 
 von Ftirstenhurg, who, accompanied by a regiment of 
 Guards, hurried with it to Warsaw. Arrived there, it 
 was determined to make immediate trial of the process. 
 The King and the Prince locked themselves up in a se- 
 cret chamber of the palace, girt themselves about with 
 leather aprons, and like true " gold-cooks " set to work 
 melting copper in a crucible and afterwards applying 
 to it the red fluid of Bottgher. But the result was un- 
 satisfactory; for notwithstanding all that they could 
 do, the copper obstinately remained copper. On refer- 
 ring to the alchemist's instructions, however, the King 
 found that, to succeed with the process, it was neces- 
 sary that the fluid should be used " in great purity of 
 heart ;" and as his Majesty was conscious of having 
 spent the evening in very bad company, he attributed 
 the failure of the experiment to that cause. A second 
 trial was followed by no better results, and then the 
 King became furious ; for he had confessed and re- 
 ceived absolution before beginning the second experi- 
 ment. 
 
 Frederick Augustus now resolved on forcing Bott- 
 gher to disclose the golden secret, as the only means 
 of relief from his urgent pecuniary difficulties. The al- 
 chemist, hearing of the royal intention, again deter- 
 mined to fly. He succeeded in escaping his guard, 
 and, after three days' travel, arrived at Ens, in Austria, 
 where he thought himself safe. The agents of the 
 Elector were, however, at his heels ; they had tracked 
 him to the " Golden Stag," which they surrounded, and 
 
Makes Bed Porcelain. 107 
 
 seizing him in his lied, notwithstanding his resistance 
 and appeals to the Austrian authorities for help, they 
 carried him by force to Dresden. From this time he 
 was more strictly watched than ever, and he was short- 
 ly after transferred to the strong fortress of Koning- 
 stein. It was communicated to him that the royal ex- 
 chequer was completely empty, and that ten regiments 
 of Poles in arrears of pay M'ere waiting for his gold. 
 The King himself visited him, and told him in a severe 
 tone that if he did not at once proceed to make gold, he 
 would be hung ! (" Thu mif zurecht, Jidttgher, sonst 
 lass ich dich hangen.'") 
 
 Years passed, and still Bottgher made no gold ; but 
 he was not hung. It was reserved for him to make a 
 far more important discovery than the conversion of 
 copper into gold, namely, the conversion of clay into 
 porcelain. Some rare specimens of this wai"e had been 
 brought by the Portuguese from China, which were 
 sold for more than their weight in gold. Bottgher 
 was first induced to turn his attention to the subject 
 by Walter von Tschirnhaus, a mater of optical instru- 
 ments, also an alchemist, ."f schirnhaus was a man of 
 education and distinction, and was held in much esteem, 
 by Prince Fiirstenburg as well as by the Elector. He 
 very sensibly said to Bottgher, still in foar of the gal- 
 lows — " If you can't make gold, try and do something 
 else ; make porcelain." 
 
 The alchemist acted on the hint, and began his ex- 
 periments, working night and day. He prosecuted his 
 investigations for a long time with great assiduity, but 
 without success. At length some red clay, brought to 
 him for the purpose of making his crucibles, set him on 
 the right track. He found that this clay, when sub- 
 mitted to a high temperature, became vitrified and re- 
 tained its shape; and that its texture resembled that 
 pf porcelain, excepting in color and opacity. He had, 
 
108 John Frederick Bbttgher. 
 
 in fact, accidentally discovered red porcelain ; and ha 
 proceeded to manufacture it and sell it as porcelain. 
 
 Biittgher was, however, well aware that the white 
 color was an essential property of true poi'celain ; and 
 he therefore prosecuted his experiments in the hope of 
 discovering the secret. Several years thus passed, but 
 without success ; until again accident stood his friend, 
 and helped him to a knowledge of the art of making 
 white porcelain. One day, in the year 1707, he found 
 his perruque unusually heavy, and asked of his valet 
 the reason. The answer was, that it. was owing to the 
 powder with which the wig was dressed, which consist- 
 ed of a kind of earth then much used for hair-powder. 
 Bottgher's quick imagination immediately seized upon 
 the idea. This white earthy powder might possibly be 
 the very earth of which he was in search — at all events 
 the opportunity must not be let slip of ascertaining 
 what it really was. He was rewarded for his pains-tak- 
 ing care and watchfulness ; for he found, on experiment, 
 that the principal ingredient of the hair-powder consist- 
 ed of kaolin, the want of which had so long formed 
 an insuperable difficulty in the way of his inquiries. 
 
 The discovery, in Bottgher's intelligent hands, led to 
 great results, and proved of far greater importance than 
 the discovery of the philosopher's stone would have 
 been. In October, 1707, he presented his first piece of 
 porcelain to the Elector, who was greatly pleased with 
 it ; and it was resolved that Bottgher should be fur- 
 nished with the means necessary for perfecting his in- 
 vention. Having obtained a skilled workman from 
 Delft, he began to turn porcelain with great success. 
 He now entirely abandoned alchemy for pottery, and 
 inscribed over the door of his workshop this distich :— 
 
 "£s machte Goti, der grosse Schopfer, 
 Aus einem Ooldmaclier einen TSpfer. " * 
 
 * "Almighty God, the great Creator, 
 
 Has changed a goldmaker to a potter.'' 
 
Makes White Porcelain. 109 
 
 Bottgher, however, was still under strict surveillance, 
 for fear lest he should communicate his secret to others 
 or escape the Elector's control. The new workshops 
 and furnaces which were erected for him were guard- 
 ed by troops night and day, and six superior officers 
 were made responsible for the personal security of the 
 potter. 
 
 Bottgher's further experiments with his new furnaces 
 proving very successful, and the porcelain which he 
 manufactured being found to fetch large prices, it was 
 next determined to establish a Royal Manufactory of 
 porcelain. The manufacture of delft ware was known to 
 have greatly enriched Holland. Why should not the 
 manufacture of porcelain equally enrich the Elector? 
 Accordingly, a decree went forth, dated the 22d of 
 January, 1710, for the establishment of " a large manu- 
 factory of porcelain " at the Albrechtsburg in Meissen. 
 In this decree, which was translated into Latin, French, 
 and Dutch, and distributed by the Ambassadors of the 
 Elector at all the European Courts, Frederick Augus- 
 tus set forth that to promote the welfare of Saxony, 
 which had suffered much through the Swedish invasion, 
 he had "directed his 'attention to the subterranean 
 treasures (unterirclischen Schatsey^ of the country, and 
 having employed some able persons in the investigation, 
 they had succeeded in manufacturing " a sort of red 
 vessels {eine Art rother Gefasse) far superior to the In- 
 dian terra sigillata ;" * as also " colored ware and plates 
 {buntes Qeschirr mid Tafeln) which may be cut, ground, 
 and polished, and are quite equal to Indian vessels," and 
 finally that " specimens of white porcelain [Probenvon 
 weissem Porzellan)" had already been obtained, and it 
 
 * The whole of the Chinese and Japanese porcelain was foi-merly 
 known as Indian porcelain — probably because it was first brought by 
 the Portuguese from India to Europe, after the discovery of the Cape 
 of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama. 
 
110 John Frederick Bottgher. 
 
 was hoped that this quality, too, would soon be manu. 
 factured in considerahle quantities. The royal decree 
 concluded by inviting " foreign artists and handicraft- 
 men " to come to Saxony and engage as assistants in 
 the new factory, at high wages, and under the patron- 
 age of the King. This royal edict probably gives the 
 best account of the actual state of Bottgher's inven- 
 tion at the time. 
 
 It has been stated in German publications that Biitt- 
 gher, for the great services rendered by him to the 
 Elector and to Saxony, was made Manager of the Royal 
 Porcelain Works, and farther promoted to the dignity 
 of Baron. Doubtless he deserved these honors ; but 
 his treatment was of an altogether different character, 
 for it was shabby, cruel, and inhuman. Two royal offi- 
 cials, named Matthieu and Nehmitz, were put over his 
 head as directors of the factory, while he himself only 
 held the position of foreman of potters, and at the same 
 time was detained the King's prisoner. During the 
 erection of the factory at Meissen, while his assistance 
 was still indispensable, he was conducted by soldiers to 
 and from Dresden ; and even after the works were fin- 
 ished, he was locked up nightlj- in his room. All this 
 preyed upon his mind, and in repeated letters to the 
 King he sought to obtain mitigation of his fate. Some 
 of these letters are very touching. " I will devote my 
 whole soul to the ai-t of making poi'celain," he writes 
 on one occasion, " I will do more than any inventor 
 ever did before ; only give me liberty, liberty !" 
 
 To these appeals the King turned a deaf ear. He 
 was ready to spend money and grant favors ; but lib- 
 erty he would not give. He regarded Bottgher as his 
 slave. In this position the persecuted man kept on 
 working for some time, till, at the end of a year or two, 
 he grew negligent. Disgusted with the world and 
 with himself, he took to drinking. Such is the force of 
 
His unhappy End. Ill 
 
 example, that it no soonei* became known that Bottgher 
 had betaken himself to this vice, than the greater num- 
 ber of the workmen at the Meissen factory became 
 drunkards too. Quarrels and fightings without end 
 were the consequence, so that the troops were frequent- 
 ly called upon to interfere and keep peace among the 
 " Porzellanern," as they were nicknamed. After a 
 while, the whole of them, more than three hundred, 
 were shut up in the Albrechtsburg, and treated as 
 prisoners of state. 
 
 Bottgher at last fell seriously ill, and in May, 1713, 
 his dissolution was hourly expected. The King, alarm- 
 ed at losing so valuable a slave, now gave him permis- 
 sion to take carriage exercise under a guard ; and hav- 
 ing somewhat recovered, he was allowed occasionally 
 to go to Dresden. In a letter written by the King in 
 April, 1714, Bottgher was promised his full liberty ; 
 but the ofier came too late. Broken in body and mind, 
 alternately working and drinking, though with occa- 
 sional gleams of nobler intention, and suifering under 
 constant ill-health, the result of his enforced confine- 
 ment, Bottgher lingered on for a few years more, until 
 death freed him from his sufferings on the 13th March, 
 1719, in the thirty-fifth year of his age. He was bur- 
 ied at night — as if he had been a dog — in the Johan- 
 nis Cemetery of Meissen. Such was the treatment and 
 such the unhappy end, of one of Saxony's greatest 
 benefactors. 
 
 The porcelain manufacture immediately opened up 
 an important source of public revenue, and it became 
 so productive to the Elector of Saxony, that his exam- 
 ple was shortly after followed by most European mon- 
 archs. Although soft porcelain had been made at St. 
 Oloud fourteen years before Bottgher's discovery, the 
 superiority of the hai-d porcelain soon became general- 
 ly recognized. Its manufacture was begun at Sevres 
 
112 Jbsiah Wedgwood. 
 
 in 1110, and it has since almost entirely superseded 
 the softer material. This is now one of the most thriv- 
 ing branches of French industry, of which the high 
 quality of the articles produced is certainly indispu- 
 table. 
 
 The career of Josiah Wedgwood, the English potter, 
 was less chequered and more prosperous than that of 
 either Palissy or Bottgher, and his lot was cast in hap- 
 pier times. Down to the middle of last century Eng- 
 land was behind most other nations of the first order in 
 Europe in respect of skilled industry. Although there 
 were many potters in Stafibrdshire — and Wedgwood 
 himself belonged to a numerous caste of potters of the 
 same name — their productions were of the rudest kind, 
 for the most part only plain brown ware, with the pat- 
 terns scratched in while the clay was wet. The prin- 
 cipal supply of the better articles of earthenware came 
 from Delft in Holland, and of drinking stone pots 
 from Cologne. Two foreign potters, the brothers Elers 
 from Nuremberg, settled for a time in Staffordshire, 
 and introduced an improved manufacture, but they 
 shortly after removed to Chelsea, where they confined 
 themselves to the manufacture of ornamental pieces. 
 No porcelain capable of resisting a scratch with a hai-d 
 point had yet been made in England ; and for a long 
 time the " white ware " made in Staffordshire was not 
 white, but of a dirty cream color. Such, in a few words, 
 was the condition of the pottery manufacture when 
 Josiah Wedgwood was born at Burslem in 1V30. By 
 the time that he died, sixty-four years later, it had 
 become completely changed. By his energy, skill, and 
 genius, he established the trade upon a new and solid 
 foundation ; and, in the words of his epitaph, " con- 
 verted a rude and inconsiderable manufacture into an 
 elegant art and an important branch of national com* 
 merce." 
 
Learns the Pottery Trade. 113 
 
 Josiah Wedgwood was one of those indefatigable 
 men who from time to time spring from the ranks of 
 the common people, and by their energetic character 
 not only practically educate the working population 
 in habits of industry, but by the example of dili- 
 gence and perseverance which they set before them, 
 largely influence the public activity in all directions, 
 and contribute in a great degree to form the national 
 character. He was, like , Arkwright, the youngest of 
 a family of thirteen children. His grandfather and 
 grand-uncle were both potters, as was also his father, 
 who died when he was a mere boy, leaving him a pat- 
 rimony of twenty pounds. He had learned to read 
 and write at the village school ; but on the death of 
 his father he was taken from it and set to work as a 
 " thrower " in a small pottery carried on by his elder 
 brother. There he began life, his working life, to use 
 his own words, " at the lowest round of the ladder," 
 when only eleven years old. He was shortly after 
 seized by an attack of virulent Smallpox, from the ef- 
 fects of which he suffered during the rest of his life, for 
 it was followed by a disease in the right knee, which 
 recurred at frequent intervals, and was only got rid of 
 by the amputation of the limb many years later. Mr. 
 Gladstone, in his eloquent Eloge on Wedgwood recent- 
 ly delivered at Burslem, well observed that the diseasa 
 from which he suffered was not improbably the occa- 
 sion of his subsequent excellence. " It prevented him 
 from growing up to be the active, vigorous English 
 workman, possessed of all his limbs, and knowing right 
 well the use of them ; but it put him upon considering 
 whether, as he could not be that, he might not be 
 something else, and something greater. It sent his 
 mind inwards ; it drove him to meditate upon the laws 
 and secrets of his art. The result was, that he arrived 
 at a perception and a grasp of them which might, per- 
 
114 Jbsiah Wedgwood. 
 
 haps, have been envied, certainly have been owned, by 
 an Athenian potter." * "^ 
 
 When he had completed his apprenticeship with his 
 brother, Josiah joined partnership with another work- 
 man, and carried on a small business in making knife- 
 hafts, boxes, and sundry articles for domestic use. An- 
 other partnership followed, when he proceeded to make 
 melon table -plates, green pickle - leaves, candlesticks, 
 snuff-boxes, and such like articles ; but he made compar- 
 atively little progress until he began business on his own 
 account at Burslem in the year 1759. There he dili- 
 gently pursued his calling, introducing new articles to 
 the trade, and gradually extending his business. What 
 he chiefly aimed at was to manufacture cream-colored 
 ware of a better quality than was then produced in 
 Staffordshire as regarded shape, color, glaze, and dura- 
 bility. To understand the subject thoroughly, he de- 
 voted his leisure to the study of chemistry; and he 
 made numerous experiments on fluxes, glazes, and va- 
 rious sorts of clay. Being a close inquirer and accurate 
 observer, he noticed that a certain earth containing 
 silica, which was black before calcination, became white 
 after exposure to the heat of a furnace. This fact* 
 observed and pondered on, led to the idea of mixing sil- 
 ica with the red powder of the potteries, and to the dis- 
 covery that the mixture becomes white when calcined. 
 He had but to cover this material with a vitrification 
 of transparent glaze, to obtain one of the most impor- 
 tant products of fictile art — that which, under the name 
 of English earthenware, was to attain the greatest com- 
 mercial value and become of the most extensive utility. 
 
 Wedgwood was for some time much troubled by his 
 furnaces, though nothing like to the same extent that 
 Palissy was ; and he overcame his difliculties in the 
 
 * " Wedgwood : an Address delivered at Burslem, Oct. 2Gth, 1863." 
 By the Kight Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P. 
 
The Barherini Vase. 115 
 
 same way — by repeated experiments and unfaltering 
 perseverance. His first attempts at making porcelain 
 for table use were a succession of disastrous failures — 
 the labors of months being often destroyed in a day. 
 It was only after a long series of trials, in the course of 
 which he lost time, money, and labor, that he arrived 
 at the proper sort of glaze to be used ; but he would 
 not be denied, and at last he conquered success through 
 patience. The improvement of pottery became his pas- 
 sion, and was never lost sight of for a moment. Even 
 when he had mastered his difficulties, and become a 
 prosperous man — manufacturing white stone ware and 
 cream-colored ware in large quantities for home and for- 
 eign use — he went forward perfecting his manufactures, 
 until, his example extending in all directions, the action 
 of the entire district was stimulated, and a great branch 
 of British industry was eventually established on firm 
 foundations. He aimed throughout at the highest ex- 
 cellence, declaring his determination " to give over man- 
 ufacturing any article, whatsoever it might be, rather 
 than to degrade it." 
 
 "Wedgwood was cordially helped by many persons 
 of rank and influence ; for, working in the truest spirit, 
 he readily commanded the help and encouragement of 
 other true workers. He made for Queen Charlotte the 
 first royal table-service of English manufacture, of the 
 kind afterwards called " queen's-ware," and was ap- 
 pointed Royal Potter ; a title which he prized more 
 than if he had been made a baron. Valuable sets of 
 porcelain were intrusted to him for imitation, in which 
 he succeeded to admiration. Sir William Hamilton 
 lent him specimens of ancient art from Herculaneum, 
 of which he produced accurate and beautiful copies. 
 The Duchess of Portland outbid him for the Barberini 
 Vase when that article was ofiered for sale. He bid as 
 high as seventeen hundred guineas for it : her grace 
 
116 Jbsiah Wedgwood. 
 
 ^. ». ^ 
 
 secured it for eighteen hundred ; hut when she learnt 
 Wedgwood's object she at once generously lent him 
 the vase to copy. He produced fifty copies at a cost 
 of about £2500, and his expenses were not covered by 
 their sale ; but he gained his object, which was to show 
 that whatever bad been done, that English skill and 
 energy could and would accomplish. 
 
 Wedgwood called to his aid the crucible of the 
 chemist, the knowledge of the antiquary, and the skill 
 of the artist. He found out Flaxman when a youth, 
 and while he liberally nurtured his genius, drew from 
 him a large number of beautiful designs for his pottery 
 and porcelain ; converting them by his manufacture 
 into objects of taste and excellence, and thus making 
 them instrumental in the diifusion of classical art 
 amongst the people. By careful experiment and study 
 he was even enabled to rediscover the art of painting 
 on porcelain or earthenware vases and similar articles 
 — an art practised by the ancient Etruscans, but which 
 had been lost since the time of Pliny. He distinguish- 
 ed himself by his own contributions to science, and hia 
 name is still identified with the pyrometer which he 
 invented. He was an indefatigable supporter of all 
 measures of public utility ; and the construction of the 
 Trent and Mersey Canal, which completed the navi- 
 gable communication between the eastern and western 
 sides of the island, was mainly due to his public-spirit- 
 ed exertions, allied to the engineering skill of Brind- 
 ley. The road accommodation of the district being 
 of an execrable character, he planned and executed 
 a turnpike-road through the potteries, ten miles in 
 length. The reputation he achieved was such that his 
 works at Burslem, and subsequently those at Etruria, 
 which he founded and built, became a point of attrac- 
 tion to distinguished visitors from all parts of Europe. 
 
 The result of Wedgwood's labors was, that the man- 
 
The Pottery Manufacture. 117 
 
 ufacture of pottery, which he found in the very lowest 
 condition, became one of the staples of England ; and 
 instead of importing what we needed for home use 
 from abroad, we became large exporters to other coun- 
 tries, supplying them with earthenware even in the 
 face of enormous prohibitory duties on articles of 
 British produce. Wedgwood gave evidence as to his 
 manufactures before Parliament in I'ZSS, only some 
 thirty years after he had begun his operations ; from 
 which it appeared, that instead of providing only cas- 
 ual employment to a small number of inefficient and 
 badly remunerated Avorkmen, about 20,000 persons 
 then derived their bread directly from the manufacture 
 of earthenware, without taking into account the in- 
 creased numbers to which it gave employment in coal- 
 mines, and in the carrying trade by land and sea, and 
 the stimulus which it gave to employment in many 
 ways in various parts of the country. Yet, important 
 as had been the advances made in his time, Mr. Wedg- 
 wood was of opinion that the manufacture was but in 
 its infancy, and that the improvements which he had 
 effected were of but small amount compared with those 
 to which the art was capable of attaining, through the 
 continued industry and growing intelligence of the 
 manufacturers, and the natural facilities and political 
 advantages enjoyed by Great Britain ; an opinion 
 which has been fully borne out by the progress which 
 has since been effected in this important branch of in- 
 dustry. In 1852 not fewer than 84,000,000 pieces of 
 pottery were exported from England to other coun- 
 tries, besides what were made for home use. But it is 
 not merely the quantity and value of the produce that 
 is entitled to consideration, but the improvement of 
 the condition of the population by whom this great 
 branch of industry is conducted. When Wedgwood 
 began his labors, the Staffordshire district was only 
 
118 JosMi Wedgwood. 
 
 in a half-civilized state. The people were poor, un- 
 cultivated, and few in number. When Wedgwood's 
 manufacture was firmly established, there was found 
 ample employment at good wages for three times the 
 number of population ; while their moral advancement 
 had kept pace with their material improvement. 
 
 Men such as these are fairly entitled to take rank as 
 the Industrial Heroes of the civilized world. Their pa- 
 tient self-reliance amidst trials and difficulties, their 
 courage and perseverance in the pursuit of worthy ob- 
 jects, are not less heroic of their kind than the bravery 
 and devotion of the soldier and the sailor, whose duty 
 and pride it is heroically to defend what these valiarjsi 
 leaders of industry have so heroically achieved. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 APPLICATION AND PEESEVEEANCK. 
 
 " Kich are the diligent, who can command 
 
 Time, nature's stock ? and could his hour-glass fall, 
 Would, as for seed of stars, stoop for the sand, 
 
 And, by incessant labor, gather all." — ^D'Avenant. 
 
 " AUez en avant, et la foi vous vieudra!" — D'Alemeekt. 
 
 THE greatest results in life are usually attained by- 
 simple means, and the exercise of ordinary quali- 
 ties. The common life of every day, with its cares, ne- 
 cessities, and duties, affords ample opportunity for ac- 
 quiring experience of the best kind ; and its most beat- 
 en paths provide the true worker with abundant scopo 
 for effort and room for self-improvement. The road of 
 human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast 
 well-doing ; and they who are the most persistent, and 
 work in the truest spirit, will usually be the most suc- 
 cessful. 
 
 Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; 
 but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who 
 look into practical life will find that fortune is usually 
 on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves 
 are on the side of the best navigators. In the pursuit 
 of even the highest branches of human inquiry, the 
 commoner qualities are found the most useful — such as 
 common sense, attention, application, and perseverance. 
 Genius may not be necessary, though even genius of 
 the highest sort does not disdain the use of these or- 
 dinary qualities. The very greatest men have been 
 
120 /Sir Isaac Newton. 
 
 among the least believers in the power of genius, and 
 as worldly wise and persevering as successful men of 
 the commoner sort. Some have even, defined genius 
 to be only common sense intensified. A distinguished 
 teacher and president of a college spoke of it as the 
 power of making efforts. John Foster held it to be 
 the power of lighting one's own fire. Buffon said of 
 genius, "It is patience." 
 
 Newton's was unquestionably a mind of the very 
 highest order, and yet, when asked by what means he 
 had worked out his extraordinary discoveries, he mod- 
 estly answered, " By always thinking unto them." At 
 another time he thus expressed his method of study : 
 " I keep the subject continually before me, and wait 
 till the first dawnings open slowly by little and little 
 into a full and clear light." It was in Newton's case 
 as in every other, only by diligent application and per- 
 severance that his great reputation was achieved. 
 Even his recreation consisted in change of study, lay- 
 ing down one subject to take up another. To Dr. 
 Bentley he said : " If I have done the public any serv- 
 ice, it is due to nothing but industry and patient 
 thought." So Kepler, another great philosopher, speak- 
 ing of his studies and his progress, said : " As in Vir- 
 gil, ' Fama mobilitate viget, vires acquirit eundo,' so it 
 was with me, that the diligent thought on these things 
 was the occasion of still further thinking ; until at last 
 I brooded with the whole energy of my mind upon the 
 subject." 
 
 The extraordinary results effected by dint of sheer in- 
 dustry and perseverance, have led many distinguished 
 men to doubt whether the gift of genius be so excep- 
 tional an endowment as it is usually supposed to be. 
 Thus Voltaire held that it is only a very slight line of 
 separation that divides the man of genius from the man 
 of ordinary mould. Beccaria was even of opinion that 
 
Application and Perseverance. 121 
 
 ail men might be poets and orators, and Reynolds that 
 they might he painters and sculptors. If this were 
 really so, that stolid Englishman might not have been 
 so very far wrong after all, who, on Canova's death, in- 
 quired of his brother whether it was " his intention to 
 carry on the business !" Locke, Helvetius, and Diderot 
 believed that all men have an equal aptitude for genius, 
 and that what some are able to effect, under the laws 
 which regulate the operations of the intellect, must 
 also be within the reach of others who, under like cir- 
 cumstances, apply themselves to like pursuits. But 
 while admitting to the fullest extent the wonderful 
 achievements of labor, and recognizing the fact that 
 men of the most distinguished genius have invariably 
 been found the most indefatigable workers, it must nev- 
 ertheless be sufSciently obvious that, without the orig- 
 inal endowment of heart and brain, no amount of labor, 
 however well applied, could have produced a Shaks- 
 peare, a Newton, a Beethoven, or a Michael Angelo. 
 
 Dalton, the cliemist, repudiated the notion of his be- 
 ing " a genius," attributing every thing which he had 
 accomplished to simple industry and accumulation. 
 John Hunter said of himself, " My mind is like a bee- 
 hive ; but full as it is of buzz and apparent confusion, 
 it is yet full of order and regularity, and food collected 
 with incessant industry from the choicest stores of na- 
 ture." We have, indeed, but to glance at the biog- 
 raphies of great men to find that the most distinguish- 
 ed inventors, artists, thinkers, and workers of all kinds, 
 owe their success, in a great measure, to their indefati- 
 gable industry and application. They were men who 
 turned all things to gold — even time itself Disraeli 
 the elder held that the secret of success consisted in 
 being master of your subject, such mastery being at- 
 tainable only thi-ough continuous application and study. 
 Hence it happens that the men who have most moved 
 
 6 
 
122 Anecdote of Sir Bohert Ped. 
 
 the world, have not been so much men of genius, strict- 
 ly so called j as men of intense mediocre abilities, and 
 untiring pei'severance ; not so often the gifted, of nat- 
 urally bright and shining qualities, as those who have 
 a.pplied themselves diligently to their work, in whatso- 
 ever line that might lie. " Alas !" said a widow, speak- 
 ing of her brilliant but careless son, " he has not the 
 gift of continuance." Wanting in perseverance, such 
 volatile natures are outstripped in the race of life by 
 the diligent and even the dull. " Che va piano, va 
 longano, e va lontano," says the Italian proverb : Who 
 goes slowly, goes long, and goes far. 
 
 Hence, a great point to be aimed at is to get the 
 working quality well trained. When that is done, the 
 race will be found comparatively easy. We must re- 
 peat and again repeat ; facility will come with labor. 
 Not even the simplest art can be accomplished without 
 it ; and what difficulties it is found capable of achiev- 
 ing ! It was by early discipline and repetition that 
 the late Sir Robert Peel cultivated those remarkable, 
 though still mediocre powers, which rendered him so 
 illustrious an ornament of the British Senate. When 
 a boy at Drayton Manor, his father was accustomed to 
 set him up at table to practice speaking extempore ; 
 and he early accustomed him to repeat as much of the 
 Sunday's sermon as he could remember. Little prog- 
 ress was made at first, but by steady perseverance 
 the habit of attention became powerful, and the ser- 
 mon was at length repeated almost verbatim. When 
 afterwards replying in succession to the arguments of 
 his parliamentary opponents— an art in which he was 
 perhaps unrivalled— it was little surmised that the ex- 
 traordinary power of accurate remembrance which he 
 displayed on such occasions had been originally trained 
 under the discipline of his father in the parish church 
 of Drayton. 
 
Gheerfulness. 123 
 
 It is indeed marvellous what continuous application 
 will effect in the commonest of things. It may seem 
 a simple affair to play upon a violin ; yet what a long 
 and laborious practice it requires! Giardini said to a 
 youth who asked him how long it would take to learn 
 it, "Twelve hours a day for twenty years together." 
 Industry, it is said, /"at* rours clanser. The poor figu- 
 rante must devote years of incessant toil to her profit- 
 less task before she can shine in it. When Taglioni 
 was preparing herself for her evening exhibition, she 
 would, after a severe two hours' lesson from her father, 
 fall down exhausted, and had to be undressed, sponged, 
 and resuscitated, totally unconscious. The agility and 
 bounds of the evening were insured only at a price like 
 this. 
 
 Progress, howevel-, of the best kind, is comparatively 
 slow. Great results can not be achieved at once ; and 
 we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step 
 by step. De Maistre says that " To know how to wait 
 is the great secret of success." We must sow before 
 we can reap, and often have to wait long, content 
 meanwhile to look patiently forward in hope; the 
 fruit best worth waiting for often ripening the slowest. 
 But "Time and patience," says the Eastern proverb, 
 " change the mulberry leaf to satin." 
 
 To wait patiently, however, men must work cheerful- 
 ly. Cheerfulness is an excellent working quality, im- 
 parting great elasticity to the character. As a bishop 
 has said, "Temper is nine-tenths of Christianity;" so 
 are cheerfulness and diligence nine-tenths of practical 
 wisdom. They are the life and soul of success, as well 
 as of happiness ; perhaps the very highest pleasure in 
 life consisting in clear, brisk, conscious working ; ener- 
 gy, confidence, and every other good quality mainly 
 depending upon it. Sydney Smith, when laboring as a 
 parish priest at Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire— though 
 
124 Hope^-William Carey. 
 
 he did not feel himself to be in his proper element^ 
 went cheerfully, to work in the fii-m determination tc 
 do his best. "I am resolved," he said, "to like it, and 
 reconcile myself to it, which is more manly than to 
 feign myself above it, and to send np complaints by 
 the post of being thrown away, and being desolate, 
 and such like trash." So Dr. Hook, when leaving 
 Leeds for a new sphere of labor, said, " Wherever I 
 may be, I shall, by ©od's blessing, do with my might 
 what my hand findeth to do ; and if I do not find 
 work, I shall make it." 
 
 Laborers for the public good especially, have to work 
 long and patiently, often uncheered by the prospect of 
 immediate recompense or result. The seeds they sow 
 sometimes lie hidden under the winter's snow, and be- 
 fore the spring comes the husbandman may have gone 
 to his rest. It is not every public worker who, like 
 Rowland Hill, sees his great idea bring forth fruit in 
 his lifetime. Adam Smith sowed the seeds of a great 
 social amelioration in that dingy old University of 
 Glasgow where he so long labored, and laid the foun- 
 dations ofhis." Wealth of Nations;" but seventy years 
 passed before his work bore substantial fruits, nor in- 
 deed are they all gathered in yet. 
 
 Nothing can compensate for the loss of hope in a man : 
 it entirely changes the character. " How can I work — 
 how can I be happy," said a great but miserable think- 
 er, " when I have lost all hope ?" One of the most 
 cheerful and courageous, because one of the most hope- 
 ful of workers, was Carey, the missionary. When in 
 India, it was no uncommon thing for him to weary out 
 three pundits, who officiated as his clerks, in one day, 
 he himself taking rest only in change of employment. 
 Carey, the son of a shoemaker, was supported in his 
 labors by Ward, the son of a carpenter, and Marsham, 
 the son of a weaver. By their labors a magnificent 
 
Dr. Young — Auduhon. 125 
 
 college was erected at Serampore; sixteen flourishing 
 stations were established ; the Bible was translated 
 into sixteen languages, and the seeds were sown of a 
 beneficent moral revolution in British India. Carey 
 was never ashamed of the humbleness of his origin. On 
 one occasion, when at the Governor-General's table he 
 overheard an officer opposite him asking anothei", loud 
 enough to be heard, whether Carey had not once been a 
 shoemaker : " No, sir," exclaimed Carey imniediately ; 
 "only a cobbler." An eminently characteri-stic anec- 
 dote has been told of his perseverance as a boy. When 
 climbing a tree one day, his foot slipped, and he fell to 
 the' ground, breaking his leg by the fall. He was con- 
 fined to his bed for weeks, but when he recovered and 
 was able to walk without support, the very first thing 
 he did was to go and climb that tree. Carey had need 
 of this sort of dauntless courage for the great mission- 
 ary work of his life, and nobly and resolutely he did it. 
 
 It was a maxim of Dr. Young, the philosopher^ that 
 " Any man can do what any other man has done ;" and 
 it is unquestionable that he himself never recoiled from 
 any trials to which he determined to subject himself. 
 It is related of him, that the first time he mounted a 
 horse he was in company with the grandson of Mi*. 
 Barclay, of Ury; the well-known sportsman ; when the 
 horseman who preceded them leaped a high fence. 
 Young wished to imitate him, but fell ofi" his horse in 
 the attempt. Without saying a word, he remounted, 
 made a second effort, and was again unsuccessful, but 
 this time he was not thrown farther than on to the 
 horse's neck, to which he clung. At the third trial he 
 succeeded, and cleared the fence. 
 
 The story of Timour the Tartar learning a lesson of 
 perseverance under adversity from the spider is well 
 known. Not less interesting is the anecdote of Audu- 
 bon, the American ornithologist, as related by himself: 
 
126 Avduhon — Newton. 
 
 "An accident," he says, "which happened to two 
 hundred of my original drawings, nearly put a stop to 
 my researches in ornithology. I shall relate it, merely 
 to show how far enthusiasm — for by no other name can 
 I call my perseverance — may enable the preserver of 
 nature to surmount the most disheartening difficulties. 
 I left the village of Henderson, in Kentucky, situated 
 on the banks of the Ohio, where I resided for several 
 years, to proceed to Philadelphia on business. I looked 
 to my drawings before my departure, placed them care- 
 fully in a wooden box, and gave them in charge of a 
 relative, with injunctions to see that no injury should 
 happen to them. My absence was of several months ; 
 and when I returned, after having enjoyed the pleas- 
 ures of home for a few days, I inquired after my box, 
 and what I was pleased to call my treasure. The box 
 was produced and opened ; but, reader, feel for me — a 
 pair of Norway rats had taken possession of the whole, 
 and reared a young family among the gnawed bits of 
 paper, which, but a month previous, represented nearly 
 a thousand inhabitants of air ! The burning heat which 
 instantly rushed through my brain was too great to 
 be endured without affecting my whole nervous system. 
 1 slept for several nights, and the days passed like days 
 of oblivion — until the animal powers being recalled 
 into action through the strength of my constitution, I 
 took up my gun, my note-book and my pencils, and 
 went forth to the woods as gayly as if nothing had hap- 
 pened. I felt pleased that I might now make better 
 drawings than before ; and, ere a period not exceeding 
 three years had elapsed, my portfolio was again filled." 
 The accidental destruction of Sir Isaac Newton's pa- 
 pers, by his little dog " Diamond " upsetting a lighted 
 taper upon his desk, by which the elaborate calcula- 
 tions of many years were in a moment desti-oyed, is a 
 well-known anecdote, and need not be repeated : it is 
 
Carlyh'^Stephensorir^Watt. 127 
 
 said that the Ibss caused the philosopher such profound 
 grief that it seriously injured his health, and impaired 
 his understanding. An accident of a somewhat similar 
 kind happened to the manuscript of Mr. Carlyle's first 
 volume of his " French Revolution." He had lent the 
 manuscript to a literary neighbor to peruse. By some 
 mischance, it had heen left lying on the parlor floor, 
 and become forgotten. Weeks ran on, and the his- 
 torian sent for his work, the printers being loud for 
 " copy." Inquiries were made, and it was found that 
 the maid-of-all-work, finding what she conceived to be 
 a bundle of waste paper on the floor, had used it to 
 light the kitchen and parlor fires with ! Such was the 
 answer returned to Mr. Carlyle ; and his feelings may 
 be imagined. There was, however, no help for him but 
 to set resolutely to work to re-write the book ; and he 
 turned to and did it. He had no draft, and was com- 
 pelled to rake up from his memory facts, ideas, and ex- 
 pressions which had been long since dismissed. The 
 composition of the book in the first instance had been a 
 work of pleasure ; the re-writing of it a second time 
 was one of pain and anguish almost beyond belief. 
 That he persevered and finished the volume under 
 such circumstances, affords an instance of determina- 
 tion of purpose which has seldom been surpassed. 
 
 The lives of eminent inventors are eminently illus- 
 trative of the same quality of perseverance. George 
 Stephenson, when addressing young men, was accus- 
 tomed to sum up his best advice to them in the words, 
 " Do as I have done — persevere." He had worked at 
 the improvement of his locomotive for some fifteen 
 years before achieving his decisive victory at Rainhill ; 
 and Watt was engaged for some thirty years upon the 
 condensing-engine before he brought it to perfection. 
 But there are equally striking illustrations of persever- 
 ance to be found in every other- branch of science, art* 
 
128 Mr. Rawlinson. 
 
 and industry. Perhaps one of the most interesting is 
 that connected with the disentombment of the Nineveh 
 marbles, and the discovery of the long-lost cuneiform or 
 arrow-headed character in which the inscriptions on them 
 are written^a kind of writing which had been lost to 
 the world since the period of the Macedonian conquest 
 of Persia. 
 
 An intelligent cadet of the East India Company, sta- 
 tioned at Kermanshah, in Persia, had observed the cu- 
 rious cuneiform inscriptions on the old monuments in 
 the neighborhood — so old that a,ll historical traces of 
 them had been lost — and amongst the inscriptions 
 which he copied was that on the celebrated rock of 
 Behistun — a perpendicular rock rising abruptly some 
 1700 feet from the plain, the lower part bearing in- 
 scriptions for the space of about 300 feet in three lan- 
 guages — Persian, Scythian, and Assyrian. Comparison 
 of the known with the unknown, of the language which 
 survived with the language that had been lost, enabled 
 this cadet to acquire some knowledge of the cuneiform 
 character, and even to form an alphabet. Mr. (after- 
 wards Sir Henry) Rawlinson sent his tracings home 
 for examination. No professors in colleges as yet knew 
 any thing of the cuneiform character ; but there was a 
 ci-devant clerk of the East India House — a modest un- 
 known man of the name of Norris — Avho had made this 
 little-understood subject his study, to whom the trac- 
 ings were submitted ; and so accurate was his knowl- 
 edge, that, though he had never seen the Behistun 
 rock, he pronounced that the cadet had not copied the 
 puzzling inscription with proper exactness. Rawlin- 
 s-in, who was still in the neighborhood of the rock, 
 compared his copy with the original, and found that 
 Norris was right ; and by further comparison and care- 
 ful study the knowledge of the cuneiform writing was 
 tjius greatly advanced. 
 
Aiisten Layard. 129 
 
 But to make the learning of these two self-taught 
 men of avail, a third laborer was necessary in order to 
 supply them with material for the exercise of their skill. 
 Such a laborer presented himself in the person of Aus- 
 ten Layard, originally an articled clerk in the office of 
 a London solicitor. One would scarcely have expect- 
 ed to find in these three men, a cadet, an India-House 
 clerk, and a lawyer's clerk, the discoverers of a forgot- 
 ten language, and of the buried history of Babylon ; yet 
 it was so. Layard was a youth of only twenty-two, 
 travelling in the East, when he was possessed with a 
 desire to penetrate the regions beyond the Euphrates. 
 Accompanied by a single companion, trusting to his 
 arms for protection, and, what was better, to his cheei*^ 
 fulness, politeness, and chivalrous bearing, he passed 
 safely amidst tribes at deadly war with each other; 
 and, after the lapse of many years, with comparatively 
 slender means at his command, but aided by application 
 and perseverance, resolute will and purpose, and almost 
 sublime patience — borne up throughout by his passion^ 
 ate enthusiasm for discovery and research — ^he succeed- 
 ed in laying bare and digging up an amount of histor^ 
 ical treasures, the like of which has probably never be- 
 fore been collected by the industry of any one man. 
 Not less than two miles of bas-reliefs were thus brought 
 to light by Mr. Layard. The selection of these valua- 
 ble antiquities, now placed in the British Museum, was 
 found so curiously corroborative of the scriptural rec- 
 ords of events which occurred some three thousand 
 years ago, that they burst upon the world almost like 
 a new revelation. And the story of the disentombment 
 of these remarkable works, as told by Mr. Layard him- 
 self in his " Monuments of Nineveh," will always be re- 
 garded as one of the most charming and unaifected rec- 
 ords which we possess of individual enterprise, industry, 
 and energy. 
 
 6* 
 
130 Buffon-^-^^ Genius is Patience^ 
 
 The career of the Comte de Buifon presents another 
 remarkable illustration of the power of patient industry, 
 as well as of his own saying, that " Genius is patience." 
 Ifotwithstanding the great results achieved by him in 
 natural history, Buffon, when a youth, was regarded as 
 of mediocre talents. His mind was slow in forming it- 
 self, and slow in reproducing what it had acquired. He 
 was also constitutionally indolent ; and being born to 
 good estate, it might be supposed that he would indulge 
 liis liking for ease and luxury. Instead of which, he 
 early formed the resolution of denying himself pleasure, 
 and devoting himself to study and self-culture. Re- 
 garding time as a treasure that was limited, and finding 
 that he was losing many hours by lying abed in the 
 mornings, he determined to break himself of the habit. 
 He struggled hard against it for some time, but failed 
 in being able to rise at the hour he had fixed. He then 
 icalled his servant, Joseph, to his help, and promised him 
 the reward of a crown every time that he succeeded in 
 getting him up before six. At first, when called, Buf- 
 fon declined to rise — pleaded that he was ill, or pretend- 
 ed anger at being disturbed; and on the Count at 
 length getting up, Joseph found that he had earned 
 nothing but reproaches for having permitted his mas- 
 ter to lie abed contrary to his express orders. At length 
 the valet determined to earn his crown ; and again and 
 again he forced Buffon to rise, notwithstanding his en- 
 treaties, expostulations, and threats of immediate dis- 
 charge from his service. One morning Buffon was un- 
 usually obstinate, and Joseph found it necessary to re- 
 port to the extreme measure of dashing a basin of ice- 
 cold water under the bed-clothes, the effect of which 
 was instantaneous. By the persistent use of such 
 means, Buffon at length conquered his habit ; and he 
 was accustomed to say, that he owed to Joseph three 
 or four volumes of his Natural History. 
 
Buffon a conscientious Worhei: 131 
 
 For forty years of his life, Buffon worked every 
 moraing at his desk from mne till two, and again in the 
 eveaing from five till nine. His diligence was so con- 
 tinuous and so regular that it became habitual. His 
 biographer has said of him, " Work was his necessity ; 
 his studies were the charm of his life; and towards 
 the last term of his glorious career he frequently said 
 that he still hoped to be able to consecrate to them a 
 few more years." He was a most conscientious woi-ker, 
 always studying to give the reader his best thoughts, 
 exjpressed in the very best manner. He was never 
 wearied with touching and retouching his compositions, 
 so that Iris style may be pronounced almost perfect. 
 He wrote the " Epoques de la Nature " not fewer than 
 eleven times before he was satisfied with it ; although 
 he had thought over the work about fifty years. He 
 was a thorough man of business, most orderly in every 
 thing ; and he was accustomed to say that genius with- 
 out order lost three-fourths of its power. His great 
 success as a writer Avas the result mainly of his pains- 
 taking labor and diligent application. " Buffon," ob- 
 served Madame Necker, " strongly persuaded that ge- 
 nius is the result of a profound attention directed to a 
 particular subject, said that he was thoroughly wearied 
 out when composing his first writings, but compelled 
 himself to return to them and go over them carefully 
 again, even when he thought he had already brought 
 them to a certain degree of perfection ; and that at 
 length he found pleasure instead of weariness in this 
 long and elaborate coiTection." It ought also to be 
 added that Buffon wrote and published all his great 
 works while afflicted by one of the most painful dis- 
 eases to which the human frame is subject. 
 
 Literary life affords abundant illustrations of the 
 same power of perseverance ; and perhaps no career is 
 more instructive, viewed in this light, than that of Sir 
 
132 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Walter Scott. His admirable working qualities were 
 trained in a lawyer's office, where he pursued for many 
 years a sort of drudgery scarcely ahove that of a copy- 
 ing clerk. His daily dull routine made his evenings, 
 which were his own, all the more sweet ; and he gener- 
 ally devoted them to reading and study. He himself 
 attributed to his prosaic office discipline that habit of 
 steady, sober diligence, in which mere literary men are 
 so often found wanting. As a copying clerk he was 
 allowed 3d. for every page containing a certain number 
 of words ; and he sometimes, by extra work, was able 
 to copy as many as 120 pages in twenty-four hours, 
 thus earning some 30«. ; out of which he would occa- 
 sionally purchase an odd volume, otherwise beyond his 
 means. 
 
 During his after-life Scott was wont to pride himself 
 upon being a man of business, and he averred, in con- 
 tradiction to what he called the cant of sonnetteers, 
 that there was no necessary connection between genius 
 and an aversion or contempt for the common duties of 
 life. On the contrary, he was of opinion that to spend 
 some fair portion of every day in any matter-of-fact 
 occupation was good for the higher faculties themselves 
 in the upshot. While afterwards acting as clerk to the 
 Court of Session in Edinburgh, he performed his literary 
 work chiefly before breakfast, attending the court dur- 
 ing the day, where he authenticated registered deeds 
 and writings of various kinds. " On the whole," says 
 Lockhart,"it forms one of the most remarkable features 
 in his history, that throughout the most active period 
 of his literary career, he must have devoted a largo 
 proportion of his hours, during half at least of every 
 year, to the conscientious discharge of professional du- 
 ties." It was a principle of action which he laid down 
 for himself, that he must earn his living by business, 
 and not by literature. On one occasion he said, " I de- 
 
Sir Walter ScoU. 133 
 
 termined that literature should he my staff, not my 
 crutch, and that the profits of my literary labor, how- 
 ever convenient otherwise, should not, if I could help it, 
 become necessary to my ordinary expenses." 
 
 His punctuality was one of the most carefully culti- 
 vated of his habits, otherwise it had not been possible 
 for him to get through so enormous an amount of liter- 
 ary labor. He made it a rule to answer every letter 
 received by him on the same day, except where inquiry 
 and deliberation were requisite. Nothing else could 
 have enabled him to keep abreast with the flood of 
 communications that poured in upon him and sometimes 
 put his good-nature to the severest test. It was his 
 practice to rise by five o'clock and light his own fire. 
 He shaved and dressed with deliberation, and was seat- 
 ed at his desk by six o'clock, with his papers arranged 
 before him in the most accui-ate order, his works of ref- 
 erence marshalled round him on the flooi', while at least 
 one favorite dog lay watching his eye, outside the line 
 of books. , Thus by the time the family assembled for 
 breakfast, between nine and ten, he had done enough — 
 to use his own words — to break the neck of the day's 
 work. But with all his diligent and indefatigable in- 
 dustry, and his immense knowledge, the result of many 
 years' patient labor, Scott always spoke with the great- 
 est diffidence of his own powers. On one occasion he 
 said, " Throughout every part of my career I have felt 
 pinched and hampered by my own ignorance." 
 
 Such is true wisdom and humility ; for the more a 
 man really knows, the less conceited he will be. The 
 student at Trinity College who went tip to his profess- 
 or to take leave of him because he had " finished his 
 education," was wisely rebuked by the professor's i-eply, 
 " Indeed ! I am only beginning mine." The superficial 
 person, who has obtained a smattering of many things 
 but knows nothing well, may pride himself upon his 
 
134 John Britton. 
 
 gifts ; but the sage humbly confesses that " all he knowa 
 is, that he knows nothing," or, like Newton, that lie 
 has been only engaged in picking shells by the sea-shore 
 while the great ocean of truth lies all unexplored be- 
 fo]'e him. 
 
 The lives of second-rate literary men furnish equally 
 remarkable illustrations of the power of perseverance. 
 The late John Britton, author of " The Beauties of Eng- 
 land and Wales," and of many valuable architectural 
 works, was born in a miserable cot in Kingston, Wilt- 
 shire. His father had been a baker and maltster, but 
 ■was ruined in trade and became insane while Britton 
 was yet a child. The boy received very little school- 
 ing, but a great deal of bad example, which happily 
 did not corrupt him. He was early in life set to labor 
 with an uncle, a tavern-keeper in Clerkenwell, under 
 whom he bottled, corked, and binned wine for more 
 than five years. His health failing him, his uncle turn- 
 ed him adrift in the world, with only two guineas, the 
 fruits of his five years' service, in his pocket. During 
 the next seven years of his life he endured many vicissi- 
 tudes and hardships. Yet he says, in his autobiography, 
 " In my poor and obscure lodgings, at eighteen pence a 
 week, I indulged in study, and often read in bed during 
 the winter evenings, because I could not afford a fire." 
 Travelling on foot to Bath, he there obtained an en- 
 gagement as cellarman, but shortly after we find him 
 back in the metropolis again, almost penniless, shoeless, 
 and shirtless. He succeeded, however, in obtaining em- 
 ployment as a cellarman at the London Tavern, where 
 it was his duty to be in the cellar from seven in the 
 morning until eleven at night. His health broke down 
 under this confinement in the dark, added to the heavy 
 work ; and he then engaged himself, at fifteen shillings 
 a week, to an attorney — for he had been diligently 
 cultivating the art of writing during the few spare 
 
Loudon. 135 
 
 minutes that he could call his own. While in this em- 
 ployment, he devoted his leisure principally to peram- 
 bulating the bookstalls, where he read books by snatch- 
 es which he could not buy, and thus picked up a good 
 deal of odd knowledge. Then he shifted to another 
 oiiice, at the advanced wages of twenty shillings a 
 week, still reading and studying. At twenty-eight he 
 was able to write a book, which he published under the 
 title of" The Enterprising Adventures of Pizarro ;" and 
 from that time until his death, dui'ing a period of about 
 fifty-five years, Britton was occupied in laborious liter- 
 ary occupation. The number of his published works is 
 not fewer than eighty-seven ; the most important being 
 " The Cathedral Antiquities of England," in fourteen 
 volumes, a truly magnificent work ; itself the best mon- 
 ument of John Britten's indefatigable industry. 
 
 Loudon, the landscape gardener, was a man of some- 
 what similar character, possessed of an extraordinary 
 working power. The son of a farmer near Edinburgh, 
 he was early inured to work. His skill in drawing 
 plans and making sketches of scenery induced his father 
 to train him for a landscape gardener. During his ap- 
 prenticeship he sat up two whole nights every week to 
 study ; yet he worked harder during the day than any 
 laborer. In the course of his night studies he learnt 
 French, and before he was eighteen he translated a life 
 of Abelard for an Encyclopaedia. He was so eager to 
 make progress in life, that when only twenty, while 
 Avorking as a gardener in England, he wrote down in 
 his note-book, "I am now twenty years of age, and 
 perhaps a third part of my life has passed away, and 
 yet what have I done to benefit my fellow-men ?" an 
 unusual reflection for a youth of only twenty. From 
 French he proceeded to learn German, and rapidly 
 mastered that language. Having taken a large farm, 
 for the purpose of introducing Scotch improvements in 
 
iSti Samuel Drew. 
 
 the art of agriculture, he shortly succeeded in realizing 
 a considerable income; The continent being thrown 
 open at the end of the war, he travelled abroad for the 
 purpose of inquiring into the system of gardening and 
 agriculture in other countries.. He twice repeated his 
 journeys, and the results were published in his Ency- 
 clopsedias, which are among the most remarkable works 
 of their kind — distinguished for the immense mass 
 of useful matter which they contain, collected by an 
 amount of industry and labor which has rarely been 
 equalled. 
 
 The career of Samuel Drew is not less remarkable 
 than any of those which we have cited. His father was 
 a hard-working laborer of the parish of St. Austell, in 
 Cornwall. Though poor, he contrived to send his two 
 sons to a penny-a-week school in the neighborhood. 
 Jabez, the elder, took delight in learning, and made 
 great progress in his lessons ; but Samuel, the younger, 
 was a dunce, notoriously given to mischief and playing 
 truant. When aboiit eight years old he was put to 
 manual labor, earning three halfpence a day as a bud- 
 dle-boy at a tin-mine. At ten he was apprenticed to a 
 shoemaker, and while in this employment he endured 
 much hardship — living, as he used to say, " like a toad 
 under a harrow." He often thought of running away 
 and becoming a pirate, or something of the sort, and he 
 seems to have grown in recklessness as he grew in yeat-B. 
 In robbing orchards, he was usually a leader ; and, as 
 he grew older, he delighted to take part in any poach- 
 ing or smuggling adventure. When about seventeen, 
 before his apprenticeship was out, he ran away, intend^ 
 ing to enter on board a man-of-war; but, sleeping in a 
 hay-field at night cooled him a little, and he returned 
 to his trade. 
 
 Drew next removed to the neighborhood of Plymouth 
 to worX ot his shoemaking business, and while at Caw- 
 
Smuggling Adventure. 137 
 
 Band he won a prize for cudgel-playing, in which he 
 seems to have been an adept. While living there, he 
 had nearly lost his life in a smuggling exploit which he 
 had joined, partly induced by the love of adventure, 
 and partly by the love of gain, for his regular wages 
 were not more than eight shillings arweek. One night, 
 notice was given throughout Crafthole, that a smuggler 
 was off the coast, ready to land her cargo ; on which 
 the male population of the place — nearly all smugglers 
 — made for the shore. One party remained on the rocks 
 to make signals and dispose of the goods as they were 
 landed ; and another manned the boats, Drew being of 
 the latter party. The night was intensely dark, and 
 very little of the cargo had been landed, when the wind 
 rose, with a heavy sea. The men in the boats, how- 
 ever, determined to persevere, and several trips were 
 made between the smuggler, now standing farther out 
 to sea, and the shore. One of the men in the boat in 
 which Drew was, had his hat blown off by the wind, 
 and in attempting to recover it, the boat was upset. 
 Three of the men were immediately drowned ; the oth- 
 ers clung to the boat for a time, but finding it drifting 
 out to sea, they took to swimming. They were two 
 miles from land, and the night was intensely dark. 
 After being about three hours in the water. Drew 
 reached a rock near the shore, with one or two others, 
 where he remained benumbed with cold till morning, 
 when he and his companions were discovered and tak- 
 en off, more dead than alive. A keg of brandy from 
 the cargo just landed was brought, the head knocked 
 in with a hatchet, and a bowlful of the liquid presented 
 to the survivors ; and, shortly after. Drew was able to 
 walk two miles through deep snow, to his lodgings. 
 
 This was a very unpromising beginning of a life ; and 
 yet this same Drew, scapegrace, orchard-robber, shoe- 
 maker, cudgel-player, and smuggler, outlived the reck- 
 
138 Samuel Drew. 
 
 lessness of his youth, and became distinguished as a 
 minister of the Gospel and a writer of good hooks. 
 Happily, before it was too late, the energy which char- 
 acterized him was turned into a more healthy direction, 
 and rendered him as eminent in usefulness as he had 
 before been in wickedness. His father again took him 
 back to St. Austell, and found employment for him as 
 a journeyman shoemaker. Perhaps his recent escape 
 from death had tended to make the young man serious, 
 as we shortly find him, attracted by the forcible preach- 
 ing of Dr. Adam Clarke, a minister of the Wesleyan 
 Methodists. His brother having died about the same 
 time, the impression of seriousness was deepened ; and 
 thenceforward he was an altered man. He began anew 
 the work of education, for he had almost forgotten how 
 to read and write ; and even after several years' prac- 
 tice, a friend compared his writing to the traces of a 
 spider dipped in ink set to crawl upon paper. Speak- 
 ing of himself, about that time. Drew afterwards said, 
 " The more I read, the more I felt my own ignorance ; 
 and the more I felt my ignorance, the more invincible 
 became my energy to surmount it. Every leisure mo- 
 ment was now employed in reading one thing or an- 
 other. Having to support myself by manual labor, my 
 time for reading was but little, and to overcome this 
 disadvantage, my usual method was to place a book 
 before me Avhile at meat, and at every repast I read 
 five or six pages." The perusal of Locke's " Essay on 
 the Understanding" gave the first metaphysical turn 
 to his mind. " It awakened me from my stupor," said 
 he, " and induced me to form a resolution to abandon 
 the grovelling views which I had been accustomed to 
 entertain." 
 
 Drew began business on his own account, with a cap- 
 ital of a few shillings ; but his character for steadiness 
 Was such that a neighboring miller oflfered him a loan. 
 
Samvd Drew, Student. 139 
 
 "which was accepted, and, success attending his indus- 
 try, the deht was repaid at the end of a year. He 
 started with a determination to ''owe no man any 
 thing," and he held to it in the midst of many priva- 
 tions. Often he went to bed supperless, to avoid rising 
 in debt. His ambition was to achieve independence 
 by industry and economy, and in this he gradually suc- 
 ceeded. In the midst of incessant labor, he sedulously 
 strove to improve his mind, studying astronomy, his- 
 tory, and metaphysics. He was induced to pursue the 
 latter study chiefly because it required fewer books to 
 consult than eliher of the others. " It appeared to be 
 a thorny path," he said, " but I determined, neverthe- 
 less, to enter, and accordingly began to tread it." 
 
 Added to his labors in shoemaking and metaphysics, 
 Drew became a local preacher and a class-leader. He 
 took an eager interest in politics, and his shop became 
 a favorite resort with the village politicians. And 
 when they did not come to him, he went to them to 
 talk over public affairs. This so encroached upon his 
 time that he found it necessary sometimes to work un- 
 til midnight to make up for the hours lost during the 
 day. His political fervor became .the talk of the vil- 
 lage. , While busy one night hammering away at a 
 shoe-sole, a little boy, seeing a light in the shop, put his 
 mouth to the keyhole of the door, and called out in a 
 shrill pipe, " Shoemaker ! shoemaker ! work by night 
 and run about by day !" A friend, to whom Drew af- 
 terwards told the story, asked, " And did not you run 
 after the boy and strap him ?" " No, no," was the re- 
 ply ; " had a pistol been fired off at my ear, I could not 
 have been more dismayed or confounded. I dropped 
 my work, and said to myself, ' True, true ! but you shall 
 never have that to say of me again.' To me that cry 
 was as the voice of God, and it has been a word in sea- 
 son throughout my life. I learnt from it not to leave 
 
140 Samuel Drew, Metaphysician. 
 
 till to-morrow the work of to-day, or to idle when I 
 ought to be working." 
 
 From that moment Drew dropped politics, and stuck 
 to his work, reading and studying in his spare hours : 
 but he never allowed the latter pursuit to interfere 
 with his business, though it frequently broke in upon 
 his rest. He married, and thought of emigrating to 
 America ; but he remained working on. His literary 
 taste first took the direction of poetical composition ; 
 and from some of the fragments which have been pre- 
 served, it appears that his speculations as to the imma- 
 teriality and immortality of the soul had their origin 
 in these poetical musings. His study was the kitchen, 
 where his wife's bellows served him for a desk; and he 
 wrote amidst the cries and cradlings of his children. 
 Paine's " Age of Reason " having appeared about this 
 time and excited much interest, he composed a pam- 
 phlet in refutation of its arguments, which was pub- 
 lished. He used afterwards to say that it was the 
 "Age of Reason " that made him an author. Various 
 pamphlets from his pen shortly appeared in rapid suc- 
 cession, and a few years later, while still working at 
 shoemaking, he wrote and published his admirable 
 " Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the 
 Human Soul," which he sold for twenty pounds, a great 
 sum in his estimation at the time. The book, went 
 through many editions, and is still prized. 
 
 Drew was in no wise puffed up by his success, as 
 many young authors are, but, long after he had be- 
 come celebrated as a writer, used to be seen sweeping 
 the street before his door, or helping liis apprentices 
 to carry in the winter's coals. Nor could he, for some 
 time, bring himself to regard literature as a profession 
 to liv6 by. His first care was to secure an honest live- 
 lihood by his business, and to put into the " lottery of 
 literary success," as he termed it, only the surplus of 
 
Joseph Hume, Surgeon, 141 
 
 his time. At length, however, he devoted himself 
 wholly to literature, more particularly in connection 
 with the Wesleyan body ; editing one of their maga- 
 zines, and superintending the publication of several of 
 their denominational works. He also wrote in the 
 "Eclectic Review," and compiled and published a 
 valuable history of his native county, Cornwall, with 
 numerous other works. Towards the close of his ca- 
 reer, he said of himself — " Raised from one of the low- 
 est stations in society, I have endeavored through life 
 to bring my family into a state of respectability, by 
 honest industry, frugality, and a high regard for my 
 moral charactei*. Divine providence has smiled on my 
 exertions, and crowned my wishes with success." 
 
 The late Joseph Hume pursued a very different ca- 
 reer, but worked in an equally persevering spirit. He 
 was a man of moderate parts, but of great industry and 
 unimpeachable honesty of purpose. The motto of his 
 life was " Perseverance," and well he acted up to it. 
 His father dying while he was a mere child, his mother 
 opened a small shop in Montrose, and toiled hard to 
 maintain her family and bring them up respectably. 
 Joseph she put apprentice to a surgeon, and educated 
 for the medical profession. Having got his diploma, 
 he made several voyages to India as ship's surgeon, 
 and afterwards obtained a cadetship in the Company's 
 service.* None worked harder, or lived more temper- 
 
 * It was charactenstic of Mr. Hume, that, during his professional 
 voyages hetween England and India, he should diligently apply his 
 spare time to the study of navigation and seamanship ; aiid many 
 fears after, it proved of use to him in a, remarkable manner. In 
 1825, when on his passage from London to Leith by a sailing smack, 
 the ve-ssel had scarcely cleared the mouth of the Thames when a sud- 
 den storm came on ; she was driven out of her course, and, in the 
 darkness of the night, she struck on the Goodwin Sands. The cap- 
 tain, losfflg his presence of mind, seemed incapable of giving coherent 
 orders, di»J it is probable that ihe vessel would have become a total 
 
142 Joseph Hume in Parliament. 
 
 ately, than he did ; and, securing the confidence of his 
 superiors, who found him a capable man in the per- 
 formance of his duty, they gradually promoted him to 
 higher offices. In 1803 he was with the division of the 
 army under General Powell, in the Mahratta war ; and 
 the interpreter having died, Hume, who had mean- 
 while studied and mastered the native languages, was 
 appointed in his stead. He was next made chief of the 
 medical staif. But as if this were not enough to occu- 
 py his full working power, he undertook in addition 
 the offices of paymaster and postmaster, and filled them 
 satisfactorily. He also contracted to supply the com- 
 missariat, which he did with advantage to the army 
 and profit to himself. After about ten years' unremit- 
 ting labor, he returned to England with a competency ; 
 and one of his first acts was to make provision for the 
 poorer members of his family. 
 
 But Joseph Hume was not a man to enjoy the fruits 
 of his industry in idleness. Work and occupation had 
 become necessary for his comfort and happiness. To 
 make himself fully acquainted with the actual state of 
 his own country, and the condition of the people, he 
 visited every town in the kingdom which then enjoyed 
 any degree of manufacturing celebrity. He afterwards 
 travelled abroad for the purpose of obtaining a knowl- 
 edge of foreign states. Returned to England, he en- 
 tered Parliament in 1812, and continued a member of 
 that assembly, with a short interruption, for a period 
 of about thirty-fout years. His first recorded speech 
 was on the subject of public education, and throughout 
 his long and honorable career he took an active and 
 earnest interest in that and all other questions calcu- 
 
 wreck, had not one of the passengers suddenly taken the command 
 and directed the working of the ship, himself taking the helm while 
 the danger lasted. The vessel was saved, and the ttrangev was Mr. 
 Hume. 
 
Joseph Hume : His Perseverance. 143 
 
 lated to elevate and improve the condition of the peo- 
 ple — criminal reform, savings-banks, free trade, econo- 
 my and retrenchment, extended representation, and 
 such like measures, all of -which he indefatigably pro- 
 moted. Whatever subject he undertook, he worked 
 at with all his might. He was not a good speaker, but 
 what he said was believed to proceed from the lips of 
 an honest, single-minded, accurate man. If ridicule, as 
 Shaftesbury says, be the test of truth, Joseph Hume 
 stood the test well. No man was more laughed at, but 
 there he stood perpetually, and literally, " at his post." 
 He was usually beaten on a division, but the influence 
 which he exercised was nevertheless felt, and many im- 
 portant financial improvements were effected by him 
 even with the vote directly against him. The amount 
 of hard work which he contrived to get through was 
 something extraordinary. He rose at six, wrote letters 
 and arranged his papers for parliament ; then, after 
 breakfast, he received persons on business, sometimes 
 as many as twenty in the morning. The House rarely 
 assembled without him, and though the debate might 
 be prolonged to two or three o'clock in the morning, 
 his name was seldom found absent from the division. 
 In short, to perform the work which he did, extending 
 over so long a period, in the face of so many adminis- 
 trations, week after week, year after year — to be out- 
 voted, beaten, laughed at, standing on many occasions 
 almost alone — to persevere in the face of every dis- 
 couragement, preserving his temper unruffled, never re- 
 laxing in his energy or his hope, and living to see the 
 greater number of his measures adopted with acclama- 
 tion, must be regarded as one of the most remarkable 
 illustrations of the power of human perseverance that 
 biography can exhibit. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 HELPS AND OPPOETUNITIES — SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS, 
 
 " Neither the naked hand, nor the understanding, left to itself, can 
 do much ; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps, of 
 which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand." — 
 Bacon. 
 
 "Opportunity has hair in front, behind she is bald; if you seize 
 her by the forelock you may hold her, but, if suffered to escape, not 
 Jupiter himself can catch her again." — From the Latin. 
 
 ACCIDEN'T does very little towards the production 
 of any great result in life. Though sometimes 
 what is called " a happy hit " may be made by a bold 
 venture, the common highway of steady industry and 
 application is the only safe road to travel. It is said 
 of the landscape painter Wilson, that when he had near- 
 ly finished a picture in a tame, correct manner, he would 
 step back from it, his pencil fixed at the end of a long 
 stick, and after gazing earnestly on the work, he w^ould 
 suddenly walk up and by a few bold touches give a 
 brilliant finish to the painting. But it will not do for 
 every one who would produce an effect, to throw his 
 brush at the canvas in the hope of producing a picture. 
 The capability of putting in these last vital touches is 
 acquired only by the labor of a life ; and the probabili- 
 ty is, that the artist who has not carefully trained him- 
 self beforehand, in attempting to produce a brilliant 
 effect at a dash, will only produce a blotch. 
 
 Sedulous attention and painstaking industry always 
 mark the true worker. The greatest men are not those 
 
Discoveries not Accidental. 145 
 
 who " despise the day of small things," but those who 
 improve them the most carefully. Michael Angelo was 
 one day explaining to a visitor at his studio what he 
 had been doing at a statue since his previous visit. " I 
 have retouched this part — polished that — softened this 
 feature — brought out that muscle — given some ex- 
 pression to this lip, and more energy to that limb." 
 " But these are trifles," remarked the visitor. " It may 
 be so," replied the sculptor, " but recollect that trifles 
 make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." So it was 
 said of Nicolas Poussin, the painter, that the rule of 
 his conduct was, that " whatever was worth doing at all 
 was worth doing well ;" and when asked, late in life, 
 by his friend Vigneul de Marville, by what means he 
 had gained so high a reputation among the painters of 
 Italy, Poussin emphatically answered, " Because I have 
 neglected nothing." 
 
 Although there are discoveries which are said to 
 have been made by accident, if carefully inquired into, 
 it will be found that there has really been very little 
 that was accidental about them. For the most part, 
 these so-called accidents have only been opportunities, 
 carefully improved by genius. The fall of the apple 
 at Newton's feet has often been quoted in proof of the 
 accidental character of some discoveries. But New- 
 ton's whole mind had already been devoted for years to 
 the laborious and patient investigation of the subject of 
 gravitation ; and the circumstance of the apple falling 
 before his eyes was suddenly apprehended only as 
 genius could apprehend it, and served to flash upon 
 him the brilliant discovery then opening to his sight. 
 In like manner, the brilliantly-colored soap-bubbles 
 blown from a common tobacco-pipe — though "trifles 
 light as air " in most eyes — suggested to Dr. Young 
 his beautiful theory of " interferences," and led to his 
 discovery relating to the diffi-action of light. Al- 
 
 1 
 
146 Intelligent Observation — Galileo. 
 
 thongh great men are popularly supposed only to deal 
 with great- things, men such as Newton and Young 
 were ready to detect the significance, of the most famil- 
 iar and simple facts ; their greatness consisting mainly 
 in their wise interpretation of them. 
 
 The difierence between men consists, in a great meas- 
 ure, in the intelligence of their observation. The Rus- 
 sian proverb says of the non-observant man, " He goes 
 through the forest and sees no firewood." " The wise 
 man's eyes are in his head," says Solomon, " but the 
 fool walketh in darkness." " Sir," said Johnson, on one 
 occasion, to a fine gentleman just returned from Italy, 
 " some men will learn more in the Hampstead stage 
 than others in the tour of Europe." It is the mind 
 that sees as well as the eye. Where unthinking gaz- 
 ers observe nothing, men of intelligent vision penetrate 
 into the very fibre of the phenomena presented to them, 
 attentively noting differences, making comparisons, and 
 recognizing their underlying idea. Many before Gali- 
 leo had seen a suspended weight swing before their 
 eyes with a- measured beat ; but he was the first to de- 
 tect the value of the fact. One of the vergers in the 
 cathedral at Pisa, after replenishing with oil a lamp 
 which hung from the roof, left it swinging to and fro ; 
 and Galileo, then a youth of only eighteen, noting it at- 
 tentively, conceived the idea of applying it to the meas- 
 urement of time. Fifty years of study and labor, how- 
 ever, elapsed, before he completed the invention of his 
 Pendulum-^the importance of which, in the measure- 
 ment of time and in astronomical calculations, can 
 scarcely be overrated. In like manner, Galileo, having 
 casually heard that one Lippershey, a Dutch spectacle- 
 maker, had presented to Count Maurice of Nassau an 
 instrument by means of which distant objects appear- 
 ed nearer to the beholder, addressed himself to the 
 cause of such a phenomenon, which led to the inveu- 
 
Brown — Brunei — CJolumhus. 147 
 
 tion of the telescope, and proved the beginning of the 
 modern science of astronomy. Discoveries such as 
 these could never have been made by a negligent oh' 
 server, or by a mere passive listener. 
 
 While Captain (afterwards Sir Samuel) Brown was 
 occupied in studying the construction of bridges, with 
 the view of contriving one of a cheap description to be 
 thrown across the Tweed near which he lived, he Avas 
 walking in his garden one dewy autumn morning, 
 when he saw a tiny spider's net suspended across his 
 path. The idea immediately occurred to him, that a 
 bridge of iron ropes or chains might be constructed in 
 like manner, and the result was the invention of his 
 Suspension Bridge. So James "Watt, when consulted 
 about the mode of carrying water by pipes under the 
 Clyde, along the unequal bed of the river, turned his 
 attention one day to the shell of a lobster presented at 
 table; and from that model he invented an iron tube, 
 which, when laid down, was found effectually to answer 
 the purpose^ Sir Isambert Brunei took his first lessons 
 in forming the Thames Tunnel from the tiny ship- 
 worm : he saw how the little creature perforated the 
 wood with its well-armed head, first in one direction 
 and. then in another, till the archway was complete, 
 and then daubed over the roof and sides with a kind 
 of varnish ; and by copying this work exactly on a 
 large scale, Brunei was at length enabled to construct 
 his shield and accomplish his great engineering work. 
 
 It is the intelligent eye of the careful observer 
 which gives these apparently trivial phenomena their 
 value. So trifling a matter as the sight of seaweed 
 floating past his ship, enabled Columbus to quell the 
 mutiny which arose amongst his sailors at not discov- 
 ering land, and to assure them that the eagerly sought 
 New World was not far ofl". There is nothing so small 
 that it should remain forgotten ; and no fact, however 
 
148 Might in Little Things. 
 
 trivial, l)ut may prove useful in some way or other if 
 carefully interpreted. Who could have imagined that 
 the famous " chalk cliffs of Albion " had been built up 
 by tiny insects — detected only by the help of the mi- 
 croscope — of the same order of creatures that have gem- 
 med the sea with islands of coral ! And who that con- 
 templates such extraordinary results, arising from in- 
 finitely minute operations, will venture to question the 
 power of little things ? 
 
 It is the close observation of little things which is 
 the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and 
 in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an 
 accumulation of small facts, made by successive gener- 
 ations of men, the little bits of knowledge and experi- 
 ence carefully treasured np by them growing at length 
 into a mighty pyramid. Though many of these facts 
 and observations seemed in the first instance to have 
 but slight significance, they are all found to have their 
 eventual uses, and to fit into their proper places. Even 
 many speculations seemingly remote, turn out to be 
 the basis of results the most obviously practical. In 
 the case of the conic sections discovered by ApoUonius 
 Perg88us, twenty centuries elapsed before they were 
 made the basis of astronomy — a science which enables 
 the modern navigator to steer his way through un- 
 known seas and traces for him in the heavens an unerr- 
 ing path to his appointed haven. And had not mathe- 
 maticians toiled for so long, and, to uninstrueted ob- 
 servers, apparently so fruitlessly, over the abstract re- 
 lations of lines and surfaces, it is probable that but few 
 of our mechanical inventions would have seen the light. 
 
 When Franklin made his discovery of the identity 
 of lightning and electricity, it was sneered at, and peo- 
 ple asked, " Of what use is it ?" To which his reply 
 was, " What is the use of a child ? It may become a 
 man I" When Galvani discovered that a frog's leg 
 
Tlie Art of seizing Opporlunities. 149 
 
 twitched when placed in contact with different metals, 
 it could scarcely have been imagined that so apparent- 
 ly insignificant a fact could have led to important re- 
 sults. Yet therein lay the germ of the Electric Tele- 
 graph, which binds the intelligence of continents to- 
 gether, and, probably before many years have elapsed 
 will " put a girdle round the globe." So, too, little bits 
 of stone and fossil, dug out of the earth, intelligently 
 interpreted, have issued iu the science of geology and 
 the practical operations of mining, in which large cap- 
 itals are invested and vast numbers of pei-sons profita- 
 bly employed. 
 
 The gigantic machinery employed in pumping our 
 mines, working our mills and manufactures, and driv- 
 ing our steamships and locomotives, in like manner de- 
 pends for its supply of power upon so slight an agency 
 as little drops of water expanded by heat — that famil- 
 iar agency called steam, which we sec issuing from that 
 common tea-kettle spout, but which, when pent up with- 
 in an ingeniously contrived mechanism, displays a force 
 equal to that of millions of horses, and contains a pow- 
 er to rebuke the waves and set even the hurricane at 
 defiance. The same power at work within the bowels 
 of the earth has been the cause of those volcanoes and 
 earthquakes which have played so mighty a part in the 
 history of the globe. 
 
 It is said that the Marquis of Worcester's attention 
 was first accidentally directed to the subject of steam 
 power, by the tight cover of a vessel containing hot 
 water having been blown off before his eyes, when con- 
 fined a prisoner in the Tower. He published the re- 
 sult of his observations in his " Century of Inventions," 
 which formed a sort of text-book for inquirers into the 
 powers of steam for a time, until Savary, Newcomen, 
 and others, applying it to pi-actical purposes, brought 
 the steam-engine to the state in which Watt found it 
 
150 Rude Scientific Apparatus. 
 
 when called upon to repair a model of Newcomen's en- 
 gine, which belonged to the TJniversity of Glasgow. 
 This accidental circumstance was an opportunity for 
 Watt, which he was not slow to improve ; and it was the 
 labor of his life to bring the eteam-engine to perfection. 
 This art of seizing opportunities and turning even 
 accidents to account, bfending them to some pui"pose, is 
 a great secret of success. Dr. Johnson has defined 
 genius to be " a mind of large general powers accident- 
 ally determined in some particular direction." Men 
 who are resolved to find a way for themselves, will al- 
 ways find opportunities enough; and if they do not lie 
 ready to their hand, they will make them. It is not 
 those who have enjoyed the advantages of colleges, 
 museums, and public galleries, that have accomplished 
 the most for science and art ; rior have the greatest 
 mechanics and inventors been trained in mechanics' in- 
 stitutes. Neeesisity, oftener than facility, has been the 
 mother of invention ; and- the most prolific school of all 
 has been the school of difficulty. Some of the very 
 best workmen have had the most indifferent tools to 
 work with. But it is not tools that make the workman, 
 but the trained skill and perseverance of the man him- 
 self. Indeed it is proverbial that the bad workfiian 
 never yet had a good tool. Some one asked Opie by 
 what wonderful process he mixed his colors. " I mix 
 them with "my brains, sir," was his reply. It is Ihe 
 same with every workman who would excel. Fergu- 
 son made marvellous things — such as his wooden clock, 
 that accurately measured the hours — by means of a 
 common penknife, a tool in every body's hand ; but 
 then every body is not a Ferguson. A pan of water 
 and two thermometers were the toolg by which Dr. 
 Black discovered latent heat ; and a prism, a lens, and 
 a sheet of pasteboard enabled Newton to unfold the 
 composition of light and the origin of colors. An me- 
 
Fergusori-^Professor Lee. 151 
 
 inent foreign savant once called upon Dr. WoUaston; 
 and requested to be shown over his laboratories in 
 which science had been enriched by so many important 
 discoveries, when the doctor took him into a little study^ 
 and, pointing to an old tea-tray on the table, containing 
 a few watch-glasses, test-papers, a small balance, and 
 a blowpipe, said, "There is all the laboratory that I 
 have !" 
 
 Stothard learnt the art of combining colors by 
 closely studying butterflies' wings : he would often 
 say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny in- 
 sects. A burnt stick and ' a barn-door served Wilkie 
 in lieu of pencil and canvas. ' Bewick first practised 
 drawing on the cottage walls of his native village, 
 which- he covered with his sketches in chalk; and 
 Benjamin West made his first brushes out of the bat's 
 tail. Ferguson laid himself down in the fields at night 
 in a blanket,' and made a' map of the heavenly bodies 
 by means of a thread with small beads on it stretched 
 between his eye and the stars. Franklin first robbed 
 the thunder-cloud of its lightning by means of a kite 
 made with two cross sticks and a silk handkerchief 
 Watt made his first model of the condensing steam- 
 engine out of an old anatomist's syringe, used to inject 
 the arteries previous to dissection. Giffbrd worked his 
 first problems in mathematics, when a cobbler's appren- 
 tice, upon small scraps of leather, which he beat smooth 
 for the purpose ; whilst Rittenhouse, the astronomer, 
 first calculated eclipses on his plough-handle. 
 
 The most ordinary occasions will furnish a man with 
 opportunities or suggestions for improvement, if he be 
 but prompt to take advantage of them. Professor Lee 
 was attracted to the study of Hebrew by finding a 
 Bible in that tongue in a synagogue,^ while working as 
 a common carpenter at the repairs of the benches. 
 He became possessed with a desire to read the book i» 
 
152 Dr. Priestley. 
 
 the original, and, buying a cheap second-hand copy of 
 a Hebrew grammar, he set to work and learnt the lan- 
 guage for himself. As Edmund Stone said to the 
 Duke of Argyle, in answer to his grace's inquiry how 
 he, a poor gardener's boy, had contrived to be able to 
 read Newton's Principia in Latin, " One needs only to 
 know the twenty-four letters of the alphabet in order 
 to learn every thing else that one wishes." Applica- 
 tion and perseverance, and the diligent improvement 
 of opportunities, will do the rest. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott found opportunities for self-improve- 
 ment in every pursuit, and turned even accidents to 
 account. Thus it was in the discharge of his functions 
 as a writer's apprentice that he first visited the High- 
 lands, and foi'med. those friendships among the surviv- 
 ing heroes of 1745 which served to lay the foundation 
 of a large class of his works. Later in life, when em- 
 ployed as quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Cav- 
 alry, he was accidentally disabled by the kick of a 
 horse, and confined for some time to his house ; but 
 Scott was a sworn enemy to idleness, and he forthwith 
 set his mind to work. In three days he had composed 
 the first canto of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
 which he shortly after finished — his first great original 
 work. 
 
 The attention of Dr. Priestley, the discoverer of so 
 many gases, was accidentally drawn to the subject of 
 chemistry through his living in the neighborhood of a 
 brewery. When visiting the place one day, he noted 
 the peculiar appearances attending the extinction of 
 lighted chips in the gas floating over the fermented 
 liquor. He was forty years old at the time, and knew 
 nothing of chemistry. He consulted books to ascer- 
 tain the cause, but they told him little, for as yet noth- 
 ing was known on the subject. Then he began to ex- 
 periment, with some rude apparatus of his own con- 
 
Davy- — Faraday. 153 
 
 trivanee. The curious results of his first experiments 
 led to others, which in his hands shortly became the 
 science of pneumatic chemistry. About the same time, 
 Scheele was obscurely working in the same direction 
 in a remote Swedish village ; and he discovered several 
 new gases, with no more effective apparatus at liis 
 command than a few apothecaries' vials and pigs' 
 bladders. 
 
 Sir Humphry Davy, when an apothecary's apprentice, 
 performed his first experiments with instruments of the 
 rudest description. He extemporized the greater part 
 of them himself, out of the motley materials which 
 chance threw in his way — the pots and pans of the 
 kitchen, and the vials and vessels of his master's sur- 
 gery. It happened that a French ship was wrecked off 
 the Land's End, and the surgeon escaped, bearing with 
 him his case of instruments, amongst which was an old- 
 fashioned glyster apparatus ; this article he presented 
 to Davy, with whom he had become acquainted. The 
 apothecary's apprentice received it with great exulta- 
 tion, and forthwith employed it as a part of a pneu- 
 matic apparatus which he contrived, afterwards using 
 it to perform the duties of an air-pump in one of his 
 experiments on the nature and sources of heat. 
 
 In like manner Professor Faraday, Sir Humphry 
 Davy's scientific successor, made his first experiments 
 in electricity by means of an old bottle, while he was 
 still a working bookbinder. And it is a curious fact, 
 that Faraday was first attracted to the study of chem- 
 istry by hearing one of Sir Humphry Davy's lectures 
 on the subject at the Royal Institution. A gentleman, 
 who was a member, calling one day at the shop where 
 Faraday was employed in binding books found him por- 
 ing over the article " Electricity " in an EncyclopsB- 
 dia placed in his hands to bind. The gentleman, hav- 
 ing made inquiries, found that the young bookbinder 
 
 7* 
 
154 Davy. 
 
 was curious about such subjects, and gave him an or- 
 der of admission to the Royal Institution, whei-e he at- 
 tended a course of four lectures delivered by Sir Hum- 
 phry. He took notes of them, which he showed to the 
 lecturer, who acknowledged their scientific ■ accuracy, 
 and was surprised when informed of the humble posi- 
 tion of the reporter. Faraday then expressed his de- 
 sire to devote himself to the prosecution of chemical 
 studies, from which Sir Humphry at first endeavored to 
 dissuade him : but the young man persisting, he was 
 at length taken into the Royal Institution as an assist- 
 ant ; and eventually the mantle of the brilliant apothe- 
 cary's boy fell upon the worthy shoulders of the equal- 
 ly brilliant bookbinder's apprentice. 
 
 The words which Davy entered in his note-book, 
 when about twenty years of age, working in Dr. Bed- 
 does's laboratory at Bristol, were eminently characteris- 
 tic of him : " I have neither riches, nor power, nor birth 
 to recommend me ; yet if I live I trust I shall not be 
 of less service to mankind and my friends, than if I liad 
 been born with all these advantages." Davy possessed 
 the capability, as Faraday does, of devoting the whole 
 power of his mind to the practical and experimental 
 investigation of a subject in all its bearings; and such 
 a mind will rarely fail, by dint of mere industry and pa- 
 tient thinking, in producing results of the highest or- 
 der. Coleridge said of Davy, " There is an energy and 
 elasticity in his mind, which enables him to seize on 
 and analyze all questions, pushing them to their legiti- 
 mate consequences. Every subject in Davy's mind has 
 the principle of vitality. Living thoughts spring up 
 like turf under his feet." Davy, on his part, said of 
 Coleridge, whose abilities he greatly admired, " With 
 the most exalted genius, enlarged views, sensitive heart, 
 and enlightened mind, he will be the victim of a want 
 of order, precision, and regularity." 
 
Ciivier. 155 
 
 The great Cuvier was a singularly accurate, careful, 
 and industrious observer. When a boy he was attract- 
 ed to the subject of natural history by the sight of a 
 volume of Buffon which accidentally fell in his way. 
 He at once proceeded to copy the drawings, and to color 
 them after the descriptions given in the text. While 
 still at school, one of his teachers made him a present 
 of " LihnsBiis's System of Nature ;" and for more than 
 ten years this constituted his library of natiiral history. 
 At eighteen he was offered the situation of tutor in 
 a family residing near Fecamp, in Normandy. Liv- 
 ing close to the sea-shore, he was brought face to face 
 with the wonders of marine life. Strolling along the 
 sands one day he observed a stranded cuttle-fish. He 
 was attracted by the cui-ions object, took it home to dis- 
 sect, and thus began the study of the moUuscag, in the 
 pursuit of which he achieved so distinguished a reputa- 
 tion.' He had no books to refer to, excepting only the 
 great book of Nature which lay- open before hira. The 
 study of the novel and interesting objects which it daily 
 presented to his eyes inade a much deeper impression 
 on his mind than any written or engraved descriptions 
 could possibly have done. Three years thus passed, 
 during which he compared the living species of marine 
 animals with the fossil remains found in the neighbor- 
 hood, dissected the. specimens of marine life that came 
 under his notice, and, by careful observation, prepared 
 the way for a complete reform in the classification of 
 the animal kingdom. About this time Cuvier became 
 known to the learned Abb6 Teissier, who wrote to 
 Jussieu and other friends in Paris on the subject of the 
 young naturalist's inquiries, in terms of such liigh com- 
 mendation, that Cuvier was requested to send some of 
 his papers to the Society of- Natural History; and he 
 was shortly after appointed assistant superintendent at 
 the Jardin des Plantes. In the letter written by Teis- 
 
156 Stephenson — Dalton — Perseverance. 
 
 sier to Jussieu, introducing the young naturalist to his 
 notice, he said, " You remember that it was I who gave 
 Delambre to the Academy in another branch of science : 
 this also will be a Delambre." We need scarcely add 
 that the prediction of Teissier was more than fulfilled. 
 
 It is not accident, then, that helps a man in the world 
 so much as purpose and persistent industry. To the 
 feeble, the sluggish and purposeless, the happiest ac- 
 cidents will avail nothing — they pass them by, seeing 
 no meaning in them. But it is astonishing how mHch 
 can be accomplished if we ai-e prompt to seize and im- 
 prove the opportunities for action and effort which are 
 constantly presenting themselves. Watt taught him- 
 self chemistry and mechanics while working at his 
 trade of a mathematical-instrument maker, at the same 
 time that he was learning German from a Swiss dyer. 
 Stephenson taught himself arithmetic and mensuration 
 while working as an engine-man, during the night shifts ; 
 and when he could snatch a few moments in the inter- 
 vals allowed for meals during the day, he worked his 
 sums with a bit of chalk upon the sides of the colliery 
 wagons. Dalton's industry was the habit of his life. 
 He began from his boyhood, for he taught a little village 
 school when he was only about twelve years old — keep- 
 ing the school in winter, and working upon his father's 
 farm in summer. He would sometimes urge himself 
 and companions to study by the stimulus of a bet, 
 though bred a Quaker; and on one occasion by his sat- 
 isfactory solution of a problem, he won as much as en- 
 abled him to buy a winter's store of candles. He con- 
 tinued his meteorological observations until a day or 
 two before he died — having made and recorded up- 
 wards of 200,000 in the course of his life. 
 
 With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time 
 may be worked up into results of the greatest value. 
 An hour in every day withdrawn from frivolous pur- 
 
The Value of Time. 157 
 
 suits would, if profitably employed, enable a person of 
 ordinary capacity to go far towards mastering a sci- 
 ence. It would make an ignorant man a well-informed 
 one in less than ten years. Time should not be allowed 
 to pass without yielding fruits, in the form of some- 
 thing learnt worthy of being known, some good princi- 
 ple cultivated, or some good habit strengthened. Dr. 
 Mason Good translated Lucretius while riding in his 
 carriage in the streets of London, going the round of 
 his patients. Dr. Darwin composed nearly all his works 
 in the same way while driving about in his " sulky " 
 from house to house in the country — writing down his 
 thoughts on little scraps of paper, which he carried 
 about with him for the purpose. Hale wrote his 
 "Contemplations" while travelling on circuit. Dr. 
 Burney learnt French and Italian while travelling on 
 horseback from one musical pupil to another in the 
 course of his profession. Kirke White learnt Greek 
 while walking to and from a lawyer's oflice ; and we 
 personally know a man of eminent position who learnt 
 Latin and French while going messages as an errand- 
 boy in the streets of Manchester. 
 
 Daguesseau, one of the great chancellors of France, 
 by carefully working up his odd bits of time, wrote a 
 bulky and able volume in the successive intervals of 
 waiting for dinner, and Madame de Genlis composed 
 several of her charming volumes while waiting for the 
 princess to whom she gave her daily lessons. Elihu 
 Burritt attributed his first success in self-improvement, 
 not to genius, which he disclaimed, but simply to the 
 careful employment of those invaluable fragments of 
 time called " odd moments." While working and 
 earning his living as a blacksmith, he mastered some 
 eighteen ancient and modern languages, and twenty- 
 two European dialects. 
 
 What a solemn and striking admonition to youth is 
 
158 Cbllectanece. 
 
 that inscribed on the dial at All Souls, Oxford—" Peri- 
 Unt et imputantur " — The hours perish, and are laid to 
 our charge. Time is the only little fragment of Eter- 
 nity that belongs to man ; and, like life, it can never be 
 recalled. " In the dissipation of worldly treasure," says 
 Jackson of Exeter, " the frugality of the future may 
 balance the extravagaince of the past ; but who can say, 
 'I will take from minutes to-morrow to compensate for 
 those I have lost to-day ?' " Melanchthon noted down 
 the time lost by him, that he might thereby reanimate 
 his industry, and not lose an hoar. An Italian scholar 
 put over his door an inscription intimating that whoso- 
 ever remained there should join in his labors. " We 
 are afraid," said some visitors to Baxter, " that we 
 break in upon your time." " To be sure you do," re- 
 plied the disturbed and blunt divine. Time was the 
 estate out of which these great workers, and all other 
 workers, formed that rich treasuiy of thoughts and 
 deeds which they have left to their successors. 
 
 The mere drudgery undergoneby some men in carry- 
 ing on their undertakings has been something extraor- 
 dinary, but the drudgery they regarded as the price of 
 success. Addison amassed as much as three folios of 
 manuscript materials before he began his " Spectator." 
 Newton wrote his " Chronology " fifteen times over be- 
 fore he was satisfied with it ; and Gibbon wrote out his 
 " Memoir " nine times. Hale studied for many years 
 at the rate of sixteen hours a day, and when wearied 
 with the study of the law, he would recreate himself 
 with philosophy and the study of the mathematics. 
 Hume wrote thirteen liours a day while preparing his 
 " History of England." Montesquieu, speaking of one 
 part of his writings, said to a friend, " You will read it 
 in a few hours ; but I assure you it has cost me so much 
 labor that it has whitened my hair." 
 
 The practice of writing down thoughts and facts fo* 
 
John Hunter. 159 
 
 the purpose of holding them fast and preventing their 
 escape into the dim region of forgetfulness, has been 
 much resorted to by thoughtful "and studious men. 
 Lord Bacon left behind him many manuscripts entitled 
 " Sudden thoughts set down for use." Erskine made 
 great extracts from Burke ; and Eldon copied , Coke 
 upon Littleton twice over with his own hand, so that 
 the book became, as it were, part of his own mind. 
 The late Dr. Pye Smith, when apprenticed to his fathei" 
 as a bookbinder, was accustomed to make copious mem- 
 oranda of all the books he read, with extracts and crit- 
 icisms. This indomitable industry in collecting mate- 
 rials distinguished him through life, his biographer de- 
 scribing him as " always at work, always in advance, 
 always accumulating." These note-books afterwards 
 pro^ved like Richter's " quarries," the great storehouse 
 from which he drew his illustrations. 
 
 The' same practice characterized the eminent John 
 Hunter, who adopted it for the purpose of supplying 
 the defects of memory ; and he was accustomed thus to 
 illustrate the advantages which one derives from put- 
 ting one's thoughts in writing : " It resembles," he said, 
 " a tradesman taking stock, without which he never 
 knows either what he possesses or in what he is defi- 
 cient." John Hunter— whose observation was so keen 
 that Abernethy was accustomed to speak of him as 
 " the Argus-eyed " — furnished an illustrious example 
 of the power of patient industry. He received little or 
 no education- till he was about twenty years of age, and 
 it was with difficulty that he acquired the arts of i-ead- 
 ing and writing. He worked for some years as a com- 
 mon carpenter at Glasgow, after which he joined his 
 brother William, who had settled in London as a lectu- 
 rer arid anatomical demonstrator. John - entered his 
 dissecting-room as an assistant, but soon shot ahead of 
 his brother, partly by virtue of his great natural ability. 
 
160 John Hunter. 
 
 but mainly by reason of hia jiatieut application and in- 
 defatigable industry. He was one of the first in this 
 country to devote himself assiduously to the study of 
 comparative anatomy, and the objects he dissected and 
 collected took the eminent Professor Owen no less than 
 ten years to arrange. The collection contains some 
 twenty thousand specimens, and is the most precious 
 treasure of the kind that has ever been accumulated by 
 the industry of one man. Hunter used to spend every 
 morning from sunrise until eight o'clock in his mu- 
 seum ; and throughout the day he carried on his ex- 
 tensive private practice, performed his laborious duties 
 as surgeon to St. George's Hospital and deputy surgeon- 
 general to the army ; delivered lectures to students, and 
 superintended a school of practical anatomy at his own 
 house ; finding leisure, amidst all, for elaborate experi- 
 ments on the animal economy, and the composition of 
 various works of great scientific importance. To find 
 time for this gigantic amount of work, he allowed him- 
 self only four hours of sleep at night, and an hour after 
 dinner. When once asked what method he had adopt- 
 ed to insure success in his undertakings, he replied, "My 
 rule is, deliberately to consider, before I commence, 
 whether the thing be practicable. If it be not practica- 
 ble, I do not attempt it. If it be pi-acticable, I can ac- 
 complish it if I give sufficient pains to it ; and having 
 begun, I never stop till the thing is done. To this rule 
 I owe all my success." 
 
 Hunter occupied a great deal of his time in collect- 
 ing definite facts respecting matters which, before his 
 day, were regarded as exceedingly trivial. Thus it was 
 r-upposed by many of his contemporaries that he was 
 only wasting his time and thought in studying so care- 
 fully as he did the growth of a deer's horn. But Hunt- 
 er was impressed with the conviction that no accu- 
 rate knowledge of scientific facts is Avithout its valua 
 
Ambrose Pare. 161 
 
 By the study referred to, he learnt how arteries accom- 
 modate themselves to circumstances, and enlarge as oc- 
 casion requires ; and the knowledge thus acquired em- 
 boldened him, in a case of aneurism in a branch artery, 
 to tie the main trunk where no surgeon before him had 
 dared to tie it, and the life of his patient was saved. 
 Like many original men, he worked for a long time, as it 
 were, underground, digging and laying foundations. 
 He was a solitary and self-reliant genius, holding on his 
 course without the solace of sympathy or approbation 
 — for but few of his contemporaries perceived the ulti- 
 mate object of his pursuits. But, like all true workers, 
 he did not fail in securing his best reward — that which 
 depends less upon others than upon one's self — the ap- 
 proval of conscience, which in a right-minded man in- 
 variably follows the honest and energetic performance 
 of duty. 
 
 Ambrose Pare, the great French surgeon, was anoth- 
 er illustrious instance of close observation, patient ap- 
 plication, and indefatigable perseverance. He was the 
 son of a barber at Laval, in Maine, where he was born 
 in 1509. His parents were too poor to send him to 
 school, but they placed him as foot-boy with the curd 
 of the village, hoping that under that learned man he 
 might pick up an education for himself. But the curd 
 kept him so busily employed in grooming his mule and 
 in other menial offices that the boy found no time for 
 learning. While in his service, it happened that the 
 celebrated lithotomist, Cotot, came to Laval to operate 
 on one of the curd's ecclesiastical brethren. Pare was 
 present at the operation, and was so much interested by 
 it that he is said to have from that time formed the de- 
 termination of devoting himself to the art of surgery. 
 
 Leaving the cure's household service. Pare appren- 
 ticed himself to a barber-surgeon named Vialot, under 
 whom he learnt to let blood, draw teeth, and perform 
 
162 Ambrose Pare. 
 
 the minor operations. After four years' experience of 
 this kind, he went to Paris to study at the school of 
 anatomy and surgery, meanwhile maintaining himself 
 by his trade of a barber. He afterwards succeeded in 
 obtaining an appointment as assistant at the Hotel 
 Dieu, where his conduct was so exemplary, and his prog- 
 ress so marked, that the chief surgeon, Goupil, entrust- 
 ed him with the charge of the patients whom he could 
 not himself attend to. After the usual course of in- 
 struction, Pare was admitted a master barber-surgeon, 
 and shortly after was appointed to a charge with the 
 French army under Montmorenei in Piedmont. Pare 
 was not a man to follow in the ordinary ruts of his pro- 
 fession, but brought the resources of an ardent and orig- 
 inal mind to bear upon his daily work, diligently think- 
 ing out for himself the rationale of diseases and their 
 befitting remedies. Before his time the wounded suf- 
 fered much more at the hands of their surgeons than 
 they did at those of their enemies. To stop bleeding 
 from gun-shot wounds, the barbarous expedient was re- 
 sorted to of dressing them with boiling oil Hemor- 
 rhage was also stopped by searing the wounds with a 
 red-hot iron ; and when amputation was necessary, it 
 was performed with a red-hot knife. At first Pare 
 treated wounds according to the approved methods; 
 but, fortunately, on one occasion, running short of boil- 
 ing oil, he substituted a mild and emollient application. 
 He was in great fear all night lest he should have done 
 wrong in adopting this treatment ; but was greatly re- 
 lieved next morning on finding his patients compara- 
 tively comfortable, while those whose wounds had been 
 treated in the usual way were writhing in torment. 
 Such was the casual origin of one of Pai-e's greatesjt 
 improvements in the treatment of gun-shot wounds; 
 and he proceeded to adopt the emollient treatment in 
 all future cases. Another still more important improve 
 
Awhrose Pari. 163 
 
 ment was his employment of the ligature in tying arte- 
 ries to stop hemorrhage, instead of" the actual cautery. 
 Pare, however, met with the usual fate of innovators and 
 reformers. His practice was denounced by his surg'ica\ 
 brethren as dangerous, unprofessional, and empirical ; 
 and the older surgeons banded themselves together to 
 resist its adoption. They reproached him for his want 
 of education, more especially for his ignorance of Latin 
 and Greek ; and they assailed him with quotations from 
 ancient writers, which he was unable either to verify or 
 refute. But the best answer to his assailants was the 
 success of his practice. The wounded soldiers called 
 out everywhere for Pare, and he was always at their 
 service: he tended thfem carefully and a,ffectionately ; 
 and he usually took leave of them with the words, " I 
 have dressed you ; may God cure you." 
 
 After three years' active service as army-surgeon, 
 Par6 returned to Paris with such a reputation that he 
 was at once appointed surgeon in ordinary to the King. 
 "When Metz was besieged by the Spanish army, under 
 Charles V., the garrison suffered heavy loss, and the 
 number of wounded was very great. The surgeons 
 were few and incompetent, and probably slew more by 
 their bad treatment than the Spaniards did by the 
 sword. The Duke of Guise, who commanded the gar- 
 rison, wrote to the King imploring him to send Pare to 
 his help. The courageous surgeon at once set oiit, and, 
 afler braving many dangers (to use his own words, 
 "D'estre pendu, estrangle ou mis en pieces"), he suc- 
 ceeded in passing the enemy's lines, and entered Metz 
 m safety; The Duke, the general's, and the captains 
 gave him an affectionate welcome ; while the soldiers, 
 when they heard of his arrival, cried, " We no longer 
 fear dying of our wounds ; our friend is among us." In 
 the following year Par6 was in like manner with the 
 besieged in the town of Hesdin, which shortly fell be- 
 
164 Awhrose Par& — Harvey. 
 
 — — ■ - >a 
 
 fore the Duke of Savoy, and lie was taken prisoner. 
 But having succeeded in curing one of the enemy's 
 chief officers of a serious wound, he was discliarged 
 without ransom, and returned in safety to Paris. 
 
 The rest of his life was occupied in study, in self im' 
 provement, in piety, and in good deeds. Urged by 
 some of the most learned among his contemporaries, he 
 placed on record the results of his surgical experience 
 in twenty-eight books, which wei-e published by him at 
 difierent times. His writings are valuable and remark- 
 able chiefly on account of the great number of facts 
 and cases contained in them, and the care with which he 
 avoids giving any directions resting merely upon theory 
 unsupported by observation. Pare continued, though 
 a Protestant, to hold the office of surgeon-in-ordinaiy 
 to the King ; and during the Massacre of St. Barthol- 
 omew he owed his life to the personal friendship of 
 Charles IX., whom he had on one occasion saved from 
 the dangerous effiscts of a wound inflicted by a clumsy 
 surgeon in performing the oj)eration of venesection. 
 Brantome, in his "Memoires," thus speaks of the King's 
 rescue of Pare on the night of St. Bartholomew — " He 
 sent to fetch him, and to remain during the night in his 
 chamber and wardrobe-room, commanding him not to 
 stir, and saying that it was not reasonable that a man 
 who had preserved the lives of so many people should 
 himself be massacred." Thus Pare escaped the hor- 
 rors of tliat fearful night, which he survived for many 
 years, and was permitted to die in peace, full of age 
 and honors. 
 
 Harvey was as indefatigable a laborer as any we have 
 named. He spent not less than eight long years of in- 
 vestigation and research before he published his views 
 of the circulation of the blood. He repeated and veri- 
 fied his experiments again and again, probably antici- 
 pating the opposition he would have to encounter from 
 
Dr. Jenner — Vaccination. 165 
 
 the profession on making known his discovery. The 
 tract in which he at length announced his views was a 
 most modest one, but simple, perspicuous, and conclu- 
 sive. It was nevertheless received with ridicule, as the 
 utterance of a crack-brained impostor. For some time 
 he did not make a single convert, and gained nothing 
 but contumely and abuse. He had called in question 
 the revered authority of the ancients ; and it was even 
 averred that his views were calculated to subvert the 
 authority of the Scriptures and undermine the very 
 foundations of morality and religion. His little prac- 
 tice fell away, and he was left almost without a friend. 
 This lasted for some years, until the great truth, held 
 fast by Harvey amidst all his adversity, and which had 
 dropped into many thoughtful minds, gradually ripened 
 by further observation, and after a period of about 
 twentyrfive years it became generally recognized as an 
 established scientific truth. 
 
 The difficulties encountered by Dr. Jenner in promul- 
 gating and establishing his discovery of vaccination as 
 a preventive of small-pox, were even greater than those 
 of Harvey. Many, before him, had witnessed the cow- 
 pox, and had heard of the report current among the 
 milkmaids in Gloucestershire, that whoever had taken 
 that disease was secure against small-pox. It was a 
 trifling, vulgar rumor, supposed to have no significance 
 whatever, and no one had thought it worthy of investi- 
 gation, until it was accidentally brought under the no- 
 tice of Jenner. He was a youth, pursuing his studies 
 at Sodbury, when his attention . was arrested by the 
 casual observation made by a country girl who came 
 to his master's shop for advice. The small-pox was 
 mentioned, when the girl said, "I can't take that disease, 
 for I have had cow-pox." The observation immediate- 
 ly riveted Jenner's attention, and he forthwith set about 
 inquiring and making observations on the subject. His 
 
166 Dr. Jenner- — Vaccination. 
 
 professional friends, to whom he mentioned his views as 
 to the prophylactic virtues of cow-pox, laughed at hini, 
 aad even threatened to expel him from their society, 
 if he persisted in harassing them with the subject. In 
 London he was so fortunate as to study under John 
 3unter, to whom he communicated his views. The ad- 
 vice of, the great anatomist was thoroughly character- 
 istic : " Don't think, but try ; be patient, be accurate." 
 Jenner's courage was supported by the advice, which 
 conveyed to him the true art of philosophical investiga- 
 tion. He went ba«k .to the country to practise his pro- 
 fession and make observations and experiments, which 
 he continued to pursue for a period of twenty years. 
 His faith in his. discovery was so implicit that he vac- 
 cinated his own son on three several occasions. At 
 length he published his views in a quarto of about sev- 
 enty- pages, in which he gave the details of twenty-three 
 cases of successful vaccination of individuals, in whom 
 it was found afterwards impossible to communicate the 
 small-pox either by contagion or inoculation. It was 
 in 1798 that this treatise was published ; though he had 
 been working out liis ideas since the year 1775, when 
 they had begun to assume a definite form. 
 
 How was the discovery received ? First with indif- 
 ference, then with active hostility. Jenner proceeded 
 to London to exhibit to the profession the process of 
 vaccination and its results ; but not a single medical 
 man could be induced to make trial of it, and after 
 fruitlessly waiting for nearly three months, he returned 
 to his native village. He was even caricatured and 
 abused for his attempt to " bestialize " his species by 
 the introduction into their systems of diseased matter 
 from the cow's udder. Vaccination was denounced 
 from the pulpit as " diabolical." It was averred that 
 vaccinated children became " ox-faced," that abscesses 
 Taroke out to " indicate sprouting horns," and that the 
 
^SiV Charles BeU. 167 
 
 countenance was gradually ". transmuted into the vis- 
 age of a cow, the voice into the bellowing of bulls." 
 Vaccination, however, was a truth, and, notwithstand- 
 ing the violence of the opposition, belief in it spread 
 , slowly. In one village, where a gentleman tried. to in- 
 troduce the practice, the first persons who permitted 
 thenaselves to be vaccinated were absolutely pelted and 
 driven into their houses if they appeared out of doors. 
 Two ladies of title-^Lady Ducie and the Countess of 
 Berkeley — to their honor be it remembered — ^had the 
 courage to vaccinate their children ; and the prejudices 
 of the day were at once broken through.. -The medical 
 profeseion gradually came round, and there were, sev- 
 eral who even sought to rob Dr. Jenner of the merit of 
 the discovery, when its importance came to be recog' 
 nized. Jenner's cause at last triumphed, and he was 
 publicly honored and rewarded. In his prosperity he 
 was as modest as he had been in liis obscurity. Ho 
 was invited to settle in London, and told that he might 
 command a, practice of i;iO,000 a year. But his an- 
 swer was, " No 1 In the morning of my days I sought 
 the sequestered and lowly paths of life — the valley, 
 and not the mountain — and now, in the evening of my 
 days, it is not meet for me to hold myself up as an ob- 
 ject for fortune and for fame." During, Jenner's own 
 lifetime the^ practice of vaccination became adopted all 
 over the civilized world ; and when he died, his title as 
 a Benefactor. of his kind was recognized far and wide. 
 Cuvier has said, " If vaccine were the only discovery 
 of the epoch, it would, serve to render it illustrious for- 
 ever ; yet it knocked twenty times in vain at the doors 
 of the Academies." 
 
 Not less patient,, r&olute, and persevering was Sic 
 Charle&.Bell in the prosecution of his discoveries relat- 
 ing to the nervous system. Previous to his time, the 
 most confused notions prevailed as to the functions of 
 
168 I)r. Marshall EaU. 
 
 the nerves, and this branch of study was little more 
 advanced than it had been in the times of Democritus 
 and Anaxagoras three thousand years before. Sir 
 Charles Bell, in the valuable series of papers the pub- 
 lication of which was commenced in 1821, took an en- 
 tirely original view of the subject, based upon a long 
 series of careful, accurate, and oft-repeated experi- 
 ments. Elaborately tracing the development of the 
 nervous system up from the lowest order of animated 
 being, to man — the lord of the animal kingdom — he 
 displayed it, to use his own words, " as plainly as if it 
 were written in our mother-tongue." His discovery 
 consisted in the fact, that the spinal nerves are double 
 in their function, and arise by double roots from the 
 spinal marrow — volition being conveyed by that part 
 of the nerves springing from the one root, and sensation 
 by the_ other. The subject occupied the mind of Sir 
 Charles Bell for a period of forty years, when, in 1840, 
 he laid his last paper before the Royal Society. As in 
 the cases of Harvey and Jenner, when he had lived 
 down the ridicule and opposition with which his views 
 were first received, and their truth came to be recog- 
 nized, numerous claims for priority in making the dis- 
 covery were set up at home and abroad. Like them, 
 too, he lost practice by the publication of his papers ; 
 and he left it on record that, after every step in his dis- 
 covery, he was obliged to work harder than ever to 
 preserve his reputation as a practitioner. The great 
 merits of Sir Charles Bell were, however, at length fully 
 recognized ; and Cuvier himself, when on his death-bed, 
 finding his face distorted and drawn to one side, pointed 
 out the symptom to his attendants as a proof of the 
 con-ectness of Sir Charles Bell's Iheory. 
 
 An equally devoted pursuer of the same branch of 
 science was the late Dr. Marshall Hall, whose name 
 posterity will rank with those of Harvey, Hunter, Jen- 
 
IStr William Herschel. 169 
 
 ner, and Bell. During the whole course of his long 
 and useful life he was a most careful and minute ob- 
 server ; and no fact, however apparently insignificant, 
 escaped his attention. His important discovery of the 
 diastaltic nervous system, by which his name will long 
 be known amongst scientific men, originated in an ex- 
 ceedingly simple circumstance. When investigating 
 ihe pneumonic circulation in the Triton, the decapitated 
 object lay upon the table ; and on separating the tail 
 and accidentally pricking the external integument, he 
 observed that it moved with energy, and became con- 
 torted into various forms. He had not touched a mus- 
 cle or a muscular nerve ; what, then, was the nature of 
 these movements ? The same phenomena had probably 
 been often observed before, but Dr. Hall was the first 
 to apply himself perseveringly to the investigation of 
 their causes ; and he exclaimed on the occasion, " I 
 will never rest satisfied until I have found all this out, 
 and made it clear." His attention to the subject was 
 almost incessant ; and it is estimated that in the course 
 of his life he devoted not less than 25,000 hours to its 
 experimental and chemical investigation. He was at 
 the same time carrying on an extensive private practice, 
 and officiating as lecturer at St. Thomas's Hospital and 
 other Medical Schools. It will scarcely be credited 
 that the paper in which he embodied his discovery was 
 rejected by the Royal Society, and was only accept- 
 ed after the lapse of seventeen years, when the truth 
 of his views had become acknowledged, by scientific 
 men both at home and abroad. 
 
 The life of Sir William Herschel affords another re- 
 markable illustration of the force of perseverance in an- 
 other branch of science. His father was a poor Ger- 
 man musician, who brought up his four sons to the 
 same calling. William came over to England to seek 
 his fortune, and he joined the band of the Durham 
 
 8 
 
170 Sir William Herschel. 
 
 Militia, in which he played the oboe. The regiment 
 was lying at Doncaster, where Dr. Miller first became 
 acquainted with Herschel, having heard him perform a 
 Bolo on the violin in a surprising manner. The Doctor 
 entered into conversation with the youth, and was so 
 pleased with him, that he urged him to leave the mili- 
 tia and take up his residence at his house for a time. 
 Herschel did so, and while at Doncaster was principal- 
 ly occupied in violin-playing at concerts, availing him- 
 self of the advantages of Dr. Miller's library to study 
 at his leisure hours. A new organ having been built 
 for the parish church of Halifax, an organist was adver- 
 tised for, on whiuh Herschel applied for the office, and 
 was selected. Leading the wandering life of an art- 
 ist, he was next attracted to Bath, where he played in 
 the Pump-room band, and also officiated as organist 
 in the Octagon chapel. Some recent discoveries in as- 
 tronomy having arrested his mind, and awakened ii> 
 him a powerful spirit of curiosity, he sought and ob- 
 tained from a friend the loan of a two-foot Gregorian 
 telescope. So fascinated was the poor musician by the 
 science, that he.even thought of purchasing a telescope, 
 but the price asked by the London optician was so 
 alarming that he determined to make one. Those who 
 know what a reflecting telescope is, and thie skill w^hich 
 is required to prepare the concave metallic speculum 
 which forms the niost important pai-t of the apparatus, 
 will be able to form some idea of the difficulty of this 
 undertaking. Nevertheless, Herschel succeeded, after 
 long and painful labor, in completing ia five-foot reflect- 
 or, with which he had the gratification of observing 
 the ring and satellites of Saturn. Not satisfied with 
 his triumph, he proceeded to make other instruments 
 in succession, of seven, ten, and even twenty feet. In 
 constructing the seven-foot reflector, he finished no 
 fewer than two hundred specula before he produced 
 
William Smith, the Geologist. 171 
 
 one that would bear any power that was applied to 
 it — a striking instance of the persevering laboriousness 
 of the man. While gauging the heaYens with his in- 
 struments, he continued patiently to earn his bread by 
 piping to the fashionable frequenters of the Pump- 
 room. So eager was he in his astronomical observa- 
 tions, that he would steal away from the room during 
 an interval of the performance, give a little turn at his 
 telescope, and contentedly- return to his oboe. Thus 
 working away, Herschel discovered the Geoi-gium Si- 
 dus, the orbit and rate of motion of which he carefully 
 calculated, and sent the result to the Royal Society; 
 when the humble oboe-player found himself at once 
 elevated from obscurity to fame. He was shortly af- 
 ter appointed Astronomer Royal, and by the kindness 
 of George III. was placed in a position of honorable 
 competency for life. He boi"e his honors with the 
 same meekness and humility which' had distinguished 
 him in the days of his obscurity. So gentle and pa- 
 tient, arid withal so distinguished and successful a fol' 
 lower of science under difficulties, perhaps can not be 
 found in the entire history of biography. 
 
 The career of William Smith, the father of English 
 geology, though perhaps less known, is not less inter- 
 esting and instructive as an example of patient and la- 
 borious effort, dnd the diligent cultivation of opportu- 
 nities.' He was born in 1769, the son of a yeoman 
 farmer at Churchillj in Oxfordshire. Plis father dying 
 when he was but a child, he received a very sparing 
 education at the village School, and even that was to a 
 considerable extent interfered with by his wandering 
 and somewhat idle habits as a boy. His mother hav- 
 ing married a second time, he was taken in chai-ge by 
 an uncle, also a farmer, by whom he was brought up; 
 Though the uncle was by no means pleased with the 
 boy's love of wandering about, collecting "pound- 
 
172 William Smith, the Geologist. 
 
 Btones," " pundips," and other stony curiosities which 
 lay scattered about the- adjoining land, he yet enabled 
 him to purchase a few of the necessary books where- 
 with to instruct himself in the rudiments of geometry 
 and surveying ; for the boy was already destined for 
 the business of a land-surveyor. One of his marked 
 characteristics, even as a youth, was the accuracy and 
 keenness of his observation ; and what he once clearly 
 saw he never forgot. He began to draw, attempted to 
 color, and practised the arts of mensuration and sur- 
 veying all without regular instruction ; and by his ef- 
 forts in self-culture, he shortly became so proficient 
 that he was taken on as assistant to a local surveyor 
 of ability in the neighborhood. In carrying on his 
 business he was constantly under the necessity of trav- 
 ersing Oxfordshire and the adjoining counties. One 
 of the first things he seriously pondered over was the 
 position of the various soils and strata that came under 
 his notice on the lands which he surveyed or travelled 
 over ; more especially the position of the red earth in 
 regard to the lias and superincumbent rocks. The 
 surveys of numerous collieries which be was called 
 upon to make gave him further experience ; and al- 
 ready, when only twenty-three years of age, he contem- 
 plated making a model of the strata of the earth. 
 
 While engaged in levelling for a proposed canal in 
 Gloucestershire, the idea of a general law occurred to 
 him relating to the strata of that district. He conceived 
 that the strata lying above the coal were not laid hori- 
 zontally, but inclined, and in one direction, towards the 
 east; resembling, on a large scale, "the ordinary ap- 
 pearance of superposed slices of bread and butter." 
 The correctness of this theory he shortly after confirm- 
 ed by observations of the strata in two parallel valleys, 
 the " red ground," " lias," and " freestone " or " oolite," 
 being found to come down in an eastern direction, and 
 
His new Theory. 173 
 
 to sink Ijelow the level, yielding place to the next in 
 succession. He was shortly enabled to verify the truth 
 of his views on a larger scale, having been appointed to 
 examine personally into the management of canals in 
 England and Wales. During his journeys, which ex- 
 tended from Bath to Newcastle-on-Tyne, returning by 
 Shropshire and Wales, his keen eyes were never idle for 
 a moment. He rapidly noted the aspect and structure 
 of the country through which he passed with his com- 
 panions, treasuring up his observations for future use. 
 His geologic vision was so acute, that though the road 
 along which he passed from York to Newcastle, in the 
 post-chaise, was from five to fifteen miles distant from 
 the hills of chalk and oolite on the east, he was satisfied 
 as to their nature by their contours and relative position, 
 and their ranges on the surface in relation to the lias 
 and " red ground " occasionally seen on the road. 
 
 The general results of his observation seem to have 
 been these. He noted that the rocky masses of country 
 in the western parts of England generally inclined to 
 the east and south-east; that the red sandstones and 
 marls above the coal measures passed beneath the lias, 
 clay, and limestone ; that these again passed beneath the 
 sands, yellow limestones, and clays, forming the table- 
 land of the Cotswold Hills ; while these in turn passed 
 beneath the great chalk deposits occupying the eastern 
 parts of England. He further observed that each layer 
 of clay, sand, and limestone held its own peculiar classes 
 of fossils ; and pondering much on these things, he at 
 length came to the then unheard-of conclusion, that each 
 distinct deposit of marine animals, in these several 
 strata, indicated a distinct sea-bottom, and that each 
 layer of clay, sand, chalk, and stone marked a distinct 
 epoch of time in the history of the earth. 
 
 This idea took firm possession of his- mind, and he 
 could talk and think of nothing else. At canal boards, 
 
174 William Smith, the Geologist. 
 
 at sheep-shearings, at county meetings, and at agricul- 
 tural associations, " Strata Smith," as he came to be call- 
 ed, was always running over with the subject that pos- 
 sessed him. He had indeed made a great discovery, 
 though he was as yet a man utterly unknown in the 
 scientific world. He proceeded to project a map of the 
 stratification of England ; but was for some time de- 
 terred from proceeding with it, being fully occupied in 
 carrying out the works of the Somersetshire coal canal, 
 which engaged him for a period of about six years. 
 He continued, nevertheless, to be unremitting in his ob- 
 servation of facts; and he became so expert in appre- 
 hending the internal structure of a district, and detect- 
 ing the lie of the strata from its external coafiguration, 
 that he was often consulted respecting the drainage of 
 extensive tracts of land, in which, guided by his geolog- 
 ical knowledge, he proved remarkably successful, and 
 acquired an extensive reputation. 
 
 One day, when looking over the cabinet collection 
 of fossils belonging to the Rev. Samuel Richai'dson, at 
 Bath, Smith astonished his friend by suddenly disar- 
 ranging his classification, and re-arranging the fossils 
 in their stratigraphical order, saying: "These came 
 from the blue lias, these from the overlying sand and 
 freestone, these from the fuller's earth, and these from 
 the Bath building-stone." A new light flashed upon 
 Ml'. Richardson's mind, and he shortly became a con- 
 vert to and believer in William Smith's doctrine. The 
 geologists of the day were not, however, so easily con- 
 vinced ; and it was scarcely to be tolerated that an un- 
 known land-surveyor should pretend to teach them the 
 science of geology. But William Smith had an eye 
 and mind to penetrate deep beneath the skin of the 
 earth ; he saw, its very fibre and skeleton, and, as it 
 were, divined its organization. His knowledge of the 
 strata in the neighborhood of Bath was so accurate, 
 
His Ehowkdgs of Strata. 175 
 
 that one evening, when dining at the house of the Rev. 
 Joseph Townsend, he dictated to Mr. Richardson the 
 different strata according to their order of succession 
 in descending oi'der, twenty-three in number, commenc- 
 ing with the chalk and descending in continuous se- 
 ries down to. the. coal, below which, the strata were 
 not then sufficiently determined. To this was added a 
 list of the more remarkable fossils which hadbeen gath- 
 ered in the several layers of rock. This was printed 
 and extensively circulated in 1801. 
 
 He next determined to trace out the strata through 
 districts as remote from Bath as his means would en- 
 able him to reach. . For years he journeyed to and fro, 
 sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, riding on 
 the tops of stage-coaches, often making up by night- 
 travelling the time he had lost by day, so as not to fail 
 in his. ordinalry business engagements. When he was 
 professionally palled away to any distance from home, 
 as, for instance, when travelling from Bath to Holk- 
 ham, in Norfolk, to direct the irrigation and drainage of 
 Mr. Coke's land in that county— he rode on horseback, 
 making frequent detours frorn the road to note the 
 geological features of the country which he raversed. 
 
 For several years he was thus engaged in his jour- 
 neys to distant quarters in England and Ireland, to the 
 extent of upwards of ten thousand miles yearly, and it 
 was amidst this incessant and laborious travelling that 
 he contrived to commit to paper his fast-growing gener- 
 alizations on what he rightly regarded as a new science, 
 No observation, howsoever trivial it might appear, was 
 neglected, and no opportunity of collecting fresh facts 
 wag overlooked. Whenever he could, he possessed him- 
 self of reeor4s. of borings, natural and artificial, sections, 
 drew them; to a constant scale of eight yards to the 
 inch, and colored them up. Of his keenness of obser- 
 vation take the following illustration; When ma,king 
 
176 William Smith, the Geologist. 
 
 one of his geological excursions about the country near 
 Woburn, as he was drawing near to the foot of the 
 Dunstable chalk hills, he observed to his companion, 
 " If there be any broken ground about the foot of these 
 hills, we may find sharlc's teeth /" and they had not pro- 
 ceeded far, before they picked up six from the white 
 bank of a new fence-ditch. As he afterwards said of 
 himself, " The habit of observation crept on me, gained 
 a settlement in my mind, became a constant associate 
 of my life, and started up in activity at the first 
 thought of a journey ; so that I generally went off well 
 prepared with maps, and sometimes with contempla- 
 tions on its objects, or on those on the road, reduced to 
 writing before it commenced. My mind was, therefore, 
 like the canvas of a painter, well prepared for the first 
 and best impressions." 
 
 Notwithstanding his courageous and indefatigable 
 industry, many circumstances contributed to prevent 
 the promised publication of William Smith's " Map of 
 the Strata of England and Wales," and it was not until 
 1814 that he was enabled, by the assistance of some 
 friends, to give to the world the fruits of his twenty 
 years' incessant labor.- To prosecute his inquiries, and 
 collect the extensive series of facts and observations 
 requisite for his purpose, he had to expend the whole 
 of the profits of his professional labors during that 
 period ; and he even sold off his small property to pro- 
 vide the means of visiting remoter parts of the island. 
 Meanwhile he had entered on a quarrying speculation 
 near Bath, which proved unsuccessful, and he was un- 
 der the necessity of selling his geological collection 
 (which was purchased by the British Museum), his fur- 
 niture and library, reserving only his papers, maps, and 
 sections, which were useless save to himself. He bore 
 his losses and misfortunes with exemplary fortitude, 
 and, amidst all, he went on working with cheerful coui> 
 
His Geological Map. 177 
 
 age and untiring patience. He died at Northampton, 
 in August, 1839, while on his way to attend the meet- 
 ing of the British Association at Birmingham. 
 
 It is difficult to speak in terms of too high praise of 
 the first geological map of England, which we owe to 
 the industry of this courageous man of science. An ac- 
 complished writer says of it, " It was a work so master- 
 ly in conception and so correct in general outline, that 
 in principle it served as a basis not only for the produc- 
 tion of later maps of the British Islands, but for geology 
 ical maps of all other parts of the world, wherever they 
 have been undeirtaken. In the apartments of the Geo- 
 logical Society Smith's map may yet be seen — a great 
 historical document, old and worn, calling for renewal 
 of its faded tints. Let any one conversant with the 
 subject compare it with later works on a similar scale, 
 and he will find that in all essential features it will not 
 sufier by the comparison — the intricate anatomy of the 
 Silurian rocks of Wales and the north of England by 
 Mui-chison and Sedgwick being the chief additions 
 made to his great generalizations." * The genius of 
 the Oxfordshire surveyor did not fail to be duly recog- 
 nized and honored by men of science during his life- 
 time. In 1831 the Geological Society of London award- 
 ed to him the WoUaston medal, " in consideration of 
 his being a great original discoverer in English geolo- 
 gy, and especially for his being the fii'st in this country 
 to discover and to teach the identification of strata, and 
 to determine their succession by means of their imbed- 
 ded fossils." William Smith, in his simple, earnest 
 way, gained for himself a name as lasting as the science 
 he loted so well. To use the words of the writer above 
 quoted, " Till the manner as well as the fact of the first 
 appearance of successive forms of life shall be solved, it 
 is not easy to surmise how any discovery can be made 
 * ' ' Saturday Review," July 3d, 1858. 
 8* 
 
178 Sugh, Miller. 
 
 in geology equal in value to that which we owe to thn 
 genius of William Smith." 
 
 Hugh Miller was a man of like observant faculties, 
 who studied literature as well as science with zeal and 
 success. The hook in which he has told the story of 
 his life ("My Schools, and Schoolmasters ") is extreme- 
 ly interesting, and calculated to be eminently useful. 
 It is the history of the formation of a truly noble char- 
 fpter in the humblest condition of life, and inculcates 
 most powerfully the lessons of self-help, self-respect, 
 and self-dependence. While Hugh was but a child, his 
 father, wbo was a sailor, was drowned at sea, and he 
 was brought up by his widowed mother. He had a 
 school training after a sort, but his best teachers were 
 the boys with whom he played, the men amongst whom 
 he worked, the friends and relatives with whom he 
 lived. He read much and miscellaneously, and picked 
 up odd sorts of knowledge from many quartera — from 
 workmen, carpenters, fishermen, and sailors, and above 
 all, from the old boulders strewed along the shores of 
 the Cromarty Frith. With a big hammer which had 
 belonged to his great-grandfather, an old buccaneer, 
 the boy went about chipping the stones, and accumu- 
 lating specimens of mica, porphyry, garnet, and such 
 like. Sometimes he had a day in the woods, and there, 
 too, the boy's attention was excited by the peculiar 
 geological curiosities which came in his way. While 
 searching, among the rocks on the beach, he was some- 
 times asked, in irony, by the farm-servants who came 
 to load their carts with sea-weed, whether he " was 
 gettin' siller in the stanes," but was so unlucky as nev- 
 er to be able to answer in the affirmative. When of a 
 suitable age he was apprenticed to the trade of his 
 choice — that of a working stone-mason ; and he began 
 his laboring career in a quarry looking out upon the 
 Cromarty Frith. This quarry proved one of his best 
 
Sis Book of Nature. 179 
 
 Bchools, L The remarkable geological formations which 
 it displayed awakened his curiosity. The bar of deep- 
 red stone beneath, and the, bar of pale-red clay above, 
 were noted by the young quarryman, who even in such 
 unpromising subjects found matter of' observation and 
 reflection. Where other men saw nothing, he detected 
 analogies, diflerences, and peculiarities,, which set him 
 a-thinking. He simply kept his eyes and his mind 
 open; was sober, diligent, and persevering;, and this 
 was the secret of his intellectual growth. 
 
 His curiosity was excited and kept alive by the cu- 
 rious organic remains, principally of old and extinct spe- 
 cies of fishes, ferns, and ammonites, which were revealed 
 along the coast by the washings of the waves, or were 
 exposed by the stroke of his mason's hammer. He 
 never lost sight of the subject, but went on accumulat- 
 ing observations and comparing formations, until .at 
 length, many years afterwards, when no longer a work- 
 ing mason, he gave to the world: his highly interesting 
 work on the Old Red Sandstone, which at once estab- 
 lished his reputation as a scientific geologist. But this 
 work was the fruit of long years of patient observation 
 and research. As he modestly states in his autobiog- 
 raphy, " The only merit to which I lay claim in the case 
 is that of patient research — a merit in which, whoevei 
 wills may rival or surpass me ; and this humble facul: 
 ty of patience, when rightly developed, may lead to 
 more .extraordinary developments of idea than even 
 genius itself" 
 
 The late John Brown, the eminent English geologist, 
 was, like Miller, a stone-mason in his early life, serving 
 an apprenticeship to the trade at Colchester, and after- 
 wards working as a journeyman mason at Norwich. 
 He began business as a builder on his own account at 
 Colchester, where by frugality and industry he secured 
 a competency. It was while working at his trade that 
 
180 John Brown — Bolert Dick. 
 
 his attention was first drawn to the study of fossils and 
 shells ; and he proceeded to make a collection of them, 
 which afterwards grew into one of the finest in Eng- 
 land. His researches along the coasts of Essex, Kent, 
 and Sussex brought to light some magnificent remains 
 of the elephant and rhinoceros, the most valuable of 
 which were presented by him to the British Museum. 
 During the last few years of his life he devoted consid- 
 erable attention to the study of the Foraminifera in 
 chalk, respecting which he made several interesting 
 discoveries. His life was useful, happy, and honored ; 
 and he died at Stanway, in Essex, in November, 1859, 
 at the ripe age of eighty years. 
 
 Not long ago Sir Roderick Murchison discovered at 
 Thurso, in the far north of Scotland, a profound geolo- 
 gist, in the person of a baker there, named Robert Dick. 
 When Sir Roderick called upon him at the bakehouse 
 in which he baked and earned his bread, Robert Dick 
 delineated to him, by means of flour upon the board, the 
 geographical features and geological phenomena of his 
 native country, pointing out the imperfections in the 
 existing maps, which he had ascertained by travelling 
 over the country in his leisure hours. On further in- 
 quiry. Sir Roderick ascertained that the humble indi- 
 vidual before him was not only a capital baker and 
 geologist, but a first-rate botanist. " I found," said the 
 President of the Geographical Society," to my great hu- 
 miliation, that the baker knew more of botanical science, 
 ay, ten times more, than I did ; and that there were 
 only some twenty or thirty specimens of flowers which 
 he had not collected. Some he had obtained as pres- 
 ents, some he had purchased, but the greater portion 
 had been accumulated by his industry, in his native 
 county of Caithness ; and the specimens were all ar- 
 ranged in the most beautiful order, with their scientific 
 names affixed," 
 
Sir Boderich Murchison. 181 
 
 Sir Roderick Murchison himself is an illustrious fol- 
 lower of these and kindred branches of science. A 
 writer in the " Quarterly Review" cites him as a "sin- 
 gular instance of a man who, having passed the early- 
 part of his life as a soldier, never having had the ai 
 vantage, or disadvantage, as the case might have been, 
 of a scientific training, instead of remaining a fox-hunt- 
 ing country gentleman, has succeeded by his own native 
 vigor and sagacity, untiring industry and zeal, in mak- 
 ing for himself a scientific reputation that is as wide as 
 it is likely to be lasting. He took, first of all, an unex- 
 plored and difiicult district at home, and, by the labor 
 of many years, examined its rock-formations, classed 
 them in natural groups, assigned to each its character- 
 istic assemblage of fossils, and was the first to decipher 
 two great chapters in the world's geological history, 
 which must always henceforth carry his name on their 
 title-page. Not only so, but he applied the knowledge 
 thus acquired to the dissection of large districts, both 
 at home and abroad, so as to become the geological 
 discoverer of great countries which had formerly been 
 'terrse incognitie.' " But Sir Roderick Murchison is 
 not merely a geologist. His indefatigable labors in 
 many branches of knowledge have contributed to ren- 
 der him among the most accomplished and complete 
 of scientific men. 
 
CHAPTER VL 
 
 WOEKEES ISr AET. 
 
 " If what shone afar so grand. 
 
 Turn to nothing in thy hand, 
 
 On again ; the virtue lies 
 
 In the struggle, not the prize." — R. M. Milites. 
 " Excelle, et tu fiYras."-^6uBEKT. 
 
 EXCELLENCE in art, as in every thing else, ean 
 only be achieved by dint of painstaking labor. 
 There is nothing less accidental than the painting of a 
 fine picture or the chiselling of a noble statue. Every 
 skilled touch of the artist's brush or chisel, though 
 guided by genius, is the product of unremitting study. 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds was such a believer in the force 
 of industry, that he held that artistic excellence, " how- 
 ever expressed by genius^ taste, or the gift of heaven, 
 may be acquired." Writing to Barry he said, " Who- 
 ever is resolved to excel - in painting, or indeed any 
 other art, must bring all his mind to bear upon that one 
 object from the moment that he rises till he goes to 
 bed." And on another occasion he said, " Those who 
 are resolved to excel must go to their work, willing or 
 unwilling, morning, noon, and night : they will find it 
 no play, but very hard labor." But although diligent 
 application is no doubt absolutely necessary for the 
 achievement of the highest distinction in art, it is 
 equally true that without the inborn genius, no amount 
 of mere industry, however well applied, will make an 
 artist. The gift cornea by nature, but is perfected by 
 
Force oflndmtry in Art. 183 
 
 self-culture,- which is of more avail thau all the impart- 
 ed education of the schools. 
 
 Some of the greatest artists have had to force their 
 way upward in the face of poverty and manifold ob- 
 structions. Illustrious instances will at once flash upon 
 the reader's mind. Claude Lorraine, the pastry-cook ; 
 Tintoretto, the dyer; the two Caravaggios, the one a 
 colorrgrinder, the other a mortar-carrier at the. Vatican; 
 Salvator B.osa, the associate of bandits; Giotto, the 
 peasant-boy; Zingaro, the gypsy; Cavedone, turned 
 out of doors to beg by his father ; Canova, the stone- 
 cutter ; these, and many other well-known artists, suc- 
 ceeded in achieving distinction by severe study and 
 labor, under circumstances the most adverse. 
 , Nor have the most distinguished artists of our own 
 country been born in a.position of life more than ordina- 
 rily favorable to the culture of artistic genius. Gains- 
 borough and Bacon were the sons of cloth-workers ; 
 Barry was an Irish sailor-boy, and Maclise a banker's 
 apprentice at Cork ; Opie and Romney, like Inigo Jones, 
 were carpenters ; West was the son of a small Quaker 
 farmer in Pennsylvania ; Northcote was a watchmaker, 
 Jackson a tailor, and Etty a printer ; Reynolds, Wilson, 
 and Wilkie were the sons of clergymen; Lawrence was 
 the son of a publican, and Turner of a barber. Several 
 of our painters, it is true, originally had some connec- 
 tion with art, though in a very humble way, such as 
 Plaxman, whose father sold plaster casts; Bird, Avho 
 ornamented tea-trays ; Martin, who was a coach-paint- 
 er ; Wright and Gilpin, who were ship-painters ; Chan- 
 trey, who was a carver and gilder ; and David Cox, 
 Stanfield, and Roberts, who were scene-painters. 
 
 It was not by luck or accident that these men achieved 
 distinction, but by sheer industry and hard work. 
 Though' some achieved wealth, yet this was rarely, if 
 ever, their ruling motive. Indeed, no mere love of 
 
184 Industry of Michael Angeh. 
 
 money could sustain the efforts of the artist in his early 
 career of self-denial and application. The pleasure of 
 the pursuit has always been its best reward ; the wealth 
 which followed but an accident. Many noble-minded 
 artists have preferred following the. bent of their genius 
 to chaffering with the public for terms. Spagnoletto 
 verified in his life the beautiful fiction of Xenophon, 
 and after he had acquired the means of luxury, prefer- 
 red withdrawing himself from their influence, and volun- 
 tarily returned to poverty and labor. When Michael 
 Angelo was asked his opinion respecting a work which 
 a painter had taken great pains to exhibit for profit, he 
 said, "I think that he will be a poor fellow so long as 
 he shows such an extreme eagerness to become rich." 
 
 Like Sir Joshua Reynolds, Michael Angelo was a 
 great believer in the force of labor ; and he held that 
 there was nothing which the imagination conceived 
 that could not be embodied in marble, if the hand were 
 made vigorously to obey the mind. He was himself 
 one of the most indefatigable of workers ; and he at- 
 tributed his power of studying for a greater number of 
 hours than most of his contemporaries, to his spare hab- 
 its of living. A little bread and wine was all he re- 
 quired for the chief part of the day when employed at 
 his work, and very frequently he rose in the middle of 
 the night to resume his labors. On these occasions, it 
 was his practice to fix the candle, by the light of which 
 he chiselled, on the summit of a pasteboard cap which 
 he wore. Sometimes he was too wearied to undress, 
 and he slept in his clothes, ready to spring to his work 
 so soon as refreshed by sleep. He had a favorite de- 
 vice of an old man in a go-cart, with an hour-glass upon 
 it bearing the inscription, "Ancora imparo ! " — " Still I 
 am learning." 
 
 Titian, also, was an indefatigable worker. His cele- 
 brated " Pietro Martire " was eight years in hand, and 
 
Titian — Odlkott — West 185 
 
 his "Last Supper" seven. In his letter to Charles V. 
 he said, " I send your Majesty the ' Last Supper,' after 
 working at it almost daily for seven years — dopo sette 
 anni lavorandovi quasi continuamente." Few think of 
 the patient labor and long training involved in the 
 greatest works of the artist. They seem easy and 
 quickly accomplished, yet with how great difficulty has 
 this ease been acquiried. " You charge me fifty se- 
 quins," said the Venetian nobleman to the sculptor, 
 " for a bust that cost you only ten days' labor." "You 
 forget," said the artist, " that I have been thirty years 
 learning to make that bust in ten days." Once when 
 Domenichino was blamed for his slowness in finishing 
 a, picture which was bespoken, he made answei-, "I am 
 continually painting it within myself." It was emi- 
 nently characteristic of the industry of the late Sir Au- 
 gustus Callcott that he made not fewer than forty sep- 
 arate sketches in the composition of his famous picture 
 of " Rochester." This constant repetition is one of the 
 main conditions of success in art, as in life itself. 
 
 'No matter how generous nature has been in bestow- 
 ing the gift of genius, the pursuit of art is neverthe- 
 less a long and continuous labor. Many artists have 
 been precocious, but without diligence" their precocity 
 would have come to nothing. The anecdote related of 
 West is well known. When only seven years old, struck 
 with the beauty of the sleeping infant of his eldest sis-- 
 ter, whilst watching by its cradle, he ran to seek some 
 paper, and forthwith drew its portrait in red and black 
 ink. The little incident revealed the artist in him, 
 and it was found impossible to draw him from his 
 bent. West might have been a greater painter, had 
 he not been injured by too early success : his fame, 
 though great, was not purchased by study, trials, and 
 difficulties, and it has not been enduring. 
 ■ Richard Wilson, when a mere child, indulged him- 
 
186 Wilson — BeyruoMs — Hogarth. 
 
 self with tracing- figures of men and animals on the 
 walls of his father's house with a burnt Stick. He 
 first directed his attention to portrait painting ; but 
 when in Italy, calling one day at the house of Zuca- 
 relli, and growing weary with waiting, he began paint- 
 ing: the jscene on which .his friend's chamber window 
 looked. When. Zucarelli arrived, he was so chai-med 
 with the picture that he asked if Wilson had not stud- 
 ied landscape, to which he replied that he had not. 
 " Then I advise you,", said the other, "to try; for you 
 are sure of great success." Wilson adopted the ad- 
 vice, studied and worked hard, and became our first 
 great English landscape painter. 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, when a boy, forgot his lessons, 
 and took pleasure only in drawing, for which his. fa- 
 ther was accustomed to rebuke him.. The boy was 
 destined for the profession of physic, but his strong in- 
 stinct for art could not be repressed, and he became a 
 painter. Gainsborough went sketching, when a school- 
 boy, in the woods of Sudbury, and at twelve he was a 
 confirmed artist : he was a keen observer and a hard 
 worker — ^no picturesque feature of any scene he had 
 once looked upon escaping his diligent pencil. Wil- 
 liam Blake, a hosier's son, employed himself in drawing 
 designs on the backs of his father's shop-bills, and mak- 
 ing sketches on the counter. Edward Bird, when a 
 child only three or four years oy, would mount a chair 
 and draw figures on the walls, which he called French 
 and English soldiers. A box of colors was purchased 
 for him, and his father, desirous of turning his love of 
 art to account, put him apprentice to a maker of tea- 
 trays ! Out of this trade he gradually raised him self, by 
 study and labor, to the rank of a Royal Academician. 
 
 Hogarth, though a very dull boy at his lessons, took 
 plsasure in making drawings of the letters of the al- 
 phabet, and his school exercises were more remarkable 
 
Hogarth's close Observation. 187 
 
 for the ornaments with, which he embellished them, 
 than for the matter of the exercises themselves. In 
 the latter respect he was beaten by all the blockheads 
 of the school, but in his adornments he stood alone, 
 His father put him apprentice to a silversmith, where 
 he learnt to draw, and also to engrave spoons and forks 
 with crests and ciphers. From silver-chasing he went 
 on to teach himself engraving on copper, principally 
 griffins and monsters of heraldry, in the course of 
 which practice he became ambitious, to delineate the 
 varieties of human character. The singular excellence 
 which he reached in this art wau inainly the result of 
 careful observation and study. He had the gift, 
 which he sedulously cultivated, of committing to mem- 
 ory the precise features of any remarkable face, and 
 afterwards reproducing them on paper; but if any 
 singularly fantastic form or outr& face came in his way, 
 he would; make a sketch of it on the spot upon his 
 thumb-nail, and carry it home to expand at his leisure. 
 Every thing fantastical and original had a powerful at- 
 traction for him, and he wandered into many out-of- 
 the-way places for the purpose of meeting with char- 
 acter. By this careful storing of his mind, he was af- 
 terwards enabled to crowd, an immense amount of 
 thought and treasured observation into his works. 
 Hence it is that Hogarth's pictures are so truthful a 
 memorial of the character, the manners, and even the 
 very thoughts of, the times in which he lived. True 
 painting, he himself observed, can only be learnt in 
 one school, and that is kept by Nature. But he was 
 not a highly cultivated man, except in his own walk. 
 His school education had been of the slenderest kind, 
 scarcely even perfecting him in the art of spelling; 
 his self-culture did the rest. For a long time he was 
 in very straitened circumstances, but nevertheless 
 W^orked on with a cheerful heart. Poor though he 
 
188 Banks — Mulready. 
 
 was, he contrived to live within his small means, and 
 he boasted, with becoming pride, that he was " a punc- 
 tual paymaster." When he had conquered all his dit- 
 ficulties and become a famous and thriving man, be 
 loved to dwell upon his early labors and privations, 
 and to fight over again the battle which ended so hon- 
 orably to him as a man and so gloriously as an artist. 
 " I remember the time," said he on one occasion, 
 " when I have gone moping into the city with scarce a 
 shilling, but as soon as I have received ten guineas 
 there for a plate, I have returned home, put on my 
 sword, and sallied out with all the confidence of a man 
 who had thousands in his pockets." 
 
 " Industry and perseverance " was the motto of the 
 sculptor Banks, which he acted on himself, and strongly 
 recommended to others. His well-known kindness in- 
 duced many asj)iring youths to call upon him and ask 
 for his advice and assistance ; and it is related that one 
 day a boy called at his door to see him with this object, 
 but the servant, angry at the loud knock he had given, 
 scolded him, and was about sending him away, when 
 Banks, overhearing her, himself went out. The little 
 boy stood at the door with some drawings in his hand. 
 " What do you want with me ?" asked the sculptor. 
 " I want, sir, if you please, to be admitted to draw at 
 the Academy." Banks explained that he himself could 
 not procure his admission, but he asked to look at the 
 boy's drawings. Examining them, he said, "Time 
 enough for the Academy, my little man ! go home — ■ 
 mind your schooling — try to make a better drawing of 
 the Apollo — and in a month come again and let me see 
 it." The boy went home — sketched and worked with 
 redoubled diligence — and, at the end of the month, 
 called again on the sculptor. The drawing was better; 
 but again Banks sent him back, with good advice, to 
 Work and study. In a week the boy was again at his 
 
Claude Lonuine — Turner. 189 
 
 door, his drawing much improved ; and Banks tid him 
 be of good cheer, for if spared he would distinguish 
 himself. The hoy was Mulready ; and the sculptor's 
 augury was amply fulfilled. 
 
 The fame of Claude Lorraine is partly explained 
 by his indefatigable industry. Born at Champagne, in 
 Lorraine, of poor parents, he was first apprenticed to a 
 pastrycook. His brother, who was a wood-carver, af- 
 terwards took him into his shop to learn that trade. 
 Having there shown indications of artistic skill, a trav- 
 elling dealer persuaded the brother to allow Claude to 
 accompany him to Italy. He assented, and the young 
 man reached Rome, where he was shortly after engaged 
 by Agostino Tassi, the landscape paintei-, as his house- 
 servant. In that capacity Claude first learnt landscape 
 painting, -and in course of time he began to, produce 
 pictures. We next find him making the tour of Italy, 
 France, and Germany, occasionally resting by the way 
 to paint landscapes, and thereby replenish his purse. 
 On returning to Rome he found an increasing demand 
 for his works, and his reputation at length became Eu- 
 ropean. He was unwearied in the study of nature in 
 her various aspects. It was his practice to spend a 
 great part of his time in closely copying buildings, bits 
 of ground, trees, leaves, and such like, which he finished 
 in detail, keeping the drawings by him in store for the 
 purpose of introducing them in his studied landscapes. 
 He also gave close attention to the sky, watching it for 
 whole days from morning till night, and noting the va- 
 rious changes occasioned by the passing clouds and the 
 increasing and waning light. By this constant practice 
 he acquired, although, it is said, very slowly, such a 
 mastery of band and eye as eventually secured for him 
 the first rank among landscape painters. 
 
 Turner, who has been styled " the English Claude," 
 pursued a career of Uke laborious industry. He was 
 
190 Turner — Perrier. 
 
 destined by his father for his own trade of a barber, 
 which he carried on in London, until one day the sketch 
 which the boy had made of a coat-of-arms on a silver 
 salver having attracted the notice of a customer whom 
 his father was shaving, the latter was urged to allow 
 his son to follow his bias, and he was eventually pei-- 
 mitted to follow art as a profession. Like all young 
 artists, Turner had many difficulties to encounter, and 
 they were all the greater that his circumstances were 
 so straitened. But he was always willing to work, 
 and to take pains with his work, no matter how hum- 
 ble it might be. He was glad to hire himself out at 
 half-a-crown a night to wash in skies in Indian ink upon 
 other people's drawings, getting his supper into the bar- 
 gain. Thus he earned money and acquired expertness. 
 Then he took to illustrating guide-books, almanacs, 
 and any sort of books that wanted cheap frontispieces. 
 " What could I have done better ?" said he afterwards ; 
 " it was first-rate practice." He did every thing care- 
 fully and conscientiously, never slurring over his work 
 because he was ill-remunerated for it. He aimed at 
 learning as well as living ; always doing his best, and 
 never leaving a drawing without having made a step in 
 advance upon his previous work. A man who thus 
 labored was sure to do much ; and his growth in power 
 and grasp of thought was, to use Ruskin's words, " as 
 steady as the increasing light of sunrise." But Tur- 
 ner's genius needs no panegyric ; his best monument 
 is the noble gallery of pictures bequeathed by him to 
 the nation, which will ever be the most lasting me- 
 morial of his fame. ° 
 
 To reach Rome, the capital of the fine arts, is usually 
 the highest ambition of the art student. But the jour- 
 ney to Rome is costly, and the student is often poor. 
 With a will resolute to overcome diflSculties, Rome may 
 however at last be reached. Thus Frangois Perrier, an 
 
Jacques Calht 191 
 
 early French painter, in his eager desire to visit the 
 Eternal City, consented to. act as guide to a blind 
 vagrant. After long wanderings he reached the Vati- 
 can, studied and became famous. Not less enthusiasm 
 was displayed by Jacques Callot in his determination 
 to visit Rome. Though opposed by his father in his 
 wish to bfe an artist, the boy would not be baulked, but 
 fled from home to make his way to Italy. Having set 
 out without means, he was soon reduced to great straits ; 
 but falling in with a band of gypsies, he joined their 
 company, and wandered about with them froni one fair 
 to another, sharing in their numerous adventures. Dur- 
 ing this remarkable journey Callot picked up much of 
 that extraordinary knowledge of figure, feature, and 
 character, which he afterwards reproduced, sometimes 
 in such exaggerated forms, in his wonderful engrav- 
 ings. 
 
 When Callot at length reached Florence, a gentle- 
 man, pleased with his ingenious ardor, placed him with 
 an artist to study ; but he was not satisfied to stop 
 short of Rome, and we find him shortly on his way 
 thithen At Rome he made the acquaintance of Porigi 
 and Thomassin, who, on seeing his crayon sketches, pre- 
 dicted for him a brilliant career as an artist. But a 
 friend of Callot's family having accidentally encounter- 
 ed him, took steps to compel the fugitive to return home. 
 By this time he had acquired such a love of wandering 
 that he could not rest;; so he ran away a second time, 
 and a second time he was bi'ought back by his elder 
 brother, who caught him at Turin. At last the father, 
 seeing resistance was in vain, gave his reluctant con- 
 sent to Callot's prosecuting his studies at Rome. 
 Thither he went accordingly ; and this time he re- 
 mained, diligently studying design and: engraving for 
 several years, under competent masters. On his way 
 back to France, he was encouraged by Cosmo n. to re- 
 
192 Benvenuto Cellini. 
 
 main at Florence, where he studied and worked for sev- 
 eral years more. On the death of his patron he return- 
 ed to his family at Nancy, where, by the use of hia 
 burin and needle, he shortly acquired both wealth and 
 fame. When Nancy was taken by siege during the 
 civil wars, Callot was requested by Richelieu to make 
 a design and engraving of the event, but the artist 
 would not commemorate the disaster which had befal- 
 len his native place, and he refused point-blank. Rich- 
 elieu could not shake his resolution, and threw him into 
 prison. There Callot met with some of his old friends 
 the gypsies, who had relieved his wants on his first jour- 
 ney to Rome. When Louis XIII. heard of his impris- 
 onment, he not only released him, but offered to grant 
 him any favor he might ask. Callot immediately re- 
 quested that his old companions, the gypsies, might be 
 set free and permitted to beg in Paris without molesta- 
 tion. This odd request was granted on condition that 
 Callot should engrave their portraits, and hence his 
 curious book of engravings entitled " The Beggars." 
 Louis is said to have offered Callot a pension of 3000 
 livres provided he would not leave Paris ; but the art- 
 ist was now too much of a Bohemian, and prized his 
 liberty too highly to permit him to accept it ; and he re- 
 turned to Nancy, where he worked till his death. His 
 industry may be inferred from the number of his en- 
 gravings and etchings, of which he left not fewer than 
 1600. He was especially fond of grotesque subjects, 
 which he treated with great skill; his free etchings, 
 touched with the graver, being executed with especial 
 delicacy and wonderful minuteness. 
 
 Still more romantic and adventurous was the ca- 
 reer of Benvenuto Cellini, the marvellous gold-work- 
 er, painter, sculptor, engraver, engineer, and author. 
 His life, as told by himself, is one of the most extraor- 
 dinary autobiographies ever written. Giovanni Cel- 
 
His indefatigable Activity. 193 
 
 lini, his father, was one of the Court musicians to 
 Lorenzo de Medici at Florence ; and his highest ambi- 
 tion concerning his son Benvenuto was that he should 
 become an expert player on the flute. But Giovanni 
 having lost his appointment, found it necessary to send 
 his son to learn some trade, and he was apprenticed to 
 a goldsmith. The boy had already displayed a love 
 of drawing and of art ; and, applying himself to his 
 business, he soon became a dexterous workman. Hav- 
 ing got mixed up in a quarrel with some of the towns- 
 people, he was banished for six months, during which 
 period he worked with a goldsmith at Sienna,. gaining 
 further experience in jewelry and gold-working. 
 
 His father still insisting on his becoming a flute- 
 player, Benvenuto continued to practise on the instru- 
 ment, though he detested it. His chief pleasure was 
 in art, which he pursued with enthusiasm. Returning 
 to Florence, he carefully studied the designs of Leo- 
 nardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo ; and, still further 
 to improve himself in gold-woi-ldng, he went on foot to 
 Rome, where he met with a variety of adventures. He 
 returned to Florence with the reputation of being a 
 most expert worker in the precious metals, and his skill 
 was soon in great request. But being of an irascible 
 temper, he was constantly getting into scrapes, and was 
 frequently under the necessity of flying for his life. 
 Thus he fled from Florence in the disguise of a friar, 
 again taking refuge at Sienna, and afterwards at Rome. 
 
 During his second residence at Rome, Cellini met 
 with extensive patronage, and he was taken into the 
 Pope's service in the double capacity of goldsmith and 
 musician. He was constantly studying and improv- 
 ing himself by acquaintance with the works of the 
 best masters. He mounted jewels, finished enamels, 
 engraved seals, and designed and executed works in 
 gold, silvei-, and bi'onze, in such a style as to excel all 
 
194 Benvenuto Cellini. 
 
 other artists. Whenever he heard of a goldsmith who 
 was famous in any particular branch, he immediately 
 determined to surpass him. Thus it was that he ri- 
 valled the medals of one, the enamels of another, and 
 the jewelry of a third ; in fact, there was not a branch 
 of his business that he did not feel impelled to excel in. 
 
 Working in this spirit, it is not so wonderful that 
 Cellini should have been able to accomplish so much. 
 He was a man of indefatigable activity, and was con- 
 stantly on the move. At one time we find him at 
 Florence, at another at Rome ; then he is at Mantua, 
 at Rome, at Naples, and back to Florence again ; then 
 at Venice, and in Paris, making all his long journeys on 
 horseback. He could not carry much luggage with 
 him ; so, wherever he went, he usually began by mak- 
 ing his own tools. He not only designed his works, but 
 executed them himself — hammered and carved, and 
 cast and shaped them with his own hands. Indeed, his 
 works have the impress of genius so clearly stamped 
 upon them, that they could never have been designed 
 by one person and executed by another. The hum- 
 blest article — a buckle for a lady's girdle, a seal, a lock- 
 et, a brooch, a ring, or a button — became in his hands 
 a beautiful work of art. 
 
 Cellini was remarkable for his readiness and dexterity 
 in handicraft. One day a surgeon entered the shop of 
 Raffaello del Moro, the goldsmith, to perform an oper- 
 ation on his daughter's hand. On looking at the sur- 
 geon's instruments, Cellini, Avho was present, found them 
 rude and clumsy, as they usually were in those days, 
 and he asked the surgeon to proceed no further with 
 the operation for a quarter of an hour. He then ran to 
 his shop, and taking a piece of the finest steel, wrought 
 out of it a beautifully finished knife, with which the op- 
 eration was successfully performed. 
 
 Among the statues executed by Cellini, the most im- 
 
His Statue of Perseus. 195 
 
 portant are the silver figure of Jupiter, executed at 
 Paris for Francis I., and the Perseus, executed in bronze 
 for the Grand Duke Cosmo of Florence. He also exe- 
 cuted statues in marble of Apollo, Hyacinthus, Narcis- 
 sus, and Neptune. The extraordinary incidents con- 
 nected with the casting of the Perseus were peculiarly 
 illustrative of the remarkable character of the man. 
 
 The Grand Duke having expressed a decided opinion 
 that the model, when shown to him in wax, could not 
 possibly be cast in bronze, Cellini was immediately 
 stimulated by the predicted impossibility, not only to 
 attempt, but to do it. He first made the clay model, 
 baked it, and covered it with wax, which he shaped into 
 the perfect form of a statue. Then coating the wax 
 with a sol-t of earth, he baked the second covering, 
 during which the wax dissolved and escaped, leaving 
 the space between the two layers for the reception of 
 the metal. To avoid disturbance, the latter process 
 was conducted in a pit dug immediately under the fur- 
 nace, from which the liquid metal was to be introduced 
 by pipes and apertures into the mould jjrepared for it. 
 
 Cellini had purchased and laid in several loads of 
 pine-wood, in anticipation of the process of casting, 
 which now began. The furnace was filled with pieces 
 of brass and bronze, and the fire was lit. The resinous 
 j)ine-wood was soon in such a furious blaze, that the 
 shop took fire, and part of the roof was burnt ; while 
 at the same time the wind blowing and the rain falling 
 on the furnace, kept down the heat, and prevented the 
 metals from melting. For hours Cellini struggled to 
 keep up the heat, continually throwing in more wood, 
 until at length he became so exhausted and ill, that he 
 feared he should die before the statue could be cast. 
 He was forced to leave to his assistants the pouring in 
 of the metal when melted, and betook himself to his- 
 bed. While those about him were condoling with him 
 
196 Benvenuto Cellird. 
 
 in his distress, a workman suddenly entered the room, 
 lamenting that " poor Benvenuto's work was irretriev- 
 ahly spoiled !" On hearing this, Cellini immediately 
 sprang from his bed and rushed to the workshop, where 
 he found the fire so much gone down that the meta;l had 
 again become hard. 
 
 Sending across to a neighbor for a load of young oak 
 which had been more -than a year in drying, he soon 
 had the fire blazing again and the metal melting and 
 glittei-ing. The wind was, however, still blowing with 
 fury, and the rain falling heavily ; so, to protect himself, 
 Cellini had some tables Avith pieces of tapestry and old 
 clothes brought to him, behind which he went on hurl- 
 ing the wood into the furnace. Amass of pewter was 
 thrown in upon the other metal, and by stirring, some- 
 times with iron and sometimes with long poles, the 
 whole soon became completely melted. At this junc- 
 ture, when the trying moment was close at hand, a ter- 
 rible noise as of a thunderbolt was heard, and a glitter- 
 ing of fire flashed before Cellini's eyes. The cover of 
 the furnace had burst, and the metal began to flow ! 
 Finding that it did not run with the proper velocity, 
 Cellini rushed into the kitchen, bore away every piece 
 of copper and pewter that it contained — some two 
 hundred porringers, dishes, and kettles of different kinds 
 — and threw them into the furnace. Then at length 
 the metal flowed freely, and thus the splendid statue 
 of Perseus was cast. 
 
 The divine fury of genius in which Cellini rushed to 
 his kitchen and stripped it of its utensils for the pur- 
 poses of his furnace, will remind the reader of the like 
 act of Pallissy in breaking up his furniture for the pur- 
 pose of baking his earthenware. Excepting, however, 
 in their enthusiasm, no two men could be less alike in. 
 character. Cellini was an Ish'mael against whom, ac- 
 cording to his own account, every man's hand was turn- 
 
Nicolas Poussin. 197 
 
 ed. But about his extraordinary skill as a workman, 
 and his genius as an artist, there can not be two opin- 
 ions. 
 
 Much less turbulent was the career of Nicolas Pous- 
 sin, a man as pure and elevated in his ideas of art as he 
 was in his daily life, and distinguished alike for his vig- 
 or of intellect, his rectitude of character, and his noble 
 simplicity. He was born in a very humble station, at 
 Andeleys, near Rouen, where his father kept a small 
 school. The boy had the benefit of his parent's in- 
 struction, such as it was, but of that he is said to have 
 been somewhat negligent, preferring to spend his time 
 in covering his lesson-books and his slate with draw- 
 ings. A country painter, much pleased with his sketch- 
 es, besought his parents not to thwart him in his tastes. 
 The painter agreed to give Poussin lessons, and he soon 
 made such progress that his master had nothing more 
 to teach him. Becoming restless, and desirous of fur- 
 ther improving himself, Poussin, at the age of 18, set 
 out for Paris, painting signboards on his way for a 
 maintenance. 
 
 At Paris a new world of art opened before him, ex- 
 citing his wonder and stimulating his emulation. He 
 worked diligently in many studios, drawing, copying, 
 and painting pictures. After a time, he resolved, if 
 possible, to visit Rome, and set out on his journey ; but 
 he only succeeded in getting as far as Florence, and 
 again returned to Paris. A second attempt which he 
 made to reach Rome was even less successful ; for this 
 time he only got as far as Lyons. He was, neverthe- 
 less, careful to take advantage of all opportunities for 
 improvement which came in his way, and continued as 
 sedulous as before in studying and working. 
 
 Thus twelve years passed, years of obscurity and 
 toil, of failures and disappointments, and probably of 
 privations. At length Poussin succeeded in reaching 
 
198 Poussin and Duquesnoi. 
 
 Rome. There he diligently studied the old masters, 
 and especially the ancient statues, with whose perfec- 
 tion he was greatly impressed. For some time he lived 
 with the sculptor Duquesnoi, as poor as himself, and 
 assisted him in modelling figures after the antique. 
 With him he carefully measured some of the most cele- 
 brated statues in Rome, more particularly the " Anti- 
 nous:" and it is supposed that this practice exercised 
 considerable influence on the formation of his future 
 style. At the same time he studied anatomy, practised 
 drawing from the life, and made a great store of sketch- 
 es of postures and attitudes of people whom he met, 
 carefully reading at his leisure such standard books oh 
 art as he could borrow from his friends. 
 
 During all this time he remained very poor, satisfied 
 to be continually improving himself He was glad to 
 sell his pictures for whatever they would bring. One, 
 of a prophet, he sold for eight livres ; and another, the 
 " Plague of the Philistines," he sold for 60 crowns — a 
 picture afterwai'ds bought by Cardinal de Richelieu for 
 a thousand. To add to his troubles, he was stricken by 
 a cruel malady, during the helplessness occasioned by 
 which the Chevalier del Posso assisted him with money. 
 For this gentleman Poussin afterwards painted the 
 " Rest in the Desert," a fine picture, which far more 
 than repaid the advances made during his illness. 
 
 The brave man went on toiling and learning through 
 sufiering. Still aiming at higher things, he went to 
 Florence and Venice, enlarging the range of his studies. 
 The fruits of his conscientious labor at length appeared 
 in the series of great pictures which he now began to 
 produce — ^liis "Death of Germanicus," followed by 
 " Extreme Unction," the " Testament of Eudamidas," 
 the " Manna," and the "Abduction of the Sabines." 
 
 The reputation of Poussin, however, grew but slowly. 
 He was of a retiring disposition and shunned society. 
 
Poussm returns to Paris. 199 
 
 People gave him credit for being a thinker much more 
 than a painter. When not actually employed in paint- 
 ing, he took long solitary walks in the country, medita- 
 ting the designs of future pictures. One of his few 
 friends while at Rome was Claude Lorraine, with whom 
 he spent. many hours at a time on the terrace of La 
 Trinit6-du-Mont, conversing about art and antiquarian- 
 ism. The monotony and the quiet of Rome were suit- 
 ed to his taste, and, provided he could earn a moderate 
 living by his brush, he had no wish to leave it. 
 
 But his fame now extended beyond Rome, and re- 
 peated invitations were sent to him to return to Paris. 
 He was offered the appointment of principal painter to 
 the King. At first he hesitated; quoted the Italian 
 proverb, Chi sta bene non si muove; said he had lived 
 fifteen years in Rome, married a wife there, and looked 
 forward to dying and being buried there. Urged 
 again, he consented, and returned to Paris. But his ap- 
 pearance there awakened much professional jealousy, 
 and he soon wished himself back in Rome again. 
 While in Paris he painted some of his greatest works — 
 his " Saint Xavier," the "Baptism," and the " Last Sup- 
 per." He was kept constantly at work. At first he did 
 whatever he was asked to do, such as designing front- 
 ispieces for the royal books, more particularly a Bible 
 and a Virgil, cartoons for the Louvre, and designs for 
 tapestry ; but at length he expostulated : — " It is im- 
 possible for me," he said to M. de Chanteloup, " to work 
 at the same time at frontispieces for books, at a Virgin, 
 at a picture of the Congregation of St. Louis, at the va- 
 rious designs for the gallery, and, finally, at designs 
 for the royal tapestry. I have only one pair of hands 
 and a feeble head, and can neither be helped nor can 
 my labors be lightened by another." 
 
 Annoyed by the enemies his success had provoked 
 and whom he was unable to conciliate, he determined, 
 
200 Ary Scheffer. 
 
 at the end of less than two years' labor in Paris, to re" 
 turn to Rome. Again settled there in his htimhie 
 dwelling on Mont Pincio, he employed himself diligent- 
 ly in the practice of his art during the remaining years 
 of his life, living in great simplicity and privacy. 
 Though suffering much from the disease which afflicted 
 him, he solaced himself by study, always striving after 
 excellence. " In growing Qld," he said, " I feel myself 
 becoming more and more inflamed with the desire of 
 surpassing myself and reaching the highest degree of 
 Iperfeetion." Thus toiling, struggling, and suffering, 
 PouSsin spent his later years. He had no children 5 his 
 wife died before him ; all his friends were gone : so that 
 in his old age he was left absolutely alone in Rome, so 
 full of tombs, and died there in 1665, bequeathing to his 
 relatives at Andeleys the savings of his life, amounting 
 to about 1000 crowns ; and leaving behind him, as a leg- 
 acy to his race, the great works of his genius. 
 
 The career of Ary Scheffer furnishes one of the best 
 examples in modern times of a like high-minded devo- 
 tion to art. Born at Dordrecht, the son of a German 
 artist, he early manifested an aptitude for drawing and 
 painting, which his parents encouraged. His father dy- 
 ing while he was still young, his mother resolved, 
 though her means were but small, to remove the fami- 
 ly to Paris, in order that her son might obtain the best 
 opportunities for instruction. There young Scheffer 
 was placed with Gu6rin the painter. But his mother's 
 means were too limited to permit him to devote himselr 
 exclusively to study. She had sold the few jewels she 
 possessed, and refused herself every indulgence, in or- 
 der to forward the instruction of her other children. 
 Under such circumstances, it was natural that Ary 
 should wish to help her ; and by the time he was eight- 
 een years of age he began to paint small pictures of 
 simple subjects, which met with a ready sale at mod< 
 
John Flaxman. 201 
 
 erate prices. He also practised portrait-painting, at 
 the same time gathering experience and earning honest 
 money. He gradually improved in drawing, coloring, 
 and composition. The " Baptism " marked a new epoch 
 in his career, and from that point he went on advancing, 
 until his fame culminated in his pictures illustrative of 
 " Faust," his " Francisca de Rimini," " Christ the Con- 
 soler," the " Holy "Women," " St. Monica and St. Augus- 
 tin," and many other noble works. 
 
 " The amount of labor, thought, and attention," says 
 Mr. Grote, " which Scheffer brought to the production 
 of the ' Francisca,' must have been enormous. In 
 truth, his technical education having "been so imperfect, 
 he was forced to climb the steep of ai-t by drawing upon 
 his own resources, and thus, whilst his hand was at 
 work, his mind was engaged in meditation. He had to 
 try various processes of handling, and experiments in 
 coloring ; to paint and repaint, with tedious and unre- 
 mitting assiduity. But Nature had endowed him with 
 that which proved in some sort an equivalent for short- 
 comings of a professional kind. His own elevation of 
 character, and his profound sensibility, aided him in 
 acting upon the feelings of others through the medium 
 of the pencil."* 
 
 One of the artists whom Scheffer most admired was 
 Flaxman ; and he once said to a friend, " If I have un- 
 consciously borrowed from anyone in the design of the 
 ' Francisca,' it must have been from something I have 
 seen among Flaxman's drawings." John Flajonan was 
 the son of a humble seller of plaster casts in New Street, 
 Covent Garden. When a child, he was such an invalid 
 that it was his custom to sit behind his father's shop 
 counter propped by pillows, amusing himself with 
 drawing and reading. A benevolent clergyman, the 
 Rev. Mr. Matthews, calling at the shop one day, saw 
 • Mr. Grate's " Memoir of the Life of Aiy Scheffer," p. 67. 
 9* 
 
202 Flaxmci/fbS First Commission. 
 
 » — — -* 
 
 the boy ti-ying to read a book, and on inquiring what 
 it was, found it to be a Cornelius Nepos, which his iar 
 ther had picked up for a few pence at a book-stall. 
 The gentleman, after some conversation with the boy, 
 said that was not the proper book for him to read, but 
 that he would bring him one. The next day he called 
 with translations of Homer and " Don Quixote," which 
 the boy proceeded to read with great avidity. His 
 mind was soon filled with the heroism which breathed 
 through the pages of the former, and, with the stucco 
 Ajaxes and Achilleses about him, ranged along the 
 shop shelves, the ambition took possession of him that 
 he too would design and embody in poetic forms those 
 majestic heroes. 
 
 Like all youthful efibrts, his first designs were crude. 
 The proud father "one day showed some of them to 
 Roubilliac the sculptor, who turned from them with a 
 contemptuous " pshaw 1" But the boy had the right 
 stuff in him ; he had industry and patience ; and he 
 continued to labor incessantly at his books and draw- 
 ings. He then tried his young powers in modelling 
 figures in plaster of Paris, wax, and clay. Some of 
 these early works are still preserved, not because of 
 their merit, but because they are curious as the first 
 healthy efforts of patient genius. It was long before 
 the boy could walk, and he only learnt to do so by 
 hobbling along upon crutches. At length he became 
 strong enough to walk without them. 
 
 The kind Mr. Matthews invited him to his house, 
 where his wife explained Homer and Milton to him. 
 They helped him also in his self-culture — giving him 
 lessons in Greek and Latin, the study of which he pros- 
 ecuted at home. By dint of patience and persever- 
 ance, his drawing improved so much that he obtained 
 a commission from a lady to execute six original draw- 
 inga 'n black chalk of subjects in Homer. His first 
 
inters the Royal Academy. 203 
 
 commission ! What an event in the artist's life ! A 
 surgeon's first fee, a lawyer's first retainer, a legisla- 
 tor's first speech, a singer's first appearance behind the 
 foot-lights, an author's first book, are not any of them 
 more full of interest to the aspirant for fame than the 
 artist's first commission. The boy at once proceeded 
 to execute the order, and he was both well praised and 
 well paid for his work. 
 
 At fifteen Flaxman entered a pupil at the Roya» 
 Academy. Notwithstanding his retiring disposition, 
 he soon became known among the students, and great 
 things were expected of him. Nor were their expect- 
 ations disappointed : in his fifteenth year he gained the 
 silver piize, and next year he became a candidate for 
 the gold one. Every body prophesied that he would 
 carry off the medal, for there was none who surpassed 
 him in ability and industry. Yet he lost it, and the 
 gold medal was adjudged to a pupil who was not af- 
 terwards heard of. This failure on the part of the 
 youth was really of service to him ; for defeats do not 
 long cast down the resolute-hearted, but only serve to 
 call forth their real powers. " Give me time," said he 
 to his father, " and I will yet produce works that the 
 Academy will be proud to recognize." He redoubled 
 his efforts, spared no pains, designed and modelled in- 
 cessantly, and made steady if not rapid progress. But 
 meanwhile poverty threatened his father's household ; 
 the plaster-cast trade yielded a very bare living ; and 
 young Flaxman, with resolute self-denial, curtailed his 
 hours of study, and devoted himself to helping his 
 father in the humble details of his business. He laid 
 aside his Homer to take up the plaster-trowel. He 
 was willing to work in the humblest department of the 
 trade, so that his father's family might be supported 
 and the wolf kept from the door. To this drudgery 
 of his art he served a long apprenticeship ; but it did 
 
204 Employed hy Wedgwood. 
 
 him good. It familiarized him with steady work, and 
 cultivated in him the spirit of patience. The discipline 
 may have been hard, but it was wholesome. 
 
 •Happily, young Flaxman's skill in design had reached 
 the knowledge of Josiah Wedgwood, who sought him 
 out for the purpose of employing him to design im- 
 proved patterns of china and earthenware. It may 
 seem a humble department of art for such a genius as 
 Flaxman to work in ; but it really was not so. An 
 artist may be laboring truly in his vocation while de- 
 signing a common teapot or water-jug. Articles in 
 daily use amongst the people, which are before their eyes 
 at every meal, may be made the vehicles of education 
 to all, and minister to their highest culture. The most 
 ambitious artist may thus confer a greater practical 
 benefit on his countrymen than by executing an elabo- 
 rate work which he may sell for thousands of pounds, 
 to be placed in some wealthy man's gallery Avhere it is 
 hidden away from public sight. Before Wedgwood's 
 Aime the designs which figured upon our china and 
 stoneware were hideous both in drawing and execu- 
 tion, and he determined to improve both. Flaxman did 
 his best to carry out the manufacturer's views. He 
 supplied him from time to time with models and de- 
 signs of various pieces of earthenware, the subjects of 
 which were principally from ancient verse and history. 
 Many of them are still in existence, and some are equal 
 in beauty and simplicity to his after-designs for mar- 
 ble. The celebrated Etruscan vases, specimens of which 
 were to be found in public museums and in the cabinets 
 of the curious, furnished him with the best examples of 
 form, and these he embellished with his own elegant 
 devices. " Stuart's Athens," then recently published, 
 furnished him with specimens of the purest-shaped 
 Greek utensils; of these he adopted the best, and 
 worked them into new shapes of elegance and beauty. 
 
FlxixmarCs Marriage. 205 
 
 Flaxman then saw that he was laboring in a great 
 work — no less than the promotion of popular educa- 
 tion ; and he was proud, in after-life, to allude to his 
 early labors in this walk, by which he was enabled at 
 the same time to cultivate his love of the beautiful, to 
 diffuse a taste for art among the people, and to replen- 
 ish his own purse, while he promoted the prosperity of 
 his friend and benefactor. 
 
 At length, in the year 1782, when twenty-seven 
 years of age, he quitted his father's roof and rented a 
 small house and studio in Wardour Street, Soho ; and 
 what was more, he married — Ann Denman was the 
 name of his wife — and a cheerful, bright-souled, noble 
 woman she was. He believed that in marrying her he 
 should be able to work with an intenser spiiit ; for, like 
 him, she had a taste for poetry and art ; and besides 
 was an enthusiastic admirer of her husband's genius. 
 Yet when Sir Joshua Reynolds — himself a bachelor — 
 met Flaxman shortly after his marriage, he said to him, 
 " So, Flaxman, I am told you are married ; if so, sir, I 
 tell you you are ruined for an artist." Flaxman went 
 straight home, sat down beside his wife, took her hand 
 in his, and said, " Ann, I am ruined for an artist." 
 "How so, John? How has it happened? and who has 
 done it ?" " It happened," he replied, " in the church, 
 and Ann Denman has done it." He then told her of 
 Sir Joshua's remark — whose opinion was well known, 
 and had often been expressed, that if students would 
 excel they must bring the whole powers of their mind 
 to bear upon their art, from the moment they rose until 
 they went to bed ; and also, that no man could be a 
 great artist unless he studied the gi-and works of Raf- 
 faelle, Michael Angelo, and others, at Rome and Flor- 
 ence. " And I," said Flaxman, drawing up his little 
 figure to its full height, "i" would be a great artist." 
 "And a great artist you shall be," said his wife, " and 
 
206 Flaxman and his Wife. 
 
 visit Rome too, if that be really necessary to make you 
 great." "But how?" asked Flaxman. "Work and 
 economizej" rejoined the brave wife; "I will never 
 have it said that Ann Denman ruined John Flaxman 
 for an artist." And so it was determined by the pair 
 that the journey to Rome was to be made when their 
 mepns would admit. " I will go to Rome," said Flax- 
 man, " and show the President that wedlock is for a 
 man's good rather than his harm ; and you, Ann, shall 
 accompany me." 
 
 Patiently and happily the affectionate couple plodded 
 on during five years in their humble little home in 
 Wardour Street, always with the long journey to Rome 
 before them. It was never lost sight of for a moment, 
 and not a penny was uselessly spent that could be saved 
 towards the necessary expenses. They said no word 
 to any one about their project; solicited no aid from the 
 Academy; but trusted only to their own patient labor 
 and love to pursue and achieve their object. During this 
 time Flaxman exhibited very few works. He could not 
 afford marble to experiment in original designs ; but he 
 obtained frequent commissions for monuments, by the 
 profits of which he maintained himself. He still worked 
 for Wedgwood, who was a prompt paymaster ; and, on 
 the whole, he was thriving, happy, and hopeful. His 
 local respectability was even such as to bring, local 
 honors and local work upon him, for he was elected 
 ,by the ratepayers to collect the watch-rate for the 
 Parish of St. Anne, when he might be seen going about 
 with an ink-bottle suspended from his button-hole, col- 
 lecting the money. 
 
 At length Flaxman and his wife having accumulated 
 a sufficient store of savings, set out for Rome. Arrived 
 there, he applied himself diligently to study ; maintain- 
 ing himself, like other poor artists, by making copies 
 from the antique. English visitors sought his studio, 
 
Flaxman at Borne. 207 
 
 and gave him commissions; and it was then that he 
 composed his beautiful designs illustrative of Homer, 
 ^schylus, and Dante. The price paid for them was 
 moderate — only fifteen shillings apiece ; but Flaxman 
 worked for art as well as money ; and the beauty of 
 the designs brought him other friends and patrons. He 
 executed Cupid and Aurora for the munificent Thomas 
 Hope, and the Fury of Athamas for the Earl of Bristol. 
 He then prepared to return to England, his taste im- 
 proved and cultivated by careful study ; but before he 
 left Italy the Academies of Florence and Carrai-a recog- 
 nized his merit by electing him a member. 
 
 His fame had preceded him to London, where he soon 
 found abundant employment. While at Rome he had 
 been commissioned to execute his famous monument in 
 memory of Lord Mansfield, and it was erected in the 
 North transept of Westminster Abbey shortly after his 
 return. It stands there in majestic grandeur, a monu- 
 ment to the genius of Flaxman himself — calm, simple, 
 and severe. No wonder that Banks, the sculptor, then 
 in the heydey of his fame, exclaimed, when he saw it, 
 " This little man cuts us all out !" 
 
 When the members of the Royal Academy heard of 
 Flaxman's return, and especially when they had an op- 
 portunity of seeing and admiring his portrait-statue 
 of Mansfield, they were eager to have him enrolled 
 among their number. He allowed his name to be pro- 
 posed in the candidates' list of associates, and was im- 
 mediately elected. Shortly after he appeared in an 
 entirely new character. The little boy who had begun 
 his studies behind the plaster-cast-seller's shop-counter 
 in New Street, Covent Garden, was now, a man of high 
 intellect and recognized supremacy in art, to instruct 
 students, in the character of Professor of Sculpture to 
 the Royal Academy ! And no man better deserved to 
 fill that distinguished office ; for none is so able to in- 
 
208 Francis Ohantrey, Carver. 
 
 struct others as he who, for himself and by his own 
 efforts, has learnt to grapple with and overcome diffi 
 culties. 
 
 After a long, peaceful, and happy life, Flaxman found 
 himself growing old. The loss which he sustained by 
 the death of his affectionate wife Ann was a severe 
 shock to him ; but he survived her several years, during 
 which he executed his celebrated " Shield of Achilles," 
 and his noble " Archangel Michael vanquishing Satan," 
 — perhaps his two greatest works. 
 • Chantrey was a more robust man ; somewhat rough, 
 but hearty in his demeanor ; proud of his successful 
 struggle with the difficulties which beset him in early 
 life ; and, above all, proud of his independence. He 
 was born a poor man's child, at Norton, near Sheffield. 
 His father dying when he was a mere boy, his mother 
 married again. Young Chantrey used to drive an ass 
 laden with milk-cans across its back into the neighbor- 
 ing town of Sheffield, and there serve his mother's cus- 
 tomers with milk. Such was the humble beginning of 
 his industrial career ; and it was by his own strength 
 that he rose fi-om that position, and achieved the highest 
 eminence as an artist. Not taking kindly to his step- 
 father, the boy was sent to trade, and was first placed 
 with a grocer in Sheffield. The business was very dis- 
 tasteful to him ; but, passing a carver's shop window 
 one day, his eye was attracted by the glittering articles 
 it contained, and, chai-med with the idea of being a car 
 ver, he begged to be released from the grocery busi- 
 ness with that object. His friends consented, and he 
 was bound apprentice to the carver and gilder for seven 
 years. His new master, besides being a carver in wood, 
 was also a dealer in prints and plaster models ; and 
 Chantrey at once set about imitating both, studying with 
 great industry and energy. All his spare hours were 
 devoted to drawing, modelling, and self-improvement, 
 
Francis Chantrey, Sculptor. 209 
 
 and he often carried his labors far into the night. Before 
 his apprenticeship was out — at the age of twenty-one — 
 he paid over to his master the whole wealth which he 
 was able to muster — a sum of £50 — to cancel his in- 
 dentures, determined to devote himself to the career of 
 an artist. He then made the best of his way to London, 
 and with characteristic good sense sought employment 
 as an assistant carver, studying painting and mod- 
 elling at his by-hours. Among the jobs on which he 
 was first employed asi a journeyman carver, was the 
 decoration of the dining-room of Mr. Rogers, the poet 
 — a room in which he was in after years a welcome vis- 
 itor ; and he usually took pleasure in pointing out his 
 early handywork to the guests whom he met at his 
 friend's table. 
 
 Returning to Sheffield on a professional visit, he ad» 
 vertised himself in, the local papers as a painter of por- 
 traits in crayons and miniatures, and also in oil. For 
 his first crayon portrait he was paid a guinea by a cut- 
 ler ; and for a portrait in oil, a confectioner paid him as 
 much as £5 and a pair of top-boots ! Chantrey was 
 soon in London again to study at the Royal Academy ; 
 and next time he returned to Sheffield he advertised 
 himself as ready to model plaster busts of his towns- 
 men, as well as paint portraits of them. He was even 
 selected to design a monument to a deceased vicar of 
 the town, and executed it to the general satisfaction. 
 When in London he used a room over a stable as a stu- 
 dio, and there he modelled his first original work for 
 exhibition. It was a gigantic head of Satan. Towards 
 the close of Chantrey's life, a friend passing through his 
 studio was struck by this model lying in a corner. 
 " That head," said the sculptor, " was the first thing 
 that I did after I came to London. I worked at it in a 
 garret with a paper cap on my head; and as I could 
 then afibrd only one candle, I stuck that one in my cap 
 
210 Francis Charitrey, Sculptor. 
 
 that it might move along with me, and give me light 
 whichever way I turned." Flaxman saw and admired 
 this head at the Academy Exhibition, and recommend- 
 ed Chantrey for the execution of the busts of four ad- 
 mirals, required for the Naval Asylum at Greenwich. 
 This commission led to others, and painting was given 
 up. But for ei'ght years before, he had not earned £5 
 by his modelling. His famous head of Home Tooke 
 was such a success that, according to his own account, 
 it brought him commissions amounting to £12,000. 
 
 Chantrey had now succeeded, but he had worked 
 hard, and fairly earned his good fortune. He was se- 
 lected from amongst sixteen competitors to execute 
 the statue of George HI. for the city of London. A few 
 years later, he produced the exquisite monument of the 
 Sleeping Children, now in Lichfield Cathedral — a work 
 of great tenderness and beauty ; and thenceforward his 
 career was one of increasing honor, fame, and prosperi- 
 ty. His patience, industry, and steady perseverance 
 were the means by which he achieved his greatness. 
 Nature endowed him with genius, and his sound sense 
 enabled him to employ the precious gift as a blessing. 
 He was prudent and shrewd, like the men amongst 
 whom he was born ; the pocket-book which accompa- 
 nied him on his Italian tour containing mingled notes on 
 art, records of daily expenses, and the current prices 
 of marble. His tastes were simple, and he made his 
 finest subjects great by the mere force of simplicity. 
 His statue of Watt, in Handsworth church, seems to us 
 the very consummation of art ; yet it is perfectly artless 
 and simple. His generosity to brother artists in need 
 was splendid, but quiet and unostentatious. He left 
 the principal part of his fortune to the Royal Academy 
 for the promotion of British art. 
 
 The same honest and persistent industry was through- 
 out distinctive of the career cf David Wilkie. The son 
 
David Winders Boyhood. 2 1 1 
 
 of a Scotch minister, he gave early indications of an 
 artistic turn ; and though he was a negligent and inapt 
 scholar, he was a sedulous drawer of faces and figui-es. 
 A silent boy, he already displayed that quiet concen- 
 trated energy of character wliich distinguished him 
 through life. He was always on the look-out for an op- 
 .portnnity to draw — and the walls of the manse, or the 
 smooth sand by the river side, were alike convenient 
 for his purpose. Any sort of tool would serve him; 
 like Giotto, he found a pencil in a burnt stick, a pre- 
 pared canvas in any smooth stone, and the subject for a 
 picture in every ragged mendicant he met. When he 
 visited a house, he generally left his mark on the walls 
 as an indication of his presence, sometimes to the dis- 
 gust of cleanly housewives. In short, notwithstanding 
 the aversion of his father, the minister, to the " sinful " 
 profession of painting, Wilkie's strong propensity was 
 not to be thwarted,' and he became an artist ; working 
 his way manfully up the steep of difficulty. Though 
 rejected on his first application as a candidate for ad- 
 mission to the Scottish Academy, at Edinburgh, on ac- 
 count of the rudeness and inaccuracy of his introducto- 
 ry specimens, he persevered in producing better, until 
 he was admitted. But his progress was slow. He ap- 
 plied himself diligently to the drawing of the human 
 figure, and held on with the determination to succeed, 
 as if with a resolute confidence in the result. He dis- . 
 played none of the eccentric humor and fitful applica- 
 tion of many youths who conceive themselves geniuses, 
 but kept up the routine of steady application to such an 
 extent that he himself was aftei-wards accustomed to at- 
 tribute his success to his dogged perseverance rather 
 than to any higher innate power. "The single ele- 
 ment," he said, " in all the progressive movements of 
 my pencil was persevering industry." At Edinburgh 
 he gained a few premiums, thought of turning his at- 
 
212 David Wilhie: His Industry. 
 
 tention to portrait-painting, with a view to its highei 
 and more certain remuneration, but eventually went 
 boldly into the line in which he earned his fame — and 
 painted his Pitlessie Fair. What was bolder still, he 
 determined to proceed to London, on account of ita 
 presenting so much wider a field for study and work ; 
 and the poor Scotch lad arrived in town, and painted, 
 his Village Politicians while living in a humble lodging 
 on eighteen shillings a week. 
 
 Notwithstanding the success of this picture, and the 
 commissions which followed it, Wilkie long continued 
 poor. The prices which his works realized were not 
 great, for he bestowed upon them so much time and 
 labor, that his earnings continued comparatively small 
 for many yeai'S. Every picture was carefully studied 
 and elaborated beforehand ; nothing was struck off at 
 a heat ; many occupied him for years — touching, re- 
 touching, and improving them until they finally passed 
 out of his hands. As with Reynolds, his motto was 
 "Work! work! work!" and, like him, he expressed 
 great dislike for talking artists. Talkers may sow, but 
 the silent reap. " Let us be doing something," was his 
 oblique mode of rebuking the loquacious and admonish- 
 ing the idle. He once related to his friend Constable 
 that when he studied at the Scottish Academy, Graham, 
 the master of it, was accustomed to say to the students, 
 in the words of Reynolds, "If you have genius* indus- 
 try will improve it ; if you have none, industry will 
 supply its place." "So," said Wilkie, "I was deter- 
 mined to be very industrious, for I knew I had no 
 genius." He also told Constable that when Linnell 
 and Burnett, his fellow-students in London, were talk- 
 ing about art, he always contrived to get as close to 
 them as he could, to hear all they said, " for," said he, 
 " they know a great deal, and I know very little." 
 This was said with perfect sincerity, for Wilkie was 
 
WilTek—Etty. 213 
 
 habitually modest. One of the first things that he did 
 with the sum of thirty pounds which he obtained from 
 Lord Mansfield for his Village Politicians, was to buy 
 a present — of bonnets, shawls, and dresses' — for his 
 mother and sister at home; though but little able to 
 afford it at the time. Wilkie's early poverty had 
 trained him in habits of strict economy, which were, 
 however, consistent with a noble liberality, as appears 
 from sundry passages in the Autobiography of Abra- 
 ham Raimbach the engraver. 
 
 William Etty was another notable instance of un- 
 flagging industry and indomitable perseverance in art. 
 His father was a gingerbread and spice maker at York, 
 and his mother — a woman of considerable force and 
 originality of character — was the daughter of a rope- 
 maker. The boy early displayed a love of drawing, 
 covering walls, floors, and tables with specimens of his 
 skill ; his first crayon being a farthing's worth of chalk, 
 and this giving place to a piece of coal or a bit of 
 charred stick. His mother, knowing nothing of art, 
 put the boy apprenticed to a trade — that of a printer. 
 I3ut in his leisure hours he went on with the practice 
 of drawing ; and when his time was out he determined 
 to follow his bent — ^he would be a painter and nothing 
 else. Fortunately his uncle and elder brother were 
 able and willing to help him on in his ne\f career, and 
 they provided him with the means of entering as pupil 
 at the Royal Academy. We observe, from Leslie's 
 Autobiography, that Etty was looked upon by his fel- 
 low-students as a worthy but dull, plodding person, 
 who would never distinguish himself But he had in 
 him the divine faculty of work, and diligently plodded 
 his way upward to eminence in the highest walks of art. 
 
 Many artists have had to encounter privations which 
 have tried their courage and endurance to the utmost 
 before they succeeded. What number may have sunk 
 
214 Martin — Pugin. 
 
 under them we can never know. Martin encountered 
 difficulties in the course of his career such as perhaps 
 fall to the lot of few. More than once he found him- 
 self on the verge of starvation while engaged on his 
 first great picture. It is related of him that on one 
 occasion he found himself reduced to his last shilling — 
 a bright shilling — which he had kept because of its 
 very brightness, but at length he found it necessary to 
 exchange it for bread. He went to a baker's shop, 
 bought a loaf, and Avas taking it away, when the baker 
 snatched it from him, and tossed back the shilling to 
 the starving painter. The bright shilling had failed 
 him in his hour of need — it was a bad one ! Return^ 
 ing to his lodgings, he rummaged his trunk for some re- 
 maining crust to satisfy his hunger. Upheld through- 
 out by the victorious power of enthusiasm, he pursued 
 his design with unsubdued energy. He had the cour- 
 age to work on and to wait ; and Avhen, a few days af- 
 ter, he found an opportunity to exhibit his picture, he 
 was from that time famous. Like many other great 
 artists, his life proves that, in despite of outward cir- 
 cumstances, genius, aided by industry, will be its own 
 protector, and that fame, though she comes late, will 
 never ultimately refuse her favors to real merit. 
 
 The most careful discipline and training after academ- 
 ic method* will fail in making an artist, unless he 
 himself take an active part in the work. Like every 
 highly cultivated man, he must be mainly self-educated. 
 When Pugin, who was brought up in his father's office, 
 had learnt all that he could learn of architecture accord- 
 ing to the usual formulas, he still found that he had 
 learned but little ; and that he must begin at the be:' 
 ginning, and pass through the discipline of labor. 
 Young Pugin accordingly hired himself out as a com- 
 mon carpenter at Covent Garden Theati-e — first work-, 
 ing under the stage, then behind the flys, then upon tho 
 
Pugin— George Kemp. 215 
 
 stage itself. He thus acquired a familiarity with work, 
 and cultivated an architectural taste, to which the di- 
 versity of the mechanical employment about a large 
 operatic establishment is peculiarly favorable. When 
 the theatre closed for the season, he worked a sailing- 
 ship between London and some of the French ports, 
 carrying on at the same time a profitable trade. At 
 every opportunity he would land and make drawings 
 of any old building, and especially of any ecclesiastical 
 structure which fell in his way. Afterwards he would 
 make special journeys to the Continent for the same 
 purpose, and returned home laden with drawings. 
 Thus he plodded and labored on, making sure of the 
 excellence and distinction which he eventually achieved. 
 A similar illustration of plodding industry in the 
 same walk is presented in the career of George Kemp, 
 the architect of the beautiful Scott Monument at Ed- 
 inburgh. He was the son of a poor shepherd, who pur- 
 sued his calling on the southern slope of the Pentland 
 Hills. Amidst that pastoral solitude the boy had no 
 opportunity of enjoying the contemplation of works of 
 art. It happened, however, that in his tenth year he 
 was sent on a message to Roslin, by the farmer for 
 whom his father herded sheep, and the sight of the 
 beautiful castle and chapel there seems to have made a 
 vivid and enduring impression on his mind. Probably 
 to enable him to indulge his love of architectural con- 
 struction, the boy besought his father to let him be a 
 joiner ; and he was accordingly put apprentice to a 
 neighboring village carpenter. Having served his time, 
 he went to Galashiels to seek worjs:. As he was plod- 
 ding along the valley of the Tweed with his tools upon 
 his back, a carriage overtook him near Elibank Tower ; 
 ' and the coachman, doubtless at the suggestion of his 
 master, who was seated inside, having asked the youth 
 how far he had to walk, and learning that he was on 
 
216 George Kemp. 
 
 his way to Galashiels, invited him to mount the box 
 beside him, and thu3 to ride thither. It turned out 
 that the kindly gentleman inside was no other than 
 Sir Walter Scott, then travelling on his ofScial duty as 
 Sheriff of Selkirkshire. Whilst working at Galashiels, 
 Kemp had frequent oppoi'tunities of visiting Melrose, 
 Dryburgh, and Jedburgh Abbeys, which he studied 
 carefully. Inspired by his love of architecture, he 
 worked his way as a carpenter over the greater part 
 of the north of England, never omitting an opportunity 
 of inspecting and making sketches of any fine Gothic 
 building. On one occasion, when working in Lanca- 
 shire, he walked fifty miles to York, spent a week in 
 carefully examining the Minster, and returned in like 
 manner on foot. We next find him in Glasgow, where 
 he remained four years, studying the fine cathedral 
 there during his spare time. He returned to England 
 again, this time working his way further south ; study- 
 ing Canterbury, Winchester, Tintern, and other well- 
 known structures. In 1824 he formed the design of 
 travelling over Europe with the same object, support- 
 ing himself by his trade. Reaching Boulogne, he pro- 
 ceeded by Abbeville and Beauvais to Paris, spending a 
 few weeks making drawings and studies at each place. 
 His skill as a mechanic, and especially his knowledge 
 of mill-work, readily secui'ed him employment where- 
 ever he went ; and he usually chose the site of his 
 employment in the neighborhood of some fine old 
 Gothic structure, in studying which he occupied his 
 leisure. After a year's working, travel, and study 
 abroad, he returned to Scotland. He continued his 
 studies, and became a proficient in drawing and per- 
 spective : Melrose was his favorite ruin ; and he pro- 
 duced several elaborate drawings of the building, one 
 of which, exhibiting it in a " restored " state, wag after- 
 wards engraved. He also obtained employmenV: as a 
 
Oeorge Kemp — John Gibson. 217 
 
 modeller of Architectural designs ; and made drawings 
 for a work begun by an Edinburgh engraver, after the 
 plan of Britton's " Cathedral Antiquities." This was a 
 task congenial to his tastes, and he labored at it with 
 an enthusiasm which insured its rapid advance ; walk- 
 ing on foot for the purpose over half Scotland, and liv- 
 ing as an ordinary mechanic, whilst executing drawings 
 which would have done credit to the best masters in 
 the art. The projector of the work having died sud- 
 denly, the publication was however stopped, and Kemp 
 sought other employment. Few knew of the genius 
 of this man — for he was exceedingly taciturn and ha- 
 bitually modest — when the Committee of the Scott Mon- 
 ument offered a prize for the best design. The com- 
 petitors were numerous — including some of the great- 
 est names in classical architecture ; but the design unan- 
 imously selected was that of George Kemp, who was 
 working at Kilwinning Abbey in Ayrshire, many miles 
 off, when the letter reached him intimating the decis- 
 ion of the committee. Poor Kemp ! / Shortly after 
 this event he met an untimely death, and did not live 
 to see the first result of his indefatigable industry and 
 self-culture embodied in stone — one of the most beauti- 
 ful and appropriate memorials ever erected to literary 
 genius. 
 
 John Gibson was another artist full of a genuine en- 
 thusiasm and love for his art, which placed him high 
 above those sordid temptations which urge meaner 
 natures to make time the measure of profit. He was 
 born at Gyffn, near Conway, in North Wales — the son 
 of a gardener. He early showed indications of his tal- 
 ent by the carvings in wood which he made by meant 
 of a common pocket-knife ; and his father, noting the 
 direction of his talent, sent him to Liverpool and 
 bound him apprentice to a cabinet-maker and wood- 
 carver. He rapidly improved at his trade, and some 
 
 10 
 
218 Robert Thorhurn. 
 
 of his carvings were much admired. He was thus 
 naturally led to sculpture, and when eighteen years 
 old he modelled a small figure of Time in wax, which 
 attracted considerable notice. The Messrs. Franceys, 
 sculptors, of Liverpool, having purchased the boy's in- 
 dentures, took him as their apprentice for six years, 
 during which his genius displayed itself in many orig- 
 inal works. From thence he proceeded to London, and 
 afterwards to Rome ; and his fame became European. 
 
 Robert Thorburn, the Royal Academician, like John 
 Gibson, was born of poor parents. His father was a 
 shoemaker at Dumfries. Besides Robert there were 
 two other sons; one of whom is a skillful carver in 
 wood. One day a lady called at the shoemaker's, and 
 found Robert, then a mere boy, engaged in drawing 
 upon a stool which served him for a table. She exam- 
 ined his work, and observing his abilities, interested 
 herself in obtaining for him some employment in draw- 
 ing, and enlisted in his behalf the services of others 
 who could assist him in prosecuting the study of art. 
 The boy was diligent, pains-taking, staid, and silent, 
 mixing little with his companions, and forming but 
 few intimacies. About the year 1830, some gentlemen 
 of the town provided him with the means of proceed- 
 ing to Edinburgh, where he was admitted a student 
 at the Scottish Academy. There he had the advan- 
 tage of studying under competent masters, and the 
 progress which he made was rapid. From Edinburgh 
 he removed to London, where, we understand, he had 
 the advantage of being introduced to notice under the 
 patronage of the Duke of Buccleuch. We need scarce- 
 ly say, however, that of whatever use patronage may 
 have been to Thorburn in giving him an introduction 
 to the best circles, patronage of no kind could have 
 made him the great artist that he unquestionably is, 
 without native genius and diligent application. 
 
Noel Paton — James /Sharpies. 219 
 
 Noel Paton, the well-known painter, began his artist- 
 ic career at Dunfermline and Paisley, as a drawer of 
 patterns for table-cloths and muslin embroidered by 
 hand; meanwhile working diligently at higher sub- 
 jects, including the drawing of the human figure. He 
 was, like Turner, ready to turn his hand to any kind of 
 work, and in 1840, when a mere youth, we find him 
 engaged, among his other labors, in illustrating the 
 " Renfrewshire Annual." He worked his way step by 
 step, slowly yet surely; but he remained unknown 
 until the exhibition of the prize cartoons painted for 
 the houses of Parliament, when his picture of the Spirit 
 of Religion (for Avhich he obtained one of the first 
 prizes) revealed him to the world as a genuine artist ; 
 and the works which he has since exhibited — such as the 
 " Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania," " Home," and 
 " The bluidy Tryste " — have shown a steady advance 
 in artistic power and culture. 
 
 Another striking exemplification of perseverance and 
 industry in the cultivation of art in humble life is pre- 
 sented in the career of James Sharpies, a working 
 blacksmith at Blackburn. He was born at Wakefield 
 in Yorkshire, in 1825, one of a family of thirteen chil- 
 dren. His father was a working iron-founder, and re- 
 moved to Bury to follow his business. The boys re- 
 ceived no school education, but were all sent to work 
 as soon as they were able; and at about ten James 
 was placed in a foundery, where he was employed for 
 about two years as smithy-boy. After that he was 
 sent into the engine-shop where his father worked as 
 engine-smith. The boy's employment was to heat and 
 carry rivets for the boiler-makers. Though his hours 
 of labor were very long — often from six in the morn- 
 ing until eight at night — his father contrived to give 
 him some little teaching after working hours ; and it 
 was thus that he partially learned his letters. An in- 
 
220 James Sharpies. 
 
 cident occurred in the course of liis employment among 
 the boiler-makers, which first awakened in him the de- 
 sire to learn drawing. He had occasionally been em- 
 ployed by the foreman to hold the chalked line with 
 which he made the designs of boilers upon the floor of 
 tho workshop ; and on such occasions the foreman 
 was accustomed to hold the line, and direct the boy to 
 make the necessary dimensions. James soon became 
 80 expert at this as to be of considerable service to the 
 foreman ; and at his leisure hours at home his great 
 delight was to practise drawing designs of boilers upon 
 his mother's floor. On one occasion, when a female 
 relative was expected from Manchester to pay the fam- 
 ily a visit, and the house had been made as decent as 
 possible for her reception, the boy, on coming in from 
 the foundery in the evening, began his usual operations 
 upon the floor. He had proceeded some way with his 
 design of a large boiler in chalk, when his mother ar- 
 rived with the visitor, and to her dismay, found the 
 boy unwashed, and the floor chalked all over. The 
 relative, however, professed to be pleased with tho 
 boy's industry, praised his design, and recommended 
 his mother to provide " the little sweep," as she called 
 him, with paper and pencils. 
 
 Encouraged by his elder brother, he began to prac- 
 tise figure and landscape drawing, making copies of 
 lithographs, but as yet without any knowledge of 
 the rules of perspective and the principles of light 
 and shade. He worked on, however, and gradually 
 acquired expertness in copying. At sixteen, he enter- 
 ed the Bury Mechanics' Institution in order to attend 
 the drawing-class, taught by an amateur who followed 
 the trade of a barber. There he had a lesson a week 
 during three months. The teacher recommended him 
 to obtain from the library Burnet's " Practical Treatise 
 on Painting ;" but as he could not yet read with ease, 
 
James Sharpies. 221 
 
 he was under the necessity of getting his mother, and 
 sometimes his elder brother, to read passages from the 
 book for him while he sat by and listened. Feeling 
 hampered by his ignorance of the art of reading, and 
 eager to master the contents of Burnet's book, he 
 ceased attending the drawing-class at the Institute 
 after the first quarter, and devoted himself to learning 
 reading and writing at home. In this he soon succeed- 
 ed ; and when he again entered the Institute and took 
 out " Burnet " a second time, he was not only able to 
 read it, but to make written extracts for future use. 
 So ardently did he study the volume, that he used to 
 rise at four o'clock in the morning to read it and copy 
 out f)assages ; after which he went to the foundery at 
 six, worked until six and sometimes eight in the even- 
 ing ; and returned home to enter with fresh zest upon 
 the study of Burnet, which he continued often until 
 a late hour. Parts of his nights were also occupied 
 in drawing and making copies of drawings. On one 
 of these — a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's " Last Sup- 
 per " — he spent an entire night. He went to bed, in* 
 deed, but his mind was so engrossed with the subject 
 that he could not sleep, and rose again to resume his 
 pencil. 
 
 He next proceeded to try his hand at painting in oil, 
 for which purpose he procured some canvas from a dra- 
 per, stretched it on a frame, coated it over with white 
 lead, and began painting on it with colors bought from 
 a house-painter. But his work proved a total failure ; 
 for the canvas was rough and knotty, and the paint 
 would not dry. In his extremity he applied to his old 
 teacher, the barber, from whom he first learat that pre- 
 pared canvas was to be had, and that there were colors 
 and varnishes made for the special purpose of oil-paint- 
 ing. As soon, therefore, as his means would allow, he 
 bought a small stock of the necessary articles and ber 
 
222 James Sharpies — Autobiography. 
 
 gan afresh — his amateur master showing him how to 
 paint ; and the pupil succeeded so well that he excelled 
 the master's copy. His first picture was a copy from 
 an engraving called " Sheep-shearing " and was after- 
 wards sold by him for half-a-crowu. Aided by a 
 shilling Guide to Oil-painting, he went on working at 
 his leisure hours, and gradually acquired a better knowl- 
 edge of his materials. He made his own easel and pal- 
 ette, palette-knife, and paint-chest ; he bought his paint, 
 brushes, and canvas, as he could raise the money by 
 vrorking over-time. This was the slender fund which 
 his parents consented to allow him for the purpose ; the 
 burden of supporting a very large family precluding 
 them from doing more. Often he would walk to Man- 
 chester and back in the evenings to buy two or three 
 shillings' worth of paint and canvas, returning almost 
 at midnight, after his eighteen miles' walk, sometimes 
 wet through and completely exhausted, but borne up 
 throughout by his inexhaustible hope and invincible 
 determination. The further progress of the self-taught 
 artist is best narrated in his, own words, as communi- 
 cated by him in a letter to the author : — 
 
 " The next pictures I painted," he says, " were a 
 Landscape by Moonlight, a Fruit-piece, and one or two 
 others ; after which I conceived the idea of painting 
 'The Forge.' I had for some time thought about it, 
 but had not attempted to embody the conception in a 
 drawing. I now, however, made a sketch of the subject 
 upon paper, and then proceeded to paint it on canvas. 
 The picture simply represents the interior of a large 
 workshop such as I have been accustomed to work in, 
 although not of any particular shop. It is, therefore, 
 to this extent, an original conception. Having made 
 an outline of the subject, I found that, before I could 
 proceed with it successfully, a knowledge of anatomy 
 was indispensable to enable me accurately to delineate 
 
James Sharpies— "■ The Forge." 223 
 
 the muscles of the figures. My brother Peter came to 
 my assistance at this juncture, and kindly purchased 
 for me Flaxman's 'Anatomical Studies' — a work alto- 
 gether beyond my means at the time, for it cost twen- 
 ty-four shillings. This book I looked upon as a great 
 treasure, and I studied it laboriously, rising at three 
 o'clock in the morning to draw after it, and occasional- 
 ly getting my brother Peter to stand for me as a model 
 at that untimely hour. Although I gradually improved 
 myself by this practice, it was some time before I felt 
 sufficient confidence to go on with my picture. I also 
 felt hampered by my want of knowledge of perspective, 
 which I endeavored to remedy by carefully studying 
 Brook Taylor's ' Principles ;' and shortly after I re- 
 sumed my painting. While engaged in the study of 
 perspective at home, I used to apply for and obtain 
 leave to work at the heavier kinds of smith-work at the 
 foundery, and for this reason — the time required for 
 heating the heaviest iron work is so much longer than 
 that required for heating the lighter, that it enabled 
 me to secure a number of spare minutes in the course 
 of the day, which I carefully employed in making dia- 
 grams in perspective upon the sheet-iron casing in front 
 of the hearth at which I worked." 
 
 Thus assiduously working and studying, James Shar- 
 pies steadily advanced in his knowledge of the prin- 
 ciples of art, and acquired greater facility in its prac- 
 tice. Some eighteen months after the expiry of his ap- 
 prenticeship he painted a portrait of his father, which 
 attracted considerable notice in the town ; as also did 
 the picture of " The Forge," which he finished soon af- 
 ter. His success in porti'ait-painting obtained for him 
 a commission from the foreman of the shop to paint a 
 family group, and Sharpies executed it so well that the 
 foreman not only paid him the agreed price of eighteen 
 pounds, but thirty shillings to boot. While engaged 
 
224 James Sharpies — Learns Engraving. 
 
 on this group he ceased to work at the foundery, and he 
 had thoughts of giving up his trade altogether and de- 
 voting himself exclusively to painting. He proceeded 
 to paint several pictures, amongst others a head of 
 Christ, an original conception, life-size, and a view of 
 Bury ; but not obtaining sufficient employment at por- 
 traits to occupy his time, or give him the prospect of a 
 steady income, he had the good sense to resume his 
 leather apron, and go on working at his honest trade of 
 a blacksmith ; employing his leisure hours in engraving 
 his picture of " The Forge," since published. He was 
 induced to commence the engraving by the following 
 circumstance : A Manchester picture-dealer, to whom 
 he showed the painting, let drop the observation, that 
 in the hands of a skillful engraver it would make a very 
 good print. Sharpies immediately conceived the idea 
 of engraving it himself, though altogether ignorant of 
 the art. The difficulties which he encountered and suc- 
 cessfully overcame in carrying out his project are thus 
 described by himself: — 
 
 " I had seen an advertisement of a Sheffield steel- 
 plate maker, giving a list of the prices at whicli he sup- 
 plied plates of various sizes, and, fixing upon one of 
 suitable dimensions, I remitted the amount, together 
 with a small additional sum for which I requested him 
 to send me a few engraving tools. I could not specify 
 the articles wanted, for I did not then know any thing 
 about the process of engraving. However, there duly 
 arrived with the plate three or four gravers and an 
 etching needle ; the latter I spoiled before I knew its 
 use. While working at the plate, the Amalgamated 
 Society of Engineers offered a premium for the best de- 
 sign for an emblematical picture, for which I deter- 
 mined to compete, and I was so fortunate -as to win 
 the prize. Shortly after this I removed to Blackburn, 
 where I obtained employment at Messrs. Yates's, en- 
 
His Difficulties. 225 
 
 gineers, as an engine-smith ; and continued to employ 
 my leisure time in drawing, painting, and engraving, as 
 before. With the engraving I made but very slow 
 progress, owing to the difficulties I experienced from 
 not possessing proper tools. I then determined to trj 
 to make some that would suit my purpose, and aftei 
 several failures I succeeded in making many that I have 
 used in the course of my engraving. I was also great- 
 ly at a loss for want of a proper magnifying glass, and 
 part of the plate was executed with no other assistance 
 of this sort than what my father's spectacles aflTorded, 
 though I afterwards succeeded in obtaining a proper 
 magnifier, which was of the utmost use to me. An in- 
 cident occurred while I was engraving the plate, which 
 had almost caused me to abandon it altogether. It 
 sometimes happened that I was obliged to lay it aside 
 for a considerable time, when other work pressed ; and 
 in order to guard it against rust, I was accustomed to 
 rub over the graven parts with oil. But on examining 
 the plate after one of such intervals, I found that the 
 oil had become a dark sticky substance extremely diffi- 
 cult to get out. I tried to pick it out with a needle, 
 but found that it would almost take as much time as to 
 engrave the parts afresh. I was in great despair at 
 this, but at length hit upon the expedient of boiling it 
 in water containing soda, and afterwards rubbing the 
 engraved parts Avith a tooth-brush ; and to my delight 
 found the plan succeeded perfectly. My gi-eatest diffi- 
 culties now over, patience and perseverance were all 
 that were needed to bring my labors to a successful is- 
 sue. I had neither advice nor assistance from any one 
 in finishing the plate. If, therefore, the work possess 
 any merit, I can claim it as my own ; and if in its ac- 
 complishment I have contributed to show what can be 
 done by persevering industry and determination, it is 
 all the honor I wish to lay claim to." 
 
 10* 
 
226 James Sharpies — Domestic Life. 
 
 It woulfl be beside our purpose to enter upon any 
 criticism of " The Forge " as an engraving ; its merits 
 having been already fully recognized by the art jour- 
 nals. The execution of the work occupied Sharples's 
 leisure evening hours during a period of five years ; 
 and it was only when he took the plate to the printer 
 that he for the first time saw an engraved plate pro- 
 duced by any other man. To this unvarnished picture 
 of industry and genius, we add one other trait, and it 
 is a domestic one. " I have been married seven years,'' 
 says he, " and during that time my greatest pleasure, 
 after I have finished my daily labor at the foundery, has 
 been to resume my pencil or graver, frequently until a 
 late hour of the evening, my wife meanwhile sitting by 
 m.y side and reading to me from some interesting 
 book" — a simple but beautiful testimony to the thor- 
 ough common sense as well as the genuine right-heart- 
 edness of this most interesting and deserving work- 
 man. 
 
 The same industry and application which we have 
 found to be necessary in order to acquire excellence in 
 painting and sculpture, are equally required in the sis- 
 ter art of music — the one being the poetry of form and 
 color, the other of the sounds of nature. Handel was 
 an indefatigable and constant worker ; he was never 
 cast down by defeat, but his energy seemed to increase 
 the more that adversity struck him. When a prey to 
 his mortifications as an insolvent debtor, he did not 
 give way for a moment, but in one year produced his 
 "Saul," "Israel," the music for Dryden's "Ode," his 
 "Twelve Grand Concertos," and the opera of" Jupiter 
 in Argos," among the finest of his works. As his bi- 
 ographer says of him., " He braved every thing, and, by 
 his unaided self, accomplished the work of twelve 
 men," . 
 
 Haydn, speaking of his art, said, " It consists in tak- 
 
Industry of Musicians. 22" 
 
 ing up a subject and pursuing it." " Work," said Mo 
 zart, "is my chief pleasure." Beethoven's favorite 
 maxim was, " The barriers are not erected which can 
 say to aspiring talents and industry, ' Thus far and no 
 farther.' " When Moscheles submitted his score of 
 " Fidelio " for the pianoforte to Beethoven, the latter 
 found written at the bottom of the last page, " Finis, 
 with God's help." Beethoven immediately wrote un- 
 derneath, " O man ! help thyself !" This was the motto 
 of his artistic life. John Sebastian Bach said of him- 
 self, " I was industrious ; whoever is equally sedulous, 
 will be equally successful." But there is no doubt 
 that Bach was born with a passion for music, which 
 ■formed the mainspring of his industry, and was the 
 true secret of his success. When a mei-e youth, his 
 elder brother, wishing to turn his abilities in another 
 direction, desti"oyed a collection of studies which the 
 young Sebastian, being denied candles, had copied by 
 moonlight ; proving the strong natural bent of the 
 boy's genius. Of Meyerbeer, Bayle thus wrote from 
 Milan, in 1820 : — "He is a man of some talent, but no 
 genius ; he lives solitary, working fifteen hours a day 
 at music." Years passed, and Meyerbeer's hard work 
 fully brought out his genius, as displayed in his " Rob- 
 erto," " Huguenots," " Proph6te," and other works, 
 confessedly amongst the greatest operas which have 
 been produced in modern times. 
 
 Although musical composition is not an art in which 
 Englishmen have as yet greatly distinguished them- 
 selves, their energies having for the most part taken 
 other and more practical directions, we are not without 
 native illustrations of the power of perseverance in this 
 special pursuit. Arne was an upholsterer's son, intend- 
 ed by his father for the legal profession ; but his love 
 of music was so great, that he could not be withheld 
 from pursuing it. While engaged in an attorney's of' 
 
228 Arne — Jacfcson. 
 
 fice, his means were very limited, but, to gratify his 
 tastes, he was accustomed to borrow a livery and go 
 into the gallery of the Opera, then appropriated to do- 
 mestics. Unknown to his father he made great prog- 
 ress with the violin, and the first knowledge his father 
 had of the circumstance was when accidentally calling 
 at the house of a neighboring gentleman, to his sur- 
 prise and consternation he found his son playing the 
 leading instrument with a party of musicians. This 
 incident decided the fate of Arne. His father offered 
 no further opposition to his wishes ; and the world 
 thereby lost a lawyer, but gained a musician of much 
 taste and delicacy of feeling, who added many valuable 
 works to our stores of English music. 
 
 The career of the late William Jackson, author of 
 " The Deliverance of Israel," an oratorio which has been 
 successfully performed in the principal towns of his na- 
 tive county of York, furnishes an interesting illustra- 
 tion of the triumph of perseverance over difficulties in 
 the pursuit of musical science. He was a son of a mil- 
 ler at Masham, a little town situated in the valley of 
 the Yore, in the north-west corner of Yorkshire. 
 Musical taste seems to have been hei-editary in the 
 family, for his father played the fife in the band of the 
 Masham Volunteers, and was a singer in the parish 
 choir. His grandfather also was leading singer and ring- 
 er at Masham Church ; and one of the boy's earliest mu- 
 sical treats was to be present at the bell-pealing on 
 Sunday mornings. During the service, his wonder 
 was still more excited by the organist's perform- 
 ance on the barrel-organ, the doors of which were 
 thrown open behind to let the sound fully into the 
 church, by which the stops, pipes, barrels, staples, key- 
 board, and jacks, were fully exposed, to the wonder- 
 ment of the little boys sitting in the gallery behind, 
 and to none more than our young musician. At eight 
 
A Village Musician. 229 
 
 years of age he began to play upon his father's old fife, 
 which, however, would not sound D ; but his mother 
 remedied the difiiculty by buying for him a one-keyed 
 flute ; and shortly after, a gentleman of the neighbor- 
 hood presented him with a flute with four silver keys. 
 As the boy made no progress with his " book-learning," 
 being fonder of cricket, fives, and boxing than of his 
 school lessons — the village schoolmaster giving him up 
 as " a bad job " — his parents sent him oS' to a school at 
 Pateley Bridge. While there he found congenial so- 
 ciety in a club of village choral singers at Brighouse 
 Gate, and with them he learnt the sol-fa-ing gamut on 
 the old English plan. He was thus well drilled in the 
 reading of music, in which he soon became a proficient. 
 His progress astonished the club, and he returned home 
 full of musical ambition. He now learnt to play upon 
 his father's old piano, but with little melodious result ; 
 and he became eager to possess a finger-organ, but had 
 no means of procuring one. About this time, a neigh- 
 boring parish clerk had purchased, for an insignificant 
 sum, a small disabled barrel-organ, which had gone the 
 .circuit of the northern counties with a show. The 
 clerk tried to revive the tones of the instrument, but 
 failed ; at last he bethought him that he would try the 
 skill of young Jackson, who had succeeded in making 
 some alterations and improvements in the hand-organ 
 of the parish church. He accordingly brought it to 
 the lad's house in a donkey cart, and in a short time 
 the instrument was repaired, and played over its old 
 tunes again, greatly to the owner's satisfaction. 
 
 The thought now haunted the youth that he could 
 make a barrel-organ, and he determined to do so. His 
 father and he set to work, and though without practice 
 in cai'pentering, yet, by dint of hard labor and after 
 many failures, they at last succeeded; and an organ 
 .was constructed which played ten tunes- very decently, 
 
230 William Jackson. 
 
 and the instrument was generally regarded as a marvei 
 in the neighborhood. Young Jackson was now fre- 
 quently sent for to repair old church organs, and to put 
 new music upon the barrels whicli he added to them. 
 All this he accomplished to the satisfaction of his em- 
 ployers, after which he proceeded with the construction 
 of a four-stop finger-organ, adapting to it the keys of an 
 old harpsichord. This he learnt to play upon — study- 
 ing " Callcott's Thorough Bass " in the evening, and 
 working at his trade of a miller during the day ; occa- 
 sionally, also, tramping about the country as a " cad- 
 ger," with an ass and a cart. During summer he work- 
 ed in the fields, at turnip-time, hay-time, and harvest, 
 but was never without the solace of music in his leisure 
 evening hours. He next tried his hand at musical com- 
 position, and twelve of his anthems were shown to the 
 late Mr. Camidge, of York, as " the production of a mil- 
 ler's lad of fourteen." Mr. Camidge was pleased with 
 them, marked the objectionable passages, and returned 
 them with the encouraging remark, that they did the 
 youth great credit, and that he must " go on writing." 
 A village band having been set on foot at Masham, 
 young Jackson joined it, and was ultimately appointed 
 leader. He played all the instruments by turns, and 
 thus acquired a considerable practical knowledge of his 
 art: he also composed numerous tunes for the band. 
 A new finger-organ having been presented to the parish 
 church, he was appointed the organist. He now gave 
 up his employment as a journeyman miller, and com- 
 ■ menced tallow-chandling, still employing his spare houra 
 in the study of music. In 1839 he published his first 
 anthem — "For joy let fertile valleys sing;" and in the 
 following year he gained the first prize from the Hud- 
 dersfield Glee Club, for his " Sisters of the Lea." His 
 other anthem, " God be merciful to us," and the 103d 
 Psalm, written for a double chorus and orchestra, are 
 
A Self-taught Musician, 231 
 
 ■well known. In the midst of tLese minor "vvorks, Jack- 
 eon proceeded with the composition of his oratorio — 
 " The Deliverance of Israel from Babylon." His prac- 
 tice was, to jot down a sketch of the ideas as they pre- 
 sented themselves to his mind, and to write them oitt in 
 score in the evenings, after he liad left his work in the 
 candle-shop. His oratorio was published in parts, in the 
 course of 1844-'5, and he published the last chorus on his 
 twenty-ninth birthday. The work was exceedingly 
 well received, and has been frequently performed with 
 much success in the northern towns. Mr. Jackson 
 eventually settled as a professor of music at Bradford, 
 where he contributed in no small degree to the cultiva- 
 tion of the musical taste of that town and its neighbor- 
 hood. Some years since he had the honor of leading 
 his fine company of Bradford choral singers before Her 
 Majesty at Buckingham Palace ; on which occasion, as 
 well as at the Crystal Palace, some choral pieces of his 
 composition were performed with great effect.* 
 
 Such is a brief outline of the career of a self taught 
 musician, whose life affords but another illustration of 
 tlie power of self-help, and the force of courage and in- 
 dustry in enabling a man to surmount and overcome 
 early diflBculties and. obstructions of no ordinary kind. 
 
 * WTiile the sheets of this revised edition are passing through the 
 press, the announcement appears in the local papers of the death of 
 Mr. Jackson at the age of fifty. His last work, completed shortly be- 
 fore his death, was a cantata, entitled "The Praise of Music." The 
 above particulars of his early life were communicated by himself to the 
 author several years since, while he was still canying on his buBiness 
 of a tallow-chandler at Masham. 
 
CHAPTER VIL 
 
 INDUSTRY AND THE PEEEAGE. 
 
 " He either fears his fate too much. 
 Or his deserts are small, 
 That dares not put it to the touch, 
 To gain or lose it alL" — Makquis op Montsose. 
 " He hath put down the mighty from their seats ; and exalted them 
 of low degree." — St. Luke. 
 
 WE have already referred to some illustrious Com- 
 moners raised from humble to elevated positions 
 by the power of application and industry ; and we might 
 point to even the Peerage itself as aftbrding equally iu- 
 stractive examples. One reason why the Peerage of 
 England has succeeded so well in holding its own, arises 
 from the fact that, unlike the peerages of other coun- 
 tries, it has been fed, from time to time, by the best in- 
 dustrial blood of the country — the very " liver, heart, 
 and brain of Britain." Like the fabled Antajus, it has 
 been invigorated and refreshed by touching its mother 
 earth, and mingling with that most ancient order of 
 nobility — the working order. 
 
 The blood of all men flows from equally remote 
 sources; and though some are unable to trace their 
 line directly beyond their grandfathers, all are never- 
 theless justified in placing at the head of their pedigree 
 the great progenitors of the race, as Lord Chesterfield 
 did when he wrote, "Adam de Stanhope — Eve de Stan- 
 hope." No class is ever long stationary. Tlie mighty 
 fall, and the humble are exalted. New families take 
 
Fall of Old Families. 233 
 
 the place of the old, who disappear among the ranks 
 of the common people. Burke's " Vicissitudes of Fam- 
 ilies " strikingly exhibit this rise and fall of families, 
 and show that the misfortiuies which overtake the rich 
 and noble are greater in proportion than those which 
 overwhelm the poor. This author points out that of 
 the twenty-five barons selected to enforce the observ- 
 ance of Magna Charta, there is not now in the House 
 of Peers a single male descendant. Civil wars and re- 
 bellions ruined many of the old nobility and dispersed 
 their families. Yet their descendants in many cases sur- 
 vive, and are to be found among the ranks of the people. 
 Fuller wrote in his "Worthies," that " some who justly 
 hold the surnames of Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantag- 
 enets, are hid in the heap of common men." Thus 
 Burke shows that two of the lineal descendants of the 
 Earl of Kent, sixth son of Edward I., were discovered 
 ia a butcher and a toll-gatherer ; that the great-grand- 
 son of Margaret Plantagenet, daughter of the Duke of 
 Clarence, sank to the condition of a cobbler at Newport, 
 in Shropshire; and that among the lineal descendants 
 of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Edward III., was the 
 late sexton of St. George's, Hanover Square. It is un- 
 derstood that the lineal descendant of Simon de Mont- 
 fort, England's premier baron, is a saddler in Tooley 
 Street. One of the descendants of the "Proud Per- 
 cys," a claimant of the title of Duke of Northumber- 
 land, was a Dublin trunk-maker; and not many years 
 eince one of the claimants for the title of Earl of Perth 
 presented himself in the person of a laborer in a North- 
 umberland coal-pit. Hugh Miller, when working as a 
 Btone-mason near Edinburgh, was served by a hodman, 
 who was one of the numerous claimants for the earl- 
 dom of Crauford — all that was wanted to establish his 
 claim being a missing marriage certificate ; and while 
 the, work was going .on, the cry resounded from tha 
 
234 Peerages fourtded hy Trade. 
 
 walls many times in the day, of—" John, Yearl Crau- 
 ford, hring us anither hod o' lime." One of Oliver 
 Cromwell's great-grandsons was a grocer on Snow Hill, 
 and others of his -descendants died in great poverty. 
 Many barons of proud names and titles have perished, 
 like the sloth, upon their family tree, after eating up all 
 the leaves ; while others have been overtaken by ad- 
 versities which they have been unable to retrieve, and 
 sunk at last into poverty and obscurity. Such are the 
 mutabilities of rank and fortune. 
 
 The great bulk of our peerage is comparatively mod- 
 ern, so far as the titles go ; but it is not the less noble 
 that it has been recruited to so large an extent from 
 the ranks of honorable industry. In olden times, the 
 wealth and commerce of London, conducted as it was 
 by energetic and enterprising men, was a prolific source 
 of peerages. Thus, the earldom of Cornwallis was 
 founded by Thomas Cornwallis, the Cheapside mer- 
 chant ; that of Essex by William Capel, the draper ; 
 and that of Craven by William Craven, the merchant 
 tailor. The modem Earl of Warwick is not descended 
 from the "King-maker," but from William Greville, 
 the woolstapler ; whilst the modern dukes of North- 
 umberland find their head, not in the Percys, but in 
 Hugh Smithson, a respectable London apothecary. The 
 founders of the families of Dartmouth, Radnor, Ducie, 
 and Pomfret, were respectively a skinner, a silk manu- 
 facturer, a merchant tailor, and a Calais merchant; 
 whilst the founders of the peerages of Tankerville, Dor- 
 mer, and Coventry, were mercers. The ancestors of 
 Earl Romney, and Lord Dudley and Ward, were gold- 
 smiths and jewellers ; and Lord Dacres was a banker in 
 the reign of Charles L, as Lord Overstone is in that of 
 Queen Victoria. Edward Osborne, the founder of the 
 Dukedom of Leeds, was apprentice to William Hewet, 
 a rich cloth-worker on London Bridge, whose only 
 
Richard Foley, Nail-malcer. 235 
 
 daughter he courageously rescued from drowning, by 
 leaping into the Thames after her, and eventually mar- 
 ried. Among other peerages founded by trade are 
 those of Fitzwilliam, Leigh, Petre, Cowper, Darnley, 
 Hill, and Carringt'on. The founders of the houses of 
 Foley and Normanby were remarkable men in many re- 
 spects, and, as furnishing striking examples of energy 
 of character, the story of their lives is worthy of pres- 
 ervation. 
 
 The father of Richard Foley, the founder of the fam- 
 ily, was a small yeoman living in the neighborhood of 
 Stourbridge in the time of Charles I. That place was 
 then the centre of the iron manufacture of the midland 
 districts, and Richard was brought up to work at one 
 of the branches of the trade — that of nail-making. He 
 was thus a daily observer of the great labor and loss 
 of time caused by the clumsy process then adopted for 
 dividing the rods of iron in the manufacture of nails. 
 It appeared that the Stourbridge nailers were gradual- 
 ly losing their trade in consequence of the importation 
 of nails from Sweden, by which they were undersold in 
 the market. It became known that the Swedes were 
 enabled to make their nails so much cheaper, by the 
 use of splitting-mills and machinery, which had com- 
 pletely superseded the laborious process of preparing 
 the rods for nail-making then practised in England. 
 
 Richard Foley, having ascertained this much, deter- 
 mined to make himself master of the new process. He 
 suddenly disappeared from the neighborhood of Stour- 
 bridge, and was not heard of for several years. No 
 one knew whither he had gone, not even his own fami- 
 ly; for he had not informed them of his intention, lest 
 he should fail. He had little or no money in his pock- 
 et, but contrived to get to Hull, where he engaged 
 himself on board a ship bound for a Swedish port, and 
 tvorked his passap-y there. The only article of property 
 
236 Bichard Foley, Nail-maker. 
 
 which he possessed was his fiddle, and on landing in 
 Sweden he begged and fiddled his way to the Danne- 
 mora mines, near Upsala. He was a capital musician, 
 as well as a pleasant fijllow, and soon ingratiated him- 
 self with the iron-workers. He was received into the 
 works, to every part of which he had access ; and he 
 seized the opportunity thus afforded him of storing his 
 mind with observations, and mastering, as he thought, 
 the mechanism of iron-splitting. After a continued 
 stay for this purpose, he suddenly disaj)peared from 
 amongst his kind friends the miners — no one knew 
 whither. 
 
 Returned to England, he communicated the results 
 of his voyage to Mr. Knight and another person at 
 Stourbridge, who had sufficient confidence in him to 
 advance the requisite funds for the pui-pose of erecting 
 buildings and machinery for splitting iron by the new 
 process. But when set to work, to the great vexation 
 and disappointment of all, and especially of Richard 
 Foley, it was found that the machinery would not act 
 —at all events it would not split the bars of iron. 
 Again Foley disappeai'ed. It was thought that shame 
 and mortification at his failure had driven him away 
 forever. Not so ! Foley had determined to master 
 this secret of iron-splitting, and he would yet do it. 
 He had again set out for Sweden, accompanied by his 
 fiddle as before, and found his way to the iron-works, 
 where he was joyfully welcomed by the miners ; and, 
 to make sure of their fiddler, they this time lodged him 
 in the very splitting-mill itself There was such an ap- 
 parent absence of intelligence about the man, except in 
 fiddle-playing, that the miners entertained no suspic- 
 ions as to the object of their minstrel, whom they thus 
 enabled to attain the very end and aim of his life. He 
 now carefully examined the works, and soon discovered 
 the cause of his failure. He made drawings or tracings 
 
The Foley Peerage. 237 
 
 of the machinery as well afs he could, though this was 
 a branch of art quite new to him ; and after remaining 
 at the place long enough to enable him to verify his 
 observations, and to impress the mechanical arrange- 
 ments clearly and vividly on his mind, he again left the 
 miners, reached a Swedish port, and took ship for Eng- 
 land. A man of such purpose could not but succeed. 
 Arrived amongst his surprised friends, he now com- 
 pleted his arrangements, and the results were entirely 
 successful. By his skill and his industry he soon laid 
 the foundations of a large fortune, at the same time 
 that he restored the business of an extensive district. 
 He himself continued, during his life, to carry on his 
 trade, aiding and encouraging all works of benevolence 
 in his neighborhood. He founded and endowed a 
 school at Stourbridge ; and his son Thomas (a great 
 benefactor of Kidderminster), who was High Sheriff of 
 Worcestershire in the time of " The Rump," founded 
 and endowed a hospital, still in existence, for the free 
 education of children at Old Swinford. All the early 
 Foleys were Puritans. Richard Baxter seems to have 
 been on familiar and intimate terms with various mem- 
 bers of the family, and makes frequent mention of them 
 in his "Life and Times." Thomas Foley, when ap- 
 pointed high sheriff of the county, requested Baxter to 
 pi'each the customary sermon before him ; and Baxter 
 in his "Life" speaks of him as "of so just and blame- 
 less dealing, that all men he ever had to do with mag- 
 nified his great integrity and honesty, which were ques- 
 tioned by none." The family was ennobled in the 
 reign of Charles the Second. 
 
 William Phipps, the founder of the Mnlgrave or 
 Noi'manby family, was a man quite as remarkable in 
 his way as Richard Foley. His father Avas a gunsmith 
 —a robust Englishman settled at Woolwich, in MainOj 
 then forming part of our English colonies in America 
 
238 William Phipps. 
 
 He was born in 1651, one of a family of not fewer than 
 twenty-six children (of whom twenty-one were sons), 
 whose only fortune lay in their stout hearts and strong 
 arms. William seems to have had a dash of the Dan- 
 ish sea-blood in his veins, and did not take kindly to the 
 quiet life of a shepherd in which he spent his early 
 years. B}' nature bold and adventurous, he longed to 
 become a sailor and roam through the world. He 
 sought to join some ship ; but not being able to find 
 one, he apprenticed himself to a shipbuilder, with 
 whom he thoroughly learnt his trade, acquiring the 
 arts of reading and writing during his leisure hours. 
 Having completed his apprenticeship and removed to 
 Boston, he wooed and married a widow of some means, 
 after which he set up a little ship-building yard of his 
 own, built a ship, and, putting to sea in her, he engaged 
 in the lumber trade, which he carried on in a plodding 
 and laborious way for the space of about ten years. 
 
 It happened that one day, whilst passing through 
 the crooked streets of old Boston, he overheard some 
 sailors talking to each other of a wreck whicn had just 
 taken place off the Bahamas ; that of a Spanish ship, 
 supposed to have much money on board. His adven- 
 turous spirit was at once kindled, and getting together 
 a likely crew without loss of time, he set sail for the 
 Bahamas. The wreck being well in shore, he easily 
 found it, and succeeded in recovering a great deal of 
 its cargo, but very little money ; and the result was, 
 that he barely defrayed his expenses. His success had 
 been such, however, as to stimulate his enterprising 
 spirit ; and when he was told of another and far more 
 richly laden vessel which had been wrecked near Port 
 de la Plata more than half a century before, he forth- 
 with formed the resolution of raising the wreck, or at 
 all events of fishing up the treasure. 
 
 Being too poor, however, to undertake such an enter-i 
 
His Treasure-seeking. 239 
 
 prise without powerful help, he set sail for England in 
 the hope that he might there obtain it. The fame of 
 his success in raising the wreck off the Bahamas had 
 already preceded him. He applied direct to the Gov- 
 ernment. By his urgent enthusiasm, he succeeded in 
 overcoming the usual inertia of official minds; and 
 Charles II. eventually placed at his disposal the " Rose 
 Algier," a ship of eighteen guns and ninety-five men, 
 appointing him to the chief command. 
 
 Phipps then set sail to find the Spanish ship and fish 
 up the treasure. He reached the coast of Hispaniola 
 in safety; but how to find the sunken ship was the 
 great difficulty. The fact of the wreck Avas more than 
 fifty years old ; and Phipps had only the traditionary 
 rumors of the event to work upon. There was a wide 
 coast to explore, and an outspread ocean, without any 
 trace whatever of the argosy which lay somewhere at 
 its bottom. But the man was stout in heart, and full 
 of hope. He set his seamen to work to drag along the 
 coast, and for weeks they went on fishing up seaweed, 
 shingle, and bits of rock. ISTo occupation could be 
 more trying to seamen, and they began to grumble one 
 to another, and to whisper that the man m command 
 had brought them on a fool's errand. 
 
 At length the murmurers gained head, and the men 
 broke into open mutiny. A body of them rushed one 
 day on to the quarter-deck, and demanded that the 
 voyage should be relinquished. Phipps, however, was 
 not a man to be intimidated ; he seized the ringleaders, 
 and sent the others back to their duty. It became 
 necessary to bring the ship to anchor close to a small 
 island for the purpose of repairs ; and, to lighten her, 
 the chief part of the stores was landed. Discontent 
 still increasing amongst the crew, a new plot was laid 
 amongst the men on shore to seize the ship, throw 
 Phipps overboard, and start on a piratical cruise againsJ 
 
240 Phipps quells a Mutiny. 
 
 the Spaniards in the South Seas. But it was necessary 
 to secure the services of the chief ship-carpenter, who 
 was consequently made privy to the plot. This man 
 proved faithful, and at once told the captain of his 
 danger. Summoning about him those whom he knew 
 to be loyal, Phipps had the ship's guns loaded which 
 commanded the shore, and ordered the bridge commu- 
 nicating with the vessel to be drawn up. When the 
 mutineers made their appearance, the captain hailed 
 them, and told the men he would fire upon them if 
 they approached the stores (still on land) — when they 
 drew back ; on which Phipps had the stores reshipped 
 imder cover of his ^uns. The mutineers, fearful of be- 
 ing left upon the barren island, threw down their arms 
 and implored to be permitted to return to their duty. 
 The request was granted, and suitable precautions 
 were taken against future mischief. Phipps, however, 
 took the first opportunity of landing the mutinous 
 part of the crew, and engaging other men in their 
 places ; but, by the time that he could again proceed 
 actively with his explorations, he found it absolutely 
 necessary to proceed to England for the purpose of 
 repairing the ship. He had now, however, gained 
 more precise information as to the spot where the 
 Spanish treasure-ship had sunk; and, though as yet 
 baffied, he was more confident than ever of the event- 
 ual success of his enterprise. 
 
 Returned to London, Phipps reported the result of 
 his voyage to the Admiralty, who professed to be 
 pleased with his exertions ; but he had been unsuccess- 
 ful, and they would not intrust him with another 
 king's ship. James II. was now on the throne, and 
 the Government was in trouble; so Phipps and his 
 golden project appealed to them in vain. He next 
 tried to raise the requisite means by a public subscrip- 
 tion. At first he was laughed at; but his ceaseless 
 
His Treasure-seeking. 241 
 
 importunity at length prevailerlj and after four years' 
 dinning of his project into the ears of the great and 
 influential — during which time he lived in poverty — 
 he at length succeeded. A company was formed in 
 twenty shares, the Duke of Albemarle, son of General 
 ■Monk, taking the chief interest in it, and subscribing 
 the principal part of the necessary fund for the prose- 
 cution of the entei-prise. 
 
 Like Foley, Phipps proved more fortunate in his 
 second voyage than in his first. The ship arrived 
 without accident rt Port de la Plata, in the neighbor- 
 hood of the reef of rocks supposed to have been the 
 scene of the wreck. His first object was to build a 
 stout boat capable of carrying eight or ten oars, in 
 constructing which Phipps used the adze himself. It 
 is also said that he constructed a machine for the pur- 
 pose of exploring the bottom of the sea similar to what 
 is now known as the diving-bell. Such a machine was 
 found referred to in books, but Phipjjs knew little. of 
 books, and may be said to have re-invented the ap- 
 paratus for his own use. He also engaged Indian di- 
 vers, whose feats of diving for pearls, and in submarine 
 operations, were -very remarkable. The tender and 
 boat having been taken to the reef, the men were set 
 to work, the diving-bell was sunk, and the various 
 modes of dragging the bottom of the sea were em- 
 ployed continuously for many weeks, but without any 
 prospect of success. Phipps, however, held on val- 
 iantly, hoping almost against hope. At length, one 
 day, a sailor, looking over the boat's side down into 
 the clear water, observed a curious sea-plant growing 
 in what appeared to be a crevice of the rock ; and lie 
 called upon an Indian diver to • go down and fetch it 
 for him. On the red man coming up with the weed, 
 he reported that a number of ship's guns were lying 
 in the same place. The intelligence was at first re- 
 ceived with incredulity, but on further investigation 
 
 11 
 
242 Phipps's Success. 
 
 it proved to be correct. Search was made, and pres- 
 ently a diver came up -with a solid bar of silver in his 
 arms. Wlien Phipps was shown it, he exclaimed, 
 " Thanks be to God ! we are all made men." Diving- 
 bell and divers now went to work with a will, and in 
 a few days, treasure was brought up to the value of 
 about £300,000, with which Phipps set sail for Eng- 
 land. On his arrival, it was urged upon the king 
 that he should seize the ship and its cargo, under the 
 pretense that Phipps, when soliciting his Majesty's 
 permission, had not given accurate information re- 
 specting the business. But the king replied that he 
 knew Phipps to be an honest man, and that he and 
 his friends should divide the whole treasure amongst 
 them, even though he had returned with double the 
 value. Phipps's share was about £20,000,. and the 
 king, to show his approval of his energy and honesty 
 in conducting the enterprise, conferred upon him the 
 honor of knighthood. He was also made High Sheriff 
 of New England; and during the time he held the 
 office, he did valiant service for the mother-country 
 and the colonists against the French, by expeditions 
 against Port Royal and Quebec. He also held the 
 post of Governor of Massachusetts, from which he re- 
 turned to England, and died in London, in 1695. 
 
 Phipps throughout the latter part of his career was 
 not ashamed to allude to the lowness of his origin, and 
 it was matter of honest pride to him that he had risen 
 from the condition of a common ship-earpenter to the 
 honors of knighthood and the government of a prov- 
 ince. When perplexed with public business, he would 
 often declare that it would be easier for him to go back 
 to his broad-axe again. He left behind him a charac- 
 ter for probity, honesty, patriotism, and courage, which 
 is certainly not the least noble inheritance of the house 
 of Normanby. 
 
 William Petty, the founder of the house of Lans< 
 
Sir. Widiam Petty. 243 
 
 downe, was a man of like energy and public usefulness 
 in his day. He was the son of a clothier in humble 
 circumstances, at Romsey, in Hampshire, where he was 
 born in 1623. In his boyhood he obtained a tolerable 
 education at the grammar-school of his native town ; 
 after which he determined to improve himself by study 
 at the University of Caen, in Normandy. Whilst there 
 he contrived to support himself unassisted by his fa- 
 ther, carrying on a sort of small peddler's trade with " a 
 little stock of merchandise." Returning to England, 
 he had himself bound apprentice to a sea-captain, who 
 " dubbed him with a rope's end" for the badness of his 
 sight. He left the navy in disgust, taking to the study 
 of medicine. When at Paris he engaged in dissection, 
 during which time he also drew diagrams for Hobbes, 
 who was -then writing his treatise on Optics. He was 
 reduced to such poverty that he subsisted for two or 
 three weeks entirely on walnuts. But again, he began 
 to trade in a small way, turning an honest penny, and 
 he was enabled shortly to return to England with 
 money in his pocket. Being of an ingenious mechani- 
 cal turn, we find him taking out a patent for a letter- 
 copying machine. He began to write upon the arts 
 and sciences, and practised chemistry and physic with 
 such success that his reputation shortly became consid- 
 ei-able. Associating with men of science, the project 
 of forming a Society for its prosecution was discussed, 
 and the first meetings of the infant Royal Society were 
 held at his lodgings. At Oxford he acted for a time 
 as deputy to the anatomical professor there,- who had a 
 great repugnance to dissection. In' 1652 his industry 
 was rewarded by the appointment of physician to the 
 army in Ireland, whither he we.nt ; and whilst there he 
 was the medical attendant of three successive lords- 
 lieutenant, Lambert, Fleetwood, and Henry Cromwell. 
 Large grants of forfeited land having been awarded to 
 the Puritan soldiery, Petty observed that the lands, 
 
244 Betty's Indxistry mid Inventions. 
 
 were very inaccurately measured ; and in the midst of 
 his many avocations he undertoolc to do the work him- 
 self. His appointments became so numerous and lu- 
 crative that he was charged by the envious with cor- 
 ruption, and removed from them all ; but he was again 
 taken into favor at the Restoration. 
 
 Petty was a most indefatigable contriver, inventor, 
 and organizer of industry. One of his inventions was 
 a double-bottomed ship, to sail against wind and tide. 
 He published treatises on dyeing, on naval philosophy, 
 on woollen cloth manufacture, on political arithmetic, and 
 many other snbjects. He founded iron works, opened 
 lead mines, and commenced a pilchard fishery and a 
 timber trade ; in the midst of which he found time to 
 take part in the discussions of the Royal Society, to 
 which he largely contributed. He left an ample for- 
 tune to his sons, the eldest of whom was created Baron 
 Shelburne. His will was a curious document, singular- 
 ly illustrative of his character; containing a detail of 
 the principal events of his life, and the gradual ad- 
 vancement of his fortune. His sentiments on pauper- 
 ism are characteristic : " As for legacies for the poor," 
 said he, " I am at a stand ; as for beggars by trade and 
 election, I give them nothing ; as for impotents by the 
 hand of God, the public ought to maintain them ; as 
 for those who have been bred to no calling or estate, 
 they should be put upon their kindred ;" . . . " where- 
 fore I am contented that I have assisted all my poor 
 relations, and put many into a way of getting their 
 own bread ; have labored in public works ; and by in- 
 ventions have sought out real objects of charity; and 
 I do hereby cqnjure all who partake of my estate, from 
 time to time, to do the same at their peril. Neverthe- 
 less, to answer custom and to take the surer side, I give 
 £20 to the most wanting of the parish wherein I die." , 
 He was interred in the fine old Norman church of Rora- 
 jley — the town wherein he was born a poor man's son 
 
JededicJi Slruit. 245 
 
 — and on the south side of the choir is still to be seen 
 a plain slab, with the inscription, cut by an illiterate 
 workman, " Here Layes Sir William Petty." 
 
 Another family, ennobled by invention and trade in 
 our own day, is that of Strutt of Belper. Their patent 
 of nobility was virtually secured by Jedediah Strutt 
 in 1758, when he invented his machine for making rib- 
 bed-stockings, and. thereby laid the foundations of a 
 fortune which the subsequent bearers of the name have 
 largely increased and nobly employed. The father of 
 Jedediah was a farmer and maltster, who did but little 
 for the education of his children;' yet they alL pros- 
 pered. Jedediah was the second son, and when a boy 
 assisted his father in the work of the farm. At an 
 early age he exhibited a taste for mechanics, and intro- 
 duced several improvements in the rude agricultural 
 implements of the period. On the death of his uncle 
 he succeeded to a farm at Blackwall, near Normanton, 
 long in the tenancy of the family, and shortly after he 
 man-ied Miss WoUatt, the daughter of a Derby hosier. 
 Having learned from his wife's brother that various 
 unsuccessful attempts had been made to manufacture 
 ribbed-stockings, he proceeded to study the subject 
 with a view to effect what others had failed in accom- 
 plishing. He accordingly obtained a stocking-frame, 
 and after mastering its construction and mode of action 
 he proceeded to introduce new combinations, by means 
 of which he succeeded in effecting a variation in the 
 plain looped work of the frame, and was thereby en- 
 abled to turn out "ribbed" hosiery. Having secured 
 a patent for the improved machine, he removed to 
 Derby, and there entered largely on the manufacture 
 of ribbed-stockings, in Avhioh he was very successful. 
 He afterwards joined Arkwright, of the merits of whose 
 invention he fully satisfied himself, and found the 
 means of securing his patent, as well as erecting a lai-ge 
 cotton-mill at. Cranford, in Derbyshire. After the px- 
 
246 William and Edward Strutt. 
 
 piry of the partnership with Arkwright, the Strutts 
 erected extensive cotton-mills at Milford, near Belper, 
 which worthily gives its title to the present head of 
 the family. The sons of the founder were, like their fa- 
 ther, distinguished for their mechanical ability. Thus 
 William Strutt, the eldest, is said to have invented 
 a self-acting mule, the success of which was only pre- 
 vented hy the mechanical skill of that day being un- 
 equal to its manufacture. Edward, the son of William, 
 was a man of eminent mechanical genius, having early 
 discovered the principle of suspension-wheels for car- 
 riages : he had a wneelbarrow and two carts made on 
 the principle, which were used on his farm near Belper. 
 It may be added that the Strutts have throughout been 
 distinguished for their noble employment of the wealth 
 which their industry and skill have brought them ; 
 that they have sought in all ways to improve the moral 
 and social condition of the work-people in their em- 
 ployment ; and that they have been liberal donors in 
 every good cause — of which the presentation, by Mr. 
 Joseph Strutt, of the beautiful park or Arboretum at 
 Derby, as a gift to the townspeople forever, affords only 
 one of many illustrations. The concluding words of 
 the short address which he delivered on presenting this 
 valuable gift are worthy of being quoted and remem- 
 bered : — " As the sun has shone brightly on me through 
 life, it would be ungrateful in me not to employ a por- 
 tion of the fortune I possess in promoting the welfare 
 of those amongst whom I live, aTid by whose industry 
 I have been aided in its organization." 
 
 No less industry and energy have been displayed by 
 the many bl-ave men, both in present and past times, 
 who have earned the peerage by their valor on land 
 and at sea. Not to mention the old feudal lords, whose 
 tenure depended upon military service, and who so oft- 
 en led the van of the English armies in great national 
 encounters, we may point to Nelson, St. Vincent, and 
 
Lord Tenterden. 247 
 
 Lyons — to Wellington, Hill, Hardinge, Clyde, and 
 many more in recent times, who have nobly earned 
 their rank by their distinguished services. But plod- 
 ding industry has far oftener worked its way to the 
 peerage by the honorable pursuit of the legal profes- 
 sion, than by any other. No fewer than seventy Brit- 
 ish peerages, including two dukedoms, have been found- 
 ed by successful lawyers. Mansfield and Erskine were, 
 it is true, of noble family ; but the latter used to thank 
 God that out of his own family he did not know a 
 lord.* The others were, for the most part, the sons 
 of attorneys, grocers, clergymen, merchants, and hard- 
 working members of the middle class. Out of this pro- 
 fession have sprung the peerages of Howard and Cav- 
 endish, the first peers of both families having been 
 judges ; those of Aylesford, EUenborough, Guildford, 
 Shaftesbury, Hardwicke, Cardigan, Clarendon, Camden, 
 Ellesmere, Rosslyn; and others nearer our own day, 
 such as Tenterden, Eldon, Brougham, Denman, Truro, 
 Lyndhurst, St. Leonards, Cranworth, Campbell, and 
 Chelmsford. 
 
 Lord Lyndhurst's father was a portrait-painter, and 
 that of St. Leonards a perfumer and hairdresser in Bur- 
 lington Street. Young Edward Sugden was originally 
 an errand-boy in the office of the late Mr. Groom, of 
 Henrietta Street, Cavendish Square, a certificated con- 
 veyancer ; and it was there that the future Lord Chan- 
 cellor of L'eland obtained his first notions of law. The 
 origin of the late Lord Tenterden was perhaps the 
 
 * Mansfield owed nothing to his nohle relations, who were poor and 
 aninfluential. His success was the legitimate and logical result of the 
 means which he sedulously employed to secme it. When a boy he 
 rode up from Scotland to London on a pony — taking two months to 
 make the journey. A^ter a course of school and college, he entered 
 upon the profession of the law, and he closed a career of patient and 
 ceaseless labor as Lord Chief-Justice of England — the functions of 
 which he is universally admitted to have performed with unsurpassed 
 ability, justice, and honor. 
 
248 Lord Campbell. 
 
 humblest of all, nor was he ashamed of it ; for he felt 
 that the industry, study, and application, by means of 
 which he achieved his eminent position, were entirely 
 due to himself. It is related of him, that on one occa- 
 sion he took his son Charles ,to a little shed, then stand- 
 ing opposite the western front of Canterbury Cathe- 
 dral, and pointing ,it out to him, said, " Charles, you 
 see this little shop ; I have brought you here on pur- 
 pose to show it you. In that shop your grandfather 
 used to shave for a penny : that is the proudest reflec- 
 tion of my life." When a boy. Lord Tenterden was a 
 singer in the Cathedral, and it is a curious circumstance 
 that his destination in life was changed by a disap- 
 pointment. When he and Mr. Justice Richards were 
 going the Home Circuit together, they went to service 
 in the Cathedral; and on Richards commending the 
 voice of a singing-man in the choir. Lord Tenterden 
 said, " Ah ! that is the only man I ever envied ! When 
 at school in this town, we were candidates for a choris- 
 ter's place, and he obtained it." 
 
 Not less remarkable was the rise to the same distin- 
 guished office of Lord Chief-Justice, of the rugged 
 Kenyon and the robust Ellenborough ; nor was he a 
 less notable man who recently held the same office — ■ 
 the astute Lord Campbell, late Lord Chancellor of Eng- 
 land, son of a pai-ish minister in Fifeshire. For many 
 years he worked hard as a reporter for the press, while 
 diligently preparing himself for the practice of his profes- 
 sion. It is said of him, that at the beginning of his career 
 he was accustomed to walk from county town to county 
 town when on circuit, being as yet too poor to afford 
 the luxury of posting. But step by step he rose slowly 
 but surely to that eminence and distinction which ever 
 follow a career of industry honorably and energetically 
 pursued, in the legal, as in every other profession. 
 
 There have been otlier illustrious instances of Lords 
 Chancellors who have plodded up the steep of fame and 
 
Lord EMon. 249 
 
 honor with equal energy and success. The career of 
 the late Lord Eldon is perhaps one of the most remark- 
 able examples. He was the son of a Newcastle coal- 
 fitter; a mischievous rather than a studious boy; a 
 great scapegrace at school, and the subject of many 
 terrible thrashings — for orchard-robbing was one of 
 the favorite exploits of the future Lord Chancellor. 
 His father first thought of putting him apprentice to a 
 grocer, and afterwards had almost made up his mind to 
 bring him up to his own trade of a coal-fitter. But by 
 this time his eldest son William (afterwards Lord 
 Stowell), who had gained a scholarship at Oxford, wrote 
 to his father, " Send Jack up to me, I can do better for 
 him." John was sent up to Oxford accordingly, where, 
 by his brother's influence and his own application, he 
 succeeded in obtaining a fellowship. But when at 
 home during the vacation, he was so unfortunate-^or 
 rather so fortunate, as the issue proved— as to fall in 
 love ; and running across the Border with his elopeA 
 bride, he married, and, as his friends thought, ruined 
 himself for life. He had neither house nor home when 
 he married, and had not yet earned a penny. He lost 
 his fellowship, and at the same time shut himself out 
 from preferment in the Church, for which he had been 
 destined. He accordipgly turned his attention to the 
 study of the law. To a friend he wrote, " I have mar- 
 ried rashly ; but it is my determination to work hard 
 to provide for the woman I love." 
 
 John Scott came up to London, and took a small 
 house in Cursitor Lane, where he settled down to the 
 study of the law. He worked with great diligence and 
 resolution ; rising at four every morning and studying 
 till late at night, binding a wet towel round his head to 
 keep himself awake. Too poor to study under a special 
 pleader, he copied out three folio volumes from a man- 
 uscript collection of pi-ecedents. Long after, wlien 
 Lord Chancellor, passing down Cursitor Lane one day, 
 
 11* 
 
250 Career of Lord Eldon. 
 
 he said to his secretary, " Here was my first perch : 
 many a time do I recollect coming down this street 
 with sixpence in my hand to buy sprats for supper." 
 When at length called to the bar he waited long for 
 employment. His first year's earnings amounted to 
 only nine shillings. For four years he assiduously at- 
 tended the London Courts and the Northern Circuit, 
 with little better success. Even in his native town, he 
 seldom had other than pauper cases to defend. The 
 results were indeed so discouraging, that he had almost 
 determined to relinquish his chance of London business, 
 and settle down in some provincial town as a country 
 barrister. His brother William wrote home, " Eusinegs 
 is dull with poor Jack, very dull indeed !" But as he 
 had escaped being a grocer, a coal-fitter, aud a country 
 parson, so did he also escape being a country lawyer. 
 
 An opportunity at length occurred which enabled 
 John Scott to exhibit the large legal knowledge which 
 he had so laboriously acquired. In a case in which he 
 was engaged, he urged a legal point against the wishes 
 both of the attorney and client who employed him. 
 The Master of the Rolls decided against him, but on an 
 appeal to the House of Lords, Lord Thurlow reversed 
 the decision on the very point that Scott had urged. 
 On leaving the House that day, a solicitor tapped him 
 on the shoulder and said, " Young man, your bread and 
 butter's cut for life." And the prophecy proved a true 
 one. Lord Mansfield used to say that he knew no in- 
 terval between no business and £3000 a year, and Scott 
 might have told the same story ; for so rapid was his 
 progress, that in 1783, when only thirty-two, he was 
 appointed King's Counsel, was at the head of the North- 
 ern Circuit, and sat in Parliament for the borough of 
 Weobley. It was in the dull but unfiinching drudgery 
 of the early part of his career that he laid the founda 
 tion of his future success. He won his spurs by perse- 
 verance, knowledge, and ability, diligently cultivated. 
 
Lord Langdah. 251 
 
 He was successively appointed to the offices of solicitor 
 and attorney-general, and rose steadily upwards to the 
 highest office that the Crown had to bestow — that of 
 Lord Chancellor of England, which he held for a quar- 
 ter of a century. 
 
 Henry Bickersteth was the son of a surgeon at Kirk- 
 by Lonsdale, in Westmoreland, and was himself edu- 
 cated to that profession. As a student at Edinburgh, 
 he distinguished himself by the steadiness with which 
 he worked, and the application which he devoted to the 
 science of medicine. Returned to Kirkby Lonsdale, he 
 took an active part in his father's practice ; but he had 
 no liking for the profession, and grew discontented with 
 the obscurity of a country town. He went on, never- 
 theless, diligently improving himself, and engaged on 
 speculations in the higher branches of physiology. In 
 confoi'mity with his own wish, his father consented to 
 send him to Cambridge, where it was his intention to 
 take a medical degree with the view of practising in the 
 metropolis. Close application to his studies, however, 
 threw him out of health, and with a view to re-establish- 
 ing his strength he accepted the appointment of travel- 
 lipg physician to Lord Oxford. While abroad he mas- 
 tered Italian, and acquired a great admiration for Ital- 
 ian literature, but no greater liking for medicine than 
 before. On the contrary, he determined to abandon it ; 
 but returning to Cambridge, he took his degree ; and 
 that he worked hard maybe inferred from the fact that 
 he was senior wrangler of his year. Disappointed in 
 his desire to enter the army, he turned to the bar, and 
 entered a student of the Inner Temple. He worked as 
 hard at law as he had done at medicine. Writing to 
 his father, he said, " Every body says to me, ' You are 
 certain of success in the end — only persevere ;' and 
 though I don't well understand how this is to happen, 
 I try to believe it as much as I can, and I shall not fail 
 to do every thing in my power." At twenty-eight he 
 
252 Reward of Perseverance. 
 
 was called to the bar, and had every step in life yet to 
 make. His means were straitened, and he lived upon 
 the contributions of his friends. For years he studied 
 and waited. Still no business came. He stinted him- 
 self in recreation, in clothes, and even in the necessaries 
 of life ; struggling on indefatigably through all. Writ- 
 ing home, he " confess :d that he hardly knew how he 
 should be able to struggle on till he had fair time and 
 opportunity to establish himself." After three years' 
 waiting, still without success, he wrote to his friends 
 that rather than be a burden upon them longer, he 
 was willing to give the matter up and return to Cam- 
 bridge, " where he was sure of support and some profit." 
 The friends at home sent him another small remittance, 
 and he persevered. Business gradually came in. Ac- 
 quitting himself creditably in small matters, he was at 
 length intrusted with cases of greater importance. He 
 was a man who never missed an opportunity, nor al- 
 lowed a legitimate chance of improvement to escape 
 him. His unflinching industry soon began to tell upon 
 his fortunes ; a few more years and he was not only ena- 
 bled to do without assistance from home, but he was in 
 a position to pay back with interest the debts which he 
 had incurred. The clouds had dispei-sed, and the after 
 career of Henry Bickersteth was one of honor, of emolu- 
 ment, and of distinguished fame. He ended his career as 
 Master of the Rolls, sitting in the House of Peers as Bar- 
 on Langdale. His life affords only another illustration of 
 the power of patience, perseverance, and conscientious 
 working, in elevating the character of the individual, 
 and crowning his labors with the most complete success. 
 Such are a few of the distinguished men who have 
 honorably worked their Avay to the highest position, 
 and won the richest rewards of their profession, by the 
 diligent exercise of qualities in many respects of an or- 
 dinary character, but made potent by the force of appli- 
 cation and industry. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ENEEGT AND COUEAGE. 
 
 "A coeur vaillant rien d'impossible." — Jacques Cmim. 
 "Den Muthigen gehort die Welt. — German Proverb. 
 " In eveiy work that he began .... he did it with all his heart, 
 and prospered." — 2 Chron. xxxi. 21. 
 
 THERE is a famous speech recorded of an old 
 JSTbrseman, thoroughly characteristic of the Teu- 
 ton. " I believe neither in idols nor demonSj" said he, 
 " I put my sole trust in my own strength of body and 
 soul." The ancient crest of a pickaxe with the motto 
 of " Either I will find a way or make one," was an ex- 
 pression of the same sturdy independence which to this 
 day distinguishes the descendants of the Northmen. 
 Indeed nothing could be more characteristic of the Scan- 
 dinavian mythology, than that it had a god with a 
 hammer. A man's character is seen in small matters ; 
 and from even so slight a test as the mode in which a 
 man wields a hammer, his energy may in some measure 
 be inferred. Thus an eminent Frenchman hit oif in a 
 single phrase the characteristic quality of the inhabit- 
 ants of a particular district, in which a friend of his 
 proposed to settle and buy land. " Beware," said he, 
 " of making a purchase there ; I know the men of that 
 department ; the pupils who come from it to our veter- 
 inary school at Paris do not strike hard upon the anvil/ 
 they want energy; and you will not get a satisfacto- 
 ry return on any capital you may invest there." A 
 fine and just appreciation of character, indicating the 
 
254 Force of Purpose. 
 
 thoughtful observer ; and strikingly illustrative of the 
 fact that it is the energy of the individual men that 
 gives strength to a state, and confers a value even upon 
 the very soil which they cultivate. As the French 
 proverb has it : " Tant vaut I'homme, tant vaut sa 
 terre." 
 
 The cultivation of this quality is of the greatest im- 
 portance ; resolute determination in the pursuit of 
 worthy objects being the foundation of all true great- 
 ness of chai'acter. Energy enables a man to force his 
 way through irksome drudgery and dry details, and 
 carries him onward and upward in every station in life. 
 It accomplislies more than genius, with not one-half the 
 disappointment and peiil. It is not eminent talent 
 that is required to insure success in any pursuit, so 
 much as purpose — not merely the power to achieve, 
 but the will to labor energetically and perseveringly. 
 Hence energy of will may be defined to be the very 
 central power of character in a man — in a word, it ia 
 the Man himself It gives impulse to his every action, 
 and soul to every efibrt. True hope is based on it — 
 and it is hope that gives the real perfume to life. 
 There is a fine heraldic motto on a broken helmet in 
 Battle Abbey, " L'espoir est ma force," which might be 
 the motto of every man's life. " Woe unto him that is 
 faint-hearted," says the son of Sirach. There is, indeed, 
 no blessing equal to the possession of a stout heart. 
 Even if a man fail in his efforts, it will be a satisfaction 
 to him to enjoy the consciousness of having done his 
 best. In humble life nothing can be more cheering and 
 beautiful than to see a man combating suffering by pa- 
 tience, triumphing in his integrity, and who, when his 
 feet are bleeding and his limbs failing him, still walks 
 upon his courage. 
 
 Mere wishes and desires but engender a sort of green 
 sickness in young minds, unless they are promptly em- 
 bodied in act and deed. It will not avail merely to 
 
Courageous Working. 255 
 
 wait, as so many do, " until Blucher cornea up," but 
 they must struggle on and persevere in the mean time, 
 as Wellington did. The good purpose once formed 
 must be carried out with alacrity and without swerv- 
 ing. In most conditions of life, drudgery and toil are 
 to be cheerfully endured as the best and most whole- 
 some discipline. " In life," said Ary Scheffer, " nothing 
 bears fruit except by labor of mind or body. To strive 
 and still strive — such is life ; and in this respect mine 
 is fulfilled ; but I dare to say, with just pride, that 
 nothing has ever shaken my courage. With a strong 
 son], and a noble aim, one can do what one wills, mor 
 ally speaking." 
 
 Hugh Miller said the only school in which he was 
 properly taught was " that world-wide school in which 
 toil :;nd hardship are the severe but noble teachers." 
 He who allows his application to falter, or shirks his 
 work on frivolous pretexts, is on the sure road to ulti- 
 mate failure. Let any task be undertaken as a thing 
 not possible to be evaded, and it will soon come to be 
 performed with alacrity and cheerfulness. Charles IX. 
 of Sweden was a firm believer in the power of will, 
 even in youth. Laying his hand on the head of his 
 youngest son when engaged on a difficult task, he ex- 
 claimed, " He shall do it ! he shall do it !" The habit 
 of application becomes easy in time, like every other 
 habit. Thus persons with comparatively moderate 
 powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves 
 wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time. Fow- 
 ell Buxton placed his confidence in ordinary means 
 and extraordinary application ; realizing the scriptural 
 injunction, " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it 
 with all thy might ;" and he attributed his own suc- 
 cess in life to his practice of " being a whole man to 
 one thing at a time." 
 
 Nothing that is of real worth can bo achieved with- 
 out courageous working. Man owes his growth chiefly 
 
256 Detei-miri'fd Effort. 
 
 to that active striving of the will, that encounter with 
 difficulty which we call effort ; and it is astonishing to 
 find how often results apparently impracticable are 
 thus made possible. An intense anticipation itself 
 transforms possibility into reality ; our desires being oft- 
 en but the precursors of the things which we are capa- 
 ble of performing. On the contrary, the timid and hesi- 
 tating find every thing impossible, chiefly because it 
 seems so. It is related of a young French officer, that 
 he used to walk about his apartment exclaiming, "IwiU 
 be Marshal of France and a great general." His ar- 
 dent desire was the presentiment of his success ; for 
 the young officer did become a distinguished command- 
 er, and he died a Marshal of France. 
 
 Mr. "Walker, author of the " Original," had so great a 
 faith in the power of will, that he says on one occasioa 
 he determined to be well, and he was so. This may an- 
 swer once ; but, tliough safer to follow than many pre- 
 scriptions, it will not always succeed. The power of 
 mind over body is no doubt great, but it may be strained 
 until the physical power breaks down altogether. It is 
 related of Muley Moluc, the Moorish leader, that, when 
 lying ill, almost worn out by an incurable disease, a 
 battle took place between his troops and the Portu- 
 guese ; when starting from his litter at the great crisis 
 of the fight, he rallied his army, led them to victory, and 
 instantly afterwards sank exhausted and expired. 
 
 It is wUl — force of purpose — that enables a man to 
 do or be whatever he sets his mind on being or doing. 
 A holy man was accustomed to say, " Whatever you 
 wish, that you are : for such is the force of our will, 
 joined to the Divine, that whatever we wish to be, se- 
 riously, and with a true intention, that we become. No 
 one ardently wishes to be submissive, patient, modest, 
 or liberal, who docs not become what he wishes." 
 The story is told of a working carpenter, who was ob- 
 served one day planing a magistrate's bench which ha 
 
Tlie Power of Will 257 
 
 was repairing, with more than usual carefulness ; and 
 when asked the reason, he replied, " Because I wish tft 
 make it easy against the time when I come to sit upon 
 it myself." And singularly enough, the man actually 
 lived to sit upon that very bench as a magistrate. 
 
 Whatever theoretical conclusions logicians may have 
 formed as to the freedom of the will, each individual 
 feels that practically he is free to choose between good 
 and evil— that he is not as a mere straw thrown upon 
 the water to mark the direction of the current, but 
 that he has within him the power of a strong swimmer, 
 and is capable of striking out for himself, of buffeting 
 with the waves, and directing to a great extent his own 
 independent course. There is no absolute constraint 
 upon our volitions, and we feel and know that we are 
 not bound, as by a spell, with reference to our actions. 
 It would paralyze all desire of excellence were we to 
 think otherwise. The entire business and conduct of 
 life, with its domestic rules, its social arrangements, and 
 its public institutions, proceed upon the practical con- 
 viction that the will is free. Without this where would 
 be responsibility ? — and what the advantage of teach- 
 ing, advising, preaching, reproof, and correction ? What 
 were the use of laws, were it not the universal belief, 
 as it is the universal fact, that men obey them or not, 
 very much as they individually determine? In every 
 moment of our life, conscience is proclaiming that our 
 will is free. It is the only thing that is wholly ours, 
 and it rests solely with ourselves individually, whether 
 we give it the i-ight or the wrong direction. Our habits 
 or our temptations are not our masters, but we of them. 
 Even 'in yielding, conscience tells us we might resist; 
 and that were we determined to master them, there 
 would not be required for that purpose a stronger resolu- 
 tion than we know ourselves to be capable of exercising. 
 
 " You are now at the age," said Lamennais once, ad- 
 dressing a gay youth, "at which a decision must be 
 
258 Fowell Buxton. 
 
 formed by you; a little later, and you may have to 
 groan within the tomb which you yourself have dug, 
 without the power of rolling away the stone. That 
 which the easiest becomes a habit in us is the will 
 Learn, then, to will strongly and decisively ; thus fix 
 your floating life, and leave it no longer to be carried 
 hither and thithei', like a withered leaf, by every wind 
 that blows." 
 
 Buxton held the conviction that a young man might 
 be very much what he pleased, provided he formed a 
 strong resolution and held to it. Writing to one of his 
 sons, he said to him, " You are now at that period of 
 life, in which you must make a turn to the right or the 
 left. You must now give proofs of principle, determi- 
 nation, and strength of mind ; or you must sink into 
 idleness, and acquire the habits and character of a des- 
 ultory, ineifective young man ; and if once you fall to 
 that point, you will find it no easy matter to rise again. 
 I am sure that a young man may be very much what 
 he pleases. In my own case it was so. . . . Much of 
 my happiness, and all my prosperity in life, have result- 
 ed from the change I made at your age. If you seri- 
 ously resolve to be energetic and industrious, depend 
 upon it that you will for your whole life have reason to 
 rejoice that you were wise enough to form and to act 
 upon that determination." As will, considered with- 
 out regard to direction, is simply constancy, firmness, 
 perseverance, it will be obvious that every thing de- 
 pends upon right direction and motives. Directed 
 towards the enjoyment of the senses, the strong will 
 may be a demon, and the intellect merely its debased 
 slave ; but directed towards good, the strong will is a 
 king, and the intellect the minister of man's highest 
 well-being. 
 
 " Where there is a will there is a way," is an old and 
 true saying. He who resolves upon doing a thing, by 
 that very resolution often scales the barriers to it, and 
 
Suwarrow — Napoleon. 259 
 
 secures its achievement. To think we are able, is al- 
 most to be so — to determine upon attainment is fre- 
 quently attainment itself. Thus, earnest resolution has 
 often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnip- 
 otence. The strength of Suwarrow's character lay in 
 his power of willing, and, like most resolute persons, 
 he preached it up as a system. "You can only half 
 will," he would say to people who failed. Like Riche- 
 lieu and Napoleon, he would have the word " impossi- 
 ble " banished from the dictionary. " I don't know," 
 " I can't," and " impossible," were words which he de- 
 tested above all others. " Learn ! Do ! Try !" he would 
 exclaim. His biographer has said of him, that he fur- 
 nished a remarkable illustration of what may be effected 
 by the energetic development and exercise offacultiesj 
 the germs of which at least are in every human heart. 
 One of Napoleon's favorite maxims was, " The truest 
 wisdom is a resolute determination." His life, beyond 
 most others, vividly showed what a powerful and un- 
 scrupulous will could accomplish. He threw his whole 
 force of body and mind direct upon his work. Imbe- 
 cile rulers and the nations they governed went down 
 before him in succession. He was told that the Alps 
 stood in the way of his armies — " There shall be no 
 Alps," he said, and the road across the Simplon Avas 
 constructed, through a district formerly almost inac- 
 cessible. " Impossible," said he, " is a word only to be 
 found in the dictionary of fools." He was a man who 
 toiled terribly; sometimes employing and exhausting 
 four secretaries at a time. He spared no one, not even 
 himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a 
 new life into them. " I made.my generals out of mud," 
 he said. But all was of no avail ; for Napoleon's in- 
 tense selfishness was his ruin, and the rnin of France, 
 which he left a prey to anarchy. His life taught the 
 lesson that pow(;r, however energetically wielded, with- 
 ont beneficence, is fatal to its possessor and its subjects; 
 
260 Wellington. 
 
 and that knowledge, or knowingness, without goodness, 
 is but the incarnate principle of evil. 
 
 Our own Wellington was a far greater man. Not 
 less resolute, firm, and persistent, hut more self-deny- 
 ing, conscientious, and truly patriotic. Napoleon's aim 
 was " Glory ;" Wellington's watchword, like Nelson's, 
 was "Duty." The former word, it is said, does not 
 once occur in his dispatches ; the latter often, but nev- 
 er acconlpanied by any high-sounding professions. The 
 greatest difiiculties could neither embarrass nor intimi- 
 date Wellington ; his energy invariably rising in pro- 
 portion to the obstacles to be surmounted. The pa-- 
 tience, the firmness, the resolution, with which he bore 
 through the maddening vexations and gigantic difficul" 
 ties of the Ir'eninsular campaigns, is, perhaps, one of the 
 sublimest things to be found in history. In Spain, 
 Wellington not only exhibited the genius of the gen- 
 eral, but the comprehensive wisdom of the statesman. 
 Though his natural temper was irritable in the ex- 
 treme, his high sense of duty enabled him to restrain 
 it ; and to those about him his patience seemed abso- 
 lutely inexhaustible. His great character stands un- 
 tarnished by ambition, by avarice, or any low passion. 
 Though a man of powerful individuality, he yet dis- 
 played a great variety of endowment. The equal of 
 Napoleon in generalship, he was as prompt, vigorous, 
 and daring as Clive ; as wise a statesman as Cromwell ; 
 and as pure and high-minded as Washington. The 
 great Wellington left behind him an enduring reputa? 
 tion, founded on toilsome campaigns won by skillful 
 combination, by fortitude which nothing could exhaust, 
 by sublime daring, and perhaps by still sublinier pa- 
 tience. 
 
 Energy usually displays itself in promptitude and 
 decision. When Ledyard the traveller was asked by 
 the African Association when he would be ready to set 
 out for Africa, he immediately answered, " To-morrow 
 
Warren Hastings. 261 
 
 morning." Blucher's promptitude obtained for him 
 the cognomen of " Marshal Forward " throughout the 
 Prussian army. When John Jervis, afterwards Earl 
 St. Vincent, was asked when he would be ready to join 
 his ship, he replied, " Directly." And when Sir Colin 
 Campbell, appointed to the command of the Indian 
 army, was asked when he could set out, his answer was, 
 " To-morrow " — an earnest of his subsequent success. 
 For it is rapid decision, and a similar promptitude in 
 action, such as taking instant advantage of an enemy's 
 mistakes, that so often wins battles. " At Areola," said 
 Napoleon, " I won the battle with twenty-five horse- 
 men. I seized a moment of lassitude, gave every man 
 a truinpet, and gained the day with this handful. Two 
 armies are two bodies which meet and endeavor to 
 frighten each other: a moment of panic occurs, and 
 that moment must be turned to advantage." " Every 
 moment lost," said he at another time, "gives an op- 
 portunity for misfortune;" and he declared that he 
 beat the Austrians because they never knew the value 
 of time : while they dawdled^ he overthrew them. 
 
 India has, during the last century, been a great field 
 for the display of British energy. From Clive to Have- 
 lock and Clyde there is a long and honorable roll of dis- 
 tinguished names in Indian legislation and warfare — 
 such as Wellesle'y, Metcalfe, Outram,Edwardes, and the 
 Lawrences. Another great but sullied name is that of 
 Warren Hastings — a man of dauntless will and inde- 
 fatigable industry. His family was ancient and illus- 
 trious ; but their vicissitudes of fortune and ill-requit- 
 ed loyalty in the cause of the Stuarts, brought them to 
 poverty, and the family estate at Daylesford, of which 
 they had been lords of the manor for hundreds of years, 
 at length passed from their hands. The last Hastings 
 of Daylesford had, however, presented the parish-living 
 to his second son ; and it was in his house, many years 
 later, that Warren Hastings, his grandson, was born. 
 
262 Sir Charles Napier. 
 
 The boy learnt his letters at the village school, on the 
 same bench with the children of the peasantry. He 
 played in the fields which his fathers had owned ; and 
 what the loyal and brave Hastings of Daylesford had 
 been, was ever in the boy's thoughts. His young am- 
 bition was fired, and it is said that one summer's day, 
 when only seven years old, as he laid him down on the 
 bank of the stream which flowed through the domain, 
 he formed in his mind the resolution that he would yet 
 recover possession of the family lands. It was the ro- 
 mantic vision of a boy ; yet he lived to realize it. The 
 dream became a passion, rooted in his very life ; and he 
 pursued his determina,tion through youth up to man- 
 hood, with that calm but indomitable force of will 
 which was the most striking peculiarity of his charac- 
 ter. The orphan boy became one of the most po\ferful 
 men of his time; he retrieved the fortunes of his line; 
 bought back the old estate, and rebuilt the family man- 
 sion. " When, under a tropical sun," says Macaulay, 
 " he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst 
 all the cares of war, finance, and legislation, still point- 
 ed to Daylesford. And when his long public life, so 
 singularly chequered with good and evil, with glory 
 and obloquy, had at length closed forever, it was to 
 Daylesford that he retired to die." 
 
 Sir Charles Napier was another Indian leader of ex- 
 traordinary courage and determination. He once said 
 of the difliculties with which he was surrounded in one 
 of his campaigns, "They only make my feet go deeper 
 into the ground." His battle of Meeanee was one of 
 the most extraordinary feats in history. With 2600 
 men, of whom only 400 were Europeans, he encounter- 
 ed an army of 35,000 hardy and well-armed Belooohees. 
 It was an act, apparently, of the most daring temerity, 
 but the General had faith in himself and in his men. 
 He charged the Belooch centre up a high bank which 
 for^ned their rampart in front, and for three mortal 
 
The Indian Swordsman, 263 
 
 hours the battle raged. Each man of that small force, 
 inspired by the chief, became for the time a hero. The 
 Beloochees, though twenty to one, were driven back, 
 but with their faces to the foe. It is this sort of pluck, 
 tenacity, and determined perseverance which wins sol- 
 diers' battles, and, indeed, every battle. It is the one 
 neck nearer that wins the race and shows the blood ; it 
 is the one march more that wins the campaign ; the 
 five minutes' more persistent courage that wins the 
 fight. Though your force be less than another's, you 
 equal and outmaster your opponent if you continue it 
 longer and concentrate it more. The reply of the Spar- 
 tan father, who said to his son, when complaining that 
 his swoi'd was too short, "Add a step to it," is applica- 
 ble to every thing in life. 
 
 Napier took the right method of inspiring his men 
 with his own heroic spirit. He worked as hard as any 
 private in the ranks. " The great art of commanding," 
 he said, " is to take a fair share of the work. The man 
 who leads an army can not succeed unless his whole 
 mind is thrown into his work. The more trouble, the 
 more labor must be given ; the more danger, the more 
 pluck must be shown, till all is overpowered." A 
 young officer who accompanied him in his campaign in 
 the Cutchee Hills, once said, " When L see that old 
 man incessantly on his horse, how can I be idle who 
 ara young and strong ? I would go into a loaded can- 
 non's mouth if he ordered me." This remark, when Re- 
 peated to Napier, he said was aniple reward for his 
 toils. The anecdote of his interview with the Indian 
 juggler strikingly illustrates his cool courage as well 
 as his remarkable simplicity and honesty of character. 
 On one occasion, after the Indian battles, a famous 
 juggler visited the camp and performed his feats be- 
 fore the General, his family, and stafi^. Among other 
 performances, this man cut in two with a stroke of his 
 Bword a lime or lemon placed in the hand of his assist- 
 
264 British Energy in India. 
 
 ant. Napier thought there was some collusion be- 
 tween the juggler and his retainer. To divide by a 
 sweep of the sword on a man's hand so small an object 
 without touching the flesh he believed to be impossi- 
 ble, though a similar incident is related by Scott in his 
 romance of the " Talisman." To determine the point, 
 the General offered his own hand for the experiment, 
 and lie stretched out his right arm. The juggler look- 
 ed attentively at the hand and said he would not make 
 the trial. " I thought I would find you out !" exclaim- 
 ed Napier. " But stop," added the other, " let me see 
 your left hand." The left hand was submitted, and the 
 man then said firmly, " If you will hold your arm 
 steady I will perform the feat." " But why the left 
 hand and not the right ?" " Because the right hand is 
 hollow in the centre, and there is a risk of cutting off 
 the thumb ; the left is high, and the danger will be 
 less." Napier was startled. " I got frightened," he 
 said ; " I saw it was an actual feat of delicate swords- 
 manship, and if I had not abused the man as I did be- 
 fore my staff, and challenged him to the trial, I hon- 
 estly acknowledge I would have retired from the en- 
 counter. However, I put the lime on my hand, and 
 held out my arm steadily. The juggler balanced him- 
 self, and, with a swift stroke cut the lime in two pieces. 
 I felt the edge of the sword on my hand as if a cold 
 thread had been drawn across it. So much (he added) 
 for the brave swordsmen of India, whom our fine fel- 
 lows defeated at Meeanee." 
 
 Tlie recent terrible struggle in India has served to 
 bring out, perhaps more prominently than any pre- 
 vious event in our history, the determined energy and 
 self-reliance of the national character. Although Eng- 
 lish officialism may often drift stupidly into gigantic 
 blunders, the men of the nation generally contrive to 
 work their way out of them with a heroism almost ap- 
 proaching the sublime. In May, 1857, when the revolt 
 
The Indian Bebellion. 265 
 
 burst upon India like a thunderclap, the British forces 
 had been allowed to dwindle to their extreme mini- 
 mum, and were scattered over a wide extent of coun- 
 try, many of them in remote cantonments. The Ben- 
 gal regiments, one after another, rose against their of- 
 ficers, broke away, and rushed to Delhi. Province 
 after province was lapped in mutiny and rebellion ; 
 and the cry for help rose from east to west. Every- 
 where the English stood at bay in small detachments, 
 beleaguered and surrounded, apparently incapable of 
 resistance. Their discomfiture seemed so complete, and 
 the utter ruin of the British cause in India so certain, 
 that it might be said of them then, as it had been said 
 before, " These English never know when they are 
 beaten." According to rule, they ought then and 
 there to have succumbed to inevitable fate. 
 
 While the issue of the mutiny still appeared uncer- 
 tain, Holkar, one of the native princes, consulted his 
 astrologer for information. Die reply was, " If all the 
 Europeans save one are slain, that one will remain to 
 fight and reconquer." In their very darkest moment 
 — even where, as at Lucknow, a mere handful of Brit- 
 ish soldiers, civilians, and women, held out amidst a 
 city and province in arms against them — there was no 
 word of despair, no thought of surrender. Though 
 cut off from all communication with their friends for 
 months, and not knowing whether India was lost or 
 held, they never ceased to have perfect faith in the 
 courage and devotedness of their countrymen. They 
 knew that while a body of men of English race held 
 together in India, they would not be left unheeded to 
 perish. They never dreamt of any other issue' but re- 
 trieval of their misfortune and ultimate triumph ; and 
 if the worst came to the worst, they could but fall at 
 their post, and die in the performance of their duty. 
 Need we remind the reader of the names of Havelock, 
 Inglis, Neill, and Outram — men of truly heroic mouW 
 
 12 
 
266 The Lawrences. 
 
 —of each of whom it might with truth be said that he 
 had the heart of a chevalier, the soul of a believer, and 
 the temperament of a martyr. Montalembert has said 
 of them that " they do honor to the human race." But 
 throughout that terrible trial almost all proved equally 
 great — women, civilians, and soldiers — from the general 
 down through all grades to the private and bugleman. 
 The men were not picked: they belonged to the same 
 ordinary people whom we daily meet at home — in the 
 streets, in workshops, in the fields, at clubs ; yet when 
 sudden disaster fell upon them, each and all displayed 
 a wealth of personal resources and energy, and became, 
 as it were, individually heroic. "Not one of them,"^ 
 says Montalembert, " shrank or trembled — all, military 
 and civilians, young and old, generals and soldiers, re- 
 sisted, fought, and perished with a coolness and in- 
 trepidity which never faltered. It is in this circum- 
 stance that shines out the immense value of public ed- 
 ucation, which invites the Englishman from his youth 
 to make use of his strength and his liberty, to associ- 
 ate, resist, fear nothing, to be astonished at nothing, 
 and to save himself, by his own sole exertions, from 
 every sore strait in life." 
 
 It has been said that Delhi was taken and India 
 saved by the personal character of Sir John Lawrence. 
 The very name of " Lawrence " represented power in 
 the North-West Provinces. His standard of duty, zeal, 
 and personal effort was of the highest; and every man 
 who served under him seemed to be inspired by his 
 spirit. It was declared of him that his character alone 
 was worth an army. The same might be said of hia 
 brother. Sir Henry, who organized the Punjaub force 
 that took so prominent a part in the capture of Delhi. 
 Both brothers inspired those who were about them 
 with perfect love and confidence. Both possessed that 
 quality of tenderness, which is one of the true elements 
 of the heroic chai-acter. Both lived amongst the peo' 
 
The Siege of Delhi. 267 
 
 pie, and powerfully influenced them for good. Above 
 all, as Col. Edwardes says, "they drew models on 
 young fellows' minds, which they went forth and cop- 
 ied in their several administrations : they sketched a 
 faith, and begot a, school, which are both living things 
 at this day." Sir John Lawrence had by his side such 
 men as Montgomery, Nicholson, Cotton, and Edwardes, 
 as prompt, decisive, and high-souled as himself. John 
 Nicholson was one of the finest, manliest, and noblest 
 of men — " every inch a hakim," the natives said of hinj 
 — " a tower of strength," as he was characterized by 
 Lord Dalhousie. In whatever capacity he acted he 
 was great, because he acted with his whole strength 
 and soul. A brotherhood of fakeers — borne away by 
 their enthusiastic admiration of the man — even began 
 the worship of Nikkil Seyn ; he had some of them pun- 
 ished for their folly, but they continued their worship 
 neverthisless. Of his sustained energy and persistency 
 an illustration may be cited in his pursuit of the 55th 
 Sepoy mutineers, when he was in the saddle for twenty 
 consecutive hours, and travelled more than seventy 
 miles. When the enemy set up their standard at Del- 
 hi, Lawrence and Montgomery, relying on the support 
 of the people of the Punjaub, and compelling their ad- 
 miration and confidence, strained every nerve to keep 
 their own province in perfect order, whilst they hurled 
 every available soldier, European and Sikh, against 
 that city. Sir John wrote to the commander-in-chief 
 to " hang on to the rebels' noses before Delhi," while 
 the troops pressed on by forced marches under Nichol- 
 son, "the tramp of whose war-horse might be heard 
 miles off," as was afterwards said of him by a rough 
 Sikh who wept over his grave. 
 
 The siege and storming of Delhi was the most illus- 
 trious event which occurred in the course of that gigan- 
 tic struggle, although the leaguer of Lucknow, during 
 which the merest skeleton of a British regiment — the 
 
268 The Siege of Delhi. 
 
 32d— held out, under the heroic Inglis, for six raontha 
 against two hundred thousand armed enemies, has per- 
 haps excited more intense interest. At Delhi, too, the 
 British were really the besieged, though ostensibly the 
 besiegers ; they were a mere handful of men " in the 
 open" — not more than 3700 bayonets, European and 
 native — and they were assailed from day to day by an 
 army of rebels numbering at one time as many as 
 75,000 men, trained to European discipline by English 
 officers, and supplied with all but exhaustless munitions 
 of war. The heroic little band sat down before the city 
 under the burning rays of a tropical sun. Death, 
 wounds, and fever failed to turn them from their pur- 
 pose. Thirty times they were attacked by overwhelming 
 numbers, and thirty times did they drive back the ene- 
 my. behind their defenses. As Captain Hodson — him- 
 self one of the bravest there — has said, " I venture to 
 aver that no other nation in the world would have re- 
 mained here, or avoided defeat if they had attempted 
 to do so." Never for an instant did these heroes fal- 
 ter at their work ; with sublime endurance they held 
 on, fought on, and never relaxed until, dashing through 
 the "imminent deadly breach," the place was won, 
 and the British flag was again unfurled on the walls 
 of Delhi. All were great — privates, officers, and gen- 
 erals. Common soldiers who had been inured to a life of 
 hardship, and young officers who had been nursed in lux- 
 urious homes, alike proved their manhood, and emerged 
 from that terrible trial with equal honor. The native 
 strength and soundness of the English race, and of man- 
 ly English training and discipline, were never more pow- 
 erfully exhibited; and it was there emphatically proved 
 that the Men of England are, after all, its greatest prod- 
 ucts. A terrible price was paid for this great chapter 
 in our history, but if those who survive, and thiise who- 
 come after, profit by the lesson and example it m.av' 
 not have been purchased at too great a cost. 
 
Missionary Laborers. 269 
 
 But not less energy and courage have been display- 
 ed in India and the East by men of various nations, in 
 other lines of action more peaceful and beneficent than 
 that of war. And while the heroes of the sword are 
 remembered, the heroes of the Gospel ought not to be 
 forgotten. From Xavier to Martyn and Williams, 
 there has been a succession of illustrious missionary la- 
 borers, working in a spirit of sublime self-sacrifice, with- 
 out any thought of worldly honor, inspired solely by 
 the hope of seeking out and rescuing the lost and fallen 
 of their race. Borne up by invincible courage and nev- 
 er-failing patience, these men have endured privations, 
 braved dangers, walked through pestilence, and borne 
 all toils, fatigues, and sufferings, yet held on their way 
 rejoicing, glorying even in martyrdom itself. Of these 
 one of the first and most illustrious was Francis Xavier. 
 Born of noble lineage, and with pleasure, power, and 
 nonor within his reach, he proved by his life that there 
 . are higher objects in the world than rank, and no- 
 bler aspirations than the accumulation of wealth. He 
 was a true gentleman in manners and sentiment ; brave, 
 honorable, generous ; easily led, yet capable of leading ; 
 easily persuaded, yet himself persuasive ; a most pa- 
 tient, resolute, and energetic man. At the age of twen- 
 ty-two he was earning his living as a public teacher of 
 philosophy at the University of Paris. There Xavier 
 became the intimate friend and associate of Loyola, 
 and shortly afterwards he conducted the pilgrimage of 
 the first little band of proselytes to Rome. 
 
 When John III. of Portugal resolved to plant Chris- 
 tianity in the Indian territories subject to his influence, 
 Bobadilla was first selected as his missionary ; but be- 
 ing disabled by illness, it was found necessary to make 
 another selection, and Xavier was chosen. Repairing 
 his tattered cassock, and with no other baggage than 
 his breviary, he at once started for Lisbon and embark- 
 ed for the East. The ship in which he set sail for Goa 
 
270 Francis Xavier. 
 
 had the Governor on hoard, with a reinforcement of a 
 thousand men for the garrison of the place. Though 
 a cabin was placed at his disposal, Xavier slept on deck 
 throughout the voyage with his head on a coil of ropes, 
 messing with the sailors. By ministering to their 
 wants, inventing innocent sports for their amusement, 
 and attending 'them in their sickness, he wholly won 
 •their hearts, and they regarded him with veneration. 
 
 Arrived at Goa, Xavier was shocked at the deprav- 
 ity of the people, settlers as well as natives ; for the 
 former had imported the vices without the restraints 
 of civilization, and the latter had only been too apt to 
 imitate their bad example. Passing along the streets 
 of the city, sounding his hand-bell as he went, he im- 
 plored the people to send him their children to be in- 
 Btructed. He shortly succeeded in collecting a large 
 number of scholars, whom he carefully taught day by 
 day, at the same time visiting the sick, the lepers, and 
 the wretched of all classes, with the object of assuaging 
 their miseries and bringing them to the truth. No cry 
 of human suffering which reached him was disregarded. 
 Hearing of the degradation and misery of the pearl- 
 fishers of Manaar, he set out to visit them, and his bell 
 again rang out the invitation of mercy. He baptized 
 and he taught, but the latter he could only do through 
 interpreters. His most eloquent teaching was his min- 
 istration to the wants and the sufferings of the wretched. 
 
 On he went, his hand-bell sounding along the coast 
 of Comorin, among the towns and villages, the temples 
 and the bazars, summoning the natives to gather about 
 him and be instructed. He had translations made of 
 the Catechism, the Apostles' Creed, the Commandments, 
 the Lord's Prayer, and some of the devotional offices of 
 the Church. Committing these to memory in their own 
 tongue, he recited them to the children, until they had 
 them by heart ; after which he sent them forth to teach 
 the words to their parents and neighbors. At Cape 
 
Xdvier's Missionary Xabors. 271 
 
 Comorin, he appointed thirty teachers, who under him- 
 self presided over thirty Christian churches, though the 
 churches were but humble, in most cases consisting only 
 of a cottage surmounted by a cross. Thence he passed 
 to Travancore, sounding his way from village to vil- 
 lage,.baptizing until his hands dropped with weariness, 
 and repeating his formulas until his voice became al- 
 most inaudible. According to his own account, the suc- 
 cess of his mission surpassed his highest expectations. 
 His pure, earnest, and beautiful life, and the irresistible 
 eloquence of his deeds, made converts wherever he 
 went ; and by sheer force of sympathy, those who saw 
 him and listened to him insensibly caught a portion of 
 his ardor. 
 
 Burdened with the thought that " the harvest is great 
 and the laborers are few," Xavier next sailed to Malac- 
 ca and Japan, where he found himself amongst entirely 
 new races, speaking other tongues. The most that he 
 could do here was to weep and pray, to smooth the pil- 
 low and watch by the sick-bed, sometimes soaking the 
 sleeve of his surplice in water, from which to squeeze 
 out a few drops and baptize the dying. Hoping all 
 things and fearing nothing, this valiant soldier of the 
 truth was borne onward throughout by faith and ener- 
 gy. " Whatever form of death or torture," said he, 
 " awaits me, I am ready to suffer it ten thousand times 
 for the salvation. of a single soul." He battled with 
 hunger, thirst, privations, and dangers of all kinds, still 
 pursuing his mission of love, unresting and unwearying. 
 At length, after eleven years' labor, this great good man, 
 while striving to find a way into China, was stricken 
 with fever in the Island of Sanchian, and there received 
 his crown of glory. A hero of nobler mould, more pure, 
 self-denying, and courageous, has probably never trod 
 this earth. 
 
 Other missionaries have followed Xavier in the same 
 field of work, such as Schwartz, Carey, and Marshman in 
 
272 John Williams. 
 
 India; Gutzlaff and Morrison in China ; Williams in the 
 South Seas ; Campbell, Moffatt, and Livingstone in Afri- 
 ca. John Williams, the martyr of Errom:anga, was orig- 
 inally apprenticed to a furnishing iron-monger. Though 
 considered a dull boy, he was handy at his trade, in 
 which he acquired so much skill that his master usual- 
 ly intrusted him with any blacksmith's work that re- 
 quired the exercise of more than ordinary care. He 
 was also fond of bell-hanging and other employments 
 which took him away from the shop. A casual sermon 
 which he heard gave his mind a serious bias, and he be- 
 came a Sunday-school teacher. The cause of missions 
 having been brought under his notice at some of his 
 society's meetings, he determined to devote himself 
 to this work. His services were accepted by the Lon- 
 don Missionary Society ; and his master allowed him 
 to leave the iron-monger's shop before the expiry of his 
 indentures. The islands of the Pacific Ocean were the 
 principaV scene of his labors — more particularly Huahine 
 in Tahiti, Raiatea, and Rarotonga. Like the Apostles, 
 he worked with his hands — at blacksmith work, garden- 
 ing, ship-building ; and he endeavored to teach the isl- 
 anders the arts of civilized life, at the same time that 
 he instructed them in the truths of religion. It was in 
 the course of his indefatigable labors that he was raas- 
 Bficred by savages on the shore of Erromanga — none 
 worthier than he to wear the martyr's crown. 
 
 The career of Di\ Livingstone is one of the most in- 
 teresting of all. He has told the story of his life in 
 that modest and unassuming manner which is so char- 
 acteristic of the man himself His ancestors were 
 poor but honest Highlanders, and it is related of one 
 of them, renowned in his district for. wisdom and pru- 
 dence, that when on his death-bed, he called his chil- 
 dren round him and left them these words,, the only 
 legacy he had to bequeath — " In my life-time," said he, 
 "I have searched most carefully through all the tra^ 
 
Dr. Livingstone. 273 
 
 ditions I could find of our family, and I never could 
 discover that there was a dishonest man among our 
 forefathers ; if, therefore, any of you or any of your 
 children should take to dishonest "ways, it will not be 
 because it runs in our blood ; it does not belong to 
 you : I leave this precept with you — Be honest." At 
 the age of ten Livingstone was sent to work in a cot- 
 ton-factory near Glasgow as a " piecer." With part 
 of his first week's wages he bought a Latin grammar, 
 and began to learn that language, pursuing the study 
 for years at a night-school. He would sit up conning 
 his lessons till twelve or later, when not sent to bed by 
 his mother, for he had to be up and at work in the fac- 
 tory every morning by six. In this way he plodded 
 through Virgil and Horace, also reading extensively 
 all books, excepting novels, that came in his way, but 
 more especially scientific works and books of travels. 
 He occupied his spare hours, which were but few, in 
 the pursuit of botany, scouring- the neighborhood to 
 collect plants. He even carried on his reading amidst 
 the roar of the factory machinery, so placing the book 
 ^upon the spinning-jenny which he worked that he 
 could catch sentence after sentence as he passed it. 
 In this way the persevering youth acquired much use- 
 ful knowledge ; and as he grew older, the desire pos- 
 sessed him of becoming a missionary to the heathen. 
 With this object he set himself to obtain a medical ed- 
 ucation, in order the better to be qualified for the 
 work. He accordingly economized his earnings, and 
 saved, as much money as enabled him to support him- 
 self while attending the Medical and Greek classes, as 
 well as the Divinity Lectures, at Glasgow, for several 
 winters, working as a cotton-spinner during the re- 
 mainder of each year. He thus supported himself, 
 during his college career, entirely by his own earnings 
 as a factory workman, never having received a far- 
 thing of help from any other source. " Looking back 
 12* 
 
274 Dr. I/ivingsion^s Studies. 
 
 now," he honestly says, " at that life of toil I can not 
 but feel thankful that it formed such a material part 
 of my early education ; and, were it possible, I should 
 like to begin life over again in the same lowly style, 
 and to pass through the same hardy training." At 
 length he finished his medical curriculum, wrote his 
 Latin thesis, passed his examinations, and was admitted 
 a licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons. 
 At first he thought of going to China, but the war 
 then waging with that country prevented his follow- 
 ing out the idea; and having offered his services to 
 the London Missionary Society, he was by them sent 
 out to Africa, which he reached in 1840. He had in- 
 tended to j)roceed to China by his own efforts ; and 
 he says the only pang he had in going to Africa at the 
 charge of the London Missionary Society was, because 
 " it was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to 
 work his own way to become, in a manner, dependent 
 upon others." Arrived in Africa, he set to wock with 
 great zeal. He could not brook the idea of merely en- 
 tering upon the labors of others, but cut out a large 
 sphere of independent work, preparing himself for it 
 by undertaking manual labor in building and other 
 handicraft employment, in addition to teaching, which, 
 he says, '' made me generally as much exhausted and 
 unfit for study in the evenings as ever I had been 
 when a cotton-spinner." Whilst laboring amongst the 
 BechuanaSjhe dug canals, built houses, cultivated fields, 
 reared cattle, and taught the natives to work as well 
 as worship. When he first started with a party of 
 them on foot upon a long journey, he overheard their 
 observations upon his appearance and powers — "He 
 is not strong," said they; "he is quite slim, and only 
 appears stout because he puts himself into those bagij 
 (trowsers) : he will soon knock up." This caused the 
 missionary's Highland blood to rise, and made him de- 
 spise the fatigue of keeping them all at the top of thei» 
 
John Howard. 275 
 
 speed for days together, until he heard them express- 
 ing proper opinions of his pedestrian powers. What 
 he did in Africa, and how he worked, may be learnt 
 from his own " Missionary Travels," one of the most 
 fascinating books of its kind that has ever been given 
 to the public. One of his last known acts is thoroughly 
 chai-acteristic of the man. The " Birkenhead " steam^ 
 launch, which he took out with him to Africa, having 
 proved a failure, he sent home orders for the construc- 
 tion of. another vessel at an estimated cost of £2000. 
 This sum be pi-oposed to defray out of the means 
 which he had set aside for his children, arising from the 
 profits of his books of travels. " The children must make 
 it up themselves," was in effect his expression in send- 
 ing home the order for the appropriation of the money. 
 
 The career of John Howard was throughout a strik- 
 ing illustration of the same power of patient pui'pose. 
 His sublime life proved that even physical weakness 
 could remove mountains in the pursuit of an end rec- 
 ommended by duty. The idea of ameliorating the 
 condition of j)risoners engrossed his whole thoughts 
 and possessed him like a passion ; and no toil, nor dan- 
 ger, nor bodily suffering could turn him from that great 
 object of his life. Though a man of no genius and but 
 moderate talent, his heart was pure and his will was 
 strong. Even in his own time he achieved a remark- 
 able degree of success ; and his influence did not die 
 with him, for it has continued powerfully to affect not 
 only the legislation of England, but of all civilized na- 
 tions, down to the present hour. 
 
 Jonas Hanway was another of the many patient and 
 persevering men who have made England what it is — ■ 
 content simply to do with energy the work they have 
 been appointed to do, and go to their rest thankfully 
 when it is done — 
 
 " Leaving no memorial but a world 
 Made better by their lives." 
 
276 Jonas Hanway. 
 
 He was born in 1712, at Portsmouth, where his father, 
 a storekeeper in the dockyard, being killed by an acci- 
 dent, he was left an orphan at an early age. His moth- 
 er removed with her children to London, where she 
 had them put to school, and struggled hard to bring 
 them up respectably. At seventeen Jonas was sent 
 to Lisbon to be apprenticed to a merchant, where his 
 close attention to business, his punctuality, and his 
 strict honor and integrity, gained tor him the respect 
 and esteem of all who knew him. Returning to Lon- 
 don in 1 V43, he accepted the offer of a partnership in 
 an English mercantile house at St. Petersburg engaged 
 in the Caspian trade, then in its infancy. Hanway 
 went to Russia for the purpose of extending the busi- 
 ness ; and shortly after his arrival at the capital he set 
 out for Persia, with a caravan of English bales of cloth 
 making twenty carriage loads. At Astracan he sailed 
 for Astrabad, on the south-eastern shore of the Cas- 
 pian ; but he had scarcely landed his bales, when an 
 insurrection broke out, his goods were seized, and 
 though he afterwards recovered the principal part of 
 tbem, the fruits of his enterpiise were in a great meas- 
 ure lost. A plot was set on foot to seize himself and 
 his party; so he took to sea, and, after encountering 
 great perils, reached Ghilan in safety. His escape on 
 this occasion gave him the first idea of the words which 
 he afterwards adopted as the motto of his life — '■'■Never 
 Despair.''^ He afterwards resided in St. Petersburg 
 for five years, carrying on a prosperous business. But 
 a relative having left him some property, and his own 
 means being considerable, he left Russia, and arrived 
 in his native country in 1750. His object in returning 
 to England was, as he himself expressed it, " to consult 
 his own health (which was extremely delicate), and do 
 as much good to himself and others as he was able." 
 The rest of his life was spent in deeds of active benev- 
 olence and usefulness to his fellow-men. He lived in a 
 
His Philanthropic Labors. 277 
 
 quiet style, in order that he might employ a larger 
 share of his income in works of benevolence. One of 
 the first public improvements to which he devoted 
 himself was that of the highways of the metropolis, in 
 which he succeeded to a large extent. The rumor of a 
 French invasion being prevalent in 1755, Mr. Han way 
 turned his attention to the best mode of keeping up 
 the supply of seamen. He summoned a meeting of 
 merchants and shipowners at the Royal Exchange, and 
 there proposed to them to form themselves into a so- 
 ciety for fitting out landsmen volunteers and boys, to 
 serve on board the king's ships. The proposal was re- 
 ceived with enthusiasm : a society was formed and of- 
 ficers were appointed, Mr. Hanway directing its entire 
 operations,' The result was the establishment in 1756 
 of The Marine Society, an institution which has proved 
 of much national advantage, and is to this day of great 
 and substantial utility. Within six years from its 
 formation, 5451 boys and 4787 landsmen volunteers 
 had been trained and fitted out by the society and 
 added to the navy, and to this day it is in active oper- 
 ation, about 600 poor boys, after a careful education, 
 being annually apprenticed as sailors, principally in the 
 merchant service. 
 
 Mr. Hanway devoted the other portions of his spare 
 time to improving or establishing important public in- 
 stitutions in the metropolis. From an early period he 
 took an active interest in the Foundling Hospital, which 
 had been started by Thomas Coram many years before, 
 but which, by encouraging parents to abandon their 
 children to the charge of a charity, w^as threatening to 
 do more harm than good. He determined to take steps 
 to stem the evil, entering upon the work in the face of 
 the fashionable philanthropy of the time ; but by hold- 
 ing to his purpose he eventually succeeded in bringing 
 the charity back to its proper objects; and time and 
 experience Lave proved that he was right. The Mag- 
 
278 Jonas Hanway, 
 
 dalen Hospital was also established in a great measure 
 through Mr. Hanway's exertions. But his most lahori- 
 ous and persevering efforts Avere in behalf of the infant 
 parish poor. The misery and neglect amidst which the 
 children of the parish poor then grew up, and the mor- 
 tality which prevailed amongst them, were frightful ; 
 but there was no fashionable movement on foot to 
 abate the suffering, as in the case of the foundlings. 
 So Jonas Hanway summoned his energies to the task. 
 Alone and unassisted he first ascertained by pei-sonal 
 inquiry the extent of the evil. He explored the build- 
 ings of the poorest classes in London, and visited the 
 poor-house sick wards, by which he ascertained the 
 management in detail of every work-house in and near 
 the metropolis. He next made a journey into France 
 and through Holland, visiting the houses for the recep- 
 tion of the pool-, and noting whatever he thought might 
 be adopted at home with advantage. He was thus em- 
 ployed for five years ; and on his return to England he 
 published the results of his observations. The conse- 
 quence was that many of the work-houses were reform, 
 ed and improved. In 1701 he obtained an Act obliging 
 every London parish to keep an annual register of all 
 the infants received, discliarged, and dead ; and he took 
 care that the Act should work, for he himself super- 
 intended its working with indefatigable watchfulness. 
 He went about from work-house to work-house in the 
 morning and from one member of Parliament to an- 
 other in the afternoon, for day after day, and for year 
 after year, enduring every rebuff, answering every ob- 
 jection, and accommodating himself to every humor. 
 At length, after a perseverance hardly to be equalled, 
 and after nearly ten years' labor, he obtained another 
 Act, at his sole expense (7 Geo. IH. c. 39), directing 
 that all parish infants belonging to the parishes within 
 the bills of moi'tality should not be nursed in the work- 
 houses, but be sent to nurse a certain number of miles 
 
His Purity of Character. 279 
 
 out of town, until they were six years old, under the 
 eare of guardians to be elected triennially. The poor 
 people called this " the Act for keeping children alive ;" 
 and the registers for the years which followed its pass- 
 ing, as compared with those which preceded it, showed 
 that thousands of lives had been preserved through the 
 judicious interference of this good and sensible man. 
 
 Wherever a philanthropic work was to be done in 
 London, be sure that Jonas Hanway's hand was in it. 
 One of the first Acts for the protection of chimney- 
 sweepers' boys was obtained through his influence. A 
 destructive fire at Montreal, and another at Bridge- 
 town, Barbadoes, afibrded him the opportunity for 
 raising a timely subscription for the relief of the suf- 
 ferers. His name appeared in every list, and his disin- 
 terestedness and sincerity were universally recognized. 
 But he was not suffered to waste his little fortune en- 
 tirely in the service of others. Five leading citizens of 
 London, headed by Mr. Hoare, the banker, without Mr. 
 Hanway's knowledge, waited on Lord Bute, then prime 
 minister, in a body, and in the names of their fellow- 
 citizens requested that some notice might be taken of 
 this good man's disinterested services to his country. 
 The result was, his appointment shortly after, as one 
 of the commissioners for victualling the navy. 
 
 Towards the close of his life Mr. Hanway's health be- 
 came very feeble, and although he found it necessary 
 to resign his office at the Victualling Board, he could 
 not be idle ; but labored at the establishment of Sun- 
 day-schools — a movement then in its infancy — or in 
 relieving poor blacks, many of whom wandered desti- 
 tute about the streets of the metropolis — or, in allevia- 
 ting the sufferings of some neglected and destitute 
 class of society. Notwithstanding his familiarity with 
 misery in all its shapes, he was one of the most cheerful 
 beings , and, but for his cheerfulness, he could never, 
 with so delicate a frame, have got through so vast an 
 
280 Jonas Hahway. 
 
 amount of self-imposed -work. He dreaded notliiug so 
 much as inactivity. Though fragile, he was bold and 
 indefatigable ; and his moral courage was of the first 
 order. It may be regarded as a trivial matter to men- 
 tion, that he was the first who ventured to walk the 
 streets of London with an umbrella over his head^ 
 But let any modern London merchant venture to walk 
 along Cornhill in a peaked Chinese hat, and he will find 
 it takes some degree of moral courage to persevere in 
 it. After carrying an umbrella for thirty years, Mr. 
 Hanway saw the article at length come into general 
 use. 
 
 Hanway was a man of strict honor, truthfulness, and 
 integrity ; and every word he said might be relied 
 upon. He had so great a respect, amounting almost 
 to a reverence, for the character of the honest mer- 
 chant, that it was the only subject upon which he was 
 ever seduced into a eulogium. He strictly practised 
 what he professed, and both as a merchant, and aftei^ 
 wards as a commissioner for victualling the navy, his 
 conduct was without stain. He would not accept the 
 slightest favor of any sort from a contractor ; and when 
 any present was sent to him whilst at the Victualling 
 Ofiice, he would politely return it, with the intimation 
 that "he had made it a rule not to accept any thing 
 from any pei-son engaged with the ofiice." When he 
 found his powers failing, he prepared for death with as 
 much cheerfulness as he would have prepared himself 
 for a journey into the country. He sent round and 
 paid all his tradesmen, took leave of his friends, ar- 
 ranged his affairs, had his person neatly disposed of, 
 and parted with life serenely and peacefully in his 74th 
 year. The property which he left did not amount to 
 two thousand pounds, and, as he had no relatives who 
 wanted it, he divided it amongst sundry orphans and 
 poor persons whom he had befriended during his life- 
 time. Such, in brief, was the beautiful life of Jonas 
 
Granvilh Sfiarp. -281 
 
 Hanway — as honest, energetic, hard-working, and true- 
 hearted a man as ever lived. 
 
 Tlie life of Granville Sharp is another striking exam- 
 ple of the same power of individual energy — a power 
 which was afterwards transfused into the noble band of 
 workers in the cause of Slavery Abolition, prominent 
 among whom were Olarkson, Wilberforce, Buxton, and 
 Brougham. But, giants though these men were in this 
 cause, Granville Sharp was the first, and perhaps the 
 greatest of them all, in point of perseverance, energy, 
 and intrepidity. He began life as aj)prentice to a lin- 
 en-draper on Tower-Hill ; but, leaving that business af- 
 ter his apprenticeship was out, he next entered as a 
 clerk in the Ordnance Office ; and it was while engaged 
 in that humble occupation that he carried on in his 
 spare hours the work of Negro Emancipation. He 
 was always, even when an apprentice, ready to under- 
 take any amount of volunteer labor where a useful pur- 
 pose was to be served. Thus, while learning the linen- 
 drapery business, a fellow-apprentice who lodged in the 
 same house, and was a Unitarian, led him into frequent 
 discussions on religious subjects. The Unitarian youth 
 insisted that Granville's Trinitarian misconception of 
 certain passages of Scripture arose from his want of ac- 
 quaintance with the Greek tongue ; on which he imme- 
 diately set to work in his evening hours, and shortly 
 acquired an intimate knowledge of Greek. A similar 
 controversy with another fellow-apprentice, a Jew, as 
 to the interpretation of the prophecies, led him in like 
 manner to undertake and overcome the difficulties of 
 Hebrew. 
 
 But the circumstance which gave the bias and direc- 
 tion to the main labors of his life originated in his gen- 
 erosity and benevolence. His brother William, a sur- 
 geon in Mincing Lane, gave gratuitous advice to the 
 poor, and amongst the numerous applicants for relief at 
 bis surgery was a poor African named Jonathan Strong. 
 
282 Granville Sharp. 
 
 It appeared that the negro had been brutally treated by 
 his master, a Barbadoes lawyer then in London, and 
 became lame, almost , blind, and unable to work ; on 
 which his owner, regarding him as of no further value 
 as a chattel, cruelly turned him adrift into the streets 
 to starve. This poor man, a mass of disease, supported 
 bimself by begging for a time, until he found his way 
 to William Sharp, who gave him some medicine, and 
 shortly after got him admitted to St. Bartholomew's 
 hospital, where he was cured. On coming out of the 
 hospital, the two brothers supported the negro in order 
 to keep him oif the streets, but they had not the least 
 suspicion at the time that any one had a claim upon his 
 person. They even succeeded in obtaining a situation 
 for Strong with an apothecary, in whose service he re- 
 mained for two years ; and it was while he was attend- 
 ing his mistress behind a hackney coach, that his for- 
 mer owner, the Barbadoes lawyer, recognized him, and 
 determined to recover possession of the slave, again 
 rendered valuable by the restoration of his health. 
 The lawyer employed two of the Lord Mayor's officers 
 to apprehend Strong, and he was lodged in the Comp- 
 ter, until he could be shipped ofiE" to the "West Indies. 
 The negro, bethinking him in his captivity of the kind 
 services which Granville Sharp had rendered him in 
 his great distress some years before, dispatched a letter 
 to him requesting his help. Sharp had forgotten the 
 name of Strong, bat he sent a messenger to make in- 
 quiries, who returned saying that the keepers denied 
 having any such person in their charge. His suspicions 
 wei-e roused, and he went forthwith to the prison, and 
 insisted upon seeing Jonathan Strong. He was admit- 
 ted, and recognized the poor negro, now in custody as a 
 recaptured slave. Mr. Sharp charged the master of 
 the prison at his own peril not to deliver up Strong to 
 any person whatever, until he had been carried before 
 the Lord Mayor, to whom Sharp immediately went, and 
 
Position of Slaves in England. 283 
 
 obtained a summons against those persons who had 
 seized and imprisoned Strong without a warrant. The 
 parties appeared before the Lord Mayor accordingly, 
 and it appeared from the proceedings that Strong's for- 
 mer master had already sold him to a new one, who 
 produced the bill of sale and claimed the negro as his 
 property. As no charge of offense was made against 
 Strong, and as the Lord Mayor was incompetent to 
 deal with the legal question of Strong's liberty or oth- 
 erwise, he discharged him, and the slave followed his 
 benefactor out of court, no one daring to touch him. 
 The man's owner immediately gave Sharp notice of an 
 action to recover possession of his negro slave, of whom 
 he declared he had been robbed. 
 
 About that time (IVB'/), the personal liberty of the 
 Englishman, though cherished as a theory, was subject 
 to grievous infringements, and was almost daily viola- 
 ted. The impressment of men for the sea-service was 
 constantly practised, and, besides the press-gangs, there 
 were regular bands of kidnappers employed in London 
 and all the large towns of the kingdom, to seize men for 
 the East India Company's service. And when the men 
 were not wanted for India, they were shipped off to the 
 planters in the American colonies. Negro slaves were 
 openly advertised for sale in the London and Liverpool 
 newspapers. Rewards were offered for recovering and 
 securing fugitive slaves, and conveying them down to 
 certain specified ships in the river. 
 
 The position of the reputed slave in England was 
 nndefined and doubtful. The judgments which had 
 been given in the courts of law were fluctuating and 
 various, resting on no settled principle. Although it 
 was a popular belief that no slave could breathe in 
 England, there were legal men of eminence <vho ex- 
 pressed a directly contrary opinion. The, lawyers to 
 whom Mr. Sharp resorted for advice, in defending him- 
 self in the action raised against him in the case of Jon- 
 
284 Oranvilh Sharp. 
 
 athan Strong, generally concurred in this view, and hj 
 was further told by Jonathan Strong's owner, that the 
 eminent Lord Chief-Justice Mansfield, and all the lead- 
 ing counsel, were decidedly of opinion that the slave, 
 by coming into England, did not become free, but 
 might legally be compelled to return again to the 
 plantations. Such information would have caused 
 despair jn a mind less courageous and earnest than 
 that of Granville Sharp ; but it only served to stimu- 
 late his resolution to fight the battle of the negroes' 
 freedom, at least in England. " Forsaken," he said, "by 
 my professional defenders, I was compelled, through 
 the want of regular legal assistance, to make a hope- 
 less attempt at self-defense, though I was totally un- 
 acquainted either with the practice of the law or the 
 foundations of it, having never opened a law-book 
 (except the Bible) in my life, until that time, when I 
 most reluctantly undertook to search the indexes of 
 a law library, which my bookseller had lately pur- 
 chased." 
 
 The whole of his time during the day was occupied 
 with tbe business of the Ordnance Department, where 
 he held the most laborious post in the office ; he was 
 therefore under the necessity of conducting his new 
 studies late at night or early in the morning. He con- 
 fessed that he was himself becoming a sort of slave. 
 Writing to a clerical friend to excuse himself for delay 
 in replying to a lettet, he said, "I profess myself en- 
 tirely incapable of holding a literary correspondence. 
 What little time I "have been able to save from sleep 
 at night, and early in the morning, has been necessarily 
 employed iu the examination of some points of law, 
 which admitted of no delay, and yet required the most 
 diligent researches and examination in my study." 
 
 Mr. Sharp gave up every leisure moment that he 
 could command during the next two years, to the 
 close study of the laws of England affecting personal 
 
His Sympathy for tJie Slave. 285 
 
 liberty — wading through an immense mass of dry and 
 repulsive literature, and mating extracts of all the 
 most important Acts of Parliament, decisions of the 
 coui'ts, and opinions of eminent lawyers, as he went 
 along. In this tedious and protracted inquiry he had 
 no instructor, nor assistant, nor adviser. He could not 
 find a single lawyer whose opinion was favorable to 
 his undertaking. The results of his inquiries were, 
 however, as gratifying to himself as they were sur- 
 prising to the gentlemen of the law. " God be thank- 
 ed," he wrote, " there is nothing in any English law 
 or statute — at least that I am able to find out — that 
 can justify the enslaving of others." He had planted 
 his foot firm, and now he doubted nothing. He drew 
 up the result of his studies in a summary form ; it was 
 a plain, clear, and manly statement, entitled, " On the 
 Injustice of Tolerating Slavery in England ;" and nu- 
 merous copies, made by himself, were circulated by 
 him amongst the most eminent lawyers of the time. 
 Strong's owner, finding the sort of man he had to deal 
 with, invented various pi'etexts for deferring the suit 
 against Sharp, and at length offered a compromise, 
 which was rejected. Granville went on circulating his 
 manuscript tract among the lawyers, until at length 
 those employed against Jonathan Strong were deterred 
 from proceeding further, and the result was, that the 
 plaintiff was compelled to pay treble costs for not 
 bringing forward his action. The tract was then print- 
 ed in 1Y69. 
 
 In the mean time other cases occurred of the kidnap- 
 ping of negroes in London, and their shipment to the 
 West Indies for sale. Wherever Sharp could lay hold 
 of any such case, he at once took proceedings to rescue 
 the negro. Thus the wife of ono Hylas, an African, 
 was seized, aud dispatched to Barbadoes; on which 
 Sharp, in the name of Hylas, instituted legal proceed- 
 ings against the aggressor, obtained a verdict with 
 
286 The Protection ofNegYoes. 
 
 damages, and Hylas's wife was brought back to Eng- 
 land free. 
 
 Another forcible capture of a negro, attended with 
 great cruelty, having occurred in 1770, he immediate- 
 ly set himself on the track of the aggressors. An 
 African, named Lewis, was seized one dark night by 
 two watermen employed by the person who claimed 
 the negro as his property, dragged into the water, 
 hoisted into a boat, where he was gagged, and his 
 limbs were tied ; and then rowing down river, they put 
 him on board a ship bound for Jamaica, where he was to 
 be sold for a slave upon his arrival in the island. The 
 cries of the poor negro had, however, attracted the at- 
 tention of some neighbors ; one of whom proceeded di- 
 rect to Mr. Granville Sharp, now known as the negro's 
 friend, and informed him of the outrage. Sharp im- 
 mediately got a wan-ant to bring back Lewis, and he 
 proceeded to Gravesend, but on arrival there the ship 
 had sailed for the Downs. A writ of habeas corpus was 
 obtained, sent down to Spithead, and before the ship 
 could leave the shores of England the writ was served. 
 The slave was found chained to the main-mast bathed 
 in tears, casting mournful looks on the land from which 
 he was about to be torn. He was immediately liber- 
 ated, brought back to London, and a warrant was is- 
 sued against the author of the outrage. The prompti- 
 tude of head, heart, and hand, displayed by Mr. Sharp 
 in this transaction could scarcely have been surpassed, 
 and yet he accused himself of slowness. The case was 
 tried before Lord Mansfield — whose opinion, it will bo 
 remembered, had already been expressed as decidedly 
 opposed to that entertained by Granville Sharp. The 
 judge, however, avoided bringing the question to an is- 
 sue, or offering any opinion on the legal question as to 
 the slave's personal liberty or otherwise, but discharged 
 the negro because the defendant could bring no evi- 
 dence that Lewis was even nominally his property. 
 
Cas^ of James Somerset. 287 
 
 The question of the personal liberty of the negro in 
 England was therefore still undecided ; but in the 
 mean time Mr. Sharp continued steady in his benevolent 
 course, and by his indefatigable exertions and prompti- 
 tude of action, many more were added to the list of the 
 rescued. At length the important case of James Som- 
 erset occurred ; a case which is said to have been se- 
 lected, at the mutual desire of Lord Mansfield and Mr. 
 Sharp, in order to bring the great question involved to 
 a clear legal issue. Somerset had been brought to Eng- 
 land by his master, and left there. Afterwards his 
 master sought to apprehend him and send him off to 
 Jamaica, for sale. Mr. Sharp, as usual, at once, took 
 the negro's case in hand, and employed counsel to de- 
 fend him. Lord Mansfield intimated that the case was 
 of such general concern, that he should take the opin- 
 ion of all the judges upon it. Mr. Sharp now felt that 
 he would have to contend with all the force that could 
 be brought against him, but his resolution was in no 
 wise shaken. Fortunately for him, in this severe strug- 
 gle, his exertions had already begun to tell : increasing 
 interest was taken in the question, and many eminent 
 legal gentlemen openly declared themselves to be upon 
 his side. 
 
 - The cause of personal liberty, now at stake, was fair- 
 ly tried before Lord Mansfield, assisted by the three 
 justices — and tried on the broad principle of the essen- 
 tial and constitutional right of every man in England 
 to the liberty of his person, unless forfeited by the law. 
 It is unnecessary hei'e to enter into any account of this 
 great trial ; the arguments extended to a'great length, 
 the cause being carried over to another term — when it 
 was adjourned and re-adjourned — but at length judg- 
 ment was given by Lord Mansfield, in whose powerful 
 mind so gradual a change had been worked by the ar- 
 guments of counsel, based mainly on Granville Sharp's 
 tract, that he now declared the court to be so clearly of 
 
288 Granvilh Sharp. 
 
 one opinion, that there was no necessity for referring 
 the case to the twelve judges. He then declared that 
 the claim of slavery never can be supported ; that the 
 power claimed never was in use in England, nor ac- 
 knowledged by the law ; therefore the man James Som- 
 erset must be discharged. By securing this judgment 
 Granville Sharp effectually abolished the slave-trade, un- 
 til then carried on openly in the streets of Liverpool 
 and London. But he also firmly established the glori- 
 ous axiom, that as soon as any slave sets his foot on 
 English ground, that moment he becomes free ; and 
 there can be no doubt that this great decision of Lord 
 Mansfield was mainly owing to Mr. Sharp's firm, reso- 
 lute, and intrepid prosecution of the cause from the be- 
 ginning to the end. 
 
 It is unnecessary further to follow the career of Gran- 
 ville Sharp. He continued to labor indefatigably in 
 all good works. He was instramental in founding the 
 colony of Sierra Leone as an asylum for rescued ne- 
 groes. He labored to ameliorate the condition of the 
 native Indians in the American colonies. He agitated 
 the enlargement and extension of the political rights 
 of the English people ; and he endeavored to effect the 
 abolition of the impressment of seamen. Granville 
 held that the British seaman, as well as the African ne- 
 gro, was entitled to the protection of the law ; and 
 that the fact of his choosing a seafaring life did not 
 in any way cancel his rights and privileges as an Eng- 
 lishman—first amongst which he ranked personal free- 
 dom. Mr. Sharp also labored, but ineffectually, to re- 
 store amity between England and her colonists in 
 America ; and when the fratricidal war of the Ameri- 
 can Revolution was entered on, his sense of integrity 
 was so scrupulous that, resolving not in any way to be 
 concerned in so unnatural a business, he resigned his 
 situation at the Ordnance Office. 
 
 To the last he held to the great object of his life^ 
 
Thomas Clarlison. 289 
 
 the abolition of slavery. To carry on this work, and 
 organize the efforts of the growing friends of the causey 
 ihe Society for the Abolition of Slavery was founded, 
 and new men, inspired by Sharp's example and zeal, 
 sprang forward to help him. His energy became theirs, 
 and the self-sacrificing zeal in which he had so long 
 labored single-handed, became at length transfused into 
 the nation itself. His mantle fell upon Clarkson, upon 
 Wilberfoi'oe, upon Brougham, and upon Buxton, who 
 labored as he had done, with like energy and steadfast- 
 ness of purpose, until at length slavery was abolished 
 throughout the British dominions. But though the 
 names last mentioned may be more frequently identi- 
 fied with the triumph of this great cause, the chief 
 merit unquestionably belongs to Granville Sharp. He 
 was encouraged by none of the world's huzzas when 
 he entered upon his work. He stood alone, opposed 
 to'the opinion of the ablest lawyers and the most rooted 
 prejudices of the times; and alone he fought out, by 
 his single exertions, and at his Individual expense, the 
 most memorable battle for the constitution of this 
 country and the liberties of British subjects, of which 
 modern times afford a record. What followed was 
 mainly the consequence of his indefatigable constancy. 
 He lighted the torch which kindled other minds, and it 
 was handed on until the illumination became complete. 
 Before the death of Granville Sharp, Clarkson had 
 already turned his attention to the question of Negro 
 Slavery. He had even selected it for the subject of a 
 college essay ; and his mind became so possessed by it 
 that he could not shake it off. The spot is pointed 
 out near Wade's Mill, in Hertfordshire, where, alight- 
 ing from his horse one day, he sat down disconsolate 
 on the turf by the road-side, and, after long thinking, 
 determined to devote himself wholly to the work. He 
 translated his essay from Latin into English, added 
 fresh illustrations, and published it. Then fellow-la- 
 
 13 
 
290 Thmfias ClarksorJs immense Labors. 
 
 borers gathered round him. The Society for Abolish- 
 ing the Slave-trade, unknown to him, had already been 
 formed, and when he heard of it he joined it. He sac- 
 rificed all his prospects in life to prosecute this cause. 
 Wilberforce was selected to lead in Parliament ; but 
 upon Clarkson chiefly devolved the labor of collecting 
 and arranging the immense mass of evidence offered 
 in support of the abolition. A remarkable instance of 
 Clarkson's sleuth-hound sort of perseverance may be 
 mentioned. The abettors of slavery, in the course of 
 their defense of the systein, maintained that only such 
 negroes as were captured in battle were sold as slaves, 
 and if not so sold, then they were reserved for a still 
 more frightful doom in their own country. Clarkson 
 knew of the slave-hunts conducted by the slave-traders, 
 but had no witnesses to prove it. Where was one to 
 be found ? Accidentally, a gentleman whom he met 
 on one of his journeys informed him of a yonng sailor, 
 in whose company he had been about a year before, 
 who had been actually engaged in one of snch slave- 
 hunting expeditions. The gentleman did not know 
 his name, and could but indefinitely describe his per- 
 son. He did not know where he was, further than that 
 he belonged to a ship-of-war in ordinary, but at what 
 port he could not tell. "With this mere glimmering 
 of information, Clarkson determined to produce this 
 man as a witness. He visited personally all the sea- 
 port towns whei-e ships in ordinary lay ; boarded and 
 examined every ship without success, until he came to 
 the very last port, and found the young man, his prize, 
 in the very last ship that remained to be visited. The 
 young man proved to be one of his most valuable and 
 effective witnesses. 
 
 During several years Clarkson conducted a corre- 
 spondence with upwards of four hundred persons, trav- 
 elling more than thirty-five thousand miles during the 
 same time in search of evidence. He was at length 
 
Fowell Buxton. 291 
 
 disabled and exhausted by illness, brought on by his 
 continuous exertions ; but he was not borne from the 
 field until his zeal had fully awakened the public mind, 
 and excited the ardent sympathies of all good men on 
 behalf of the slave. 
 
 After years of protracted struggle, the slave-trade 
 was abolished. But still another great achievement 
 remained to be accomplished — the abolition of slavery 
 itself throughout the British dominions. And here 
 again determined energy won the day. Of the leaders 
 in the cause, none was more distinguished than Fowell 
 Buxton, who took the position formerly occupied by 
 Wilberforce in the House of Commons. Buxton was 
 a dull, heavy boy, distinguished for his strong self-will, 
 which first exhibited itself in violent, domineering, 
 and headstrong obstinacy. His father died when he 
 was a child; but fortunately he had a wise mother, 
 who trained his will with great care, constraining him 
 to obey, but encouraging the habit of deciding and act- 
 ing for himself in matters which might safely be left to 
 him. His mother believed that a strong will, directed 
 upon worthy objects, was a valuable manly quality if 
 properly guided, and she acted accordingly. When 
 others about her commented on the boy's self-will, she 
 would merely say, " Never mind — he is self-willed now 
 — you will see it will turn out well in the end." Fow- 
 ell Ifearnt very little at school, and was regarded as a 
 dunce and an idler. He got other boys to do his ex- 
 ercises for him, while he romped and scrambled about. 
 He returned home at fifteen, a great, gi'owing, awkward 
 lad, fond only of boating, shooting, riding, and field- 
 sports-— spending his time principally with the game- 
 keeper, a man possessed of a good heart, an intelligent 
 observer of life and nature, though he could neither 
 read nor write. Buxton had excellent raw material in 
 him, but he wanted culture, training, and development. 
 At this juncture of his life, when his habits wei-e being' 
 
292 Buxtcm's Energy of Character. 
 
 formed for good or evil, he was happily thrown into 
 the society of the Gurney family, distinguished for their 
 fine social qualities not less than for their intellectual 
 culture and public-spirited philanthropy. This inter- 
 course with the Gurneys, he used afterwards to say, 
 gave the coloring to his life. They encouraged his ef- 
 forts at self-culture ; and when he went to the Univer- 
 sity of Dublin and gained high honors there, the ani- 
 mating passion in his mind, he said, " was to carry back 
 to them the prizes which they prompted and enabled 
 me to win." He married one of the daughters of the 
 family and started in life, commencing as a clerk to his 
 uncles Hanbury, the London brewers. His power of 
 will, which made him so difficult to deal with as a boy, 
 now formed the backbone of his character, and made 
 him most indefatigable and energetic in whatever he 
 undertook. He threw his whole strength and bulk 
 right down upon his work; and the great giant — 
 " Elephant Buxton " they called him, for he stood some 
 six feet four in height — became one of the most vigor- 
 ous and practical of men. "I could brew," he said, 
 "one hour — do mathematics the next — and shoot the 
 next — and each with my whole soul." There was in- 
 vincible energy and determination in whatever he did. 
 Admitted a partner, he became the active manager of 
 the concern ; and the vast business which he conducted 
 felt his influence through every fibre, and prospered 
 far beyond its previous success. Nor did he allow his 
 mind to lie fallow, for he gave his evenings diligentlj 
 to self-culture, studying and digesting Blackstone* 
 Montesquieu, and solid commentaries on English law. 
 His maxims in reading were, " never to begin a book 
 without finishing it ;" " never to consider a book fin- 
 ished until it is mastered ;" and " to study every thing 
 with the whole mind." 
 
 When only thirty-two, Buxton entered Parliament,- 
 and at once assumed that position of influence there of 
 
Buxton^s Determination. 293 
 
 ■whieh every honest, earnest, well-informed man is se- 
 cure,, who enters that assembly of the first gentlemen 
 in the world. The principal question to which he de- 
 voted himself was the complete emancipation of the 
 slaves in the British colonies. He himself used to at- 
 tribute the interest which he early felt in this question 
 to the influence of Priscilla Gurney, one of the Earlham 
 family — a woman of a fine intellect and warm heart, 
 abounding in illustrious virtues. When on her death- 
 bed, in 1821, she repeatedly sent for Buxton, and urged 
 him " to make the cause of the slaves the great object 
 of his life." Her last act was to attempt to reiterate 
 the solemn charge, and she expired in the ineffectual 
 effort. Buxton never forgot her counsel ;i he named 
 one of his daughters after her ; and on the day on 
 which she was married from his house, on the 1st of 
 August, 1834 — the day of Negro emancipation — after 
 his Priscilla had been manumitted from her filial serv- 
 ice, and left her father's home in the company of her 
 husband, Buxton sat down and thus wrote to a friend : 
 " The bride is just gone ; every thing has passed off' to 
 admiration ; and tliere is not a slave in the British coU 
 onies .'" 
 
 Buxton was no genius — not a great intellectual lead- 
 er nor discoverer, but mainly an earnest, straightfor- 
 ward, resolute, energetic man. Indeed, his whole char- 
 acter is most forcibly expressed in his own words, which 
 every young man might well stamp upon his soul: 
 "The longer I live," said he, "the more I am certain 
 that the great difference between men, between the 
 feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, 
 is energy — invincible determination — a purpose once 
 fixed, and then death or victory ! That quality will 
 do any thing that can be done in this world ; and no 
 talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will mak« 
 a two-legged ci'eature a Man without it." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MEN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 " Seest thou a man diligent in his business ? he shall stand hefora 
 kings." — Proverbs of Solomon. 
 
 "That man is but of the lower part of the world that is not brought 
 np to business and affairs." — Owen Fjsltham. 
 
 HAZLITT, in one of his clever essays, represents 
 the man ofbusiness as a mean sort of person put 
 in a go-cart, yoked to a trade or profession ; alleging 
 that all he has to do is, not to go out of the beaten 
 track, but merely to let his affairs take their own 
 course. " The great requisite," he says, " for the pros- 
 perous management of ordinary business is the want of 
 imagination, or of any ideas but those of custom and 
 interest on the narrowest scale."* But nothing could 
 be more one-sided, and in effect untrue, than such a 
 definition. Of course, there are narrow-minded men of 
 business, as there are narrow-minded scientific men, lit- 
 erary men, and legislators ; but there are also business 
 men of large and comprehensive minds, capable of ac- 
 tion on the very largest scale. As Burke said in his 
 speech on the India Bill, he knew statesmen who were 
 peddlers, and merchants who acted in the spirit of 
 statesmen. 
 
 If we take into account the qualities necessary for 
 
 the successful conduct of any important undertaking — 
 
 that it requires special aptitude, promptitude of action 
 
 on emergencies, capacity for organizing the labors oft- 
 
 ♦ Ou "Thought and Actioii," 
 
Genius and Business. 295 
 
 en of large numbers of men, great tact and knowledge 
 of human nature, constant self-culture, and growing ex- 
 perience in the practical affairs of life — it must, we 
 think, be obvious that the school of business is by no 
 means so narrow as some writers would have us believe. 
 Mr. Helps has gone much nearer the truth when he said 
 that consummate men of business are as rare almost as 
 great poets — rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and 
 martyrs. Indeed, of no other pursuit can it so emphat- 
 ically be said, as of this, that " Business makes men." 
 
 It has, however, been a favorite fallacy with dunces 
 in all times, that men of genius are unfitted for busi- 
 ness, as well as that business occupations unfit men for 
 the pursuits of genius. The unhappy youth who com- 
 mitted suicide a few years since because he had been 
 " born to be a man and condemned to be a grocer," 
 proved by the act that his soul was not equal even to the 
 dignity of grocery. For it is not the calling that de- 
 grades the man, but the man that degrades the calling. 
 All work that brings honest gain is honorable, whether 
 it be of hand or mind. The fingers may be soiled, yet 
 the heart remain pure ; for it is not material so much 
 as moral dirt that defiles — greed far more than grime, 
 and vice than verdigris. 
 
 The greatest have not disdained to labor honestly 
 and usefully for a living, though at the same time aim- 
 ing after higher things. Thales, the first of the seven 
 sages, Solon, the second founder of Athens, and Hyper- 
 ates, the mathematician, were all traders. Plato, called 
 the Divine by reason of the excellence of his wisdom, 
 defrayed his travelling expenses in Egypt by the profits 
 derived, from the pil which he sold during his journey. 
 Spinoza maintained himself by polishing glasses while 
 he pursued his philosophical investigations. Linnseus, 
 the great botanist, prosecuted his studies while ham- 
 mering leather and making shoes. Shakspeare was a 
 successful manager of a theatre — perhaps priding him- 
 
296 Cheat Men ofBrniness. 
 
 self more upon his practical qualities in that capacity 
 than on his writing of plays and poetry. Pope was of 
 opinion that Shakspeare's principal object in cultivat- 
 ing literature was to secure an honest independence. 
 Indeed he seems to have heen altogether indifferent to 
 literary reputation. It is not known that he superin- 
 tended the publication of a single play, or even sanc« 
 tioned the printing of one ; and the chronology of his 
 writings is still a mystery. It is certain, however, that 
 he prospered in his business, and realized sufficient to 
 enable him to retire upon a competency to his native 
 town of Stratford-upon-Avon. 
 
 Chaucer was in early life a soldier, and afterwards an 
 effective Commissioner of Customs, and Inspector of 
 Woods and Crown Lands. Spenser was Secretary to 
 the Lord Deputy of Ireland, was afterwards Sheiiff of 
 Cork, and is said to have been shrewd and attentive in 
 matters of business. Milton, originally a schoolmaster, 
 was elevated to the post of Secretary to the Council of 
 State during the Commonwealth ; and the extant Or- 
 der-book of the Council, as well as many of Milton's let- 
 ters which are preserved, give abundant evidence of 
 his activity and usefulness in that office. Sir Isaac 
 Kewton proved himself an efficient Master of the 
 Mint, the new coinage of 1694 having been carried on 
 under his immediate personal superintendence. Cow- 
 per prided himself upon his business punctuality, though 
 he confessed that he " never knew a poet, except him- 
 self, who was punctual in any thing." But against 
 this we may set the lives of Wordsworth and Scott — 
 the former a distributer of stamps, the latter a clerk to 
 the Court of Session — both of whom, though great 
 poets, were eminently punctual and practical men of 
 business. David Ricardo, amidst the occupations of 
 his daily business as a London stock-jobber, in conduct- 
 ing which he acquired an ample fortune, was able to 
 concentrate his mind upon his favorite subject — on 
 
Siiccess in Business. 297 
 
 which he was enabled to throw great light — the prin- 
 ciples of political economy ; for he united in himself 
 the sagacious commercial man and the profound philos- 
 opher. Baily, the eminent astronomer, was another 
 Btock-hroker ; and Allen, the chemist, was a silk manu- 
 facturer. 
 
 We have abundant illustrations, in our own day, of 
 the fact that the highest intellectual power is not in- 
 compatible with the active and eflScient performance of 
 routine duties. Grote, the great liistorian of Greece, 
 was a London banker. And it is not long since John 
 Stuart Mill, one of our greatest living thinkers, retired 
 from the Examiner's department of the East India Com- 
 pany, carrying with him the admiration and esteem of 
 his fellow-officers, not on account of his high views of 
 philosophy, but because of the high standai-d of effi- 
 ciency which he had established in his office, and the 
 thoroughly satisfactory manner in which he had con- 
 ducted the business of his department. 
 
 The path of success in business is usually the path of 
 common sense. Patient labor and application are as 
 necessary here as in the acquisition of knowledge or the 
 pursuit of science. The old Greeks said, " To become 
 an able man in any profession, three things are neces- 
 sary — nature, study, and practice." In business, prac- 
 tice, wisely and diligently improved, is the great secret 
 of success. Some may make what are called " lucky 
 hits," but like money earned by gambling, such " hits " 
 may only serve to lure one to ruin. Bacon was accus- 
 tomed to say that it was in business as in ways — the 
 nearest way was commonly the foulest, and that if a 
 man would go the fairest way he must go somewhat 
 about. The journey may occupy a longer time, but the 
 pleasure of the labor involved by itj and the enjoyment 
 of the results produced, will be more genuine and unal- 
 loyed. To have a daily appointed task of even common 
 drudgery to do makes the rest of life feel all the sweeter. 
 13* 
 
298 Effects of Practical Industry. 
 
 The fable of the labors of Hercules is the type of all 
 human doing and success. Every youth should be 
 made to feel that his happiness and well-doing in life 
 must necessarily rely mainly on himself and the exer- 
 cise of his own energies, rather than upon the help and 
 patronage of others. The late Lord Melbourne embod- 
 ied a piece of useful advice in a letter which he wrote 
 to Lord John Russell, in reply to an application for a 
 provision for one of Moore the poet's sons : " My dear 
 John," he said, " I return you Moore's letter. I shall 
 be ready to do what you like about it when we have 
 the means. I think whatever is done should be done 
 for Moore himself. This is more distinct, direct, and 
 intelligible. Making a small provision for young men 
 is hardly justifiable ; and it is of all things the most 
 prejudicial to themselves. They think what they have 
 much larger than it really is ; and they make no exer- 
 tion. The young should never hear any language but 
 this : ' You have your own way to make, and it de- 
 pends upon your own exertions whether you starve or 
 not.' Believe me, etc., Melbouene." 
 
 Practical industry, wisely and vigorously applied, 
 always produces its due efiects. It carries a man on- 
 ward, brings out his individual character, and stimu- 
 lates the action of others. All may not rise equally, 
 yet each, on the whole, very much according to his de- 
 serts. " Though all can not live on the piazza," as the 
 Tuscan proverb has it, " every one may feel the sun." 
 . On the whole, it is not good that human nature 
 should have the road of life made too easy. Better to 
 be under the necessity of working hard and faring 
 meanly, than to have every thing done ready to our 
 hand and a pillow of down to repose upon. Indeed, to 
 ■gtart in life with comparatively small means seems so 
 necessary as a stimulus to work, that it may almost be 
 set down as one of the conditions essential to success 
 in life. Hence, an eminent judge, when asked what 
 
The Necessity of Labor. 299 
 
 contributed most to success at the bar, replied, " Some 
 succeed by gi-eat talent, some by high connections, 
 some by miracle, but the majority by commencing 
 without a shilling." 
 
 We have heard of an architect of considerable ac- 
 complishments — a man who had improved himself by 
 long study, and travel in the classical lands of the 
 East — who came home to commence the practice of his 
 ■profession. He determined to begin anywhere, pro- 
 vided he could be employed : and he accordingly un- 
 dertook a business connected with dilapidations — one 
 of the lowest and least remunerative departments of 
 the architect's calling. But he had the good sense not 
 to be above his trade, and he had the resolution to 
 work his way upward, so that he only got a fair start. 
 One hot day in July a friend found him sitting astride 
 of a house-roof occupied with his dilapidation business. 
 Drawing his hand across his perspiring, countenance, he 
 exclaimed, " Here's a pretty business for a man who 
 has been all over Greece !" However, he did his woi-k, 
 such as it was, thoroughly and well ; he persevered 
 until he advanced by degrees to more remunerative 
 branches of employment, and eventually he rose to the 
 highest walks of his profession. 
 
 The necessity of labor may, indeed, be regarded as 
 the main root and spring of all that we call progress 
 in individuals, and civilization in nations; and it is 
 doubtful that any heavier curse could be imposed on 
 man than the gratification of all his wishes without ef- 
 fort on his part, leaving nothing for his hopes, desires, 
 or struggles. The feeling that life is destitute of any 
 motive or necessity for action, must be of all others 
 the most distressing and insupportable to a rational 
 being. The Marquis de Spinola asking Sir Horace 
 Vere what his brother died of. Sir Horace replied, " He 
 died, sir, of having nothing to do." " Alas !" said Spi- 
 nola, " that is enough to kill any general of us all." 
 
300 Misfortune and Ill-luck. 
 
 . , _ — ■-"■ '■ ■ < 
 
 Those who fail in life are however very apt to as- 
 sume a tone of injured innocence, and conclude too 
 hastily that every body excepting themselves has had 
 a hand in their personal misfortunes. An eminent 
 writer lately published a book, in which he described 
 his numerous failures in business, naively admitting, at 
 the same time, that he was ignorant of the multiplica- 
 tion-table ; and he came to the conclusion that the real 
 cause of his ill-success in life was the money-worship- 
 ping spirit of the age. Lamartine also did not hesitate 
 to profess his contempt for arithmetic ; but, had it been 
 less, probably we should not have witnessed the un- 
 seemly spectacle of the admirers of that distinguished 
 personage engaged in collecting subscriptions for his 
 support in his old age. 
 
 Again, some consider themselves born to ill-luck, and 
 make up their minds that the world invariably goes 
 against them without any fault on their own part. We 
 have heard of a person of this sort who went so far as 
 to declare his belief that if he had been a hatter, people 
 would have been born without heads ! There is, how- 
 ever, a Russian proverb which says that Misfortune is 
 next door to Stupidity ; and it will often be found that 
 men who are constantly lamenting their luck, are in 
 some way or other reaping the consequences of their 
 own neglect, mismanagement, improvidence, or want 
 of application. Dr. Johnson, who came up to London 
 with a single guinea in his pocket, and who once ac- 
 curately described himself in his signature to a letter 
 addressed to a noble lord, as Impranms, or Dinnerless, 
 has honestly said, " All the complaints which are made 
 of the world are unjust ; 1 never knew a man of merit 
 neglected ; it was generally by his own fault that he 
 failed of success." 
 
 Washington Irving, the American author, held like 
 views. " As for the talk," said he, " about modest 
 merit being neglected, it is too often a cant, by which 
 
Action in Detail. 301 
 
 indolent and irresolute men seek to lay their want of 
 success at the door of the public. Modest merit is, how- 
 ever, too apt to be inactive, or negligent, or uninstructed 
 merit. Well- matured and well-disciplined talent is al- 
 ways sure of a market, provided it exerts itself; but it 
 must not cower at home and expect to be sought for. 
 There is a good deal of cant, too, about the success of 
 forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth 
 are passed over with neglect. But it usually happens 
 that those forward men have that valuable quality of 
 promptness and activity without which worth is a mere 
 inoperative property. A barking dog is often more 
 useful than a sleeping lion." 
 
 Attention, application, accuracy, method, punctuality, 
 and dispatch are the principal qualities required for the 
 efficient conduct of business of any sort. These, at first 
 sight, may appear to be small matters; and yet they are 
 of essential importance to human happiness, well-being, 
 and usefulness. They are little things, it is true ; but 
 human life is made up of comparative trifles. It is the 
 repetition of little acts which constitutes not only the 
 sum of human character, but which determines the 
 character of nations. And where men or nations have 
 broken down, it will almost invariably be found that 
 neglect of little things was the rock on which they split. 
 Every human being has duties to be performed, and, 
 therefore, has need of cultivating the capacity for do- 
 ing them ; whether the sphere of action be the manage- 
 ment of a household, the conduct of a trade or profes- 
 sion, or the government of a nation. 
 
 The examples we have already given of great work- 
 ers in various branches of industry, art, and science, 
 render it unnecessary further to enforce the importance 
 of persevering application in any department of life. 
 It is the result of every-day experience, that steady at- 
 tention to matters of detail lies at the root of human 
 progress ; and that diligence, above all, is the mother of 
 
302 Necessity of Accuracy in Business. 
 
 good luck. Accuracy is also of much importance, and 
 an invariable mark of good training in a man — accu- 
 racy in observation, accuracy in speech, accuracy in the 
 transaction of affairs. What is done in business must 
 be well done ; for it is better to accomplish perfectly a 
 small amount of work, than to half do ten times as 
 much. A wise man used to say, " Stay a little, that we 
 may make an end the sooner." 
 
 Too little attention, however, is paid to this highly 
 important quality of accuracy. As a man eminent in 
 practical science lately observed to us, " it is astonish- 
 ing how few people I have met with in the course of 
 my experience who can define a fact accurately." Yet 
 in business affairs, it is the manner in which even small 
 matters are transacted, that often decides men for or 
 against you. With virtue, capacity, and good conduct 
 in other respects, the person who is habitually inaccu- 
 rate can not be trusted ; his work has to be gone over 
 again ; and he thus causes an infinity of annoyance, vex- 
 ation, and trouble. 
 
 It was one of the characteristic qualities of Charles 
 James Fox, that he was thoroughly pains-taking in all 
 that he did. When appointed Secretary of State, being 
 piqued at some observation as to his bad writing, he 
 actually took a writing-master, and wrote copies like a 
 schoolboy until he had sufficiently improved himself. 
 Though a corpulent man, he was wonderfully active at 
 picking up cut tennis balls, and when asked how he con- 
 trived to do so, he playfully replied, " Because I am a 
 very pains-taking man." The same accuracy in trifling 
 matters was displayed by him in things of greater im- 
 portance ; and he acquired his reputation, like the paint- 
 er, by " neglecting nothing." 
 
 Method is essential, and enables a larger amount of 
 ■work to be got through with satisfaction. "Method," 
 said the Rev. Richard Cecil, " is like packing things in 
 a box ; a good packer will get in half as much again as 
 
Necessity of Accuracy in Business. 303 
 
 a bad one." Cecil's dispatch of business was extraor- 
 dinary, his maxim, being, " the shortest -way to do many 
 things is to do only one thing at once ;" and he never left 
 a thing undone with a view of recurring to it at a period 
 of more leisure. When business pressed, he rather cliose 
 to encroach on his hours of meals and rest than omit 
 any part of his work. De Witt's maxim was like Cecil's : 
 * One thing at a time." " If," said he, " I have any neces- 
 sary dispatches to make, I think of nothing else till they 
 are finished ; if any domestic affairs require my attention, 
 I give myself wholly up to them till they are set in order." 
 
 A French minister, who was alike remarkable for his 
 dispatch of business and his constant attendance at 
 places of amusement, being asked how he contrived to 
 combine both objects, replied, " Simply by never post- 
 poning till to-morrow what should be done to-day." 
 Lord Brougham has said that a certain English states- 
 man reversed the process, and that his maxim was, 
 never to transiact to-day what could be postponed till 
 to-morrow. Unhappily, such is the practice of many 
 besides that minister, already almost forgotten ; the 
 practice is that of the indolent and the unsuccessful. 
 Such men, too, are apt to rely upon agents, who are not 
 always to be relied upon. Important affairs must be 
 attended to in person. "If you want your business 
 done," says the proverb, " go and do it ; if you don't 
 want it done, send some one else." 
 
 An indolent country gentleman had a freehold es- 
 tate producing about five hundred a year. Becoming 
 involved in debt, he sold half the estate, and let the 
 remainder to an industrious farmer for twenty years. 
 About the end of the term the farmer called to pay 
 his rent, and asked the owner whether he would sell 
 the farm. " Will you buy it ? " asked the owner sur- 
 prised. " Yes, if we can agree about the price." " That 
 is exceedingly strange," observed the gentleman ; pray, 
 tell me how it happens that^ while I could not live 
 
304 Promptitude.. 
 
 upon twice as much land for which I paid no rent, yott 
 are regularly paying me two hundred a year for your 
 farm, and are able, in a few years, to purchase it." 
 "The reason is plain," was the reply; "you sat still 
 and said Go, I got up and said Come; you lay in bed 
 and enjoyed your estate, I rose in the morning and 
 minded my business." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, writing to a youth who had ob- 
 tained a situation and asked for his advice, gave him 
 in reply this sound counsel: "Beware of stumbling 
 over a pi-opensity which easily besets you from not 
 having your time fully employed — I mean what the 
 women call dawdling. Your motto must be. Hoc age. 
 Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the 
 hours of recreation after business, never before it. 
 When a regiment is under march, the rear is often 
 thrown into confusion because the front does not move 
 steadily and without interruption. It is the same 
 with business. If that which is first in hand is not 
 instantly, steadily, and regularly dispatched, other 
 things accumulate behind, till affairs begin to press 
 all at once, and no human brain can stand the confu- 
 sion." 
 
 Promptitude in action may be stimulated by a due 
 consideration of the value of time. An Italian philos- 
 opher was accustomed to call time his estate : an estate 
 which produces nothing of value without cultivation, 
 but, duly improved, never fails to recompense the la- 
 bors of the . diligent worker. Allowed to lie waste, 
 the product will be only noxious weeds and vicious 
 growths of all kinds. One of the minor uses of steady 
 employment is, that it keeps one out of mischief, for 
 truly an idle brain is the devil's Avorkshop, and a lazy 
 man the devil's bolster. To be occupied is to be pos- 
 sessed as by a tenant, whereas to be idle is to be empiy ; 
 and when the doors of the imagination are opened, 
 temptation finds a ready access, and evil thoughts come 
 
The Value of Time. 305 
 
 trooping in. It is observed at sea, that men are never 
 so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least 
 employed. Hence an old captain, when there was 
 nothing else to do, would issue the order to " scour the 
 anchor !" 
 
 Men of business are accustomed to quote the maxim 
 that Time is money; but it is more; the proper im- 
 provement of it is self-culture, self-improvement, and 
 growth of character. An hour wasted daily on trifles 
 or in indolence, would, if devoted to self-improvement, 
 make an ignorant man wise in a few years, and, em- 
 ployed in good works, would make his life fruitful, and 
 death a harvest of worthy deeds. Fifteen minutes a 
 day devoted to self-improvement, will be felt at the end 
 of the year. Good thoughts and carefully gathered 
 experience take up no room, and may be carried about 
 as our companions everywhere, without cost or incum- 
 brance. An economical use of time is the true mode 
 of securing leisure : it enables us to get through busi- 
 ness and carry it forward, instead of being driven by 
 it. On the other hand, the miscalculation of time in- 
 volves us in pei-petual hurry, confusion, and difficulties; 
 and life becomes a mere shuffle of expedients, usually 
 followed by disaster. Nelson once said, " I owe all my 
 success in life to having been always a quarter of an 
 hour before my time." 
 
 Some take no thought of the value of money until 
 they have come to an end of it, and many do the same 
 with their time. The hours are allowed to flow by un- 
 employed, and then, when life is fast waning, they be- 
 think themselves of the duty of making a wiser use of 
 it. But the habit of listlessness and idleness may al- 
 ready have become confirmed, and they are unable to 
 break the bonds with which they have permitted them- 
 selves to become bound. Lost wealth may be replaced 
 by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by 
 temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever. 
 
306 Punctuality. 
 
 A proper consideration of the value of time will also 
 inspire habits of punctuality. '" Pun ctuality," said Louis 
 XIV., " is the politeness of kings." It is also the duty 
 of gentlemen, and the necessity of men of business- 
 Nothing begets confidence in a man sooner than the 
 practice of this virtue, and nothing shakes confidence 
 sooner than the want of it. He who holds to his ap- 
 pointment and does not keep you waiting for him, shows 
 that he has regard for your time as well as for his own. 
 Thus punctuality is one of the modes by which we tes- 
 tify our personal respect for those whom we are called 
 upon to meet in the business of life. It is also conscien- 
 tiousness, in a measure ; for an appointment is a con- 
 tract, express or implied, and he who does not keep it 
 breaks faith, as well as dishonestly uses other people's 
 time, and thus inevitably loses character. We nat- 
 urally come to the conclusion that the person who is 
 careless about time is careless about business, and that 
 he is not the one to be trusted with the transaction of 
 matters of importance. When Washington's secretary 
 excused himself for the lateness of his attendance and 
 laid the blame upon his watch, his master quietly said, 
 " Then you must get another watch, or I another secre- 
 tary." 
 
 The person who is negligent of time and its employ- 
 ment is usually found to be a general disturber of oth- 
 ers' peace and serenity. It was wittily said by Lord 
 Chesterfield of the old Duke of Newcastle — "His 
 Grace loses an hour in the morning, and is looking for 
 it all the rest of the day." Every body with whom the 
 unpunctual man has to do is thrown from time to time 
 into a state of fever : he is systematically late ; regular 
 only in his irregularity. He conducts his dawdling as 
 if upon system ; arrives at his appointment after time ; 
 gets to the railway station after the train has started ; 
 posts his letter when the box has closed. Thus bu- 
 siness is thrown into confusion, and every body con- 
 
Great Generals Men of Business. 807 
 
 cerned is put out of temper. It will generally he found 
 that the men who are thus habitually behind time are 
 as habitually behind success ; and the world generally 
 casts them aside to swell the ranks of the grumblers and 
 the railers against fortune. 
 
 In addition to the ordinary working qualities, the bu- 
 siness man of the highest class requires quick percep- 
 tion and firmness in the execution of his plans. Tact 
 is also important ; and though this is partly the gift 
 of nature, it is yet capable of being cultivated and de- 
 veloped by observation and experience. Men of this 
 quality are quick to see the right mode of action, and 
 if they have decision of purpose, are prompt to carry 
 out their undertakings to a successful issue. These 
 qualities are especially valuable, and indeed indispens- 
 able, in those who direct the action of other men on a 
 large scale, as for instance, in the case of the command- 
 er of an army in the field. It is not merely necessary 
 that the general should be great as a warrior but also 
 as a man of business. He must possess great tact, 
 much knowledge of character, and ability to organize 
 the movements of a large mass of men, whom he has to 
 feed, clothe, and furnish with whatever may be neces- 
 sary in order that they may keep the field and win bat- 
 tles. In these respects Napoleon and Wellington weve 
 both first-rate men of business. 
 
 Though Napoleon had an immense love for details, 
 he had also a vivid power of imagination, which en- 
 abled him to look along extended lines of action, and 
 deal with those details on a large scale, with judgment 
 and rapidity. He possessed such knowledge of charaC' 
 ter as enabled him to select, almost unerringly, the best 
 agents for the execution of his designs. But he trusted 
 as little as possible to agents in matters of great mo- 
 ment, on which important results depended. This fea- 
 ture in his character is illustrated in a remarkable de- 
 gree by the " Napoleon Correspondence," now in course 
 
808 Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
 of publication, and particularly by the contents of the 
 fifteenth volume,* which include the letters, orders, and 
 dispatches written by the Emperor at Finkenstein, a 
 little chateau on the frontier of Poland in the year 
 1807, shortly after the victory of Eylau, 
 
 The French army was then lying encamped along 
 the river Passarge, with the Russians before them, the 
 Austrians on their right flank, and the conquered Prus- 
 sians in their rear. A long line of communications had 
 to be maintained with France, through a hostile coun- 
 try ; but so carefully, and with such foresight was this 
 provided for, that it is said Napoleon never missed a 
 post. The movements of armies, the bringing up of re- 
 inforcements from remote points in France, Spain, Italy, 
 and Germany, the opening of canals and the levelling 
 of roads to enable the produce of Poland and Prussia 
 to be readily transported to his encampments, had his 
 unceasing attention, down to the minutest details. 
 We find him directing where horses were to be obtain- 
 ed, making arrangements for an adequate supply of sad- 
 dles, ordering shoes for the soldiers, and specifying the 
 number of rations of bread, biscuit, and spirits that 
 were to be brought to camp, or stored in magazines for 
 the use of the troops. At the same time we find him 
 writing to Paris, giving directions for the reorganiza- 
 tion of the French College, devising a scheme of public 
 education, dictating bulletins and articles for the " Mon- 
 iteur," revising the details of the budgets, giving in- 
 structions to architects as to alterations to be made at 
 the Tuileries and the Church of the Madelaiiie, throw- 
 ing an occasional sarcasm at Madame de Stael and the 
 Parisian journals, interfering to put down a squabble 
 at the Grand Opera, carrying on a correspondence 
 with the Sultan of Turkey and the Schah of Persia, so 
 that while his body was at Finkenstein his mind seem- 
 
 * " Correspondnnce de Napoleon I".,"piiblie'e par ordre de I'Em, 
 poreur Napoleon III. (Paris, 1864). 
 
The Napoleon Correspondence. 309 
 
 ed to be working at a hundred different places in Paris, 
 in Europe, and throughout the world. 
 
 "We find him in one letter asking Ney if he has duly 
 received the muskets which have heen sent him ; in an- 
 other he gives directions to Prince Jerome as to the 
 shirts, great-coats, clothes, shoes, shakos, and arms, to 
 be served out to the Wtlrtemburg regiments ; again he 
 presses Cambacer&s to forward to the army a double 
 stock of corn — " The ifs and the 6m^" said he, " are at 
 present out of season, and above all it must be done 
 with speed." Then he informs Daru that the army 
 want shirts, and that they don't come to hand. To 
 Massena he writes, " Let me know if your biscuit and 
 bread arrangements are yet completed." To the Grand 
 Due de Berg, he gives directions as to the accoutre- 
 ments of the cuirassiers — "They complain that the 
 men want sabres ; send an officer to obtain them at 
 Posen. It is also said they want helmets ; order that 
 
 they be made at Ebling It is not by sleeping 
 
 that one can accomplish any thing." Thus no point of 
 detail was neglected, and the energies of all were stim- 
 ulated into action with extraordinary power. Though 
 many of the Emperor's days were occupied by inspec- 
 tions of his troops — in the course of which he some- 
 times rode from thirty to forty leagues a day — and 
 by reviews, receptions, and affairs of state, leaving 
 but little time for business matters, he neglected 
 nothing on that account ; but devoted the greater 
 part of his nights, when necessary, to examining 
 budgets, dictating dispatches, and attending to the 
 thousand matters of detail in the organization and 
 working of the Imperial Government ; the machinery 
 of which was for the most part concentrated in his 
 own head. 
 
 Like Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington was a first- 
 rate man of business ; and it is not perhaps saying too 
 much to aver that it was in no small degree because 
 
310 Wellington. 
 
 of his possession of a business faculty amounting to 
 genius, that the Duke never lost a battle. 
 
 While a subaltern, he became dissatisfied with the 
 slowness of his promotion, and having passed from the 
 infantry to the cavalry twice, and back again, without 
 advancement, he applied to Lord Camden, then Vice- 
 roy of Ireland, for emjiloyment in the Revenue or 
 Treasury Board. Had he succeeded, no doubt he 
 would have made a first-rate head of a department, as 
 he would have made a first-rate merchant or manufac- 
 turer. But his application failed, .and he remained 
 with the army to become the greatest of British gen- 
 erals. 
 
 The Duke began his active military career under the 
 Duke of York and General Walmoden, in Flanders and 
 Holland, where he learnt, amidst misfortunes and de- 
 feats, how bad business arrangements and bad general- 
 ship serve to ruin the morale of an army. Ten years 
 after entering the army we find him a colonel in India, 
 reported by his superiors as an officer of indefatigable 
 energy and application. He entered into the minutest 
 details of the service, and sought to raise the discipline 
 of his men to the highest standard. " The regiment of 
 Colonel Wellesley," wrote General Harris in 1799, " is 
 a model regiment ; on the score of soldierly bearing, 
 discipline, instruction, and orderly behavior it is above 
 all praise." Thus qualifying himself for posts of great- 
 er confidence, he was shortly after nominated governor 
 of the capital of Mysore. In the war with the Mahrat- 
 tas he was first called upon to try his hand at general- 
 ship ;- and at tliirty-four he won the memorable battle 
 of Assaye, with an army composed of 1500 British and 
 5000 Sepoys, over 20,000 Mahratta infantry and 30,000 
 cavalry. But so brilliant a victory did not in the least 
 disturb his equanimity, or affect the perfect honesty of 
 his character. Shortly after this event the opportuni- 
 ty occurred for exhibiting his admirable practical 
 
Wellington in India. 311 
 
 f— — ■ . 
 
 qualities as an administrator. Placed in command of 
 an important district immediately after the capture of 
 Seriugapatam, his first object Avas to establish rigid or- 
 der and discipline among his own men. Flushed with 
 victory, the troops were found riotous and disorderly. 
 " Send me the provost-marshal," said he, " and put him 
 under my orders : till some of the marauders are hung, 
 it is impossible to expect order or safety," This rigid 
 severity of Wellington in the field, though it was the 
 dread, proved the salvation of his troops in many cam- 
 paigns. His next step was to re-establish the markets 
 and re-open the sources of supj^ly. General Harris 
 wrote to the Governor-general, strongly commending 
 Colonel Wellesley for the perfect discipline he had es- 
 tablished, and for his "judicious and masterly arrange- 
 ments in respect to supplies, which opened an abundant 
 free market, and inspired confidence into dealers of 
 every description." The same close attention to, and 
 mastery of details, characterized him throughout his 
 Indian career; and it is remarkable that one of his 
 ablest dispatches to Lord Olive, full of practical infor- 
 mation as to the conduct of the campaign, was written 
 whilst the column he commanded Avas crossing the 
 Toombuddra, in the face of the vastly superior army 
 of Dhoondiah, posted on the opposite bank, and while a 
 thousand matters of the deepest interest were pressing 
 upon the commander's mind. But it was one of his 
 most remarkable characteristics, thus to be able to 
 withdraw himself temporarily from the business im- 
 mediately in hand, and to bend his full powers upon the 
 consideration of matters totally distinct ; even the 
 most difficult circumstances on such occasions failing 
 to embarrass or intimidate him. 
 
 Returned to England with a reputation for general- 
 ship, Sir Arthur Wellesley met with immediate em- 
 ployment. In 1808 a corps of 10,000 men destined to 
 liberate Portugal was placed under his charge- He 
 
312 Wellington in the Peninsula. 
 
 landed, fought and won two battles, and signed the 
 Convention of Cintra. After the death of Sir John 
 Moore he was intrusted with the command of a new 
 expedition to Portugal. But Wellington was fearfully 
 overmatched throughout his Peninsular campaigns. 
 From 1809 to 1813 he never had more than 30,000 
 British troops under his command, at a time when 
 there stood opposed to him in the Peninsula some 
 350,000 French, mostly veterans, led by some of Na- 
 poleon's ablest generals. How was he to contend 
 against such immense force with any fair prospect of 
 success? His clear discernment and strong common 
 sense soon taught him that he must adopt a different 
 policy from that of the Spanish generals, who were in- 
 variably beaten and dispersed whenever they ventured 
 to offer battle in the open plains. He perceived he had 
 yet to create the army that was to contend against 
 the French with any reasonable chance of success. 
 Accordingly, after the battle of Talavera in 1809, when 
 he found himself encompassed on all sides by superior 
 forces of French, he retired into Portugal, there to car- 
 ry out the settled policy on which he had by this time 
 determined. It was, to organize a Portuguese army 
 under British officers, and teach them to act in combi- 
 nation with his own troops, in the mean time avoiding 
 the peril of a defeat by declining all engagements. 
 He would thus, he conceived, destroy the morale of 
 the French, who could not exist without victories ; 
 and when his army was ripe for action, and the enemy 
 demoralized, he would then fall upon them with all his 
 might. 
 
 The extraordinary qualities displayed by Lord Wel- 
 lington throughout these immortal campaigns, can only 
 be appreciated after a perusal of his dispatches, which 
 contain the unvarnished tale of the manifold ways and 
 means by which he laid the foundations of Jiis success. 
 Never was man more tried by difficulty and opposi- 
 
Wellington's Business Qeniits. 313 
 
 tion, arising not less from the imbecility, falsehoods, 
 and intrigues of the British Government of the day, 
 than from the selfishness, cowardice, and vanity of the 
 people he went to save. It may, indeed, be said of 
 him, that he sustained the war in Spain by his indi- 
 vidual firmness and self-reliance, which never failed 
 him even in the midst of his greatest discouragements. 
 He had not only to fight Napoleon's veterans, but also 
 to hold in check the Spanish juntas and the Portuguese 
 regency. He had the utmost difiiculty in obtaining 
 provisions and clothing for his troops; and it will 
 scarcely be credited that, while engaged with the en- 
 emy in the battle of Talavera, the Spaniards, who ran 
 away, fell upoii the baggage of the British army, and 
 the rufiians actually plundered it! These and other 
 vexations the Duke bore with a sublime patience and 
 self-control, and held on his course, in the face of ingrat- 
 itude, treachery, and opposition, with indomitable firm- 
 ness. He neglected nothing, and attended to every 
 important detail of business himself. When he found 
 that food for his troops was not to be obtained from 
 England, and that he must rely upon his own resources 
 for feeding them, he forthwith commenced business as 
 a corn-merchant on a large scale, in copartnery with 
 the British Minister at Lisbon. Commissariat bills 
 were created, with which grain was bought in the 
 ports of the Mediterranean and in South America. 
 When he had thus filled his magazines, the overplus 
 was sold to the Portuguese, who were greatly in want 
 of provisions. He left nothing whatever to chance, but 
 provided for every contingency. He gave his atten- 
 tion to the minutest details of the service ; and was 
 accustomed to concentrate his whole energies, from 
 time to time, on such apparently ignominious matters 
 as soldiers' shoes, camp-kettles, biscuits, and horse-fodr 
 der. His magnificent business qualities were every- 
 where felt ; and there can bo no doubt that, by the 
 
 14 
 
314 Wellington! s Honesty. 
 
 care with which he provided for every contingency, 
 and the personal attention which he gave to every de- 
 tail, he laid the foundations of his great success.* By 
 such means he transformed an army of raw levies into 
 the best soldiers in Europe, with whom he declared it 
 to be possible to go anywhere and do any thing. 
 
 We have already referred to his remarkable power 
 of abstracting himself from the work, no matter how 
 engrossing, immediately in hand, and concentrating his 
 energies upon the details of some entirely different bus- 
 iness. Thus Napier relates that it was while he was 
 preparing to fight the battle of Salamanca that he had 
 to expose to the Ministers at home the futility of rely- 
 ing upon a loan ; it was on the heights of San Christo- 
 val, on the field of battle itself, that he demonstrated 
 the absurdity of attempting to establish a Portuguese 
 bank; it was in the trenches of Burgos that he dissect- 
 ed Funchal's scheme of finance, and exposed the folly 
 of attempting the sale of church property ; and on each 
 occasion he showed himself as well acquainted with 
 these subjects as with the minutest detail in the mech- 
 anism of armies. 
 
 Another feature in his character, showing the upright 
 man of business, was his thorough honesty. Whilst 
 Soult ransacked and carried away with him from Spain 
 numerous pictures of great value, Wellington did not 
 appropriate to himself a single farthing's worth of prop- 
 erty. Everywhere he paid his way, even when in the 
 enemy's country. When he had crossed the French 
 frontier, followed by 40,000 Spaniards, who sought to 
 " make fortunes " by pillage and plunder, he fii-st re- 
 buked their officers, and then, finding his efforts to re- 
 strain them unavailing, he sent them back into their 
 
 * The recently published correspondence of Napoleon with his broth- 
 er Joseph, and the Memoirs of the Dnke of Ragusa, abundantly con- 
 firm this view. The Duke overthrew Napoleon's generals by the su- 
 periority of his routine. He used to say that, if he knew any thing at 
 all, he knew how to feed an army. 
 
Monesty the best Policy. 315 
 
 own country. It is a remarkable fact, that, even in 
 France, the peasantry fled from their own countrymen, 
 and carried their valuables within the protection of the 
 British lines ! At the very same time, Wellington was 
 writing home to the British Ministry, " We are over- 
 whelmed with debts, and I can scarcely stir out of my 
 house on account of public creditors waiting to demand 
 payment of what is due to them." Jules Maurel, in 
 his estimate of the Duke's character, says, " Nothing 
 can be grander or more nobly original than this ad- 
 mission. This old soldier, after thirty years' service, 
 this iron man and victorious general, established in an 
 enemy's country at the head of an immense army, is 
 afraid of his creditors ! This is a kind of fear that has 
 seldom troubled the mind of conquerors and invaders ; 
 and I doubt if the annals of war could present any 
 thing comparable to this sublime simplicity." But the 
 Duke himself, had the matter been put to him, would 
 most probably have disclaimed any intention of acting 
 even grandly or nobly in the matter ; merely regard- 
 ing the punctual payment of his debts as the best and 
 most honorable mode of conducting his business. 
 
 The truth of the good old maxim, that " Honesty ia 
 the best policy," is upheld by the daily experience of 
 life, uprightness and integrity being found as success* 
 ful in business as in every thing else. As Hugh Mil- 
 ler's worthy uncle used to advise him, " In all your 
 dealings give your neighbor the cast of the bank — 
 'good measure, heaped up, and running over' — and 
 you will not lose by it in the end." A well-known 
 brewer of beer attributed his success to the liberality 
 •with which he used his malt. Going up to the vat 
 and tasting it, he would say, " Still rather poor, my 
 lads ; give it another cast of the malt." The brewer 
 put his character into his beei', and it proved generous 
 accordingly, obtaining a reputation in England, India, 
 and the colonies, which laid the foundation of a large 
 
316 Uprightness in Business. 
 
 fortune. Integrity of word and deed ought to be the 
 very corner-stone of all business transactions. To the 
 tradesman, the merchant, and manufacturer, it should 
 be what honor is to the soldier, and charity to the 
 Christian. In the humblest calling there will always 
 be found scope for the exercise of this uprightness of 
 character. Hugh Miller speaks of the mason with 
 whom he served his apprenticeship, as one who "pict 
 his conscience into every stone that he laid." So the 
 true mechanic will pride himself upon the thoroughness 
 and solidity of his work, and the high-minded contract- 
 or upon the honesty of performance of his contract in 
 every particular. The upright manufacturer will find 
 not only honor and reputation, but substantial success, 
 in the genuineness of the article which he pi'oduces, and 
 the merchant in the honesty of what he sells, and that 
 it really is what it seems to be. Baron Dupin, speak- 
 ing of the general probity of Englishmen, which he held 
 to be a principal cause of their success, observed, " We 
 may succeed for a time by fraud, by surprise, by vio- 
 lence ; but we can succeed permanently only by means 
 directly opposite. It is not alone the courage, the in- 
 telligence, the activity, of the merchant and manufac- 
 turer which maintain the superiority of their produc- 
 tions and the character of their country ; it is far more 
 their wisdom, their economy, and, above all, their prob- 
 ity. If ever in the British Islands the useful citizen 
 should lose these vii'tues, we maybe sure that, for Eng- 
 land, as for every other country, the vessels of a de- 
 generate commerce, repulsed from every shore, would 
 speedily disappear from those seas whose surface they 
 now cover with the treasures of the universe, bartered 
 for the treasures of the industry of the three king- 
 doms." 
 
 It must be admitted, that trade tries character per--^ 
 haps more severely than any other pursuit in life. It 
 puts to the severest tests honesty, self-denial, justice, and 
 
Bicsiness Confidence. 317 
 
 truthfulness ; and men of business who pass through 
 such trials unstained are perhaps worthy of as great 
 honor as soldiers who prove their courage amidst the 
 fire and perils of battle. And, to the credit of the mul- 
 titudes of men engaged in the various departments of 
 trade, we think it must be admitted that on the whole 
 they pass through their trials nobly. If we reflect but 
 for a moment on the vast amount of wealth daily in- 
 trusted even to the subordinate persons, who them- 
 selves probably earn but a bare competency— the loose 
 cash which is constantly passing through the hands of 
 shopmen, agents, brokers, and clerks in banking-houses 
 ■ — and note how comparatively few are the breaches of 
 trust which occur amidst all this temptation, it ' will 
 probably be admitted that this steady daily honesty 
 of conduct is most honorable to human nature, if it do 
 not even tempt us to be proud of it. The same trust 
 and confidence reposed by men of business in each 
 other, as implied by the system of credit, which' is 
 mainly based upon the principle of honor, would be 
 surprising if it were not so much a matter of ordinary 
 practice in business transactioris. Dr. Chalmers has 
 well said that the implicit trust with which merchants 
 are accustomed to confide in distant agents, separated 
 from them perhaps by half the globe-soften consign- 
 ing vast wealth to persons recommended only by their 
 character, whom perhaps they have never seen — is 
 probably the finest act of homage which men can ren- 
 der to one another. 
 
 Although common honesty is still happily in the as- 
 cendant among common people, and the general business 
 community of England is still sound at heart, putting 
 their honest character into their respective callingsj there 
 are unhappily, as there have been in all times, but too 
 many instances of flagrant dishonesty and fraud, exhib- 
 ited by the unscrupulous, the over speculative, ana the 
 intensely selfish, in their haste to be rich. There are 
 
818 Dishonest Odins. 
 
 tradesmen who adulterate, contractors who " scamp," 
 manufacturers who give us shoddy instead of wool, 
 " dressing " instead of cotton, cast-iron tools instead of 
 steel, needles without eyes, razors made only " to sell," 
 and swindled fabrics in many shapes. But these we 
 must hold to be the exceptional cases of low-minded and 
 grasping men, who, though they may gain wealth, which 
 they probably can not enjo.y, will never gain an honest 
 character, nor secure that without which wealth is 
 nothing — a heart at peace. "The rogue cozened not 
 me, but his own conscience," said Bishop Latimer of a 
 cutler who made him pay twopence for a knife not 
 worth a penny. Money earned by screwing, cheating, 
 and overreaching, may for a time dazzle the eyes of the 
 unthinking ; but the bubbles blown by unscrupulous 
 rogues, when full-blown, usually glitter only to burst. 
 The Sadliei's, Dean Pauls, and Redpaths, for the most 
 part, come to a sad end even in this world ; and though 
 the successful swindles of others may not be "found 
 out," and the gains of their roguery may remain with 
 them, it will be as a curse and not as a blessing. 
 
 It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may 
 not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest 
 one ; but the success will be of a truer kind, earned with- 
 out fraud or injustice. And even though a man should 
 for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest : bet- 
 ter lose all and save character. For character is itself 
 a fortune ; and if the high-principled man will but hold 
 on his way courageously, success will surely come, nor 
 will the highest reward of all be withheld from him. 
 "Wordsworth well describes the "Happy Warrior," as 
 he 
 
 "Who comprehends his trust, and to the same 
 
 Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim ; 
 
 And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait 
 
 For wealth, or honor, or for worldly state ; 
 
 Whom they most follow, on whose head must fall. 
 
 Like showers of manna, if they come at all." 
 
David Barclay. 319 
 
 As an example of the high-minded mercantile man 
 trained in upright habits of business, and distinguished 
 for justice, truthfulness, and honesty. of dealing in all 
 things, the career of the well-known David Barclaj'^, 
 grandson of Robert Barclay, of TJry, the author of the 
 celebrated "Apology for the Quakers," may be briefly 
 referred to. For many years he was the head of an 
 extensive house in Cheapside, chiefly engaged in the 
 American trade ; but, like Granville Sharp, he entertain- 
 ed so strong an opinion against the war with our Amer- 
 ican colonies, that he determined to retire altogether 
 from the trade. Whilst a merchant, he was as much 
 distinguished for his talents, knowledge, integrity, and 
 power, as he afterwards was for his patriotism and mu- 
 nificent philanthropy. He was a mirror of truthful- 
 ness and honesty ; and, as became the good Christian 
 and true gentleman, his word was always held to be as 
 good as his bond. His position and his high character 
 induced the ministers of the day on many occasions to 
 seek his advice ; and, when examined before the House 
 of Commons on the subject of the American dispute, 
 his views were so clearly expressed, and his advice was 
 so strongly justified by the reasons stated by him, that 
 Lord North publicly acknowledged that he had derived 
 more information from David Barclay than from all 
 others east of Temple Bar. On retiring from business, it 
 was not to rest in luxurious ease, but to enter upon new 
 labors of usefulness for others. With ample means, he 
 felt that he still owed to society the duty of a good ex- 
 ample. He founded a house of industry near his resi- 
 dence at Walthamstow, which Jje supported at a heavy 
 outlay for several years, until at length he succeeded in 
 rendering it a source of comfort as well as independence 
 to the well-disposed families of the poor in that neigh- 
 borhood. When an estate in Jamaica fell to him, he de- 
 termined, though at a cost of some £10,000, at once to 
 give liberty to the whole of the slaves on the property. 
 
320 David Barclay. 
 
 He sent out an agent, who hired a ship, and he had the 
 little slave community transported to one of the free 
 American States, where they settled down and pros' 
 pered. Mr. Barclay had been assured that the negroes 
 were too ignorant and too barbarous for freedom, and 
 it was thus that he determined practically to demon- 
 strate the fallacy of the assertion. In dealing with his 
 accumulated savings, he made himself the executor of 
 his own will, and instead of leaving a large fortune to 
 be divided among his relatives at his death, he extend- 
 ed to them his munificent aid dui'ing his life, watched 
 and aided them in their respective careers, and thus not 
 only laid the foundation, but lived to see the maturity, 
 of some of the largest and most prosperous business con- 
 cerns in the metropolis. "VYe believe that to this day 
 some of our most eminent merchants — such as the Gur- 
 neys, Hanburys, and Buxtons — are proud to acknowl- 
 edge with gratitude the obligations they owe to David 
 Barclay for the means of their first introduction to life, 
 and for the benefits of his counsel and countenance in 
 the early stages of their career. Such a man stands as 
 a mark of the mercantile honesty and integrity of his 
 country, and is a model and example for men of busi- 
 ness in all time to come. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 MONET — ITS TJSE AND ABUSE. 
 
 "Not for to hide it in a hedge, 
 Nor for a train attendant, 
 But for the glorious privilege 
 Of being independent." — Burks. 
 " Neither a borrower nor a lender be : 
 For loan oft loses both itself and friend ; 
 And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." — Shakspeake. 
 "Never treat money affairs with levity — Money is character." — SiB 
 
 E. L. BULWEB i/TTTON. 
 
 HOW a man uses money — makes it, saves it, and 
 spends it — is perhaps one of the best tests of prac- 
 tical wisdom. Although money ought by no means to 
 be regarded as a chief end of man's life, neither is it a 
 trifling matter, to be held in philosophic contempt, rep- 
 resenting, as it does to so large an extent, the means of 
 physical comfort and social well-being. Indeed, some 
 of the finest qualities of human nature are intimately 
 related to the right use of money ; such as generosity, 
 honesty, justice, and self-sacrifice; as well as the prac- 
 tical virtues of economy and providence. On the other 
 hand, there are their counterparts of avarice, fraud, in- 
 justice, and selfishness, as displayed by the inordinate 
 lovers of gain ; and the vices of thriftlessness, extrava- 
 gance, and improvidence, on the part of those who mis- 
 use and abuse the means intrusted to them. " So that," 
 as is wisely observed by Henry Taylor in his thought- 
 ful ' Notes from Life,' " a right measure arid mannor in 
 
 14* 
 
322 Self-denial 
 
 getting, saving, spending, giving, taking, lending, bor- 
 rowing, and bequeathing, would almost argue a perfect 
 man." 
 
 Comfort in w.orldly circumstances is a condition 
 whicb every man is justified in striving to attain by all 
 worthy means. It secures that physical satisfaction, 
 which is necessary for the culture of the better part of 
 his nature ; and enables him to provide for those of his 
 own household, without which, says the apostle, a man 
 is " worse than an infidel." Nor ought the duty to be 
 any the less pleasing to us, that the respect which our 
 fellow-men entertain for us in no slight degree depends 
 ■upon the manner in which we exercise the opportuni- 
 ties which present themselves for our honorable ad- 
 vancement in life. The very effort required to be made 
 to succeed in life with this object, is of itself an educa- 
 tion ; stimulating a man's sense of self-respect, bringing 
 out his practical qualities, and disciplining him in the 
 exercise of patience, perseverance, and such like virtues. 
 The provident and careful man must necessarily be a 
 thoughtful man, for he lives not merely for the present, 
 but with provident forecast makes arrangements for the 
 future. He must also be a temperate man, tad exercise 
 the virtue of self-denial, than which nothing is so much 
 calculated to give strength to the character. John 
 Sterling says truly, that " the worst education which 
 teaches self-denial, is better than the best which teaches 
 every thing else, and not that." The Romans rightly 
 employed the same word (virtus) to designate courage, 
 which is in a physical sense what the other is in a mor- 
 al ; the highest virtue of all being victory over our- 
 selves. 
 
 Hence the lesson of self-denial — the sacrificing of a 
 present gratification for a future good — is one of the 
 last that is learnt. Those classes which work the hard- 
 est might naturally be expected to value the most the 
 money which they earn. Yet tlie readiness with which 
 
Self-denial 323 
 
 so many are accustomed to eat up and drink up their 
 earnings as they go, renders them to a great extent 
 helpless and dependent upon the frugal. There are 
 large numbers of persons among us who, though enjoy- 
 ing sufficient means of comfort and independence, are 
 often found to be barely a day's march ahead of actual 
 ■want when a time of pressure occurs ; and hence a great 
 cause of social helplessness and suffering. On one oc 
 casion a deputation waited on Lord John Russell, re- 
 specting the taxation levied on the working classes of 
 the country, when the noble lord took the opportunity 
 of remarking, " You may rely upon it that the Govern- 
 ment of this country durst not tax the working classes 
 to any thing like the extent to which they tax them- 
 selves in their expenditure upon intoxicating drinks 
 alone !" Of all great public questions, there is perhaps 
 none more important than this — no great work of re- 
 form calling more loudly for laborers. But it must be 
 admitted that " self-denial and self-help " would make a 
 poor rallying-cry for the hustings ; and it is to be feai-- 
 ed that the patriotism of this day has but little regard 
 for such common things as individual economy and 
 providence, although it is by the practice of such vir- 
 tues only that the genuine independence of the indus- 
 trial classes is to be secured. " Prudence, frugality, and 
 good management," said Samuel Di-ew, the philosophic- 
 al shoemaker, " are excellent artists for mending bad 
 times : they occupy but little room in any dwelling, but 
 would furnish a more effectual remedy for the evils of 
 life than any Reform Bill that ever passed the Houses 
 of Parliament." Socrates said, " Let him that would 
 move the world move first himself." Or as the old 
 rhyme runs — 
 
 ' If eveiy one would see 
 To his owTi reformation, 
 How very easily 
 You might reform a nation." 
 
32i The Use of Money. 
 
 It is, however, generally felt to be a far easier thing to 
 reform the Church and the State than to reform the 
 least of our own had habits ; and in such matters it is 
 usually found more agreeable to our tastes, as it cer- 
 tainly is the common practice, to begin with our neigh- 
 bors rather than with ourselves. 
 
 Any class of men that lives from hand to mouth wiU 
 ever be an inferior class. They will necessarily remain 
 impotent and helpless, hanging on to the skirts of socie- 
 ty, the sport of times and seasons. Having no respect 
 for themselves, they will fail in securing the respect of 
 others. In commercial crises, such men must inevita- 
 bly go to the wall. Wanting that husbanded power 
 which a store of savings, no matter how small, invaiia- 
 bly gives them, they will be at every man's mercy, and, 
 if possessed of right feelings, they can not but regard 
 with fear and trembling the future possible fate of their 
 wives and children. " The world," once said Mr. Cob- 
 den to the working men of Huddersfield, " has always 
 been divided into two classes — those who have saved, 
 and those who have spent — the thrifty and the extrav- 
 agant. The building of all the houses, the mills, the 
 bridges, and the ships, and the accomplishment of all 
 other great works which have rendered man civilized 
 and happy, has been done by the savere, the thrifty ; 
 and those who have wasted their resources have al- 
 ways been their slaves. It has been the law of nature 
 and of Providence that this should be so ; and I were 
 an impostor if I promised any class that they would 
 advance themselves if they were improvident, thought- 
 less, and idle." 
 
 Equally sound was the advice given by Mr. Bright 
 to an assembly of working men at Rochdale, in 1847, 
 when, after expressing his belief that, " so far as hon- 
 esty was concerned, it was to be found in pretty equal 
 amount among all classes," he used the following words : 
 " There is only one way that is safe for any man, or 
 
Money — Its Use and Abuse. 325 
 
 any number of men, by which they can maintain theii 
 present position if it be a good one, or raise themselves 
 above it if it be a bad one — that is, by the practice of 
 the virtues of industry, frugality, temperance, and hon- 
 esty. There is no royal road by which men can raise 
 themselves from a position which they feel to be un- 
 comfortable and unsatisfactory, as regards their men- 
 tal or physical condition, except by the practice of 
 those virtues by which they find numbers amongst 
 them are continually advancing and bettering them- 
 selves." 
 
 There is no reason why the condition of the average 
 workman should not be a useful, honorable, respecta- 
 ble, and happy one. The whole body of the working 
 classes might (with few exceptions) be as frugal, vir- 
 tuous, well-informed, and well-conditioned as many in- 
 dividuals of the same class have already made them- 
 selves. What some men are, all without difficulty 
 might be. Emjjloy the same means, and the same re- 
 sults will follow. That there should be a class of men 
 who live by their daily labor in eveiy state is the ordi- 
 nance of God, and doubtless is a wise and righteous 
 one ; but that this class should be otherwise than fru- 
 gal, contented, intelligent, and happy, is not the design 
 of Providence, but springs solely from the weakness, 
 self-indulgence, and perverseness of man himself. The 
 healthy spirit of self-help created amongst working peo- 
 ple would more than any other measure serve to raise 
 them as a class, and this, not by pulling down others, 
 but by levelling them up to a higher and still advanc- 
 ing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue. "All 
 moral philosophy," says Montaigne, " is as applicable 
 to a common and private life as to the most splendid. 
 Every man carries the entire form of the human condi- 
 tion with him." 
 
 When a man casts his glance forward, he will find 
 that the three chief temporal contingencies for which 
 
326 Money — lis Use and Abuse. 
 
 he has to provide are want of employment, sickness, 
 and death. The two first he may escape, but the last 
 is inevitable. It is, however, the duty of the prudent 
 man so to live, and so to arrange, that the pressure of 
 Buifering, in event of either contingency occurring, shall 
 be mitigated to as great an extent as possible, not only 
 to himself, but also to those who are dependent upon 
 him for their comfort and subsistence. Viewed in this 
 light, the honest earning and the frugal use of money 
 are of the greatest importance. Rightly earned, it is 
 the representative of patient industry and untiring ef- 
 fort, of temptation resisted and hope rewarded ; and 
 rightly used, it affords indications of prudence, fore- 
 thought, and self-denial — the true basis of manly char- 
 acter. Though money represents a crowd of objects 
 without any real worth or utility, it also represents 
 many things of great value ; not only food, clothing, 
 and household satisfaction, but personal self-respect 
 and independence. Thus a store of savings is to the 
 working man as a barricade against want ; it secures 
 him a footing, and enables him to M'ait, it may be in 
 cheerfulness and hope, until better days come round. 
 The very endeavor to gain a firmer position in the 
 Avorld has a certain dignity in it, and tends to make a 
 man stronger and better. At all events, it gives him 
 greater freedom of action, and enables him to husband 
 his strength for future effort. 
 
 But the man who is always hovering on the verge of 
 want is in a state not far removed from that of slavery. 
 He is in no sense his own mastei", but is in constant per- 
 il of falling under the bondage of others, and accepting 
 the terms which they dictate to him. He can not help 
 being in a measure servile, for he dares not look the 
 world boldly in the face ; and in adverse times he must 
 look either to- alms or the poor's rates. If work fails 
 him altogether, he has not the means of moving to an- 
 other field of employment ; he is fixed to his parish like 
 
Necessity ofEccmomy. 827 
 
 a limpet to its rock, and can neither migrate nor emi- 
 grate* 
 
 To secure independence, the practice of simple econ- 
 omy is all that is necessary. Economy requires neither 
 superior courage nor eminent virtue ; it is satisfied with 
 ordinary energy, and the capacity of average minds. 
 Economy, at bottom, is but the spirit of order applied 
 in the administration of domestic affairs: it means man- 
 agement, regularity, prudence, and the avoidance of 
 waste. The spirit of economy was expressed by our 
 Divine Master in the \Vords, " Gather up the fragments 
 that remain, so that nothing may be lost." ' His omnip- 
 otence did not disdain the small things of life; and 
 even while revealing His infinite power to the multi- 
 tude, he taught the pregnant lesson of carefulness, of 
 which all stand so much in need. 
 
 Economy also means the power of resisting present 
 gratification for the purpose of securing a future good, 
 and in this light it represents the ascendency of reason 
 over the animal instincts. It is altogether different 
 from penuriousness : for it is economy that can always 
 best afford to be generous. It does not make money 
 an idol but regards it as a useful agent. As Dean 
 Swift observes, " we must carry money in the head, not 
 in the heart." Economy may be styled the daughter 
 of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the mother 
 of Liberty. It is evidently conservative — conservative 
 of character, of domestic happiness, and social well-be- 
 ing. It is, in short, the exhibition of self-help in one 
 of its best forms. 
 
 Francis Horner's father gave him this advice on en- 
 tering life : — " Whilst I wish yon to be comfortable in 
 every respect, I can not too strongly inculcate econo- 
 my. It is a necessary virtue to all ; and however the 
 shallow part of mankind may despise it, it certainly 
 leads to independence, which is a grand object to every 
 man of a high spirit." Burns's lines, quoted at the 
 
328 Getiings and Savings. 
 
 head of this chapter, contain the right idea; but un- 
 happily his strain of song was higher than his practice; 
 his ideal better than his habit. When laid on his death- 
 bed he wrote to a friend, " Alas ! Clarke, I begin to 
 feel the worst. Burns's poor widow, and a half a dozen 
 of his dear little ones helpless orphans ; — there I am 
 weak as a woman's tear. Enough of this ; — 'tis half 
 my disease." 
 
 Every man ought so to contrive as to live within his 
 means. This practice is of the very essence of honesty. 
 For if a man do not manage honestly to live within 
 his own means, he must necessarily be living dishonest- 
 ly upon the means of somebody else. Those who are 
 careless about personal expenditure, and consider mere- 
 ly their own gratification, without regard for the com- 
 fort of others, generally find out the real uses of money 
 when it is too late. Though by nature generous, these 
 thriftless persons are often driven in the end to do very 
 shabby things. They waste their money as they do their 
 time ; draw bills upon the future ; anticipate their earn- 
 ings ; and are thus under the necessity of dragging af- 
 ter them a load of debts and obligations which seriously 
 afiiect their action as free and independent men. 
 
 It was a maxim of Lord Bacon, that when it was 
 necessary to economize, it was better to look after petty 
 savings than to descend to petty gettings. The loose 
 cash which many persons throw away uselessly, and 
 worse, would often form a basis of fortune and inde- 
 pendence for life. These wasters are their own worst 
 enemies, though generally found amongst the ranks of 
 those who rail at the injustice of" the world." Biut if 
 a man will not be his own friend, how can he expect 
 that others will ? Orderly men of moderate means 
 have always something left in their pockets to help 
 others ; whereas your prodigal and careless fellows 
 who spend all never find an opportunity foi' helping 
 any body. It is poor economy, however, to be a scrub. 
 
Danger of Borrowing. 829 
 
 Narrow-mindedness in living and in dealing is general- 
 ly short-sighted, and leads to failure. The penny soul, 
 it is said, never came to twopence. Generosity and 
 liberality, like honesty, prove the best policy after all. 
 Though Jenkinson, in the "Vicar of Wakefield," cheated 
 his kind-hearted neighbor Flamborough in one way or 
 another every year, " Flamborough," said he, " has been 
 regularly growing in riches, while I have come to pov- 
 erty and a jail." And practical life abounds in cases 
 of brilliant results from a course of generous and honest 
 policy. 
 
 The proverb says that " an empty bag can not stand 
 upright ;" neither can a man who is in debt. It is also 
 difficult for a man who is in debt to be truthful ; hence 
 it is said that lying rides on debt's back. The debtor 
 has to frame excuses to his creditor for postponing pay- 
 ment of the money he owes him, and probably also to 
 contrive falsehoods. It is easy enough for a man who 
 will exercise a healthy resolution, to avoid incurring 
 the first obligation ; but the facility with which that 
 has been incurred often becomes a temptation to a sec- 
 ond ; and very soon the unfortunate borrower becomes 
 so entangled that no late exertion of industry can set 
 him free. The first step in debt is like the first step 
 in falsehood ; almost involving the necessity of proceed- 
 ing in the same course, debt following debt, as lie 
 follows lie. Haydon, the painter, dated his decline from 
 the day on which he first borrowed money. He real- 
 ized the truth of the proverb, " Who goes a-borrowing, 
 goes a-sorrowing." The significant entry in his diary 
 is : " Here began debt and obligation, out of which I 
 have never been and never shall be extricated as long 
 as I live." His autobiography shows but too painfully 
 how embarrassment in money matters produces poign- 
 ant distress of mind, utter incapacity for work, and 
 constantly recurring humiliations. The written ad* 
 vice which he gave to a youth when entering the navy 
 
S30 Avoid DM. 
 
 was as follows ; " Never purchase any enjoyment if it 
 can not be procured without horrowing of others. 
 Never borrow money : it is degrading. I do not say 
 never lend, but never lend if by lending you render 
 yourself unable to pay what you owe ; but under any 
 circumstances never borrow." Fichte, the poor stu- 
 ent, refused to accept even presents from his still poor- 
 er parents. 
 
 Dr. Johnson held that early debt is ruin. His words 
 on the subject are weighty, and worthy of being held 
 in remembrance. " Do not," said he, " accustom your- 
 self to consider debt only as an inconvenience ; you 
 will find it a calamity. Poverty takes away so many 
 means of doing good, and produces so much inability 
 to resist evil, both natural and moral, that it is by all 
 virtuous means to be avoided. . . . Let it be your first 
 care, then, not to be in any man's debt. Resolve not to 
 be poor ; whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a 
 great enemy to human happiness ; it certainly destroys 
 liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and 
 others extremely diificult. Frugality is not only the 
 basis of quiet, but of beneficence. No man can help 
 others that wants help himself; we must have enough 
 before we have to spare." 
 
 It is the bounden duty of every man .to look his af- 
 fairs in the face, and to keep an account of his incom- 
 ings and outgoings in money matters. The exercise of 
 a little simple arithmetic in this way will be found of 
 great value. Prudence requires that we shall pitch 
 our scale of living a degree below our means, rather 
 than up to them. But this can only be done by carry- 
 ing out faithfully a plan of living by which both ends 
 may be made to meet. John Locke strongly advised 
 this course : " Nothing," said he, " is likelier to keep a 
 man within compass than having constantly before his 
 eyes the state of his affairs in a regular course of ac- 
 count," The Duke of Wellington kept an accurate 
 
Early Struggles of John Jervis. 331 
 
 detailed account of all the moneys received and ex- 
 pended by him. " I make a point," said he to Mr. 
 Gleig, " of paying my own bills, and I advise every one 
 to do the same ; formerly I used to trust a confidential 
 servant to pay them, but I was cured of that folly by 
 receiving one morning, to my great surprise, duns of a 
 year or two's standing. The fellow had speculated 
 with my money, and left my bills unpaid." Talking 
 of debt, his remark was, " It makes a slave of a man. 
 I have often known wbat it was to bo in want of 
 money, but I never got into debt." Washington was 
 as particular as Wellington was, in matters of business 
 detail ; and it is a remarkable fact, that he did not dis- 
 dain to scrutinize the smallest outgoings of his house- 
 hold — determined as he was to live honestly within 
 his means — even when holding the high office of Presi- 
 dent of the American Union. 
 
 Admiral Jei-vis, Earl St. Vincent, has told the story 
 of his early struggles, and, amongst other things, of his 
 determination to keep out of debt. " My father had a 
 very large family," said he, " with limited means. He 
 gave me twenty pounds at -starting, and that was all 
 he ever gave me. After I had been a considerable 
 time at the station [at sea], I drew for twenty more, 
 but the bill came back protested. I was mortified at 
 this rebuke, and made a promise, which I have ever 
 kept, that I would never draw another bill without a 
 certainty of its being paid. I immediately changed 
 my mode of living, quitted my mess, lived alone, and 
 took up the ship's allowance, which I found quite sufii- 
 cient ; washed and mended my own clothes ; made a 
 pair of trowsers out of the ticking of my bed ; and 
 having by these means saved as much money as would 
 redeem my honor, I took up my bill, and from that 
 time to this I have taken • care to keep within my 
 means." Jervis for six years endured pinching priva- 
 tion, but preserved his integrity, studied his profession 
 
332 Idving too high. 
 
 with success, and gradually and steadily rose by merit 
 and bravery to the highest rank. 
 
 Mr. Hume hit the mark when he once stated in the 
 House of Commons — though his words were followed 
 by " laughter " — that the tone of living in England is 
 altogether too high. Middle-class people are too apt 
 to live up to their incomes, if not beyond them : affect- 
 ing a degree of " style " which is most unhealthy in its 
 efi'ects upon society at large. There is an ambition to 
 bring up boys as gentlemen, or rather " genteel " men, 
 though the result frequently is only to make them 
 gents. They acquire a taste for dress, style, luxuries, 
 and amusements, which can never form any solid foun- 
 dation for manly or gentlemanly character ; and the re- 
 sult is, that we have a vast number of gingerbread 
 young gentry thrown upon the world, who remind one 
 of the abandoned hulls sometimes picked up at sea, 
 with only a monkey on board. 
 
 There is a dreadful ambition abroad for being " gen- 
 teel." We keep up appearances, too often at the ex- 
 pense of honesty ; and, though we may not be rich, yet 
 we must seem to be so. We must be " respectable," 
 though only in the meanest sense — in mere vulgar out- 
 ward show. We have not the courage to go patiently 
 onward in the condition of life in which it has pleased 
 God to call us ; but must needs live in some fashion- 
 able state to which we ridiculously please to call our- 
 selves, and to gratify the vanity of that unsubstantial 
 genteel world of which we form a part. There is a 
 constant struggle and pressure foy front seats in the so- 
 cial amphitheatre ; in the midst of which all noble self- 
 denying resolve is trodden down, and many fine na- 
 tures are inevitably crushed to death. What waste, 
 what misery, what bankruptcy, come from all this am- 
 bition to dazzle others with the glare of apparent 
 worldly success, we need not describe. The mischiev- 
 ous results show themselves in a thousand ways — in 
 
Sir Charles Napier on Deli. 333 
 
 ^ ... II , .- — ■ ■ 
 
 the rank frauds committed by men who dare to be dis- 
 honest, but do not dare to seem poor ; and in the des- 
 perate dashes at fortune, in which the pity is not so 
 much for those who fail, as for the huiidreds of inno- 
 cent families who are so often involved in their ruin. 
 
 The late Sir Charles Napier, in taking leave of his 
 command ia India, did a bold and honest thing in pub- 
 lishing his strong protest, embodied in his last General 
 Order to the officers of the Indian army, against the 
 " fast " life led by so many young officers in that serv- 
 ice, involving them in ignominious obligations. Sir 
 Chai-les strongly urged in that famous document— 
 what had almost been. lost sight of— that "honesty is 
 inseparable from the character of a thorough-bred gen- 
 tleman ;" and that " to drink unpaid-for champagne and 
 unpaid-for beer, and to ride unpaid-for horses, is to be 
 a cheat, and not a gentleman." Men who lived beyond 
 their means and were summoned, often by their own 
 servants, before Courts of Requests for debts contracted 
 in extravagant living, might be officers by virtue of 
 their commissions, but they were not gentlemen. The 
 habit of being constantly in debt, the Commander-in- 
 chief held, made men grow callous to the proper feel- 
 ings of a gentleman. It was not enough that an officer 
 should be able to fight : that any bull-dog. could do. 
 But did he hold his word inviolate ?— did he pay his 
 debts ? These were among the points of honor which, he 
 insisted, illuminated the true gentleman's and soldier's 
 careei'. As Bayard was of old, so would Sir Charles 
 Napier have all British officers to be. He knew them 
 to be " without fear," but he would also have them 
 "without reproach." There are, however, many gallant 
 young fellows, both in India and at home, capable of 
 mounting a breach on an emergency, amidst belching 
 fire, and of performing the most desperate deeds of val- 
 or, who nevertheless can not or will not exercise the 
 moral courage necessary to enable them to resist a 
 
334: Besislance to Temptation. 
 
 petty temptation presented to their senses. They can 
 not utter their valiant " No," or " I can't afford it," to 
 the invitations of pleasure and self-enjoyment; and 
 they are found ready to brave death rather than the 
 ridicule of their companions. 
 
 The young man, as he passes through life, advances 
 through a long line of tempters ranged on either side 
 of him ; and the inevitable effect of yielding is degra- 
 dation in a greater or a less degree. Contact with 
 them tends insensibly to draw away from him some 
 portion of the divine electric element with which his 
 nature is charged; and his only mode of resisting 
 them is to utter and to act out his " No " manfully and 
 resolutely. He must decide at once, not waiting to 
 deliberate and balance reasons : for the youth, like 
 " the woman who deliberates, is lost." Many deliber- 
 ate, without deciding ; but " not to resolve, is to re- 
 solve." A perfect knowledge of man is in the prayer, 
 "Lead us not into temptation." But temptation will 
 come to try the young man's strength ; and once yield- 
 ed to, the power to resist grows weaker and weaker. 
 Yield once, and a portion of virtue has gone. Resist 
 manfully, and the first decision will give strength for 
 life ; repeated, it will become a habit. It is in the out- 
 works of the habits formed in early life that the real 
 strength of the defense must lie; for it has been wisely 
 ordained that the machinery of moral existence should 
 be carried on principally through the medium of the 
 habits, so as to save the wear and tear of the great 
 principles within. It is good habits, which insinuate 
 themselves into the thousand inconsiderable acts of 
 life, that really constitute by far the greater part of 
 man's moral conduct. 
 
 Hugh Miller has told how, by an act of youthful de- 
 cision, he saved himself from one of the strong tempta- 
 tions so peculiar to a life of toil. When employed as a 
 mason, it was usual for his fellow-workmen to have an 
 
A high, Standard. 335 
 
 occasional treat of drink, and one day two glasses of 
 whisky fell to his share, which he swallowed. When 
 he reached home, he found, on opening his favorite 
 book — " Bacon's Essays " — that the letters danced be- 
 . fore his eyes, and that he could no longer master the 
 sense. " The condition," he says, " into which I had 
 brought myself was, I felt, one of degradation. I had 
 sunk, by my own act, for the time, to a lower level of 
 intelligence than that on which it was my privilege to 
 be placed ; and though the state could have been no 
 very favorable one for forming a resolution, I in that 
 hour deterjnined that I should never again sacrifice my 
 capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking usage ; 
 and, with God's help, I was enabled to hold by the de- 
 termination." It is such decisions as this that often 
 form the turning-points in a man's life, and furnish the 
 foundation of his future character. And this rockj on 
 which Hugh Miller might have been wrecked, if he had 
 not at the right moment put forth his moral strength 
 to strike away from it, is one that youth and manhood 
 alike need to be constantly on their guard against. It 
 is about one of the worst and most deadly, as well as 
 extravagant, temptations which lie in the way of youth. 
 Sir Walter Scott used to say that "of all vices, drink- 
 ing is the most incompatible with greatness." Not 
 only so, but it is incompatible with economy, decencyj 
 health, and honest living. When a youth can not re- 
 strain, he must abstain. Dr. Johnson's case is the case 
 of many. He said, referring to his own habits, " Sir, I 
 can abstain ; but I can't be moderate." 
 
 But to wrestle vigorously and successfully with any 
 vicious habit, we must not merely be satisfied with 
 contending on the low ground of worldly prudence, 
 though that is of use, but take stand upon a higher 
 moral elevation. Mechanical aids, such as pledges, may 
 be of service to some, but the great thing is to set up 
 a high standard of thinking and acting, and endeavor 
 
836 Proverbs on Money-making. 
 
 to strengthen and purify the principles as well as to re- 
 form the habits. For this purpose a youth must study 
 himself, watch his steps, and compare his thoughts and 
 acts with his rule. The more knowledge of himself 
 he gains, the more humhle will he be, and perhaps the 
 less confident in his own strength. But the discipline 
 will be always found most valuable which is acquired 
 by resisting small present gratifications to secure a 
 prospective greater and higher one. It is the noblest 
 work in self-education — for 
 
 " Real glory 
 Springs from the sflent conquest of ourselves. 
 And without that the conqueror is nought 
 But the first slave." 
 
 Many popular books have been written for the pur- 
 pose of communicating to the public the grand secret 
 of making money. But there is no secret whatever 
 about it, as the proverbs of every nation abundantly 
 testify. " Take care of the pennies and the pounds will 
 take care of themselves." " Diligence is the mother 
 of good luck." "No pains no gains." "No sweat no 
 sweet." " Work and thou shalt have." " The world 
 is his who has patience and industry." " Better go to 
 bed supperless than rise in debt." Such are specimens 
 of the proverbial philosophy, embodying the hoarded 
 experience of many generations, as to the best means 
 of thriving in the world. They were current in peo- 
 ple's mouths long before books were invented ; and 
 like other popular proverbs they wei-e the first codes 
 of popular morals. Moreover they have stood the test 
 of time, and the experience of every day still bears wit- 
 ness to their accuracy, force, and soundness. The Prov- 
 erbs of Solomon ai-e full of Avisdom as to the force of 
 industry, and the use and abuse of money : — "He that 
 is slothful in work is brother to him that is a great 
 waster." " Go to the ant, thou sluggard ; consider her 
 ways, and be wise." Poverty, says the preacher, shall 
 
Industry Jionorahh. 837 
 
 come upon the idler, "as one that travelleth, and want 
 as an armed man ;" but of. the industrious and upright, 
 " the hand of the diligent maketh rich." " The drunk- 
 ard and the glutton shall come to poverty ; and drowsi- 
 ness shall clothe a man with rags." " Seest thou a man 
 diligent in his business ? he shall stand before kings." 
 But above all, " It is better to get wisdom than gold ; 
 for wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that 
 may be desired are not to be compared to it." 
 
 Simple industry and thrift will go far towards mak- 
 ing any person of ordinary working faculty compara- 
 tively independent in his means. Even a working man 
 may be so, provided he will carefully husband his re- 
 sources, and watch the little outlets of useless expendi- 
 ture. A penny is a very small matter, yet the comfort 
 of thousands of families depends upon the proper spend- 
 ing and saving of pennies. If a man allows the little 
 pennies, the results of his hard work, to slip out of his 
 fingers — some to the beer-shop, some this way and some 
 that^ie will find that his life 'is little raised above one 
 of mere animal drudgery. On the other hand, if he 
 take care of the pennies — putting some weekly into a 
 benefit society or an insurance fund, others into a sav- 
 ings' bank, and confiding the rest to his wife to be care- 
 fully laid out, with a view to the comfortable mainten- 
 ance and education of his family — he will soon find that 
 this attention to small matters will abundantly repay 
 him, in increasing means, growing comfort at home, and 
 a mind comparatively free from fears as to the future. 
 And if a working man have high ambition and possess 
 richness in spirit — a kind of wealth which far tran- 
 scends all mere worldly possessions — he may not only 
 help himself, but be a profitable helper of others in his 
 path through life. That this is no impossible thing 
 even for a common laborer in a workshop, may be illus- 
 trated by the remarkable career of Thomas Wright of 
 Manchester, who not only attempted but succeeded iu 
 
 15 
 
338 Philanthropy of Thomas Wright 
 
 the reclamation of many criminals while working for 
 weekly wages in a foundery. 
 
 Accident first directed Thomas Wright's attention to 
 the difficulty encountered by liberated convicts in re- 
 turning to habits of honest industry. His mind was 
 shortly possessed by the subject, and to remedy the 
 evil became the purpose of his life. Though he work- 
 ed from six in the morning till six at night, still there 
 were leisure minutes that he could call his own — more 
 especially his Sundays — and these he employed in the 
 service of convicted criminals ; a class then far more 
 neglected tlian they are now. But a few minutes a 
 day, well employed, can effect a great deal ; and it will 
 scarcely be credited, that in ten years this working 
 man, by steadfastly holding to his purpose, succeeded 
 in rescuing not fewer than three hundred felons from 
 continuance in a life of villainy ! He came to be re- 
 garded as the moral physician of the Manchester Old 
 Bailey; and where the chaplain and all others failed, 
 Thomas Wright often succeeded. Children he thus 
 restored reformed to their parents ; sons and. daughters, 
 otherwise lost, to their homes ; and many a returned 
 convict did he contrive to settle down to honest and 
 industrious pursuits. The task was by no means easy. 
 It required money, time, energy, prudence, and above 
 all, character, and the confidence which character in- 
 variably inspires. The most remarkable circumstance 
 was that Wright relieved many of these poor outcasts 
 out of the comparatively small wages earned by him at 
 foundery work. He did all this on an income which did 
 not average, during his working career, £100 per an- 
 num ; and yet, while he was able to bestow substantial 
 aid on criminals, to whom he owed no more than the 
 service of kindness which every human -being owes to 
 another, he also maintained his family in comfort, and" 
 was, by frugality and carefulness, enabled to lay by a 
 store of savings against his approaching old age. Ev- 
 
Energy in Money-making. 339 
 
 ery week he apportioned his income with deliberate 
 care ; sc much for the indispensable necessaries of food 
 and clothing, so much for the landlord, so much for the 
 schoolmaster, so much for the poor and needy ; and the 
 lines of distribution were resolutely observed. By such 
 means did this humble workman pursue his great work, 
 with the results we have so briefly described. Indeed, 
 his career affords one of the most remarkable and strik- 
 ing illustrations of the force of purpose in a man, of the 
 might of small means carefully and sedulously applied, 
 and, above all, of the power which an energetic and up- 
 right character invariably exercises upon the lives and 
 conduct of others. 
 
 There is no discredit, but honor, in every right walk 
 of industry, whether it be in tilling the ground, making 
 tools, weaving fabrics, or selling the products behind a 
 counter. A youth may handle a yard-stick, or measure 
 a piece of ribbon ; and there will be no discredit in do- 
 ing so, unless he allows his mind, to have no higher 
 range than the stick and ribbon ; to be as short as 
 the one and as narrow as the other. " Let not those 
 blush who Aawe," said Fuller, " but those who have 
 not a lawful calling." And Bishop Hall said, " Sweet 
 is the destiny of all trades, -whether of the brow or of 
 the mind." Men who have raised themselves from a 
 humble calling need not be ashamed, but rather ought 
 to be proud of the difficulties they have surmounted. 
 An American President, when asked what was his 
 coat-of-arms, remembering that he had been a hewer of 
 wood in his youth, replied, " A pair of shirt-sleeves." A 
 French doctor once taunted Flechier, Bishop of Nismes, 
 who had been a tallow-chandler in his youth, with the 
 meanness of his origin, to which Flechier replied, " If 
 you had been born in the same condition that I was, 
 you would still have been but a maker of candles." 
 
 Nothing is more common than energy in money- 
 making, quite independent of any higher object than 
 
340 Mere Money-iriaking. 
 
 its accumulation. A man who devotes himself to this 
 pursuit, body and soul, can scarcely fail to become rich. 
 Very little brains will do : spend less than you earn ; 
 add guinea to guinea ; scrape and save ; and the pile 
 of gold will gradually rise. Osterwald, the Parisian 
 banker, began life a poor man. He was accustomed 
 every evening to drink a pint of beer for supper at a 
 tavern which he visited, during which he collected and 
 pocketed all the corks that he could lay his hands on. 
 In eight years he had collected as many corks as sold 
 for eight lonis-d'ors. With that sum he laid the foun- 
 dations of his fortune — gained mostly by stock-jobbing ; 
 leaving at his death some three millions of francs. 
 John Foster has cited a striking illustration of what 
 this kind of determination will do in money-making. 
 A young man who ran through his patrimony, spending 
 it in profligacy, was at length reduced to utter want 
 and despair. He rushed out of his house intending to 
 put an end to his life, and stopped on arriving at an 
 eminence overlooking what were once his estates. He 
 sat down, ruminated for a time, and rose with the de- 
 termination that he would recover them. He returned 
 to the streets, saw a load of coals which had been shot 
 out of a cart on to the pavement before a house, of- 
 fered to carry them in, and was employed. He thus 
 earned a few pence, requested some meat and drink as 
 a gratuity, which was given him, and the pennies were 
 laid by. Pursuing this menial labor, he earned and 
 saved more pennies ; accumulated sufficient to enable 
 him to purchase some cattle, the value of which he un- 
 derstood, and these he sold to advantage. He pro- 
 ceeded by degrees to undertake larger transactions, 
 until at length he became rich. The result was that 
 he more than recovered his possessions, and died an in- 
 veterate miser. When he was buried, mere earth went 
 to earth. With a nobler spirit, the same determina- 
 tion might have enabled such a man to be a benefactor 
 
The Power of Money. 341 
 
 to others as well as to himself. But the life and its 
 end in this case were alike sordid. 
 
 To provide for others and for our own comfort and 
 Independence in old age, is honorable and greatly to 
 be commended ; but to hoard for mere wealth's sake is 
 the characteristic of the narrow-souled and the miserly. 
 It is against the growth of this habit of inordinate sav- 
 ing that the wise man needs most carefully to guard 
 himself: else, what in youth was simple economy, may 
 in old age grow into avarice, and what was a duty in the 
 one case, may become a vice in the other. It is the 
 love of money — not money itself — which is " the root 
 of evil," — a love which narrows and contracts the soul, 
 and closes it against generous life and action. Hence, 
 Sir Walter Scott makes one of his characters declare 
 that "the penny siller slew more souls than the naked 
 sword slew bodies." It is one of the defects of busi- 
 ness too exclusively followed, that it insensibly tends 
 to a mechanism of character. The business man gets 
 into a rut, and often does not look beyond it. If he 
 lives for himself only, he becomes apt to regard other 
 human beings only in so far as they minister to his 
 ends. Take a leaf from such men's ledger and you 
 have their life. 
 
 Worldly success, measured by the accumulation of 
 money, is no doubt a very dazzling thing ; and all men 
 are naturally more or less the admirers of worldly suc- 
 cess. But though men of persevering, sharp, dexter- 
 ous, and unscrupulous habits, ever on the watch to 
 push opportunities, may and do " get on " in the world, 
 yet it is quite possible that they may not possess the 
 slightest elevation of character nor a particle of real 
 goodness. He who recognizes no higher logic than 
 that of the shilling may become a very rich man, and 
 yet remain all the while an exceedingly poor creature. 
 For riches are no proof whatever of moral worth ; and 
 their glitter often serves only to draw attention to the 
 
342 Riches no Proof of Worth. 
 
 ■worthlessness of their possessor, as the light of the 
 glowworm reveals the grub. 
 
 The manner in which many allow themselves to be 
 sacrificed to their love of wealth reminds one of the 
 cupidity of the monkey — that caricature of our species. 
 In Algiers, the Kabyle peasant attaches a gourd, well 
 fixed, to a tree, and places within it some rice. The 
 gourd has an opening merely sufficient to admit the 
 monkey's paw. The creature comes to the tree by 
 night, inserts his paw, and grasps his booty. He tries to 
 draw it back, but it is clenched, and he has not the wis- 
 dom to unclench it. So there he stands till morning, 
 when he is caught, looking as foolish as may be, though 
 with the prize in his grasp. The moral of this little sto- 
 ry is capable of a very extensive application in life. 
 
 The power of money is, on the whole, over-estimated. 
 The greatest things which have been done for the world 
 have not been accomplished by rich men, nor by sub- 
 scription-lists, but by men generally of small pecuniary 
 means. Christianity was pi'opagated over half the 
 world by men of the poorest class ; and the greatest 
 thinkers, discoverers, inventors, and artists, have been 
 men of moderate wealth, many of them little raised 
 above the condition of manual laborers in point of 
 worldly circumstances. And it will always be so. 
 Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to 
 action ; and in many cases they are quite as much a 
 misfortune as a blessing. The youth who inherits 
 wealth is apt to have life made too easy for him, and 
 he soon grows sated with it, because he has nothing 
 left to desire. Having no special object to struggle for, 
 he finds time hang heavy on his hands; he remains 
 morally and spiritually asleep ; and his position in so- 
 ciety is often no higher than that of a polypus over 
 which the tide floats. 
 
 " His only labor is to kill the time, 
 And labor dii-e it is, and weary woe." 
 
.Ti'ue.Bespedcchility. 343 
 
 Yet the rich man, inspired by a right spirit, -will 
 spurn idleness as unmanly ; and if he bethink himself 
 of the responsibilities which attach to the possession of 
 Avealth and property, he will. feel even a higher call to 
 work than men of humbler lot. This, however, must 
 be admitted to be by no means the practice of life. The 
 golden mean of Agur's perfect prayer is, perhaps, the 
 best of all, did we but know it : " Give me neither pov- 
 erty nor riches ; feed me with food convenient for me." 
 The late Joseph Brotherton, M.P., left a fine motto to 
 be recorded upon his monument in the Peel Park at Man- 
 chester — the declaration in his case being strictly true : 
 " My richness consisted not in the greatness of my pos- 
 sessions, but in the smallness of my wants." He rose 
 from the humblest station, that of a factory boy, to an 
 eminent position of usefulness, by the simple exercise 
 of homely honesty, industry, punctuality, and self-denial, 
 Down to the close of his life, when not attending Par- 
 liament, he did duty as a minister in a small chapel in 
 Manchester to which he was attached ; and in all things 
 he made it appear, to those who knew him in private 
 life, that the glory he sought was not " to' be seen of 
 men," or to excite their praise, but to earn the con- 
 sciousness of discharging the every-day duties of life, 
 down to the smallest and humblest of them, in an hon- 
 est, upright, truthful, and loving spirit. 
 
 " Respectability," in its best sense, is good. The re- 
 spectable man is one worthy of i-egard, literally worth 
 turning to look at. But the respectability that con- 
 sists in merely keeping up appearances is not worth 
 looking at in any sense. Far better and more respect- 
 able is the good poor man than the bad rich pne^-bet- 
 ter the humble silent man than the agreeable, well-ap- 
 pointed rogue who keeps his gig. A well-balanced 
 and well-stored mind, a life full of useful purpose, what- 
 ever the position occupied in it may be, is of far greater 
 importance than average worldly respectability. The 
 
344: Beat Men of Mark. 
 
 highest object of life we take to be, to form a manly 
 character, and to work out the best development possi- 
 ble, of body and spirit — of mind, conscience, heart, and 
 Boul. This is the end : all else ought to be regarded 
 but as the means. Accordingly, that is not the most 
 successful life in which a man gets the most pleasure, 
 the most money, the most power or place, honor or 
 .' fame ; but that in which a man gets the most manhood, 
 and performs the greatest amount of useful work and 
 of human duty. Money is power after its sort, it is 
 true ; but intelligence, public spirit, and moral virtue, 
 are powers too, and far nobler ones. " Let others plead 
 for pensions," wrote Lord Collingwood to a friend ; " I 
 can be rich without money, by endeavoring to be su- 
 perior to every thing poor. 1 would have my services 
 to my country unstained by any interested motive ; 
 and old Scott,* and I can go on in our cabbage-garden 
 without much greater expense than formerly." On an- 
 other occasion he said, " I have motives for my conduct 
 which I would not give in exchange for a hundred pen- 
 sions." 
 
 The making of a fortune may no doubt enable some 
 •people to "enter society," as it is called; but to be es- 
 teemed there, they must possess qualities of mind, man- 
 ners, or heart, else they are merely rich people, nothing 
 more. There are men " in society " now, as rich as 
 Croesus, who have no consideration extended towards 
 them, and elicit no respect. For why ? They are but 
 as money-bags : their only power is in their till. The 
 men of mark in society — the guides and rulers of opin- 
 ion — the really successful and useful men — are not nec- 
 essarily rich men ; but men of sterling character, of dis- 
 
 * His old gardener. Collingwood's favorite amusement was gar- 
 dening. Shortly after the battle of Trafalgar a brother admiral called 
 upon him, and, after searching for his lordship all over the garden, he 
 at last discovered him, with old Scott, in the bottom of a deep trench 
 which they were busily employed in digging. 
 
Seal Men of Mark. 
 
 845 
 
 ciplined experience, and of moral excellence. Even the 
 poor man, like Thomas Wright, though he possess but 
 little of this world's goods, may, in the enjoyment of a 
 cultivated nature, of opportunities used and not abused, 
 of a life spent to the best of his means and ability, look 
 down, without the slightest feeling of envy, upon the 
 person of mere worldly success, the man of money-baga 
 and acres. 
 
 J.5* 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 BELF-CtTLTTTEE — EACILITIES AlfD DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 "Every person has two educations, one which he receives from 
 ethers, and one, more important, which he gives to himself." — Gibbon. 
 
 "Is there one whom difficulties dishearten — who hends to the 
 stoi-m? He will do little. Is there one who viill conquer? That 
 kind of man never fails. " — John Hunter. 
 
 " The wise and active conquer difficulties, 
 By danng to attempt them : sloth and folly 
 Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and danger, 
 And make the impossibility they fear." — KowE. 
 
 ' ' 'T^HE best part of every man's education," said Sir 
 Jl Walter Scott, " is that which he gives to himself." 
 The late Sir Benjamin Brodie delighted to remember 
 this saying, and he used to congratulate himself on the 
 fact that professionally he was self-taught. But this is 
 necessarily the case with all men who have acquired 
 distinction in letters, science, or art. The education re- 
 ceived at school or college is but a beginning, and is 
 valuable mainly inasmuch as it trains the mind and ha- 
 bituates it to continuous application and study. That 
 which is put into us by others is always far less ours 
 than that which we acquire by our own diligent and 
 persevering effort. Knowledge conquered by labor 
 becomes a possession — a property entirely our own. 
 A greater vividness and permanency of impression is 
 Secured ; and facts thus acquired become registered in 
 the mind in a way that mere imparted information can 
 never effect. This kind of self culture also calls forth 
 power and cultivates strength. The solution of one 
 
Importance of Self-culture. 847 
 
 problem helps the mastery of another ; and thus knowl- 
 edge is carried into faculty. Our own active effort is 
 the essential thing ; and no facilities, no books, no teach- 
 ers, no amount of lessons learnt by rote will enable us 
 to dispense with it. 
 
 The best teachers have been the readiest to recog- 
 nize the importance of self-culture, and of stimulating 
 the student to acquire knowledge by the active exer- 
 cise of his own faculties. They have relied more upon 
 training than upon telling, siaA sought to make their 
 pupils themselves active parties to the work in which 
 they were engaged; thus making teaching something 
 far higher than the mere passive reception of the scraps 
 and details of knowledge. This was the spirit in which 
 the great Dr. Arnold worked ; he strove to teach his 
 pupils to rely upon themselves, and develop their pow- 
 ers by their own active efforts, himself merely guiding, 
 directing, stimulating, and encouraging them. "I 
 would far rather," he said, " send a boy to Van Die- 
 men's Land, where he must work for his bread, than 
 send him to Oxford to live in luxury, without any de- 
 sire in his mind to avail himself ot his advantages." 
 "If there be one thing on earth," he observed on an- 
 other occasion, " which is truly admirable, it is to see 
 God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, 
 when they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cul- 
 tivated." Speaking of a pupil of this character, he said, 
 " I would stand to that man hat in hand." Once 
 at Laleham, when teaching a rather dull boy, Ar- 
 nold spoke . somewhat sharply to him, on which the 
 pupil. looked up in his face and said, "Why do you 
 speak angrily, sir? indeed, I am doing the best I can." 
 Years afterwards, Arnold used to tell the story to his 
 children, and added, " I never felt so much in my life — 
 that look and that speech I have never forgotten." 
 
 From the numerous instances already cited of men 
 of humble station who have risen to distinction in sci- 
 
348 The Use of Active iMployment. 
 
 ence and literature, it will be obvious that labor is by 
 no means incompatible with the highest intellectual 
 culture. Work in moderation is healthy as well as 
 agreeable to the human constitution. Work educates 
 the body, as study educates the mind ; and that is the 
 best state of society in which there is some work for ev- 
 ery man's leisure, and some leisure for every man's work. 
 Even the leisure classes are in a measure compelled to 
 work, sometimes as a relief from ennui, but in most 
 cases to gratify an instinct which they can not resist. 
 Some go fox-hunting in the English countries, others 
 grouse-shooting on the Scotch hills, while many wander 
 away every summer to climb mountains in Switzerland. 
 Hence the boating, running, cricketing, and athletic 
 sports of the public schools, in which our young men at 
 the same time so healthfully cultivate their strength 
 both of mind and body. It is said that th". Duke of Wel- 
 lington, when once looking on at the boys engaged in 
 their sports in the play-ground at Eton, where he had 
 spent many of his own younger days, made the remark, 
 "It was there that the battle of Waterloo was won !" 
 Daniel Malthus urged his son when at college to be 
 most diligent in the cultivation of knowledge, but he 
 also enjoined him to pursue manly sports as the best 
 means of keeping Up the full working power of his mind, 
 as well as of enjoying the pleasures of intellect. " Ev- 
 ery kind of knowledge," said he, " every acquaintance 
 with nature and art, will amuse and strengthen your 
 mind, and I am perfectly pleased that cricket should do 
 the same by your arms and legs ; I love to see yoti ex- 
 cel in exercises of the body, and I think myself that 
 the better half, and much the most agreeable part, of 
 the pleasures of the mind is best enjoyed while one is 
 upon one's legs." But a still more important use of 
 active employment is that referred to by the great di- 
 vine, Jeremy Taylor. "Avoid idleness," he says, 
 " and fill Tip all the spaces of thy time with severe and 
 
ImportandQ of Physical Health. 349 
 
 useful employment; for lust easily creeps in at those 
 emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body 
 is at ease ; for no easy, healthful, idle person was evei" 
 chaste, if he could be tempted ; but of all employments 
 bodily labor is the most useful, and of the greatest 
 benefit for driving away the devil." 
 
 Practical success in life depends more upon physical 
 health than is generally imagined. Hodson, of Hod- 
 son's Horse, writing home to a friend in England, said, 
 " I believe if I get on well in India, it will be owing, 
 physically speaking, to a sound digestion." The ca- 
 pacity for continuous working in any calling must nec- 
 essarily depend in a gi-eat measure upon this ; and 
 hence the necessity for attending to health, even as a 
 means of intellectual labor. It is perhaps to the neg- 
 lect of physical exercise that we find amongst students 
 so frequent a tendency towards discontent, unhappiness, 
 inaction, and reverie — displaying itself in contempt for 
 real life and disgust at the beaten tracks of men — a 
 tendency which in England has been called Byronism, 
 and in Germany Wertherism. Dr. Channing noted the 
 same growth in America, which led him to make the 
 remark, that "too many of our young men grow up iu 
 a school of despair." The only remedy for this green- 
 sickness in youth is physical exercise — action, work, 
 and bodily occupation. 
 
 The use of early labor in self-imposed mechanical 
 employments may be illustrated by the boyhood of Sir 
 
 ■ Isaac Newton. Though comparatively a dull scholar, 
 he was very assiduous in the use of his saw, hammer, 
 and hatchet — " knocking and hammering in his lodging 
 room" — making models of windmills, carriages, and 
 machines of all sorts ; and as he grew older, he took 
 delight in making little tables and cupboards for his 
 friends. Smeaton, Watt, and Stephenson, were equally 
 handy with tools when mere boys; and but for such 
 
 ■kind of self-culture in their youth, it is doubtful whetb- 
 
850 Education in Mechanics. 
 
 er they would have accomplished so much in their 
 manhood. Such was also the early training of the 
 great inventors and mechanics described in the j)reced- 
 ing pages, whose contrivance and intelligence were 
 practically trained by the constant use of their hands 
 in early life. Even where men belonging to the man- 
 ual labor class have i-isen above it, and become more 
 purely intellectual laborers, they have found the ad- 
 vantages of their early training iu their later pursuits. 
 Elihu Burritt says he found hard labor necessary to en- 
 able him to study with effect ; and more than once he 
 gave up school-teaching and study, and, taking to his 
 leather apron again, went back to his blacksmith's 
 forge and anvil for his health of body and mind's sake. 
 The training of young men in the use of tools would, 
 at the same time that it educated them in " common 
 things," teach them the use of their hands and arms, 
 familiarize them with healthy work, exercise their fac- 
 ulties upon things tangible and actual, give them some 
 practical acquaintance with mechanics, impart to them 
 the ability of being useful, and implant in them the 
 habit of persevering physical effort. This is an advan- 
 tage which the working classes, strictly so called, cer- 
 tainly possess over the leisure classes — that they are in 
 early life under the necessity of applying themselves 
 laboriously to some mechanical pursuit or other — thus 
 acquiring manual dexterity and the use of their physi- 
 cal powers. The chief disadvantage attached to the 
 calling of the laborious classes is, not that they are em- 
 ployed in physical work, but that they, are too exclu- 
 sively so employed, often to the neglect of their moral 
 and intellectual faculties. While the youths of the leis- 
 ure classes, having been taught to associate labor with 
 servility, have shunned it, and been allowed to grow up 
 practically ignorant, the poorer classes, confining them- 
 selves within the circle of their laborious callings, have 
 been allowed to grow up, in a large proportion of cases. 
 
Healthiness of Great Men. 351 
 
 absolutely illiterate. It seems possible, however, to 
 avoid both these evils by combining physical training or 
 physical work with intellectual culture ; and there are 
 various signs abroad which seem to mark the gradual 
 adoption of this healthier system of education. 
 
 The success of even professional men depends in no 
 slight degree on their physical health; and a public 
 writer has gone so far as to say that " the greatness of 
 our great men is quite as much a bodily affair as a 
 mental one."* A, healthy breathing apparatus is as 
 indispensable to the successful lawyer or politician as 
 a well-cultured intellect. The thorough aeration of the 
 blood by free exposure to a large breathing surface in 
 the lungs, is necessary to maintain that full vital power 
 on which the vigorous working of the brain in so large 
 a measure depends. The lawyer has to climb the 
 heights of his profession through close and heated 
 courts, and the political leader has to bear the fatigue 
 and excitement of long and anxious debates in a crowd- 
 ed House. Hence the lawyer in full practice and the 
 parliamentary leader in full work are called upon to 
 display powers of physical endurance and activity even 
 more extraordinary than those of the intellect — such 
 powers as have been exhibited in so remarkable a de- 
 gree by Brougham, Lyndhurst, and Campbell ; by Peel, 
 Graham, and Palmerston — ^all full-chested men. 
 
 Though Sir Walter Scott, when at Edinburgh Col- 
 lege, went by the name of " The Greek Blockhead," 
 he was, notwithstanding his lameness, a remarkably 
 healthy youth : he could spear a salmon with the best 
 fisher on the Tweed, and ride a wild horse with any 
 hunter in Yarrow. When devoting himself in after 
 life to literary pursuits, Sir Walter never lost his taste 
 for field sports ; but while writing " Waverley " in the 
 morning, he would in the afternoon course hares. Pro- 
 fessor Wilson was a very athlete, as great at throwing 
 • Article in the "Times." 
 
352 Sustainea Application. 
 
 the hammer as in his flights of eloquence and poetry ; 
 and Burns, when a youth, was remarkable chiefly for 
 his leaping, putting, and wrestling. Some of our great 
 est divines were distinguished in their youth for their 
 physical energies. Isaac Barrow, when at the Charter- 
 house School, was notorious for his pugilistic encoun- 
 ters, in which he got many a bloody nose ; Andrew 
 Fuller, when working as a farmer's lad at Soham, was 
 chiefly famous for his skill in boxing ; and Adam 
 Clarke, when a boy, was only remarkable for the 
 strength displayed by him in " rolling large stones 
 about " — the secret, possibly, of some of the power 
 which he subsequently displayed in rolling forth large 
 thoughts in his manhood. 
 
 While it is necessary, then, in the first place to se- 
 cure this solid foundation of physical health, it must also 
 be observed that the cultivation of the habit of mental 
 application is quite indispensable for the education of 
 the student. The maxim that "Labor conquers all 
 things " holds especially true in the case of the con- 
 quest of knowledge. The road into learning is alike 
 free to all who will give the labor and the study requi- 
 site to gather it ; nor are there any difficulties so great 
 that the student of resolute pui-pose may not surmount 
 and overcome them. It was one of the characteristic 
 expressions of Chatterton, that God had sent his crea- 
 tures into the world with arms long enough to reach 
 any thing if they chose to be at the trouble. In study, 
 as in business, energy is the great thing. There must 
 be the " fervet opus :" we must not only strike the iron 
 while it is hot, but strike it till it is made hot. It is 
 astonishing how much may be accomplished in self- 
 culture by the energetic and the persevering, who are 
 careful to avail themselves of opportunities, and use up 
 the fragments of spare time which the idle permit to 
 run to waste. Thus Ferguson learnt astronomy from 
 the heavens while wrapt in a sheep-skin on the high 
 
Well-directed Labor. 353 
 
 land hills. Thus Stone learnt mathematics while work- 
 ing as a journeyman gardener ; thus Drew studied the 
 highest philosophy in the intervals of cobbling shoes ; 
 and thus Miller taught himself geology while working 
 as a day-laborer in a quarry. 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, as we have already observed, 
 was so earnest a believer in the force of industry, that 
 he held that all men might achieve excellence if they 
 would but exercise the power of assiduous and patient 
 working. He held that drudgery lay on the road to 
 genius, and that there was no limit to the proficiency of 
 an artist except the limit of his own painstaking. He 
 would not believe in what is called inspiration, but only 
 •in study and labor. " Excellence," he said, " is never 
 granted to man but as the reward of labor." "If you 
 have great talents, industry will improve them ; if you 
 have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their 
 deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor; 
 nothing is to be obtained without it." Sir Fowell Bux- 
 ton was an equal believer in the power of study ; and he 
 entertained the modest idea that he could do as well as 
 other men if he devoted to the pursuit double the time 
 and labor that they did. He placed his great confidence 
 in ordinary means and extraordinary application. 
 
 "I have known several men in my life," says Dr. 
 Ross, " who may be recognized in days to come as men 
 of genius, and they were all plodders, hard-working, 
 intent men. Genius is known by its works; genius 
 without works is a blind faith, a dumb oracle. But 
 meritorious works are the result of time and labor, and 
 can not be accomplished by intention or by a wish. . . . 
 Every great work is the result of vast preparatory train- 
 ing. Facility comes by labor. Nothing seems easy, 
 not even walking, that was not difficult at first. The 
 orator whose eye flashes instantaneous fire, and whose 
 lips pour out a flood of noble thoughts, startling by 
 their unexpectedness and elevating by their wisdom 
 
354 Thoroughness and Accuracy. 
 
 and truth, has learned his secret by patient repetition, 
 and after many bitter disappointments."* 
 
 Thoroughness and accuracy are two principal points 
 to be aimed at in study. Francis Homer, in laying 
 down rules for the cultivation of his mind, placed great 
 stress upon the habit of continuous application to one 
 subject for the sake of mastering it thoroughly ; he 
 confined himself with this object to only a few books, 
 and resisted with the greatest firmness " every ap- 
 proach to a habit of desultory reading." The value of 
 knowledge to any man consists not in its quantity, but 
 mainly in the good uses to which he can apply it. 
 Hence a little knowledge of an exact and perfect char- 
 acter, is always found more valuable for practical pur- 
 poses than any extent of superficial learning. 
 
 One of Ignatius Loyola's maxims was, " He who does 
 well one work- at a time, does more than all." By 
 epi-eading our efforts over too large a surface we inev- 
 itably weaken our force, hinder our progress, and ac- 
 quire a habit of fitfulness and ineffective working. Lord 
 St. Leonards once communicated to Sir Fowell Buxton 
 the mode in which he had conducted his studies, and 
 thus explained the secret of his success : " I resolved," 
 said he, " when beginning to read law, to make every 
 thing I acquired perfectly my own, and never to go to 
 a second thing till I had entirely accomplished the first. 
 Many of my competitors read as much in a dfty as I 
 read in a week ; but, at the end; of twelve months, my 
 knowledge was as fresh as the day it was acquired, 
 while theirs had glided away from recollection." 
 
 It is not the quantity of study that one gets through, 
 or the amount of I'eading, that makes a wise man ; but 
 
 * "Self-Development: an address to Stud,ents," by George Eoss, 
 M.D., pp. 1-20, reprinted from the "Medical Circular." This ad- 
 dress, to which we acknowledge our obligations, contains many admi- 
 rable thoughts on self-culture, is thoroughly healthy in its tone, and 
 \i-ell deserves republication in an enlai'ged form. 
 
Decision and Promptitude. 355 
 
 the appositeness of the study to the purpose foi* which 
 it is pursued ; the concentration of the mind, for the 
 time being, on the subject under consideration ; and the 
 habitual discipline by which the whole system of men- 
 tal application is regulated. Abernethy was even of 
 opinion that there was a point of saturation in his own 
 mind, and that if he took into it something more than 
 it could hold, it only had the effect of pushing some- 
 thing else out. Speaking of the study of medicine, he 
 said, " If a man has a clear idea of what he desires to 
 do, he will seldom fail in selecting the proper means of 
 accomplishing it." 
 
 The most profitable study is that which is conducted 
 with a definite aim and object. By thoroughly mas- 
 tering any given branch of knowledge we render it 
 more available for use at any moment. Hence it is not 
 enough merely to have books, or to know where to read 
 _ for information as we want it. Practical wisdom, for 
 the purposes of life, must be carried about with us, and 
 be ready for use at call. It is not sufficient that we 
 have a fund laid up at home, but not a farthing in the 
 pocket : we must carry about with us a store of the cur- 
 rent coin of knowledge ready for exchange on all oc- 
 casions, else we are comparatively helpless when the 
 opportunity for using it occurs. 
 
 Decision and promptitude are as requisite in self- 
 culture as in business. The growth of these qualities 
 may be encouraged by accustoming young people to 
 rely upon their own resources, leaving them to enjoy 
 as much freedom of action in early life as is practicable. 
 Too much guidance and restraint hinder the formation 
 of habits of self-help. They are like bladders tied un- 
 der the arms of one who has not taught himself to swim. 
 "Want of confidence is perhaps a greater obstacle to im- 
 provement than is generally imagined. It has been said 
 that half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's 
 horse while he is leaping. Dr, Johnson was accus* 
 
356 Labor-saving Processes fallacmis. 
 
 tomed to attribute his success to confidence in his 
 own powers. True modesty is quite compatible with 
 a due estimate of one's own merits, and does not de- 
 mand the abnegation of all merit. Though there are 
 those who deceive themselves by putting a false figure 
 before their ciphers, the want of confidence, the want 
 of faith in one's self, and consequently the want of 
 promptitude in action, is a defect of character which is 
 found to stand very much in the way of individual 
 progress ; and the reason why so little is done, is gen- 
 erally because so little is attempted. 
 
 There is usually no want of desire on the part of most 
 persons to arrive at the results of self-culture, but there ^ 
 is a great aversion to pay the inevitable price for it, of 
 hard work. Dr. Johnson held that " impatience of 
 study was the mental disease of the present generation ;" 
 and the remark is still applicable. We may not believe 
 that there is a royal road to learning, but we seem to 
 believe very firmly in the " popular " one. In educa- 
 tion, we invent labor-saving processes, seek short cuts 
 to science, learn French and Latin " in twelve lessons," 
 or " without a master." We resemble the lady of 
 fashion, who engaged a master to teach her on condi- 
 tion that he did not plague her with verbs and partici- 
 ples. We get our smattering of science in the same 
 way ; we learn chemistry by listening to a short course 
 of lectures enlivened by experiments, and when we have 
 ■inhaled laughing-gas, seen green water turned to red, 
 and phosphorus burnt in oxygen, we have got our 
 smattering, of which the most that can be said is, that 
 though it may be better than nothing, it is yet good for 
 nothing. Thus we often imagine we are being educated 
 while we are only being amused. 
 
 The facility with which young people are thus in- 
 duced to acquire knowledge, without study and la- 
 bor, is not education. It occupies but does not enrich 
 the mind. It imparts a stimulus for the time, and pro* 
 
Intellectual Dissipation. 357 
 
 duces a sort of intellectual keenness and cleverness; 
 but, without an implanted purpose and a higher object 
 than mere pleasure, it will bring with it no solid ad- 
 vantage. In such cases knowledge produces but a 
 passing impression ; a sensation, but no more ; it is, in 
 fact, the merest epicurism of intelligence — sensuous, but 
 certainly not intellectual. Thus the best qualities ol 
 many minds, those which are evoked by vigorous effort 
 and independent action, sleep a deep sleep, and are often 
 never called to life, except by the rough awakening of 
 sudden calamity or suffering, which, in such cases, comes 
 as a blessing, if it serves to rouse up a courageous spirit 
 that, but foi it, would have slept on. 
 
 Accustomed to acquire information under the guise 
 of amusement, young people will soon reject that which 
 is presented to them under the aspect of study and la- 
 bor. Learning their knowledge and science in sport, 
 they will be too apt to make sport of both ; while the 
 habit of intellectual dissipation, thus engendered, can 
 not fail, in course of time, to produce a thoroughly 
 emasculating effect both upon their mind and charac- 
 ter. " Multifarious reading," said Robertson of Bright- 
 on, " weakens the mind like smoking, and is an excuse 
 for its lying dormant. It is the idlest of all idlenesses, 
 and leaves moi-e of impotency than any other." 
 
 The evil is a growing one, and operates in various 
 ways. Its least mischief is shallowness ; its greatest, 
 the aversion to steady labor which it induces, and the 
 low and feeble tone of mind which it encourages. If 
 we would be really wise, we must diligently apply our- 
 selves, and confront the same continuous application 
 which our forefathers did ; for labor is still, and ever 
 will be, the inevitable price set upon every thing which 
 is valuable. We must be satisfied to work with a pur- 
 pose, and wait the results with patience. All progress, 
 of the best kind, is slow ; but to him who works faith- 
 fully and zealously the reward will, doubtless, be vouch* 
 
358 The right Use of Knovjkdqe. 
 
 safed in good time. The spirit of industry, embodied 
 in a man's daily life, will gradually lead him to exercise ' 
 his powers on objects outside himself, of greater digni- 
 ty and more extended usefulness. And still we must 
 labor on ; for the work of self-culture is never finished. 
 " To be employed," said the poet Gray, " is to be hap- 
 py." "It is better to wear out than rust out," said 
 Bishop Cumberland. "Have we not all eternity to 
 rest in?" exclaimed Arnauld. "Repos ailleurs" was 
 the motto of Marnix de St. Aldegonde, the energetic 
 and ever-working friend of William the Silent. 
 
 It is the use we make of the powers intrusted to us, 
 which constitutes our only just claim to respect. He 
 who employs his one talent aright is as much to be hon- 
 ored as he to whom ten talents have been given. There 
 is really no more personal merit attaching to the posses- 
 sion of superior intellectual powers than there is in the 
 succession to a large estate. How are those powers 
 used — ^how is that estate employed? The mind may 
 accumulate large stores of knowledge without any use- 
 ful purpose ; but the knowledge must be allied to good- 
 ness and wisdom, and embodied in upright character, 
 else it is naught. Pestalozzi even held intellectual 
 training by itself to be pernicious ; insisting that the 
 roots of all knowledge must strike and feed in the soil 
 of the rightly-governed will. The acquisition of knowl- 
 edge may, it is true, protect a man against the meaner 
 felonies of life ; but not in any degree against its selfish 
 vices, unless fortified by sound principles and habits. 
 Hence do we find in daily life so many instances of men 
 who are well-informed in intellect, but utterly defonned 
 in character ; filled with the learning of the schools, yet 
 possessing little practical wisdom, and offering exam- 
 ples for warning rather than imitation. An often 
 quoted expression at this day is that "Knowledge is 
 power ;" but so, also, are fanaticism, despotism, and am- 
 bition. Knowledge of itself, unless wisely directed, 
 
Learning and Wisdom. ■ 859 
 
 might merely make bad men more dangerous, and the 
 society in which it was regarded as the highest good, 
 little better than a pandemonium. 
 
 It is possible that at this day we may even exagger- 
 ate the importance of literary culture. We are apt to 
 imagine that because we possess many libraries, insti- 
 tutes, and museums, we are mating great progress. 
 But such facilities may as often be a hindrance as a 
 help to individual self-culture of the highest kind. The 
 possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more 
 constitutes learning, than the possession of wealth con- 
 stitutes generosity. Though we undoubtedly possess 
 great facilities, it is nevertheless true, as of old, that 
 wisdom and understanding can only become the pos- 
 session of individual men by travelling the old road 
 of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry. 
 The possession of the mere materials of knowledge is 
 something very different from wisdom and understand- 
 ing, which are reached through a higher kind of disci- 
 pline than that of reading — which is often but a mere 
 passive reception of other men's thoughts ; there being 
 little or no active effort of mind in the transaction. 
 Then how much of our reading is but the indulgence 
 of a sort of intellectual dram-drinking, imparting a 
 grateful excitement for the moment, without the slight- 
 est effect in improving and enriching the mind or build- 
 ing up the character. Thus many indulge themselves 
 in the conceit that they are cultivating their -minds, 
 when they are only employed in the humbler occupa- 
 tion of killing time, of which perhaps the best that can 
 be said is, that it keeps them from doing worse things. 
 
 It is also to be borne in mind that the experience 
 gathered from books, though often valuable, is but of 
 the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained 
 from actual life is of the nature o^ wisdom ; and a small 
 store of the latter is worth vastly more than any stock 
 of the former. Lord Bolingbroke truly said that 
 
360 Learning and Character. 
 
 " Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly 
 to make us better men and citizens, is at best but a 
 specious and ingenious sort of idleness, and the knowl- 
 edge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of igno- 
 rance — nothing more." 
 
 Useful and instructive though good reading may be, 
 it is yet only one mode of cultivating the mind ; and 
 is much less influential than practical experience and 
 good example in the formation of character. There 
 were wise, valiant, and true-hearted men bred in Eng>^ 
 land, long before the existence of a reading public. 
 Magna Charta was secured by men who signed the 
 deed with their marks. Though altogether unskilled 
 in the art of deciphering the literary signs by which 
 principles were denominated upon paper, they yet un- 
 derstood and appreciated, and boldly contended for, 
 the things themselves. Thus the foundations of Eng- 
 lish liberty were laid by men who, though illiterate, 
 were nevertheless of the very highest stamp of charac^ 
 ter. And it must be admitted that the chief object of 
 culture is, not merely to fill the mind with other men's 
 thoughts, and to be the passive recipient of their im- 
 pressions of things, but to enlarge our individual intel- 
 ligence, and render us more useful and eificient workera 
 hi the sphere of life to which we may be called. Many 
 of our most energetic and useful workers have been but 
 sparing readers. Brindley and Stephenson did not 
 learn to read and write until they reached manhood, 
 and yet they did great works and lived manly lives; 
 John Hunter could barely read or write when he was 
 twenty years old, though he could make tables and 
 chairs with any carpenter in the trade. "I never 
 read,", said the great physiologist when lecturing be- 
 fore his class ; " this " — pointing to some part of the 
 subject before him — "this is the work that you must 
 study if you wish to become eminent in your profes- 
 sion." When told that one of his contemporaries had 
 
Self-respect. 361 
 
 charged him with being ignorant of the dead languages, 
 he said, " I would undertake to teach him that on the 
 dead body which he never knew in any language, dead 
 or living." 
 
 It is not then how much a man may know, that is 
 of importance, but the end and purpose for which he 
 knows it. The object of knowledge should be to ma- 
 ture wisdom and improve character, to render us bet- 
 ter, happier, and more useful ; more benevolent, more 
 energetic, and more efficient in the pursuit of every 
 high purpose in life. "When people once fall into the 
 habit of admiring and encouraging ability as such, with- 
 out reference to moral character — and religious and po- 
 litical opinions are the concrete form of moral character 
 — they are on the highway to all sorts of degradation." * 
 We must ourselves be and (?o, and not rest satisfied 
 merely with reading and meditating over what other 
 men have been and done. Our best light must be 
 made life, and our best thought action. At least we 
 ought to be able to say, as Richter did, " I have made 
 as much out of myself as could be made ot the stuff, 
 and no man should require more ;" for it is every rnan's 
 duty to discipline and guide himself, with God's help, 
 according to his responsibilities and the faculties with 
 which he has been endowed. 
 
 Self-discipline and self-control are the beginnings of 
 practical wisdom; and these must have their root in 
 self-respect. Hope springs from it — hope, which is the 
 companion of power, and the mother of success ; for 
 whoso hopes strongly has within liim the gift of mira- 
 cles. The humblest may say, " To respect myself, to 
 develop myself — this is my true duty in life. An inte- 
 gral and responsible part of the great system of socie- 
 ty, I owe it to society and to its Author not to degrade 
 or destroy either my body, mind, or instincts. Oh the 
 contrary, I am bound to the best of my power to give 
 * " Saturday Review.'' 
 16 
 
?62 "Getting on." 
 
 to those parts of my constitution tie higliest aegres; oi 
 perfection possible. I am not only to suppress the 
 evil, but to evoke the good elements in my nature. 
 And as I respect myself, so am I equally bound to re- 
 spect others, as they on their part are bound to respect 
 me." Hence mutual respect, justice, and order, of which 
 law becomes the written record and guarantee. 
 
 Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man 
 may clothe himself^ — the most elevating feeling with 
 which the mind can be inspired. One of Pythagoras's 
 wisest maxims, in his " Golden Verses," is that with 
 which he enjoins the pupil to " reverence himself." 
 Borne up by this high idea, he will not defile his body 
 by sensuality, nor his mind by servile thoughts. This 
 sentiment, carried into daily life, will be found at the 
 root of all the virtues — cleanliness, sobriety, chastity, 
 morality, and religion. " The pious and just honoring 
 of ourselves," said Milton, " may be thought the radical 
 moisture and fountain-head from whence every laud- 
 able and worthy enterprise issues forth." To think 
 meanly of one's self, is to sink in one's own estimation 
 as well as in the estimation of others. And as the 
 thoughts are, so will the acts be. Man can not aspire 
 if he look down ; if he will rise, he must look up. The 
 very humblest may be sustained by the proper indul- 
 gence of this feeling. Poverty itself may be lifted and 
 lighted up by self-respect ; and it is truly a noble sight 
 to see a poor man hold himself upright amidst his temp- 
 tations, and refuse to demean himself by Ioav actions. 
 
 One way in which self-culture may be degraded is 
 by regarding it too exclusively as a means of "getting 
 on." Viewed in this light, it is unquestionable that ed- 
 ucation is one of the best investments of time and la- 
 bor. In any line of life, intelligence will enable a man 
 to adapt himself more readily to circumstances, sug- 
 gest improved methods of working, and render him 
 more apt, skilled, and effective in all respects. He who 
 
Knowledge as a Means of Rising. 363 
 
 works with his head as well as his hands, will come to 
 look at his business with, a clearer eye; and he will 
 become conscious of increasing power — perhaps the 
 most cheering consciousness the human mind can cher- 
 ish. The power of self-help will gradually grow ; and 
 in proportion to a man's self-respect, will he be armed 
 against the temptation of low indulgences. Society and 
 its action will be regarded with quite a new interest, 
 iiis sympathies will widen and enlarge, and he will thus 
 be attracted to work for others as well as for himself! 
 
 Self-culture may not, however, end in eminence, as in 
 the numerous instances above cited. The great ma- 
 jority of men, in all times, however enlightened, must 
 necessarily be engaged in the ordinary avocations of 
 industry ; and no degree of culture which can be con- 
 ferred upon the cominunity at large will ever enable 
 thehi — even were it desirable, which it is not — to get 
 rid of the daily work of society, which must be done. 
 But this, we think, may also be accomplished. We can 
 elevate the condition of labor by allying it to noble 
 thoughts, which confer a grace upon the lowliest as 
 well as the highest rank. For no matter how poor or 
 humble a man may be, the great thinker of this and 
 other days may come in and sit down with him, and be 
 his companion for the time, though his dwelling be the 
 meanest hut. It is thus that the habit of well-directed 
 reading may become a source of the greatest pleasure 
 and self-improvement, and exercise a gentle coercion, 
 with the most 'beneficial results, over the whole tenor 
 of a man's character and conduct. And even though 
 self-culture may not bring wealth, it will at all events 
 give one the companionship of elevated thoughts." A 
 nobleman once contemptuously asked of a sage, "What 
 have you got by all your philosophy?" "At least I 
 have got society in myself," was the wise man's reply. 
 
 But many are apt to feel despondent, and become 
 discouraged in the work of self-culture, because they 
 
364 Lmv View of Self-culture. 
 
 do not " get on " in the world so fast as they think 
 they deserve to do. Ha-ving planted their acorn, they 
 expect to see it grow into an oak at once. They have 
 perhaps looked npon knowledge in the light of a mar- 
 ketable commodity, and are consequently mortified he- 
 cause it does not sell as they expected it would do. 
 Mr. Tremenheere, in one of his " Education Reports " 
 (for 1840-'l), states that a schoolmaster in Norfolk, find- 
 ing his school rapidly falling ofi", made inquiry into the 
 cause, and ascertained that the reason given hy the 
 majority of the parents for withdrawing their children 
 was, that they had expected " education was to make 
 them better ofi" than they were before," but that hav 
 ing found it had " done them no good," they had tak- 
 en their children from school, and would give them- 
 selves no further trouble about education ! 
 
 The same low idea of self-culture is but too prevalent 
 in other classes, and is encouraged by the false views 
 of life which are always more or less current in society. 
 But to regard self-culture either as a means of getting 
 past others in the world, or of intellectual dissipation and 
 amusement, rather than as a power to elevate the char- 
 acter and expand the spiritual nature, is to j)lace it on 
 a very low level. To use the words of Bacon, " Knowl- 
 edge is not a shop for profit or sale, but a rich store- 
 house for the glory of the Creator and the relief of 
 man's estate." It is doubtless most honorable for a 
 man to labor to elevate himself, and to better his con 
 dition in society, but this is not to be done at the sac- 
 rifice of himself. To make the mind the mere drudge 
 of the body, is putting it to a very servile use ; and to 
 go about whining and bemoaning our pitiful lot be- 
 cause we fail in achieving that success in life which, 
 after all, depends rather npon habits of industry and at- 
 tention to business details than npon knowledge, is the 
 mark of a small, and often of a sour mind; Such a tern 
 per can not better be repi'oved than in the words oi 
 
Our Popular Literature. 865 
 
 Robert Southey, who thus wrote to a friend who sought 
 his counsel : " I would give you advice if it could be 
 of use ; but there is no curing those who choose to be 
 diseased. A good man and a wise man may at times 
 be angry with the world, at times grieved for it ; but 
 be sure no man was ever discontented with the world 
 if he did his duty in it. If a man of education, who has 
 health, eyes, hands, and leisure, wants an object, it is 
 only because God Almighty has bestowed all those 
 blessings upon a man who does not deserve them." 
 
 Another way in which education may be prostituted 
 is by employmg it as a mere means of intellectual dis- 
 sipation and amusement. Many are the ministers to 
 this taste in our time. There is almost a mania for 
 frivolity and excitement, which exhibits itself in many, 
 forms in our popular literature. To meet the public 
 taste, GUI' books and periodicals must now be highly 
 spiced, amusing, and comic, not disdaining slang, and 
 illustrative of breaches of all laws, human and divine. 
 Douglas Jerrold once observed of this tendency, " I am 
 convinced the world will get tired (at least I hope so) 
 of this eternal guffaw about all things. After all, life 
 has something serious in it. It can not be all a comic 
 history of humanity. Some men would, I believe, write 
 a Comic Sermon on the Mount. Think of a Comic 
 History of England, the drollery of Alfred, the fun of 
 Sir Thomas More, the farce of his daughter begging the 
 dead head and clasping it in her cofBn on her bosom.. 
 Surely the world will be sick of this blasphemy." John 
 Sterling, in a like spirit, said : — ^" Periodicals and novels 
 are to all in this generation, but more especially to those 
 whose minds are still unformed and in the process of 
 formation, a new and more effectual substitute for the 
 plagues of Egypt, vei-min that corrupt the wholesome 
 waters and infest our chambers." 
 
 As a rest from toil and a relaxation from graver pur- 
 BuitSj the perusal of a well-written story, by a write* 
 
366 Pursuit ofPkdsure, 
 
 of genius, is a high intellectual pleasure; and it is a 
 description of literature to which all classes of readers, 
 old and young, are attracted as by a powerful instinct ; 
 nor would we have any of 'them debarred from its en- 
 joyment in a reasonable degree. But to make it tha 
 exclusive literary diet, as some do-^to devour the 
 garbage with which the shelves of circulating libraries 
 are filled — and to occupy the greater portion of the 
 leisure hours in studying the preposterous pictures of 
 human life which so many of them present, is worse 
 than waste of time : it is positively pernicious. The 
 habitual novel-reader indulges in fictitious feelings so: 
 much, that there is great risk of sound and healthy: 
 feeling becoming perverted or benumbed. - "I never 
 go to hear a tragedy," said a gay man once' to the 
 Archbishop of York, "it wears my. heart' out." The 
 literary pity evoked by fiction leads to no correspond- 
 ing action ; the susceptibilities which it excites involve 
 neither inconvenience nor self-sacrifice ; so that the 
 heart that is touched too often by the fiction may at 
 length become insensible to the reality. The steel is 
 gradually rubbed out of the character, and it insensi- 
 bly loses its vital spring. "Drawing fine pictures of 
 virtue in one's mind," said Bishop Butler, " is so far 
 from necessarily or certainly conducive to form a Iidbit 
 of it in him 'who thus employs himself, that it may even 
 harden the mind in a contrary course, and render it 
 gradually more insensible." 
 
 Amusement in moderation is wholesome, and to be 
 commended ; but amusement in excess vitiates the 
 whole nature, and is a thing to be carefully guarded 
 against. The maxim is often quoted of "All work and 
 no play makes Jack a dull boy ;" but all play and no 
 work makes him something greatly worse. Nothing 
 can be more hurtful to a youth than to have his soul 
 sodden with pleasure. The best qualities of his mind 
 are impaired ; common enjoyments become tasteless ; 
 
Benjamin Constant. 367 
 
 his appetite for the higher kind of pleasures is vitiated ; 
 and when he comes to face the work and the duties of 
 life, the result is usually aversion and disgust. " Fast " 
 men waste and exhaust the powers of life, and dry up 
 the sources of true happiness.. Having forestalled their 
 spring, they can produce no healthy growth of either 
 character or intellect. A child without simplicity, a 
 maiden without innocence, a boy without truthfulness, 
 are not more piteous sights than the man who has 
 wasted and thrown away his youth in self-indulgence. 
 Mirabeau said of himself, " My early , years have al- 
 ready in a great measure disinherited the succeeding 
 ones, and dissipated a great part of my vital powers." 
 As the wrong done to another to-day returns upon our- 
 selves to-morrow, so the sins of our youth rise up in 
 our age to scourge us. When Loi-d Bacon says that 
 " strength of nature in youth passeth over many ex- 
 cesses which are owing a man until he is old," he ex- 
 poses a physical as well as a moral fact which can not 
 be too well weighed in the conduct of life. " I assure 
 you, wrote Giusti the Italian to a friend, " I pay a 
 heavy price for existence. It is true that our lives are 
 not at our own disposal. Nature pretends to give them 
 gratis at the beginning, and then sends in her account." 
 The woi'st of youthful indisoi'etions is, not that they de- 
 stroy health, so much as that they sully riianhood. The 
 dissipated youth becomes a tainted man ; and often he 
 can not be pure, even if he would. If cure there be, it 
 is only to be found in, inoculating the mind with a fer- 
 vent spirit of duty, and in energetic application to use- 
 ful work. 
 
 One of the most gifted of Frenchmen, in point of 
 great intellectual endowments, was Benjamin Constant; 
 but, hla^i at twenty, his life was only a prolonged 
 wail, instead of a harvest of the great deeds which 
 he was capable of accomplishing with ordinary dili- 
 gence and self-control. He resolved upon doing so 
 
868 Augustin Thierry: 
 
 many things, which he never did, that people came to 
 Bpeak of him as Constant the Inconstant. He was a 
 fluent and brilliant writer, and cherished the ambition 
 of writing works, "which, the world would not willing- 
 ly let die." But whilst Constant affected the highest 
 thinking, unhappily he practised the lowest living ; nor 
 did the transcendentalism of his books atone for the 
 meanness of his life. He frequented the gaming-tables 
 while engaged in preparing his work upon religion, and 
 carried on a disreputable intrigue while writing his 
 "Adolphe." With all his powers of intellect, he was 
 powerless, because he had no faith in virtue. "Bah !" 
 said he, " what are honor and dignity ? The longer I 
 live, the more clearly I see there is nothing in them." 
 It was the howl of a miserable man. He described him- 
 self as but " ashes and dust." " I pass," said he, " like 
 a shadow over the earth, accompanied by misery and 
 ennuV He wished for Voltaire's energy, which he 
 would rather have possessed than his genius. But he 
 had no strength of purpose — nothing but wishes : his 
 life, prematurely exhausted, had become but a heap of 
 broken links. He spoke of himself as a person with one 
 foot in the air. He admitted that he had no principles, 
 and no moral consistency. Hence, Avith his splendid 
 talents he contrived to do nothing ; and, after living 
 many years miserable, he died worn out and wretched. 
 The career of Augustin Thierry, the author of the 
 " History of the Norman Conquest," affords an admira- 
 ble contrast to that of Constant. His entire life pre- 
 sented a striking example of perseverance, diligence, 
 self-culture, and untiring devotion to knowledge. In 
 the pui-suit he lost his eyesight, lost his health, but 
 never lost his love of truth. When so feeble that he 
 was carried from room to room, like a helpless infant, 
 in the arms of a nurse, his brave spirit never failed him ; 
 and blind and helpless though he was, he concluded his 
 literary career in the following noble words : — " If, as I 
 
Coleridge and Soiiihey. S6i> 
 
 think, the interest of science is counted in the, number of 
 great national interests, I have given my country all that 
 the soldier, mutilated on the field of battle, gives her. 
 Whatever may be the fate of my labors, this example, 
 I hope, will not be lost. I would wish it to serve to 
 combat the species of moral weakness which is the 
 disease of our present generation ; to bring back into 
 the straiglt^t road of life some of those enervated souls 
 that complain of wanting faith, that know not what to 
 do, and seek everywhere, without finding it, an object 
 of worship and admiration. Why say, with so much 
 bitterness, that in the world, constituted as it is, there is 
 no air for all lungs — no employment for all minds ? Is 
 not calm and serious study there? and is not that a ref- 
 uge, a hope, a field within the reach of all of us ? With 
 it, evil days are passed over without their weight being 
 felt. Every one can make his own destiny — every one 
 employ his life nobly. This is what I have done, and 
 would do again if I had to recommence my career ; I 
 would choose that which has brought me where I am. 
 Blind, and suffering without hope, and almost without 
 intermission, I may give this testimony, which from me 
 will not appear suspicious. There is something in the 
 world better than sensual enjoyments, better than for- 
 tune, better than health itself — it is devotion to knowl- 
 edge." 
 
 Coleridge in many respects resembled Constant. He 
 possessed equally brilliant powers, but was similarly 
 infirm of purpose. With all his great intellectual gifts, 
 he wanted the gift of industry, and was averse to con- 
 tinuous labor. He wanted also the sense of independ- 
 ence, and thought it no degradation to leave his wife 
 and children to be maintained by the brain-work of 
 the noble Southey, while he himself retired to Higli- 
 gate Grove to discourse transcendentalism to his disci- 
 ples, looking down contemptuously upon the honest 
 work going forward beneath him amidst the din and 
 
 16* 
 
370 Robert Nkoll 
 
 smoke of London. With remunerative employment at 
 his command he stooped to accept the charity of friends; 
 and, notwithstanding his lofty ideas of philosophy, he 
 condescended to humiliations from which many a day- 
 laborer would have shrunk. How different in spirit 
 was Southey ! Laboring not merely at work of his own 
 choice, and at task-work often tedious and > distasteful, 
 but also unremittingly and with the utmost eagerness 
 seeking and storing knowledge purely for the love of 
 it. Every day, every hour had its allotted employment : 
 engagements to publishers requiring punctual fulfill- 
 ment; the current expenses of a large household duly 
 to provide for: Southey had no crop growing while his 
 pen was idle. "My ways," he used to say, "are as 
 broad as the king's high-road, and my means lie in an 
 inkstand." 
 
 Robert Nicoll wrote to a friend, after reading, the 
 " Recollections of Coleridge," " What a mighty intel- 
 lect was lost in that man for want of a little energy — a 
 little determination !" Nicoll himself was a true and 
 brave spirit, who died young, but not before he had en- 
 countered and overcome great difficulties in life. At 
 his outset, while carrying on a small business as a book- 
 seller, he found himself weighed down with a debt of 
 only twenty pounds, which he said he felt " weighing 
 like a millstone round his neck," and that "if he had it 
 paid he never -would borrow again from mortal man." 
 Writing to his mother at the time he said, "Fear not 
 for me, dear mother, for I feel myself daily growing 
 firmer and more hopeful in spirit; The more I think 
 and reflect — and thinking, not reading, is now my occu- 
 pation—I feel that, whether I be growing richer or not, 
 I am growing a wiser man, which is far better. Paioj 
 poverty, and all the other wild beasts of life which so 
 affrighten others, I am so bold as to think I- could look 
 in the face without shrinking, without losing respect for 
 myself, faith in man's high destinies, or trust in Godi 
 
Wisdom learnt from Failure. 871 
 
 There is a point which it costs much mental toil and 
 struggling to gain, but which, when once gained, a man 
 can look down from, as a traveller from a lofty mount- 
 ain, on storms raging below, while he is walking in 
 sunshine. That I have yet gained this point in life I 
 will not say, but I feel myself daily nearer to it." 
 
 It is not ease, but effort — not facility, but diificulty, 
 that makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life, 
 in which difficulties have not to be encountered and 
 overcome before any decided measure of success can be 
 achieved. Those difficulties are, however, our best in- 
 structors, as our mistakes often form our best experi- 
 ence. Charles James Fox was accustomed to say that 
 he hoped more from a man who failed, and yet went on 
 in spite of his failure, than from the buoyant career of 
 the successful. " It is all very well," said he, " to tell 
 me that a young man has distinguished himself by a 
 brilliant first speech. He may go on, or he may be sat- 
 isfied with his first triumph ; but show me a young 
 man who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has 
 gone on, and I will back that young man to do better 
 than most of those who have succeeded at the first trial." 
 
 We learn wisdom from failure much more than from 
 success. We often discover what will do, by finding 
 out what will not do ; and probably he who never made 
 a mistake never made a discovery. It was the failure 
 in the attempt to make a sucking-pump act, when the 
 working-bucket was more than thirty-three feet above 
 the surface of the water to be raised, that led observ- 
 ant men to study the law of atmospheric pressure, and 
 opened anew field of research to the genius of Galileo, 
 Toi-recelli, and Boyle. John Hunter used to remark 
 that the art of surgery would not advance until pro- 
 fessional men had the courage to publish their failures 
 as well as their successes. Watt the engineer said, of , 
 all things most wanted in mechanical engineering was 
 a history of failures : " We want," he said, " a book of 
 
872 Uses of Difficulty. 
 
 blots." When Sir Humphry Davy was once shown a 
 dexterously manipulated experiment, he said — " I thank 
 God I was not made a dexterous manipulator, for the 
 most important of my discoveries have been suggested 
 to me by failures." Another distinguished investigator 
 in physical science has left it on record that, whenever 
 in the course of his researches he encountered an ap- 
 parently insuperable obstacle, he generally found him- 
 self on the brink of some discovery. The very greatest 
 things — great thoughts, discoveries, inventions — ^have 
 usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over 
 in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty. 
 
 Beethoven said of Rossini, that he had in him the 
 stuff to have made a good musician if he had only, when 
 a boy, been well flogged; but that he had been spoilt 
 by the facility with which he produced. Men who feel 
 their strength within them need not fear to encounter 
 adverse opinions; they have far greater reason to fear 
 undue praise and too friendly criticism. When Men- 
 delssohn was about to enter the orchestra at Birming- 
 ham, on the first performance of his "Elijah," he said 
 laughingly to one of his friends and critics, " stick your 
 claws into me ! Don't tell me what you like, but what 
 you don't like !" 
 
 It has been said, and truly, that it is the defeat that 
 tries the general more than the victory. Washington 
 lost more battles than he gained ; but he succeeded in 
 the end.- The Romans, in their most victorious cam- 
 paigns, almost invariably began with defeats. Moreau 
 used to be compared by his companions to a drum, 
 which nobody hears of except it be beaten. Welling- 
 ton's military genius Avas perfected by encounter with 
 difficulties of apparently the most overwhelming char- 
 acter, but which only served to move his resohition, 
 and bring out more prominently his great qualities as 
 a man and a general. So the skillful mariner obtains 
 his best experience amidst storms and tempests, which 
 
Adversity and Pros'perity. 873 
 
 train him to self-reliance, coui-age, and the highest dis- 
 cipline ; and we probably owe to rough seas and win- 
 try nights the best training of our race of British sea- 
 men, who are certainly not surpassed by any in the 
 world. 
 
 Necessity may be a hard schoolmistress, but she is 
 generally found the best. Though the ordeal of adver- 
 sity is one from which we naturally shrink, yet, when 
 it comes, we must bravely and manfully encounter it 
 Burns says truly, 
 
 " Though losses and crosses 
 Be lessons right severe, 
 There's wit there, you'll get there, 
 You'll find no other where." 
 
 " Sweet indeed are the uses of advereity." They re- 
 veal to us our powers, and call forth our energies. If 
 there be real worth in the character, like sweet herbs^ 
 it will give forth its finest fragrance when pressed. 
 " Crosses," says the old proverb, " are the ladders that 
 lead to heaven." " What is even poverty itself," asks 
 Richter, " that a man should murmur under it ? It is 
 but as the pain of piercing a maiden's ear, and you 
 hang precious jewels in the wound." In the experi- 
 ence of life it is found that the wholesome discipline 
 of adversity in strong natures usually carries with it a 
 self-preserving influence. Many are found capable of 
 bravely bearing up under privations, and cheerfully 
 encountering obstructions, who are afterwards found 
 unable to withstand the more dangerous influences of 
 prosperity. It is only a weak man whom the wind 
 deprives of his cloak; a man of average strength is 
 more in danger of losing it when assailed by the beams 
 of a too genial sun. Thus it often needs a higher dis- 
 cipline and a stronger character to bear uj) under good 
 fortune than under adverse. Some generous natures 
 kindle and warm with prosperity, but there are manj^ 
 
374 The School of Difficulty the best Schodt. 
 
 on whom wealth has no such influence. Base hearts 
 it only hardens, making those who were mean and serv- 
 ile, mean and proud. But while prosperity is apt to 
 harden the heart to pride, adversity in a man of reso- 
 lution will serve to ripen it into fortitude. To use the 
 tvords of Burke, " Difficulty is a severe instructor, set 
 over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guard- 
 ian and instructor, who knows us better than we 
 know ourselves, as He loves us better too. He that 
 wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens 
 our skill ; our antagonist is thus our helper." Without 
 the necessity of encountering difficulty, life miglit be 
 easier, but men would be worth less. For trials, wisely 
 improved, train the character, and teach self-help ; thus 
 hardship itself may often prove the wholesomest disci- 
 pline for us, though we recognize it not. When the 
 gallant young Hodson, unjustlj'' removed from his In- 
 dian command, felt himself sore pressed down by un- 
 merited calumny and reproach, he yet preserved the 
 courage to say to a friend, " I strive to look the worst 
 boldly in the face, as I would an enemy in the field, 
 and to do my appointed work resolutely and to the 
 best of my ability, satisfied that there is a reason for 
 all ; and that even irksome duties well done bring 
 their own reward, and that, if not, still they are du- 
 ties." 
 
 The battle of life is, in most cases, fought up-hill ; 
 and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win 
 it without honor. If there were no difficulties there 
 would be no success ; if there were nothing to struggle 
 for, there would be nothing to be achieved. Difficul- 
 ties may intimidate the weak, but they act only as a 
 wholesome stimulus to men of resolution and valor. 
 All experience of life, indeed, serves to prove that the 
 impediments thrown in the way of human advance- 
 ment may, for the most part, be overcome by steady 
 good conduct, honest zeal, activity, perseverance, and 
 
TTie School of Difficulty the lest Sclwot 375 
 
 above .all, "by a determined resolution to surmount dif» 
 ficulties, and stand up manfully against misfortune. 
 
 The School of Difficulty is the best school of moral 
 .discipline, for nations as for individuals. Indeed, the 
 history of difficulty would be but a history of all the 
 great and good things that have yet been accomplished 
 by men. It is hard to say how much northern nations 
 owe to their encounter with a comparatively rude and 
 .changeable climate, and an originally sterile soil, which 
 ■is one of the necessities of their condition — involving 
 a perennial struggle with difficulties such as the na- 
 
 •tivi3s of sunnier climes know nothing of. And thus it 
 may be, that though our finest products are exotic, the 
 
 -skill and industry which have been necessary to rear 
 them, have issued in the production of a native growth 
 
 :of men not surpassed on the globe. 
 
 Wherever there is difficulty, the individual man must 
 
 -c6rae:out for better for worse. Encounter with it will 
 train his strength, and discipline liis skill; heartening 
 him for future effiart, as the racer, by being trained to 
 run against the hill, at length courses with facility. 
 The- road to success may be steep to climb, and it puts 
 to the proof the energies of him who would reach the 
 summit.,- But by experience a man soon learns that 
 
 ■obstacles are to be overcome by grappling with them; 
 
 .that" the nettle feels as soft as silk when it is boldly 
 
 ■^g'rasped; and that the most effisctive help, towards 
 
 ■realizing'the object proposed is the moral conviction 
 
 .that: ■we can and will accomplish it. Thus difficulties 
 6ften;fall away of themselves before the determination 
 
 ;t6 overcome them. 
 
 .; Much will be done if we do but try. Nobody knows 
 what (he can do till he has tried; and few, try their 
 
 -best till they have'been forced to do it. "i/'I could 
 
 cdo such.and such a thing," sighs the desponding youth. 
 
 ;But nothing will be done if he only Avishes. The desire 
 must ripen into purpose and effiart; and one energetin 
 
376 Difficulty and Success. 
 
 < 
 
 attempt is worth a thousand ' aspirations. It is these 
 thorny " ifs " — the mutterings of impotence and despair 
 — which so often hedo;e round the field of possibility, 
 and prevent any tiling being done or even attempted. 
 " A difficulty," said Loi-d Lyndhurst, " is a thing to be 
 overcome ;" grapple with it at once ; facility will come 
 with practice, and strength and fortitude with repeated 
 effort. Thus the mind and character may be trained to 
 an almost perfect discipline, and enabled to act with a 
 grace, spirit, and liberty, almost incomprehensible to 
 those who have not passed through a similar experience. 
 
 Every thing that we learn is the mastery of a diffi- 
 culty ; and the mastery of one helps to the mastery of 
 others. Things which may at first sight appear com- 
 paratively valueless in education — such as the study 
 of the dead languages, and the relations of lines and 
 surfaces which we call mathematics — are really of the 
 greatest practical value, not so much because of the in- 
 formation which they yield, as because of the develop- 
 ment which they compel. The mastery of these stud- 
 ies evokes effort, and cultivates powers of application, 
 which otherwise might have lain dormant. Thus one 
 thing leads to another, and so the work goes on through 
 life — encounter with difficulty ending only when life 
 and culture end. But indulging in the feeling of dis- 
 couragement never helped any one over a difficulty, and 
 never will. D'Alembert's advice to the student who 
 complained to him about his want of success in master- 
 ing the first elements of mathematics was the right one, 
 " Go on, sir, and faith and strength will come to yon." 
 
 The danseuse who 'turns a pirouette, the violinist who 
 plays a sonata, have acquired their dcKterity by patient 
 repetition and after many failures. Carissimi, when 
 praised tor the ease and grace of his melodies, exclaim- 
 ed, " Ah ! you little know with what difficulty this ease 
 has been acquired." Sir Joshua Reynolds, when once 
 asked how long it had taken him to paint a certain pic« 
 
Outran arid Judge Robinson. 377 
 
 ture, replied, " All my life." Henry Clay, the Ameri- 
 caa orator, when giving advice to young men, thus de- 
 scribed to them the secret of his success in the cultiva- 
 tion of his art: "I owe my success in life," said he, 
 " chiefly to one circumstance — that at the age of twen- 
 ty-seven I commenced, and continued for years, the pro- 
 cess of daily reading and speaking upon the contents 
 of some historical or scientific book. These ofi"-hand 
 efforts were made, sometimes in a corn-field, at others 
 in the forest, and not unfrequently in some distant barn, 
 with the horse and the ox for my auditors. It is to 
 this early practice of the art of all ai-ts that I am in- 
 debted for the primary and leading impulses that stim 
 ulated me onward and have shaped and moulded my 
 whole subsequent destiny." 
 
 Curran, the Irish orator, when a youth, had a strong 
 defect in his articulation, and at school he was known 
 as " stuttering Jack Curran." While he was engaged 
 in the study of the law, and still struggling to over- 
 come his defect, he was stung into eloquence by the sar- 
 casms of a member of a debating club, who character- 
 ized him as " Orator Mum ;" for, like Cowper, when he 
 stood up to speak on a previous occasion, Curran had 
 not been able to utter a word. The taunt stung him 
 and he replied in a triumphant speech. This acciden- 
 tal discovery in himself of the gift of eloquence encour- 
 aged him to proceed in his studies with renewed ener- 
 gy. He corrected his enunciation by reading aloud, 
 emphatically and distinctly, the best passages in litera- 
 ture for several hours every day, studying his features 
 before a rriirror, and adopting a method of gesticulation 
 suited to his rather awkward and ungraceful figure. 
 He also proposed cases to himself, which he argued 
 with as much care as if he had been addressing a jury. 
 Curran began business with the qualification which 
 Lord Eldon stated to be the first requisite for distinc- 
 tion, that is, " to be not worth a shilling." While work- 
 
378 Struggles with Poverty. 
 
 ing his way laboriously at the bar, still oppressed by 
 the diffidence which had overcome him in his debating 
 club, he was on one occasion provoked by the Judge 
 (Robinson) into making a very severe retort. In the 
 case under discussion, Curran observed, "that he had 
 never met the law as laid down by his lordship in any 
 book in his library." " That may be, sir," said the 
 judge, in a contemptuous tone, "but I suspect that 
 your library is very small" His lordship was notori- 
 ously a furious political partisan, the author of several 
 anonymous pamphlets characterized by unusual vio- 
 lence and dogmatism. Curran, roused by the allusion 
 to his straitened circumstances, replied thus: "It is 
 very true, my lord, that I am poor, and the circum- 
 stance has certainly curtailed my library; my books 
 are not numerous, but they are select, and I hope they 
 have been jjerused with proper dispositions. I have 
 prepared myself for this high profession by the study 
 of a few good works, rather than by the composition 
 of a great many bad ones. I am not ashamed of my 
 poverty ; but I should be ashamed of my wealth, could 
 I have stooped to acquire it by servility and corruption. 
 If I rise not to rank, I shall at least be honest ; and 
 should I ever cease to be so, many an example shows 
 me that an ill-gained elevation, by making me the more 
 conspicuous, would only make me the more universally 
 and the more notoriously contemptible." 
 
 The extremest poverty has been no obstacle in the 
 way of men devoted to the duty of self-culture. Pro- 
 fessor Alexander Murray, the linguist, learnt to write 
 by scribbling his letters on an old wool-card with the 
 end of a burnt heather stem. The only book which his 
 father, who was a poor shepherd, possessed, was a pen- 
 ny Shorter Catechism; but that, being thought too 
 valuable for common use, was carefully preserved in a 
 cupboard for the Sunday catechisings. Professor Moor, 
 when a young man, being too poor to purchase NeKT- 
 
William Chambers — Cobbett. 379 
 
 ton's " Principia," borrowed the book, and copied the 
 whole of it with his own hand. Many poor students, 
 while laboring daily for their living, have only been 
 able to snatch an atom of knowledge here and there at 
 intervals, as birds do their food in winter-time when 
 the fields are covered with snow. They have strug- 
 gled on, and faith and hope have come to them. A 
 well-known author and publisher, William Chambers, 
 of Edinburgh, speaking before an assemblage of young 
 men in that city; thus briefly described to them his 
 humble beginnings, for their encouragement : " I stand 
 before you," he said, '' a self-educated man. My edu- 
 cation is that which is supplied at the humble parish 
 schools of Scotland ; and it was only when I went to 
 Edinburgh, a poor boy, that I devoted my evenings, af- 
 ter the labors of the day, to the cultiva,tion of that in- 
 tellect which the Almighty has given me. From seven 
 or eight in the morning till nine or ten at night was I 
 at my business as a bookseller's apprentice, and it was 
 only during hours after these, stolen from sleep, that I 
 could devote myself to study. I did not read novels : 
 my attention was devoted to physical science, and oth- 
 er, useful matters. I also taught myself French.- I 
 look back to those times with great pleasure, and am 
 almost sorry I have not to go through the same experi- 
 ence again ;" for I reaped more pleasure when I had not 
 a sixpence in my pocket, studying in a garret in Edin- 
 burgh, than I now find when sitting amidst all the ele- 
 gancies and comforts of a parlor." 
 ' William Cobbett's account of how he learnt English 
 grammar is full of interest and instruction for all stu- 
 dents laboring under difficulties. " I learned gram- 
 mar," said he, " when I was a private soldier on the 
 pay of sixpence a day. The edge of my berth, or that 
 of my guard-bed, was my seat to study in ; my knap- 
 sack was my book-case ; a bit of board lying on my lap 
 was my writing-table; and the task did not demanJ 
 
380 The Fremh Exile. 
 
 any thing like a year of my life. I had no money to 
 purchase candle or oil; in winter-time it was rarely 
 that I could get any evening light but that of the fire, 
 and only my turn even of that. And if I, under such 
 circumstances, and without parent or friend to advise or 
 encourage me, accomplished this undertaking, what ex- 
 cuse can there be for any youth, however poor, however 
 pressed with business, or however circumstanced as to 
 room or other conveniences ? To buy a pen or a sheet 
 of paper I was compelled to forego some portion of food, 
 though in a state of half-starvation : I had no moment 
 of time that I could call my own ; and I had to read and 
 ■Write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling, 
 and brawling of at least half a score of the most thought- 
 less of men, and that, too, in the hours of their freedom 
 from all control. Think not lightly ot the farthing that 
 I had to give, now and then, for ink, pen, or paper! 
 That farthing was, alas ! a great sum to me ! I was as 
 tall as I am now ; I had great health and great exei-- 
 cise. The whole of the money, not expended for us at 
 market, was two-pence a week for each man. I re- 
 member, and well I may ! that on one occasion I, after 
 all necessary expenses, had, on a Friday, made shifts to 
 have a halfpenny in reserve, which I had destined for 
 the purchase of a red herring in the morning ; but, when 
 I pulled off my clothes at night, so hungry then as to 
 be hardly able to endure life, I found that I had lost 
 my halfpenny ! I buried my head under the miserable 
 sheet and rug, and cried like a child ! And again I say, 
 if I, under circumstances like these, could encounter 
 and overcome this task, is there, can there be, in the 
 whole world, a youth to find an excuse for the non-per- 
 formance ? " 
 
 We have been informed of an equally striking in- 
 stance of perseverance and application in learning on 
 the part of a French political exile in London. Hia 
 original occupation was that of a stonemason, at which 
 
The French Exile. 381 
 
 he found employment for some time ; but ■work becom- 
 ing slack, he lost his place, and poverty stared him in 
 the face. In his dilemma, he called upon a fellow-exile 
 profitably engaged in teaching French, and consulted 
 him: -what he ought to do to earn a living. The an- 
 swer was, "Become a professor!" "A professor?" an- 
 swered the mason — " I, who am only a workman, speak- 
 ing but a patois ! Surely you are jesting ?" " On the 
 contrary, I am quite serious," said the othei-, " and 
 again I advise you — become a professor ; place your- 
 self under me, and I will undertake to teach you how 
 to teach others." " No, no !" replied the mason, " it is 
 impossible ; I am too old to learn ; I am too little of a 
 scholar; I can not be a professor." He went away, 
 and again he. tried to obtain employment at his trade. 
 From London he went into the provinces, and travelled 
 several hundred miles in vain ; he could not find a mas- 
 ter. Returning to London, he went direct to his for- 
 mer adviser and said, " I have tried everywhere for 
 work, and failed; I will now try to be a professor!" 
 He immediately placed himself under instruction ; and 
 being a man of close application, of quick apprehension, 
 and vigorous intelligence, he speedily mastered the ele- 
 ments of grammar, the rules of construction and com- 
 position, and (what he had still in a great measure to 
 learn) the correct pronunciation of classical French. 
 When his friend and instructor thought him sufficient- 
 ly competent to undertake the teaching of others, an 
 appointment, advertised as vacant, was applied for and 
 obtained; and behold our artisan at length become 
 professor ! It so happened, that the seminary to which 
 he was appointed was situated in a suburb of London 
 where he had formerly worked as a stonemason ; and 
 evei-y morning the first thing which met his eyes on 
 looking out of his dressing-room window was a stack 
 of cottage-chimneys which he had himself built ! Ho 
 ■feared for a time lest he should be recognized in the vil- 
 
382 Sir SamuelBomilly. 
 
 lage as the quondam workman, and thus bring discredit 
 on his seminary, which was of high standing. But he 
 need have been under no such apprehension, as he proved 
 a most efficient teacher, and his pupils were on more 
 than one occasion publicly complimented for their 
 knowledge of French. Meanwhile, he secured the re- 
 spect and friendship of all who knew him — fellow-pro- 
 fessors as well as pupils ; and when the story of his 
 struggles, his difficulties, and his past history, became 
 known to them, they admired him more than ever. 
 
 Sir Samuel Romilly was not less indefatigable as a 
 self-cultivator. The son of a jeweller, descended from 
 a French refugee, he received little education in his 
 early years, but overcartie all his disadvantages by un- 
 wearied application, and by efforts constantly directed 
 towards the same end. "I determined," he says, in his 
 autobiography, " when I was between fifteen and six- 
 teen years of age, to apply myself seriously to learning 
 Latin, of which I, at that time, knew little more than 
 some of the most familiar rules of grammar. In the 
 course of three or four years, during which I thus ap- 
 plied myself, I had read almost every prose writer of 
 the age of pure Latinity, except those who have treat- 
 ed merely of technical subjects, such as Varro, Colu- 
 mella, and Celsus. I had gone three times through 
 the whole of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. I had studied 
 the most celebrated orations of Cicero, and translated 
 a great deal of Homer. Terence, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, 
 and Juvenal, I had read over and over again." He 
 also studied geography, natural history, and natural 
 philosophy, and obtained a considerable acquaintance 
 with general knowledge. At sixteen he was articled 
 to a clerk in Chancery : worked hard ; was admitted 
 to the bar ; and his industry and perseverance insured 
 success. He became Solicitor-General under the Fox 
 administration in 1806, and steadily worked his way to 
 the highest celebrity in his profession. Yet he was al- 
 
John Leyden. 883 
 
 ways haunted by a painful and almost oppressive sense 
 of his own disqualifications, and never ceased laboring 
 to remedy them. His autobiography is a lesson of in- 
 structive facts, worth volumes of sentiment, and well 
 deserves a careful perusal. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott was accustomed to cite the case of 
 his young friend John Leyden as one of the most re- 
 markable illustrations of the power of perseverance 
 which he had ever known. The son of a shepherd m 
 one of the wildest valleys ia Roxburghshire, he was al- 
 most entirely self-educated. Like many Scotch shep- 
 herds' sons — like Hogg, who taught himself to write 
 by copying the letters of a printed book as he lay 
 watching his flock on the hill-side — like Cairns, who 
 from tending sheep on the Lammermoors, raised him- 
 self by dint of application and industry to the profess- 
 or's chair which he now so worthily holds — like Mur- 
 ray, Ferguson, and many more, Leyden was early in- 
 spired by a thirst for knowledge. When a poor bare- 
 footed boy, he walked six or eight miles across the 
 moors daily to learn reading at the little village 
 schbolhouse of Kirkton ; and this was all the educa- 
 tion he received ; the rest he acquired for himself He 
 found his way to Edinburgh to attend the college 
 there, setting the extremest penury at defiance. He 
 was first discovered as the frequenter of a small book- 
 seller's shop kept by Archibald Constable, afterwards 
 so well known as a publisher. He would pass hour af- 
 ter hour perched on a ladder in mid-air, with some 
 gi-eat folio in his hand, forgetful of the scanty meal of 
 bread and water which awaited him at his miserable 
 lodging. . Access to books and lectures comprised all 
 within the bounds of his wishes. Thus he toiled and 
 battled at the gates of science until his unconquerable 
 perseverance carried every thing before it. Before he 
 had attained his nineteenth year he had astonished all 
 the professors in Edinburgh by his profound knowledge 
 
384 Professor Lee. 
 
 of Greek and Latin, and the general mass of informa- 
 tion he had acquired. Having turned his views to In- 
 dia, he sought employment in the civil service, hut fail- 
 ed. He was however informed that a surgeon's assist- 
 ant's commission was open to him. But he was no sur- 
 geon, and knew no inore of the profession than a child. 
 He could, however, learn. Then he was told that he 
 must be ready to pass in six months ! Nothing daunt- 
 ed, he set to work to acquire in six months what usual- 
 ly required three years. At the end of six months he 
 took his degree with honor. Scott and a few friends 
 helped to fit him out ; and he sailed for India, after 
 publishing his beautiful poem, "The Scenes of Infancy." 
 In India he promised to become one of the greatest of 
 oriental scholars, but was unhappily cut off by fever 
 caught by exposure, and died at an early age. 
 
 The life of the late Dr. Lee, Professor of Hebrew at 
 Cambridge, furnishes one of the most remarkable in- 
 stances in modern times of the power of patient perse- 
 verance and resolute purpose in working out an honor- 
 able cai'eer in literature. He received his education at 
 a charity school at Lognor, near Shrewsbury, but so 
 little distinguished himself there, that his master pro- 
 nounced him one of the dullest boys that ever passed 
 through his hands. He was put apprentice to a car- 
 penter, and worked at that trade until he arrived at 
 manhood. To occupy his leisure hours he took to read- 
 ing; and, some of the books containing Latin quota- 
 tions, he became desirous of ascertaining what they 
 meant. He bought a Latin grammar, and proceeded to 
 learn Latin. As Stone, the Duke of Argyle's gardener, 
 said, long before, " Does one need to know any thing 
 more than the twenty-four letters in order to learn ev- 
 ery thing else that one wishes?" Lee rose early and 
 sat up late, and he succeeded in mastering the Latin 
 before his apprenticeship was out. Whilst working one 
 day in some place of worship, a copy of a Greek Testa- 
 
Professor Lee. 385 
 
 ment fell in his way, and he was immediately filled with 
 the desire to learn that language. He accordingly sold 
 some of his Latin books, and purchased a Greek Gram- 
 mar and Lexicon. Taking pleasure in learning, he soon 
 mastered the language. Then he sold his Greek books, 
 and bought Hebrew ones, and learnt that language, un- 
 assisted by any instructor, without any hope of fame 
 or reward, but simply following the bent of his genius. 
 He next proceeded to learn the Chaldee, Syriac, and 
 Samaritan dialects. But his studies began to tell upon 
 his health, and brought on disease in his eyes through 
 his long night-watchings with his books. Having laid 
 them aside for a time and recovered his health, he went 
 on witli his daily work. His character as a tradesman 
 being excellent, his business improved, and his- means 
 enabled him to marry, which he did when twenty-eight 
 years old. He determined now to devote himself to 
 the maintenance of his family, and to renounce the lux- 
 ury of literature; accordingly he sold all his books. 
 He might have continued a working carpenter all his 
 life, had not the chest of tools upon which he depended 
 for subsistence been destroyed by fire, and destitution- 
 stared him in the face. He was too poor to buy new 
 tools, so he bethought, him of. teaching children their 
 letters — a profession requiring the least possible capi-^ 
 tal. But though he had mastered many languages, he 
 was so defective in the common branches of knowledge, 
 that at first he could not teach them. Resolute of pur- 
 pose, however, he assiduously set to work, and taught 
 himself arithmetic and writing to such a degree as to be 
 able to impart the knowledge of these branches to little 
 children. His unaffected, simple, and beautiful charac- 
 ter gradually attracted friends, and the acquirements 
 of the "learned carpenter" became bruited abroad. 
 Dr. Scott, a neighboring clergyman, obtained for him 
 the appointment of master of a charity school in 
 Shrewsbury, and introduced him to a distinguished Orir 
 
 17 
 
386 Late Learners. 
 
 ental scholar. These friends supplied him with books, 
 and Lee successively mastered Arahic, Persic, and Hin- 
 dostanee. He continued to pursue his studies while on 
 duty as a private in the local militia of the county ; 
 gradually acquiring greater proficiency in languages. 
 At length his kind patron, Dr. Scott, enabled Lee to en- 
 ter Queen's College, Cambridge' ; and after a course of 
 study, in which he distinguished himself by his mathe- 
 matical acquirements, a vacancy occurring in the pro- 
 fessorship of Arabic and Hebrew, he was worthily elect- 
 ed to fill the honorable oflBce. Besides ably perfoi-ming 
 his duties as a professor, he voluntarily gave much of 
 his time to the instruction of missionaries going forth 
 to preach the Gospel to eastern tribes in their own 
 tongue. He also made translations of the Bible into 
 several Asiatic dialects ; and having mastered the New 
 Zealand language, he arranged a grammar and vocabu- 
 lary for two New Zealand chiefs who were then in Eng- 
 land, which books are now in daily use in the New 
 Zealand schools. Such, in brief, is the remarkable his- 
 tory of Dr. Samuel Lee ; and it is but the counterpart 
 of numerous similarly instructive examples of the pow- 
 er of perseverance in self-culture, as displayed in the 
 lives of many of the most distinguished of our literary 
 and scientific men.* 
 
 There are many other illustrious names which might 
 be cited to prove the truth of the common saying that 
 "it is never too late to learn." Even at advanced years 
 men can do much, if they will determine on making a 
 beginning. Sir Henry Spelman did not begin the study 
 of science until he was between fifty and sixty years of 
 age. Franklin was fifty before he fully entered upon 
 the study of Natural Philosophy. Dryden and Scott 
 were not known as authors until each was in his for- 
 tieth year. Boccaccio, was thirty-five when he com' 
 
 * See the admirable and well-known book, " The Fursuit of Knowl 
 edge under DiiTioulties. " 
 
Illustrious Dunces. 887 
 
 menced his literary career, and Alfieri was forty-six 
 when he began the study of Greek. Dr. Arnold learnt 
 German at an advanced age, for the purpose of reading 
 Niebuhr in the original; and in like manner James 
 Watt, when about forty, while working at his trade of 
 an instrument-maker in Glasgow, learnt French, Ger- 
 man, and Italian, to enable himself to peruse the valua- 
 ble works on mechanical philosophy which existed in 
 those languages. Thomas Scott was fifty-six before he 
 began to learn Hebrew. Robert Hall was once found 
 lying upon the floor, racked by pain, learning Italian in 
 his old age, to enable him to judge of the parallel drawn 
 by Macaulay between Milton and Dante. Handel was 
 forty-eight before he published any of his great works. 
 Indeed, hundreds of instances might be given of men 
 who struck out an entirely new path, and successfully 
 entered on new studies, at a comparatively advanced 
 time of life. None but the frivolous or the indolent 
 will say, " I am too old to learn." 
 
 And here we would repeat what we have said before, 
 that it is not men of genius who move the world and 
 take the lead in it, so much as men of steadfastness, 
 purpose, and indefatigable industry. Notwithstanding 
 the many undeniable instances of the precocity of men 
 of genius, it is nevertheless true that early cleverness 
 gives no indication of the height to which the grown 
 man will reach. Precocity is sometimes a symptom of 
 disease rather than of intellectual vigor. What be- 
 comes of all the " remarkably clever children ?" Where 
 are the duxes and prize-boys? Trace them through 
 life, and it will frequently be found that the dull boys, 
 who were beaten at school, have shot, ahead of them. 
 The clever boys are rewarded, but the prizes which 
 they gain by their greater quickness and facility do not 
 always prove of use to them. What ought rather to 
 be rewarded is the endeavor, the struggle, and the obe- 
 dience ; for it is the youth who does his best, though 
 
388 Cortona — Sheridan. 
 
 endowed with an inferiority of natural powers, that 
 ought above all others to he encouraged. 
 
 An interesting chapter might be written on the sub> 
 jeet of illustrious dunces — dull boys, but brilliant men. 
 We have room, however, for only a few instances. Pie- 
 tro di Cortona, the painter, was thought so stupid that 
 he was nicknamed "Ass's Head" when a boy; and 
 Tomaso Guidi was generally known as " Heavy Tom " 
 (Massaccio Tomasaccio), though by diligence he after- 
 wards raised himself to the highest eminence. New- 
 ton, when at school, stood at the bottom of the lowest 
 form but one. The boy above Newton having kicked 
 him, the dunce showed his pluck by challenging him to 
 a fight, and beat him. Then he set to work with a will, 
 and determined also to vanquish his antagonist as a 
 scholai-, which he did, rising to the top of his class. 
 Many of our greatest divines have been any thing but 
 precocious. Isaac Barrow, when a boy at the Charter- 
 house School, was notorious chiefly for his strong ten* 
 per, pugnacious habits, and proverbial idleness as a 
 scholar ; and he caused such grief to his parents that 
 his father used to say that, if it pleased God to take 
 from him any of his children, he hoped it might be 
 Isaac, the least promising of them all. Adam Clarke, 
 when a boy, was proclaimed by his father to be "a 
 grievous dunce ;" though he could roll large stones 
 about. Dean Swift was " plucked " at Dublin Univer- 
 sity, and only obtained his recommendation to Oxford 
 " speciali gratia." The well-known Dr. Chalmers and 
 Dr. Cook* were boys together at the parish school of 
 St. Andrew's ; and they were found so stupid and mis- 
 chievous, that the master, irritated beyond measure, 
 dismissed them both as incorrigible dunces. 
 
 The brilliant Sheridan showed so little capacity as a • 
 boy, that he was presented to a tutor by his mother 
 with the complimentary accompaniment that he was an 
 * Late Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrew's. 
 
Clive — Grant — Jackson. 389 
 
 incorrigible dunce. "Walter Scott was all but a dunce 
 when a boy, always much readier for a " bicker," than 
 apt at his lessons. At the Edinburgh University, Pro- 
 fessor Dalzell pronounced upon him the sentence that 
 " Dunce he was, and dunce he would i-emain." Chat- 
 terton was returned on his mother's hands as " a fool, 
 of whom nothing could be made." Burns was a dull 
 boy, good only at athletic exercises. Goldsmith spoke 
 of himself as a plant that flowered late. Alfieri left 
 college no wiser than he entered it, and did not begin 
 the studies by which he distinguished himself, until he 
 had run half over Europe. Robert Clive was a dunce, 
 if not a reprobate, when a youth ; but always full of 
 energy, even in badness. His family, glad to get rid 
 of him, shipped him off to Madras ; and he lived to lay 
 the foundations of the British power in India. Napo- 
 leon and Wellington were both dull boys, not distin- 
 guishing themselves in any way at school.* Of the 
 former the Duchess d'Abrantes says, "He had good 
 health, but was in other respects like other boys." 
 
 Ulysses Grant, the Commander-in-chief of the United 
 States, was called " Useless Grant " by his mother — he 
 was so dull and unhandy when a boy ; and Stonewall 
 Jackson, Lee's greatest lieutenant, was, in his youth, 
 chiefly noted for his slowness. While a pupil at West 
 Point Military Academy he was, however, equally re- 
 markable for his indefatigable application and perse- 
 verance. When a task was set him, he never left it 
 until he had mastered it ; nor did he ever feign to pos- 
 sess knowledge which he had not entirely acquired. 
 
 * A writer in the " Edinburgh Review " (July, 1859) observes that 
 " the Dulse's talents seem never to have developed thenlselves until 
 some active and practical field for their display was placed immedi- 
 ately before him. He was long described -by his Spai-tan mother, 
 who thought him a. dunce, as only 'food for powder.' He gained no 
 sort of distinction, either at Eton or at the French Military College 
 of Angers." It is not improbable that a competitive examination, at 
 this day, might have excluded him from the army. 
 
390, Sir Humphry Davy — John HowarcC. 
 
 " Again and again," wrote one who knew him, " when 
 called upon to answer questions in the recitation of the 
 day, he would reply, ' I have not yet looked at it ; I 
 have been engaged in mastering the recitation of yes- 
 terday or the day before.' The result was that he 
 graduated seventeenth in a class of seventy. There 
 was probably in the whole class not a boy to whom 
 Jackson at the outset was not inferior in knowledge 
 and attainments; but at the end of the race he had 
 only sixteen before him, and had outstripped »o fewer 
 than fifty-three. It used to be said of him by his con- 
 temporaries, that if the course had been for ten years 
 instead of four, Jackson would have graduated at the 
 head of his class."* 
 
 John Howard, the philanthropist, was another illus- 
 trious dunce, learning next to nothing during the sev» 
 en years that he was at school. Stephenson, as a youth, 
 was distinguished chiefly for his skill at putting and 
 wrestling, and attention to his work. The brilliant 
 Sir Humphry Davy was no cleverer than other boys : 
 his teacher. Dr. Cardew, once said of him, " While he 
 was with me I could not discern the faculties by which 
 he was so much distinguished." Indeed, Davy himself 
 in after life considered it fortunate that he had been 
 left to " enjoy so much idleness " at school. Watt was 
 a dull scholar, notwithstanding the stories told about 
 his precocity ; but he was, what was better, patient 
 and perseverant, and it was by such qualities, and by 
 his carefully cultivated inventiveness, that he was ena- 
 bled to perfect his steam-engine. 
 
 What Dr. Arnold said of boys is equally true of men 
 — that the diiference between one boy and another con- 
 sists not so much in talent as in energy. Given per 
 severance and energy soon becomes habitual. Pro- 
 vided the dunce has persistency and application, he 
 will inevitably head the cleverer fellow without thosa 
 * Correspondent of "The Times," 11th June. 1863. 
 
Stcry of a Dunce. 391 
 
 qualities. Slow bat sure wins the race. It is perse- 
 verance that explains how the position of boys at 
 school are so often reversed in real life ; and it is curi- 
 ous to note how some who were then so clever have 
 since become so commonplace ; whilst others, dull boys, 
 of whom nothing was expected, slow in their faculties 
 but sure in their pace, have assumed the position of 
 leaders of men. The author of this book, when a boy, 
 stood in the same class with one of the greatest of 
 dunces. One teacher after another had tried his skill 
 upon him and failed. Corporal punishment, the fool's 
 cap, coaxing, and earnest entreaty, proved alike fruit- 
 less. Sometimes the experiment was tried of putting 
 him at the top of his class, and it was curious to note 
 the rapidity with which he gravitated to the inevitable 
 bottom. The youth was given up by his teachers as 
 an incorrigible dunce — one of them pronouncing him 
 to be a " stupendous booby." Yet, slow though he 
 was, this dunce had a sort of dull energy of purpose in 
 him, which grew with his muscles and his manhood ; 
 and, strange to say, when he at length came to take 
 part in the practical business of life, he was found head- 
 ing most of his school companions, and eventually left 
 the greater number of them far behind. The last time 
 the author heard of him, he was chief magistrate of his 
 native town. 
 
 The tortoise in the right road will beat a racer in 
 the wrong. It matters not, though a youth be slow, if 
 he be but diligent. Quickness of parts may even prove 
 a defect, inasmuch as the boy who learns readily will 
 often forget as readily ; and also because he finds no 
 need of cultivating that quality of application and per- 
 severance which the slower youth is compelled to ex- 
 ercise, and which proves so valuable an element in the 
 formation of every character. Davy said, " What I am 
 I have made myself;" and the same holds true univera- 
 ally. 
 
392 Success depends, on Perseverance. 
 
 To conclude : the best culture is not obtained from 
 teachers when at school or college, so much as by our 
 own diligent self-education when we have become men. 
 Hence parents need not be in too great haste to see 
 their children's talents forced into bloom. Let them 
 watch and wait patiently, letting good example and 
 quiet training do their work, and leave the rest to 
 Providence. Let them see to it that the youth is pro- 
 vided, by free exercise of his bodily powers, with a full 
 stock of physical health ; set him fairly on the road of 
 self-cultui-e ; carefully train his habits of application 
 and perseverance ; and as he grows older, if the right 
 stuff be in him, he will be enabled vigorously and effect- 
 ively to cultivate himself. 
 
CHAPTER m. 
 
 EXAMPLE — MODELS. 
 
 '•Ever theif phantoms rise before ns, 
 
 Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ; 
 By bed and table they lord it o'er us, 
 With looks of beauty and words of good." 
 
 John Sterling. 
 
 " Children may be strangled, but Deeds never ; they have an inde« 
 
 Btructiblo life, both in and out of our consciousness." — George Eliot. 
 
 " Thei'e is no action of man in this life, which is not the beginning 
 
 of so long a chain of consequences, as that no human providence is 
 
 high enough to give us a prospect to the end. " — Thomas op Malmes- 
 
 BURY. 
 
 EXAMPLE is one of the most potent of instructors, 
 though it teaches without a tongue. It is the 
 practical school of mankind, working by action, which 
 is always more forcible than words. Precept may 
 point to us the way, but it is silent, continuous ex- 
 ample, conveyed to us by habits, and living with us in 
 fact, that carries us along. Good advice has its weight : 
 but without the accompaniment of a good example it 
 is of comparatively small influence ; and it will be found 
 that the common saying of " Do as t say, not as I do," 
 is usually reversed in the actual experience of life. 
 
 All persons are more or less apt to learn through the 
 eye rather than the ear; and, whatever is seen in fact, 
 makes a far deeper impression than any thing that is 
 merely read or heard. This is especially the case in ear- 
 ly youth, when the eye is the chief inlet of knowledge. 
 Whatever children see they unconsciously imitate. 
 They insensibly come to resemble those who are about 
 
 1'?* 
 
894 Home. Influence. 
 
 them — as insects take the color of the leaves they feecl 
 on. Hence the vast importance of domestic training. 
 For whatever may be tlie efficiency of schools, the ex- 
 amples set in our homes must always he of vastly great- 
 er influence in forming the characters of our future men 
 and women. The home is the crystal of society — the 
 nucleus of national character ; and from that source, 
 be it pure or tainted, issue the habits, principles, and 
 maxims which govern public as well as private life. 
 The nation comes from the nursery. Public opinion 
 itself is for the most part the outgrowth of the home ; 
 and the best philanthropy comes from the fireside. 
 " To love the little platoon we belong to in society," 
 says Burke, " is the germ of all public affections." 
 From this little central spot, the human sympathies 
 may extend in an ever-widening circle, until the world 
 is embraced ; for, though true philanthropy, like chari- 
 ty, begins at home, assuredly it does not end there. 
 
 Example in conduct, therefore, even in apparently 
 trivial matters, is of no light moment, inasmuch as it is 
 constantly becoming inwoven with the lives of others, 
 and contributing to form their natures for better or foi: 
 worse. The characters of parents are thus constantly 
 repeated in their children ; and the acts of affection, 
 discipline, industry, and self-control, which they daily 
 exemplify, live and act when all else which may have 
 been learned through the ear has long been forgotten. 
 Hence a wise man was accustomed to speak of his chil- 
 dren as his " future state." Even the mute action and 
 unconscious look of a parent may give a stamp to the 
 chariicter which is never effaced ; and who can tell how 
 much evil act has been stayed by the thought of some 
 good parent, whose memory their children may not sul- 
 ly by the commission of an unworthy deed, or the in- 
 dulgence of an impure thought ? The veriest trifles 
 thus become of importance in influencing the charac- 
 ters of men. " A kiss from my mother," said West. 
 
Parental Example. 395 
 
 " made me a painter." It is on the direction of such 
 seeming trifles when children that the future fesppiness 
 and success of men mainly depend. Fowell Buxton, 
 when occupying an eminent and influential station in 
 ?ife, wrote to his mother, " I constantly feel, especially 
 in action and exertion for others, the effects of princi- 
 ples early implanted by you in my mind." Buxton 
 was also accustomed to remember with gratitude the 
 obligations which he owed to an illiterate man, a game- 
 keeper, named Abraham Plastow, with whom he played, 
 and rode, and sported — a man who could neither read 
 nor write, but was full of natural good sense and moth- 
 er-wit. " What made him particularly valuable," says 
 Buxton, " were his principles of integrity and honor. 
 He never said or did a thing in the absence of my moth- 
 er of which she would have disapproved. He always 
 held up the highest standard of integrity, and filled our 
 youthful minds with sentiments as pure and as gener- 
 ous as could be found in the writings of Seneca or Cic- 
 ero. Such was my first instructor, and, I must add, my 
 best." 
 
 Lord Langdale, looking back upon the admirable ex- 
 ample set him by his mother, declared, " If the whole 
 world were put into one scale, and my mother into the 
 other, the world would kick the beam." Mrs. Schim- 
 nlel Penninck, in her old age, was accustomed to call to 
 mind the personal influence exercised by her mother 
 upon the society amidst which she moved. When she 
 entered a room it had the effect of immediately raising 
 the tone of the conversation, and as if purifying the 
 moral atmosphere— all seeming to breathe more freely 
 and stand more erectly. "In her presence," says the 
 daughter, " I became for the time transformed into an- 
 other person." So much does the moral health depend 
 flpon the moral atmosphere that is breathed, and so 
 great is the influence daily exercised by parents over 
 their children by living a life before their eyes, that 
 
396 Acts and Consequences. 
 
 perhaps the best system of parental instruction might 
 be summed up in these two words : "Improve thyself." 
 
 There is something solemn and awful in the thought 
 that there is not an act done or a word uttered by a 
 human being but carries with it a train of conse- 
 quences, the end of which we may never trace. Not 
 one but, to a certain extent, gives a color to our life, 
 and insensibly influences the lives of those about us. 
 The good deed or word will live, even though we may 
 not see it fructify, but so will the bad ; and no person 
 is so insignificant as to be sure that his example will 
 not do good on the one hand, or evil on the other. 
 The spirits of men do not die ; they still live and walk 
 abroad among us. It was a fine and a true thought 
 uttered by Mr. Disraeli in the House of Commons on 
 the death of Richard Cobden, that " he was one of 
 those men who, though not present, were still mem- 
 bers of that House, who were independent of dissolu- 
 tions, of the caprices of constituencies, and even of the 
 course of time." 
 
 There is, indeed, an essence of immortality in the life 
 of man, even in this world. No individual in the uni- 
 verse stands alone ; he is a component part of a system 
 of mutual dependencies ; and by his several acts he 
 either increases or diminishes the sum of human good 
 now and forever. As the present is rooted in the past, 
 and the lives and examples of our forefathers still to a 
 great extent influence us, so are we by our daily acts 
 contributing to form the condition and character of 
 the future. Man is a fruit formed and ripened by the 
 culture of all the foregoing centuries ; and the living 
 generation continues the magnetic current of action 
 and example destined to bind the remotest past with 
 the most distant future. No man's acts die utterly; 
 and though his body may resolve into dust and air' 
 his good or his bad deeds will still be bringing foi-th 
 frui't after their kind, and influencing future genera- 
 
Immortality of Human Deeds. 397 
 
 tions for all time to come. It is in this momentoua 
 and solemn fact that the great peril and responsibility 
 of human existence lies. 
 
 Mr. Babbage has so powerfully expressed this idea 
 in a noble passage in one of his writings that we here 
 venture to quote his words : " Every atom," he says, 
 " impressed with good or ill, retains at once the mo- 
 tions which philosophers and sages have imparted to 
 it, mixed and combined in ten thousand ways with all 
 that is worthless and base ; the air itself is one vast 
 library, on whose pages are written forever all that 
 man has ever said or whispered. There, in their im- 
 mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the e9,rli- 
 est as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand forever 
 recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled; per- 
 petuating, in the united movements of each particle, 
 the testimony of man's changeful will. But, if the air 
 we breathe is the never-failing historian of the senti- 
 ments we have uttered, earth, air, and ocean, are, in 
 like manner, the eternal witnesses of the acts we have 
 done ; the same principle of the equality of action and 
 reaction applies to them. No motion impressed by 
 natural causes, or by hui9a.n agency, is ever obliter- 
 ated. ... If the Almi^^jf^i^aped on the brow of the 
 first murderer the Jridelibfe'and visible mark ot his 
 guilt. He has also established laws by which every 
 succeeding criminal is not less irrevocably chained to 
 the testimony of his crime ; for every atom of his 
 mortal frame, through whatever changes its several 
 particles may migrate, will still retain adhering to it, 
 through every combination, some movement derived 
 from that very muscular effort by which the crime it- 
 self was pei-petrated." 
 
 Thus, every act we do or word we utter, as well as 
 every act we witness or word we hear, carries with it 
 an influence which extends over, and gives a color, not 
 only to the whole of our future life, but makes itself 
 
398 Importance of Good Examph. 
 
 felt upon the whole frame of society. "We may not, 
 and iudeed can not, possibly, trace the influence work- 
 ing itself into action in its various ramifications amongst 
 our children, our friends, or associates; yet there it. is 
 assuredly, working on forever. And herein lies the 
 great significance of setting forth a good example — a 
 silent teaching which even the poorest and least sig- 
 nificant person can practise in his daily life. There 
 is no one so humble, but that he owes to others this 
 simple but priceless instruction. Even the meanest 
 condition may thus be made useful; for the light set 
 in a low place shines as faithfully as that set upon a 
 hill. Eviry where, and under almost all circumstances, 
 however externally adverse^ in moorland shielings, 
 in cottage hamlets, in the close alleys of great towns 
 — the true man may grow. He who tills a space of 
 earth scarce bigger than is needed for his grave, may 
 work as faithfully, and to as good purpose, as the heir 
 to thousands. The commonest workshop may thus be 
 a school of industry, science, and good morals, on the 
 one hand ; or of idleness, folly, and depravity, on the 
 other. It all depends on the individual men, and the 
 use they make of the opportunities for good which 
 offer themselves. 
 
 A life well spent, a character uprightly sustained, is 
 no slight legacy to leave to one's children, and to the 
 world ; for it is the most eloquent lesson of virtue and 
 ■the severest reproof of vice, while it continues an endur- 
 ing source of the best kind of riches. Well for those 
 who can say, as Pope did, in rejoinder to the sarcasm 
 of Lord Hervey, " I think it enough that my parents, 
 such as they were, never cost me a blush, and that 
 their son, such as he is, never cost them a tear." 
 
 It is not enough to tell others what they are to do, 
 but to exhibit the actual example of doing. "What 
 Mrs. Chisholm described to Mrs. Stowe as the secro'c of 
 her success, applies to all life. " I found," she ivaid. 
 
Dr. Ghithie and Jbh7i Pounds. 899 
 
 " that if we want any thing done, we must go to work 
 and do : it is of no use merely to talk — none whatever." 
 It is poor eloquence that only shows how a person can 
 talk. Had Mrs. Chisholm rested satisfied with lectur- 
 ing, her project, she was persuaded, would never. have 
 got beyond the region of talk ; hut when people saw 
 what she was doing and had actually accomplished, they 
 fell in with her views and came forward to help her. 
 Hence the most beneficent worker is not he who says 
 the most eloquent things, or even who thinks the most 
 loftily, but he who does the most eloquent acts. 
 
 True-hearted persons, even in the humblest station in 
 life, who are energetic doers^ may thus give an impulse 
 to good woi'ks out of all proportion, apparently, to 
 their actual station in society. Thomas Wright might 
 have talked about the reclamation of criminals, and 
 John Pounds about the necessity for Ragged Schools, 
 and yet done nothing ; instead of which they simply set 
 to work without any other idea in their minds than that 
 of doing, not talking. And how the example of even 
 the poorest man may tell upon society, hear what Dr. 
 Guthrie, the apostle of the Ragged School movement, 
 says of the influence which the example of John 
 Pounds, the humble Portsmouth cobbler, exercised 
 upon his own working career: — 
 
 "The interest I have been led to take in this cause 
 is an example of how, in Providence, a man's destiny — 
 his course of life, like that of a river — may be deter- 
 mined and affected by veiy trivial circumstances. It 
 is rather curious — at least it is interesting to me to re- 
 member — that it was by a picture I was first led to 
 take an interest in ragged schools — by a picture in an 
 old, obscure, decaying burgh that stands on the shores 
 of the Frith of Forth, the birthplace of Thomas Chal- 
 mers. I went to see this place many years ago ; and, 
 going into an inn for refreshment, I found the room cov- 
 ered with pictures of shepherdesses with their crooks, 
 
4:00 The Apostle of Ragged Schools. 
 
 and sailors in holiday attire, not particularly interesting. 
 But above the chimney-piece there was a large print, 
 more respectable than its neighbors, which represented 
 a cobbler's room. The cobbler was there himself, spec- 
 tacles on nose, an old shoe between his knees — the 
 massive forehead and firm mouth indicating great de- 
 termination of character, and, beneath his bushy eye- 
 brows, benevolence gleamed out on a number of poor 
 ragged boys and girls who stood at their lessons round 
 the busy cobbler. My curiosity was awakened ; and 
 in the inscription I read how this man, John Pounds, a 
 cobbler in Portsmouth, taking pity on the multitude of 
 poor ragged children left by ministers and magistrates, 
 and ladies and gentlemen, to go to ruin on the streets 
 — how, like a good shepherd, he gathered in these 
 wretched outcasts — how he had trained them to God 
 and to the world— and how, while earning his daily 
 bread by the sweat of his brow, he had rescued from 
 misery and saved to society not less than five hundred 
 of these children. I felt ashamed of myself I felt re- 
 proved for the little I had done. My feelings were 
 touched. I was astonished at this man's achievements ; 
 and I well remembei-, in the enthusiasm of the moment, 
 saying to my companion (and I have seen in my cooler 
 and calmer moments no reason for unsaying the saying) 
 — 'That man is an honor to humanity, and deserves 
 the tallest monument ever raised within the shores of 
 Britain.' I took up that man's history, and I found it 
 animated by the spirit of Him who ' had compassion 
 on the multitude.' John Pounds was a clever man 
 besides ; and, like Paul, if he could not win a poor boy 
 any other way, he won him by art. He would be seen 
 chasing a ragged boy along the quays, and compelling 
 him to come to school, not by the power of a police- 
 man, but by the power of a hot potato. He knew the 
 love an Irishman had for a potato ; and John Pounds 
 might be seen running holding under the boy's nose a 
 
Good Models of Character. 401 
 
 potato, like an Irishman, very hot, and with a coat as 
 ragged as himself. When the day comes when honor 
 will be done to whom honor is due, I can fancy the 
 crowd of those whose fame poets have sung, and to 
 whose memory monuments have been raised, dividing 
 like the wave, and, passing the great, and the noble, 
 and the mighty of the land, this poor, obscure old man 
 stepping forward and receiving the especial notice of 
 Him who said, ' Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the 
 least of these, ye did it also to Me.' " 
 
 The education of character is very much a question 
 of models ; we mould ourselves so unconsciously after 
 the characters, manners, habits, and opinions of those 
 who are about us. Good rules may do much, but good 
 models far more; for in the latter we have instruction 
 in action — wisdom at work. Good admonition and bad 
 example only build with one hand to pull down with 
 the other. Hence the vast importance of exercising 
 great care in the selection of companions, especially in 
 youth. There is a magnetic affinity in young persons 
 which insensibly tends to assimilate them to each oth- 
 er's likeness. Mr. Edgeworth was so strongly con- 
 vinced that from sympathy they involuntarily imitated 
 or caught the tone of the company they frequented, 
 that he held it to be of the most essential importance 
 that they should be taught to select the very best mod- 
 els. " No company, or good company," was his motto. 
 Lord Collingwood, writing to a young friend, said, 
 " Hold it as a maxim, that you had better be alone than 
 in mean company. Let your companions be such as 
 yourself or superior ; for the worth of a man will al- 
 ways be ruled by that of his company." It was a re- 
 mark of the famous Dr. Sydenham that every body some 
 time or other would be the better or the worse for hav- 
 ing but spoken to a good or a bad man. As Sir Peter 
 Lely made it a rule never to look at a bad picture if he 
 could help it, believing that whenever he did so hia 
 
402 Personal Influence. 
 
 pencil caught a taint from it, so, whoever chooses to 
 gaze often upon a debased specimen of humanity and 
 to frequent his society, can not help gradually assimilat- 
 ing himself to that sort of model. 
 
 It is therefore advisable for young men to seek the 
 fellowship of the good, and always to aim at a higher 
 standard than themselves. Francis Horner, speaking 
 of the advantages to himself of direct personal inter- 
 course with high-minded, intelligent men, said, " I can 
 not hesitate to decide that I have derived more intel- 
 lectual improvement from them than from all the books 
 I have turned over. Lord Shelburne (afterwards Mar- 
 quis of Lansdowne), when a young man, paid a visit to 
 the venerable Malesherbes, and was so much impressed 
 by it that he said : " I have travelled much, but I have 
 never been so influenced by personal contact with any 
 man ; and if I ever accomplish any good in the course 
 of my life, I am certain that the recollection of M. de 
 Malesherbes will animate my soul." So Fowell Buxton 
 was always ready to acknowledge the powerful influence 
 exercised upon the formation of his character in early 
 life by the example of the Gurney family : " It has given 
 color to my life," he used to say. Speaking of his suc- 
 cess at the Dublin University, he confessed, " I can as- 
 Bcribe it to nothing but my Earlham visits." It waa 
 from the Gurneys he " caught the infection " of self-im- 
 provement. 
 
 Contact with the good never fails to impart good, 
 and we carry away Avith us some of the blessing, as 
 travellers' garments retain the odor of the flowers and 
 shrubs through which they have passed. Those who 
 knew the late John Sterling intimately, have spoken of 
 the beneficial influence which he exercised on all with 
 whom he came into personal contact. Many owed to 
 him their first awakening to a higher being ; from him 
 they learnt what they were, and what they ought to be. 
 Mr. Trench says of him : " It was impossible to come 
 
Example of the Brave. 403 
 
 ill contact with his noble nature without feeling one's 
 self in some measure ennobled and lifted up, as 1 ever 
 felt when I left him, into a higher region of objects and 
 aims than that in which one is tempted habitually to 
 dwell." It is thus that the noble character always acts ; 
 we become insensibly elevated by him, and can not 
 help feeling as he does, and acquiring the habit of look- 
 ing at things in the same light. Such is the magical 
 action and reaction of minds upon each other. 
 
 Artists, also, feel themselves elevated by contact with 
 artists greater than themselves. Thus Haydn's genius 
 was first fired by Handel. Hearing him play, Haydn'a 
 ardor for musical composition was at once excited, and 
 but for this circumstance, he himself believed that he 
 would never have written the " Creation." Speaking 
 of Handel, he said, " "When he chooses he strikes like 
 the thunderbolt ;" and at another time, " There is not a 
 note of him but draws blood." Scarlatti was another 
 of Handel's ardent admirers, following him all over 
 Italy ; afterwards, when speaking of the gi-eat master, 
 he would cross himself in token of admiration. True 
 artists never fail generously to recognize each other's 
 greatness. Thus, Beethoven's admiration for Chcrubini 
 was regal : and he ardently hailed the genius of Schu- 
 bert : " Truly," said he, " in Schubert dwells a divine 
 fire." When Northcote was a mere youth he had such 
 an admiration for Reynolds that, when the great painter 
 was once attending a public meeting down in Devon- 
 ehire, the boy pushed through the crowd, and got so 
 near Reynolds as to touch the skirt of his coat, " which 
 I did," says Northcote, " with great satisfaction to my 
 mind " — ■ a true touch of youthful enthusiasm in its ad- 
 miration of genius. 
 
 The example of the brave is an inspiration to the 
 timid, their presence thrilling through every fibre. 
 Hence the miracles of valor often performed by ordi- 
 nary men under the leadership of the heroic. The very . 
 
404 Use of Biography. 
 
 recollection of the deeds of the valiant stirs men's blood 
 like the sound of the trumpet. Ziska bequeathed hiij 
 skin to be used as a drum to inspire the valor of the 
 Bohemians. When Scanderbeg, prince of Epirus, was 
 dead, the Turks wished to possess his bones, that each 
 might wear a piece next his heart, hoping thus to secure 
 some portion of the courage he had displayed while liv- 
 ing, and which they had so often experienced in battle. 
 When the gallant Douglas, bearing the heart of Bruce 
 to the Holy Land, saw one of his knights surrounded 
 and sorely pressed by the Saracens, he took from his 
 neck the silver case containing the hero's bequest, and 
 throwing it amidst the thickest press of his foes, cried, 
 " Pass first in fight, as thou wert wont to do, and Doug- 
 las will follow thee, or die ;" and so saying, he rushed 
 forward to the place where it fell, and was there slain. 
 
 The chief use of biography consists in the noble 
 models of character in which it abounds. Our great 
 forefathers still live among us in the records of their 
 lives, as well as in the acts they have done, which live 
 also ; still sit by us at table, and hold us by the hand ; 
 furnishing examples for our benefit, which we may still 
 study, admire, and imitate. Indeed, whoever has left 
 behind him the record of a noble life, has bequeathed 
 to posterity an enduring source of good, for it serves 
 as a model for others to form themselves by in all time 
 to come ; still breathing fresh life into men, helping 
 them to reproduce his life anew, ancl to illustrate his 
 character in other forms. Hence a book containing the 
 life of a true man is full of precious seed. It is a still 
 living voice : it is an intellect. To use Milton's words, 
 " It is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalm- 
 ed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." 
 Such a book never ceases to exercise an elevating and 
 ennobling influence. But, above all, there is theBook 
 containing the very highest Example set before ns to 
 shape our lives by in this world— the most suitable fo,i: 
 
Lives influenced hy Biography. 405 
 
 all the necessities of our mind and heart — an example 
 which we can only follow afar oif and feel after. 
 
 "Like plants or vines which never saw the sun, 
 But dream of him and guess where he may he, 
 And do their best to climh and get to him." 
 
 Again, no yonng man can rise from the pei'usal of 
 such lives as those of Buxton and Arnold, without feet 
 ing his mind and heart made better, and his best re- 
 solves invigorated. • Such biographies increase a man's 
 self-reliance by demonstrating what men can be, and 
 what they can do ; fortifying his hopes and elevating 
 his aims in life. Sometimes a young man discovers 
 himself in a biography, as Correggio felt within him 
 the risings of genius on contemplating the woi-ks of 
 Michael Angelo : " And I too, am a painter," he ex- 
 claimed. Sir Samuel Romilly, in his autobiography, 
 confessed himself to have been powerfully influenced by 
 the life of the great and noble-minded French Chancel- 
 lor Daguesseau : — " The works of Thomas," says he, 
 " had fallen into my hands, and I had i-ead with admi- 
 ration his ' Eloge of Daguesseau ;' and the career of 
 honor which he represented that illustrious magistrate 
 to have run, excited to a great degree my ardor and 
 ambition, and opened to my imagination new paths of 
 glory." 
 
 Franklin was accustomed to attribute his usefulness 
 and eminence to his having early read Cotton Mather's 
 "Essays to do Good" — a book which grew out of 
 Mather's own life. And see how good example draws 
 other men after it, and propagates itself through future 
 geperations in all lands. For Samuel Drew avers that 
 he framed his own life, and especially his business hab- 
 its, after the model left on record by Benjamin Frank- 
 lin. Thus it is impossible to say where a good example 
 may not reach, or where it will end, if indeed it have 
 an end. Hence the advantage, in literature as in life. 
 
406 Inspiring Books. 
 
 of keeping the best society, reading the best books, and 
 wisely admiring and imitating the best things we find 
 in them. "In literature," said Lord Dudley, "I am 
 fond of confining myself to the best company, which 
 consists chiefly of my old acquaintance, with whom I 
 am desirous of becoming more intimate; and I suspect 
 that nine times out of ten it is more profitable, if not 
 more agreeable, to read an old book over again, than to 
 read a new one for the first time." 
 
 Sometimes a book containing a' noble exemplar of 
 life, taken up at random, merely with the object of 
 reading it as a pastime, has been. known to call foi-th 
 energies whose existence had not before been suspect- 
 ed. Alfieri was first drawn with passion to literature 
 by reading "Plutarch's Lives." Loyola, when a sol- 
 dier serving at the siege of Pampeluna, and laid up by 
 a dangerous wound in his leg, asked for a book to 
 divert his thoughts : the " Lives of the Saints " was 
 brought to him, and its perusal so inflamed his mind, 
 that he determined thenceforth to devote himself to 
 the founding of a religious order. Luther, in like man- 
 ner, was inspired to undertake the great labors of his 
 life by a perusal of the " Life and Writings of John 
 Huss." Dr. Wolff was stimulated to enter upon his 
 missionary career by reading the "Life of Francis 
 Xavier ;" and the book fired his youthful bosom with a 
 passion the most sincere and ardent to devote himself 
 to the enterprise of his life. William Carey, also, got 
 the first idea of entering upon his sublime labors as a 
 missionary from a perusal of the voyages of Captain 
 Cook. 
 
 Francis Horner was accustomed to note in his diary 
 and letters the books by which he was most improved 
 and influenced. Amongst these were Condorcet's 
 " Eloge of Haller," Sir Joshua Reynolds's " Discourses," 
 the writings of Bacon, and "Burnet's Account of Sir 
 Matthew Hale." The perusal of the last-mentioned 
 
Cheerfulness. 407 
 
 book — the portrait of a prodigy of labor — Horner says, 
 filled him with enthusiasm. Of Condorcet's " Eloge of 
 Haller," he said : " I never rise from the account of 
 such men without a sort of thi-illing palpitation about 
 me, which I know not whether I should call admira- 
 tion, ambition, or despair." And speaking of the " Dis- 
 courses " of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he said : " Next to 
 the writings of Bacon, there is no book which has more 
 powerfully impelled me to self-culture. He is one of 
 the first men of genius who has condescended to in- 
 form the world of the steps by which greatness is at- 
 tained. The confidence with which he asserts the om- 
 nipotence of human labor has the efiect of familiarizing 
 his reader with the idea that genius is an acquisition 
 rather than a ^ift ; whilst with all there is blended so 
 naturally and eloquently the most elevated and pas- 
 sionate admiration of excellence, that upon the whole 
 there is no book of a more inflammatory efiect." It is 
 remarkable that Reynolds himself attributed his first 
 passionate impulse towards the study of art, to reading 
 Richardson's account of a great painter ; and Haydon 
 was in like manner afterwards inflamed to follow the 
 same pursuit by rea,ding of the career of Reynolds^ 
 Thus the brave and inspiring life of one man lights a 
 flame in the minds of others of like faculties and im- 
 pulse ; and where there is equally vigorous effort, like 
 distinction and success will almost surely follow. 
 Thus the chain of example is carried down through 
 time in an endless succession of links — admiration ex- 
 citing imitation, and perpetuating the true aristocracy 
 of genius. 
 
 One of the most valuable and one of the most infec- . 
 tious examples which can be set before the young, is5 
 that of cheerful working. Cheerfulness gives elasticity 
 to the spirit. Spectres fly before it ; difficulties cause 
 no despair, for they are encountered with hope, and the 
 mind acquires that happy disposition to improve op- 
 
408 Br. Arnold. 
 
 portunities which rarely fails of success. The fervent 
 spirit is always a healthy and happy spirit; working 
 cheerfully itself, and stimulating others to work. It 
 confers a dignity on even the most ordinary occupa- 
 tions. The most effective work, also, is usually the full- 
 heai'ted work — that which passes through the hands or 
 the head of him whose heart is glad. Hume was accus- 
 tomed to say that he would rather possess a cheerful 
 disposition: — inclined always to look at the bright side 
 of things — than with a gloomy mind to be the master 
 of an estate of ten thousand a year. Granville Sharp, 
 amidst his indefatigable labors on behalf of the slave, 
 solaced himself in the evenings by taking part in glees 
 and instrumental concerts at his brother's house, sing- 
 ing, or playing on the flute, the clarionet, or the oboe ; 
 and, at the Sunday evening oratorios, when Handel was 
 played, to beat the kettle-drums. He also indulged, 
 though sparingly, in caricature drawing. Fowell Bux- 
 ton also was an eminently cheerful man; taking speC' 
 ial pleasure in field sports, in riding about the country 
 with his children, and in mixing in all their domestic 
 amusements. 
 
 In another sphere of action, Dr. Arnold was a noblo 
 and a cheerful worker, throwing himself into the great 
 business of his life, the training and teaching of young 
 men, with his whole heart and soul. It is stated in his 
 admirable biography, that "the most remarkable: thing 
 in the Laleham circle was the wonderful healthiness of 
 tone which prevailed there. It was a place where a 
 new comer at once felt that a great and earnest work 
 was going forward. Every pupil was made to feel 
 that there was a work for him to do ; that his happi- 
 ness, as well as his duty, lay in doing that work well. 
 Hence an indescribable zest was communicated to a 
 young man's feeling about life; a strange joy came 
 over him on discerning that he had the means of being 
 useful, and thus of being happy; and a deep respect 
 
Sir John Sinclair. 409 
 
 and ardent attachment sprang tip towards him who 
 had taught him thus to value life and his own self, and 
 his work and mission in the world. All this was 
 founded on the breadth and comprehensiveness of Ar- 
 nold's character, as well as its striking ti'uth and reali- 
 ty ; on the unfeigned regard he had for work of all 
 kinds, and the sense he had of its value, both for the 
 complex aggregate of society and the growth and pro- 
 tection of the individual. In all this there was no ex- 
 citement ; no predilection for one class of work above 
 another ; no enthusjasm for any one-sided object ; but 
 a humble, profound, and most religious consciousness 
 that work is the appointed calling of man on earth ; 
 the end for which his various faculties were given ; the 
 element in which his nature is ordained to develop it- 
 self, and in which his progressive advance towards 
 heaven is to lie." Among the many valuable men 
 trained for public life and usefulness by Arnold, was 
 the gallant Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, who, writing 
 home from India, many years after, thus spoke of his 
 revered master, " The influence he produced has been 
 most lasting and striking in its effects. It is felt even 
 in India ; I can not say more than that." 
 
 The useful influence which a right-hearted man of 
 energy and industry may exercise amongst his neigh- 
 bors and dependents, and accomplish for his country, 
 can not, perhaps, be better illustrated than by the ca- 
 reer of Sir John Sinclair ; characterized by the Abb6 
 Gregoire as " the most indefatigable man in Europe." 
 He was originally a country laird, born to a considera- 
 ble estate situated near John-o'-Groat's House, almost 
 beyond the beat of civilization, in a bare wild country 
 fronting the stormy North Sea. His father dying 
 while he was a youth of sixteen, the management of 
 the family property thus early devolved upon him; 
 and at eighteen he began a course of vigorous im- 
 provement in the county of Caithness, which eventual- 
 ly 
 
410 Sinclair's Improvements in Caithness. 
 
 ly spread all over Scotland. Agriculture then was in 
 a most backward state ; the fields were uninclosed, the 
 lands undrained ; the small farmers at Caithness were 
 so poor that they could scarcely afford to keep a horse 
 or shelty ; the hard work was chiefly done, and the 
 burdens borne, by the women ; and if a cottier lost a 
 horse it was not unusual for him to marry a wife as 
 the cheapest substitute. The country was without 
 roads or bridges; and drovers driving their cattle 
 south had to swim the rivers along with their beasts. 
 The chief track leading into Caithness lay along a high 
 shelf on a mountain side, the road being some hundred 
 feet of clear perpendicular height above the sea which 
 dashed below. Sir John, though a mere youth, deter- 
 mined to make a new road over the hill of Ben Cheilt, the 
 old let-alone proprietors, however, regarding his scheme 
 with incredulity and derision. But he himself laid out 
 the road, assembled some twelve hundred workmen 
 early one summer's morning, set them simultaneously 
 to work, superintending their labors, and stimulating 
 them by his presence and example ; and before night, 
 what had been a dangerous sheep-track, six miles in 
 length, hardly passable for led horses, was made prac- 
 ticable for wheel-carriages as if by the power of magic. 
 It was an admirable example of energy and well-direct- 
 ed labor, which could not fail to have a most salutary 
 Influence upon the surrounding population. He then 
 proceeded to make more roads, to erect mills, to build 
 bridges, and to inclose and cultivate the waste lands. 
 He introduced improved methods of culture, and regu- 
 lar rotation of crops; distributing small premiums to 
 encourage industry ; and he thus soon quickened the 
 whole frame of society within reach of his influence, 
 and infused an entirely new spirit into the cultivators 
 of the soil. From being one of the most inaccessible 
 districts of the north — the very ultima thule of civiliza- 
 tion — Caithness became a pattern county for its roads, 
 
Is returned to Parliament. , 411 
 
 its agriculture, and its fisheries. In Sinclair's youth, 
 the post was carried by a runner only once a week, 
 and the young baronet then declared that he would 
 never rest till a coach drove daily to Thurso. The 
 people of the neighborhood could not believe in any 
 such thing, and it became a proverb in the county to 
 say of any utterly impossible scheme, " Ou, ay, that 
 will come to pass when Sir John sees the daily mail at 
 Thurso !" But Sir John lived to see his dream real- 
 ized, and the daily mail established to Thurso. 
 
 The circle of his benevolent operations gradually 
 widened. Observing the serious deterioration which 
 had taken place in the quality of British wool — one of 
 the staple commodities of the country — ^he forthwith, 
 though but a private and little-known country gentle- 
 man, devoted himself to its improvement. By his per- 
 sonal exertions he established the British Wool Socie- 
 ty for the purpose, and himself led the way to practi- 
 cal improvement by importing 800 sheep from all coun- 
 tries, at his own expense. The result was, the introduc- 
 tion into Scotland of the celebrated Cheviot breed. 
 Sheep farmers scouted the idea of south-country flocks 
 being able to thrive in the far north. But Sir John 
 persevered ; and in a few years there were not fewer 
 than 300,000 Cheviots diffused over the four northern 
 counties alone. The value of all grazing land was 
 thus enormously increased, and Scotch estates, which 
 before were comparatively worthless, began to yield 
 large rentals. 
 
 Returned by Caithness to Parliament, in which he 
 remained for thirty years, rarely missing a division, his . 
 position gave him further opportunities of usefulness, 
 which he did not neglect to employ. Mr. Pitt, observ- 
 ing his persevering energy in all useful public projects, 
 sent for hiiii to Downing Street, and voluntarily pro- 
 posed his assistance in any object he might have in 
 view. Another man might have thought of himself 
 
412 . Sir John Sinclair, 
 
 and his own promotion ; but Sir John characteristical. 
 Ijr replied, that he desired no favor for himself, but in 
 timated that the reward most gratifying to his feelings 
 would be Mr. Pitt's assistance in the establishment of 
 a National Board of Agriculture. Arthur Young laid 
 a bet with the baronet that his scheme would never be 
 established, adding, " Your Board of Agriculture will 
 be in the moon !" But vigorously setting to work, he 
 rousedpublic attention to the subject, enlisted a major- 
 ity of Parliament on his side, and eventually establish- 
 ed the Board, of which he was appointed President. 
 The result of its action need not be described, but the 
 stimulus which it gave to agriculture and stock-raising 
 was shortly felt throughout the whole United King- 
 dom, and tens of thousands of acres were redeemed 
 from barrenness by its operation. He was equally in- 
 defatigable in encouraging the establishment of fish- 
 eries ; and the successful founding of these great branch- 
 es of British industry at Thurso and Wick was mainly 
 due to his exertions. He urged for long years, and at 
 length succeeded in obtaining, the inclosure of a har 
 bor for the latter place, which is perhaps the greatest 
 and most prosperous fishing-town in the world. 
 
 Sir John threw his personal energy into every work 
 in which he engaged, rousing the inert, stimulating the 
 idle, encouraging the hopeful, and. working with alL 
 When a French invasion was threatened, he offered to 
 Mr. Pitt to raise a regiment on his own estate,, and he 
 was as good as his word. He went down to the north, 
 and raised a battalion of 600 men, afterwards in- 
 creased to 1000 ; and it was admitted to be one of 
 the finest, volunteer regiments ever raised, inspired 
 throughout by his own noble and patriotic spirit. 
 While commanding officer of the camp at Aberdeen he 
 held the offices of a Director of the Bank of Scotland, 
 Chairman of the British Wool Society, Provost of Wick, 
 Director of the British Fishery Society, Commissioner 
 
His Energy. 413 
 
 for issuing Exchequer Bills, Member of Parliament for 
 Caithness, and President of the Board of Agriculture. 
 Amidst all this multifarious and self-imposed work, ho 
 even found time to write books, enough of themselves 
 to establish a reputation. When Mr. Rush, the Ameri- 
 can Ambassador, arrived in England, he relates that he 
 inquired of Mr. Coke of Holkham, what was the best 
 work on Agriculture, and was referred to Sir John Sin- 
 clair's ; and when he further asked of Mr. Vansittart, 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, what was the best work 
 on British Finance, he was again referred to a work by 
 Sir John Sinclair, his " History of the Public Revenue." 
 But the great monument of his indefetigable industry, 
 a work that would have appalled other men, but only 
 served to rouse and sustain his energy, was his " Sta- 
 tistical Account of Scotland," in twenty-one volumes, 
 one of the most valuable practical works ever published 
 in any age or country. Amid a host of other pursuits 
 it occupied him nearly eight years of hard labor, during 
 which he received, and attended to, upwards of 20,000 
 lettei's on the subject. It was a thoroughly patriotic 
 undertaking, from which. he derived no personal advan- 
 tage whatever, beyond the honor of having completed 
 it. The whole of the profits were assigned by him ta 
 the Society for the Sons of the Clergy in Scotland. 
 The publication of the book led to great public im- 
 provements ; it was followed by the immediate aboli- 
 tion of several oppressive feudal rights, to which it 
 called attention ; the salaries of schoolmasters and cler- 
 gymen in many parishes were increased; and an in 
 creased stimulus was given to agriculture thi'oughout 
 Scotland. Sir John then publicly offered to undertake 
 the much greater labor of collecting and publishing a 
 similar Statistical Account of England; but unhappily 
 the then Archbishop of Canterbury refused to sanction 
 it, lest it should interfere with the tithes of the clergy, 
 and the idea was abandoned. 
 
414: Sir John Sinclair. 
 
 A remarkable illustration of hia energetic prompti- 
 tude was the manner in which he once provided, on a 
 great emergency, for the relief of the manufacturing 
 districts. In 1793 the stagnation produced by the war 
 led to an unusual number of bankruptcies, and many 
 of the first houses in Manchester and Glasgow were 
 'tottering, not so much from want of property but be- 
 cause the usual sources of trade and credit were for the 
 time closed up. A period of intense distress amongst 
 the laboring classes seemed imminent, when Sir John 
 urged, in Parliament, that Exchequer notes to the 
 amount of five millions should be issued immediately 
 as a loan to such merchants as could give security. 
 This suggestion was adopted, and his offer to carry out 
 his plan, in conjunction with certain members named 
 by him, was also accepted. The vote was passed late 
 at night, and early next morning Sir John, anticipating 
 the delays of ofiicialism and red tape, proceeded to bank- 
 ers in the city, and borrowed of them, on his own per- 
 sonal security, the sum of £70,000, which he dispatched 
 the same evening to those merchants who were in the 
 most urgent need of assistance. Pitt, meeting Sir John 
 in the House, expressed his great regret that the press- 
 ing wants of Manchester and Glasgow could not be sup- 
 plied so soon as was desirable, adding, " The money 
 can not be raised for some days." " It is already gone ! 
 it left London by to-night's mail !" was Sir John's tri- 
 umphant reply; and in afterwards relating the anec- 
 dote he added, with a smile of pleasure, " Pitt was as 
 much startled as if I had stabbed him." To the last 
 this great, good man worked on usefully and cheerful- 
 ly, setting a great example for his family and for his 
 country. In so laboriously seeking others' good, it 
 niight be said that he found his own— not wealth, for 
 his generosity seriously impaired his private fortune, 
 but happiness, and self-satisfaction, and the peace that 
 passes knowledge. A great patriot, with magnificent 
 
His energetic Promptitude. 415 
 
 powers of work, he nobly did his duty to' his country ; 
 yet he was not neglectful- of his own household and 
 home. His sons and daughters grew up to honor and 
 iisefulness ; and it was one of the proudest things Sir 
 John could say, when verging on his eightieth year, 
 that he had lived to see seven sons grow up, not one 
 of whom had incurred a debt he could not pay, or 
 caused him a sorrow that could have been avoided. 
 
 ^=Of 
 
CHAPTER Xm. 
 
 CHAEACTER THE TEUE GENTLBSLUJ. 
 
 "For who can always act? but he, 
 
 To whom a thousand memories call, 
 Not being less but more than all 
 The gentleness he seemed to be, 
 
 But seemed the thing he was, and join'd 
 
 Each office of the social hour 
 
 To noble manners, as the flower 
 And native gi-owth of noble mind ; 
 
 And thus he bore without abuse 
 The grand old name of Gentleman." — ^Tenntson^ 
 
 "Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, 
 Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt." — Goethe. 
 
 "That which raises a countiy, that which strengthens a countiy, 
 and that which dignifies a country — that which spreads her power, 
 creates her moral influence, and makes her respected and submitted 
 to, bends the heart of millions, and bows down the pride of nations to 
 her — the instrument of obedience, the fountain of supremacy, the true 
 throne, crown, and sceptre of a nation ; — this aristocracy is not an 
 aristocracy of blood, not an aristocracy of fashion, not an aristocracy 
 of talent only ; it is an aristocracy of Character. That is the true 
 heraldry of man." — The Times. 
 
 THE crown and glory of life is Character. It is the 
 noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in 
 itself, and an estate in the general good-will ; dignify- 
 ing every station, and exalting every position in society. 
 It exercises a greater power than wealth, and secures 
 all the honor without the jealousies of fame. It carries 
 with it an influence which always tells ; for it is the re- 
 sult of proved honor, rectitude, and consistency — quail- 
 
Canning — Ih-ancis IIoTner. 417 
 
 ties v/hich, perhaps more than any other, command the 
 general confidence and respect of mankind. 
 
 Character is human nature in its Tbest form. It is 
 moral order embodied in the individual. Men of char- 
 acter are not only the conscience of society, but in every 
 well-governed State they are its best motive power; 
 for it is moral qualities in the main which rule the 
 world. Even in war, Napoleon said the moral is to the 
 physical as ten to one. The strength, the industry, and 
 the civilization of nations — all depend upon individual 
 character ; and the very foundations of civil security 
 rest upon it. Laws and institutions are Tjut its out- 
 growth. In the just balance of nature, individuals, na- 
 tions, and races, will obtain just so much as they de- 
 serve, and no more. And as effect finds its cause, so 
 surely does quality of character amongst a people pro- 
 duce its befitting results. 
 
 Though a man have comparatively little culture, 
 slender abilities, and but small wealth, yet, if his char- 
 acter be of stej-ling worth, he will always command an 
 influence, whether it be in the workshop, the counting- 
 house, the mart, or the senate. Canning wisely wrote 
 in 1801, " My road must be through Character to Pow- 
 er; I will try no other course; and I am sanguine 
 enough to believe that this course, though not perhaps 
 the quickest, is the surest." You may admire men of 
 intellect ; but something more is necessary before you 
 will trust them. Hence Lord John Russell once ob- 
 served in a sentence full of truth, " It is the nature of 
 .party in England to ask the assistance of men of genius, 
 but to follow the guidance of men of character." This 
 was strikingly illustrated in the career of the late Fran- 
 cis Homer — a mail of whom Sydney Smith said that the 
 Ten Commandments were stamped upon his counte- 
 nance. " The valuable arid peculiar light," Says Lord 
 Cockburn, " in which his history is calculated to inspire 
 every right-minded youth, is this. He died at the age 
 
 18* 
 
418 Francis Horner — Franlclin. 
 
 . ■■ ' ■— ^ 
 
 of thirty-eight ; possessed of greater puhlic influence 
 than any other private man, and admired, beloved, 
 trusted, and deplored by all, except the heartless or the 
 base. No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament 
 to any deceased member. Now let every young man 
 ask — how was this attained ? By rank ? He was the 
 son of an Edinburgh merchant. By wealth ? Neither 
 he, nor any of his relations, ever had a superfluous six- 
 pence. By office ? He held but one, and only for a 
 few years, of no influence, and with very little pay. By 
 talents ? His were not splendid, and he had no genius. 
 Cautious and slow, his only ambition was to be right. 
 By eloquence ? He spoke in calm, good taste, without 
 any of the oratory that either terrifies or seduces. By 
 any fascination of manner ? His was only correct and 
 agreeable. By what, then, was it ? Merely by sense, 
 industry, good principles, and a good heart — qualities 
 which no well-constituted mind need ever despair of at- 
 taining. It was the force of his character that raised 
 him ; and this character not impressed upon him by 
 nature, but formed, out of no peculiarly fine elements, 
 by himself There were many in the House of Com- 
 mons of far greater ability and eloquence. But no one 
 surpassed him in the combination of an adequate por- 
 tion of these with moral worth. Horner was born to 
 show what moderate powers, unaided by any thing 
 whatever except culture and goodness, may achieve, 
 even when these powers are displayed amidst the com- 
 petition and jealousy of public life." 
 
 Franklin, also, attributed his success as a public man, 
 not to his talents or his powers of speaking — for these 
 were but moderate — but to his known integrity of 
 character. Hence it was, he says, " that I had so much 
 weight with my fellow-citizens. I was but a bad speak 
 er, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my 
 choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I 
 generally carried my point." Character creates confi. 
 
Character is Power. 419 
 
 dence in men in high station as well as in humble life. 
 It was said of the first Empei-or Alexander of Russia, 
 that his personal character was equivalent to a, consti- 
 tution. Daring the wars of the Fronde, Montaigne was 
 the only man amongst the French gentry who kept his 
 castle gates unbarred ; and it was said of him, that his 
 personal character was a better protection for him than 
 1 regiment of horse would have been. 
 
 That character is jjower, is true in a much higher 
 sense than that knowledge is power. Mind without 
 heart, intelligence without conduct, cleverness without 
 goodness, are powers in their way, but they may be 
 powers only for mischief. "We may be instructed or 
 amused by them; but it is sometimes as difiicult to 
 f<,dmire them as it would be to admire the dexterity of 
 a pickpocket or the horsemanship of a highwayman. 
 
 Truthfulness, integrity, and goodness — qualities that 
 hang not on any man's breath — form the essence of 
 manly character, or, as one of our old writers has it, 
 " that inbred loyalty unto Virtue which can serve 
 her without a livery." He who possesses these quali- 
 ties, united with strength of purpose, carries with him 
 a power which is irresistible. He is strong to do good, 
 strong to resist evil, and strong to bear up under diffi- 
 culty and misfortune. When Stephen of Colonna fell 
 into the hands of his base assailants, and they asked him 
 in derision, " Where is now your fortress ?" " Here," 
 was his bold reply, placing his hand upon his heart. It 
 is in misfortune that the character of the upright man 
 shines forthwith the greatest lustre; and when all else 
 fails, he takes stand upon his integrity and his courage. 
 
 The rules of conduct followed by Lord Erskine — a 
 man of sterling independence of principle and scrupu- 
 lous adherence to truth — are worthy of being engraven 
 on every young man's heart. " It was a first command 
 and counsel of my earliest youth," he said, "always to 
 do what my conscience told me to be a duty, and to 
 
420 Value of a Good Name. 
 
 leave the consequence to God. I shall carry with me 
 the memory, and I trust the practice, of this parental 
 lesson to the grave. I have hitherto followed it, and I 
 have no reason to complain that my obedience to it has 
 been a temporal sacrifice. I have found it, on the contra- 
 ry, the road to prosperity and wealth, and I shall point 
 out the same path to my children for their pui-suit." 
 
 Every man is bound to aim at the possession of a 
 good character as one of the highest objects of life. 
 The very effort to secure it by worthy means will fur- 
 nish him with a motive of exertion ; and his idea of 
 manhood, in proportion as it is elevated, will steady 
 and animate his motive. It is well to have a high 
 standard of life, even though we may not be able alto- 
 gether to realize it. " The youth," says Mr. Disraeli, 
 " who does not look up will look down ; and the spirit 
 that does not soar is destined perhaps to grovel." 
 George Herbert wisely writes, 
 
 "Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high, 
 
 So shall thou humble and magnanimous be. 
 Sink not in spirit ; who aimeth at the sky 
 Shoots higher much than he that means a tree." 
 
 He who has a high standard of living and thinking 
 will certainly do better than he who has none at all. 
 " Pluck at a gown of gold," says the Scotch proverb, 
 " and you may get a sleeve o't." "Whoever tries for 
 the highest results can not fail to reach a point far in 
 advance of that from which he started ; and though 
 the end attained may fall short of that proposed, still, 
 the very effort to rise of itself can not fail to prove per- 
 manently beneficial. 
 
 There are many counterfeits of chai'acter, but the gen- 
 uine article is difiicult to be mistaken. Some, knowing 
 its money value, would assume its disguise for the pur 
 pose of imposing upon the unwary. Colonel Gharteria 
 said to a man distinguished for his honesty, " I would 
 
Be What you Seem. 421 
 
 give a thousand pounds for your good name." " Why ?" 
 " Because I could make ten thousand by it," was the 
 knave's reply. 
 
 Integrity in word and deed is the backbone of char- 
 acter ; and loyal adherence to veracity its most promi- 
 nent characteristic. One of the finest testimonies to 
 the character of the late Sir Robert Peel was that bome 
 by the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords, a 
 few days after the great statesman's death. "Your 
 lordships," he said, " must all feel the high and honor- 
 able character of the late Sir Robert Peel. I was long 
 connected with him in public life. We were both in 
 the councils of our Sovereign together, and I had long 
 the honor to enjoy his private friendship. In all the 
 course of my acquaintance with him I never knew a 
 man in whose truth and justice I had greater confi- 
 dence, or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to 
 promote the public service. In the whole course of my 
 communication with him, I never knew an instance in 
 which he did not show the strongest attachment to 
 truth ; and I never saw in the whole course of ray life 
 the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated any 
 thing which he did not firmly believe to be the fact." 
 And this high-minded truthfulness of the statesman 
 was no doubt the secret of no small part of his influ- 
 ence and power. 
 
 There is. a truthfulness in action as well as in words, 
 which is essential to uprightness of character. A man 
 must really be what he seems or purposes to be. When 
 an American gentleman wrote to Granville Sharp, that 
 from respect for his great virtues he had named one of 
 his sons after him, Sharp replied : " I must request you 
 to teach him a favorite maxim of the family whose 
 name you have given him — Always endeavor to he real- 
 ly what you woidd wish to appear. This maxim, as my 
 father informed me, was carefully and humbly practised 
 by his father, whose sincerity, as a plain and honest 
 
422 Conscience and Character. 
 
 man, thereby became the principal feature of Ms char- 
 acter, both in public and private life." Every man who 
 respects himself, and values the respect of others, will 
 carry out the maxim in act — doing honestly what he 
 proposes to do — putting the highest character into his 
 work, scamping nothing, but priding himself upon his 
 integrity and conscientiousness. Once Cromwell said 
 to Bernard — a clever but somewhat unscrupulous law- 
 yer, " I understand that you have lately been vastly 
 wary in your conduct; do not be too confident of this: 
 subtlety may deceive you, integrity never will." Men 
 whose acts are at direct variance with their words, 
 command no respect, and what they say has but little 
 weight : even truths, when uttered by them, seem to 
 come blasted from their lips. 
 
 The true character acts rightly, whether in secret or 
 in the sight of men. That boy was well trained who, 
 when asked why he did not pocket some pears, for no- 
 body was there to see, replied, "Yes, there Avas: I was 
 there to see myself; and I don't intend ever to see my- 
 self do a dishonest thing." This is a simple but not in- 
 appropriate illustration of principle, or conscience, dom- 
 inating in the character, and exercising a noble protect- 
 orate over it ; not merely a passive influence, but an 
 active power regulating the life. Such a principle goes 
 on moulding the character hourly and daily, growing 
 with a force that operates every moment. Without 
 this dominating influence, character has no protection, 
 but is constantly liable to fall away before temptation ; 
 and every- such temptation succumbed to, every act of 
 meanness or dishonesty, however slight, causes self-deg- 
 radation. It matters not whether the act be successful 
 or not, discovered or concealed ; the culprit is no long- 
 er the same, but another person ; and he is pursued by 
 a secret uneasiness, by self-reproach, or the workings of 
 what we call conscience, which is the inevitable doom 
 of the guilty. 
 
Importance of Good Habits. 423 
 
 And here it may be observed how greatly the char- 
 acter may he strengthened and supported by the culti- 
 vation of good habits. Man, it has been said, is a bun- 
 dle of habits ; and habit is second nature. Metastasio 
 entertained so strong an opinion as to the power of 
 repetition in act and thought, that he said, "All is 
 habit in mankind, even virtue itself." Butler, in his 
 " Analogy," impresses the importance of careful self- 
 discipline and firm resistance to temptation, as tending 
 to make virtue habitual, so that at length it may be- 
 come more easy to do good than to give way to sin. 
 "As habits belonging to the body," he says, " are pro- 
 duced by external acts, so habits of the mind are pro- 
 duced by the execution of inward practical purposes, 
 i. e., carrying them into act, or acting upon them — the 
 principles of obedience, veracity, justice, and charity." 
 And again. Lord Brougham says, when enforcing the 
 immense importance of training and example in youth, 
 "I trust every thing, under God, to habit, on which, in 
 all ages, the lawgiver, as well as the schoolmaster, has 
 mainly placed his reliance; habit, which makes every 
 thing easy, and casts the difficulties upon the deviation 
 from a wonted course." Thus, make sobriety a habit, 
 and intempera,nce will be hateful; make prudence a 
 habit, and reckless profligacy will become revolting to 
 every pi-inciple of conduct which regulates the life of 
 the individual. Hence the necessity for the greatest 
 care and watchfulness against the inroad of any evil 
 habit ; for the character is always weakest at that point 
 at which it has once given way ; and it is long before a 
 principle restored can become so firm as one that has 
 never been moved. It is a fine remark of a Russian 
 writer, that "Habits are a necklace of pearls : untie the 
 knot, and the whole unthreads." 
 
 Wherever formed, habit acts involuntarily, and with- 
 out efibrt ; and it is only when you oppose it, that you 
 find how powerful it has become. What is done onco 
 
424 Habits constitute Character. 
 
 and again, soon gives facility and proneness. The hab- 
 it at first may seem to have no more strength than a 
 spider's web ; but, once formed, it binds as with a chain 
 of iron. The small events of life, taken singly, may 
 seem exceedingly unimportant, like snow that falls si- 
 lently, flake by flake ; yet accumulated, these snow- 
 flakes form the avalanche. 
 
 Self-respect, self-help, application, industry, integrity 
 — all are of the nature of habits, not beliefs. Princi- 
 ples, in fact, are but the names which we assign to hab- 
 its ; for the principles are words, but the habits are the 
 things themselves : benefactors or tyrants, according 
 as they are good or evil. It thus happens that as we 
 grow older, a portion of our free activity and individu- 
 ality becomes suspended in habit ; our actions become 
 of the nature of fate ; and we are bound by the chains 
 which we have woven around ourselves. 
 
 It is indeed scarcely possible to over-estimate the im- 
 portance of training the young to virtuous habits. In 
 them they are the easiest formed, and when formed, they 
 last for life ; like letters cut on the bark of a tree, they 
 grow and widen with age. " Train up a child in the 
 way he should go, and when he is old he will not de- 
 part from it." The beginning holds within it the end ; 
 the first start on the road of life determines the direc- 
 tion and the destination of the journey ; " Ge ti'est que In 
 premier pas qui cofite." "Remember," said Lord Col- 
 lingwood to a yo,ung man whom he loved, " before yoa 
 are five-and-twenty you must establish a character that 
 will serve you all your life." As habit strengthens with 
 age, and character becomes formed, any turning into a 
 new path becomes more and more difficult. Hence, it 
 is often harder to unlearn than to learn ; and for this rea- 
 son the Grecian flute-player was justified who charged 
 double fees to those pupils who had been taught by an 
 inferior master. To uproot an old habit is sometimes 
 a more painful thing, and vastly more difficult, than to 
 
Manners and Morals. 425 
 
 wrench out a tooth. Try and reform a habitually in- 
 dolent, or improvident, or drunken person, and in a 
 large majority of cases you will fail. For the habit in 
 each case has wound itself in and through life until it 
 has become an integral part of it, and can not be up- 
 rooted. Hence, as Mr. Lynch observes, " the wisest 
 habit of all is the habit of care in the formation of good 
 habits." 
 
 Even happiness itself may become habitual. There 
 is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and 
 also of looking at the dark side. Dr. Johnson has said 
 that the habit of looking at the best side of a thing is 
 worth more to a man than a thousand pounds a year. 
 And we possess the power, to a great extent, of so ex- 
 ercising the will as to direct the thoughts upon objects 
 calculated to yield happiness and improvement rather 
 than their opposites. In this way the habit of happy 
 thought may be made to spring up like any other habit. 
 And to bring up men or women with a genial nature 
 of this sort, a good temper, and a happy frame of mind, 
 is, perhaps, of even more importance, in many cases, 
 than to perfect them in much knowledge and many 
 accomplishments. 
 
 As daylight can be seen through very small holes, 
 so little things will illustrate a person's character. 
 Indeed, character consists in little acts, well and hon- 
 orably performed; daily life being the quarry from 
 which we build it iip, and rough-hew the habits which 
 form it. One of the most marked tests of character is 
 the manner in which we conduct ourselves towards 
 others. A graceful behavior towards superiors, infe- 
 riors, and equals, is a constant source of pleasure. It 
 pleases others because it indicates respect for their 
 personality; but it gives tenfold more pleasure to 
 ourselves. Every man may, to a large extent, be a 
 self-educator in good behavior, as in every thing else ; 
 he can be civil and kind, if he will, though he have 
 
i26 Oivility and Kindness. 
 
 not a penny in his purse. Gentleness in society is like 
 the silent influence of light, which gives color to all 
 nature ; it is far more powerful than loudness or force, 
 and far more fruitful. It pushes its way quietly and 
 persistently, like the tiniest dafibdil in spring, which 
 raises the clod and thrusts it aside by the simple per- 
 sistency of growing. 
 
 Even a kind look will give pleasure and confer hap- 
 piness. In one of Robertson of Brighton's letters, he 
 tells of a lady who related to him "the delight, the 
 tears of gratitude, which she had witnessed in a poor 
 girl to whom, in passing, I gave a kind look on go- 
 ing out of church on Sunday. What a lesson ! How 
 cheaply happiness can be given ! What opportunities 
 we miss of doing an angel's work ! I remember doing 
 it, full of sad feelings, passing on, and thinking no more 
 about it; and it gave an hour's sunshine to a human 
 life, and lightened the load of life to a human heart for 
 a time."* 
 
 Morals and manners, which give color to life, are of 
 much greater importance than laws, which are but 
 their manifestations. The law touches ns here and 
 there, but manners are about us everywhere, pervading 
 society like the air we breathe. Good manners, as we 
 call them, are neither more nor less than good behav- 
 ior ; consisting of courtesy and kindness ; benevolence 
 being the preponderating element in all kinds of mutu- 
 ally beneficial and pleasant intercourse amongst human 
 beings. " Civility," said Lady Montague, " costs noth- 
 ing and buys every thing." The cheapest of all things 
 is kindness, its exercise requii-ing the least possible 
 trouble and self-sacrifice. " Win hearts," said Burleigh 
 to Queen Elizabeth, "and you have all men's hearts 
 and purses." If we would only let nature act kindly, 
 free from affectation and artifice, the results on social 
 good-humor and happiness would be incalculable. Tho 
 • Bobertson's "Life and Letters," i. 258. 
 
Anecdote of Abernethy, 427 
 
 little courtesies ■which form the small change of life, 
 may separately appear of little intrinsic value, but they 
 acquire their importance from repetition and accumula- 
 tion. They are like the spare minutes, or the groat a 
 day, which prowprhially produce such momentous re- 
 sults in the course of a twelvemonth, or in a lifetime. 
 
 Manners are the ornament of action ; and there is a 
 way of speaking a kind word, or of doing a kind thing, 
 which greatly enhances their value. What seems to 
 be done with a gi'udge, or as an act of condescension, 
 is scarcely accepted as a favor. Yet there are men 
 who pride themselves upon their gruffness ; and though 
 they may possess virtue and capacity, their manner is 
 often such as to render them almost insupportable. It 
 is difficult to like a man who, though he may not pull 
 your nose, habitually wounds your self-respect, and 
 takes a pride in saying disagreeable things to you. 
 There are others who are dreadfully condescending, 
 and can not avoid seizing upon every small opportu- 
 nity of making their greatness felt. When Abernethy 
 was canvassing for the office of surgeon to St. Barthol- 
 omew Hospital, he called upon such a person — a rich 
 grocer, one of the governors. The great man behind 
 the counter seeing the great surgeon entei', immedi- 
 ately assumed the grand air towards the supposed 
 suppliant for his vote. " I presume, sir, you want my 
 vote and interest at this momentous epoch of your 
 life." Abernethy, who hated humbugs, and felt net- 
 tled at the tone, replied : " No, I don't : I want a pen- 
 nyworth of figs ; come, look sharp and wrap them up ; 
 I want to be off!" 
 
 The cultivation of manner — though in excess it is 
 foppish and foolish — is highly necessary in a person 
 who has occasion to negotiate with others in matters 
 of business. Affability and good breeding may even 
 be regarded as essential to the success of a man in any 
 eminent station and enlarged sphere of life; for the 
 
4:28 Bight-Jieartedness. 
 
 want of it has not unfrequently been found in a great 
 measure to neutralize the results of much industry, in- 
 tegrity, and honesty of character. There are, no doubt, 
 a few strong tolerant minds which can bear with de- 
 fects and angularities of manner, and; look only to the 
 more genuine qualities ; but the world at large is not 
 so forbearant, and can not help forming its judgments 
 and likings mainly according to outward conduct. 
 
 Another mode of displaying true politeness is con- 
 sideration for the opinions of others. It has been said 
 of dogmatism, that it is only puppyism come to its full 
 growth • and certainly the worst form this quality can 
 assume, is that of opinionativeness and arrogance. Let 
 men. agree to differ, and, when they do differ, bear and 
 forbear. Principles and opinions may be maintained 
 with perfect suavity, without coming to blows or utter- 
 ing hard words ; and there are circumstances in which 
 words are blows, and inflict wounds far less easy to 
 heal. As bearing upon this point, we quote an instruct- 
 ive little parable spoken some time since by an itiner- 
 ant preacher of the Evangelical Alliance on the bor- 
 ders of Wales : — ^"As I v/as going to the hills," said he, 
 " early one misty morning, I saw sometbing moving on 
 a mountain side, eo strange-looking that I took it for a 
 monster. When I came nearer to it I found it was a 
 man. When I came up to him I found he was my 
 brother." 
 
 The inbred politeness which springs from right-heart- 
 edness and kindly feelings, is of no exclusive rank or 
 station. The mechanic who works at the bench may 
 possess it, as well as the clergyman or the peer. It is 
 by no means a necessary condition of labor that it 
 should, in any respect, be either rough or coarse. The 
 politeness and refinement which distinguish all classes 
 of the people in many continental countries show that 
 those qualities might become ours too — as doubtless 
 they will become with increased culture and more gen- 
 
William and Charles Orant. 429 
 
 eral social intercourse — without sacrificing any of our 
 more genuine qualities as men. From the highest to 
 the lowest, the richest to the poorest, to no rank or con- 
 dition in life has nature denied her highest boon — the 
 great heart. There never yet existed a gentleman hut 
 was lord of a great heart. And this may exhibit itself 
 under the hodden gray of the peasant as well as under 
 the laced coat of the noble. Robert Burns was once 
 taken to task by a young Edinburgh blood, with whom 
 he was walking, for recognizing an honest farmer in the 
 open street. " Why, you fantastic gomeral !" exclaimed 
 Burns, " it was not the great coat, the scone bonnet, 
 and the saunders-boot hose that I spoke to, but the man 
 that was in them ; and the man, sir, for true worth, 
 would weigh down you and me, and ten more such, any 
 day." There may be a homeliness in externals, which 
 may seem vulgar to those who- can not discern the heart 
 beneath; but, to the right-minded, character will &h 
 ways have its clear insignia. 
 
 William and Charles Grant were the sons of a farmer 
 in Inverness-shire, whom a sudden flood stripped of 
 every thing, even to the very soil which he tilled. The 
 farmer and his. sons, with the world before them where 
 to choose, made their way southward in search of em- 
 ployment until they arrived in the neighborhood of 
 Bury in Lancashire. From the crown of the hill near 
 Walmesley they surveyed the wide extent of country 
 which lay before them, the river Irwell making its cir- 
 cuitous course through the valley. They were utter 
 strangers in the neighborhood, and knew not which way 
 to turn. To decide their course they put up a stick, 
 and agreed to pursue the direction in which it fell. 
 Thus their decision was made, and they, journeyed on 
 accordingly until they reached the village of Rams- 
 botham, not far distant. They found employment in a 
 print-work, in which William served his apprentice- 
 ship; and they commended themselves to their em- 
 
430 WiUidm and Charles Grant. 
 
 ployers by their diligence, sobriety, and strict integrity. 
 They plodded on, rising from one station to another, 
 until at length the two men themselves became employ- 
 ers, and after many long years of industry, enterprise, 
 and benevolence, they became rich, honored, and re- 
 spected by all who knew them. Their cotton-mills and 
 print-works gave employment to a large population. 
 Their well-directed diligence made the valley teem 
 with activity, joy, health, and opulence. Out of their 
 abundant wealth they gave liberally to all worthy ob- 
 jects, erecting churches, founding schools, and in all 
 ways promoting the well-being of the class of working- 
 men from which they had sprung. They afterwards 
 erected, on the top of the hill above "Walmesley, a lofty 
 tower in commemoration of the early event in their his- 
 tory which had determined the place of their settle- 
 ment. The brothers Grant became widely celebrated 
 for their benevolence and their various goodness, and 
 it is said that Mr. Dickens had them in his mind's eye 
 when delineating the character of the brothers Cheery- 
 ble. One amongst many anecdotes of a similar kind 
 may be cited to show that the character Avas by no 
 means exaggerated. A Manchester warehouseman pub- 
 lished an exceedingly scurrilous pamphlet against the 
 firm of Grant Brothers, holding up the elder partner to 
 ridicule as "Billy Button." William was informed by 
 some one of the nature of the pamphlet, and his ob- 
 servation was that the man would live to repent of it. 
 " Oh !" said the libeller, when informed of the remark,- 
 " he thinks that some time or other I shall be in his 
 debt ; but I will take good care of that." It happens, 
 however, that men in business do not always foresee 
 who shall be their creditor, and it so turned out that 
 the Grants' libeller became a bankrupt, and could not 
 complete his certificate and begin business again with- 
 out obtaining their signature. It seemed to him a hope- 
 less case to call upon that firm for any favor, but the 
 
The True Gentleman. 431 
 
 pressing claims of his family forced him to make the 
 application. He appeared before the man whom he 
 had ridiculed as " Billy Button " accordingly. He told 
 his tale and produced his certificate. "You wrote a 
 pamphlet against us once ?" said Mr. Grant. The sup- 
 plicant expected to see his document thrown into the 
 fire ; instead of which Grant signed the name of the 
 firm, and thus completed the necessary certificate. 
 " "We make it a rule," said Tie, handing it back, " never 
 to refuse signing the certificate of an honest tradesman, 
 and we have never heard that you were any thing else." 
 The tears started into the man's eyes. "Ah," contin- 
 ued Mr. Grant, " you see my saying was true, that you 
 would live to repent writing that pamphlet. I did not 
 mean it as a threat — I only meant that some day you 
 would know us better, and repent having tried to in- 
 jure us." " I do, I do, indeed, repent it." "Well, well, 
 you know us now. But how do you get on — what are 
 you going to do ?" The poor man stated that he had 
 friends who would assist him when his certificate was 
 obtained. " But how are you off in the mean time ?" 
 The answer was, that, having given up every farthing 
 to his creditors, he had been compelled to stint his 
 family in even the common necessaries of life, that he 
 might be enabled to pay for his certificate. " My good 
 fellow, this will never do ; your wife and family must 
 not suffer in this way ; be kind enough to take this ten- 
 pound note to your wife from me ; there, thei-e, now — 
 don't cry, it will be all well with you yet ; keep up your 
 spirits, set to work like a man, and you will raise your 
 head among the best of us yet." • The overpowered 
 man endeavored with choking utterance to express his 
 gratitude, but in vain ; and putting his hand to his face, 
 he went out of the room sobbing like a child. 
 
 The True Gentleman is one whose nature has been 
 fashioned after the highest models. It is a grand old 
 name, that of Gentleman, and has been recognized as a 
 
432 The Oenilemari's RectUude. 
 
 rank and power in all stages of society. " The Gentle- 
 man is always the Gentleman," said the old French 
 General to his regiment of Scottish gentry at Rousil- 
 lon, " and invariably proves himself such in need and in 
 danger." To possess this character is a dignity of it- 
 self, commanding the instinctive homage of every gen- 
 erous mind, and those who will not how to titular rank, 
 will yet do homage to the gentleman. His qualities 
 depend not upon fashion or manners, but upon moral 
 worth — not on personal possessions, but on personal 
 qualities. The Psalmist briefly describes him as one 
 " that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, 
 and speaketh the truth in his heart." 
 
 The gentleman is eminently distinguished for his 
 self-respect. He values his character — not so much of 
 it only as can be seen of others, but as he sees it him- 
 self; having regard for the approval of his inward 
 monitor. And, as he respects himself, so, by the same 
 law, does he respect others. Humanity is sacred in his 
 eyes ; and thence proceed politeness and forbearance, 
 kindness and charity." It is related of Lord Edward 
 Fitzgerald that, while travelling in Canada, in company 
 with the Indians, he was shocked by the sight of a poor 
 squaw trudging along laden with her husband's trap- 
 pings, while the chief himself walked on unencumbered. 
 Lord Edward at once relieved the squaw of her pack 
 by placing it upon his own shoulders — a beautiful in- 
 stance of what the French call poUtesse de coeur- — the 
 inbred politeness of the true gentleman. 
 
 The true gentleman has a keen sense of honor— scru- 
 pulously avoiding mean actions. His standard of prob- 
 ity in word and action is high. He does not shuffle 
 or prevaricate, dodge or skulk ; but is honest, upright, 
 and straightforward. His law is rectitude — action in 
 right lines. When he says yes, it is a law : and he 
 dares to say the valiant no at the fitting season. The 
 jjentleman will not be bribed; only the low-minded 
 
Wellingtoyi and Wellesley. 433 
 
 and unprincipled will sell themselves to those who are 
 interested in buying them. When the upright Jonas 
 Hanway officiated as commissioner in the victualling 
 department, he declined to receive a present of any 
 kind from a conti'actor ; refusing thus to be biased in 
 the performance of his public duty. A fine trait of the 
 same kind is to be noted in the life of the Duke of 
 Wellington. Shortly after the battle of Assaye, one 
 morning the Prime Minister of the Court of Hydera- 
 bad waited upon him for the purpose of privately as- 
 certaining what territory and what advantages had 
 been reserved for his master in the treaty of peace be- 
 tween the Mahratta princes and the Nizam. To obtain 
 this information the minister offered the general a very 
 large sum — considerably above £100,000. Looking at 
 him quietly for a few seconds, Sir Arthur said, " It aj)- 
 pears, then, that you are capable of keeping a secret ?" 
 " Yes, certainly," replied the minister. " Then so am 
 I" said the English general, smiling, and bowed the 
 minister out. It was to Wellington's great honor, that 
 though uniformly successful in India, and with the 
 power of earning in such modes as this enormous 
 wealth, lie did not add a farthing to his fortune, and re- 
 turned to England a comparatively poor man. 
 
 A similar sensitiveness and high-mindedness charac- 
 terized his noble relative, the Marquis of Wellesley, 
 who, on one occasion, positively refused a present of 
 £100,000, proposed to be given him by 'the Directors 
 of the East India Company on the conquest of Mysore. 
 "It is not necessary," said he, "for me to allude to the 
 independence of my character, and the proper dignity 
 attaching to my office; other reasons besides these 
 important considerations lead me to decline this testi- 
 mony, which is not suitable to me. J think of nothing 
 hut our army. I should be much distressed to curtail 
 the share of those brave soldiers." And the Marquis's 
 resolution to refuse the present remained unalterable. 
 
 19 
 
434 A Noble Peasant. 
 
 Sir Charles Napier exhibited the same nohle self- 
 denial in the course of his Indian career. He rejected 
 all the costly gifts which barbaric princes were ready 
 to lay at his feet, and said with truth, " Certainly I 
 could have got £30,000 since my coming to Scinde, 
 but my hands do not want washing yet. Our dear 
 father's sword which I wore in both battles (Meanee 
 and Hyderabad) is unstained." 
 
 Riches .and rank have no necessary connection with 
 genuine gentlemanly qualities. The poor man may be 
 a true gentleman — in spirit and in daily life. He may be 
 honest, truthful, upright, polite, temperate, courageous, 
 self-respecting, and self-helping — that is, be a true gen- 
 tleman. The poor man with a rich spirit is in all ways 
 superior to the rich man with a poor spirit. To borrow 
 St. Paul's words, the former is as " having nothing, yet 
 possessing all things," while the other, though possess- 
 ing all things has nothing. The iirst hopes every thing, 
 and fears nothing ; the last hopes nothing, and fears 
 every thing. Only the poor in spirit are really poor. 
 He who has lost all, but retains his courage, cheerful- 
 ness, hope, virtue, and self-respect, is still rich. For 
 such a man, the world is, as it were, held in trust ; his 
 spirit dominating over its grosser cares, he can still 
 walk erect, a true gentleman. 
 
 Occasionally, the brave and gentle character may be 
 found under the humblest garb. Here is an old illus- 
 tration, but a fine one. Once on a time, when the Adio-e 
 suddenly overflowed its banks, the bridge of Verona 
 was carried away with the exception of the centre arch, 
 on which stood a house, whose inhabitants supplicated 
 help from the windows, while the foundations were vis- 
 ibly giving way. « I will give a hundred French louis," 
 said the Count Spolverini, who stood by, " to any per- 
 son who will venture to deliver these unfortunate peo- 
 ple." A young peasant came forth fi-oni the crowd, 
 seized a boat and pushed into the stream. He gained' 
 
Intrepidity of Deal Boatmen. 435 
 
 the pier, received the whole family into the boat, and 
 made for the shore, where he landed them in safety. 
 " Here is your money, my brave young fellow," said 
 the count. " No," was the answer of the young man, 
 " I do not sell my life ; give the money to this poor 
 family, who have need of it." Here spoke the true spirit 
 of the gentleman, though he was in the garb of a peas- 
 ant. 
 
 Not less touching was the heroic conduct of a party 
 of Deal boatmen in rescuing the crew of a collier-brig 
 in the Downs but a short time ago.* A sudden storm 
 which set in from the north-east drove several ships 
 from their anchors, and it being low water, one of them 
 struck the ground at a considerable distance from the 
 shore, when the sea made a clean breach over her. 
 There was not a vestige of hope for the vessel, such was 
 the fury of the wind arid the violence of the waves. 
 There was nothing to tempt the boatmen on shore to 
 risk their lives in saving either ship or crew, for not 
 a farthing of salvage was to be looked for. But the 
 daring intrepidity of the Deal boatmen was not want- 
 ing at this critical moment. No sooner had the brig 
 grounded than Simon Pritchard, one of the many per- 
 sons assembled along the beach, threw off his coat and 
 called out, " Who will come with me and try to save 
 that crew ?" Instantly twenty men sprang forward, 
 with, "I will," " and I." But seven only were wanted; 
 and running down a galley-punt into the surf, they 
 leaped in and dashed through the breakers, amidst the 
 cheers of those on shore. How the boat lived in such a 
 sea seemed a miracle ; but in a few minutes, impelled 
 by the strong arms of these gallant men, she flew on. 
 and reached the stranded ship, " catching heron the top 
 of a wave ;" and in less than a quarter of an hour from 
 the time the boat left the shore, the six men who com- 
 pofied the crew of the collier were landed safe on Wal- 
 
 * On the 11th January, 1866. 
 
436 Two English Navvies. 
 
 mer Beach. , A nobler instance of indomitable courage 
 and disinterested heroism on the part of the Deal boat- 
 men — brave though they are always known to be — per- 
 haps can not be cited ; jind we have pleasure in here 
 placing it on record. 
 
 Mr. Turnbull, in his worfe on "Austria,'*' relates an 
 anecdote of the late Emperor Francis, in illustration of 
 the manner in which the Government of that country 
 has been indebted, for its hold upon the people, to the 
 personal qualities of its princes. "At the time whec 
 the cholera was raging at Vienna, the emperor, with an 
 aide-de-camp, was strolling about the streets of the 
 city and suburbs, when a corpse was dragged past on a 
 litter, unaccompanied by a single mourner. The unusu- 
 al circumstance attracted his attention, and he learnt, on 
 inquiry, that the deceased was a poor person who had 
 died of cholera, and that the relatives had not ventured 
 on what was then considered the very dangerous office 
 of attending the body to the grave. ' Then,' said 
 Francis, 'we will supply their place, for none of my 
 poor people should go to the grave without that last 
 mark of respect ;' and he followed the body to the dis- 
 tant place of interment, and, bare-headed, stood to see 
 every rite and observance respectfully performed." 
 
 Fine though this illustration may be of the qualities 
 of the gentleman, we can match it by another equally 
 good, of two English navvies in Paris, as related in a 
 morning paper a few years ago. " One day a hearse 
 was observed ascending the steep Rue de Clichy on its 
 way to Montmartre, bearing a coffin of poplar-wood with 
 its cold corpse. Not a soul followed — not even the liv- 
 ing dog of the dead man, if he had one. The day was 
 rainy and dismal ; passers-by lifted the hat, as is usual 
 when a funeral passes, and that was all. At length it 
 passed two English navvies, who found themselves in 
 Paris on their way from Spain. A right feeling spoke 
 from beneath their serge jackets. ' Poor wretch !' said 
 
Oenerous Act of Masrshal Ney. 437 
 
 the one to the other, 'no one follows him; let us two 
 follow !' And the two took off their hats, and walked 
 bare-headed after the corpse of a stranger to the ceme- 
 tery of Montmartre." 
 
 Above all, the gentleman is truthful. He feels that 
 truth is the " summit of being," and the soul of recti- 
 'tude in human affairs. Lord Chesterfield declared that 
 Truth made the success of a gentleman. The Duke of 
 "Wellington, writing to Kellerman, on the subject of 
 prisoners on parole, when opposed to that general in 
 the peninsula, told him that if there was one thing on 
 which an English ofiicer prided himself more than an- 
 other, excepting his courage, it was his truthfulness. 
 " "When English officers," said he, " have given their 
 parole of honor not to escape, be sure they will not 
 break it. Believe me — trust to their word ; the word 
 of an English officer is a surer guarantee than the vigi- 
 lance of sentinels." 
 
 True coui'age and gentleness go hand in hand. The 
 brave man is generous and forbearant, never unforgiv- 
 ing and cruel. It was finely said of Sir John Franklin 
 by his friend Parry, that "he was a man who never 
 turned his back upon a danger, yet of that tenderness 
 that he would not brush away a mosquito." A fine 
 trait of character — truly gentle, and worthy of the spir- 
 it of Bayard — was displayed by a French officer in the 
 cavalry eom'bat of El Bodon in Spain. He had raised 
 his sword to strike Sir Felton Harvey, but perceiving 
 his antagonist had only one arm, he instantly stopped, 
 brought down his sword before Sir Felton in the usual 
 salute, and rode past. To this may be added a noble 
 and gentle deed of Ney during the same Peninsular 
 "War. -Charles Napier was taken prisoner at Corunna, 
 desperately wounded ; and his friends at home did not 
 know whether he was alive or dead. A special mes- 
 senger was sent out from England with a frigate to 
 ascertain his fate. Baron Clouet received the flag, and 
 
438 Englishmen in India, 
 
 informed Ney of the a'rrival. " Let the prisoner see his 
 friends," said Ney, " and tell them he is well, and well- 
 treated." Clouet lingered, and Ney asked, smiling, 
 "what more he wanted?" "He has an old mother, a 
 widow, and blind." " Has he ? then let him go himself 
 and tell her he is alive." As the exchange of prisoners 
 between the countries was not then allowed, Ney knew 
 that he risked the displeasure of the Emperor by set- 
 ting the young oflScer at liberty ; but Napoleon ap- 
 proved the generous act. 
 
 Notwithstanding the wail which we occasionally 
 hear for the chivalry that is gone, our own age has 
 witnessed deeds of bravery and gentleness — of heroic 
 self-denial and manly tenderness — which are unsurpass- 
 ed in history. The events of the last few years have 
 shown that our countrymen are as yet an undegener- 
 ate race. On the bleak plateau of Sebastopol, in 
 the dripping perilous trenches of that twelvemonth's 
 leaguer, men of all classes proved themselves worthy of 
 the noble inheritance of character which their forefa- 
 thers have bequeathed to them. But it was in the hour 
 of the great trial in India that the qualities of our coun- 
 trymen shone forth the brightest. The march of Neill 
 on Cawnpore, of Havelock on Lucknow — officers and 
 men alike urged on by the hope of rescuing the women 
 and the children — are events which the whole history 
 of chivalry can not equal. Outram's conduct to Have- 
 lock, in resigning to him, though his inferior oifieef, the 
 honor of leading the attack on Lucknow, was a trait 
 worthy of Sydney, and alone justifies the title which 
 has been awarded to him of, " the Bayard of India." 
 The death of Henry Lawrence — that brave and gentle 
 i^pirit — his last words before dying, " Let there be no 
 fuss about rae ; let me be buried with the men " — the 
 anxious solicitude of Sir Colin Campbell to rescue the 
 beleaguered of Lucknow, and to conduct his long train 
 of women and children by night from thence to Cawn' 
 
Wreck of the Birkenhead. 439 
 
 pore, which he reached amidst the all hut overpower- 
 ing assault of the enemy — the care with which he led 
 <ihem across the pei'ilous bridge, never ceasing his 
 charge over them, until he had seen the precious con- 
 voy safe on the road to AUahahad, and then hurst upon 
 the Gwalior contingent like a thunderclap ; — such things 
 make us feel proud of our countrymen, and inspire the 
 conviction tliat the hest and purest glow of chivalry is 
 not dead, but vigorously lives among us yet. 
 
 Even the common soldiers proved themselves gentle- 
 men under their trials. At Agra, where so many poor 
 fellows had been scorched and wounded in their en- 
 counter with the enemy, they were brought into the 
 fort, and tenderly nursed by the ladies ; and the rough, 
 gallant fellows proved gentle as any children. During 
 the weeks that the ladies watched over their charge, 
 never a word was said by any soldier that could shock 
 the ear of the gentlest. And when all was over — when 
 the mortally wounded had died, and the sick and maim- 
 ed who survived were able to demonstrate their grati- 
 tude — they invited their nurses and the chief people of 
 Agra to an entertainment in the beautiful gardens of 
 the Taj, where, amidst flowers and music, the rough vet-- 
 erans, all scarred and mutilated as they were, stood up 
 to thank their gentle countrywomen who had clothed 
 arid fed them, and ministered to their wants during 
 their time of sore distress. In the hospitals at Scutari, 
 too, many wounded and sick blessed the kind English 
 ladies who nursed them ; and nothing can be finer than 
 the thought of the poor sufierers, unable to rest through 
 pain, blessing the shadow of Florence Nightingale as it 
 fell upon their pillow in the night-watches. 
 
 The wreck of the Birkenhead off the coast of Africa 
 on the 2'7th February, 1852, affords another memora- 
 ble illustration of the chivalrous spirit of common men 
 acting in this nineteenth centur^^, of which any age 
 might be proud. The vessel was steaming along the 
 
440 Exercise of Personal Power. 
 
 African coast with 472 men and 166 women and chiU 
 dren on board. The men belonged to several regiments 
 then serving at the Cape, and consisted principally of 
 recruits who had been only a short time in the service. 
 At two o'clock in the morning, Avhile all were asleep 
 below, the ship struck with violence upon a hidden 
 rock which penetrated her bottom ; and it was at 
 once felt that she must go down. The toU of the 
 drums called the soldiers to arms on the upper deck, 
 and the men mustered as if on parade. The word was 
 passed to save the women cmd children; and the helpless 
 creatures were brought from below, mostly undressed, 
 and handed silently into the boats. When they had 
 all left the ship's side, the commander of the vessel 
 thoughtlessly called out, "All those that can swim, 
 jump overboard and make for the boats." But Cap- 
 tain Wright, of the 91st Highlanders, said, " No ! if you 
 do that, thA boats with the women must be swamped;" 
 and the brave men stood motionless. There was no 
 boat remaining and no hope of safety, but not a heart 
 quailed ; no one flinched from his duty in that trying 
 moment. " There was not a murmur nor a cry amongst 
 them," said Captain Wright, a survivor, "until the 
 vessel made her final plunge." Down went the ship, 
 and down went the heroic band, firing a feu dejoie as 
 they sank beneath the waves. Glory and honor to the 
 gentle and the brave ! The examples of such men nev- 
 er die, but, like their memories, are immortal. 
 
 There are many tests by which a gentleman may be 
 known ; but there is one that never fails — How does he 
 exercise power over those suboi-dinate to him ? How 
 does he conduct himself towards women and children? 
 How does the oifieer treat his men, the employer his serv- 
 ants, the master his pupils, and man in every station those 
 who are weaker than himself? The discretion, forbear- 
 ance, and kindliness with which power in such cases is 
 used, may indeed be regarded as the crucial test of gen- 
 
Gentleness the Test of Gerdhmanliness. 441 
 
 tlemanly character. When La Motte was one day pass- 
 ing through a cro-wd, he accidentally trod upon the foot 
 of a young fellow, who forthwith struck him on the 
 face : "Ah, sir, said La Motte, you will surely be sorry 
 for what you have done, when you know that I am 
 blind.'''' He who bullies those who are not in a position 
 to resist may be a snob, but can not be a gentleman. 
 He who tyrannizes over the weak and helpless may be 
 a coward, but no true man. The tyrant, it has been 
 said, is but a slave turned inside out. Strength, and 
 the consciousness of strength, in a righthearted man 
 imparts a nobleness to his character; but he will be 
 most careful how he uses it ; for 
 
 "It is excellent 
 To have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous 
 To use it like a giant." 
 
 Gentleness is indeed the best test of gentlemanliness. 
 A consideration for the feelings of others, for his infe- 
 riors and dependents as well as his equals, and respect 
 for their self-respect, will pervade the true gentleman's 
 whole conduct. He will rather himself suffer a small 
 injury, than by an uncharitable construction of anoth- 
 er's behavior, incur the risk of committing a great 
 wrong. He will be forbearant of the weaknesses, the 
 failings, and the errors, of those whose advantages in 
 life have not been equal to his own. He will be merci- 
 ful even to his beast. He will not boast of his wealth, 
 or his strength, or his gifts. He will not be puffed up 
 by success, or unduly depressed by failure. He will not 
 obtrude his views upon others, but speak his mind freely 
 when occasion calls for it. He will not confer favors 
 with a patronizing air. Sir Walter Scott once said of 
 Lord Lothian, "He is a man from whom one may receive 
 a favor, and that's saying a great deal in these days." 
 
 Lord Chatham has said that the gentleman is char- 
 acterized by his sacrifice of self and preference of oth- 
 
 19* 
 
442 Character of Sir Francis Drake. 
 
 ers to himself in the little daily occurrences of life. In 
 illustration of this ruling spirit of considerateness in a 
 noble character, we may cite the anecdote of the gal- 
 lant Sir Ralph Abercrombie, of whom it is related, that 
 when mortally wounded in the battle of Aboukir, he 
 was carried in a litter on board the " Foudroyant ;" 
 and, to ease his pain, a soldier's blanket was placed un- 
 der his head, from which he experienced considerable 
 relief. He asked what it was. "It's only a soldier's 
 blanket," was the reply. " Whose blanket is it ?" said 
 he, half lifting himself up. " Only one of the men's." 
 " I wish to know the name of the man whose blanket 
 this is." " It is Duncan Roy's of the 42d, Sir Ralph." 
 " Then see that Duncan Roy gets his blanket this very 
 night."* Even to ease his dying agony the general 
 would not deprive the private soldier of his blanket 
 for one night. The incident is as good, in its way, as 
 that of the dying Sydney handing his cup of water to 
 the private soldier on the field of Zutphen. 
 
 The quaint old Fuller sums up in a few words the 
 character of the true gentleman and man of action in 
 describing that 'of the great admiral. Sir Francis Drake : 
 " Chaste in his life, just in his dealings, true of his 
 word ; merciful to those that were under him, and hat- 
 ing nothing so much as idlenesse ; in matters especially 
 of moment, he was never wont to rely on other men's 
 care, how trusty or skillful soever they might seem to 
 be, but, always contemning danger, and refusing no 
 toyl, he was wont himself to be one (whoever was a sec- 
 ond) at every turn, where courage, skill, or industry, 
 was to be employed." 
 
 * Brown's " Horaj Subsedva;." 
 
IN D E X. 
 
 AEENSIOE. 
 
 AKRNsmE, poet, 30. 
 
 Alfieri, in youtli, 339. 
 
 Angelo, Michael, 145, 1S4. 
 
 Application and perseverance, 119, 122, 
 3SS-39-2. 
 
 Arkwri^'ht, Sir R., 53-6S. 
 
 Arne, Dr., musician, 22T, 228. 
 
 Arnold, Dr , on Belf-education, 347 ; a 
 cheeifiil worker, 408, 409. 
 
 Abercromble, Sir Ralph, anecdote of, 442. 
 
 Abernetliy, surgeon, anecdote of, 427. 
 
 Accuracy, 302, 
 
 Activity, examples of, 193, 194. 
 
 Act) and consequences, 39G. 
 
 Addison, 31, 15S. 
 
 Adrian VI., 33. 
 
 Adversity, u^ea of, 373, 374. 
 
 Attention, hajjit of, 61, 122. 
 
 Audubon, ornithologist, his persever- 
 ance, 126. 
 
 Anstila, Emperor of, anecdote of, 436. 
 
 B. 
 
 Babbagk, on acts and consequences, 397. 
 . Rach, John Sebastian, 227. 
 Bacon, Lord, 25, 41, 183, 297 ; Jiis notes, 
 
 159; on economy, 328 ; on knowledge, 
 
 364. 
 Banks, sculptor, ISS. 
 Barberini Vase, the, and Wedgwood, 
 
 115, 116. 
 Barbers, eminent, 54, 55. 
 Barclay, David, merchant, his character 
 
 and work, 319, 320. 
 Barrow, Isaac, 352; as a boy, 3S8. 
 Baxter, Richard, on time, 15S. 
 Beethoven, 227, 3T2, 403. 
 Bell, Sir Charles, ICS. 
 Bewick, wood-engraver, 151, 
 Biography, its uses, 27, 404, 405. 
 Bird, artist, 183, ISS. 
 Birkenhead^ wreck of the, 439, 440. 
 Blackstone, Sir William, 33. 
 Books, inspiration from, 405-407. 
 Borrowing, danger of, 339. 
 Bottgher, J. F., the potter, 90 ; his early 
 
 i:fe, 104; his boyish trick in alchemy. 
 
 CUATTEETON. 
 
 104,105; hifl trouble.", 105-111; makes 
 
 red porcelain, 107 ; makes white por< 
 
 celain, 100; his death. 111. 
 Boulton and Watt, 57. 
 Bright, John, on frugality, 324. 
 Briudley, engineer, 28, 300. 
 Britton, John, his early life, difficulties 
 
 surmounted, 134. 
 Brotherton, Joseph, M.P.,-36, 343. 
 Brougham, Lord, 42, 43, 423. 
 Brown, John, geologist, 1T9. 
 Brown, Sir S., 147. 
 
 Brunei, Sir L, a thouglitful obseiTcr, 147. 
 Bufibn, Comte de, as student, 130, 131. 
 Burney, Dr., 157. 
 Burns, Robert, in boyhood, 3S9 ; bis im- 
 
 providence, 328. 
 Burritt, Elihu, 157, '350. 
 Business men, 294-297. 
 Business qualities ofgreat men, 307-315. 
 Buxton, Sir Fowell, philanthropist, 293; 
 
 onwill, 253, 291, 853; on mother' s ib. 
 
 flnence, 395; on good company, 402. 
 
 405; his cheerfulness, 408. 
 
 CjGBABibm, fallacy of, 24, 
 
 Callcott, Sir A.,' 185. 
 
 Callot, Jacques, artist, 191. 
 
 Campbell, Lord, 31, 248. 
 
 Canning, on character, 417. 
 
 Carey, William, missionary, 29, 124, l&S, 
 
 271. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, his destroyed MS., 127, 
 Cavendish, philosopher, 41. 
 Cecil, on method, 302. 
 Cellini, Benveuuto, his origin, 192 ; his 
 
 career, 103, 194; statue of Perseus, 
 
 196, 196. 
 Chalmew, Rev. Dr., on honesty, 317; in 
 
 boyhood, 388. 
 Chambers, -William, publisher, 379. 
 Chantrey, Sir Francis, 30, 183; charac 
 
 ter and works, 208-210. 
 Character is power, 360, 41T, 419, 
 Charleris, Colonel, 420. 
 Chatterton, po?t, 352, 3S9. 
 
444 
 
 Index. 
 
 Chancer, Geoffrey, as a man of business, 
 296. 
 
 Cheeryble Brother?, 430, 431. 
 
 Cheerful II esp, 123, 407, 40S. 
 
 Chisholni, Mra., on work and success, 
 39 E). 
 
 Civility anil kindness, 426. 
 
 Clnrlte, Adam, 35-\ 
 
 Clai'lcson, 'J'hunms, philantltropist, 289* 
 290; his immense labors, 2S9-291. 
 
 Clay, Jleni-y, orator, 37T. 
 
 Clergyriien'a sons, 31. 
 
 Clive, Robert, 389. 
 
 Clyde, Lord, 247, 261. 
 
 Cobbett, William, author, 379. 
 
 Cobden, Richard, 396 ; on thrift, 324. 
 
 Cockbiim, Lord, on character, 417. 
 
 Collingirood, Lord, on honest poverty, 
 344; on mean company, 401; on char- 
 acter, 424. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., poet, 31, 369. 
 
 Columbus, a careful observer, 147. 
 
 Comic literature, 365. 
 
 Constant, Benjamin, 3G7. 
 
 Courageous working, 255. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, on integrity, 422, 
 
 Cuneilorm inscriptions, 12S. 
 
 Currnn, J. P., 377. 
 
 CuTier, Baron, 155, 1G7. 
 
 D. 
 
 DAGTTESSBAtr, Chancellor of France, 15T, 
 405. 
 
 D'Alembert, 31, 376. 
 
 Dalton, John, 121, 156. 
 
 Ilargan, William, on independence, 24. 
 
 Darwin, Dr., author, 157. 
 
 Davy, Sir H., 30, 32, 153; on Coleridge, 
 154: in boyhood, 390, 3".l. 
 
 Deal boatmen, intrepidity of, 435. 
 
 Decision, S55. 
 
 Details, importance of, 331. 
 
 Dick, Robert, geologist, ISO. 
 
 Difficulty, uses.: of, 372-379. 
 
 Diligence indispensable, 39. 
 
 Discoveries qot accidental, 144 
 
 Dishonest gains, 317, 31S. 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, 41, 44 ; on Cobdai'a 
 influence, 396. 
 
 Douqias, anecdote of thp, 404. 
 
 Drake, Sir E",, Admiral, 31 ; character of, 
 442. 
 
 Drew, Samuel, shoemaker and metaphy- 
 Rician, 39 ; his origin, l."6 ; his career, 
 137,138; hid studies, 139; his writ- 
 ings, 140, 141 : on frugality, 323, 353, 
 405. 
 
 Drinking, vice of, 335. 
 
 Dunces, illustrious, 291, 343, 38T-392. 
 
 E. 
 
 Economy and independence, 336-329. 
 Kdgeworth, Mr., 51, 401. 
 
 UEALTO. 
 
 Edwardes, Colonel, 31, 267. 
 Edwards, Thomas, Banff, 29, 
 Eldon, Ijord, his career, 249. 
 Er^kine, Lord, his notes, 159; on eon* 
 
 duct, 419. 
 Etruscan pottery, £0. 
 Etty, William, 1S3 ; as a worker, 21.'?. 
 Example, power of, 393, 394, 39S, 403. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fabaiiay, Professor, 30, 153. 
 Fei'guson, astronomer, 151, 352, 
 Flaxman, John, sculptor, 116, 183; his 
 
 life and works, 201-208 ; his wife, 2i5 ; 
 
 his studies, 223. 
 Foley Peerage,- the founder of, 235. 
 Foster, Johu, 29 ; words of, 120, 
 Fox, C. J., 37; his pains-taking, 302, 
 
 371. 
 Franklin, Benjamin, and electricity,148; 
 
 his integrity, 418. 
 Franklin, Sir John, his tenderness, 437. 
 French generals risen from the ranks, 
 
 34, 85. 
 Fuller, Andrew, 352. 
 
 G. 
 
 GAiNsnoKOtJGn, painter, 183, 186. 
 
 Galileo's obsei'ving faculty, 14J. 
 
 Galvani and electricity, 148. 
 
 Genius, definition oi; 120, 150. 
 
 Genteel life, 332. 
 
 Gentleman, the true, 410, 431, 436, 437. 
 
 Gentleness, influence of, 425. 
 
 Geology, discoveries in, 172-lSl. 
 
 Gesner, naturalist, 33. 
 
 " Getting on," 3C2. 
 
 Gibson, Johu, artist, 28, 217. 
 
 Gifford, William, 29, 161. 
 
 Good, Dr. Mason, 157. 
 
 Government and individual action, 22, 
 
 23. 
 Grant, iflysses, in boyhood, 389. 
 Grant, William and Charles, 439. 
 Grote, Mr., historian, 297. 
 Guthrie, Rev. Dr., and John Foands. 
 
 399. 
 
 IL 
 
 HABira, importance of good, 423, 424. 
 
 Hale, Sir Matthew, as a student, 153. 
 
 Hail, Dr. Mai^hall, his discoveries, 16S. 
 
 Handel, musician, 403. 
 
 Hanway, Jona.", philanthropist, 275-2S0. 
 
 Hardinge, Lord, 31, 24T. 
 
 Harvey, and the cireulation of the blood* 
 
 164. 
 Hasting?, Warren, 32, 2G1. 
 Hawkswood, Sir John, 29. 
 Haydn, musician, 33, 403, 
 Haydon, on debt, 329. 
 Hazlitt, on businesp, 294. 
 Health of great men, 351. 
 
Index. 
 
 4i5 
 
 UEATnOOAT. 
 
 Henthcoat, John, M.P., ioveutor of bob- 
 
 biu-net mftcliine, 64-78. 
 Ileilniann, Joehiia, invention of the 
 
 combing machine, and ita value, 85- 
 
 80. 
 Heroism, true, 438-440, 
 llorschel, nBtronomer, 30; his diacover- 
 
 ies, 169. 
 llobson, Admiral, 29. 
 Hoche, G-eneral, 34. 
 HodBon of Hodson'a Hor^e, 31; on 
 
 health, 349, 409. 
 Hogarth, William, painter, lSS-188. 
 Home Influence, 394. 
 Honesty the best policy, 315-320. 
 Honor, the gentleman's sense of, 432. 
 Hook, Rev. l)i'., on work, 124. 
 Hope a helper, 124, 40T. 
 Hoiner, Francis, his father's advice, 327 ; 
 
 on good company, 402. 
 Howard, John, 275, 390. 
 Humbert, General, 35. 
 Hume, Joseph, his work and persever- 
 ance, 141 ; on high living, ^3:2. 
 Hunter, Jolin, anatomist, 2^^ 32, 121 ; his 
 
 patient industry, early life, and career, 
 
 159-161, 360, 371. 
 Hunter, William, anatomist, 153. 
 
 Ihuobtality in this world, 396. 
 
 Impatience, 356. 
 
 Independence, liow secured, 327. 
 
 Indian rebellion, 264-266. 
 
 Indian swordsman, 263, 264. 
 
 Individualism and freedom, 21-23 ; its 
 iofluence, 26. 
 
 Industi-y, results of, 120; industry and 
 succe^^, 183, 184; industry and the 
 peerage, 232; industryhonorable, 339. 
 
 Integrity, importance of, 418. 
 
 Inventors, benefits to society,- 50. 
 
 Irving, Waaliington, on deserts, 300. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jackson, Stonewall, in boyhood, 889, 
 
 390. 
 Jackson, William, self-taught musician, 
 
 22S-231. 
 Jackson, W., of Birkenhead, 38. 
 Jacquard, inventor, 78. 
 Jenner, Dr., discoverer of vaccination, 
 
 165. 
 Jerrold, Douglas, on comic literature, 
 
 365. 
 Jervi-a, Admiral, on debt, 381. 
 Johnson, Andrew, President of the United 
 
 States, 80. 
 Johnson, Dr., on observation, 146; on 
 
 gfenius, 150; on impatience, 356; on 
 
 looking at the bright side, 425. 
 JonBon, Ben, 28r 
 Jones, Inigo, 28, 1S3. 
 
 MONET. 
 K. 
 
 Kemp, George, architect, 21tJ. 
 
 Kepler, 31, 120. 
 
 ICnowledge and goodness, 358. 
 
 L- 
 
 Laiior a blessing, 49. 
 
 Laborers' sons, distinguished, 28, 
 
 Lamennaid's opinion on will, 257. 
 
 Langda e, Lord, 251 ; on mother's influ- 
 ence, 395. 
 
 Lansdowue, Marquis of, on MaleshertKa, 
 402. 
 
 Lnurfdowne peerage, the, 243. 
 
 Late learner.-', 3S(). 
 
 Lawrences, the, 183 ; in India, 266. 
 
 Layard, Austen, his perseverance, 32, 
 129, 
 
 Learning and wisdom, 359. 
 
 Leo, Professor, linguist, 2S, 151 ; his per- 
 severance, 38i, 885, 
 
 Lee, Bev. AVilliam, inventor of stocking- 
 loom, 644)9. 
 
 Leyden, Jolm, hi^ perseverance, 383. 
 
 Lindsay, W. S., 37. 
 
 Linn-j?us, naturalist, 295. 
 
 Literary culture, 35'.t. 
 
 Livingstone, Dr., missionary, 20, 272, 
 273. 
 
 Locke, John, on debt, 330. 
 
 Loom, the Jacquard, 83. 
 
 Lorraine, Claude, painter, 183, 189. 
 
 Loudon, landscape-gardener, 135. 
 
 Loyola, Ignatius, 354, 406. 
 
 Luddites, the, machine-breakers, 75. 
 
 Lyndhurst, Lord, defense of Heathcoat's 
 patent, 73 ; on difficulty, 376. 
 
 Lyons silk industry, 84. 
 
 Lytton, Sir '^. Bulwer, 43. 
 
 M. 
 
 MALESIIEnBES, IVI. dc, 402, 
 
 Mnlthus, D., on exercise, 348. 
 Mannerri, their influence, 426, 427. 
 Manpfield, Lord, lawyer, 247, 287. 
 Martin, John, artist, 183, 214. 
 Masi?ena, Marshal, 35. 
 Mather, Cotton, his essays, 405. 
 Melbourne, Lord, and Moore the poet*fl 
 
 son, 298. 
 Mendelssohn on criticism, 372. 
 Method, 302, 303. 
 Meyei'beer, musician, 227. 
 Mill, John S., 23, 297. 
 Miller, Hugh, geologist, his origin, 39 ; 
 
 on work as a teacher, 49, 179, 233, 255 ; 
 
 on drink, 334. 
 Miltoo, John, 32 ; a man of business, 296^. 
 Misfortune and stupidity, 300. 
 Models of eliaracter, 401. 
 Money, its upe and ubiisc, 321; making 
 
 and saving, 030-245. 
 
446 
 
 Index. 
 
 MONTALEMIIEKT. 
 
 Montttlembert on the Indian rebellion, 
 
 266. 
 Moreau, General, greatest in defeat, 372. 
 Mother's influence, 394, 395. 
 Motte, I^, anecdote of, 441. 
 Mulveady, artist, ISS, 1S9. 
 Murat, Marsha], 85. 
 Mm-chison, Sir Koderick, 180, 181. 
 Murray, t*iofe3sor Alexnnder, 378. 
 31usician9, industry of, 22G, 22T. 
 
 N. 
 
 NAPrea, Sir Charles, 262; on debt, 333; 
 on rectitude, 434. 
 
 Kapoleon and Jacquard, 83; hia charac- 
 ter, and on will, 259 ; as a business 
 mnn, attentive to details, 307-309; as 
 a boy, 389. 
 
 Navvies, anecdote of two English, 43G. 
 
 Negroes and Granville Sharp, 2S3. 
 
 Nelson, Admii'al, 31 ; liis punctuality, 
 305. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, sayings of, 120, 126, 
 145, 150 ; his labor, 15S ; as a mnn of 
 buainesp, 296, 349 ; a dull boy, iiSS. 
 
 Ney, Marshal, 35 ; generous conduct of, 
 43T. 
 
 Nicoll, Robert, poet, 370. 
 
 Norfchcote, painter, 183, 403. 
 
 Note-making, 153. 
 
 O. 
 
 Odsebvation, intelligent, 146, 155, 176. 
 
 Opie, painter, 28, 150, 183. 
 
 Order, importance of, 154. 
 
 Ovren, Bichard, naturalist, 32, IGO. 
 
 P. 
 
 PALtSBT, the potter, 90-104. 
 
 Par6, Ambrose, surgeon, 161-104. 
 
 Parental example, 395. 
 
 Patient labor, its results, 25, 120, 1C3, 
 130, 37G. 
 
 Paton, Noel, artist, 219. 
 
 Peel family, the, 59-63. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, stat^muu, his cultiva- 
 tion of memory, 122 ; his truthfulness, 
 421. 
 
 Peerages founded by tradesmen, 234 ; 
 by lawyers, 247. 
 
 Pergseus and conic section?, 14S. 
 
 Perrier, Franpois, artist, 190. 
 
 " Perseus," casting of, 1C5, 196. 
 
 Perseverance, its value and results, 93- 
 101, 120, 121, 125-133, 141, 156, 252, 
 801, 333-386; commands succeEg,391. 
 
 Petty, Sir AVilliam, and tlio Lansdowne 
 peei'agp, 242. 
 
 Phippa, William, founder of the Nor- 
 manby peerage, 237-242. 
 
 Pliysical health and education, 349. 
 
 I*l:nsurc, pursuit of, 360. 
 
 Politeness, 426-429. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 32, 398. 
 
 Porcelain, invention of, 107. 
 
 Pottei'S, illustrious, 90. 
 
 Pottery manufacture, 117, 204. 
 
 Pounds, Jolm, iind Ragged Schools, 399. 
 
 Poussin, N., ai-ti-'t, 145, 197-199. 
 
 Prieatley, Dr., 153. 
 
 Promptitude, imiiortance of, 304, 35£^ 
 
 414. 
 Pugin, architect, 214, 215. 
 Punctuality, impoitance of^ 133, 306. 
 Pui'poae, force of, 254. 
 
 Ramus, Pierre, 33. 
 
 Randon, Marshal, 36. 
 
 Rawlinson, Sir Henry, his peiBeverance^ 
 
 133. 
 Reading to bad purpose, 357. 
 Rectitude of the gentleman, 432. 
 Respectability, tme, 343. 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 31, 183, 16G, 205, 
 
 353. 
 Ricardo, David, 296. 
 Riclies and worth a temptation to ease, 
 . 40, 342, 344. 
 
 Robbia, Lnca delln, sculptor, 91. 
 Robei-tson of Brighton, on i-eading, 357: 
 
 on kindness, 4'.6. 
 Robinson, Judge, and CuiTan, 878. 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 42, 382, 405. 
 Rosa, Salvator, 183. 
 ]ios3. Dr., on intent men, 353. 
 Rosse, Lord, 41. 
 Russell, Earl, 41 ; on diaracter, 417. 
 
 S. 
 
 Saxony, Elector of, and Bottgher, 106. 
 Schcffer, Ary, artist^ 200, 901. 
 Scott, John {Lord Eldon), 249. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 32 ; a patient wnrker, 
 
 132,152,296; on self-education, 346; 
 
 his athletic eports, £51 ; boyhood, 389. 
 Self-cultui-e, 346, 347, 363. 
 Self-denial, 322, 411. 
 Self-help, spirit of, 21-25. 
 Self-respect, 361. 
 Shakspeare, 28, 205. 
 Shar}!, Granville, pbilanthropist, 2S1- 
 
 2S9 ; a cheerful man, 408 ; on charac- 
 ter, 421. 
 Sharpies, James, artist and blacksmith, 
 
 219-225. 
 Sheri.lan, IL B., 388. 
 Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, 29, 30. 
 Sinclair, Sir John, his public usefulness, 
 
 hid energy, hi=5 worfe, 409-415. 
 Slaves in England, 283. 
 Smeaton, James, engineer, 32, 51, 349. 
 Smith, Dr. Pye, 159. 
 Smith, Wm., geologisl, liia knowledgcw 
 
 lTl-173. 
 
Index. 
 
 447 
 
 Soult, Marslml, risen from the ranUSf 35 ; 
 
 loot in Spain, 314. 
 Soutliey, Kobert, 33; on abused powers, 
 
 365 ; Iiis industry, 3T0. 
 Spenser, poet, as man of business, 2dG. 
 Spinoza, 295. 
 St. Vincent, Lord, 216. 
 Steaiu-engine, invention of, 50. 
 Stephen of Colonna, saying of, 410. 
 Steplienaon, George, 30 ; perseverance, 
 
 121, 156, 349, 360 ; his play, 390. 
 Sterling, John, 402. 
 Stone, Edmund, 152, 353. 
 Stotbard, painter, 151. 
 Stowell, Lord, 249, 250. 
 Strutt of Derby, 56, 245. 
 Sugden, Sir E., 24T. 
 Suwarrow on will, 259. 
 Sydenham, saying of, 401, 
 
 T. 
 
 Taglioni, labors of, 123. 
 
 Tailors, distinguished, 29, 30. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 2T ; on idleness, 343. 
 
 Temptera of youth, 334-336. 
 
 Tenterdcn, Lord, 2T, 24T. 
 
 Thierry, Auguslin, his noble character, 
 
 368. 
 Thornbum, E., artist, 218. 
 Thoroughness, 354 
 Thrift, 323-325. 
 Time, value of, 150, 304, 306. 
 Titian, his industry, 1S4, 1S5. 
 TocqueviUe, Alexi.-j de, 45, 46. 
 Tools, education in use of, 349, 350. 
 Trifles, attention to, 145, 148, 801, 303, 
 
 305. 
 Truthfulness, 421. 
 Turner, artist, 28, 183, 189. 
 
 V. 
 Vattcanson, inventor, 81, 
 Vauquelm, chomfct, 33. 
 
 Vicissitudes of families, 232, 233. 
 
 Victor, Marshal, 35. 
 
 Vinceut, Karl St., on debt, 331. 
 
 W. 
 
 Walkek, author of "Original," on -will, 
 256. 
 
 Washington, George, ."06, 372. 
 
 Watt, James, 30, 61, 62; his perseverance, 
 127 ; a thoughtful obsei-ver, 147, 349. 
 
 Weavers' sons, illustrious, 2S. 
 
 Wedgwood, Josiah, DO ; character and 
 repulation, 112-118, 204. 
 
 Wellesley, Marquis of, his rectitude, 433. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 247, 260 ; a busi. 
 ness man, his honesty, 307-315; on 
 accounts, 331, 37-2 ; as a boy, 389 ; on 
 Sir Hobert Peel, 421; his rectitude, 433. 
 
 West, Eenjamin, painter, 151, 183, 185. 
 
 Wilkie, Sir David, 31, 151, 183; liis in- 
 dustry, 210. 
 
 Will, power of, 250-262. 
 
 Williams, John, missionary, 272. 
 
 Wilson, Professor, 32, 361. 
 
 Wilson, Eichard, artist, 31, 183, 185. 
 
 Wisdom, 359. 
 
 Wolfr, Dr., inspired by Xavier, 400. 
 
 Wollaston, Dr., 31, 161. 
 
 Worcester, Marquis of, and steam power, 
 41, 149. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, poet, 32; on self- 
 reliance, 45, 296. 
 
 Work a necessity, 131, 212, 360. 
 
 Wright, (Japtain, 91at Highlanders, 440. 
 
 Wright, Thomas, philanthropist, 337,333, 
 345. 
 
 X. 
 
 Xavibb, Francis, missionary, 269-271. 
 
 Yateb, Peel & Co., 61-63. 
 
 Young, Dr., philosopher, 31, 125, 143. 
 
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