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TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE
Vol. II.

LONDON : PRINTED BY
3P0TTISW00DH AND CO., NEW-STREET SQTTABB
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

TUMING -POINTS IN LIFE

BY THE
EEV. FEEDEEICK AENOLD, B.A.
OH11IST CHURCH, OXFORD
IN TWO VOLUMES
Vol. II.

LONDON
EICIIAED BENTLEY AND SON
NEW BUBLINGTON STEEET
1873

CONTENTS

THE SECOND VOLUME.

CHAPTER I.
SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS.
Historical Roll of our Great Lawyers — Sir William Grant  .
Lord Stowell — Pemberton Leigh — Lord Redesdale — Cha
racter of English Law — Sketch of the career of Lord
Tenterden — Turning-points in his Life — Judge Buller —
The Lessons of a Representative Career like Lord Ten-
terden's  Page 1
CHAPTER II.
THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT.
Greatness of English Commerce — The Consecration of Crade —
The Theory of making the Best of Both Worlds — The Brothers
Cheeryble — Jonas Hanway — Joshua Watson — William
Cotton  32
CHAPTER III.
RISING MEN.
How we see Men Rise— The Rise is not to be accounted for by
mere Luck — Rise through the 'Knowledge of Foreign Lan
guages — How God helps those who help themselves — The

CONTENTS OF

Founders of the Houses of Normanby, Lansdowne, and Bel-
per — The Happiness of Striving — Concerning Men who have
striven in a Good Cause — The Clapham Set — The Necessity
of Patience — The Misfortunes of Prosperous Men ; Pitt, Sir
Walter Scott, Campbell, Alexander Dumas, Voltaire — The
Epitaphs of the Hallam Family .... Page 60
CHAPTER IV.
STATESMEN.
Great Statesmen create the Turning-points of History — Turn
ing-points in the Lives of Pitt and Fox — Possible Retribution
on Pitt and Dundas — Earl Russell's Opinions — Sketch of
Sir George Cornewall Lewis— The Story of the Fall of
Clarendon  108
CHAPTER V.
TURNING-POINTS IN NATIONAL HISTORT.
Decisive Battles from Marathon to Waterloo — The Franco-
Prussian War— Discovery of America probably caused by
Observation of a Flock of Parrots — The Ifs of History — Pos
sible Fortunes of Mary, Queen of Scots — The Monotony of
History— The Education of the World — The First Napoleon
—The Historical Parallels of 1814 and 1870— The Story of
the Capture and Escape of Marlborough . . . 153
CHAPTER VI.
FORCE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES.
Digression on the Slang Term of ' Going to the Bad ' — Vast
Number of Instances in which Young Men are ruined by
their own Misconduct — Cases of Unavoidable Misfortune 
People ruined by Prosperity— The Hopes of the Hopeless-
Remedial Character of Suffering  192

THE SECOND VOLUME.

CHAPTER VII.
THEORIES OF LIFE.
Men consciously or unconsciously construct Theories of Life
— They fall back on a Moral Basis for their Actions — The
Fundamental Question of Belief or Unbelief — Citations from
Mr. Palgrave and Professor Shairp — Theory of Mr. Huxley
— Theory of Mr. Matthew Arnold — The Philosophy of
Goethe and Shakespeare —Tennyson's 'Palace of Art' — Human
Conduct at the Probable End of the World — The Confessions
of Novelists respecting their Ideal of Life — The Doctrine
of Providence in Life — Bishop Copleston and Principal
Shairp  Page 208
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PHILOSOPHY OP LIFE.
Defect in Popular Theological Teaching respecting Philosophy
of Life — The Plan of Life — The Writings of Bishop Dupan-
loup— Men should select a Special Vocation — The Ars
Vivendi ......... 237
CHAPTER IX.
LIFE, A SCHOOL OF FACULTIES TO BE TRAINED.
Life is to be regarded as a State of Education— Human Life
probably the Groundwork of Eternal Life — Beauty and
Meaning of Human Life  253
CHAPTER X.
PATIENT CONTINUANCE -IN WELL-DOING.
Patience the Test of Life— It is Constant, Equable, Impartial-
Well-doing in respect to Children, the Poor, and the Duties
of Life— Love, Faith, Hope— The Supreme Turning Point
of Life  279

TUBNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS.
It is a happy circumstance in English his
tory that we might, among successful lawyers,
enumerate many of the brightest examples of
probity, industry, and piety. The forensic
roll includes many brilliant- lives, fertile in
memorable incident and in lessons of the
highest import. We think of such judges
as the upright and pious Hale, the learned
and patriotic Selden. Such a judge was
the truly pious and amiable Chief-Justice
Wilton. Look at what Ave may call the
modern roll of those who have been in suc
cession Lord Chief Justices of England —
Mansfield, Kenyon, Ellenborough, Tenterden,
VOL. II. B

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

Denman, Campbell — and each name suggests
passages of history and life from which much
instruction has been drawn and might yet
be derived. The roll of our Chancellors,
from the pious and high-minded man who
now holds that position downwards, includes
many memorable and beneficent names.1
There are other great lawyers, whose names
are not so well known to the general reader, in
whom the highest departments of law expand
into statesmanship, such as Lord Redesdale,
Sir William Grant, and Lord Stowell. There
is something eminently instructive in such
a career as that of Sir William Grant. He
was a Canadian ex-Attorney-General, who was
long without a brief at the English Bar, until
Pitt sent to confer with him about the affairs
of Canada. This was the turning-point for
Grant. The Premier gave him a seat in
Parliament, and, although hardly known at
the Bar, caused him to receive a silk gown.
He showed himself a great lawyer; but far
1 In Foss's ' Judges of England ' there is an interesting
memoir of the last Lord Chancellor, Lord Hatherley, in
part from materials supplied by himself.

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS.

above that, he was a great Parliamentary
orator. It has been said by Lord Brougham
that, with the exception of Mr. Pitt, perhaps
no man had ever greater sway in the House
than Grant. By the consent of the whole
Bar he seems to have attained the highest
point of judicial eloquence. ' The charm of
it was indescribable ; its effect on the hearers
was that which Milton describes, when he
paints Adam listening to the angel after the
angel had ceased to speak.'
Another great lawyer, whose tone of mind
is very similar to Sir William Grant's, was
Lord Stowell. . His fame has been somewhat
overshadowed by that of his still greater
brother, Lord Eldon. But the fame of Lord
Stowell is certainly more cosmopolitan, and
will probably be more lasting. He is one
of the great founders of international law.
If you take up such a text-book on public
law as ' Wheaton's Elements of International
Law'< — it was Jeremy Bentham who coined
the felicitous phrase — it will be seen how
often his decisions are quoted. During the
long French war Lord Stowell administered

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

and in part created our civil law, showing per
fect impartiality to Englishmen and foreign
ers, and English justice became as famous
throughout Europe as English victory. Such
are the great judges, who, although not well
known to general readers, are the men who
largely fix the estimate in which England is
held by that foreign opinion which, according
to that fine saying of Burke's which Madame
de Stael so often repeated, anticipates the
verdict of posterity. It is remarkable that
Lord Stowell always looked back on old days
at Oxford as the happiest of his life, and an
old Oxford Calendar was to him, from its asso
ciations, as touching as any volume of poetry
could be.
Only a few years ago there died one of our
most successful lawyers, Pemberton Leigh,
Baron Kingsdown. He has left behind him
a privately-printed work, most of which was
allowed to appear in one of the leading
reviews, giving an account of his ' Recollec
tions ' in Parliament and at the Bar. He
retired from both at the age of fifty. He re
fused to be Solicitor-General; he refused to

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS.

be Lord Chancellor. His name was little
heard of by the general public. He simply
detested popularity; but for twenty years he
was one of the greatest judges of the final
Court of Appeal. A peerage — for he never
took pay — was the only reward which he
ever accepted from the country. He gives
a touching picture of the poverty and hard
work of his early life, but he adds — ' It was
the severe preparation for the subsequent
harvest. I learned to consider indefatigable
labour as the indispensable condition of
success ; pecuniary independence as essential
alike to virtue and happiness, and no sacrifice
too great to avoid the misery of debt.' Mr.
Pemberton Leigh obtained a large practice,
and carried in the House of Commons several
useful reforms. The following is the account
of his feelings when he won his first election :
— ' I shall never forget the night in which,
after so much excitement, I found myself
a Member of Parliament. I threw myself
upon my knees, and earnestly prayed to the
Source of all strength that I might be
enabled to perform faithfully and successfully

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

the duties which belong to that position.' At
the death of his distant kinsman, Sir Robert
Leigh, he became possessed, under very remark
able circumstances, of a property of many
thousands a year. At the age of fifty he
resolved to retire, and commence the life of
a country gentleman. ' I provided myself
with microscopes, telescopes, painting imple
ments, a chest of turner's tools, and I know
not how many other resources against ennui,
none of which I ever used ; and after the
lapse of seventeen years I can safely say that
I never had one hour hang heavy on me, nor
felt anything but regret at being called upon
to forsake my solitude in order to attend
the sittings of the Judicial Committee.' We
are informed that Lord Kingsdown was
warmly attached to the Church of England,
and more than one parish church was built
or restored at his expense.
Or again, we might take some eminent law
yers who, having attained the highest distinc
tions at the English Bar, became each of them
Lord Chancellor of Ireland. To mention one,
such was Mitford, the brother of the historian

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS.

of Greece. He was one of those few great
lawyers whose parliamentary runs parallel
with their forensic fame, one of that class of
lawyers, not very numerous, who have obtained
large business by writing a law book. The
legal attitude he took up in Parliament re
flected on him the highest honour. There
was nothing about him, and there never is in
the best lawyers, merely technical and litigious.
He implored the House of Commons, on their
prosecution of Hastings, to adhere to two
principles, ' never to bring forward a fact that
was matter of calumny to the accused, and
never to inflame the passions of those who
are to decide as judges.' The share which
he took in legislation was of a calm, judicial,
and impartial kind. The House of Commons
did itself the honour of electing him Speaker.
But Mitford frankly said at the same time
that the Bar was his profession, and that it
was in his profession that he looked for pro
motion. He subsequently became Lord Redes-
dale and Chancellor of Ireland. After his
return from Ireland he was for many years
one of the most useful and efficient members

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

of the House of Lords. His son, the Chair
man of Committees, has maintained the same
character for ability and integrity. It is such
men as these who redeem the profession of
the Bar from the reproaches so often brought
against it, and enable us to realise that great
idea of law which Hooker has so nobly ex
pressed: ' Of Law there can be no less acknow
ledged that her seat is the bosom of God, and
her voice the harmony of the universe. All
things in heaven and earth do her homage,
the very least as feeling her care, and the
greatest as not exempted from her power.
Both angels and men, and all creatures of
what condition soever, though each in dif
ferent sort and manner, yet all with uniform
consent, admire her as being the mother of
their peace and joy.'
King George the Third, on an occasion
when Mr. Justice Park was present, said of
him: ' It is wonderful to think that this little
head contains the whole law of England.'
' Not so, sire,' replied the Judge, ' it but
contains the knowledge where the law may
be found.'

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS.

An acute lawyer has remarked that Ser
jeant Wilde, afterwards Lord Truro, who
began life as a solicitor, and who was, pro
bably, for forty years concerned in nearly
every important commercial case in the City
of London, either on one side or the other,
must have been at the making of a great part
of the commercial law. For, in this country,
the law is built up by numerous decisions
which daily increase the fabric, and, as Junius
well remarked : ' What yesterday was fact,
to-day is doctrine.' The readiness with which
the prodigious memory and powerful brain of
Serjeant Wilde enabled him to recall the facts
and doctrines laid down in all the leading
cases of nearly half a century was sufficient
to strike with amazement a person of ordinary
powers. Sir John Campbell, when Attorney-
General, brought to the discharge of his im
portant duties not only advantages similar to
those of Serjeant Wilde, but from having been
a reporter, and having written out so many of
the leading cases, had so completely impressed
them on his mind, that he could quote to
younger men, to whose inquiries he was

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

always accessible, not only the names of the
principal cases in every branch of the common
law, but also the names of the reports, the
volumes, and even the pages in which they
were to be found .... Serjeant Wilde, at
Guildhall, has often been concerned in six
cases in one day, and has stated the names of
persons, dates, and sums of money in each
case, from memory, without referring to his
brief or any other written memorandum.
It would be easy to select many legal bio
graphies rich with incident and instruction.
As a story of perseverance and success there
is none that exceeds in interest the career
of Lord Tenterden, who, to many great titles,
was, as his biographer says, especially entitled
to be called ' the humble and the just. '
We will now take in detail the exemplary
life of this great lawyer, Lord Chief Justice
Tenterden. It will illustrate the turning-
points of a great lawyer's progress. Just
opposite the magnificent west portal of Can
terbury Cathedral, at the corner of a nar
row street, there was once a barber's shop.
It has now disappeared to make room for the

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS.

house of the architect to the Cathedral. It
had in front of it the long traditionary bar
ber's pole of several colours. It was only a
poor, mean-looking tenement, having blocks
in the window partly bare and partly covered
with wigs, a sign over the door with the
shopman's name, and with the announcement
that shaving cost a penny, hair-cutting two
pence, and that the hair could be fashionably
dressed on reasonable terms. It is still locally
recollected that there was a stationer's shop
attached to this one. The barber's shop was
kept by a worthy hairdresser of the name of
Abbott. He was a tall, erect, primitive-look
ing man, with a large club pigtail, who might
often be seen going about with his instru
ments of business under his arm, attended by
his son Charles, ' a decent, grave, primitive-
looking youth.' That child afterwards com
memorated his prudent father and his pious
mother. Living beneath the very shadow
of the great Cathedral, the humble family
learned to love it, and to prize its blessings.
There is reason to believe that they constantly
attended the Cathedral services. The clergy

12 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
were very kind to the worthy man, who was
indeed hairdresser to the entire Chapter, and
who made it his boast that, on no less than
three occasions, he had attended the Arch
bishop himself on the occasion of triennial
visitations. All through the career of his son Charles,
who became one of the most illustrious magis
trates that the English Bench has ever known,
we see the advantages of the endowments
for education provided by pious, charitable
men in past ages ; we see, too, the good
effected by good men in the case of a poor,
deserving scholar ; and we may trace, too, the
kindly guidings of Providence in his behalf.
The King's School, at Canterbury, gave the
small tradesman's child an education as tho
rough and complete as could be given to the
son of the richest noble. The head-master
was a profound scholar, with the rare gift of
being able to impart his abundant knowledge'.
He eagerly sought for signs of ability and
attention among his pupils, and helped and
encouraged them with all his might. His
attention was soon drawn to the cleverness

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS.

and good conduct of young Abbott. In
course of time the lad turned out Latin verse
which the head-master declared was as good
as any that could be produced at Winchester
or Eton. His schoolfellows afterwards de
scribed him as a grave, silent boy, very well
behaved, always studious and fond of reading,
even in his play hours. He made very few
mistakes in his lessons, always striving to be
accurate and equably industrious.
At fourteen he was a great hungry boy, and,
however well he was getting on. at school, his
parents thought that it was high time he should
be earning his own living. At this time the
place of a singing boy became vacant in the
Cathedral. Old Abbott thought that his son,
with his good character and his father's good
character, and his own lively parts, would
stand a good chance. The members of the
Chapter were no doubt willing and anxious to
oblige their worthy hairdresser, but they had
chiefly to consider the efficiency of their musi
cal services. It was found that Abbott's voice
was husky, but there was another boy with an
excellent voice, who very properly received the

14 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
appointment. Many years after, Charles Ab
bott became a nobleman and Chief Justice of
England. While going circuit with another
judge he came to that familiar Cathedral of
Canterbury. The Chief Justice pointed out a
singing man in the choir. ' Behold, brother
Richardson,' said he; ' that is the only human
being I ever envied. When at school in this
town we were candidates together for a choris
ter's place; he obtained it; and if I had gained
my wish he might have been accompanying
you as Chief Justice, and pointing me out as
his old schoolfellow the singing man.'
So Charles Abbott was not to be a chorister,
and accordingly he continued for a further
space at the King's School. It is hardly neces
sary to say that he became captain of the
school. When Charles was seventeen his father
thought it absolutely necessary that he should
earn his own bread. Let him be apprenticed
to the paternal business, and keep a shop as
his father did before him. This idea was a
great shock to the kind head-master. He
thought that his most promising pupil ought;
to go to college, and that the Canterbury

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS. 15
people ought to help in sending him there. In
a quiet way a sum of money was collected in
the old city for the purpose of his outfit, and
the trustees of the school granted him a small
exhibition which was then vacant. This still
was insufficient, and it is said that an inden
ture binding Charles Abbott, to the shaving
business was actually sealed, signed, and de
livered, when the trustees, apparently stretch
ing a point in his favour, came to the conclu
sion that they had power to increase the
exhibition from the funds of the school. They
voted a sum that would be a sparing academi
cal subsistence for a young man for the three
years preceding his degree. In after years,
when he had become a great judge, he was
himself one of the trustees. At a business
meeting of the body, among the agenda of the
day there was an application from an Oxford
Exhibitioner from the school for an increase of
his allowance. The secretary declared that,
after a diligent search for precedents, he could
only discover one which had happened many
years before. ' That student was myself,' said
the learned Judge; and he immediately sup-

16 TURNING POINTS IN LIFE.
plied the required sum from his own private
purse. The barber's son was now an undergraduate
of Oxford. He entered at Corpus Christi
College, where he soon obtained a classical
scholarship. We find him writing to a friend,
' I have received two letters from my dearest
mother, in which she gives me an account how
sincerely all my friends at Canterbury have
congratulated her on my success, and friends
so much superior to our humble condition that
she says, " such a universal joy as appeared on
the occasion I believe hardly ever happened in
a town left by a tradesman's son." Who would
not undergo any labour to give pleasure to
such parents! . . . But a little while
past to be a scholar of Corpus was the height
of my ambition ; that summit is, thank Heaven,
gained, when another and another appears still
in view. In a word I shall not rest easy till
I have ascended the rostrum in the theatre.'
There was then no class list at Oxford, and the
highest University distinction was to gain the
Chancellor's medal and recite a prize compo
sition from the rostrum of the Sheldonian

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS. 17
theatre. The subject for the Latin poem open
to undergraduates was the then recent glorious
defence of Gibraltar — ' Calpe Obsessa ' was
the -subject. He failed, but his poem when
returned to him bore an encouraging phrase
which indicated that it had been second best.
The man who obtained it was Mr. W. L.
Bowles, who afterwards became a useful clergy
man and a not undistinguished poet. Forty
years afterwards, when a judge on circuit, he
met Mr. Bowles at Salisbury, and with that
unfailing memory which University men have
for old College days, the judge recalled their
old competition, gracefully saying that the
rule had been preserved that the best man
ought to win ; ' detur digniori ' was the fami
liar Latin phrase.
The subjects of the prize poems then, as
now, were chosen from striking contemporary
events. Lunardi's balloon voyages were at this
time exciting the greatest attention and asto
nishment. It was little thought that this
invention could be utilized to the great ex
tent which we have lately seen in France; but
then, as now, the idea was entertained that the
VOL. II. C

¦i 8 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
balloon would be found susceptible of guidance
in any given direction, and would promote
rapid intercourse between different nations.
The balloon, ' Globus Aerostoticus,' was the sub
ject ofthe prize poem. Abbott obtained it, and
accordingly mounted the rostrum victoriously.
Next year he obtained another Chancellor's
medal with a remarkable Essay on the Use and
Abuse of Satire. But in the midst of this suc
cess his happiness was overshadowed by the
death of his father. His mother kept on the
shop opposite Canterbury Cathedral and sold
perfumery. He was willing to go out to Vir
ginia as tutor if £50 a year might be settled on
his mother for life. 'This,' he wrote, 'with,
the little left her by my father, would afford
her a comfortable subsistence without the fa
tigue of business, which she is becoming very
unable to bear.' This condition failing, Abbott
gave up the idea of going to America.
It was well for him that he did not. He had
now achieved a great University reputation.
Many private pupils came to him. After he
had taken his degree he was made Fellow of
his College, and became Junior Tutor. He

'^SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS. 19
dressed and lived plainly, and it was thought
remarkable that he never rode on horseback.
Once he told a friend with an air of triumph,
' My father was too poor ever to keep a horse,
and I was too proud ever to earn sixpence by
holding the horse of another.' About this
time it was Abbott's intention to take Holy
Orders. But it so happened that he was asked
to become tutor to a son of that famous law
yer, Mr. Justice Buller, and was thrown into
close intimacy with the great judge, as he
often spent some time at the country seat in
Devonshire. Buller was one of the greatest of
English judges. It has been said that as
Burke's name in the Senate, so is Buller's in
Westminster Hall. There are some curious
points in Buller's personal history. He
married at the early age of seventeen, and was
made a judge at the unprecedented early age
of thirty -two. He also died at a comparatively
early age. Lord Mansfield had soon perceived
his extraordinary ability, and procured him
promotion. What Lord Mansfield had done for
Buller, that Buller in turn did for the future
Lord Tenterden. He clearly discerned the great
c 2

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

intellectual strength that characterised his
son's tutor, and urged him to go to the Bar.
It is said that he furnished Abbott with funds
to enable him to do so, and as this seems to have
been Judge Buller's kind way with several
young men of promise, it is not unlikely that
he did so. The sagacious judge also recom
mended him to go to a lawyer's office for some
months, to acquire a knowledge of the practi
cal details of law. He soon gained this requisite
knowledge, and also formed a valuable legal
connection. Moreover, he managed to muster
up a hundred guineas to become a pupil of
George Wood, whom Lord Campbell calls the
' Great Master of Special Pleading.' At the
end of a year Wood told him that he had
taught him all he could. We are told that he
worked night and day in his small chambers
in Brick Court. He determined to practise
as a special pleader below the bar, until he
could take his call with every prospect of
success. For seven years he kept a sort of legal
shop, and the shop kept him. He gave all his
friends to understand that he was ready to

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS.

draw declarations, pleas, replications, and
demurrers with the utmost despatch, and on
most reasonable terms. He kept a small boy
as clerk, at ten shillings a week. Modest,
learned, industrious, he was always to be
found in his chambers fulfilling his promises
to the letter, and never losing a friend. His
door was always open, his opinion always
safe, his services ever prompt. He made a
considerable income as a special pleader, but
he determined that he would push on to
the Bar. He received his call at the Inner
Temple, and went the Oxford circuit. He
at once rose to a large business. He was
not like some barristers, a great advocate,
nor, like others, a skilful cross-examiner. "
But the solicitors liked him ; the judges
listened to him with respect; he was of the
greatest help to a leader, he showed himself
skilful and sagacious, and his law was
thorough and deep. He was never an
advocate in any real sense of the term, but
he was a great lawyer and a great judge.
He acquired a great and special reputa
tion as a commercial lawyer, and published

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

a book which was much wanted, on ' Mer
chants' Ships and Seamen.' The MS. of this
book still remains, written, we are informed,
in a beautifully neat, clear hand. In Eng
land his book is becoming superseded by the
new Merchant Shipping Acts, but in America
it continues to be the standard work on
the subject. That old cathedral connection
seemed still to cling to him, and to bring
him prosperity. He was known to be a
good ecclesiastical lawyer and sound church
man, and Lord Campbell, who knew him
well, says that he had a general retainer
from most of the prelates, and deans, and
Chapters. When his business became con
siderable, he ventured to marry. The father
of the young lady, a country gentleman,
called at his chambers, and asked him how
he hoped to maintain his future wife. He
answered, 'By the books in this room, and
two pupils in the next.' They lived for years
very happily in a little house in Bloomsbury
Square. We are told that his was a cheer
ful and pious household. Some very touch
ing and affectionate letters to his wife are on
record, and the following playful lines : 

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS. 23
In the noise of the Bar and crowds of the hall,
Tho' destined still longer to move,
Let my thoughts wander home and my memory recall
The dear pleasures of beauty and love.
The soft looks of my girl, the sweet voice of my boy,
Their antics, their hobbies, their sports ;
How the houses he builds her quick fingers destroy,
And with kisses his pardon she courts.
With eyes full of tenderness, pleasure, and pride,
The fond mother sits watching their play,
Or turns, if I look not, my dulness to chide,
And invites me, like them, to be gay.
She invites to be gay, and I yield to her voice,
And my toils and my sorrows forget ;
In her beauty, her sweetness, her kindness rejoice,
And hallow the day that we met.
Full bright were her charms in the bloom of her life,
When I walked down the church by her side,
And, five years passed over, I now find the wife
More lovely and fair than the bride.
After a long and prosperous career at the
Bar, his health showed symptoms of decline.
He saw reason to fear that his eyesight was
failing him. He longed for the comparative
rest and ease of the judicial Bench. But
he was disappointed. No promotion came.
When a vacancy arose, he was passed over.

24 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
He was determined to retire from the Bar,
and his only difficulty was whether he should
take up his abode at Oxford or Canterbury.
He had just resolved upon Oxford when one
of the judges of the Common Pleas, Mr. John
Heath — for Heath had always steadily re
fused to be knighted — died, as he always said
he would, ' in harness,' at the age of eighty.
Charles Abbott was made judge, and, taking
the degree of serjeant-at-law, as was then
usual, he assumed armorial bearings, with
the motto which so well described his simple,
industrious life — ' Lahore.'
He was now judge. His youthful vision
of going to his native town in ermine and
scarlet was to be fulfilled. He saw at once
that he should much more greatly enjoy
being judge than counsel. The search for
truth, he said, was much more pleasant than
the search for arguments. He was in a very
short time removed from the Common Pleas
to what was then the much more laborious
work of the Queen's Bench. This was in
1816. Lord Ellenborough then presided over
the King's Bench, and the other puisne

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS. 25
judges besides Abbott were those great law
yers Holroyd and Bayley. Before two
years had passed, it became quite clear to
Westminster Hall that one of the greatest
common-law judges had risen on the bench.
In 1818 Lord Ellenborough was struck down
by paralysis. It became a matter of the
keenest interest who should become the new
Chief Justice of England. After some delay
and many conjectures it became known that
Mr. Justice Abbott was to preside as chief
over the court where he had been puisne
judge. And now the full lustre of Abbott's
extraordinary character became fully appa
rent. He was the most acute and upright of
magistrates. His court became what lawyers
call an exceedingly ' strong ' court. Lord
Campbell glows with enthusiasm as he de
scribes that time. ' Before such men there
was no pretence for being lengthy or impor
tunate. Every point made by counsel was
understood in a moment; the application of
every authority was understood at a glance;
the counsel saw when he might sit down, his
case being safe, and when he might sit down,

26 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
alh chance of success for his client being at an
end. During that golden age law and reason
prevailed. The result was confidently anti
cipated by the knowing before the argument
began, and the judgment was approved by all
who heard it pronounced, including the van
quished party. Before such a tribunal the
advocate becomes dearer to himself by pre
serving his own esteem. I do not believe
that so much important business was ever
done so rapidly and so well before any other
court that ever sate in any age or country.
The principal merit is no doubt due to Ab
bott, and no one could have played his part
so well.'
Nine years after his elevation to the office
of Chief Justice, Abbott was raised to the
peerage. Mr. Canning wrote to him in 1827 :
' As in the approaching law promotions, more
than one peerage will be conferred by his
Majesty, it has occurred to Mr. Canning, as
due to Lord Chief Justice Abbott, to his Lord
ship's eminent services, and to the dignity of
the court over which he presides, that an
opportunity should be afforded to the Lord

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS. 27

Chief Justice to express his wish (if he enter
tains it) for a similar honour.' He Was
accordingly raised to the peerage by the title
of Tenterden, with which place, as a Kentish
man, he had many associations. Latimer's
quaint sermon will be recollected by many of
our readers, in which he connects the Goodwin
Sands with Tenterden steeple. That was a
great day at Westminster Hall when the whole
Bar of England wished to do the Chief Justice
honour, on the occasion of his taking his seat .
in the House of Lords. ' We all stood under
the bar,' says Lord Campbell; ' such a serried
conglomeration of wigs never was seen before
or since.' Next day Lord Tenterden threw
down a note to the Attorney-General, which
was handed through all rows of the Bar,
saying how the kindness of their attendance
had gone to his heart. He was not able to
attend the House of Lords much, as his time
was greatly absorbed by his judicial duties.
He made, however, at least one great speech,
of which the then Bishop of Rochester said that
it was most impressive and convincing. He
also effected some useful legislation in pro-

28 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
moting law reforms. After the passing of
the Reform Bill, he never sat again in the
House of Peers.
Lord Tenterden's health was now alto
gether failing. He amused himself by study
ing botany and composing Latin verse. He
wrote a very pretty Latin poem on ' The Lily
of the Valley,' and Latinised much of the
' Lady of the Lake.' He beautifully concludes
a Latin poem on the ' Conservatory,' by ex
pressing the hope that it might be allowed
him to soothe his cares by the strains of
poetic story, and in weary age to gather the
same flowers that he gathered in his youth.
In company he was always courteous, and
among his intimate friends he took pleasure
in referring to the days of his youth. This
great judge is known to have possessed one
remarkable defect, that of an irritable temper.
But it was beautiful to see how he conquered
this defect by principle, or rather by Christian
grace. The very defect that might have in
jured him served to adorn his character. ' It
was singular with what effect he fought against
this,' says Lord Campbell, 'and how he

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS. 29
mastered the rebellious part of his nature.
Indeed, it was a study to observe this battle,
or rather victory, for the conflict was too
successful to be apparent on many occasions.
He directed the jury in every particular, as if
no irritation had ever passed over his mind in
the course of the cause. It was therefore an
edifying sight to observe Lord Tenterden,
whose temper had been visibly affected during
the trial, addressing himself to the points of
the cause with the same perfect calmness
and indifference with which a mathematician
pursues the investigation of an abstract truth.'
Judge Talfourd says of him, ' The chief judi
cial virtue of his mind was that of impar
tiality; not mere independence of external
influences, but the general absence of ten
dency in the mind itself to take a part or
receive a bias.' To us this appears to be the
ne plus ultra of a judge.
Such a career as that of Lord Tenterden is
a boon to England. It shows the fairness
and impartiality of public life. It indicates
how in England the highest positions are
open to the lowliest. It shows how bravely

30 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
honours may be won, and how meekly they
may be borne.
Lord Tenterden died at the post of duty.
There had been an important trial, and the
Chief Justice presided for the first two days,
but on the evening of the second day he
went home ill. It was found to be fever,
which baffled all the efforts of such eminent
men as Sir Henry Halford, Dr. Holland, and
Sir Benjamin Brodie. It was an instance,
like the later instances of Wightman and
Talfourd, of a man dying at his post. In his
last moments he imagined that he was sum
ming up a case, and died after uttering the
words, ' And now, gentlemen of the jury, you
will consider of your verdict.' His monu
ment, which bears an epitaph written by
himself, may be seen at the Foundling Hos
pital, of which he was a governor. That
epitaph sums up the moral of his life. He
tells us how he was born of the lowliest
parents, who were yet pious and prudent, and
that the reader might learn by his example
how much among Englishmen honourable

SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS. 31
labour may achieve, with the favour of
Heaven. His son adds the words, —
Hsec de se conscripsit
Vir summus idemque omnium modestissimus.
Lord Campbell speaks with the highest
honour of the good son who thus completed
the epitaph. His grandson, too, has added
fresh lustre to the name of Tenterden by his
services on the Commission which crossed the
Channel to negotiate the Treaty of Washing
ton, and at the Court of Arbitration which sat
at Geneva — services which have been duly
recognised by the Crown, and are the earnest
of a career worthy of the name of Tenterden.

32 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

CHAPTER II.
THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT.
Standing in that central space of the City
which is the very heart of London's heart,
amid the multitudinous tumult of those who
are ' citizens of no mean city,' it was not with
out emotion that I read the legend over the
greatest Exchange in the world — ' The earth
is the Lord's and the fulness thereof; the
compass of the world and they that dwell
therein.' The legend is indeed worthy of a
city ' whose merchants are princes and whose
traffickers are the honourable of the earth.'
The inspired words lend to trade its consecra
tion. It is the acknowledgment that the
teeming produce of the earth and seas, the
treasures of the forest and the mine, all the
yield and increase within Arctic and Antarctic
circle, are the Lord's, and that He freely out-

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 33
spreads them for the use of his people to
provide them both with the splendours and
conveniences of life, to promote human inter
course and brotherhood, and to make material
blessings the types, accompaniments, and
machinery to dispense even higher blessings
than these. It seems to me that, in olden
times, the good merchants of London city
have intelligibly felt all this, and laid it to
heart. We know, too, that the line of like-
minded, true successors has never failed. I
feel this when I stand on one of the London
bridges and look back on the space occupied
by what is called the City. How grandly
looms the vast cathedral dome, giving to that
vast congeries of streets and houses its unity
and central point ! How, within the narrow
limits of the City — which, when examined, are
far from being extensive — rises the forest of
spires and towers grouped around the cathedral
mother church ! Look at the history of that
cathedral, of those many churches, of the
great civic companies, of the vast municipal
charities, and you will comprehend the liberal-
handed, disinterested character of the Christian
VOL. II. D

34 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
merchant, such as was Gresham and many of
Gresham's compatriots. I think of Barzillai,
that man of very great substance, so true to
God and loyal to David, and of Araunah, who
' as a kins; ffave unto the king.' At times we
read sorrowfully of many blots upon London's
fair civic shield, and quiet people, content with
food and raiment, wonder at the maddening
thirst for wealth ; but the recollections of
such men as Thornton and Henry Hoare are
fresh upon us, and we rejoice that Christian
England has still many a Christian merchant.
There is something, also, that is stately and
noble about the merchants. They carry their
rank on their thoughtful foreheads, and in their
gesture and bearing. Recall their portraits
by Vandyke and Titian, in the burgomasters
of Amsterdam, and the merchant princes of
Venice. Such were veritable statesmen -and
Christians, with a large eye for the rising
interests of fair Republics, with a large eye for
the still greater cause of God's truth hi the
earth. I love to think of the Venetian mer
chant, now counting up his bales from the
Indies, and his spice-boxes from Surinam

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 35
now discoursing with his brother merchants
on the Rialto, or walking with Eastern
strangers clad in their ample flowing garbs
on the Piazzetta, and anon entertaining high
questions of war, and peace, and government ;
or, amid the trophies of art and skill, gathering
beauty, and genius, and valour, to the music
and feast within the illumination of some sea
girt marble palace. Amid the merchants of
Holland the genius of commerce was deve
loped side by side with the desperate love of
endangered liberty and heroic devotion to per
secuted truth. Thus have I deeply felt in
moving about the water-streets of Venice and
Amsterdam, and thus, also, on the silent high
way, which is really London's greatest street.
I know that in the dingy resorts of commerce
are also men who will endure hardships and
bear arms if necessary; even as of old, in
perilous times, they largely gave of their sub
stance, and were willing to undergo for their
country the ordeal of battle. I know that
they have an equal devotion for science, and
literature, and art, as the great Italian mer
chant princes of the middle ages ; and, best of
d 2

36 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
all, I know how the love of God is shed abroad
in many hearts, keeping within due Emits that
adverse love of money, and prompting to many
good deeds of love, in Christ, towards man.
A work was published some years ago by a
distinguished minister of religion, the Rev.
William Arthur, entitled ' The Successful
Merchant.' It is exceedingly well written,
and the subject of the biography, Mr. William
Budgett, of Bristol, was an eminently Christian
man, with a very decided idiosyncrasy of his
own, and possessed the characteristics of a true
merchant in having both a genius for getting
and a genius for giving. The work recalls
Dr. Binney's celebrated little book, 'Is it
possible to make the best of both worlds?'
Granting that in a most important sense this
inquiry may be answered in the affirmative, I
must also add, that for myself I feel ah in
stinctive objection to the terms of the question.
I will not now go into my reasons ; if my
readers think with me, I believe that those
reasons will not be slow in suggesting them
selves. Now, Mr. Budgett was one who
sought to make the best of both worlds, and,

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. yj
upon the whole, I think he actually did so.
Yet even in reading his biography, where
things are naturally put in their fairest light,
I think I see that he fell into some mistakes
by trying to make the very most of this world.
I hold that his plan of selling some articles at
cost price, or even below cost price, with the
intention that customers should be attracted to
his store in the belief that all other things were
equally cheap, wasunmerchant-like. It ought
to be remembered, perhaps, that Mr. Budgett
was for many years a small retail dealer, and
that it was in the latter half of his life that his
transactions achieved that magnitude which
made him a great merchant. Mr. Budgett
exhibited in himself, and demanded from
others, an amount of energetic endeavour
which was abnormal and unhealthy. A man's
ordinary work must be done in an ordinary
way, and extraordinary efforts should be re
served for special occasions. He was intensely
energetic, and his eye and voice rebuked any
one in his employ who was not exhibiting a
similar degree of energy. In the words of
his biographer : ' The Successful Merchant

38 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
had lived too fast. His master energy, which
had crushed so many difficulties, had been
doing its work on his own frame, which soon
became a witness that over-activity is not to
be indulged without shattering a man at last.'
I am sure that there is a great deal too much
of this trying to make the best of both worlds.
Mr. Budgett did himself a great deal of harm,
and must have done a great deal of harm to
others, unless they made up at other times for
the pressure which he occasionally put upon
them. I point out these drawbacks, and with
this measure of exception Mr. Arthur's ' Suc
cessful Merchant ' might very well be called
the ' Christian Merchant.' It is very instruc
tive, and Mr. Budgett had a natural nobleness
and an abounding charity, which go very far
towards carrying out the idea of the highest
type of this character.
A distinction is generally drawn between the
merchant and the retailer. The ancient Greek
looked upon retailing with intense dislike,
and even with contempt and loathing. Napo
leon, with the same heathenish feeling, spoke
of us as a nation of shopkeepers. It is some-

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 39
times said that Napoleon failed to distinguish
between the merchant and the shopkeeper;
but, looking fully into the matter, I think that
this distinction might be reduced to so small
a point of difference that it can hardly hold.
Yet there are very mournful facts which affix
a stigma upon retail business from which mer
chant business is comparatively free. Mr.
Hughes once spoke to his constituents, with
the honest freedom which so well became him,
of the amount of fraudulent dealing with cus
tomers that prevailed in Lambeth ; and I saw
a newspaper paragraph the other day to the
effect that, in the district of Newington alone,
upwards of a hundred tradesmen had been
fined for the false weight and the false mea
sure. Yet the false weight and the false
measure are abominations to the Lord ! Their
use is, indeed, to eliminate Christianity from
trade, and also to eliminate such tradespeople
from Christ's kingdom. The true merchant
loves the measure shaken together and pressed
down and running over. It is immaterial to
ask whether to the merchant or to the retailer
is to be attributed the adulterated lime-juice

40 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
which destroys the poor mariners on long
voyages, the impositions about stores which
did so much mischief to our brave soldiers in
the Crimea, the cheats in connection with the
preserved meats that starved the heroic ex
plorers who shared Sir John FrankEn's last
and fatal expedition. This is the exhibition
of whatever is vilest in the most fraudulent
petty trader. Adulteration is the curse of
English trade. I once knew a really Christian
person who told me that they had given up
trade for a much less independent position in
life from the sheer impossibility of making a
livelihood without resorting to customary dis
honest shifts. Yet I cannot but hope that,
in many directions, this experiment is being
made patiently and fairly and with better
results. I cannot believe that there is any
position of life where the grace of God and
the providence of God are not sufficient. The
temptation of the retailer is ten times more
urgent than that of the merchant, and is in
cessant and unvarying, and so much greater,
therefore, is the honour and reward of one
who holds fast to his integrity towards Heaven

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 41
and towards man, and who carries into the
lowEest details of the humblest business the
great moral and religious qualities which make
up the Christian merchant.
I will now take up a few examples of the
Christian merchant, using the word in a large
sense, leaving to another paper or another pen
further remarks on our humbler merchant.
And, first, who is not familiar with the
glorious character of the brothers Cheeryble
in ' Nicholas Nickleby ?' and who was not de
lighted when Mr. Dickens stated that these
were not imaginary characters, but people in
real life ? I have been given to understand
that a certain Manchester firm was de
lineated. Surely Scott must have often met,
in the great Scottish cities, with the double of
his Baillie Nicol Jarvie! I will, however, take
three modern examples of the Christian mer
chant respectively of the last century, the last
generation, and the last few years. Any one
of these would afford ample scope for a sepa
rate chapter, but I will gather up the salient
points which I desire to present, and the
reader will find elsewhere fuller information.

42 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

The character of Jonas Hanway, as a
philanthropist, was so widely known and
appreciated in the latter part of his life, that
his remarkable career as a merchant will
incur some risk of being overlooked. Some
parts of his career have been weE brought
out by Mr. Smiles, in his ' Self-Help,' but not,
perhaps, the Christian aspect sufficiently. Mr.
Hanway engaged in the Russian trade, and
made a daring attempt to open up a Persian
trade by the Volga and the Caspian. In
later life he had a curious device on his
carriage. It represented a man dressed in a
Persian habit, just landed in a storm on a
rough coast, leaning on his sword in a calm,
resigned attitude. In the background was
depicted a boat tossed about by biEows, and
in the foreground an armorial shield, leaning
against a tree, with the motto, 'Never de
spair.' This represented an incident in his
own career on the Caspian Sea; and his pub-
Eshed travels abound with records of simEar
striking interest. Having made a moderate
fortune at St. Petersburg, he determined to
retire and spend the rest of his Efe in his own

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 43
country. Hanway always retained an ade
quate idea of the noble profession to which he
had once belonged. It is related of him that
' he was sometimes seduced into an eulogium
on the usefulness of the merchant, a character
for which he entertained great reverence.'1
He keenly enjoyed the pleasures of his hardly-
earned retirement. His biographer quaintly
says : ' He partook willingly of the joys of the
table, and that felicity of conversation which
a moderate application to the bottle excites
among men of parts.' Yet he would retire if
the mirth became boisterous, and was known
to say: 'My companions were too merry to
be happy, or to let me be happy, so I left
them.' He commenced a career of incessant
benevolence which is very rarely paralleled,
but to which Lord Shaftesbury's active work
presents a close approximation. There was
hardly any religious or charitable object, or
any object which required public spirit, in
which he was not largely concerned. To his
exertions we, in some measure, owe the proper
1 ' Remarkable Occurrences in the Life of Jonas Han
way, Esq.' &c, by John Pugh. London, 1787.

44 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
paving and lighting of the London streets,
and he was the first Englishman who, at any
risk of stares, had the moral courage to carry
an umbrella. But his exertions and liberality
were mainly devoted to charitable and re
ligious causes. We have need of a Hanway
now! for we are told that he explored the
miserable and unhealthy habitations of the
parish poor, and exposed his lungs to the
pestilential air of the* workhouse sick wards,
procuring a complete account of the internal
management of every workhouse in London
and its neighbourhood. Nor was this all.
He took strenuous means, to a large extent
successfully, to check the frightful mortality
among the infants of the London parish poor.
He founded the Marine Society and a Mag
dalen Asylum ; he was one of the first who
looked after the interests of English and
African blacks, in the case of the negroes and
chimney-sweepers' boys, and promoted, by
every means in his power, the new movement
of establishing Sunday schools. A complete
examination of his career of benevolence
would almost embrace the statistics of Chris-

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 45
tian effort during the period of his floruit.
Such Avere the beneficent occupations to
which this Christian merchant devoted the
long mellow evening of his days. His cha
racteristic cheerfulness was never better
exhibited than in his last hours, when his
case was hopeless; his last recorded word
was ' Christ.'
When Jonas Hanway died, Joshua Watson
was a lad of fifteen. He had just left a
school in the City designed for merchants'
sons, where they learned book-keeping, ex
change, .and foreign languages, and had gone
into his father's country house. His father,
a son of one of the statesmen of the Lake
country, had his place of business, as a wine
merchant, on Tower Hill, and afterwards at
16, Mincing Lane. Joshua was first his
father's assiduous assistant and afterwards
his partner. When the father had retired,
he was sought out and requested to become
a partner in a similar house in Mark Lane.
Here he made a fortune, principaEy through
Government contracts, which enabled him
to retire. It is to be regretted that the

46 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
editor of his interesting biography1 has given
us such scanty details of his mercantEe
career. Yet the biography is exceedingly
valuable. There is hardly a page, and we
have looked into all the pages, from which
interesting extracts might not be culled.
Mr. Watson was a rigid churchman, and, to
state our impression candidly, there was
something strait and sectarian in the tone of
his churchmanship. He lived on terms of
the closest intimacy and affection with the
highest church dignitaries, reminding us of
honest Isaak Walton, to whom, in several
respects, he bears a resemblance, in his love
of the Church of England, his intimacies
with bishops, his honest business ways, his
simplicity, and his goodness. When the great
crash of 1825 happened, Joshua Watson felt
the effects severely and was crippled for life.
People felt for Watson who did not feel much
for the rest, for they knew that the blow
which had fallen directly upon him had faEen
indirectly upon the charities of which he was
1 ' Memoirs of Joshua Watson,' by Archdeacon Churton.
Second edition. London: Parkers, 1863.

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 47
such a munificent supporter. The Arch
bishop of Canterbury (Manners- Sutton) sent
for him, and, with faltering voice and suffused
eyes, begged to be allowed to do anything in
the world for him. ' Judge,' said the arch
bishop on one occasion to Mr. Baron Park,
' I tell you I could not love that man more
were he my own son.' Blomfield, Bishop of
London, wrote to him to use all the money
he had at his bankers, and telling him to
pledge his credit as far as it would go. Wat
son did not avail himself of either offer,
but we may well envy the feelings with which
the Christian merchant would receive such
proofs of affection and esteem. We need
scarcely wonder that Joshua Watson was en
thusiastic about bishops. On one occasion
he wrote to the Bishop of Durham (Van
Mildert) : ' How little do those who would
fain make more equitable distribution of the
revenues of the Church know of the manner
in which its largest revenues are expended !
Would to God, without offence to Christian
humEity, the plain, unvarnished tale might
be fairly told in the ears of all the people ! '

48 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
We admit this testimony with great pleasure,
but we are still on the side of those who
advocate ' a more equitable distribution of
the revenues of the Church.' Admitting that
the exceptions are numerous and splendid, we
strongly suspect that the ' plain, unvarnished
tale ' would, upon the whole, teE a very
different story to what Watson considered it
might. Watson might speak, indeed, with
authority in the case of Van Mildert, the
most munificent of the prince-bishops of
Durham. We cannot resist the pleasure
of saying a few words about Van Mildert.
Watson had known him from a very early
time. Van Mildert used to lodge with him
in Mincing Lane when he came to town, and
subsequently the two friends kept house to
gether in Great George Street, Westminster.
Van Mildert, a poor ardent student, having
taken the living of Farningham, fell into
heavy pecuniary difficulties in consequence of
being obliged to rebuEd his house. Joshua
Watson, with other friends, took the whole
of the responsibility upon themselves. Van
Mildert writes a touching letter on the subject.

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT.

49

' The feeling is, in some respects, a very pain
ful one, and occasions a frequent depression
of spirits which I am unable to overcome.
There is a pleasure, an exquisite one, in
having such friends ; but the wound given
to the spirit of independence, by being
obliged to make such a use of them, is not
easily healed. It has been my misfortune to
be more or less embarrassed ever since I have
been a beneficed man, and every additional
benefice has brought its additional burdens,
and made me more embarrassed than before.
So that, in spite of all the friendly helps I
have met with, I still am, and to all ap
pearance ever shall be, a necessitous man.'
It is delightful to know that this poor
struggling clergyman eventually became per
haps the richest prelate on the bench, and
the University of Durham, and a thousand
private instances, bear testimony to his spirit
of incessant charity. Van Mildert went far
to prove Joshua Watson's theory. So did
that most munificent giver, Bishop Blomfield.
When giving munificently to Joshua Watson's
darling charity, the Clergy Orphan School,
VOL. II. E

50 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
Bishop Blomfield said that he was not
disinterested, for he expected his own
children would have to come to it. We have
not far to go, however, before we see a very
different state of things. In this biography
we find mention of the great liberality of
Bishop Monk. Let any praise that is fairly
due be fully conceded. Yet this bishop
left a quarter of a million behind him, de
rived from the revenues of his see. We
altogether deny that there was anything
ApostoEcal in this.
Bishop Blomfield, on the occasion of Wat
son's death, said : ' I use the word venerated
as most truly describing the sentiment with
which I regarded Mr. Joshua Watson. He
was the most remarkable instance I have ever
personally known of a Christian man devoting
all the faculties with which God had endowed
him, and a very large portion of the means,
which are more valuable in the world's esti
mate, though not in his, to the promotion of
God's glory in His Church.' Unquestionably
it was this liberal, expansive bearing of the
merchant, when added to the graces of the

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 51
Christian character, which made Watson one
of the pillars of the great Church societies for
so many years. In a position of great social
eminence, he always looked back on the old
trading days. ' He often caEed for us,' writes
a relative, ' on his way into London ; and one
day he showed us the house which had once
been his in Mincing Lane, now part of the
Commercial Sale-rooms. The very counting-
house and desk which he used to occupy
alone remained unaltered, and there we ac
companied him to receive a dividend.
Another day we accompanied him to King's
College to see the distribution of prizes to
the medical students by the archbishop. The
Bishops of London and Lichfield, Sir R. H.
Inglis, and Mr. Gladstone were also there.
My uncle sat by Mr. Gladstone, and had
much talk with him.' There used to be most
brilliant meetings at his house in Park Street.
We omit the imposing list of churchmen,
which our readers will take for granted.
' Of the legal profession, besides his friends
Park and Richardson, were Chief-Justice
Tindal, the venerable Judge Burton, Judges
E 2

52 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
Patteson and Coleridge, and Sir WEliam Page
Wood. From the medical school there were
the Heberdens, Bransby Cooper, Dr. Thomas
Watson, and one to be remembered alike as
a Christian philanthropist and able physician,
Dr. Thomas Todd. There was admission
within the threshold to many whose names
were distinguished in science, such as Dr.
Whewell, Professor Sedgwick, and Charles
Lyell, the geologist. The poets Wordsworth
and Southey were here to be heard of when
they came to London ; and here were to be
met some of the most eminent sons of art, as
Sir Francis Chantrey, and Lough, Copley
Fielding, and George Robson.' The force of
goodness and force of character had gathered
friends around the retired Christian merchant
such as are denied to vulgar rank and wealth.
Joshua Watson survived to an advanced age,
living latterly in comparative retirement,
waxing riper and riper in the Divine Efe,
becoming more and more like a little chEd,
until he was translated home ; ' it might be
said of him before his translation he had this
testimony, that he pleased God.'

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT.
On the 5th of last December, there died, at
Leytonstone, a very eminent example of the
Christian merchant. We make a few notes
from an interesting ' In Memoriam ' article
which subsequently appeared.1 William Cotton
was a man who had the very highest name in
the city of London, a man of astute character
in business, but remarkable even beyond his
remarkable commercial position for his charm
of natural character and his Christian liber
ality. He was one of a family of ten, and
circumstances not permitting him to take holy
orders, he entered the firm of Huddart and
Co., where he subsequently became one of the
principal partners. He did his business strenu
ously. He had a positive genius for engineer
ing, and was a friend of James Watt. He
was associated with those who first sent a
steamship to sea ; and he visited our great
manufacturing towns to see how power-loom
weaving might be adapted to the heavier fa
bric of navy canvas. He did away with the
pestilent system in the east end of London of
paying the mechanics by orders on publicans
1 ' Guardian '' of Dec. 27, 1866.

54 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
on Saturday nights, and substituted Thurs
day evening payments instead. The source
of information to which we have alluded
says : —
'In the year 1821 — on the introduction of
Mr. Harman — he was first elected a director
of the Bank of England. This position he
occupied for forty-five years, only retiring in
March last because the state of his health then
prevented his attending at the time of elec
tion. Many reforms and alterations in that
great establishment were due to his own
sagacity and knowledge of the true principles
of finance, and also to his clear perception of
the character and power of those who were
working with him or under him. The years
of his chief labour there were 1843-45, during
which he filled the post of Governor, at
the time when the present Bank Charter was
framed by the late Sir Robert Peel. The
latter found in WiEiam Cotton a clear and
honest adviser, decided in his own views, with
no personal interest to serve, and unsparing
in his labour. In order that this great mea
sure might be carried to a successful issue,

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 5.5
the Governor of the Bank, WEliam Cotton,
was constantly in attendance under the gallery
of the House of Commons (not being himself
a member of the House), in order that Sir
Robert Peel might be able to consult him on
any doubtful point. Often, too, in the middle
of night a messenger would come to Walwood
asking for further information. And as Sir
Robert was happy in the character of the
Governor, to whose lot it fell to conduct the
negotiation on behalf of the Bank, so was his
estimation of the great Minister's character
deep and sincere, and none more truly la
mented his untimely death. His fellow-direc
tors ofthe Bank conferred on him the unpre
cedented honour of a third election as
Governor, in order that he might carry out to
its conclusion that work which had been begun
under his auspices. It was at this period also
that the mechanical bent of his mind showed
itself in full power. The necessity Of weigh
ing all the gold coinage of the kingdom, much
of which had become light through use, made
him conceive the possibility of doing this
by an automaton weighing-machine. The

56 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
result was the present self-acting weighing-
machine, far exceeding, not only in rapidity,
but in accuracy, the steadiest and most prac
tised hand, and it is stiE at work at the Bank,
at the Mint, and in many local establishments,
just as it was at first designed by the Governor
of the Bank. It was exhibited at the Exhibi
tion of 1851, and of it one of the profoundest
reasoners of our day declared that it seemed
to him the perfection of mechanical ingenuity
— that the machine itself seemed almost to
think during the pause which ensued between
the reception of the sovereign into the scale
and its delivery into its appropriate place,
either as a light or fuE-weight coin. The
machine has been appropriately named " The
Governor." '
But Cotton's brightest achievements were
beyond these. He devoted himself earnestly
to the practical Christian work of the London
hospitals. The London Hospital, St. Thomas's,
Guy's, and King's, all owed something to his
strenuous efforts. The same was the case
with churches and schools. The great Church
societies, the Society for the Propagation of

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 57
the Gospel, the Society for. Promoting Chris
tian Knowledge, and the National, found him,
as they found Joshua Watson, a very pillar
of strength. As a gentleman of country es
tate, he served as sheriff of the county and
chairman of quarter sessions. From the time
of his first entering business he made a resolu
tion, which he faithfuEy kept, of devoting one
tenth of his profits to pious and charitable
purposes. God blessed His servant in this.
His gains were large, and his commission fund,
as he called it, was large correspondingly.
' There was no exultation in what he had
accomplished during a long life, but regret
that he had not done more : no trust in his
own good deeds or boundless charities, but
earnest faith in the merits of his Saviour.' He
survived to his eightieth year, as his father
had done before him.
Several common characteristics will be noted
in these examples of the Christian merchant.
Each worked strenuously and successfully at
his business ; each had the moderation and
good sense to retire after a competent fortune
was gained, whEe he had stEl an unblunted

58 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
capacity for knowledge and enjoyment, and
secured a breathing-time of repose before he
was called away ; each purified and elevated
the society in which he moved, and reflected
honour on the calling which reflected honour
upon him ; each devoted energy and wealth
to the good of his fellow-creatures, and the
glory of God. Such men carried the peculiar
sense, earnestness, and insight of their calling
into the larger matters that included it, and
went far beyond. They looked upon their
immortal existence as a whole, and not alone
upon its earthly and temporary part. They
were not influenced by narrow considerations
of mere profit and loss, but regarded their
example to children and friends, the testi
mony of an approving conscience, the sweet
ness of a good and honoured name, the ratifi
cation of their deeds by a righteous Judge at
the last. They savingly solved that greatest
problem of loss and gain — how far it would
profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose
his own soul. With all their gettings they
got understanding, and valued wisdom as

THE CHRISTIAN MERCHANT. 59
being in worth beyond rubies. They sought
diligently in their calling for goodly pearls,
and they found the Pearl of Great Price, and
held all worldly things as dross compared to
that, their best and only abiding treasure.

60 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

CHAPTER III.
RISING MEN.
I think nothing is more pleasant than to see
a good man reaEy rising in the world. Slowly
but surely they seem to find their way to the
front at last. ' Slow rises worth by poverty
depressed,' wrote old Johnson, whose personal
history barbed the line. One day I went to
visit the shop of a worthy apothecary to which
I was wont to resort. The apothecary had
disappeared. He rigorously confined himself
to his private residence, where he saw his
patients, and, though the shop was his, he
declined to pass its portals. Or to go a grade
higher in the profession, I remember a
struggling surgeon, who managed to struggle
on certainly, which is saying something in
these hard competition times, but that was aE.
I visited him the other day after the lapse of

RISING MEN. 61

years. A carriage and pair was standing at
the doors, and I soon found that he was over
whelmed with work of a highly remunerative
kind, and, although I am sure that, as is the
nature of 'the beloved physician,' no case of ne
cessity or poverty would appeal to him in vain,
yet he had given up aE the lower work of his
profession, and no professional work would
be undertaken which in the exclusive sense
would not 'pay.' The other night I went to
see an old College friend. He told me with a
pardonable glee that he had been walking
down Whitehall with a Cabinet Minister. The
point might seem a trivial one, but to him
it represented a great social success. And
when I caEed on my friend at his office and
saw the people with whom he was surrounded,
and found that I had to wait in his ante-room,
I began fully to understand that my friend
was a rising man. Very glad am I to find
that my friend, the young solicitor, has put
on another clerk, has joined a good club, and
no longer lives in chambers, but has a box in
the country. He gets back as a bird to its
birdcage at nightfall. Very glad am I to see

62 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
that my friend the merchant stays at home
after breakfast half an hour later, and drives
down in a brougham to his place of business.
When I visit at their houses they tell me when
it is time to go out and make ' some filthy
lucre,' and announce their intention of retiring
as soon as they have made ' a Ettle pile.'
There are some men who, so to speak, are
bound to get on. When they have planted their
feet on the first rung of a ladder they must
needs mount. A Solicitor-General in the course
of nature should become Lord Chancellor or a
Chief at least. When a counsel has shown
that he has some specific gift in some particu
lar class of cases, say patents or election busi
ness, or winning the hearts of juries, he must
rise. When a man has been private chaplain
to a bishop, or head-master of a school, or a
Regius Professor, he is on the groove of ad
vancement. The ' Saturday Review ' said ofthe
late Dr. Longley that he was a safe card, and
the Government played him again and again!
As a Westminster boy he was called ' the rose
among thorns,' and he passed on from bishop
ric to bishopric with universal appreciation.,

RISING MEN. 63

Canon Melvill, who died the other day, was an
example of a man who in orderly sequence
passed from grade to grade in the minor
ranges of his profession, being a man, however,
who would have done honour to the highest.
There was a time when Canon MelviE was the
most remarkable man of his profession. All
who aspired to be orators crowded to hear
him, and I have even heard that members of
the House of Commons endeavoured to trans
plant his peculiar style. A schoolboy at
Christ's Hospital, a sizar at St. John's, he
became not only a Fellow of Peterhouse,
but one of the most remarkable influences
of Cambridge, an influence which continued
to expand and bless when removed to the
wider circle of London. Of late years popular
preaching has very much declined in the popu
lar estimation. People to whom it was once
almost the sole intellectual stimulus as well
as reEgious, now study the daEy papers,
and find many opportunities for cultivating
the pleasures of the mind. Perhaps reEgion
benefits by the change. The deepest needs of
the soul wEl still seek satisfaction, but reli-

64 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
gious instruction will not now be so much
confounded with the rhetoric of merely popular
oratory. In religion, as in many other de
partments of human life, there wEl be room
to treat a great subject intellectuaEy, and to
bring it into connection with all the lines of
thought that move contemporary lives and
opinions, and constitute what is sometimes
vaguely called 'the spirit of the age.' There
will not fail a succession of men competent to
deal with such subjects, or a succession of dis
ciples to take a living interest in them. But
that class of rising men who may be described
as popular preachers, who attracted immense
audiences, and rose through their gift, wEl
now probably have a much more limited
sphere. The biographies of eminent preachers
wEl be fewer and less varied. Any apparent
loss that may result would probably be com
pensated in other ways.
It has often been said that there are some
persons who have a natural tendency to rise
and others to fall. If you take two men and
put them down in precisely similar circum
stances in the streets of London, it has often

RISING MEN. 65

been said that in a short time one wEl be in
obscurity and distress and the other wEl be
prosperous and famous. A man wEl, perhaps,
say that it is aE luck; like the late Emperor of
the French at WEhelmshohe, that he has been
' betrayed by fortune.' But without denying
that disturbing and confusing element of
chance, we must nevertheless reduce it within
much smaller limits than is ordinarily sup
posed, and resolve it into a question of man's
faculties and his proper use of them. You
must first supply a man with tools, and then
test his capacity to use them. I heard of a
young fellow of fortune who was anxious to
become an engineer. He found, however, that
the great engineering establishment which he
considered the best, or at least the best for his
purposes, refused to receive any apprentices,
even with the largest premium. Our would-
be engineer was resolved not to be disap
pointed. He sought for employment in the
yard as a common workman, and was engaged
at a pound a week. He dressed and fared as
a common workman, and was always among
the first, at five or six in the morning, when
VOL. 11. F

66 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
the gates were opened. In this way be ob
tained a very complete notion of the business.
I read the other day an interesting address
by a lawyer to his brethren in the law, 1 which
shows the kind of means by which rising men
rise. ' A knowledge of foreign languages is a most
useful branch of knowledge for an attorney.
When I was young this knowledge was little
esteemed, and it was only here and there that
a parent of unusual foresight sent his son to
France or Germany for education. In these
cases, too, the son was usually destined for
manufacturing, commercial, or mercantile pur
suits. Fifty years ago a knowledge of foreign
languages was rare in our profession, and Mr.
Lavie, a London solicitor, who had been sent
to France when young to recover his health,
made a large practice and a large fortune
principally by his knowledge of French. This
knowledge is not now scarce, and a solicitor
of my acquaintance in London speaks both
German and. French with the same ease and
fluency with which he speaks English. This
1 The late Mr. Glynn, of Newcastle.

RISING MEN. 67

has brought him practice, and in some actions
which he has had to prosecute in the French
courts he has actuaEy gone over to France,
and by the " comity of nations," which has
more weight in France than in England, he has
been permitted to argue his cases and conduct
his evidence, viva voce, in the French court.
'People may call an attorney an attorney,
as we call a dog a dog, but there are as many
kinds of the one animal as there are of the
other. An old solicitor in Newcastle, in a
debate at the meeting of the Literary and
Philosophical Society of Newcastle, declared
that if he found a clerk of his reading a novel
he would discharge the culprit on the spot.
Now, can this plan of treatment be considered
as judicious ? An attorney who knows nothing
but law is at a disadvantage with another who
knows the world. Let us, by all means, get
as much of history, biography, voyages, and
travels as we can ; processes of manufacture,
ingenious inventions, marvellous works of man
— say, knowledge of places and things. Don't
let us foEow the example of Sir Arthur Hazle-
wood, a young Scotsman of old famEy, in-
F 2

68 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
vented by Sir Walter Scott, who went to the
Bar, but finding, in an action \>j a -tallow-
chandler, that he was expected to defile his
mouth with filthy terms of trade, threw up
his brief, and left the profession in disgust.
Both in patent laws, and in many others, you
will find terms of trade, of manufactures, or
of seamanship most useful knowledge. But
of all useful knowledge, knowledge of men, of
human nature — knowledge of the world, as it
is caEed, is the most useful of all.'
The same writer gives an example of the
way in which legal gentlemen contrive to rise.
' The advice given by a very old London at
torney to a friend of mine, on leaving the Lon
don Agency Office to come to Newcastle, was
sound, through strange — " Don't sit too much
in your office ; walk about and let the people
see you." Advertising is not supposed to be
followed by our profession, but here, within
certain reasonable limits, is a short and simple
way of advertising. A client is not likely to
employ an attorney whom he never saw, and
the highest praise bestowed by a London
attorney upon his partner, in my^hearing, was

RISING MEN. 69

this : — " He never goes round the corner but
he brings in a client." " There are ten people
who can do business, for one who can get
business," was the remark' to me of a London
attorney, of fourscore years and five ; and I
lay before* you the results of experience longer
than my own, that you may not make the
mistake into which so many young attorneys
fall at their start in life, that they are not to
move, but let people come to them. In theory
— Yes ; but in practice you must meet busi
ness halfway.'
It has often been said that God helps those
who help themselves. Nothing succeeds like
success, and it often happens that those who
by their own exertions have reached the
highest pinnacle of success have received ex
traordinary favours from Dame Fortune when
they have been securely placed beyond her
power. We take an excerpt from the un
published autobiography of Lord Kings-
down : —
' In 1830 an event happened which has de
cided the course of my subsequent Efe. Sir
Robert Leigh, who had retired from Parliament

70 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
in 1820, and had amassed by prudence and
frugality a very large property in addition to
his patrimonial estate, though he had been
always fond of Mr. and Mrs. Cooke, had kept
up no intercourse with the rest of the famEy,
and indeed had apparently an aversion to
them. The famEy estates had been settled
by his father, in default of issue of his own
body, on the issue of his own brother (my
grandfather), and would have been divided,
therefore (if the limitation had taken effect),
amongst his five daughters, of whom my
mother was the eldest. This settlement had
greatly annoyed Sir Robert, and indisposed
him towards those who had the chance of
benefiting by it. In 1828 or 1829 he quar-
reEed with the rector of Wigan, who claimed
tithes of the Hindley Hall estate, which Sir
Robert insisted was covered by a farm modus.
The rector filed a biE in Chancery, and set
down his cause at the Rolls. Sir Robert en
deavoured to retain Bickersteth, and was very
angry when he found that he was retained on
the other side. Still greater was Sir Robert's
annoyance when he was told I was next in

RISING MEN. 71

business in court, and that he must engage me.
He submitted, however, though I believe with
a very bad grace ; said I was a mere boy, and,
in short, considered his case as sacrificed.
When his attorney, Mr. GaskeE, who was a
perfect stranger to me, came to consultation,
I observed that I believed I had some in
terest, or might have some interest in the
estate ; when he informed me that the entaE
had been found faulty, and that Sir Robert
had barred the remainder after the limitations
to his own issue and his brother and their
issue male. This did not much disturb me.
On looking into the evidence I found that
there was a fatal blot in our case. In order to
maintain a farm modus it was necessary to state
precisely what lands were covered by it, and
if any were improperly included or improperly
omitted. The modus was held to be ill laid,
and a decree went against the defendant.
On looking at an old map of the estate I found
that a small piece of land taken in from Pen
nington Green some fifty years before was
included in our answer as part of the ancient
farm. The only chance for us was that the

72 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
blot might not be hit.' Lord Kingsdown pro
ceeds to teE how he fared in the suit, and
eventually succeeded to his kinsman's im
mense possessions.
We wEl, for our next instances, take the
fortunes of the founder of the house of
Phipps, and the founder of the house of
Petty, which have culminated, respectively,
in the marquisates of Normanby and Lans-
downe. They are remarkable instances of
industrial success, combined with a very fair
proportion of luck. Not altogether dissimEar
would be the fortunes of the house of Strutt,
which appropriately culminated in the peerage
of Belper.
The founder of the house of Phipps, ' this
our Phipps,' as his biographer calls him, was
born in an obscure part of New England, the
son of a gunsmith, who rejoiced in twenty-
five other children besides the future great
man. From his earliest days we are told
that he had an unaccountable impulse on his
mind hinting to him that he was born for
great matters. He was, indeed, always noted
for one mark of real greatness — a greatness

RISING MEN. 73

independent of material success, namely, that
he was of ' a most incomparable generosity.'
Yet at twenty-three he was only a working
carpenter, who, having the good luck to
marry a well-to-do young widow, was able to
set up in business on his own account. He
assured his incredulous wife that on some
far-distant prosperous day ' he should be
owner of a fair brick house in the Green
Lane of North Boston ; and that, it may be,
this would not be all that the providence of
God would bring him to.' His first specu
lations, however, despite this presage of good,
turned out to be altogether of a disastrous
character. In the course of his business of
shipbuilding he heard a rumour that some
where off the Bahamas there was a wreck
that contained a mighty treasure. From
shipbuilding he had turned sailor, and now,
with a genuine adventurous spirit, he went
to England to see if he could find any en
couragement at Whitehall for his scheme of
recovering the wreck. After much waiting,
he was at last furnished with a vessel, and
sailed forth upon his adventurous quest. But

74 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
precious things do not reveal themselves all
at once to the seekers. His saEors rose in
mutiny against him, and when he had re
placed them by a new set, these proved so
unsafe that he thought it best to return to
England ; yet before he did so, being off
Hispaniola, he contrived, ' by the policy of
his address,' to worm out of a very old man
some further information about the lost
treasure-ship. When he returned to the
Court of England of course the old story of
incredulity, delay, and disappointment was
once more repeated. The Duke of Albe
marle, however, with one or two others,
charmed with his conversation and address,
were willing to run a risk ; and so he was
enabled to ' set sail for the fishing: ground
which had been so well baited half an hundred
years before.' He had with him a tender,
and when he got to Port de la Plata, with
infinite pains he fashioned out of a cotton
tree a canoe or ' periaga,' which would carry
eight or ten oars. His device was that the
' periaga ' should explore the dangerous shoals
which would rise within two or three feet of

RISING MEN. 75

the surface of the water, and yet were so
steep that a vessel striking against them would
sink down countless fathoms deep into the
ocean. These shoals were known by the
emphatic title of the Boilers.
One day the men were out in the ' periaga,'
peering about, as they had done on many a
fruitless day before. One of them, gazing
down into the depths of the clear water,
saw the marine plant caEed the sea-feather
wafting out of a rock, and desired one of the
Indian divers to pluck it up that they might
not return altogether empty-handed. The
diver brought up the feather, and he also
brought them back a marvellous story. He
said that close by the rock where he found
the sea-feather there were numbers of great
guns lying about. The men were utterly
astonished, and told the Indian to dive again.
This time he brought up a large lump of
sEver, worth some hundred pounds. They
now fixed a buoy to mark the spot, and
rowed back to the ship. They kept their
discovery secret for a time, putting aside ' the
sow of silver ' in the cabin until the captain

76 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
should notice it. ' At last he saw it. Seeing
it, he cried out with some agony, " Why, what
is this? Whence comes this?" And then,
with changed countenances, they told him
how and where they got it. " Then," said
he, " Thanks be to God, we are made ! " '
He might indeed well say so. That ' fair
brick house in the Green Lane ' was assured
to him. They took up thirty-two tons of
sEver. Over the silver had grown a crust
like Emestone, several inches, which they had
to break through with instruments, ' when
whole bushels of rusty pieces of eight would
come tumbling out.' Moreover, they found
great quantities of gold, pearls, and precious
stones. The value of the whole was close on
three hundred thousand pounds. And now
dreadful apprehensions seized upon the mind
of ' this our Phipps,' at last so lucky. He was
afraid lest the sailors should rise in mutiny
and take the treasure for themselves. He
made all sorts of vows ' u° the Lord would
carry him safe home to England with what
he had now given him to suck of the abun
dance of the seas and of the treasures hid

RISING MEN. 77

in the sands.' He came home safely, and the
Duke of Albemarle, to whom the lion's share
of the spoil fell, certainly had his ' fling of
luck.' Phipps' share was sixteen thousand
pounds ; and the Duke, with much gallantry,
presented him with a gold cup for his wife,
worth a thousand pounds. The king con
ferred on him the honour of knighthood. So
great was now his reputation for courage and
ability that James II. would willingly have
retained him in England ; but his heart was
set upon that ' fair green house,' and with the
title of High Sheriff of New England he
returned home to set about constructing it.
On his way home he again revisited the scene
of the wreck, and made some very handsome
pickings there.
The career of Sir William Phipps hence
forth becomes historical. On his return
home he caused himself to be christened,
being then thirty -nine. ' I have divers times,'
he said, ' been in danger of my life, and I
have been brought to see that I owe my
life to. Him that has given a life so often to
me.' It is to be regretted that much of his

78 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
religion henceforth consisted in burning
harmless old ladies whom, as High Sheriff,
he considered to be guilty of witchcraft. His
ruling idea henceforth was the conquest of
Canada; and though the armament which he
conducted against the French was unsuc
cessful, yet he paved the way for its eventual
subjugation. His intense devotion to his wife,
who bore him no children, is a touchingly
beautiful feature in his character. He died
at the comparatively early age of forty-five.
Before his death we find him brought into
connection with one Constantine Phipps. This
gentleman was, most probably, his nephew,
through one of his one-and-twenty brothers.
To him also he probably bequeathed the bulk
of his fortune. This Constantine Phipps was a
distinguished lawyer, and became Lord Chan
cellor of Ireland; he is noted for his .having
returned to his practice at the Bar after he lost
the seals. His son married the heiress of the
third Earl of Anglesea ; and the son of this son
was raised to the peerage of Ireland under the
title of -Mulgrave. Afterwards the title be
came Viscount Normanby and Earl of Mul-

RISING MEN. 79

grave, and its last possessor, who, with all his
imputed failings, was a most able and accom
plished man, became Marquis of Normanby.
But the honest, hardfaring man — the lucky
finder of the treasures in the Spanish seas,
is justly regarded as the founder of the house
of PhippSj of courtier fame.
The founder of the house of Petty has
told us much of his history in that curious
autobiographic document, his wEl. His father
was a clothier, and ' also did die his own
clothes.' As a boy, the illustrious Petty had
a passion for knowledge and for making and
accumulating money. He talks of ' getting
up mathematics ' and ' getting up money ' as
being very much the same kind of thing.
Even as a lad, when he went to Normandy in
a vessel, he played the merchant, and made
a matter of sixty pounds. He then spent
several years on the Continent, and, it seems,
exhausted his funds. He told Aubrey that
in Paris he lived for a week or two on two or
three pennyworth of walnuts. Later he went
to Oxford, and was also admitted a member
of the College of Physicians. He tells us,

80 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
also, that he was admitted a member of
'several Clubs of the Virtuous.' The ex
pression is curious enough as a description
of a club, but what Petty meant was the
Virtuosi. As a physician he performed his
famous cure of Ann Green. This woman
had been hung, and after execution had been
suspended for half an hour, and finally her
friends had rolled her about and stamped on
her before she should come to the knife of the
dissector. Petty succeeded in resuscitating
her, and she lived for many years. But his
famous pecuniary achievements were made
in the settlement of Ireland, after the sup
pression of the RebeEion, in 1641. Petty
was then physician to the army. He per
ceived that this was a great opportunity of
making a fortune. He procured a contract
for the ' admeasurement ' of forfeited lands.
He made thirteen thousand pounds by the
contract, and then purchased from the sol
diers, at low rates, those forfeited lands
of which they had debentures. He must
have made very lucky bargains ; for Aubrey
says that these lands were worth eighteen

RISING MEN. 8r

thousand a year to him. These enormous
gains occasioned much envy and ill-feeling.
One of Oliver Cromwell's knights challenged
him ; but Petty said that he was a near
sighted man, and, if they fought, they must
fight with carpenters' adzes, in a dark cellar.
The Restoration saved him. Although he
had been a warm Cromwellite, he dexterously
contrived that he should be regarded as a
devoted adherent of the new Government. He
was made Surveyor-General of Ireland, and all
his territorial possessions were secured to him
by the Act of Settlement. The survey which
he made of Ireland was a great national
service. From Mount Mongarto, in Kerry,
his eye could sweep over fifty thousand acres,
all his own. Not content with this, he busied
himself about mines, fisheries, ironworks, and
the timber trade. Petty was clever in all
kinds of ways, and had a remarkable in
ventive faculty; he had the manners of a
courtier and the versatEity of an actor; but
he made money with a kind of intuition of
genius. Pepys has a mention of him : ' 1st
February, 1684. Thence to Whitehall ;
O VOL. II. G

82 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

where, in the Duke's chamber, the King
came and stayed an hour or two, laughing at
Sir W. Petty, who was then about his boat,
and at Gresham College in general ; at which
poor Petty was, I perceived, at some loss ;
but did argue discreetly, and bear the un
reasonable follies of the King's objections,
and other bystanders, with great discretion;
and offered to take odds against the King's
best boat ; but the King would not lay, but
cried him down with words only.' Petty
married a lady whom Aubrey describes as
' very beautiful, brown, with glorious eyes.'
He died in Piccadilly. His widow was made
Baroness of Shelburne in her own right ; her
youngest son became Earl of Shelburne.
Besides his property in England he owned
a hundred and thirty-five square miles of
land in Ireland. All his children died before
him, so he left his vast estates to his nephew,
the Hon. John Fitzmaurice, who assumed
the name of Petty, and was made a British
peer, under the title of Baron Wycombe. A
grandson of this nobleman was the late cele
brated Marquis, whose social gatherings at

RISING MEN. 83

Bowood and Berkeley Square were so remarks
able, and who is understood to have refused
the Dukedom of Kerry.
The real founder of the Belper peerage was
Jedediah Strutt. His father was a country
yeoman, and the Derbyshire legend goes that
Jedediah, as a mere child, used to construct
miniature waterfalls on the little stream that
glided through his father's fields. He, too,
was lucky in his marriage, although the luck
is not at first sight very obvious. His
wife's family all "belonged to the hosiery
trade, and the young man's thoughts were
thus directed into a channel in which he was
enabled to do justice to his remarkable in
ventive faculty. He constructed a curious
and complicated machine, the parent of the
lace frame, for the manufacture of ribbed
stockings, and removed to Derby, where he
worked his invention under a patent. Here
another strqke of luck happened to him. A
certain individual of the name of Arkwright,
who had the notion that he had devised a
cotton-spinning invention, appEed to Mr.
Strutt and his partner for capital to carry it
a 2

84 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
into effect. The great scientific sagacity of
Jedediah Strutt at once detected the extra
ordinary importance of the invention. A
partnership was speedily arranged; and in
that most pleasant village of Cromford, close
by the lovely scenery of Matlock, the first
cotton-spinning mill was erected. Soon after
wards Mr. Strutt's own invention was applied
to the weaving of calicoes. Thus that great
manufacture Avas cradled in Derbyshire which
became so fruitful a source of modern indus
trial prosperity. He had four splendid mills
at Belper, where he fixed his residence, the
Cromford property, where they have a mag
nificent seat, eventually accruing to the Ark-
wrights; For three generations the family
of the Strutts, widely ramifying throughout
the country, were the chief manufacturing
powers and great social influence in Derby
shire. They have also been largely noted for
their munificence and public spirit. Their,
splendid liberality in the promotion of useful
pubEc objects, and especially in attending to
the comfort and well-being of their work
people, is one of the most useful and brEEant

RISING MEN. 85

examples of the sympathy that ought to exist
between the gentry and the ouvriere class.
The great industrial success of the Strutts
has always been joined with a thorough love
of literature and the arts. We find Thomas
Moore, the poet, when residing in Derbyshire,
thus mentioning the Strutts in the year
1813: — 'There are three brothers of them,
and they are supposed to have a mElion of
money pretty equally divided between them.
They have fine families of daughters, and are
fond of literature, music, and all those ele
gances which their riches enable them so
amply to indulge themselves with. ... I
like the Strutts exceedingly; and it is not the
least part of my gratification to find a very
pretty girl of sixteen reading the sixth book
of Virgil and not at all spoilt by it. This
is Joseph Strutt's eldest girl — a classic, and
a poetess into the bargain. Indeed, they
have quite a nest of young poets in that
famEy. I do not think I wrote half so well
when I was their age. Then they have fine
pianofortes, magnificent organs, splendid
houses, most exceEent white soup ; so that

86 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
I passed my time very agreeably among them,
and Bessy came away loaded with presents.'
There are, however, better instances of
rising men than those who have acquired riches
and honour for themselves. It is perhaps,
after all, not a very truthful or elevating view
of human life to represent that a man by
energy and ability may rise beyond his fellows
and win some of the great prizes of life. If
there are prosperous elements that lead one
way, there are adverse circumstances that
impel in the other direction. Many of those
who strive to rise meet with utter failure in
case their ambition is frustrated, but those
who desire most of all simply to do their duty
to God and man can never meet with absolute
faEure, but will, after all, gam substantial
success. There is a very sensible man who says,
writing from his own experience : ' The very
act of struggling is in itself a species of
enjoyment ; and every hope that crosses the
mind, every high resolve, every generous
sentiment, every lofty aspiration, nay, every
brave despair — is a gleam of happiness that
flings its Elumination upon the darkest

RISING MEN. 87

destiny. All these are as essentially a portion
of human life, as the palpable events that
serve as landmarks to the history; and all
these would have to be computed before
we could fairly judge of the prevailing
character of the career.' Nothing is more
interesting than looking at the history of in
significant minorities of men who, few in
number but strong in conviction, have ulti
mately carried the suffrages of the better part
of the community, and have proved benefac
tors to the world. Such men are in the best
sense rising men, and their prosperous cause
is not a selfish one. A magnificent example
of such a group is to be found in what Sir
James Stephen called the Clapham set, and of
which Mr. Colquhoun has written in the
' Contemporaries of Wilberforce.' The story
of. Wilberforce himself is one that might be
fitly rehearsed by some new writer to each
generation of Englishmen.
And what a remarkable set of men they
were, who thoroughly leavened the Church
of England, and greatly changed the face of
society and our EngEsh world! Nothing is

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

more wonderful than the freshness, strength,
and originaEty which distinguished this great
party of the so-called Evangelicals. They
present lives of intense interest, and even love
stories and gleams of romance. First of aE,
we have the elder Milner, who, from the
drudgery of the loom, pushed on to be senior
Wrangler and head of Queen's College, and
who brought into the travelling carriage which
Wilberforce shared with him that copy of
Doddridge's 'Rise and Progress' which, under
°God, so materially changed the lives of both.
Then we have Newton, to whom WEberforce
resorted for aid and advice in his renewed life.
Among all my friends, I now know only one
who attended the breakfasts Newton used to
give — where he was listened to as an almost
inspired oracle, and if he only coughed, an
anxious inquiry ran round the circle as to
whether the cough had covered some precious
utterance — and who would watch him in the
pulpit of St. Mary Woolnooth, as he would
ask his man-servant where he had left off, and
would be told that it was something about the
Lord Jesus Christ. Then we have that ex-

RISING MEN. 89

traordinary young man, John Bowdler, who,
in some respects, reminds me of Henry Kirke
White, and in some respects even of Pascal.
He broke down his health by extraordinary
intellectual toE, evidencing both a strength and
versatility of mind that were most remarkable.
He formed a deep attachment to a young lady,
which, on account of his unsettled prospects,
was long discouraged by his friends, and at last,
upon the eve of marriage, he was found in his
chamber with a blood-vessel burst in his lungs.
The purity and elevation of his character had*
won him the deep love of the pure and high-
minded men with whom he associated. ' 0 sit
anima mea cum Bowdlero ! ' was the heartfelt
exclamation of Wilberforce. A set of men were
associated with Wilberforce whom Mr. Col-
quhoun calls the Cabinet Council. Among
these was Stephen, the Master in Chancery,
who married Wilberforce 's sister, father of the
historian, working thoroughly in dry uncon
genial duties, yet full of energy and impe
tuosity in stirring up Wilberforce and his
friends to good works, and delighting to get
away from Chancery Lane to the woods and

90 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
lawns ofthe country. It is' pleasant to find
a shrewd Londoner, like Stephen, writing :
' The country is that where I learn what is
good for myself. I love the country ; I love
its natural, innocent joys ; I love its natural,
instructive sorrows. . . Oh what a delicious
oratory is a beech-wood in a calm, hot day !
Not a leaf stirring; not a sound ; a sacred
kind of shady light, with here and there a
straggling sunbeam, like a gleam of providen
tial direction for the dark concerns of life.'
But the chief rural figure among these men
was that of Thomas Gisborne, the clergyman.
He used to live in the most retired and woody
part of Needham Forest, amid oaks, flowering
gorse, and chestnut trees, keeping open house
for his tired friends, when they wanted to
exchange London for country scenes and
country air. He would tell them about every
bird, flower, and insect which he saw, and take
them into the cottages of the forest ; or, in
winter, he would come up to Palace Yard,
Battersea Rise, or Kensington Gore, where he
would be dazed by the throng of faces, the
tumult of voices, but would give his safe and

RISING MEN. gr

sound advice, and be glad once more to betake
himself to his glades.
The two Thorntons, John and Henry, are
very interesting men. The elder was the
one who allowed Newton a considerable an
nual sum for charitable uses while he was
at Olney, and whose great relaxation it was
to carry pious Churchmen and Noncon
formists about in his carriage, taking care
that they had plenty of pipes and tobacco
if they wanted such. Churchmen and Non
conformists drew closer together in those days,
when the fashionable hatred was directed
against the so-called Methodism of the Evan
gelicals. Colquhoun justly says : ' When the
waters are out, inequalities vanish; when the
waters subside, hillocks reappear, and dispu
tants plant their feet on these, and count them
great heights.' Henry Thornton, the son,
with his father's "wide beneficence, had one of
the finest and best balanced minds of the set.
For thirty years he was .member for South-
wark, and never spent a guinea in a bribe.
His seat was often in peril — the forest of black
hands was frequently against him on nomina-

92 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
tion day ; but when defeat seemed imminent,
all good men to whom his Christian example
was dear, all sensible men who rejoiced in the
character for independence and good sense
maintained by the member for Southwark,
rallied round him. When his children re
joiced at seeing the long triumphal procession,
he said, ' I had rather have a shake of the
hand from good old John Newton than the
cheers of all that foolish mob, who praise me,
they don't know why.' He gave it as his
deliberate opinion that wealth was ' extremely
mean, except for the sake of the beneficent
uses to which it is convertible.' It was the
example of Wilberforce that had won over
Henry Thornton to better things ; he had
observed that Wilberforce, in his crowded
active life, always, kept a morning hour in
violate, and his Sundays holy. Most interest
ing is the account of Thornton's associates,
who used to meet at Clapham, in the Oval
Library which Pitt. planned, looking out on
the lawn, in what was then only a village, but
which the long arms of London have now
reached and clasped to herself. Among the

RISING MEN. 93

young men were the promising young lawyer,
Copley, young Stephen, and the boy from Mr.
Preston's academy, Thomas Babington Ma-
caulay, the son of the stern Scotchman who
almost founded Sierra Leone, and the relative
and namesake of the Leicestershire squire,
Thomas Babington, the descendant of Crusaders,
and a warrior in the mighty modern crusade
against slavery, and all other evils. Then,
again, there were such noblemen as Lords Bex-
ley, Sidmouth, and Teignmouth. Then, again,
there was the delicate, pensive form of Mrs.
Grant, of whom poor Bowdler said, that ' she
was so soft, so gentle, so unwearied, surely she
was sent into the world to comfort the sick
and sorrowful ; ' and, hardly less remarkable,
Mrs. Henry Thornton herself. Of Mrs. Grant
Mr. Colquhoun says, 'Married in India, having
passed in that tropical climate many of her
most impassible years, a character naturaEy
gentle seemed to have been mellowed into
special tenderness under those Eastern suns ;
so that when she left India and passed into
our colder and sterner society, she brought
into her manners, looks, and sentiments some-

94 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
thing of that sensitive delicacy which belongs
to plants nursed into luxuriant growth under
the heat of Southern suns. The voice soft and
low, the manner quiet and retiring, the dress
itself, the veE thrown over the head, and
falling down in folds over the figure, was all
in keeping with that veiled modesty and gentle
purity.' When the Thorntons died — the wEe so
soon after the husband — Robert Harry Inglis
and his young wife, being childless, with rare
disinterestedness and courage, took charge of
their young family of nine children. How
well this duty was discharged is evidenced,
among other facts, by this, that when the ' elder
son, arriving at man's estate, was qualified,
both by ability and fortune, to take up an
independent position in the house which his
father owned, he, voluntarEy declining that
post, preferred for twelve years to live, with
fiEal duty, as a son in the house where he
might have ruled as a master.' Sir Robert,
by a kind of magic, gathered around him
every man who had made himself conspicuous
in active life or in intellectual pursuits. Even

RISING MEN. 95

Macaulay, who differed from him toto coelo,
heard him with reverence, and gave him the
homage of a son. For many years he was one
of the most familiar figures of the House of
Commons, coming down, night after night,
with the unfailing rose in his button-hole — a
rose, however, never gathered by himself
in the country, for he was one of the most
inveterate of Londoners, but constantly sent
him by those who knew and loved the man.
He travelled abroad regularly, enchanting the
foreigners by his simple, grand manners, and
supposed at times to be an English duke. He
was the personification of happiness and
courtesy. He was thoroughly well educated,
with that peculiar and most valuable education
which results from intimacy with distinguished
men. To talk with Guizot, Hallam, Palgrave,
Macaulay, Southey, Croker, Lockhart, about
history and literature ; to Whewell, Owen,
Sabine, Murchison, about science; to Stamford
Raffles, Basil Hall, Sir John FrankEn, Dr.
Wolff, about travels; to Chantrey, Lawrence,
WEkie, about art : this was surely an educa
tion better than Christ Church gave him, and

96 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
he proved himself highly educated, so as to
hold his own with such men,- and to prove one
of the most serviceable of the trustees of the
British Museum.
This cluster of names forms a very Hagiology
for the present generation of the Low Church
clergy. Their sayings and doings are a veri
table acta sanctorum. Men have caught their
fleeting examples and crystallized them into
abiding shapes. Their lines of speech and
action have been reduced to formulas, and even.
to shibboleths, and have been made binding
on their successors. Now this stETness and
strictness are quite contradictory to the frank,
free, joyous spirit of these great men. More
over, the accidental features have been con
founded with the essential. Platform oratory
is considered the great exponent of Exeter
Hall views ; but WEberforce himself regarded
this with distrust, and looked upon it as a
shadow, and drawback, and necessary evE.
Nevertheless, it is right to imitate a good
thing, although of course an imitation must
always come behind the original. What one
would desire to point out is the peculiar in-

RISING MEN. 97

fluence which such men as Wilberforce,
Thornton, and Ihglis acquired in the House.
At first they were disliked, avoided, scoffed
at ; belonging to neither party, they were sure
to reprove, and uncertain to support. Never
theless, these men attained to be a power in
the country. Thus, important decisions hung
on their voice and influence. The Minister of
the day would address to them appeals not to
make up their minds until they had heard* the
Government side of the question. Men knew
that in one quarter of the House, at least,
there was an unpurchasable integrity. We
want men at the present thne who wiE forget
the dreams of selfish ambition and inglorious
ease, who wEl be true to the voice of duty,
and who wEl have that heartfelt patriotism,
that heartfelt religion which, when united,
wEl do our land the good she so sorely
needs, and alone confer a pure and lasting
fame. On every side we see slow waiting, and the
necessity of patience. Johnson wrote, ' Slow
rises worth by poverty depressed,' and he
hhnself was the best iEustration of his apoph-
VOL. II. H

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

thegm. There seems to have been no conscious
point in his career at which the drudge of the
booksellers became the dictator of the literary
world. It was learning, hard Avork, and good
sense, well-nigh sublimated to genius, which
made him victorious, and if there was any
definite moment of victory — as perhaps there
was — it has not been recorded for us. The
same story is told over and over again in the
annals of literature, science, and art. We have
all heard of the provocations of Palissy, the
potter. Such a life as that of Stephenson, the
engineer, shows us the gradual triumph of
genius. He was over forty before he secured
a position Avhich afforded him the modest com
petence of a hundred a year. He inaugurated
and carried out the whole raEway system, in
spite of the organised opposition of the Avhole
stupidity of the country. The readers of Mr.
Smiles' ' Lives of the Engineers ' will remem
ber other instances of the class to Avhich Ste
phenson belonged. Such is the renowned Tel
ford, the son of the smaE East Lothian farmer,
who became the architect of three great London
bridges, of the Plymouth breakwater, and the

RISING MEN. 99

London and East India Docks. Such, again,
was Rennie, the romantic dreamer of Eskdale,
a poet and a friend of poets, whose moral
beauty of Efe is as remarkable as the list of
the great bridges and canals by which he de
veloped the resources of the country. Such,
again, to take another French instance, was
D'Alembert.. Being exposed and abandoned
by his mother, the lady novelist De Tencer, in
a public market, he was placed by the autho
rities as a foundling at a glazier's shop. He
showed an extraordinary love and aptitude
for learning, but he was baffled and dis
couraged at every step. They ridiculed his
pursuits at home ; at school they dissuaded him
from mathematics, in which department his
powers were of the highest order; and, what
was almost worst of all, whenever he persuaded
himself that he had done something original,
he invariably found that others had found out
the same thing before him. Such abEity could
not possibly be repressed. At twenty-four he
was a member of the Academy, and henceforth
his career was plain. Then his brilliant but
unnatural mother is said to have claimed her
h2

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

son. D'Alembert replied, ' You are only my
step-mother; the glazier's wife is my mother.'
We have spoken of brilliant successes in these
high inteEectual walks of life, and have seen
that they do not so much depend upon great
gifts, or the opportunity of their exhibition,
as on a fixed purpose and a rule of life. There
is a real danger, perhaps, in allowing the mind
to dwell upon pictures of human success.
Those who are striving form a far too glowing
conception of the prosperity of those who have
attained. If we look at the lives of the most
successful men, gain is chequered by disaster
and loss, and, according to the common image,
the fruit clutched so eagerly becomes as Dead
Sea ashes to the taste. An eloquent writer
once wrote a religious work on ' the Mirage of
Life.' Those who dream of worldly success,
those who attain to such success, often find
that the real object of their search has eluded
their grasp, and their very successes only serve
to point a moral and adorn a tale — to point a
moral on the vanity of human wishes, and to
tell the tale of glory saddened by sorrows and
reverses.

RISING MEN. 101

' How do these events,' Wrote at the time
Mr. Wilberforce, the friend of Pitt ; ' how do
these events tend to illustrate the vanity of
worldly greatness! Poor Pitt, I almost be
lieve, died of a broken heart. A broken
heart ! What ! was he like Otway, or Col
lins, or Chatterton, who had not so much as
a needful complement of food to sustain theE*
bodies, while the consciousness of unrewarded
talents and mortified pride pressed them
within, and ate out their very souls? Was
he even like Suwarroff, another most useful
example, basely deserted and driven into
exile by the sovereign he had so long served ?
No ; he was the highest in power and esti
mation in the Avhole kingdom; the favourite,
I believe, on the whole, both of king and
people. Yes ; this man, who died of a broken
heart, was First Lord of the Treasury, and
Chancellor of the Exchequer.'
Or. look at the language of Sir Walter Scott,
in reference to his leaving Abbotsford. ' When
I think,' he writes, at a time when leaving Ab
botsford apparently for ever ; ' when I think
what this place now is, with what it has been,

102 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
not long ago, I think my heart avEI break.
Lonely, aged, deprived of all my family, I am
an impoverished and embarrassed man.' At
another time he writes, ' Death has closed
the dark avenue of love and friendship. I
look at them through the grated door of a
burial place, filled with monuments of those
who once Avere dear to me, and Avith no other
wish than that it may open for me at no
distant period.' Not long after, he writes in
this strain: ' Some new object of complaint
comes every moment. Sicknesses come thicker
and thicker ; friends are fewer and fewer. The
recollection of youth, health, and powers of
activity, neither improved nor enjoyed, is a
poor strain of comfort. The best is, the long
halt will arrive at length, and close all.' Such
was the confession of one who had drunk so
largely of the world's cup of enjoyment. Oh,
how emphatically does it warn those whose
hearts are still set upon similar vanities !
Or compare the language of the poet Camp
beE. ' I am alone in the world. My wife and
the chEd of my hopes are dead. My only sur
viving child is consigned to a living tomb ' (he

RISING MEN. 103

was the inmate of a lunatic asylum). ' My
old friends, brothers and sisters, are dead —
all but one, and she too is dying. My last
hopes are blighted. As for fame, it is a bubble
that must soon burst. Earned for others,
shared for others, it was sweet ; but, at my
age, to my own solitary experience it is bitter.
Left in my chamber alone with myseh0, is it
wonderful my philosophy at times takes fright;
that I rush into company, resort to that which
blunts, but heals no pang; and then, sick of
the world and dissatisfied with myself, shrink
back into solitude ? '
Perhaps few literary contrasts are sharper
than that presented by the first great success of
Alexander Dumas, at the Palais Royal, albeit
that success was of a questionable kind. The
Due d'Oriians (Louis Philippe) was there,
accompanied by twenty or thirty princes and
princesses. Completely unknown before the
representation of his ' Henri Trois,' he was
next day the most famous man in Paris. As
soon as his success was assured, and he had
received the congratulations of his friends,
he hurried off to see his sick mother. ' How

104 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFjb..
many envy me this evening,' he writes,
' who little thought that I passed the night
on a mattress by the bedside of my dying
mother ! '
Of Voltaire, it is none other than the
friendly Marmontel who says : ' To him the
greatest of blessings — repose — was unknown.
It is true that at last envy appeared tired of
the pursuit, and began to spare him on the
brink of the grave. On his return to Paris,
after a long exile, he enjoyed his renown, and
felt the enthusiasm of a whole people grate
ful for the pleasures he had afforded them.
The weak and last effort he made to amuse
them, " Irene," Avas applauded, as " Zaire " had
been; and this representation, at which he
was crowned, was for him the most delightful
triumph. But at what moment did this tardy
consolation, the recompense of so much work
ing, reach him? The next day I saw him in
his bed. "Well," said I, "are you at last
satiated with glory?" " Ah, my good friend,"
he replied, " you talk to me of glory, and I am
dying in frightful torture." '
As an example of a literary family, eminent

RISING MEN. 105

for sorrow as well as intellectual greatness,
look at the memorials of the wonderful Hal-
lam. Not so much to be pitied were those
that died young as the father who witnessed
the premature departure of so much goodness
and promise. Look first at the inscription on
his tablet at St. Paul's, which was probably
written by Macaulay. ' Henry Hallam, the
historian ofthe Middle Ages, of the Constitu
tion of his country, and of the literature of
Europe. This monument is raised by many
friends, who, regarding the soundness of his
learning, the simple elegance of his style, his
manly and capacious intellect, the fearless
honesty of his judgment, and the moral dig
nity of his life, desire to perpetuate his me
mory Avithin these sacred walls, as of one
who has best illustrated the English lan
guage, the English character, and the EngEsh
name.' This is the inscription to the memory of
Arthur Henry, set. 23, the subject of Tenny
son's ' In Memoriam.' His epitaph at Cleve-
don is as folloAvs : — ' And now, in this obscure
and solitary church, repose the mortal re-

106 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
mains of one too early lost for public fame,
but already distinguished among his con
temporaries for the brightness of his genius,
the depth of his understanding, the nobleness
of his disposition, the fervour of his piety, and
the purity of his life. Vale dulcissime, desi-
deratissime. Requiescas in pace usque ad
tubam.' Here are the epitaphs on two other chil
dren : — ' Eleanor Hallam, d. aat. 21. Her
afflicted parents, bending under this second
bereavement, record here that loveliness of
temper and that heavenly-minded piety which
are lost to them, but are gone to their oavti
reward.' ' Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam, d. set. 26. In
whose clear and vivid understanding, sweet
ness of disposition, and purity of life, an
image of his elder brother was before the eyes
of those who had most loved him. Distin
guished, like him, by early reputation, and by
the affection of many friends, he was, like
him, also cut off by a short illness in a foreign
land.' We need not add anything to these touch-.

RISING MEN. 107

ing epitaphs. They tell, indeed, the touching
story of the vanity and glory of genius and
success, but they tell also of that blessed hope
that alone solves the enigma of life, and brings
consolation to all its sorrows and disappoint
ments.

108 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

CHAPTER IV.
STATESMEN.
A large subject in connection with history
and life opens up in reference to statesmen
and statesmanship. Their lives are fraught
with larger influence and meaning than the
lives of other men ; they connect the broad
events and tendencies of history with the de
tails of individual life. Many of the most
stirring pages of history and all its milder and
more graceful passages belong to the lives of
the great men who have Eved and made
history. There is a curious theory that
distinguished statesmen are but the 'out
come ' of their time, and the real history of
a country must be sought in the masses of
the people. There may be some measure of
truth m this assertion which has been over
looked by some regular historians, but the world

STATESMEN. 109

is pretty well agreed that the great men who
have stamped their mark upon an era have
shaped the destinies of their country and have
invisibly influenced the course of subsequent
ages. Dr. Johnson intercalated a well-known pas
sage in Goldsmith's ' Traveller,' commencing
with the lines :
How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure !
There is in these lines that general amount of
truth and error which is ordinarily found in
such universal propositions.
In the Georgian era it can hardly be said of
any English statesman that he caused or cured
many human ills, except in some very remote
way. There are, however, times in the his
tory of all nations when good or bad legisla
tion has been fraught with far-reaching con
sequences. Some moments in the lives of
statesmen have really been the deepest mo
ments of national history. The hour when a
line of thought and observation has con
ducted a statesman's mind to some course of

no TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
practical action beyond battle or treaty is a
landmark in a people's history. No events
loom larger in Athenian story than the Con
stitution of Solon or the Constitution of Cleis-
thenes. To use Dr. Arnold's phrase, we
draw no distinction between ancient and mo
dern history, except that ancient history is in
a sense much more truly modern than much
which we call modern history. That is in
deed a happy destiny ' To scatter plenty o'er
a smEing land, and read his history in a na
tion's eyes.' At the same time there is an
infinite amount of truth in Johnson's lines.
Nothing is more important than that people
should understand what statesmen are and
what they are not able to do. Individual Efe
is the ultimate fact in all politics. The great
men of any era are unable to confer upon a
man the mastery over his passions and the
harmonious development of his complex na
ture. They can only put him under general
conditions favourable for his progress. They
cannot enlighten his conscience, soothe his
grief, or take away his poverty. They can
provide him with a sphere for the exercise of

STATESMEN. in

his powers, but they can only do this in
proportion as 'self-reverence, self-knowledge,
self-control ' can make him fit for political
life. The great defect of all revolutions has
been that people have sought from Govern
ments what Governments cannot give, but
which they might have found in themselves.
The lives of statesmen may demonstrate con
clusively the comparative narroAvness of the
limits in which they must work. They show
also the comparative unimportance of the forms
of institutions, but the supreme importance
of the brightness, spirit, and purity that should
animate them. The statesmen who really-
shine brightest in history are those who have
developed both the resources and the spirit, of
a nation, who have attended to material ii>
terests, but have not allowed material interests
to dwarf the patriotism and inteEigence of
the people. The lives of statesmen have
always been a source of the deepest interest,
through the knowledge that their lives have
influenced so many lives, that they, through
their action on their country, are brought not
remotely into direct connection with ourselves.

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

We follow them, animated and interested,
through the successive steps by which they
attained to power, and peruse the great
speeches by which they astonished and de-
Eghted Senates. It would, by the way, be an
amusing subject to write an essay on the
perorations of speeches. Amid these enuncia
tions of the largest aspirations of statesmen,
you might find almost every example of gor
geous rhetoric and ill-starred vaticination.
What Minister eA'er yet brought in a Bill re
lating to Ireland, repealing, amending, or pro
mulgating laws, without drawing a vision of
an Utopian age which was to follow the passing
of his proposed legislation ? The Irish perora
tion is the most striking specimen of its class.
There is something almost exciting as we turn
to the gladiatorial encounters of the arena of
the Senate. Of all kinds of glory, military glory
is the promptest and the most fraught with
results, but next to that come the cheers of a
great oration and a triumphant division. Yet
it must be owued that when we come to look
into the lives of statesmen there is generaEy
very much of disappointment. ' See, my

STATESMEN. 113

son,' said Oxestierna, ' by how little wisdom
we are governed.' Sometimes we see instances
of astonishing littleness in great people. Thus
the Duke of Wellington was violently op
posed to Russia because he had violent quar
rels with the Lievens, and thought himseE0
not civiEy treated at St. Petersburg. Simi
larly M. Guizot is accredited with an un
friendly feeling towards England, because in
England there had been a lack of personal
attention to him.1 * Very often also there is a
certain narrowness in the views and feelings
of statesmen. Accustomed to deal with men
in the aggregate, they are deficient in sym
pathy with individual life, and are content
with political combinations instead of looking
into the deeper tendencies of a nation. Thus
the great experiment of ruling France by
a parliamentary government under Louis
Philippe led to the capital error of absolute
reliance on the majority of a Chamber. Again,
statesmen have been tempted to look upon
religion simply as a means of government, in
stead of perceiving that religious questions
1 Lord Dalling's ' Life of Lord Palmerston.'
VOL. II. I

ii4 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
underlie all others, and are more important
than any. It is a reproach that may continuaUy
be levelled against statesmen that they are
slow to discern the signs of the times. The •
Parliament that met just before the breaking
out of the Franco-Prussian War was congra
tulated in the speech from the Throne on the
quietness and amity of nations. When Lord
Granville assumed the rehis of the Foreign
Office he was told that never before had there
been such a lull in the affairs of Europe.
If we looked, then, at the great turning-
points in the lives of statesmen we should
take both a larger and a more limited view.
In the larger view we should take those
events which have, in influencing a statesman's
mind, also influenced the destiny of his country.
Such a time has been that when Hyde renounced
his connection with the Roundheads, or Burke
with the Jacobins. The gradual growth of
opinion in the mind of the late Sir Robert Peel
led first to his acceptance ofthe Catholic claims,
and next to his abandonment of Protection.
The more limited view concerns the occasions
which .determined a man's connection with a

STATESMEN. 115

party or his advance in office, as when Mr.
Canning sided with the Liberals, or Mr. Can
ning's great pupE, Mr. Gladstone, definitely
broke with the Tory party, among whom he
had been brought up. Of course, there is no
sharp line of demarcation between these two
classes of instances. It does not follow that
because a statesman has overthrown any sys-
temf that, therefore, the system was a wrong
one ; Ave only see that the application of prin
ciples must vary with the conditions. The
principle of Protection might be right in one
stage of a nation's history, but under altered
circumstances it might be best to resort to a
system of Free Trade. Under one state of
society an aristocratic GoA7ernment might be
best. In another a truly representative sys
tem might be best, and when intelligence is
more widely diffused, representation may
be broadly based upon a national suffrage.
Neither the statesman who has founded a
system, nor a statesman who has abolished a
system, is deserving of unlimited panegyric or
condemnation. They have each done best for
the times in which they lived. The rival
1 2

116 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
schools have simply exhibited the oscilla
tions of the pendulum. At times it may he
best to create a system, at times to destroy,
at times to reconstruct. This has been the
lesson taught by the history of monarchy in
England. The monarch's power, raised almost
to despotism by the Tudors, was destroyed,
and raised again under the Stuarts, and re
constructed in the Revolution. In the con
flicts of statesmen we see the clear exhibi
tion of political truth. Some one truly said
of a debate in the House of Commons, that no
one speech gave the entire truth, but that the
entire truth is to be gathered from all the
speeches. We . mention such considerations,
because in a country like England it is most
important to moderate the acrimony of
discussion, and that we should understand
that men of all parties work truly toAvards
the common wealth. The study of the lives
of statesmen is one of the' best means of at
taining to political knowledge, all-important
in countries with such Constitutions as our
own. They have a special nobleness, pathos,
and importance of their own, and their indi-

STATESMEN. 117

vidual history shadows off by imperceptible
degrees into national history.
Obliged to resort to a principle of selection,
we look at some points in the lives of those
two illustrious statesmen, Pitt and Fox, who
are so closely and immediately connected
with our own current history. It oddly hap
pened that in early youth the two were
brought together. It so happened that one
day Lady Holland said to her husband, ' I
have been this morning with Lady Hester
Pitt, and there is little William Pitt, not
eight years old, and really the cleverest child
I ever saw, and brought up so strictly and so
proper in his behaviour, that, mark my words,
that little boy avEI be a thorn in Charles' side
as long as he lives.'1 Pitt's first speech in the
House of Commons at once established his
parliamentary reputation. Never, said Bishop
Tomline, were higher expectations formed of
any person upon his first coming into Parlia
ment, and never were expectations more com
pletely fulfiEed. The thought of the great
Chatham was in each man's mind, and so paved
1 ' Fox Correspondence,' edited by Lord Russell. Vol I.

nS TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
the way to success. As soon as Pitt sat down,
Fox with generous warmth hurried up to
wish him joy of his success.1 'He is not a
chip of the old block,' said Burke ; ' he is the
old block itself.' There came an important
moment when Pitt called on Fox to give him
Lord Shelburne's invitation to re-enter with
his friends the service of the Crown. ¦ Bishop
Tomline says, ' This was, I believe, the last
time Mr. Pitt was in a private room with
Mr. Fox, and from this period may be dated
that political hostility which continued through
the remainder of their lives.'
That was a great moment when the King sent
for Pitt as the only man who could make head
against Fox, and resolved to govern through
his means. The youngster accepted the post
of Premier. ' Without one moment's faltering
he responded to the call.' On the afternoon
of the A^ery same day on which that call was
made, young Pepper Arden rose in his place
and moved for a new writ for the borough of
Appleby, ' in the room of the right honour
able William Pitt, who since his election has
1 Lord Stanhope's ' Pitt.'

STATESMEN. 119

accepted the office of First Lord of the Trea
sury and ChanceEor of the Exchequer.' There
was immediately a burst of loud and genera!
laughter. It was not altogether unlike the
moment when Mr. Disraeli sat down amidst
the derision ofthe House, saying that the time
would come Avhen they would hear him.
Nevertheless, he formed his Cabinet, his majo
rity increased, the influence of Fox declined,
and at the age of twenty-four the heaven-
born Minister commenced his long Dictator
ship. There Avas a very touching passage in the
life of Pitt given by Lord Stanhope,, the one
love of his life-time for Eleanor Eden. Mr.
Pitt avows to Lord Auckland his love for his
daughter, and Lord Auckland as candidly
avows that his love might have been fully
appreciated. But the mighty Premier of Eng
land — we might almost sav her uncrowned
monarch — could not marry because he was not
a man of fortune. The young people, like
multitudes of young people, could not marry
because there was an insufficiency of means.
There Avould be no provision for the young

120 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
lady in the possible case of her being left a
widow. Pitt owns to her father that he was
not in circumstances in which he could make
his daughter an offer of marriage. Lord
Auckland replies that he was aware in general
of the circumstances of pecuniary debt and
difficulty in which Mr. Pitt Avas involved.
The Premier desired that all the blame, if
any, should be borne by himself. And so the
matter terminated.
Two points may be mentioned in the career
of Pitt which had a great effect, humanly
speaking, in bringing about its termination.
The first of these rests on probable grounds.
It seems to have been the condemnation of
Lord Melville, the sting being that the con
demnation was brought about by Mr. Wilber
force, whose known probity determined so
many wavering opinions. Pitt watched his
friend with intense interest, knowhig the
mighty results which the member for York
shire could ensure. 'It required no Ettle
effort to resist the fascination of that pene
trating eye.' The second Lord Malmesbury
(Lord Fitzharris) says that the numbers on

STATESMEN. 121

the vote being equal, 'the Speaker Abbot
(after looking as Avhitc as a sheet and pausing
for ten minutes) gave the casting vote against
us. Pitt immediately put on the little cocked
hat that he was in the habit of wearnig Avhen
dressed for the evening, and jammed it deeply
over his forehead, and I distinctly saw the
tears trickling down his cheeks.' The noto
rious Colonel Wardle said that men Avanted
to see ' how Billy looked after it.' Colonel
Legard, in 'a letter to Wilberforce, saijd, 'I
believe that the delinquency of Lord Melville
and the desertion of some of his oldest friends
inflicted a Avound upon his mind Avhich it
never recovered, and contributed to his pre
mature death.' Mr. Wilberforce docketed the
letter with tho statement, ' It did not injure
Pitt's health.'
It is very remarkable that the condemna
tion of Lord Melville, and the grief and dis
appointment of Pitt, appear to have been a
kind of just retribution for the part Avhich
they took against Warren Hastings. It seems
that both of them had a great jealousy against
Warren Hastings, fearing lest he should ob-

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

tain a seat in the Board of Control, and dis
tribute the valuable patronage according to
the King's personal views. Mr. Storer tells Mr.
Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland,1 ' Mr. Dun-
das said before several persons the other day,
with that generous frankness which is his cha
racteristic, that the Opposition had done his job
for him — they had knocked up Mr. Hastings's
pretensions to the Board of Control, and had
ruined the Bengal squad.' If Pitt and Dundas
had joined in the impeachment of Hastings
from a selfish political motive, they certainly
experienced a just retribution, which might
serve as a beacon and example in any annals
of statesmanship.
But the blow which most certainly de
stroyed Pitt was the battle of Austerlitz.
This is called by Lord Stanhope's father ' the
immediate cause of his death.' There came on
him the careworn and unhappy aspect which
Wilberforce called ' the Austerlitz look.' On
his return from Bath, as he passed along the
passage of his Putney villa, he saw a map
of Europe, and mournfuUy said, ' RoU up
1 'Auckland Correspondence,' Vol. I., 472:

STATESMEN. 1-23

that map ; it will not be wanted these ten years.'
Only suppose that he could have known that
the distinguished Indian officer whom he met
hardly two months ago at Lord Camden's
table1 — one Arthur Wellesley — was destined to
pluck out the eyes of the French eagle and
to chain it to a rock.
Fox got into Parliament before he was
twenty-one, and had made some good speeches,
but none of them with the success that had
attended Pitt's first effort. King George
early took a dislike to him. ' That young
man has so strongly cast off eA^ery principle of
common honour and honesty, that he must
become as contemptible as he is odious.' Put
ting out of account his first Junior Lordship
at the Admiralty, Fox Avas not quite twenty
months in office altogether. It must be
owned that in England statesmanship was
a very poorly remunerated profession. Fox,
with his immorality, gambling, and drunken
ness, was scarcely fitted to sway a nation
where character counts for at least as much
as cleverness. Walpole tells a strange story,
which Lord Holland recognises, of an im-

124 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
postor calling herself the_ Hon. Mrs. Grieve,
who undertook to get him a young West In
dian hekess as his Avife, Avith a fortune of
eighty thousand pounds. He ultimately mar
ried his mistress, Mrs. Armistead, and had
not the generosity to own that she was his
wife. Lord Russell has some terrible words
on Fox : ' His life had from his youth been
one of indulged passion and loose morality.'
The detection of Fox's illness was made by
Lord Lauderdale. Fox had gone to Chelten
ham, no one suspecting that he had any serious
complaint; but Lord Lauderdale, whose father
had died ofthe dropsy, first called the attention
of Fox's friends to the swelling of his legs
and the falling off about his neck and chest.
Sir George Cornewall Lewis indicates Avhat
he considers was the great turning-point in
the life of Fox. ' We beEeve that Fox's deci-
cision to separate himself from Lord Shel
burne was the turning-point of his political
life, and exercised an enormous influence upon
the subsequent course of events.' The Avay
in which Fox deserted Lord Shelburne, on an
imputation of insincerity, and formed a coali-

STATESMEN. 125

tion with Lord North, is a remarkable chapter
in politics. As Mr. Disraeli says, ' England
does not love coalitions, and henceforth he
continues in hopeless opposition to Pitt.'
Fox, a middle-aged man, groAving old, has
left his Alices, or his vices have left him. He
is enjoying his luxurious retirement at St.
Ann's Hill, and gratifying that passionate
loATe of Greek literature, which appears to be
innate in the higher order of EngEsh states
men. Fox's death, Avhich happened rather
suddenly, is represented as a kind of
euthanasia. ' Read me,' said the dying man,
' the Eighth Book of Virgil.' His last words
were ' Liz,' meaning his wife, and ' I die
happy.' Lord Russell concludes his chapter
with Lord Holland's remark : — ' If a conscious
ness of being beloved and almost adored by
all who approached him, could minister con
solation in the hour of death, no man could
Avith more reason or propriety have closed
his career with the exclamation of "I die
happy," for no man ever deserved or obtained
that consolation more certainly than Mr. Fox.'

126 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
Perhaps, however, we might desire a consola
tion even firmer and better than this.
I cannot think that Lord Russell's estimate
of Pitt is altogether impartial or eAren just.
Lord Russell never for a, moment loses the
poEtician in his attempt to be biographer and
historian. He entirely disapproves of Pitt's
first war Avith France, which saddled us Avith
the main burden of the national debt, as
altogether unnecessary. He does not, how
ever, appear to me to do justice to the point
of view in which the majority of the nation
looked on the matter; neither can I believe
that Pitt was fighting without any defined
views of the object of the contest. He is
entirely in favour of that second war, after
the rupture of Amiens, in part of which Fox
Avas Foreign Secretary. Lord Russell does
not appear to be very consistent in his opinion
of the conduct and character of Napoleon.
He can hardly mean both the one and the
other of the folio Aving sentences : —
'It was not possible, sure- ' He (Napoleon) meant to
ly, for the First Consul to be undisputed master of the
show, by experience, his in- continent of Europe, to

STATESMEN. 127

clination and love of peace, change the disposition of
while he was forced by his territories and the form of
enemies to carry on war government of various coun-
with all the vigour he could tries at his pleasure, and to
command.' — Page 200. • impose silence on all who
might feel alarmed or in
dignant at the violence of
his acts and the insolence of
his language.' — Page 264.
Lord Russell thinks that King George made
a master of kingcraft,, and yet sneers at him
because he refused Fox as his Minister before
the death of Pitt, and accepted him afterwards.
But this very abEity to discern the signs of
the times, and not to aim at impossibilities, is
the very difference between our Stuart and
Hanoverian princes. We have the manffesta-
tion of great contempt for the royal under
standing. Certainly it was nothing better
ihan that of the average merchant, and squire,
and rector. But average merchants, rectors,
and squires make up a considerable section of
;he State, and it was as well that they should
have so potent a voice as the King's in the
souncEs of their country. ' The national heart
still beats true to George III.,' truly said Mr.
Thackeray. With all his drawbacks and thick-

128 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
headedness, he was honest, he Avas pure, he Avas
self-denying, he was religious, and, thank God,
these are qualities Avhich the great mass of
Englishmen will always appreciate.
Fox's death was an euthanasia. Pitt's
certainly Avas not ; he died a miserable man.
' My country, how I leave my country ! ' were
his last words, extorted by his grief for Aus
terlitz. It is, we believe, a fact, that a visitor,
calling at his Putney vEla, found it deserted
by his hireling servants, and passed through
one deserted room after another till he came
to the chamber where the statesman was lying
dead. When last thoughts came with his last
illness, he was not happy, and he was not
prepared. His friend, the Bishop of Lincoln,
would have administered the sacrament, but
Pitt said he had not strength to go through
with it. He said that ' he had, as he feared
was the case Avith many others, neglected
prayer too much to allow him to hope it could
be very efficacious now.' Yet he was enabled
to pray earnestly, and to look back with some
satisfaction on his innocency of life. He said:

STATESMEN. 129

" I throw myself entirely upon the mercy of
God, through the merits of Christ."
' It has been the misfortune of many great
statesmen that they have regarded religion
simply as a social organisation, or as an in
strument of government, or as an important
element of public opinion. It is impossible that
Vn-gEian cadences should effectually soothe
a dying bed. At the last, as in the case of
Pitt, one must fall back upon principles that
ought to have been tested and proved, and
not now to be learned for the first tune. We
could not wish that the deathbed of such "a
one should be other than troubled and dis
turbed, nor yet could any last words better
become any of us than those of poor Pitt : "I
throw myself entirely upon the mercy of God,
through the merits of Christ." '

We wEl now glance at the fortunes of a
fallen statesman. We wEl seek a view of
Lord Clarendon's inner life, with which the
public is not very famEiar, and Avhich must
mainly be sought for in his minor writings.
VOL. II. K

130 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
There are very few men who, in so large a
manner as Lord Clarendon, have both lived
history and Avritten history. To a great
degree, our knowledge of the times during
which he lived is derived from his own im
mortal writings. During those times there
are few names which emerge more frequently,
or with broader influence, than his own. In
the momentous period of the Long Parliament
his influence is first seen on the side of the
people, and then on the side of the Crown.
He was the leader of his party in the House of
Commons ; he was Lord Chancellor in the.
House of Lords ; for many years he was Prime
Minister of England; he became the grand
father of two English sovereigns. There has
been no other English subject on whom such
an accumulation of honours has thus rested.
For many years his career was singularly
chequered, exhibiting various errors and faults,
but at the same time great endurance and
great virtues; and through good report and
evil report, through good estate and evil estate,
he clung close to the faith and hope of a
Christian man. At last came his extraordinary

STATESMEN. 131

elevation, and from that giddy eminence as
extraordinary a fall. In exEe, in poverty, in
obloquy, closed that long and eventful career,
so imperishably bound up with English history
and English literature. His last days, though
his saddest, were his happiest and his best ; his
fall proved to be a rising again, and he learned
to look upon banishment as a season of rest, as
a quiet pause, as a solemn audit ofthe past, be
fore his active, crowded career came to an end
on earth. It would be foreign to our pur
pose to enter into any details of this period's
political events. We take up the personal
history of Lord Clarendon at the time when
he became a conspicuous actor in the stirring
events of his times. He had been known as a
great lawyer ; he now appeared in the charac
ter of a great statesman. Wherever a liberty
was to be asserted, a Avrong to be redressed,
an inquiry to be instituted, a tyrannical insti
tution to be abolished, a grievous criminal
to be exposed, Edward Hyde was among the
first and foremost on the popular side. But after
a time, rightly or Avrongly, he became firmly
convinced that this side was pushing things too
k2

132 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
far, and to an extent which neither his
conscience nor reason approved. He threw
the whole weight of his influence into the de
clining side of the royalists, and withdrew to
York to be in attendance on the king. He
does not appear to have been very popular
among the party whom he thus joined.
Though he went over to the Court, he carried
thither the stern, rigid virtues of a republican,
Avhich rarely, indeed, find much favour among
courtiers ; an intrepidity in speaking unwel
come truth, a strict justice and moderation, a
high-minded, incorruptible spirit. He was
of great use to his party in the paper war
that preceded actual hostilities ; but when
the mEitary operations commenced, Hyde
ceased for a time to appear in a prominent
position. Perceiving that the times in which he lived
were perhaps the most memorable in the whole
course of English history, he had commenced,
while yet in ScEly, the ' History of the Great
Eebellion,' a work disfigured, indeed, by in
accuracies, by personal feelings, and political
partisanship, but of commanding merits Avhich

STATESMEN. 133

have made it classic. He continued it in
Jersey. He was in the island for about two
years, ' and enjoyed,' as he Avas wont to say,
' the greatest tranquillity of mind imaginable.'
After a time, first one of his friends was
obliged to leave him, and then the other. Sir
George Carteret then received him into Eliza
beth Castle. Here he built himself a lodging
of two or three rooms, and over the door of
his lodging he set. up his arms with a Latin
inscription — ' Bene vixit qui latuit ' (He has
lived well who has escaped notice). ' And he
always took pleasure in relating with what
great tranquillity of spirit he spent his time here,
amongst his books, which he got from Paris,
and his papers, between which he seldom
spent less than ten hours in the day.' King
Charles himself sent him a variety of materials
for his work. When the Prince of Wales left
France, Hyde received directions from the king
and queen to be in attendance upon them.
The happy seclusion of Jersey was at once
abandoned for a life of wandering and priva
tion. The ship in which he saEed to Holland
was seized by a privateer, and he Avas robbed

134 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
of a sum of money which he could ill afford
to lose. By-and-by, Charles II. sent him on
an unsatisfactory embassy to Madrid. Here
Hyde, who always writes of himself as ' the
chancellor ' — .for he had received the empty
office of Chancellor of the Exchequer at the
mimic Court of Charles — studied the country
and language, and commenced his ' Devotions
on the Psalms.' On his return he took up his
abode at AntAverp as ambassador. Charles,
after the battle of Worcester, having escaped
to Paris, required his services there ; and he
resided at Paris and elsewhere, in close attend
ance on his wandering and unfortunate
sovereign. From the Clarendon papers we
can see the straits to which he was reduced,
and the manner in which he bore them. ' I
do not know that any man is yet dead for
Avant of bread, Avhich really I wonder at.
Five or six of us eat together one meal a day
for a pistole a week ; but all of us owe for God
knows how many weeks to the poor woman
that feeds us.' ' At this time I have neither
clothes nor fire to preserve me from the
sharpness of the season.' ' I am so cold that

STATESMEN 135

I am scarce able to hold my pen, and
have not three sous in the world to buy a
fagot.'. ' I have not been master of a crown
these many months, am cold for want of
clothes and fire, and owe for aU the meat
I have eaten these three months, and to a
poor woman who is no longer able to trust ;
and my poor family at AntAverp (which
breaks my heart) is in as sad a state as I am.'
' Keep up your spirits, and take heed of sink
ing under that burden you never kneeled to
take up. Our innocence begets our cheerful
ness ; and that again will be a means to secure
the other. Whoever grows too weary and
impatient of the condition he is in avEI too im
patiently project to get out of it ; and that,
by degrees, will shake or baffle or delude his
innocence. We have no reason to blush for
the poverty which is not brought upon us by
our oAvn faults. As long as it pleases God
to give us health (which, I thank Him, I have
in a great measure), I shall think He intends
me to outlive all these sufferings ; and when
He sends sickness, I shall (I hope with the
same submission) belieAre that He intends to

136 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
remove me from greater calamities.' ' I have
no other counsel to give you than, by the
grace of God, I mean to foEow myself, which
is to submit to God's pleasure and judgment
upon me, and to starve, reaEy and literally,
with the comfort of having endeavoured to
avoid it by all honest means, and rather to
bear it than do anything contrary to my
duty.' The evil days seemed over at last ; in 1660
came the Restoration. Hitherto his title had
only been an empty mockery ; it now became
a splendid reality. And yet this period of
grandeur and greatness to which we now ap
proach in Hyde's career is the least pleasing
in the retrospect. He had nobly withstood
the effects of adversity ; he by no means
endured Avith equal success the influence of
prosperity. The prosperity was as magnifi
cent as his adversity had been protracted and
deep. And now painful blots upon his cha
racter began to appear, which had hitherto
escaped the notice of others, and perhaps his
own, and Avhich, perhaps, required the fierce
heat of prosperity for their manifestation. He

STATESMEN. \yj

appears to have been greedy of power and
grasping of gain. The sumptuous pile of
Clarendon House, which he was raising for
himself, betrayed an ostentatious magnificence.
Sometimes he appears to have erred in de
parting from strict veracity. In some measure
he must have forfeited his own dignity and
self-respect. He himself, in the long days of
banishment and old age, confessed to himself
how -much he had erred and how greatly he
had forgotten higher things in this season of
brilliant sunshine. He confessed that those
prosperous days contrasted ill with the calm
ness and happiness of his days of loneliness
and Avant. If he had been content to take a
full share in the wickedness of those wicked
times, his lofty position might have been safe.
Thank God he was preserved from that.
Old Pepys has, in his ' Diary,' two or three
passages that 'mark the decline and fall of
Clarendon. Pepys has given the graphic
account of the circumstances of Clarendon's
departure from his final interview with the
king, on which Mr. Ward's celebrated paint
ing, ' The Fall of Clarendon ' is founded.

138 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE
The courtiers, when they saw him, used to
teE the king that his ' schoolmaster ' was
coming. They used to mimic the chancellor
for the royal amusement. We are told that
the infamous Duke of Buckingham was pecu
liarly successful in imitating ' the stately walk
of that solemn personage.' The king at first
feebly reproved and then delighted at this
buffoonery at the expense of his old and
faithful servant. Clarendon now seriously
crossed the royal path. At last Charles sent
the earl a message recommending him imme
diately to resign the Great Seal. In reply the
falling Minister requested an audience. The
king could not Avith any decency refuse this,
and appointed him to come on a certain day
after breakfast. The day of the appointed
interview was known to all the courtiers.
The event, of course, excited the highest in
terest. A private conversation of two hours
ensued. As they came forth from the con
ference, the courtiers eagerly watched the ex
pression of both their countenances. They
thought that both faces looked ' very thought
ful.' Pepys says that the king's infamous

STATESMEN. 139

paramour ' ran out into her aviary, and stood
blessmg herself at the old man's going away ;
and seATeral of the gallants of Whitehall (of
which there were many staying to see the
chanceEor's return) did talk to her in her
birdcage.' Clarendon, in his Life, has an
allusion to the dissolute crew who were Avait-
ing about eagerly hoping for his disgrace.
For some days the king took no further steps.
The courtiers were greatly alarmed at this.
With ceaseless importunities they taunted him
on his subserviency to ' a cunning old laAvyer,
and nearly lectured him out of his Avits.'
Then the king yielded, and sent a Secretary
of State Avith a warrant under the sign manual
to demand the Great Seal. "When the secre
tary returned with this coveted ensign of
office, a base courtier clasped his majesty's
knees, exclaiming, ' Sir, you are now a king.'
Assuredly there was a great faE here ; but
still Clarendon's enemies were not satisfied.
Perhaps they dreaded his future return to
power. They determined to prevent this;
they tlnrsted for his blood ; they brought
against him an impeachment for high treason.

Ho TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
The late Lord Chancellor Campbell has charac
terised the articles ofthe impeachment as ' pre
posterously vague and absurd.' There seemed
little chance of a conviction against him.
The king was anxious that he should leave
the country : this would be enough to satisfy
his enemies. Very unwiEingly, but in obedi
ence to the king's wish, which he had always
treated with almost absolute submission,
Clarendon withdrew beyond the seas. His
enemies seized upon this as an occasion against
him. They passed a BEl through ParEament
banishing him for ever, and making his return
an act of high treason. The days which fol
lowed are generally looked upon as the most
sombre in Clarendon's career; but those who
take a more solemn view of life, and chiefly
regard a man's highest interests, will turn
away with reEef from the thronged galleries
of WhitehaU and the rising glories of Claren
don House to Montpellier, to Moulins, and to
Rouen. With a well-nigh broken heart and en
feebled form he betook himself to France. The
French Government treated him alternately

STATESMEN. 141

with harshness and consideration, according to
the variations of their political relations with the
English Government. After many chequered
days he settled himself for a time at Mont-
peEier. Here he finished his little work on
the Psalms. He has prefaced this by a letter
to his children, from which we make some
quotations, as giving in the best form the
state of mind to which his fall had brought
him: —
•' My children, you have undergone so great
a share with me in all the inconveniences and
afflictions of my banishment, that it is but
justice to assign you a share EkeAvise of what
soever I have gotten by them ; and I do con
fess to you I found so great a serenity and
tranquillity of mind in composing these con
siderations and reflections upon the Psalms
of David, that I am willing to believe that the
reading them may administer some kind of
relief and ease to you in any trouble or adver
sity to which you may be exposed. In aU
times somewhat extraordinary hath been
thought to be contained therein for the in
struction, encouragement, and reformation of

142 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
mankind, and for the rendering our lives more
acceptable to God Almighty. ... I
began to exercise myself in these meditations
in the time of a former banishment, Avhen, to
the public calamities Avith which the king and
the kingdom were afflicted, and to my own
particular, my forced absence for so many
years from your dear mother and from you,
the nature of that employment I had from the
king, and the scene upon which that employ
ment was to be acted, added very much to
the melancholique of the condition I was in.
. . . It pleased God, by a chain of miracles,
at last to bring that to pass which all the world
thought impossible to be done. . . . And
in this miraculous restoration and prosperity
I had my full share, which I enjoyed- many
years, in an envious proportion of the king's
favour and good opinion, Avhich I had endea-
A^oured to preserve by all the industry and
fidelity a servant so obliged ought to perform ;
having (God knows) never anything before
my eyes or in my purposes but the king's
honour and happiness. ... I have too
much cause to believe and confess that, though,

STATESMEN. 143

to the utmost of my power, and according to
the understanding God hath given me,
which, no doubt, hath many defects, I have
not failed in the performance of my duty to
the king and to the country, I have abund
antly failed in my duty to my God, and not
enough remembered his particular saving
blessings and deliverances of myself and
famEy in the time of my adversity and banish
ment, nor the vows and promises I then made
to Him ; and for that reason He hath exposed
me to new troubles and reproaches for crimes
I am in no degree guilty of, and condemned
me to a new banishment in my age, when I
am not able to struggle with those difficulties
that encompass me. I am sure I discontinued
this heavenly exercise upon the Psalms them
selves and the whole body of the Scriptures ;
and God, in His great mercy, awakened me
out of the lethargy I Avas in, by reproaches
I least apprehended, and a judgment I least ex
pected or suspected, and drove me out of that
sunshine that dazzled me, withdrew the king's
favour from me, out of that crowd of business
that stifled all other thoughts, and condemned

144 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
me to such a solitariness and desertion as
must reduce my giddy and wandering
soul to some recollection and steadmess.' He
learned to speak of his banishment as his
' third and most blessed recess, in Avhich God
vouchsafed to exercise many of His mercies
towards him.' Three such ' recesses or ac
quiesces ' he used to reckon up in his Efe.
The first of these was When he was Eving in
Jersey ; the second when he was ambassador
at Madrid ; the third was his final banish
ment. He used to say that, of the infinite
blessings which God had vouchsafed to bestow
upon him from his cradle, he used to esteem
himself so happy in none as in these : ' In
every one of which God had given him grace*
and opportunity to make full reflections upon
his actions and his observations, upon what
he had done himself and what he had seen
others do and suffer ; to repair the breaches
in his own mind, and to fortify himself with
new resolutions against future encounters in
an entire resignation of all his thoughts and
purposes into the disposal of God Almighty,
and in a firm confidence of his protection and

STATESMEN. 145

deliverance in all the difficulties he should be
obliged to contend with ; towards the obtain
ing whereof he resumed those vows, and pro
mises of integrity, and hearty endeavours,
which are the only means to procure the con
tinuance of that protection and deEverance.'
Yet, as the years rolled on, the old man
earnestly desired once more to see his native
country ' before he went hence to be no more
seen.' To the last the fond hope was always
before him that he might yet be restored to
something of his old position. He removed
to Rouen, that he might at least have the
melancholy satisfaction of being so much
nearer to English soil. He sent a petition
to the unfeeling king that he might be allowed
to die among his- children. ' Seven years,'
he pleaded, ' was a time prescribed and limited
by God himself for the expiations of some of
His greatest judgments ; and it is full that
time since I have, with all possible humility,
sustained the insupportable weight of the
king's displeasure. Since it will not be in
any one's power long -to prevent me from
dying, methinks the desiring a place to die
VOL. 11. L

146 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
in should not be thought a great presump
tion. It was not so to be. The wocthless monarch
did not eAren Arouchsafe a word of answer to this
pathetic appeal. Rouen was to prove the last
scene of his Avanderings. He died there one
Avinter day, in the cold, friendless Avinter of his
life, at the age of sixty -five.
The moral of the fall of Clarendon is this —
the moral to hoAV many a sad narrative of a
statesman's broken hopes and broken heart ! —
' It is better to trust in the Lord than to
put any confidence in man.'
' It is better to trust in the Lord than to
put any confidence in princes.'

Descending the stream of politics still
further, we take a glance at Sir George Corne-
waE Lewis, whose recent Life and Letters give
us a view of some aspects of the statesmanship
of our own days.
Sir George Cornewall Lewis was one of
those great statesmen Avhich Christ Church
within the century has given to the country.

STATESMEN. 147

His success as a scholar and a thinker always
ran parallel Avith his success as an administra
tor and as a Parliamentary speaker. He owed
his success as much to his moral as to his intel
lectual faculties. No Chancellor of the Ex
chequer ever inspired City men with a greater
degree of confidence. His brief, straightfor
ward, inornate addresses were received with a
degree of favour hardly accorded to the most
scenic budgets of Mr. Gladstone, or the most
brilliant orations of Mr. Disraeli. The utmost
confidence was felt in his simplicity and good
f aith, and at the same time it was fully under
stood that his conclusions were the results of
anxious inquiry and sound reasoning. But
at the same time it would hardly be thought
that he Avas the man to meet safely a great
financial crisis, and although it is probable that,
had he lived longer, he might have been the
Premier of a Whig Administration, yet possibly
he would have been little more than the bond
of union to join together stronger spirits. The
same characteristics belonged to the literary
as to the political life of Sir George LeAvis,
and eAren in a greater degree. He was happier
1 2

148 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
as the editor of the ' Edinburgh Review ' than
as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Indeed,
the former employment was much more to
his taste than the latter. In the field of
criticism, particularly in the field of negative
criticism, he was pre-eminent. His, in an
especial way, was Bacon's lumen siccum. He
pulled down even the ruins of those historical
structures which Niebuhr had left. He was
little more than destructive, Avas in no degree
synthetic, and had more ' light ' than ' sweet
ness.' Those who are acquainted with Dr. New
man's late remarkable work, ' Essays towards a
Grammar of Assent,' and can conceive a direct
contradiction to its every page, wEl be able
to form an idea of Sir George's governing
mental characteristics. The result is that he
was not. much better than an Iconoclast, and
has not left — we had almost said was incapable
of leaving — any durable monument to posterity.
There are many points of interest presented
by the political and intellectual history of
Sir George Lewis. Most of his letters were
written at a time when letter -writing was still
an art, and postage was so expensive that

STATESMEN. 149

people were anxious to gain the value of the
money. They are, therefore, written with a
fullness which, we are afraid, wEl be wanting
to the letters of the next generation of states
men and authors. He speaks with certain
severity of some of his contemporaries, but
perhaps not more severely than the truth
would warrant. Yet it .is easy to see, on the
surface of the letters, that, though endued
. with a common sense which amounted to posi
tive genius, he made several egregious blunders
in his reasoning. For instance, through the
unhopefulness of his nature he expected
nothing but disappointments in the expedition
to the Crimea, and through his inability to
sympathise with forms of genius not akin to
his oaati, he could see Ettle that was Ekely to be
permanently popular in the works of Dickens
or Macaulay. In his o-wn mind he gave lite
rature a distinct preference over politics. The
meeting of Parliament is 'that abominable
meeting of Parliament.' After he had lost his
seat it was with difficulty that he consented
to re-enter the House once more, and with
regret that he became a Cabinet Minister.

150 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
The main interest of his letters lies in their
touches of contemporary politics and literature,
which will be a help towards the construction
of the history of the period to which they re
late. When he succeeded the present Premier
as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he writes to
say that Mr. Gladstone had been very kind to
him and helped him very much. He was very
severe on Macaulay 's article on Bacon : ' His
remarks on ancient philosophy are, for the
most part, shallow and ignorant in the ex
treme  There is generally a want of
soundness and coherency, and a puerile and
almost girlish affectation of tmsel ornament,
which, coming from a man of nearly forty,
convince me that Macaulay wEl never be any
thing more than a rhetorician.' There is much
substantial justice in this criticism, but at the
same time we see that Sir George was totally
incapable of appreciating an order of mind
with which he had nothing in common. LeAvis
had not a spark of Macaulay's genuine bril
liancy, and the result is that thousands have
read Macaulay where only a leader here and
there knows of the ' Methods of Observation
and Reasoning in Politics" and the ' Enquiry

STATESMEN. 151

into the Credibility of Early Roman History.'
His latest and perhaps his best book was
a collection of articles in the ' Edinburgh
RevieAv' on the Administrations .of Great
Britain from 1783 to 1830. We find the
statement in one of the letters that Macaulay
reckoned on thirteen volumes of his history.
' It is too long, and overdone with detaEs,'
writes Lewis ; and we may add, that if Macau
lay really designed to bring doAvn his history
to ' a period within the memory of men now
living,' as he stated, the rate of progress would
have required not thirteen, but at least thirty
volumes. Here are some of his judgments on his con
temporaries. Of Mr. Disraeli he says, 'Dis-
raeE, though a hard hitter in attack, faEed
as an exponent of a measure or a system of
policy.' Of Sir Robert Peel, ' I cannot say
that I prized his judgment very highly, nor
do I think that as a guide in public afiairs,
when he had ceased to be an administrator, he
was of great value. .He did not see far before
him, he was not ready in applying theory to
practice, he did not foresee the coming storm.
Peel's death will" exercise a great influence

152 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
upon the Peelite body. Graham is a great
sufferer by the change, as he had constantly
stood by Peel when his other friends Avent
different .ways. Upon Gladstone it will have
the effect of removing a weight from a spring.'
Here, again, is perhaps the most damaging
sentence that has ever been written concern
ing the modern House of Commons, with
which Ave may conclude this chapter. It is
much to be regretted that Sir George did not
draw the obvious exception of men actuated
by Christian principle, and apparently does
not perceive that Christian principle will alone
save a popular Legislature from the evE of
selfish personal objects.
' I have Avritten a long letter to TocqueAdlle,
to explain to him that the present state of
poEtics is dangerous to nothing, except the
morality of public men. I have shoAvn him
how this danger equally besets both sides of
the House, hoAv public morality is equally
promoted by finding excuses for supporting
men who abandon their principles, and for not
supporting men who act upon their principles;
the motive in both cases being purely personal.'

NATIONAL HISTORY. 153

CHAPTER V-
0N TURNING-POINTS IN NATIONAL HISTORY.
Another aspect of turning-points in life is
that of those in the history of nations. This
must be glanced at briefly. National life and
individual life are closely connected. The in
dividual is the State seen through a magnifying
lens. The State is the individual seen through
the diminishing lens. To use the Platonic
image, what we read in the one case in small
characters we read in the other case in large
characters. There is a well-known book Avhich speaks-
of such turning-points as the ' Fifteen Decisive
Battles of the World,' an arbitrary enumeration
indeed, but still, taking the uncertain for a
certain number, indicating the tremendous
issues dependent on such decisive turning-
points.

154 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
For instance, what a moment was that when
at Marathon the Medes and Persians, with their
scimetars and lunar spears, broke before the
Athenians, and were driven back into the
marshes ! Then Asia precipitated itself upon
Europe, and the civEisation of the West was
for the moment trembling in the balance.
Some of the battles discussed might be open
to criticism, on the ground that they did not
really determine a nation's fate. The unpro-
sperous issue of the Sicilian expedition, as Dr.
Arnold points out, hindered the expansion of
Greece in the Western world, and reserved for
Latin institutions the supremacy which might
have belonged to HeEenic culture. It was in
the East, and not in the West, that the destiny
of the Greek race was to accomplish itself.
The Athenian power survived the disasters of
Syracuse, but it fell in a moment of careless
ness, through characteristic Athenian faults, at
the fateful Goat's River. Mr. Hallam says of a
certain battle that ' it may justly be reckoned
among those few battles of Avhich a contrary
event would have essentially varied the drama
ofthe world in all its subsequent scenes.'

NATIONAL HISTORY. 155
What a moment was that, when the Eng-
Esh had turned the French at Waterloo, and
the Duke anxiously waited for Blucher that
he might reap the fruits of victory! Again,
let us look at that mighty historical drama
which has been unroUed during the Franco-
Prussian Avar. Did ever high-handed violence
meet with so rapid and overwhelming a re
tribution ? What a moment was that when,
in the Cabinet of the Tuileries, Napoleon the
Third, over-persuaded by his wife and the
Due de Grammont, and deceived by Lebceuf,
returned to the council and declared that they
must ask for further securities ! One would
almost have thought that a thunderbolt would
have fallen from the clear sky. I see that the
Count de la Chapelle says very frankly that
the whole nation was enthusiastically bent on
war, and makes them all accomplices together.
In a historical point of view, Napoleon seemed
right, but, in the moral point of view, he was
wrong, and in the long run the moral element
beats the political element.
Lord Dalling (Sir Henry Bulwer), in his

156 TURNING-POINTS IN LITE.
recent ' Life of Lord Palmerston,' thinks that
he discerns a great moment in modern politics.
This was when Mr. Huskisson was ejected by
the Duke of Wellington from his Cabinet. This
led to the appointment of Mr. Fitzgerald ; this
led to the vacancy for Clare ; this led to the elec
tion of Mr.. O'Connell ; this led to the agitation
for the CathoEc claims ; this led to the first
Reform ; this led to the repeal of the Corn
Laws, and the second reform. By these
means has been accompEshed a silent but
thorough revolution in England. The gene
ralisation, however, is perhaps a little too
rapid. The discovery of America is referred to
by Humboldt as a ' wonderful concatenation
of trivial circumstances,' which undeniably
exercised an influence on the course of the
world's destiny. ' These circumstances are,'
Washington Irving has justly observed, ' that
if Columbus had resisted the counsel of Martin
Alonzo Pinzon, and continued to steer west
ward, he would have entered the Gulf Stream,
and been borne to Florida, and from thence pro
bably to CapeHatteras and Virginia — a circum-

¦ NATIONAL HISTORY. 157
stance of incalculable importance, since it might
have been the means of giving to the United
States of North America a Catholic Spanish
population in the place of the Protestant Eng
lish • one by which those regions were subse
quently colonised. " It seems to me like an
inspiration," said Pinzon to the Admiral, " that
my heart dictates to me that Ave ought to
steer in a different direction." It was on the
strength of this circumstance that, in the cele
brated lawsuit which Pinzon carried on against
the heirs of Columbus between 1513 and 1515,
he maintained that the discovery of America
was alone due to him. This inspiration,
Pinzon owed, as related by an old sailor
at the same trial, to the flight of a flock of
parrots, which he had observed in the
evening flying towards the south-west, in
order, as he might well have conjectured, to
roost on trees on the land. Never has a flight
of birds been attended with more important
results.' We wEl here take some astute observations
from the ' Saturday RevieAv,' as illustrating
a somewhat different view of the question.

158 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
' If something had happened, which didn't
happen, what would have happened afterwards ?
is a kind of speculation which is now much in
fashion. Of course, no one can answer posi
tively the above inquiry. Yet, in looking
back upon the course of history, it is im
possible not to dwell for a moment upon some
of the most important crises, and to remark
how small a difference might have made an
incalculable change. We know the usual
sayings about the decisive battles of the world.
If Themistocles had lost the battle of Salamis,
if Asdrubal had won the battle of the Metau-
rus, if Charles Martel had been beaten by the
Saracens, would not the subsequent history of
Europe and the world have been altered, and
a great many fine philosophical theories have
been destroyed before their birth ? It is im
possible here to discuss so large a question as
the frequency with which those historical
crises occur, in which the merest trifle may
turn the balance, or to inquire whether they
ever occur at all. But we may notice shortly
two or three conditions of the argument which

NATIONAL HISTORY. 159
are frequently overlooked, and which make,
most of these discussions eminently unsatis
factory. Thus, for example, the believers m
decisive battles very seldom take the trouble
to argue the real difficulty of the question.
The defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig, or perhaps
at Waterloo, it has been said, changed the
history of Europe. It may be so ; but the
fact that a particular battle was the most
crushing, or the final Woav Avhich he received,
does not even tend to prove that a dhTerent
result would have been equally decisive the
other way. On the contrary, a victory might
probably have been the next worst thing to a
defeat. The battles in which the Saracens or
the Hungarians received the final check to their
advance are in the same way reckoned as
decisive of victory. But, to make this out,
we should have to prove that which is at first
opposed to all probability — that, in the event
of a victory, they could have permanently held
their conquests; and afterwards that, if they
had not held them, they would not have been
absorbed by the conquered population. When

160 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
Canute rebuked his courtiers, he happened to
select a time at which the tide was rising. If,
by a little management, they had induced him
to give the order just as the tide turned, they
might perhaps have persuaded him that his
order was the cause of the change. A good
many historical heroes seem to have been
Canutes who issued their commands precisely
at the turn of the tide ; and historical writers
have been crying out ever since that, if it had
not been for this marvellous Canute, the
tide would have swelled until the whole
eountry had been engulphed. The analogy
is, of course, imperfect ; for the histori
cal tide is really affected in some degree
by the hero who opposes its progress at the
proper moment, only he has a wonderful
advantage if he happens to strike just at the
fortunate epoch.
' The absurdity of a series of " ifs " has also
been thus shown. " If this did not happen,
then something else must have happened, and
the whole course of subsequent events must
have been altered." It is one of these far
fetched explanations which we can produce at

NA TIONAL HISTOR Y. 161
wEl to account for any phenomenon. We
might say, for instance, that the prophet
Jonah is the cause of American slavery. If
he had not preached, Nineveh would not have
repented; n° Nineveh had not repented, it
would have been overthrown. Who knows
the consequences ? The whole course of
empire would have been changed, and America
might still be a forest.
' Mr. PhEEmore, m his " History of England
in the Reign of George III.," describes the
difficulty of writing modern history, and
laments that in modern times we have no
Herodotus nor Thucydides, no Livy nor
Tacitus. He says that if these Greek and
Roman historians lived in our day — if they
saw this, and if they saw that, h° they were
acquainted with India, E" they were acquainted
with America, and if they knew a great num
ber of other things besides, the result, the
grand result, the astonishing result, would be
that they would have known more than they
knew, and would have told us more.
In Whitaker's " Vindication of Mary Queen
of Scots," that curious writer thus speculates
vol. n. M

162 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
m the true spirit of this paper. When de
pendence was made on Elizabeth's dying with
out issue, the Countess of Shrewsbury had her
son purposely residing hi London, Avith two
good and able horses continually ready, to
give the earliest intelligence of the sick Eliza
beth's death to the imprisoned Mary. On
this the historian observes, " And had this not
improbable event actually taken place, what
a different aspect would our history have
assumed from what it wears at present !
Mary would have been carried from a prison
to a throne. Her wise conduct in prison
Avould have been applauded by all. From
Tutbury, from Sheffield, from Chatsworth,
she would have been said to have touched with
a gentle and masterly hand the springs that
actuated all the nation, against the death of
her tyrannical cousin," &c. So ductile is
history in the hands of man ! And so pecu
liarly does it bend to the force of success, and
warp with the warmth of prosperity !
' " If Mary had lived a Ettle longer, or Eliza
beth died sooner," says Mr. Mill, " the Refor
mation would have been crushed in England."

NATIONAL HISTORY. 163
People who believe in a steady development of
human thought' are naturally unwilling to
allow that the spread of new ideas may be
arrested or made possible by the accident of
a single woman's life ; for, on the same
principles, we can have no certainty that in a
few years hence we may not all be Roman
Catholics, or Mormons, or followers of Comte.
' It is always a question among military
writers how far the pause of Hannibal was com
pulsory — a question not likely to be solved,
unless Pompeii yields us further literary trea
sures. As far as one can decide, at such a dis
tance of time and of scene, it seems all but
certain that the rapid advance of Hannibal on
Rome after the battle of Cannaa, that of Henry
of Navarre on Paris after the battle of Ivry, or
that of Charles Stuart on London after pene
trating as far as Derby, would have changed
the course of human history.'
Without a religious reference, either history
or science becomes dreary or unintelhgible.
Take history. From a merely secular point
of view it is a study that is unutterably sad
and dreary. It is like the bitter record of
112

1 64 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
the Prophet — lamentation, mourning, and
woe. That nation is happy that has not a
history, for history is the record of the
tragedy and crimes of a nation's life. It
creeps on from point to point of the same
monotony of events, from siege to siege, from
battle to battle, from treaty to treaty. It
is the perpetual story of the monuments ot
Nineveh, where we see the long lines of cap
tives led away into exile. It is the ever-
renewed legend of Judaea Capta, of the
medal that shows the discrowned one be
neath the palm tree. It is the imagery of
the arch whereon is depicted lamentation,
mourning, and woe. But when we bring the
Divine life into such things the case alto
gether alters. Those generations of the past
are the strata by which we attain to a higher
level. We discern that 'through the ages
one increasing purpose runs.' God has been
guiding the human race through the tangled
course of its destinies. It is very striking
to observe how so remarkable a writer as Mr.
Wallace, Avho indeed elaborated Darwinism
before Darwm, has broken away from his own

NATIONAL HISTORY. 16
theory of natural selection to admit that a
Providence has directed the process : — ' A
superior inteEigence has guided the develop
ment of man in a definite direction and for
a special purpose, just as man guides the
development of many animal and vegetable
forms.' What is true of nature is also true
of history. The great idea of the education
of the world, suggested by Pascal, and elabo
rated by Bishop Temple, is in the main a
true one. The Avorld, in its corporate exist
ence, is carried on in the course of improve
ment, and each generation starts from the
vantage ground of that which has been
gained by its ancestry. Of the lives that
momentarEy fall, like rain-drops into the earth,
none are lost or wasted. The broken purposes
that fail on earth are carried out hereafter, and
the worn, shattered banner of humanity, torn
and drooping here, is planted again hereafter
upon a happier shore.
We may take some instances of historical
paraEels suggested by the late war. The first
of the phEosophical historians noted the ten
dency of history to repeat itself in cycles.

1 66 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
There are seA'eral periods of military history
which present strong points of resemblance
to the Prussian invasion of France. These
are especially the invasion of 1793-4, and
the invasion of 1814. At one point in the
invasion of 1794, things seemed more hope
less for France than they did so lately after
all the disastrous fighting betAveen Metz
and Verdun. In this campaign, the invaders,
though at first prosperous, could hot avail
themselves of their prosperity through their
want of vigour and of unity. The events of
history give us an extraordinary number of
duplicates. On October 13, 1793, the Ger
mans attacked the lines of Wissembourg, and
took possession of the place. The French
General was obliged to fall back upon
Haguenau, and so make a considerable
sacrifice of territory. The Germans then,
as lately, possessed an extraordinary pre
ponderance of troops and resources, and
the French were in the worst possible plight
at the time. But in the earlier wars they
were tardy, irresolute, inactive, and commit
ting an extraordinary number of fatuous

NATIONAL HISTORY. 167
blunders. At one period of the campaign
the Allies were within a hundred and fifty
mEes of Paris. The French army was in
deep dejection, the capital in dismay, and the
republican authorities Avere betaking them
selves to flight. But the Germans never
ventured to march upon Paris, and the great
opportunity of concluding the Avar Avas lost.
If they had advanced, England would pro
bably haATe been saved six hundred millions
of public debt. But the Committee of Public
Salvation, however remorselessly cruel with
their myriad assassinations, were energetic
and patriotic men, and did not despair of the
State. Even the vile Barere used thriEing
language to arouse the defenders. ' Liberty
has become the creditor of every citizen;
some oAve it their industry; others their for
tune ; some their counsels ; others their arms ;
all their lives. The Republic is a besieged
city; all its territory must become a vast
camp.' Nothing Elustrates the difference
between the two periods as the conduct of
the Germans at Wissembourg in 1793 and
their conduct at Wissembourg and Woerth in

168 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
1870. The original achievement of 1793 was
very great, but a historian of the Convention
says, ' Such was the tardiness of the Allies
that the French lost only one thousand men
in this general rout, which, E" duly improved,
might have occasioned the loss of their whole
army. This important success, which once
more opened the territory of the Republic to
a victorious enemy, led to no results.' But
in this age men do not linger, but strike
at the heart, on the maxim frappez vite et
frappez forte. Never before or after has
France been in a worse state than when she
hurled back the invasion of 1794.
WhEe the Allies were languid, France Avas
aroused. A levy of 1,200,000 men was
ordered, and in an incredibly short time were
fairly disciplined. Above all, France was
about to yield an extraordinary crop of mili
tary genius. There was one young officer of
engineers, the founder of an empire, Avho was
then saving Toulon from the British invader.
There were more than a dozen men in the
lowest orders of life who might be said to
be carrying in their empty knapsacks a field-

NATIONAL HISTORY. 169
marshal's baton. For the immediate emergency
there Avas the great, Carnot, the head of the
military department. ' Carnot,' said Napoleon,
' has organised victory. ' He was the Von Moltke
of the campaign of 1793-4, but on the side of
the defence and not on the side of the attack.
Carnot held the view which condemns the
cold shade of the aristocracy, as Sir William
Napier said, under which our soldiers fight.
' He deemed it impossible that an army com
manded by officers chosen exclusively from a
limited class of society could long maintain
a contest with one led by those chosen with
discernment from inferior ranks.' Carnot, like
Jomini, wrote several treatises on scientific
warfare, the one best kno-wn being that in
opposition to the vieAVs of that great mEitary
genius, Vauban. It relates to the siege
question. It was the assertion of Vauban
that the means of defence in sieges were
inferior to those of attack, and that the
hour of the fall of every fortress might
be calculated with mathematical certainty
Carnot, on the other hand, maintained that
the means of defence in fortified towns

170 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
may be made equal or superior to those
of attack. His greatest improvement was
the substitution of earthworks for ma
sonry. While Carnot was developing a
mEitary genius almost possessing his mathe
matical accuracy, the Allies obstinately pre
served the old ' system of positions.' The
French were enabled to stem the tide of in
vasion and then roll back the waves upon thefr
foes. The Allies were delayed by fortresses,
which they were not content to 'mask,' but
stayed to besiege, and this gave France time
to complete her immense armaments which
almost realised her dream of universal empire.
It was a saying of the Archduke Charles, that
the military superiority of France arises from
the chain of fortresses Avith which it is sur
rounded, whereby it is enabled, Avith equal
facEity, to throw delays in the way of an in
vasion of its own, and to find a solid base for
an irruption into its neighbours' territories ;
and that the want of such a barrier on the
right bank of the Rhine is the principal
defect in the system of German defence. By
the recent war these conditions have been

NATIONAL HISTORY. 171
almost reversed. The German defences had
been organised, and the Germans have been
ahle to pierce through the chain of fortresses
which protected the Imperial frontiers of
France, and have since appropriated them.
We now turn to the invasion of 1814,
Avhich, in a still greater degree than 1794-5,
abounds with historical parallels. France had
been drained of men and arms by the fatal
expedition to Russia, by the battle of Dres
den, which was the last pitched battle which
Napoleon won, and that awful field of Leipzig,
where the charm of his invincibility was again
rudely broken, and Germany, in resurrection
from his despotism, for ever broke off his
yoke. All Europe was iioav in arms against
France, and then, even more than at the
present time, there were political elements
hardly less destructive to empire and dynasty
at work in Paris. The First Napoleon re
joiced to leave Paris Avith its festering pas
sions, to make himself once more at home
with his soldiers. The AEies, despite their
enormous preponderance of forces, would
willingly shrink from meeting Napoleon him-

172 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
self. Even the Duke of Wellington thought
his presence substantially equal to an addi
tion of forty thousand men to the amount
of an army. Paris had then none of those
fortifications with which M. Thiers has since
surrounded her. There was only an octroi,
which the Emperor directed should be
strengthened with palisades and artElery.
When, on January 25, 1814, Napoleon
reached Chalons to withstand the flood of
invasion, his Generals hoped that he was
being followed by supports of troops. He
coolly told them ' No,' and proceeded to
encourage them by unfolding the boldness
and profundity of his plans. The campaign
which he then fought is full of remarkable
instances of a military genius which never
shone brighter, but he could not achieve
impossibilities. The enormous disciplined
masses passing into France could not faE to
overwhelm him eventually. Three great ar
mies were prepared to act against him, with
enormous reserves behind — in all more than
a million of men. The Allies hardly \Ten-
tured on any movement in the presence of

NATIONAL HISTORY. 173
Napoleon except in overwhelming masses.
Though he suffered a defeat from Blucher
through force of numbers, he had still such
hope Ei his destiny that he even withdrew
from Caulaincourt his carte blanche of .makino- o
peace. He thought he could give his enemy
on the wide plains of. Champagne the same
stunning blows which he had so often given
them on the plains of Italy. To affect the
pohtical condition of Paris, he resorted, as his
manner Avas, to illimitable lying, in which
he was certainly not without imitators at
the last great crisis. He held a review, and
gave in the Moniteur next morning the
numbers five times the amount of the truth.
When Blucher won the battle of La Rotbiere,
the rough Prussian eagerly struck off with
his knife the necks of champagne bottles, and
all with him ¦ vehemently drank the toast
' Nach Paris ' (to Paris). Napoleon fell back
towards the interior; his plan was to concen
trate his forces. By forced marches and
incredible impetuosity he first threw himself
on one army and then on another of the
invaders, wmning victory after victory. He

174 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
thus won the brilliant fields of MontmiraE,
Nangis, and Montereau. On this last he
gaily said : ' Don't fear, my friends. The
bullet is not cast that will kill me.' Blucher
found that it was not so easy after all to get
to Paris. The Allies even offered an armis
tice, and were prepared for peace on the
conditions which Caulaincourt had proposed
in his name. But Napoleon had not as a
politician the foresight which he possessed as
a general. He did not perceive that his very
victories were those of the kind which made
King Pyrrhus exclaim : ' One more such vic
tory, and I am undone.' His triumphs would
not now produce final effects. The resistless
might of Europe was setting in upon him,
and he could not achie\Te miracles. It was
in vain he sent to Paris artiEery, flags,
and thousands of prisoners. The end must
come. Still that marvellous campaign will always
be studied, both in the popular pages of
Thiers and Alison, and also in works written
for military students. Step by step we are
reminded of the recent war. On advancing

NATIONAL HISTORY. 175
towards the capital of France on the north
east or by the east, we arrive at the borders
of a basin, of which Paris is the centre, and
towards Avhich the Marne and the Seine flow,
forming an angle, Avhose sides unite at the
common apex, Paris. Between the line of
the Marne and Seine is the intermediate line
of the Aube. It was between those lines that
Napoleon showed his genius as a strategist
and a general. The Allies justly considered
that a march from the Vosges to Paris was
the hardest part of the war. In the midst
of his successes he might repeatedly have
made peace on honourable terms, but he was
deluded by his own hopes and Avishes, and
the victories which he won. He failed also
to appreciate the fickleness of the capital and
the reality of the Bourbon reaction. Success
forsook him, when he could least spare a
reverse, at Laon ; but though he fell back
in retreat he succeeded in retaking Rheims,
the last city he ever took, and where he held
his last review. He now felt bitterly his
enormous error in leaving vast forces in fron
tier fortresses, while he wanted troops so

176 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
sorely to shield the very heart of the empire.
There is nothing more glorious in French
annals than that battle of Arcis-sur-Aube,
where twenty thousand French opposed dur
ing a whole day ninety thousand Russians
and Austrians ; the last battle which he
fought in this campaign. But he wanted
more men. He determined to advance from
the Aube to the Marne, in the direction of
Metz, where he might be joined by the garrisons
of Metz, Luxembourg, ThionviEe, Verdun,
and Strasburg. He accordingly went back
so far as St. Dizier, where he halted. It was
Count Pozzo di Borgo who persuaded the
Emperor Alexander that it was best for him
to advance on Paris, even at the risk of
Napoleon attacking him in the rear with an
army of a hundred thousand men. He cal
culated on the political effects of a march on
Paris. By his march to the frontier, Napo
leon, in the faEure of his calculations, as
happened in the event, was as much isolating
himself as E" he had been shut up like Bazame
in Metz.
In the March of 1814, the one subject of

NATIONAL HISTORY. 177
conversation at Paris was that ofthe defences
of the capital against the invader. Napoleon
had made two great mistakes. Paris was
unprovided with fortEications. Paris was un
provided with muskets. Thus it is that M.
Thiers speaks : ' An enemy advancmg along
the right bank of the Seine must of necessity
encounter the half-cfrcle of heights that sur
rounds Paris from Vincennes to Passy, and
which encloses the most populous and richest
part of the city. From the confluence of the
Marne and the Seine, near Charenton, to
Passy and AuteuE, Paris is encircled by a
chain of heights, sometimes extending en
plateau, as at RomainvEle, sometimes saillant,
as at Montmartre, and these offered a most
valuable means of resistance, even before a
patriot king had covered these positions with
impregnable fortifications ! ' So far M. Thiers.
But we must ask : What became of the patriot
king? what became of the Enpregnable forti
fications? The smaU army, indeed, fought
bravely at Montmartre and BeUeviEe (M.
Thiers' ' Battle of Paris '), but as soon as the
VOL. II. N

178 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
first bomb had fallen into the city it capitu
lated. There is no scene more striking in
history than when the news of this great
calamity came to Napoleon. He had a power
ful army, he could haAre saved Paris E° she
had held out, he might yet re-appear there
and make the capital the tomb of the invaders.
But the political situation was too strong for
him; his own marshals put extreme pressure
upon him, and said the army had no more
blood to spEl; and he himself admitted that
* abdication was the idea of the hour.' Even
while signing the act of abdication he declared
he could still beat them. One consolation,
such as it was, he had : ' England has done
me much harm, undoubtedly ; but I have left
a poisoned arrow in her side. It is I who
augmented that national debt that will press
on future generations, and will become an
unceasingly oppressive if not overwhelming
burden to her.' We think that it was on the
night of the very day when he spoke of poi
soning England that the Emperor took poison
himself, but ineffectually. He exclaimed:
' How difficult death is here, and how easy

NATIONAL HISTORY. 179
on the field of battle! Ah! why did I not
die at Arcis-sur- Aube ? '

I do not know what may be my readers'
private opinion of the Great Duke of Marl
borough. Some of them may agree Avith Sir
Archibald Alison in looking upon him as ther
great hero, others, with Lord Macaulay,
in regarding him as the great vElain of
history. But aE agree in regarding him
as a great man, who humbled the pride
of France, who raised the fame of England,
and Avho was a mighty instrument in bringing
about great events. God ' maketh even the
wrath of man to praise Him;' and though
there may have been little to please Him in
Marlborough's life, yet that life might be none
the less directed by His providence. In think-
mg over the earUer career of the great duke,
some sets of circumstances appear to be so
providential that, as Elustrations of ' the hand
of God in history,' I think it well to put them
down. About the year 1670 — that may be taken
s2

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

as a convenient date for the period — the power
of France overshadowed ail Christendom.
Louis XIV., a selfish, cruel, bigoted volup
tuary, was the absolute tyrant of the country.
His neighbours dreaded his encroachments,
and in the open field had found reason to
tremble at his power. One country alone
might have entered the lists against France,
either as a single opponent, or as the soul of
an aEiance. This was England — England,
that in old historic Avars had so often over
thrown the chivalry of France, and, only
twelve years before, under the lion-hearted
Protector, had revived the fame of her ancient
prowess. But a weak, sinful, guilty man,
Charles II., Avas then King of England, and
found in his brother of France a congenial
spirit. He joined with Louis in a wicked con
spiracy against the civil and religious liberties
of the world. A secret treaty, of a character
truly infamous, was concluded in 1670, at
Dover, by Avhich, practically, Charles sold
England into the hands of the King of France.
For a stipulated sum of money he really be
came the A'assal of Louis. Nor Avas this aU,

NATIONAL HISTORY.

The king of France was then engaged in a
war against the Protestant Dutch, whom he
hated with peculiar rancour. England, at the
time of the great Queen Elizabeth, had been
of the most essential assistance to Holland, in
establishing and fostering her liberties and her
religion. Charles Avas hoav prepared to join
with Louis in crushing both. He covenanted
to send him some troops to assist in the sub
jugation of Holland.
There Avas in those days at the Court of
London a soldier of fortune named Churchill.
He was descended of a good stock — on his
mother's side from the renoAvned sea-captain
Drake. He was a man of great abEity, of
great daring, of surpassing personal beauty.
He had gone out some time before, under the
notorious Colonel Kirke, to the African fort
ress of Tangier, a place which had lately come
into the possession of the English through the
king's marriage Avith Catherine of Braganza.
He was now in London, and, as we should say
in modern parlance, quite the rage. He stole
away the hearts of all the Court beauties.
Among the rest, the king's chief favourite, the

182 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
Countess of Castlemain, was in love with him,
and made him the present of a Ettle fortune.
King Charles was violently jealous of his
good-looking subject, as far as his easy, languid
nature was susceptible of violent jealousy.
He thought it best to get rid of Churchill by
giving him a company of horse to serve in the
French army against Holland.
Churchill was very popular among the
French. He went by the name of ' the hand
some Englishman.' The war went disas
trously for the Dutch, and that brave, indus
trious people was reduced to the utmost despair.
Churchill distinguished himself greatly ; so
greatly, indeed, that King Louis XIV. pub
licly thanked him at the head of his army, and
promised to use his influence to procure him
promotion. According to all human calcula
tion, France was now, and was long Ekely to
be, at the head of the world. This alEance
with the king of England, this presence of the
English troops on the French side, were not
the least proofs of it. And yet these very
facts Avere noAV developing circumstances which
hereafter should tell with deadly effect against

NATIONAL HISTORY. 183
the French. The English army, from the
insularity of their country, had not had much
experience in general warfare ; but they were
now thoroughly drilled in the continental
system. ChurchEl obtained the best mEitary
education in the world. He learned fortifica
tion through the famous engineer, Vauban, and
the science of war from those most famous
generals, Conde- and Turenne ; arts of siege
and arts of warfare which he afterwards turned
against his teachers on many memorable oc
casions. Now, is not all this very remarkable, say
providential, that a worthless king, for the
sake of a worthless minion, should send the
most soldierly genius in England to learn the
dread trade of war in the best military school
hi the world ? that France, who, in the inso
lence of success, employed these English sol
diers, should thus be training an army which
should hereafter reduce her to the verge of
ruin and despair ? that Marlborough should
learn from the marshals of France those lessons
which enabled him afterwards to bring them
to defeat and disgrace? that King Louis of

1 84 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
France should himself personally obtain the
promotion of the man who proA'ed to be his
deadhest enemy, and put him on the high road
to great military rank, Avhich Avas eventually
the means of covering his own grey hairs with
well-merited shame and disappointment ?
Let us now pass OA^er a term of thirty years.
We come to the scene of Marlborough's most
famous triumphs, and an occasion of a great
perE and deliverance. That dashing Captain
Churchill has become the great Earl of Marl
borough. On various occasions, in various
critical campaigns, he has proved his great
genius. This he has done in the civil Avars of
England, and in the Low Countries. The
Grand Alliance has now been formed, to curb
the towering ambition of Louis. Marlborough
is the generalissimo of the army. The cam
paign ofthe first year of the war has just been
fought ; it was a year unmarked by any such
victories as those Avhich afterwards ensued —
Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malplaquet
— but, nevertheless, Marlborough's success.
had been brilliant ; he had taken several im
portant places; especially, he had captured

NATIONAL HISTORY. 185
the city of Liege. The campaign was now
over; all hostEities were suspended by the
winter. The army had gone into winter
quarters. Marlborough set out from Flanders to pro
ceed to the Hague. Some Dutch commis
sioners were in his company. He resolved to
do part of his journey by water, and embarked
on the Meuse. The Meuse is an affluent of
the Rhine, and retains many of the beauties
of the parent stream. Although the livery
of winter was on land and stream, the river
was still navigable, and its banks presented
much of that eminently pleasing scenery which
at the present day delights multitudes of
tourists. The boat preserved an easy, pro
sperous course. Everything around was as
peaceful as if there was a general pacification,
instead of universal war. The many-sided
Marlborough must have enjoyed this peaceful
change. Perhaps he anticipated the wide
field now open for his genius and ambition,
exulting in the success which he had just at
tained, and lookmg forward to plans of- future
victory. > v

1 86 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
If such were his meditations, they Avere
destined to be rudely interrupted. A band
of marauding Frenchmen, in the love of ad
venture, or desire of plunder, were just at this
time making a daring incursion on the banks
of the Meuse. They saw the boat, and from
its size and equipments judged that it might
be a prize of unusual value. Passengers and
boatmen included, the whole crew were quite
incapable of competing Avith the superior
number of Frenchmen. The French soon
perceived and used their opportunity ; the
crew were surrounded, the boat seized, and
all were made prisoners.
Yes, there was no doubt at all about the
humiliating fact ; the great Earl of Marl
borough, the generaEssimo of the allied armies,
was a prisoner in the hands of the French.
Not at the close of some late-contested field, in
honourable defeat by the fan*, open foe, was
the great commander taken captive, but thus
ingloriously by a band of mere marauders. It
was not for him to wield the thunderbolts
of war. Immured in some strong fortress, he
would perhaps drag on his days as a dis-

NATIONAL HISTORY. 187
honoured prisoner, while others fought the
campaigns and won the battles of the clay.
The French dealt with their prize in sharp,.
business-like fashion ; they overhauled the
boat to look for any valuables it might con
tain. To their extreme satisfaction the search
proved exceedingly, abundantly productive.
Valuable plate, rich furs and coverings, a
round sum of money, handsome wearing ap
parel formed their lucky booty. They then
turned round to investigate their prisoners ;
it was just possible that they might be persons
of rank, very well worth the capturing. If
they had only known it, there Avas one prisoner
there worth that boatful of gold, yea, that
boatful of gold told ten times over ; ay, and
if the king of France with prescient eye could
have read the future, he would have promoted
the captain of the band to the third place in
the kingdom if he had brought Marlborough
as a prisoner to Versailles. If this had only
been the case, the fate of the war, and the
history of Europe might have been different.
The Dutchmen Avere overhauled — solid,
robust, substantial men. Not much was to

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

be made out of them. The Frenchmen must
have perceived that Marlborough was treated
with high consideration, but his real rank did
not transpire. Even the intrepid spirit of
Marlborough must have quailed in this mo
ment of consternation and danger. Just at
this crisis his servant noiselessly came behind
him, and slipped a piece of paper into his
hand. With his usual presence of mind, Marl
borough did nothing to betray the incident ;
but he found an opportunity to take a quick
glance at the paper.
It was an old passport ; a passport which
had been made many years ago ; a passport
which belonged to himself. It Avas made
out to him under the name of General
Churchill. His captors came to examine him. He
exhibited the passport ; the title of Marl
borough did not appear there. If it had, he
would have been seized at once, with the
utmost joy and delight ; but his captors, ig
norant and unlearned men, though the name
of Marlborough was then ringing in all ears,

NATIONAL HISTORY. 189

did not recognise the former appellation. To
them the passport was a mere credential of
respectability. What should they do Avith the prisoners ?
This Avas noAV an object of consultation.
Perhaps the dark thought occurred to them
that they had better put them to death.
This is what would have been done imme
diately in ancient times. Happily, Christ
ianity, even in the worst Avars, has mitigated
materially the ferocious spirit of warfare.
Should they take their prisoners to France?
There Avere serious difficulties in the way. It
would not be easy to carry aAvay their pri
soners as well as their booty. Besides, the
country might be aroused, and they might be
compelled to abandon both. After all, their
booty had been very satisfactory. Besides,
these poor people had lost all their property.
Ultimately they determined to do them no
further harm, but let them proceed on their
journey. With what a feeling of relief Marlborough
must have Avatched their vanishing forms!
In due season he arrived in safety at the

i9o TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
Hague. He Avas greeted with the utmost en
thusiasm. That enthusiasm was redoubled
when his narrow escape from captivity be
came known. And now all Marlborough's
previous successes were thrown into the shade
by the wonderful victories which have made
Marlborough a household name in England
for all time. So greatly was that name
dreaded by the foe, that the French nurses
long hushed their children to sleep by telling
them that Marlborough was coming. Napo
leon counted him the first of modern generals ;
and when setting out on his Russian campaign
he whistled the air, ' Marlbrook s'en va t'en
guerre,' a romantic remembrance of the re
nown of the great captain.
The great Schlegel does not hesitate to speak
of turnEig-points in a man's life, where the
Spirit, of the Living God has interposed; and
there is a crisis not only for individuals, but
for nations, and for the world. In some deeply-
moving catastrophe of a man's life it makes a
distinct and speaking manEestation of itself,
working in him a total change of his feelings
and sentiments. But the Spirit's flaming

NATIONAL HISTORY. 191
SAVord of judgment may be turned not only
upon individuals, but also upon whole nations
and ages, to divert them from error and unbe
lief, and to lead them back to truth. Lastly,
it may also be directed towards the whole
world and the whole human race.

192 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

CHAPTER VI.
FORCE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES.
Hitherto we have chiefly dwelt on the bright
side of human endeavour, but there is also a
dark side to be stated. There are those who
haATe turned the corner and gone down hEl,
who have come to the turning-point and have
taken the wrong turning ; who have come to
the spot where the two roads parted off, and
have stood a little while and gone a Ettle
way, and have come back and pondered, and
have then definitely made up their mnids —
in the wrong direction. Let us consider this
a little. I suppose that there is no expression more
commonly used among young men than ' going to
the bad.' Now it may be well to enqufre what
this ' going to the bad ' may happen to mean.
In the first place, the number of men who,

FORCE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES. 193
born under fair stars and with fair prospects, \
nevertheless ' go to the bad,' is awlul, is sunply /
incalculable. It is a subject which suggests/
many sad reflections. It is one which belongs
to every man's experience, and, the wider
the experience, the more decisive becomes the
observation of failure and downfall. Thack
eray used to dwell upon the doctrine that there
was a skeleton in every closet. If he meant
that each man had some dark secrets in his
mind which he dared not reveal, I think he was
wrong in that impression. It was a libellous
hit at human nature. Such a position would
be intolerable to a Christian man and a gentle
man. Depend upon it he has opened the door
and window of his closet, and has exorcised the
ghost. But if it is meant that there is some
mauvais sujet. Ei each family, some member,
perhaps, deeply beloved, who has altogether
gone wrong, then I suspect that the saying is
true. It is said, for instance, by our teetotal
friends — let us hope that they have put a par
donable spice of exaggeration into the matter
— that there is no single family but has a
drunkard in it.
VOL. 11. 0

to

194 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
Let us look at cases in which people break
down. I suppose most of us know the Agony
column in the Times. I don't suppose that
people Eivent hints of agonising stories for the
mere sake of spendmg seven shElmgs on an
advertisement. What touching hints of family
history do we find there ! How often the in
timation, clear or veEed, that some one has
' gone astray ! ' That is the pretty uniform
tenour of a large proportion of these very
curious adA-ertisements.
We hear a great deal of people who emerge
from the working class — which, indeed, is not
a class, but the stuff and staple from which all
classes are formed — and a bracing, healthful,
cheering reading it is, though perhaps a little
misleading to many hopeful aspirants, yet
teUing us how poor men, by energy, skEl, and
character, have attained fame and fortune. It
is always exhilarating to read records of pro
gress. But the wheel of life revolves. There
s both upwards and downwards. If there
are men who emerge from the masses and win
their way upwards, there are also men who

FORCE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES. 195
lose their position, gravitate downwards, and
are lost in the masses.
Let a man run over the list of his school
fellows, and he wEl find that a considerable
proportion of them have been ruined for
life. At CoEege we often hear of a man ' going to
the bad.' It is the most mournful bit of College
slang I know. To some it only' means that
a man has taken a very low class instead of a
high class, or has been plucked instead of
taking any class at all. Or perhaps it means
that a man has accumulated a great deal of
debt, which his friends have much difficulty
in discharging, or which has become a great
incubus upon himself. There is no doubt but
these are serious things in themselves, and
the precursors to things still more serious.
But University men who burn the candle at
both ends little imagine the smoke and sput
tering with which the darkness comes on.
Gunning, in his 'Reminiscences of Cam
bridge,' speaks of several cases within his ex
perience. Once a gentleman, caUed out at
0 2

196 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
dinner to see a poor wretch lying senseless in
a cart, recognised the wreck of a University
man who had been one of the most courted and
brilliant members of the best society of his
day. You ask after such a man, and you find
he left CoEege one night suddenly, and long
years passed before he turned up as usher in the
vulgarest of commercial schools. Another has
left hopelessly in debt, and has been unable to
take a degree. Another has been refused his
College testimonials, and consequently cannot
take a family living. His relations allow him
a pound a week, on the strength of which he
degenerates into a useless vagabond. Another
enlisted m the Line, and went out as a common
soldier to India. Another is in the police
force. Another is driving a hansom. Another
is in the fire brigade. Another emigrated to
America, working his way behind the mast.
The other day a cabman touched his hat to
a gentleman, who recognised in him an old
schoolfellow. I do not cite these cases as
being altogether unfortunate. Doubtless
each shows a great fall off from a University
career, but still there was decent bread

FORCE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES. 197
honestly earned. But there are many worse
cases than these. A man starving in a garret
at Islington; a man turned bushranger in
Australia; a man dying in a workhouse ; a
man convicted at the bar of the Old Bailey,
and so on, are instances of that most serious
tragedy that may underlie the slang saying of
' going to the bad.' A very common form of
a man ' going to the bad ' is that he drinks him
self to death, or is cut off by disease which is
his own fault. A man, to use another slang
expression, may sow his wild oats, but he is
never sure when he has finished reaping
them. All such persons had their turning-points.
You might trace up the evil to its genesis.
A critical moment came to them unknown,
when they had to choose between the right
hand and the left, and the choice, apparently
arbitrary, was most probably led up irre
sistibly by antecedent events to a foregone
conclusion. Take another set of cases, where the moral
obliquity is not equally apparent. All of a
sudden a man is arrested suddenly by some

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

great misfortune. It is not in reality any
fault of his. The blow comes with a crushing
force, and is not, hi many cases, without a
very serious and sometimes a deleterious effect
upon his character.
A bank suddenly fails. One man loses his
whole fortune. Another has a mere nothing,
and he loses that nothing.
Mr. Reade in one of his novels makes a
'man lose his money at a bank. He then
turns Atheist and burns the famEy Bible.
Even a sorer trial than the loss of fortune
is the indifference and neglect with which the
world, or mere summer friends, ' flies of estate
and sunshine,' view such misfortunes.
I knew a man once who had possessed a
considerable fortune and some Eterary reputa
tion. By some fell stroke he lost the whole
of his property — by a stroke sudden, fatal,
and- irretrievable. He went round to his
friends to try and get some help. Among
others he went to the late Lord Macaulay,
then Mr. Macaulay. He came at an inoppor
tune moment. Macaulay had just lost his
seat for Edinburgh, and, refusing to sit for

FORCE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES. 199
any other constituency, he resigned office, and
some five thousand a year with it. The
Whigs were at that time firmly in office, and
he was abandoning a large income apparently
ensured for years. He received my poor
friend with the greatest kindness, and handed
him thirty pounds, addmg, if I remember
aright, many kind words and promises of
further assistance. The poor man dwelt
greatly on Macaulay's cheering kindness. He
told me, apparently in accordance with some
scientific vagary, that he made dinner the
smgle meal of the twenty-four hours. I
know some people have had the idea, and
acted upon it, not unprosperously, but the
sickening thought occurs to me that perhaps
it was want or forced economy that made my
poor friend adopt the theory. His only means
of support was the giving lessons in German.
He was called in to give lessons to some
family, that of a great dignitary, who had
known him on equal terms in his days of
affluence. The callousness, the uninterested
and matter-of-course way in which they took
his misfortunes — above all, the manner in which

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

they abandoned their cordiality towards an old
friend for an indifference towards a new lan
guage master, weighed heavily upon his spirits.
One day the luckless German master com
mitted suicide by cutting his throat.
In such cases it can hardly be broadly
asserted that a man has by his own miscon
duct gone utterly the wrong way. There has
been some staggermg blow of adversity, and
his nature has reeled and sunk beneath it.
Some splendid stroke of prosperity might
have had an equally disastrous effect. A man
told me once that, having come into an un
expected legacy, he had no sleep in conse
quence for eleven nights. I think that people
who speak of such prolonged sleeplessness
unconsciously exaggerate, and do not allow for
some surreptitious Avinks : Efe, Avithout any
sleep at aE, could hardly be sustained beyond
a few days. Once I travelled in a railway
carriage in the north of France and met a
madman in charge of his keepers. They told
me that the unhappy man had suddenly come
into a large fortune and had lost his reason.
Dr. Forbes Winslow has a striking anecdote

FORCE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES. 201
in that striking and most remarkable work, on
the ' Obscurer Diseases of the Mind.' A man
on the Stock Exchange one day made ten
thousand pounds. His brain was turned m a
moment. He commenced saying ' Ten thou
sand pounds ! ten thousand pounds ! ' and
Avent on saying it with incredible rapidity,
through many weary months of madness.
One is very sorry to refer madness to a suf
ferer's OAvn fault, but a sounder moral sense,
undebased by excessive love of money, might
have averted such a catastrophe.
There is only one way of meeting such
misfortunes as may assuredly come to us. So
to speak, we live in the trembling valleys,
such as those below the slopes of Etna, and
are liable to the fiery irruption.
There is only one way of meeting the
instances where men break down, or come to
grief in consequence of some sudden stroke of
fortune or misfortune — the two opposing poles,
Arctic and Antarctic, on which one is equally
liable to be wrecked. A man's philosophy
Avill not suffice. It would conduct us either
to Epicureanism or Stoicism. The one is an

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

organised selfishness, that would turn wealth
to basest uses; the other, a pride and in
human disdain of outward circumstances that
in an extreme case would take refuge from
sorrow in suicide. It is only the ballasted
mind which, self-poised, would be unswayed
by veering currents. However far back re
moved the stages of the radical defect may be,
the matter narrows itself at last to the want
of that religious sense which determines the
relative proportion of things. Where the
overwhelming thought of a future life is
present, it absorbs minor cares and elevates*
ordinary motives. Neither is it any answer
to say that men who profess to be actuated
by such motives often practically forget them.
I have somewhere read of a man who day
by day was approaching some vast mountain,
whether Alp, or Andes, or Himalayan. The
vast snowy height, however, above him go
verned all the horizon, and dominated all
other natural phenomena. It might be that
any casual employment or chain of thought
caused a brief forgetfulness. It might be that
the interposition of a hand's breadth before

FORCE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES. 203
the eyes served to blot out the mountain
from the view. But there was no confusion
of thought between the relative proportions
of the hand's breadth and of the mountain.
Even so in life, when the great aspiration of
immortality is firmly grasped, mere human
things sink into a comparative insignificance.
There wEl be little of permanent elation or
permanent depression. The inequaEties on
the earth's surface are as nothing when we
are shnply considering the magnitude of the
earth. • There is always a consolation for those who
may look back sorrowfully on life, and think,
as Mr. Dickens made one of his characters say,
' that it is all a muddle!' and, as one man sor
rowfully said towards the end of his Efe, that
' his youth was a blunder, his manhood a
struggle, and his old age a regret.' The
blunder, the struggle, and the regret may
have formed part of the discipline of life. It
would have been ill indeed for a man to be
able to assert that his youth was triumph,
his manhood rest, and his old age comfort and
complacency. All men need through errors

204 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
to attain to truth, through struggles to victory,
through regrets to that sorrow which is a very
source of life, that repentance which is not to
be repented of. Men must rise in an ever-
ascending scale, like that ladder of St. Augus^
tine, by which men, through stepping stones
of their dead selves, rise to higher things,
or those steps of Alciphron, the Epicurean,
which crumbled away into nothingness as fast
as each footfall left them. Our very mistakes (
in life may be over-ruled for a higher end, and
our very tears water spiritual growth that may
be rich with immortal foliage and fruit. It il
not, after all, what a man may have been, but
what a man is, which makes his true happi
ness, and fixes his real state. If only we are
saved at last, if only we escape safe to shore,
it matters little though we are only rescued in
clinging to spars and broken pieces of the
ship. When one views the miseries of huma
nity, where perhaps some single act has ruined
a whole life, and has brought a misery that
seems incommensurate to the offence, there is
only one way in which consolation can be
found. This sharp suffering may be remedial,

FORCE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES. 205
and indeed essential for life. The image that
comforts one most is that suggested by sur
gery. You see a surgeon about to perform
some operation which we know will inflict
pain, and perhaps be perilous to life. The
instruments look so cold, and keen, and bright,
and there seems something almost cruel about
the surgeon as with calm nerve and decision
he proceeds to operate. But his course is
dictated by skill and wisdom, and frequently
enough by the purest benevolence. This is
just the same way that we may believe God
deals with us. Having endowed His creatures
with free will, we may say that a state of sin
follows at once on the power of free volition.
And all the sorrow of life is but the Divine
Master's hand cutting away the diseased por
tions of our nature, that we may live and not
die. The force of adverse circumstances is one
of the weapons in the Divine arsenal, whereby
our self-discipline is accomplished, and we are
brought out of ourselves, by the sorrow that
comes not from the ground, and the trouble
that comes not from the dust, into simple de
pendence on a supernatural power.

206 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
You thought, by efforts of your own,
To take at last each jarring tone
Out of your life, till all should meet
In one majestic music sweet ;
And deemed that in your own heart's ground
The root of good was to be found ;
And that by careful watering,
And earnest tendance, we might bring
The bud, the blossom, and the fruit
To grow and flourish from that root ;
You deemed you needed nothing more
Than skill and courage to explore
Deep down enough in your own heart
To where the well-head lay apart,
Which must the springs of being feed,
And that these fountains did not need
The soil that choked them moved away,
To bubble in the open day.
But thanks to heaven it is not so ;
That root a richer soil doth know
Than our poor hearts could e'er supply ; 
That stream is from a source more high ;
From God it came, to God returns,
Not nourished from our scanty urns,
But fed from his unfailing river,
Which runs, and will run on for ever.1
There is somewhere on our coast a fountam
within high-water mark on the seashore.
Twice a day the tide spreads over it, and the
pure, sweet water is defiled and spoiled by
1 Archbishop Trench.

FORCE OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES. 207
the salt, bitter wave. But the tide goes down,
and the fountain washes itself clear from
the defilement. As that troubled sea goes
down once more the fountain gushes pure
and sweet beneath the pure sweet heavens.
This is the emblem of a lEe that is in daily
conflict with the world and with adverse cfr-
cumstances. Again and agam it is over
powered by those perplexed circumstances
and tumultuous voices, but these all subside,
and the soul is left alone with God.

268 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

CHAPTER yil.
THEORIES OF LIFE.
Every man is, in some sort of way, a phEoso-
pher. As he accumulates the facts of expe
rience he begins to generalise from them. A
man more and more perceives the immense
importance of intention as determining the
moral quality of actions. Somehow a man
finds the necessity of clinging to some moral
support. In cases of failure he will at least
try to have the consolation that he acted
for the best. Very probably the man turns
an Optimist, believing that everything has
really been for the best ; or even if he turns
Pessimist, determinately believing that every
thing has happened for the worst, he is still
constructing some kind of philosophy for him
self. Of course many men can only philosophise

THEORIES OF LIFE. 209
these philosophies in a Arery crude kind of way.
Many, on the other side, do so in a very elabo
rate and complicated manner. But whether
men distinctly formulate their views or not,
they certainly do make out some kind of theory
of life for themselves. Here is our life, and
the question is, ' What shall we do with it ? '
In such an inquiry everything depends on
what theory of life we may adopt. There are
various theories of Efe before the world.
Approfondissez — go to the bottom of things —
is a motto that has a wide predominance at
the present day. Men are not so well content
as they used to be with being practical Atheists,
but in an age of general discussion and infor
mation they seek some basis of argument that
may give colour to and explain their lives.
The question that underlies the whole matter is
Avhether we beheve in a Living God, and, sup
posing we believe in Him, whether we regard
Him as a Loving Father loving and caring
for his chEdren, or whether we regard Him
simply as the impersonation ofthe causes which
are at work in the material universe, 'look
ing with sober satisfaction upon the successful
vol. 11. p

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

expansion of the original seed which commenced
the formation of the vast material organism.'
A man, therefore, must arrive at some solid
view of human Efe. He must not be one of
those who are ever learning and yet never
able to come to a knowledge of the truth.
Until the central idea of lEe is adjusted, we
shall be unable to find a balanced and well-
ordered Efe. A man wEl, indeed, be ever
proceeding in knowledge, and from time to
time he wEl have to put his added experience
and ideas into definite relation with his beEef.
Some people form their opinions dogmatically,
and then, as they say, lay them on the shelf.
Others always hold their opmions 'in solution,'
prepared to modify or reject them on any
advent of further light. An opinion per
manently laid upon the shelf, or, on the other
hand, one only retained in a settled state of
unsettledness, seems equally removed from an
intelligent holding of. it. A man wEl, above
all things, hold the love of truth. He wEl
reverence truth as he does his conscience.
But having sought carefully for it, and at
tained it, not as a matter of opinion, but from
all the best thought and experience, he will

THEORIES OF LIFE.

seek to be settled and grounded. Above all,
he will know that, with the safeguard of a
pure, unselfish, and laborious Efe, he cannot
wander far from it. He avEI know, indeed,
that there may be an inaccuracy and incom
pleteness in his views which time alone can
clarify and extend ; and in his own mind he
will be constantly adjusting the relations of
things new to things old. He will also con
stantly hold the supreme majesty of truth,
and welcome every fact, however opposed to
his dearest beliefs, which- is brought home by
irrefragable argument or fact. But he holds
firmly to his belief, since he has sought to
buEd upon a rock, and has so built up the
edifice of his faith from deep waters and amid
many storms ; and he feels pretty certain that
no difficulties will represent that investigation
and thought with which former difficulties
have been overcome. What PhiEp van Arte-
velde says is especially true of religion : —
' All my life long
I have beheld with most respect the man
Who knew himself and knew the ways before him,
And from among them chose considerately,
And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind
Pursued his purpose.' p 2

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

The great tendency of the present day is in
the direction of physical science. We observe,
Ave note, we examine and cross-examine facts,
and from phenomena we attain to law. For
a time we seem bound up and deEvered over
to dead, impersonal, pitUess laws. The world
seems as some vast manufactory, in which we
hear incessantly the clash and whirring of a
complex machinery. But we come to learn
that the Lawgiver is behind His laws, and
that, paradoxical as it may sound, whEe He
hides Himself behind them, He also reveals
Himself through them. For these laws, too,
are ' emanations of the all-beauteous mind.'
In a sense they shadow forth the Divinity
that contrived them. Moreover, we learn the
limitations of these laws ; that there are other
facts, the facts of mind and conscience, as
certain as any material facts, though una
menable to physical law. As Mr. Palgrave
strikingly says : —

' To matter or to force
The All is not confined ;
Beside the law of things
Is set the law of mind ;

THEORIES OF LIFE.

One speaks in rock and star,
And one within the brain,
In unison at times,
And then apart again ;
And both in one have brought us hither,
That we may know our whence and whither.
The sequences of law
We learn through mind alone ;
' Tis only through the Soul
That aught we know is known :
With equal voice she tells
Of what we touch and see
Within these bounds of life
And of a life to be ;
Proclaiming one who brought us hither,
And holds the keys of whence and whither.'
Or as Principal Shairp1 acutely puts it : —
' One thing often said before must be re
peated. This supposed necessity to rest in
the perception of ordered phenomena is no
necessity at aE, but an artificial and arbitrarily
imposed limitation, against which thought left
to its natural action rebels. It is impossible
for any reflective mind, not dominated by a
1 I must in this chapter express my obligations to
Principal Shairp's admirable little book, ' Culture and
Eeligion,' which I would venture very strongly to
recommend.

214 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
system, to regard the ordered array of phy
sical forces, and to rest satisfied with this
order, without gomg on to ask whence it
came, what placed it there. Thought cannot
be kept back, when it sees arrangement, #from
asking what is the arranging power; when
it sees existence, from inquiring how it came
to exist ; and the question is a natural and legi
timate one, in spite of aE that phenomenalism
may say against it, and it wEl not cease to be
asked whEe there are reasonmg men to ask it.'
Men wEl, either consciously or uncon
sciously, phEosophise on life ; and there is
no greater ' moment ' than when a man reso
lutely takes up some system of life, and
determines to abide by it. Here is Professor'
i. Huxley's famous view : — ' That man, I think,
has had a liberal education who has been so
trained in youth that his body is the ready
servant of his wiE, and does with ease and
pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it
fs capable of; whose inteEect is a clear, cold,
logic engine, with all its parts of equal
strength and in smooth working order; ready,
Eke a steam-engme, to be turned to any kmd

THEORIES OF LIFE. 215
of work, and spin the gossamers as well as
forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind
is stored with a knowledge of the great and
fundamental truths of Nature, and of the laws
of her operations ; one who, no stunted ascetic,
is full of life and fire, but whose passions are
trained to come to heel by a vigorous wiE,
the servant of a tender conscience; who has
learned to love all beauty, whether of nature
or art, to hate all vileness, and to respect
others as himself.' This is a noble passage,
regarded as an eloquent exposition of a merely
scientic theory of culture. But it is concerned
merely with the phenomena of Efe. We are
to take all the facts of life; we are to, look at
human life as a game, as Professor Huxley goes
on to explain, in which we are to seek to win
for ourselves. Man is to be ' the servant of
a tender conscience ; ' but we are at a loss to
see how under such a system a tender con
science is to be framed. God is reduced to an
automaton, a mere personification of dead
law. Such a system, if consistent with itself,
would abjure the moral elements, but by the
introduction of high-sounding moral phrases,

216 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
we have to see how far it is consistent. The
Avhole merit of life is made to consist in win
ning a merely human game. But how does
it apply to those who have been liberated
from merely secular aims; those who have
been content to sacrifice all the ordinary aims
of life, who have been content to labour,
and suffer, and die, if knowledge can be ex
tended, if society can be purified, i£ the limits
of the Kingdom of Christ can be enlarged?
Would the true heroes of the world ever have
done anything on this view of life? Some
men lay the greatest stress upon culture—
that new and somewhat artificial word on
Avhich se much is buEt up by our phEoso-
phical culturists; of whom, perhaps, Mr. Mat
thew Arnold is the greatest exponent since
Goethe. But it is important to have a clear
idea of what is really meant by culture.
'Culture,' says Principal Shairp, 'is not a
product of mere study. Learning may be
got from books, but not culture. It is a
more living process, and requires that the
student shall at times close his books, leave
his solitary room, and mingle Avith his fellow-

THEORIES OF LIFE. 217
men. He must seek the intercourse of living I
hearts as well as of dead books — especially
the companionship of those of his own con
temporaries whose minds and characters are
fitted to instruct, elevate, and sweeten his
own. Another thing required is, the disci-
pEne which must be carried on by each man
in himself; the learning of self-control, the
forming of habits, the effort to overcome what
is evE, and to strengthen what is good in his
own nature. But to enumerate aE the means
of culture would be impossible, seeing they
are wide as the world, and the process .'
begins with the cradle ; and we may well '¦
believe does not end with the grave.' This
eloquent writer goes on to argue — ' Start
from the manward pole, and go along the line
honestly and thoroughly, and you land in the
Divine one. Start from the Divine pole, and
carry out aE that it implies, and you land in
the manward pole, or the perfection of huma
nity. Ideally considered, then, culture must
culminate in reEgion, and reEgion in culture.'
But most men find it difficult to reconcile the
two, and reconcile the claims of culture and

218 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
religion. But if we refuse to limit culture by
any narrow definition, if we refuse to confine
culture within the limits of Positivism, and
make it embrace the nature of man in its
totality, then culture must rise to some better
idea of culture than that entertained by the
culturists. Of these, Goethe would probably be con
sidered the chief. He endeavoured to confine
culture entfrely within the limits of human
development. There is probably nothing con
trary to this, even in the second part of
' Faust,' although the Germans have imported
into Goethe, as they have imported into Shake
speare, very much of what Goethe or Shake
speare must have been altogether unconscious.
Goethe was a many-sided man, and it is im
possible to contemplate without wonder all
that he did in the development of his nature in
so many varied relations. But the career was
not a satisfactory one, and a darkness seems to
rest upon it at the last. His purely selfish
system was not one which travelled beyond
the precincts of sense. The philosophy of
Shakespeare, if he may be said to have held

THEORIES OF LIFE. 219
a philosophy, was like Comte's, like Goethe's,
like Bacon's, in its natural system, entfrely
limited to the facts of this life, ignoring those
higher spfritual facts, which, though immea
surable, imponderable, invisible, are as true
as any ofthe objective facts of nature.
I cannot but think that Mr. Tennyson's fine
poem of the ' Palace of Art ' pourtrays the soul
that has buEt up its rest in everything that
can administer gratification to the senses and «
the inteUect, but has found all this utterly
break down in a moment of supreme trial.
When the fool in the parable says, ' Soul,
thou hast much goods laid up for many years,'
I do not understand by these goods that which
relates merely to the eating, drinking, and
makhig merry. The expression is used of
the soul that trusts to its own powers and its
own resources, trusts to that which is alto
gether external to the love and will of God.
The Soul abides in the wide royal palace,
lavished with everything of literature and
art, of all that the ' supreme Caucasian mind '
can invent or suggest, and fiEed with con
tempt for humbler men.

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

' O all things fair to sate my various eyes !
O shapes and hues that please me well !
O silent faces of the great and wise,
My gods with whom I dwell !
' 0 God-like isolation which art mine,
I can but count thee perfect gain ;
What time I watch the darkening droves of swine
That range on yonder plain ! ' . . .
Then of the moral instinct she would prate,
And of the rising from the dead,
As hers by right of full-accomplished fate,
And at the last she said :
' I take possession of man's mind and deed ;
I care not what the sects may brawl ;
I sit as God, holding no form of creed,
But contemplating all.1
The downfall of that soul is then set forth
by the poet in the finest vein of human para
bolic preaching.
I can very well understand how to many
the pursuit of knowledge is indeed everything.
And the poet beautifully shows how know
ledge may be gloriously used after the soul
has gained the supreme good : 
Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are
So lightly, beautifully built :
Perchance I may return with others there,
When I have purged my guilt.

THEORIES OF LIFE.

I read the other day of a great man be
ginning to learn German after his fortieth
year. When Robert Hall, aged and racked
with pain, read Macaulay's first essay, he
set to work at Italian in order to judge
of the paraEel drawn between Milton and
Dante. I remember hearing of some Ame
ricans who imagined in a moment of pre
ternatural acuteness that the Judgment
Day was at hand. They concluded, how
ever, that the Judgment Day could not
find them better employed than lighting
their candles and going to their proper
business. A similar story is related of the
most saintly of English judges.1 A man
1 'In the year 1666 an opinion did run through the
nation that the' end ofthe world would come that year.
This had spread mightily among the people ; and Judge
Hale going that year the Western Circuit, it happened that
as he was on the bench at the assizes, a most terrible storm
fell out very unexpectedly, accompanied with such flashes
of lightning and claps of thunder that the like will hardly
fall out in an age : upon which a whisper or a rumour ran
through the crowd, that now was the world to end and the
day of judgment to begin ; and on this there followed a
general consternation in the whole assembly, and all men
forgot the business they were met about, and betook them
selves to their prayers. This, added to the horror raised

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

might be profitably employed to the last
day of his life in gathering up new facts in
science or new conclusions. It is sometimes
said that the next world finds us very much
as this world leaves us. The remark is
perhaps truer than might be supposed. Our
stock of ideas and knowledge now may have
some direct relation to that which we may
start with hereafter.
But besides anti-Christian philosophical sys
tems, there are practical plans and theories of
life which, without rising to the dignity of being
in any degree phEosophical, do largely domi
nate in the minds of many. There is no
I common denominator that can measure the
immense difference between human minds.
While one man's nature is entirely occupied in
by the storm, looked very dismally, insomuch that my
informant, a man of no ordinary resolution and firmness of
mind, confessed it made a great impression upon himself.
But he told me that he did observe the judge not a whit
affected, and was going on with the business of the court
in his ordinary manner ; from which he made this con
clusion — that his thoughts were so well fixed, that he
believed if the world had been really to end, it would
have given him no considerable disturbance.' — Life of Sir
Matthew Hale.

THEORIES OF LIFE. 223
the cultivation of the inteEectual faculties
and the eradication of moral evE, another
man's soul is wrapt up in dreams of pride,
selfishness, and wealth. One man's whole
nature is deeply moved and troubled because
he cannot understand the origin of evE or the
dealings of Providence, and another man's
soul is troubled by no deeper emotions than
those relating to the rise or fall of stock.
We cannot but think that in the ordinary
novel one finds the expression of vulgar
theories of life. It is easy to see of some
French noveEsts that their imagination can
invent no higher state of Efe than lots, of
pleasure, money, and whie, and to roE under
some gorgeously laden table in the small
hours of the morning.
Moreover, there is a point of view from
which the most ordinary novel has its moral
and psychological interest. If it tells us
little else, it teEs us a great deal about its
author. It reveals to us many both of the
most common and the most curious workings
of the human mind. For the fortunes of the
hero or the actors Ave have little sympathy.

224 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
The hero may stop, or not, the runaway horse,
with its lovely but senseless burden ; the
unjust wEl may stand or be critically over
thrown as the judge is about to sum up ; the
villain may leave, or may not leave, a full
confession of his guilt; so far as we ourselves
. are personally concerned, the narrative may
quite faE to excite our flagging interest. But
it is really Avorth whEe to examine the 'par
ticular kind of mind which has produced a
particular kind of novel. By use we may
learn to discriminate between the real cha
racter of the novelist and the mere veneering
of language. The novelist reaUy answers a
great many interrogatories which we might
feel inclined to put to him. He truly goes
into the confessional, whispers every fact of
his history, unbares the cogitations of his soul.
There are not many novels from which we
may not, more or less, disentangle an auto-
' biographical element. Only, as in the case
of the confessional, though it may be interest
ing at first, there is a terrible sameness about
it afterwards. The character of this self-
inculpating evidence is, however, mainly of a

THEORIES OF LIFE. 225
negative kind. We detect the want of ear
nestness and simplicity of feelings We see
the want of real discrimination of character,
of true delicacy of mind. We see how thin
and worthless, and comrentional, is the whole
estimate of life and character. We notice the
absence of any broad sympathies, of any high
aims, of any heartfelt religious motives. Most (
of all, we see what are the ordinary aspirations \
of essentially vulgar people; They reveal to
us their day-dreams and reA^eries. We see
their discontent, Avith the duties and the work
they ha\re to do, and their sighings after the
boundless Avealth and enjoyment which will
really be their ruin. They permit us to
observe Avhat would be the Elysium of their
souls. There was a merchant who wished for
no. better heaven than the world, with the
addition of a good many more thousands in
the funds. It is a heathenish notion — that&of
the Turk or Indian, who believes that the
next world wEl be the heightened sensual
pleasures of this Efe — which the novel-writer
too often shares with the candid mercantile
man we have cited. Nor is this all. The
vol. 11. Q

226 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
enervating scenes of luxury, and the sugges
tions of passion and voluptuousness, which
are so invariable in sensational fiction, are,
most probably, the reflex of the author's mind.
It is quite possible that a woman may write
sensational novels, as a mere branch of useful
industry, while she spends most of her leisure
time in cutting bread and butter for her chil
dren. But, generally, the world is right, in
spite of indignant protests, in conceiving that
some sort of relationship subsists between a
writer and his works. It is not an agreeable
idea that we derive from being favoured Avith
glimpses into these polluted chambers of ima
gination. Of course we are very far from saying that
the facile habit of novel composition has lost
its value and compensation for many minds.
Only too often it is the favourite occupation
of* the mannish woman or the womanish man.
But on many minds it must act beneficiaEy,
as a gentle stimulant or a gentle sedative.
To many it affords a natural outlet to over
charged feelmgs, to tender reminiscences, to
the desire to vindicate uncomprehended cha-

THEORIES OF LIFE. 227
racters and careers. Many natures expand
into fiction as naturally as the earth into
flowers or the birds into song. But in many
cases it affords only an ugly exhibition of a
false ideal of life. It would be a good plan,
after people have written their novels, and
have richly reaped occupation and pleasure
from the pursuit, to commit the pages to the
flames, And watch with an unfaltering eye
Their darling visions till they die.
There is one other subject of supreme im
portance which fitly belongs to this chapter,
on which we cannot dwell, but which we
would not leave Avithout a mention, although
a mention altogether disproportioned to the
real value of the subject. This is the question
of a particular Providence presiding in the
events of human life. On this point we shall
content ourselves with reproducing the views
of one who may almost be said to have solved
this great enigma.
There is the difficulty of reconcEing the
belief in a superintending Providence with

228 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

that of the free will and free -agency of man,
which question leads to the mysterious diffi
culty concerning the origin of evil. Dr.
Copleston, the late Bishop of Llanduff, re
gards the events of this life as subject to
the control of Divine providence, but he
will not allow the beEef of this controUing
power to be contradictory to the belief of
the freedom of human actions. He saj^s,
in his work on 'Necessity and Predestina
tion ' : — ' It does not follow that because we
beEeve this power to be exercised, therefore
it is exercised to the exclusion of all other
influence. And again, it may be (to speak in
a manner adapted to human conceptions and
human experience), it may be kept hi reserve
to act upon occasions : it may form the plan
and the outline, and delegate the subordinate
parts to minor agents; it may, for the purpose
of exercising the fidelity and zeal of those
agents, one whEe keep itself out of sight ; or
at another, to animate their exertions, let
them perceive its presence ; or, to check their
folly and presumption, make them feel their
dependence, and frustrate their endeavours —

THEORIES OF LIFE. 229
it may, supposing these agents to have a will
of their own, incline that will to act conform
ably to their duty, by making that duty
appear easy and agreeable, by removing ob
stacles and terrors, and placing attractive
objects hi their way: or, if the wEl be stubborn,
it may make it feel the ill consequences of
that stubbornness, and it may contrive that
its perverseness shall defeat its own purpose,
and forward some other purpose which is
kind and beneficial : it may make the miscon
duct of one instrumental to his own cor
rection, or to the improvement and fidelity of
the rest, by shoAving, in ordinary cases of dis
obedience, the evEs he brings upon himself, or,
in cases of extreme depravity, the utter aban
donment and ruin to which the delinquent is
left.' He proceeds to say : ' Does any part of such
a scheme either detract from the notion of a
Supreme InteEigence planning, governing,
guiding, and accomplishing the Avhole ; or can
such a conception in the mind of man, of the
scheme of Divine Providence, tend to relax
his energy, to discourage his industry, to

230 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
impair the distinctions of right and wrong, or
Aveaken the principle of duty and obedience ? '
It has been truly said that we cannot help
feeling, and this we collect to be Dr. Cople-
ston's opinion, that as God deals with us, so
in effect we are; and that nothing can be
more, absurd and presumptuous than to
deduce the nature and condition of man from
any speculation about the attributes of God;
or to begin with determining what God is,
in order to decide upon our own predicament
in His creation.
Bishop Copleston says: 'Now E" we eon*
sider how small a part of God's works, both
in extent and in duration, our faculties can
embrace, and further, how intimately and
variously connected all the parts of those
Avorks are, plainly indicating one scheme, of
Avhich the remotest parts have numerous and
complicated relations with each other, so that
much of what we see is essential to what we
do not see, and to suppose one Avithout the
other would be a contradiction in terms as
literal, though not so palpable, as a circle
with unequal radii — when, I say, aE our hi-

THEORIES OF LIFE. 231
quiries Eato nature only tend to Enpress upon
our mnids this wonderful concatenation; and
when, agam, a scheme perfectly analogous to
this has been traced in the moral world, inso
much that in the history of mankind there is
no one event, however trivial, but may have
intimate and essential connections with all
other events, however grand and important;
and these connections may run out into all
possible combinations, and multiply to all in
finity; when, I say, we reflect on all this, he
must indeed be a rash and vain reasoner who
does not admit the probability that aE his own
perplexities arise from imperfect acquaintance
Avith the objects of bis speculation; and that
Avhere facts militate against his reasonings,
some Enpossible condition was involved in his
own expectations, something destructive of
the very essence of that thing which was the
main object of his thoughts.
'And thus we may conclude with regard to
all questions in which the infinite power of
God is represented as being irreconcEable
Avith something that either is, or is alleged to
be — that unless an actual contradiction can be

232 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
pointed out in the terms of the proposition,
no difficulties can justify a denial of its pos-
sibEity — and, on the other hand, that many of
those things which fiE us with difficulty to
account for, are necessary conditions to other
things, the existence of which we assume, and
could not without involving a contradiction
have been otherwise. So that what we first
thought to be impossibilities, turn out to be
only difficulties — and, on the other hand, many
of the difficulties which perplex us in the
scheme of Providence are such, that the re
moval of them, keeping other things as they
are, would be an impossibility.''
SimEarly, that amiable metaphysician, Abra
ham Tucker, says : — 'A universal Providence
disposing aE events Avithout exception, leaves
no room for freedom ; but there is such Provi
dence, therefore no freedom : or on the other
side there is a freedom of the wEl, therefore
no such Providence. Thus, both parties lay
down the same major, without which they
would make no scruple to admit the minor
assumed by their antagonist. But the most
sober and considerate part of mankind, in-

THEORIES OF LIFE. 233
duced by the strong evidences both of freedom
and Providence, have forborne to pronounce
them incompatible, the. only obstacle against
the reception of either : yet look upon their
consistency as one of those mysteries which
we are forced to admit, though we cannot
explain.' The question has been thus summed up : —
' It is indeed impossible not to feel with Dr.
Copleston and the author of the " Analogy "
that a state of probation is almost included
under the idea of God's moral government of
the world, and that the notion of a righteous
judgment hereafter implies some sort of temp
tation to do what is Avrong. Such, too, is the
natural government of God. We find our
selves placed in a balance between right and
wrong, Avith a power of choice, and an antici
pation of the consequences of that choice.
Present fruition, and succeeding pain, present
forbearance, and consequent enjoyment, mark
.out to us plainly a sort of conditional coA^enant
which God has made with us in respect to our
passage through this temporal state; and that
which constitutes our trial in our temporal

234 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
capacity, does also constitute it in our re
ligious capacity : the description of the one
will be a description of the other, if only
what we call temporal interest in the one
place we call future in another, and sub
stitute virtue for prudence in speaking of
the trial for a future life. Thus our trials
of difficulties and dangers, in our temporal
and religious capacities, are evidently ana
logous and correspondent. Why we are
involved in hazards which our Almighty
Parent foresees will end, in some cases, in
our confusion and misery ; or why any sort
of danger or hazard should be imposed on
mo'rtals ; why evil is permitted to reign in
the world ; how all this is to be reconcEed
with the character of infinite mercy : these
are matters which Dr. Copleston does not
pretend to tell us, but leaves them as diffk
culties of speculation, so to remain till we are
furnished with higher degrees of intelligence
than it is the lot of our present nature to.
enjoy. We have no business with the specu
lation at all; we can know nothing of God
but hi his relations to man, and those relations

THEORIES OF LIFE. 235
 • 
he practically points out, and positively re
veals ; and there our inquiries must rest, or
terminate in disappomtment and confusion.'
We will take one more citation — it shall
be from Principal Shairp — on the practical
bearing of the question.
'To be thus perfectly single-hearted and
candid is, I. know, a most difficult attainment.
Entire candour and honesty regarding ourselves,
instead of being the first, is one of the last and
highest attainments of a perfectly fashioned
character. But though this is true, it is also the
beginning of all well-doing; without some
measure of it, even though weak and unsteady,
no good thing can begin. We must be honest
with ourselves, desire to know the truth
about ourselves ; desire, however faintly, to
be better than we are, or there is no bettering |
- possible for us. But if this desire is in us,
it is the germ out of which all good may
come. The first honest acting out of this
desire will be to face conscience, as I said, to
walk according to the light we have, to do the
immediate thing we know to be right, and
then more light wEl follow.

236 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
 • 
' We shall desire to get beyond mere notional
religion, and to lay a living hold on living
truth. And the way to do this is to take our
common thoughts of right and wrong into the
light of God, and connect them with Him,
and act them out in the conviction that they
come straight from Him. One of the first
results of such an effort to act up to con
science avEI be the conviction that there is
in us something essentially wrong inwardly,
which, of ourselves, we are quite unable to set
right, that to do this is a task to which our
own internal resources are wholly inadequate ;
and the more honestly the attempt is made
the more entirely will a man feel that the
powers of restoration he needs must lie out
of himself, above himself. Of such poAvers
no tidings reach him from any quarter of the
universe, saA^e only from the Revelation that
is in Christ.'

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 237

CHAPTER VIII.
PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
It is perfectly possible to construct a
scheme of the social philosophy of life.
Something of the nature of such a plan might
be almost gathered froin the preceding pages.
Men practically either adopt a religious theory
or a secular theory of Efe. Now, after the
theory has been adopted, there is rouni for a
great deal of tact in the management of the
detaEs of human Efe. , You may make the
best of it or you may make the worst of it,
or you may, to an indefinite extent, spoil
and curtaE it. The one great business of
human life is attained Avhen the soul has
been led to conscious affiance in its Maker
through the work of the Redeemer. But the
busuiess of Efe is not concluded then. Any
school of reEgion that can so regard Efe is
essentially defective. Rather it is only just

238 TURNING POINTS IN LIFE.
begun. The goal is reached that shall be our
starting point. In ordinary theological lan
guage it is said that henceforth the life of the
believer must be one of holiness, that he must
grow in grace and in knowledge, and that he
lives now that his Efe may be a process of sane
tification to his spirit. That also must be ac
cepted as substantial truth. But there is a
further truth beyond this that must be accepted
and explained, and the want of it has been the
cause of much narrowness and intolerance.
God has placed us on this earth, and amid the
relationships of life, in order that we may grow
in the love and knowledge of His works as of
Himself, and also of man, His greatest and-'
dearest work of all.
Thus every proAince of knowledge may
become informed with a religious motive, and
be made subsidiary to Divine life. The two
hemispheres of knowledge are those which
relate to nature and to man. In studying
nature we obtain glimpses of the Divine Mmd.
Each fact is part of the Divine order. If the
Almighty has been pleased to exhibit His
exquisite skill and wisdom in the construction

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 239
of organic forms, it may be reverently said
that in the investigation and reconstruction
of such forms we are walking in His steps.
If we beEeve that in history or in contem
porary Efe we see the development of His
moral laws and the superintendence of His
providence, the observation and investigation
of such history is an intellectual pursuit which
becomes glorified in the Eght of reEgion.
The acquisition of intellectual truth becomes
part of religious duty.
' The plan of life ! ' says an Elustrious French
writer, ' here is the great fact ! the greatest of
all! ' Who can thoroughly understand all that it
means, and all that it could put into existence,
were it lived as it ought to be lived ? Certain
it is that Efe is a serious thing, that should be
governed neither by caprice nor thrown away
on chance.
'LEe is long, and in its many succeedmg ages
and phases brings in its tram many duties,
and with the duties the highestfresponsibiliti.es.
'Life is often rugged; it is not always
young and joyous. Soon come trials, struggles,

240 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
labours, and contrarieties of every kind. These
are the real foundations of life. Amusement
and pleasure are never more than the brEliant
and deceitful surface.
' During the Eiexperience of youth, life flies
gaily on like a pleasant adventure, without care,
Avithout any foresight, without any plan. This
we understand, deplore.'
There are few books more interesting and
important in this respect than the wise
writings of the Bishop of Orleans, Mgr. Du-
panloup. His book, 'La Feinme studieuse,'
might almost equally suit Frenchmen and
Englishmen. He has a keen eye for the fri-
voEties of society, for the indolence, stupidity,
and mistakes of average Efe, and, above all, he
has a decided speciality for the weaknesses of
the unoccupied female mind. ' La vie ! elle
n'est un jeu ni une fiction pour personne ; et
c'est vous surtout, femmes du monde, qui ap-
prenez cela vite par vos mecomptes et vos
douleurs ! Mais croyez-en mon experience :
une vie bien gouvernee, un temps utilement
employ^, previendrait bien des tristesses, ou
aiderait a les supporter.' He quotes Madame

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 241
Swetchine's remark, ' que la piete" seule ne me
suffit pas, s'E ne s'y joint le rayon lumineux
d'intelligence.' The Bishop holds that the edu
cation of the seventeenth century, '¦reflSchir,
comparer, raisonner juste,' more truly attained
the aim of education than can be found in
modern education. He makes a noble plea
for the intellectual culture of women. He
forcibly insists, in the first place, that a woman
should perform aE her ordinary duties — and
he might have added that some of these duties,
such as cookery, have an Eitellectual character
— but that when she has done her best for her
husband, her children, and her family, when
she has wisely attended to her household ac
counts and all the detaEs of domestic manage
ment, she has then leisure hours which she
should employ in study and literature. He
echoes F^nelon's old-fashioned advice, which is
not so inappropriate as might be thought — that
in the first place they should learn to read
and write correctly. He says that if Moliere had
liAred longer he would have regretted having
attacked des precieuses, des femmes savantes,
when he contrasted them with the kind of
VOL. 11. R

242 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
women turned out by a later generation. It
is very urgent on women to be careful what
they read : ' I ask all Christian Avomen to dis
dain in their reading whatever is crude and
mediocre, and to read nothing in their leisure
hours but the best books. I ask them above
everything to repel far from them whatever is
evil and pernicious. Conscience itself makes
it an imperious duty not to touch any un
healthy book, by which they would lose their
delicacy of spirit or purity of soul. Through
their vivacity of animation and intelligence,
strong reading will, with astonishing ease, de-
velope virtues, or the converse lead to inevitable
and lamentable weaknesses.' The good bishop
gives a list of books which might, perhaps, be
enlarged, which is well worthy of consultation.
He goes carefully into detail, and thinks that
ladies may claim some fresh morning hours
before lunch peculiarly their own. ' L'usage
accorde generalement aux femmes le libre
emploi de leurs matinees, c'est-a-dire des heures
qui s'^coulent depuis leur lever jusqu'au de
jeuner, lequel il convient, afin de se laisser
plus de temps, de renvoyer assez tard, a onze

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 243
heures au plus t6t, si cela depend d'elles.
Elles ne sont pas tenues de paraitre au salon
a ces premiers moments de la journ^e; elles
doivent done garder soigneusement cette liberty,
et la consacrer au travail s^rieux, r&ervant
la simple lecture, le dessin, la musique, la cor-
respondance, pour les heures de l'apres-midi.
Le matin done, apres les exercices pieux, qu'il
ne faut jamais omettre, apres un coup d'ceE
attentif donn4 au menage, aux enfants, a la
maison, a toutes ces choses qui sont facile-
ment r£gl£es, si la veille elles ont ete p revues et
ordonnees : ce qu'il faut, c'est de se menager
quelques heures, deux ou trois, s'E est pos
sible, pour son travail a soi, ses Etudes favorites,
et une fois ces heures fixers, y tenh* forte-
ment. Sinon, sans cesser, se presentera un pr£-
texte ou un autre pour les entamer et les
sacrifier. Je l'ai dit pour les hommes, et je
le redis ici : toute femme qui ne se m^nagera
pas le matin ces quelques heures sacr^es, se
laissera necessairement- envahir, distraire,
^parpiller, et elle ne fera jamais rien.'
Much the same thing may be said about
the leading serious practical aims of life. At
e 2

244 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
the outset there seems a very prodigality of
life. We aim at so many thEigs that the
sum of them is infinitely beyond the scope of
the threescore years and ten, even if such
are granted to us. Most men of letters have
had ideas or have even sketched out plans of
Avriting and study which would last them
three times the length of a lifetime. AU
men of any education know that there are at
least some half-dozen objects on which they
might concentrate their powers, which would
profitably exercise heart and mind or any
special gifts. But it becomes necessary for
them to make an election. If there is any
solidity of character they will desire to make
some especial vocation their own. They wEl
desire to intermeddle with all knowledge, but
on that golden circlet of their sympathies and
tastes there must be worn the fixed jewel of
their especial gift and calling. They wEl
carefully choose this lot in Efe. In a large
degree it wEl be decided by the antecedents
of connection and education, and also upon
a large deliberate survey of the field of human
life and endeavour. And when the choice

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 245
has been made, it will be persevered in until
the signal of retreat or retirement is given,
with a steadfast view to the development of
one's oAvn character and powers, the good
of man, and the glory of God. This will
quicken a man in his business, and make him
do his work with all his might. It is true
that it will add a more solemn tinge to life,
but it wEl also give a brighter aspect to
death. It opens a bright and ever broadening
horizon, flushed with unutterable brightness,
and radiant with glorious forms.
Taking a retrospect of Efe, we perceive
that the whole difference lies between fruitful
and unfruitful lives. Not those who have
little to do, who may imagine themselves
exempted by affluence from work, but those
whose energies are fully taxed may haAre the
brightest hopes of harvest. The finer-tem
pered natures feel the tacit appeal which ease
of cfrcumstances makes to their sense of
generosity and duty ; and in England perhaps
none work harder than those who, from a
secular point of view, have no need to work
at all. It makes very little difference what

246 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
!part we play in life, but it makes all the
difference how the part is played. In a
drama few ask who played the king or who
the peasant ; the inquiry is who played the
part, though lowliest, the best.
The great demand on each human life is
for fruit. The whole earth, with its exquisite
balance and proportion of laws, is constructed
for the production of fruit. The great phi
losophy of our age, so crowned with mag
nificent results, is the philosophy of fruit.
However valuable an element the beauty of
a thing may be, yet fruitfulness and use
are the great objects whose attainment are
sought. The difference between one life and
another in this respect is often absolutely
immeasurable in degree. In the case of most
people, few are those who consider themselves
bound by the teaching of Christianity. Most
men perform their modest percentage of cha
rity with that comfortable feeEng of prudence
and security with which men may pay their
five pounds a year to cover some five thou
sand pounds' worth of property. The ana
logy, however, fails in one most important

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 247
particular. The chance is only very remote
that a man's house will be destroyed. But
it is an absolute certainty that the mortal
house of this tabernacle will be taken down,
and no system of insurance would provide
against the risk. It is easy to understand that
there are men who have deliberately ignored
the existence of any supernatural element in
life, but the phenomenon is odd enough among
people, who profess to adjust their manage
ment of life on a reEgious basis.
There is no doubt, then, that life may be
made, if not exactly joyous, at least exceed
ingly comfortable, to those who do not expect
much from it, and at the same time get all
they can. There is an art of life — an ars
vivendi — in avoiding the rough corners, in
keeping clear of misery and sorrow, in eating
and drinking luxuriously within the limits
Avhich do not injure health, in steeling the
mind agamst emotion, which has been brought
to its highest perfection amid the civilisation
of our nineteenth century. Yet it is easy to
see, even on mere intellectual grounds, hoAv
in gaining these lower ends some higher

24S TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
ends are sacrificed. ' Grief,' says Schubert,
' sharpens the understanding and strengthens
the soul, whereas joy seldom troubles itself
about the former, and makes the latter either
effeminate or frivolous.' A class that vene
rates mere comfort must be sordid and Ioav-
minded. It is no part of our philosophy
to deprecate the comforts, conveniences, and
pleasures of life. But a wise man will take
them at their worth, wEl use them without
using them to the full, and remember the
uncertainty of the tenure by which they are
held. He wEl enter into the meaning of one
who spoke of knowing how to want and to be
full, how to abound and to suffer need. There
is a forcible Yorkshire saying about men who
do not know how to ' carry corn,' that is, how
to bear prosperity. I believe as much hap
piness and prosperity are given to Christian
men as they are able to bear. It is with
drawn when they abuse it, and is not given
where it might be abused. I am speaking of
those who look upon life as in a sense ordered
for them, and view existence in relation to a
future existence. As for those whose horizon

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 249
is limited entirely to this life, they are doubt
less permitted to get the most of it, seeing
that they voluntarily abdicate their best
chances of the next.
Those who are wiser, and who are content to
take the sharp lessons of the school of adver
sity, will find their happiness herein. Cer
tainly adversity is not joyous, but grievous,
but it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of right
eousness to them that are exercised thereby.
There is something very significant in the
use of this word exercised. It implies that
the affliction should be continuous, and not
momentary. Directly any care or sorrow
happens to us, it is the passionate desire of
the heart, it is the earnest prayer of the mind
that the affliction should be removed at once.
Let but this sharp stroke be removed, let
this keen suspense, this bitter remorse pass
away. But this is not the Divine plan. We
have to be exercised thereby. There is a
work to be done, and it has to be done
thoroughly. The ground has to be broken up,
and harrowed, and furrowed, and this work,
as all great work, has to be done gradually.

250 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
The stake in the flesh is not removed ;
the destiny of life is not altered. Com
pensation may arise to restore the balance ;
strength is given to sustain the burden. But
we are to be exercised by the trouble. It
has to seek and search each nook and cranny
of our characters. It is, to use a medical
expression, to precipitate, to bring to the sur
face that mental or spiritual disease which
may be poisoning our being. It is a wonder
ful thing how the long discipline of life gra
dually accomplishes its mission. The ground
is prepared, and the rains and the sunshine
visit it; the seed grows secretly. It is often
difficult to see in what way any special
discipline of Efe is related to the effect which
the discipline is intended to produce. But
somehow, as the time wears on, we see that
great results have been achieved. We per
ceive that some crisis of spiritual life, which is
the truest crisis of the life of all, has been safely
tided over. Somehow the life is not allowed
to drain away into the morass of worldli-
ness, but is somehow lifted up into clearer
light and to the serene heavens. To the soul

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. . 251
that can rest on what is infinitely higher than
itself, that can rise above the cares and sor
rows of human life, and rest with faith and
assurance upon the Fatherhood of God, life
must be disarmed of its cares and terrors...
They are not afraid of evil tidings. They
look upon the fortuitous as somethmg that,
at least, cannot harm them, as embracing
nothEig that is not ordained or permitted
by the providence of God. As Jeremy
Taylor says : ' We are in the world Eke men
playing at tables; the choice is not in our
power, but to play it is; and when it is
faEen we must manage it as we can, and
let nothEig trouble us; but when we do
a base action, or speak like a fool, or think
wickedly. These things God hath put
into our powers ; but concerning those
things' which are whoUy in the choice of
another they cannot fall under our deEbera-
tion, and therefore, neither are they fit for
our passions.' And as he again says : ' Let us
choose God, and let God choose for us.' And
so in our Collect, we pray ' that among aE the
changes and chances of this mortal Efe our

252 .TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
hearts may there be fixed where alone true
joys are to be found.'
That our nature should instinctively desire
a future lEe is in itself no mean proof that
there is a future life in store for us. This
is the argument for immortality drawn from
the constitution of man. The present facul
ties which we possess, the emotions, intelli
gence, wEl, of the human soul, seem to argue
that these faculties shall have a full scope
hereafter. The love of truth now will be the
love of truth evermore. Those who love and
those who know avEI be ever as the angels
that know and the angels that burn. We
may believe that the mental and the moral
habits of this life adumbrate in some kind of
way the faculties of a future life. The habit
of thoughtfulness, of exact observation, of the
wise employment of time, of feeling and affec
tion, will, under altered conditions, as we
may weE believe, continue with us hereafter.
Possibly the wider and ampler a man's expe
rience may be in this world, the richer and
more varied the fruitage in another state of
existence.

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 253

CHAPTER IX.
THAT LIFE IS A SCHOOL 01" FACULTIES TO BE
TRAINED.
So after glancing at so many departments of
human life, we come back to that thought
that underlies so many of our sketches, as to
what is the value and the meaning of LEe.
We have seen that there is such a thing as a
theory of human life to be established, and
a certain philosophy in ordering it in all its
details in accordance with the theory. There
is something to be added supplemental to
these considerations, the view that flows
naturaUy from what we have said : That life
is a school of faculties to be trained. It is
such a thought as this which is full of com
fort and meaning, which gives some kind of
coherency to the multitudinous details of life,
imparting simplicity to what is complex, and

254 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
unity to what is manifold. If there were
not some such thought as this, there would
be an insufferable weariness and satiety in
human life. I have heard of the case of a
man who committed suicide, and left in a
letter his reason for the act that he was per
fectly tired of dressing and undressing day
after day. There was a great surgeon who
made his fortune and retired to a beautiful
estate which he had purchased. As he looked
upon his glorious trees he murmured that
one day he would assuredly hang himself
from the branches of one of them. There
Avas a great duke who had the most charminc
of villas on the shore of the Thames. As he
looked on the living stream brimming the
green turf, he could only say: ' Oh ! that weari
some river, avEI it never cease flowing ? '
Without endorsing any of those views
which one might call anthropomorphic re
specting a future . state, I might venture to
put broadly the propositions that the things
of this world are closely related to the things
that shall be hereafter ; that the other world
finds us much as this world leaves us ; that

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 255
the stock of experience, knowledge, and ideas
which we accumulate here has a direct connec
tion Avith that knowledge upon knowledge, that
glory upon glory, to which we look hereafter.
OrdinarEy a Christian man comprehends the
sphere of duty and beEef ; he understands and
discharges what he calls his religious duties.
Perhaps he is able to take a wide and wise
view of his duties, and to see that his religion
ought to have an hourly influence upon the
details of his life. But he might advance a
stage beyond that, and see that there is a
Divhie meaning, a Divine training even in the
most secular and trivial of his daily engage
ments. Of course much more is this apparent
in those higher aspects of human life which of
themselves assert their solemn meaning. In
a vast number of instances a man leaves
human life exactly at the time when he might
consider himself best fitted to make the most
of it. Often it is, when a man has accumulated
his greatest- experience, when passion and
prejudice have passed away, when character
is exalted and refined, when splendid possibi
lities appear within the grasp, that some casual

256 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
incident, a mere stumbling footfall, or chance
infection, or some mechanical derangement
of our marveEous organization, superinduces
death. We undertake to say, as death ap
proaches more nearly, the soul seems more
vehemently to assert its energies, and all
spiritual faculties appear keener, fresher, and
brighter. And so we can easily understand
how one poet looks forward to a higher
destiny beyond life for the loved, lost friend
of his youth, and believes —
Whate'er thy hands are set to do,
Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.
Very often amid the discipline and cares of
life it becomes the impatient desire of the
soul to be relieved from the struggle, and the
mind's eye dwells on imaged scenes of quie
tude and repose. We grow impatient of our
burden, and we long to be rid of it. But if
we consider human life to be a discipline and
a school of our faculties, Ave shaE not dare to
avoid the lessons or to abridge the time that
is granted us for learning them. There is a
driE of our faculties, painful, monotonous, and

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 257
perpetual, which nevertheless is necessary in
making us good soldiers and servants. It is
only practice that makes perfect. Every one
who has attended to the culture of the moral
nature knows what repeated efforts are neces
sary" to extirpate the evE instincts and ten
dencies of our nature, and to hnplant the
habits which are for the health of mind and
body. We are told of afflictions that they
yield -the peaceable fruits of righteousness to
them that are exercised thereby. Now most
of us, as we have before said, when we feel
the slightest touch of affliction, immediately
make it the most earnest desire that we
may be relieved from it altogether. But
this relief, we have seen, would exclude
the notion of a man's being exercised by his
trouble. Life is the development of man's
intellectual nature. That is too limited a
definition by far. That object might be
defined as the balanced, harmonious develop
ment of all the various factors of man's
nature. It would include the growth of na
tural feeling in the various relationships of
life. It would imply some experience in the
vol. 11. s.

258 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
conflicts, sorrows, and repentances of the soul.
It would indicate the exercise of a skilled and
disciplined moral sense. That would indeed
be a dwarfed and stunted nature that is deve
loped on the intellectual side alone to the cost
of the feeling and the conscience. There is
greater equality probably than we imagine in
human life. Those who are stationary or slow
in mental growthmay receive an ample compen
sation in the advancement of other faculties.
We believe, then, that the world is one
great school in which the scholars of time
learn lessons for eternity. Mr. Thackeray, in
one of the happiest and most pathetic of his
touches, makes Thomas Newcome in his last
wanderings recall his Carthusian days, and
answer, ' Adsum,' as he stood hi the presence
of The Master. Mr. Kingsley says that the
great reward of having done work well is
having more work to do ; ' this is the true
and heroical rest which only is worthy of
gentlemen and sons of God.' The Laureate,
in his poem of ' Wages,' asks for Virtue, ' Give
her the glory of going on and not to die.'
This is simply the human imaginative way of

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 259
putting the Divine truth that those who have
wrought well here shall be the possessors of
many talents, and the rulers over many cities.
It implies that Avork done here bears a rela
tion to more glorious work hereafter, and
that aE the powers of the soul avEI find limit
less scope in the asons of eternity.
Such an estimate surely lends an en
nobling and attractive aspect to human life.
It transfigures and glorifies the whole course
of it. It lends ' the consecration and the poet's
dream ' to the hard, dry facts of human life.
The merchant, amid the multiplicity of his
engagements and aA^ocations, may think that
he is forming and disciplining some special
faculty which it has been given him to culti
vate, and which may be developed hereafter.
The humblest labourer who tills the soE may,
in the same way, cultivate the garden of his
own soul, and may believe that he is sovring
seed that will yield fruit a hundredfold.
Such a theory shows that, not in retirement
and separation from the world, but in the
energies and activities of life are the true
means of man's highest culture to be found.
s 2

260 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
It will not deprive Efe of its happiness or
its Emocent gaiety, but will rather give the
settled sunshhie of a heart which is firmly
based on that serene deep love. Here, then,
we have the expression of the beEef that
human gEts and faculties, here A7ouchsafed,
are the embryo and blossom of what shall be
fully developed hereafter. We may, perhaps,
believe this of great men and even of men in
the great occasions of their Eves. But the
same truth belongs to the most ordinary de-
taEs of the most commonplace life. Take the
common trials, struggles, efforts, checks, dis
appointments, of human existence. At first
sight they are so very small, they seem even
contemptible, yet Ave own their power to dis
turb serenity and even to embitter Efe. They>
shape, and train, and develope the soul. Take
such a text as this, ' God is strong and pa
tient, and God is provoked every day.' Now
we beEeve that it is the object of reEgion to
renew in us the faded image of God, and to
make us ' perfect, as our Father hi Heaven is
perfect.' According to our nature we have to
learn to be strong and patient, and to bear

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 261
provocations. And this training of life, in its
care, and worry, and multitudinous details, is
probably that very training which will make
us strong and patient, and tolerant of evil
and provocation. These are Divine elements,
which, doubtless, may be essential towards the
happiness of future life, and may be seeds
which shaE germinate in immortal fruits.
Perhaps, however, there is a very large
portion of humanity to whom such considera
tions hardly apply. It may be said generally
that while some men act from sense, others
act from feeling. I cannot but think, also,
that the emotions are Divmely given to men
as guides of action. Those who have not the
skEl to weave a chain of argument may yet
be able, by the sure Eistinct of cultivated
feeling, to arrive at a correct conclusion.
This is pre-eminently the case with woman,
whose instinctive feeling flies straight to the
point which reason only reaches by a cir
cuitous process. It is true that feeling may
often lead us astray, but perhaps not oftener
than defective reasoning conducts us into
equal blunders.

262 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
But there is a kmd of social philosophy that
applies to us aU alike. This is the vivre
savoir in its true sense, the ars vivendi, the
art of life, the making the most of life. Men
construct some kind of philosophy for them
selves. They find the necessity of reposing
upon some moral idea as the basis of their
lives and referring the details of Efe to
governing principles. I think it was Goethe
who said that a man ought, every day, to read
a fine book, see a noble picture, and look at
a beautiful person. I have no doubt but
Goethe, when thus agreeably occupied, felt
pleasure in referring the details of daily Efe
to the principle of aesthetic culture. Few
men care to live at random, and spend their
days without a plan.
The first thing for all men is to arrange the
prmciples of action, and to form the basis of
life. When this is attained, I think there is
a never-ending education going on for us, in
the way in which we spend our time wisely
and happily, act rightly in the manifold rela
tionships of life, progress in the harmonious
culture and balance of life, attain to that pro-

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE.

portion of happiness which may be best for us,
and share fully in the blessings and progress of
the world in which we live.
According to any true scheme of social philo
sophy, it is first of all necessary while tra
velling through this world to have an assured
good hope of the future life. There is a touch
ing proverbial expression about a warm nest
on a rotten bough. It is frequently appEed to
men of life incomes, to the clergyman or officer,
whose benefice or annuity fails with him.
The broken bough is suddenly precipitated
upon the ground, the nest is despoiled, and the
younglings scattered. But the image holds
good for a much larger proportion of human
life than might be expected. Any man who
lives careless and at ease in his possessions
might find that suddenly, perchance in a
single night, for him those possessions are
gone, and his soul is required of him. Now
there is a way in which making the most of
both worlds may be impossible for a man.
This world, though so urgent and immediate,
is by far the lesser object as compared with the
next. It is often — surely, we should say, it is

264 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
invariably necessary, — that many sacrifices
should be made in ensuring some great object.
Now so it is in the lives of Christian men.
They are not forbidden to enjoy all that
which God has given them richly to enjoy.
But their object is to attain to a far more ex
ceeding and eternal weight of glory. So they
consciously forbid themselves, as they find
that there is virtually forbidden to them much
that they would desire to have. It may even
please God to lay upon them great trials,
troubles, and deprivations to ensure this great
object, just as the soldier must undergo great
hardships before he can win the city, and the
statesman do hard work before he can attain
to the glory of power. Make up the mind
clearly as to what is the greatest object of aE to
be secured, and Ei comparison be content to let
everything else in the world go as soon as this
objectis attained. No lot in this world wEl come
amiss if only life's great end be achieved.
At the same time there is an immense
amount of avoidable stupidity and unhappiness
in this world. There is always abundant op
portunity for the exercise of prudence and skill

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 265
in the planning out of the arrangements oj
our daily life, and its business and occupa
tions. Some people are absurdly ascetic,
and miss much of the happiness and the
enjoyment that might be theirs. This error
is certainly not very widely extended, and
men more generaEy fall into the opposite
error. StiE there is a frightful amount of self-
inflicted misery in the world. The ages of
superstition of course give the most flagrant
examples of this, and although we may admit
that nothing short of stern high purpose could
have rebuked the surrounding wickedness and
worldliness in those times, which some people
call ' the Dark Ages,' and others the ' Ages o\
Faith,' yet such austerities have been mainly
based upon religious error. Our loving
Father in Heaven wishes His children to be
happy, to be happy throughout eternity, and
to be happy through then? earthly Efe, so far
as such happiness may safely be vouchsafed to
them. It is commonly said that, after all,
happiness and unhappiness are very evenly
distributed. This may be true ; and yet, after
all, it is also true that there are many persons

266 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
whose serene blue sky seems hardly marred by
a cloud. It may be possible for us all to attain
peace and sunlight within our own breast.
By every man there is work to be done.
The rule is inflexible. Most people are
obliged to work by the necessities of their
position ; and if there are any who seem
absolved by this necessity, such persons are
reaEy placed in the van of progress ; their
work is, as it were, really left to their honour
by the Great Taskmaster. It is the better
for them E" they truly work, it is infinitely
the worse for them if they do not. For work
alone ensures health, or gives any true enjoy
ment. Without occupation the whole nature
lags ; it makes no progress, it attains no true
value or dignity.
Nothing is more productive of happiness
to a man than that he should be in harmony
with his work, that he should have the faculty
of work, and be able to feel that he can do it
thoroughly and well. Of course it is part of
the very idea of work that it should involve
labour and weariness. A man needs fully to
reconcile his mind to this, so that he may

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 267
work on with patience and perseverance.
There are various helpful considerations that
might well occur to him. To most men then"
very EveEhood and subsistence depend upon
work; if tihey wiU not work, neither wEl they
eat. But there is a higher than this com
pulsory ground. The worker feels that in his
way he is carrying on the order of the world.
Without work the world would have been a
wilderness, or into a wilderness would speedEy
return. There is no work without its use.
I believe that in the long run every scrap of
labour teUs. No labour is labour in vain.
It is a thought full of incitement and en
couragement that we too are of use in the
world, that we are co-operant towards good.
The consideration also arises, that while we
thus work both for our own subsistence and
for a moral end, our labour returns in bless
ings to ourselves. We are adding to our own
culture, we are promoting our own develop
ment. Any man who works benefits him
self, chiefly and foremost, beyond anyone else.
The earnest preacher who preaches to others
preaches most of all to himself. The pubEc

268 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
writer, who appears to teach others, has chiefly
been bringing together facts and ideas for
himself. Above aE, there is the supreme
satisfaction of knowing that in work we are
fulfilEng the will of God. He condescends to
employ us as feEow labourers with Himself.
He has made work a law to Himself, and He
has assigned it as a law to us. The highest
title which He vouchsafes to any man is
that of a good and faithful servant. Such
thoughts will never make hard work other
than hard work ; but they will save us from
lassitude ; they avEI cause perseverance, cheer
fulness, and hope. There is much social
wisdom constantly required. There is the
regulation of our tune, the adjustment of the
hours of rest and labour. Then so many
questions occur of engagements, amusement,
friendship, acquaintance, the rich and poor,
reading, travel, society; the whole of Avhich
constitutes, in point of fact, a protracted kind
of education. Then matters of daily Efe
afford employment to the whole complex
nature of man, and afford countless oppor
tunities of exercising the judgment.

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 269

It is so easy to fall into error on the right
hand and on the left hand ; in point of fact
we commit numberless errors, and it is only
by incessant practice in the art of life that
we make -any approach towards wisdom. Of
course a man must have fixity of purpose and
resoluteness of character. But even these
degenerate so easily into weaknesses. For
instance, a man lays down rules of conduct,
and he is wise in so doing. But instead of
making his rules his servants, he is often an
abject slave to his inflexible rules. All sorts
of present harm happen in order that no pre
cedent may be set for possible harm in the
future. Then a man may work hard and yet
Avork unwisely. A man will saunter and
dawdle, looking at his work for a long time
before he seriously takes it in hand, and at
last finishing with a rush, in which he has
hardly been able to do himself justice. There
is the morning for the morning's work, and
the work cannot be huddled up in the un
certain twilight. I think that everybody
must feel how immense is the temptation to
fritter away a morning, and how keenly the

270 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
lost morning is regretted. The post brings
the Tetters that are fraught with so many
interests and cares ; the people call who know
that you are sure to be at home in the morn
ing ; the newspapers come in, lately so
crowded with then- appalling and enchaining
narratives. It requires considerable adroit
ness and determination, when you have at
tended to the more pressing demands which
these things present, to grapple with the
hardest points in the best hours, and reserve
lighter employment for lighter hours. On
the other hand, a man may be so engrossed
with his work that he may be unable to give
any attention to the most important matters
that may be suddenly brought before him. It is
a grand item of the art of life to be able to seize
opportunities. A man should have the insight
to seize any occasion that may present itself.
There are countless points of life in which
a Christian casuistry must be exercised. It
is in the building up of Christian character
and conduct that our main work wEl lie.
The inflexible rule is, that one should adhere
to Christian principle. Sometimes the pru-

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 271

dential maxims of the world come into conflict
with a higher Christian philosophy. For in
stance, those who hold the favourite theory
that the world is an oyster, which they must
open for themselves, generally select all their
acquaintance Avith a rigid view to their utility
to themselves. They avEI not know anyone
below themselves in the social scale. They
will not cultivate any intimacy with a poor or
uninHuential man of their own standing. It
is nothing to them that they are told to mind
not high things, but condescend to those of low
estate. Similarly take the subject of promises.
Nearly every man has at times made some kind
of indiscreet promise. Some men, indeed, seem
to make a practice of large promises, from the
performance of which they exonerate them
selves. The habit of such easy promising is
one of the greatest meanness. The promiser
has ,the gratification of at once discounting a
large amount of gratitude; he has the pleasure
of giving pleasure; he creates at the moment
a very Avarm feeling of appreciation towards
himself. But he incurs the responsibility of
creating a legitimate expectation which he

272 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
does not satisfy, and generally mcurs the con
tempt and mdignation of the person he has
deluded. If a man has made an unwise promise
on the spur of the moment, or in a fit of
thoughtless generosity, he should redeem it
to the full extent of his power. He knows
that if he swears to his neighbour, he should
perform it although it be to his own injury.
It is perhaps not paying too high a price if
he learns to be more guarded and mode
rate in his language, and to rise superior to
the cheap gratification of a moment. Again,
aE insincerity of speech should be specially
guarded against. Nothing is more easily de
tected, or brings a readier return of indiffe
rence and dislike than such insincerity. The
words that are duly weighed wEl always be
treasured and counted up. We fall back more
and more on the simplicity of the ' yea, yea,'
and the ' nay, nay.'
It is so difficult hi Efe to strike the golden
mean, and in this golden mean the true wisdom
of life so often consists. There is the incentive
to labour, and there is the desire for rest, and
we have to steer between the two ; between

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 273
giving too much or too little thought to our
worldly interest; between shrinking altogether
from amusement and becoming too addicted to
it ; between shunning and courting society ;
between neglecting books for observation and
reflection, or neglecting observation and re
flection for mere reading, and so on through
many pairs of contrasts. All this shows us
the extreme fraEty and feebleness of man, his
liability to commit blunders and to fall. But
all this time a kind of education is going on
for and in him. His powers of volition are in
incessant exercise. Agahi and again he has to
make his election between this course and that.
By-and-by this power of choice is so constantly
exercised that the mind acts instinctively,
and the right course is taken, or at least
those cautious steps which, if wrong, may
be easEy retraced. When once the habits of
scrutiny into our actions, of seff-examination
of the detaEs of our lives, of referring each
transaction to the principle involved, are dis
tinctly formed, then comes that other habit of
decision, and decision according to a right
judgment. VOL. 11. t

274 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
Innumerable are the little hints that might
be given about the practical detaEs which
belong to the science of Efe ; for instance, the
use of stray minutes in the course of the day,
especiaUy in the bright mornhig hours, can be
turned to the highest account. The Chan
ceEor D'Aguesseau said, ' Here are the books
that I have composed during the daEy five
minutes that Madame D'Aguesseau. has kept
me waiting for dinner during twenty years.'
A similar statement has been made of the
composition of one of the most important
theological works of the age. Then, again,
the character of the morning's work — and the
morning is the essence of the day — depends on
the character of the evening before. If you
have sat up very late, or if you have had a
bad night, you wEl hardly be up to the mark
for the severe duties of the day. Mere duties
of routine can be generally managed, even if
it be with some drag upon the mind ; but in
inteEectual pursuits a man can hardly venture
to do this ; he dare not injure the quality of
his work. Under these circumstances, a man
suits his work to the conditions of his mental

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE.

275

and physical health. If he cannot follow his
first line he falls back upon his second, and
if he cannot follow' his second line he falls back
upon his third. If a man cannot compose he
can make his notes and abstracts, and if he can
not make notes and abstracts he can go on with
his reading. It is better to do it quietly and
determinately ; and a man who tries, even
under unfavourable circumstances, adheres to
the line of duty.
Sometimes a sudden light seems to break
upon the soul. The whole landscape of Efe
seems lighted up. We see clearly the paths
which we should take, and the high duties
for which we should brace ourselves. Then
we impose upon ourselves the tasks that are
necessary to fulfil our path and destiny
in life. But this rare fine light dies away.
Indeed the clouds soon gather where the sun
shine had shone brightest. The season of
depression succeeds the season of exaltation.
Then is it as with Wordsworth's 'Happy
Warrior,' who —

' Through the licit of conflict keeps the law
In calmness made, and saw what he foresaw.'
T 2

276 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
With which we may compare Ben Jonson's
lines — ' A valiant man
Ought not to undergo or tempt a danger,
But worthily and by selected ways ;
He undertakes with reason, not by chance ;
His valour is the salt to his other virtues :
They are all unseasoned without it. The waiting maids,
Or the concomitants of it, are his patience,
His magnanimity, his confidence,
His constancy, security and quiet.
He can assure himself against all rumour,
Despairs of nothing, laughs at contumelies,
As knowing himself advanced in a height
Where.injury cannot reach him, nor aspersion
Touch him with soil.'
To some people there are times when almost
a paralysis falls upon the powers of volition.
The mind is unnerved for decision, and in
competent to strike out independent fines of
action. In such a time of gloom we fall back
upon the steadfast resolve of a happier time.
We adhere to the lines we had marked out for
ourselves in the happier moments when our
inteUectual and spiritual vision was unclouded.
As Burke said, ' Never despair; and, if you do,
work in despair.'
It is a 'many-chambered' school that in

DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 277
which God trains. None are excluded from
it ; all are welcome. It has room for all gifts,
all circumstances, aE conditions. It makes
aUowance for defects and shortcomings which
are ruin in this world. Trained in this school
many have reached a high place, who have
had no ' tincture of letters.' Most of us must
have known some, especially in the humbler
places of society, who had not any of this
world's learning; had never heard even the
names of the greatest poets and philosophers,
yet who, without help from these, had been
led, by some secret way, up to the serenest,
most beautiful heights of character. It is,
indeed, a many chambered-school. These
were led through some of its chambers to
their end; we are being led through others.
To those who, like ourselves, have large op
portunities of culture placed within their
reach, these are the instruments of the Divine
discipline. It is part of that discipline to
put large opportunities in men's hands, and
to leave it to themselves whether they will
use or neglect them. There shaU be no
compulsion to make us turn them to account.

278 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
Occasions of learning and self-improvement
come, stay Avith us for a whEe, then pass,
and the wheels of time shall not be reversed
to bring them back once they are. gone. If
we neglect them, we shall be permanent losers
for this life. We cannot say how much we
may be losers hereafter. But if we do what
we can to use them while they are granted,
we shall have learnt one lesson of the heavenly
discipline, and shaE be better prepared for
the others, whether of action or endurance,
which are yet to come.

PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING. 279

CHAPTER XIX.
PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING.
Adhering to the practical character of these
pages, let us lastly enquire what principle
may be defined as the mainstay of life, and
which best sets forth the raison d'etre, the
object and aim of existence. In that inspired
language which we have learnt to recognize
and reverence as the authoritative utterances
of God, we are told of those who make it
their lofty aim to seek for glory, honour,
and immortality. Human life has its whole
work and meaning as connected with such
a prize as that. The heart and intellect of
man can conceive of nothing higher. The
method and means are defined to us as
'patient continuance in well-doing.' And
perhaps it is not without a feeling of dis
appointment that we come to the examination

28o TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
and analysis of such a phrase. The aim is
so splendid as contrasted with the plain,
prosaic, homely character of the means. It is
no sudden act of devotedness, no height of
faith, no deed of heroism, no great intellectual
power, that can achieve this object, but some
thing that almost implies repetition and mo
notony, that taxes the energies, submission,
and endurance of a life-time, the ' patient con-
tiuance in well-doing.'
That homely virtue of patience is thus
brought mto its fullest reEef. There seems
to be two reasons why such prominence
should be given to patience in the Christian
scheme. The first is, that it is uniform in its
requirements. The second, that it is impartial
in its application. Life may be popularly
said to be decided by its turning-point ; that
turning-point is the result of an epoch, and
its issue the symbol of a character. If any
great event in a man's Efe is to be settled by
his patience, that habit of patience must be
successfully built up through time and ex
perience. And often at a critical moment the
patience is found to give way; the habit has

PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING. 281
not been securely built up, and breaks down
at the application of a severe test. Then,
slowly and sorrowfuEy we have to begin all
o\Ter again. We have to seek the point of
departure, though with dimness and weakness.
Patience is a test that with equable pressure
applies to the whole period of life. It is the
moral discipline which we can never abdicate
for an hour. It is a divine accomplishment in
which we may be always students. And whEe
patience is a test designed to last till the end
of life, it is also one that is found always to act
with extreme impartiality. It is one that ap
plies with perfect equality to all sorts and con
ditions of men. The refined and the educated
and the thoughtful have advantages by this
test over those who in character and inclina
tion are the very opposite. It may even be
said that patience is a heavier trial for the
more refined and intellectual nature; but
then again, such natures are better able,
through long discipline, to sustain the trial.
The most exalted characters have an added
melloAvness and beauty in its exhibition.
Indeed, this virtue Elustrates the essential

282 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
connection between truth and goodness, be
tween the moral and intellectual life. Patience
is the instrument by which all prolonged
intellectual efforts are conducted, the inse
parable co-efficient of inteEectual power.
We believe that this 'patience' is to be
exercised in a special and particular direction
in ' well-donig.' Dr. Arnold used to say,
'that no student would continue long in a
healthy religious state unless his heart was
kept tender by mingling with children, or by
frequent intercourse with the poor and suffer
ing.' Most people of a religious turn of mind
will endorse the truth of this remark. When
ever they have tried to do good in this way,
they have found that it rebounds to their own
good. Clergymen may teach others, but they
know that it is at the bedside of the sick that
they learn the highest lessons for themselves.
It is here that mercy is twice blessed ; that a
man's kindness returns into his own bosom.
Nothing is a greater mistake on the part of
intellectual people, than to suppose that their
main- work in life is the cultivation of the
intellect. As much might a man suppose

PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING. 283
that constitutional vigour, lies in the brawny
development of an athletic arm, or in the
hypertrophy of an over-exerted and over-
nourished heart. The true development of a
man consists in the balanced harmonious de
velopment of all his powers. His physical
and mental powers must keep even pace, and
there must be the diligent culture of the
moral feeEngs. We sometimes meet with
men, who have a mind indeed, but hardly
body or soul. True manhood consists not in
mere intellect, for then Satan would be alto
gether superior to us; nor yet in physical
power, for then the very beasts of the field
would surpass us, but in approximation to the .
nature of the Christ, who was Perfect God
and also Perfect Man. In the especial direc
tions indicated by Dr. Arnold, those true good
works of well-doing, the visiting of the sick,
and the mingEng with little children, we
find an ample field for the development of
tenderness, sympathy, and charity. The
sick bed of others brings before us both
memories and anticipations. It reminds us of
those terms of weakness and insecurity Avhich

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

are the conditions on which we hold human
life. It brings back to us" the recollection of
hours of waiting and watching and hoping
and despairing. If significantly points, in the
hushed footfall and the darkened lights, to the
silence and suffering and resignation which we
must one day make our own. It is in these
sad retreats that we learn some of the kindest
and costliest lessons of humanity. We do but
render what we hope to receive; hanc veniam
petimusque damusque vicissim. We learn a
true sympathy with affliction. We learn
patience and watchfulness. We learn to bear
and forbear. We are often also permitted to
see how mind and faith preserve a victorious
supremacy over lassitude and disease, and how
the veil between the human and the disem
bodied states becomes almost translucent. The
purified spirit can almost live in heaven before
it leaves earth. There is no one who can
truly mingle with Ettle children without
unsealing new founts of tenderness and
mystery. When God makes men fathers,
by one more precious means He is carrying
on the education of the world. He teaches us

PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING. 285
by the children as much as He teaches the
chEdren by us. Perhaps only the chEdless or
those who have lost a chEd can quite appre
ciate the full meaning and beauty of such
lessons. We discern how it is necessary that
we should become as little children. We
begm to understand how their love and faith
and weakness and dependence and tenderness
should symbolize our dependence on the
Father of Spirits. It is through loving ten
dance on the sick and children that our
sympathies and loving interests continue
fresh and green, and are not withered in
the fierce noontides of life. In that patience
which we seek to show them, is the foresight
of their wants; in tender dealings with their
weakness and ignorance and inexperience, in
the constant guidance and instruction they
require, are seen dimly shadowed forth the
compassion and patience of God towards us,
the children of larger growth.
We have spoken of 'well-doing' as ex
hibited in these two forms of beneficence.
But every form of beneficence is covered
by the expression. The special characteristic

286 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
of the Christian, is that he is zealous for good
works. The well-doing includes the doing-
well, in every department of life, the
looking forward to the anticipation of the
final ' well done.' The only way by which we
can possibly accomplish the highest arts of
life, attain to its highest meaning, is by
drawing our strength and inspirations from
the highest source. Through any more secular
system, through any ' enlightened self-inte
rest,' we should infallibly break down. In all
weE-doing we have to consider that we get
by losing, and lose by getting We must rise
altogether from the region of seE". Newman
speaks of 'a remarkable law of ethics
which is well known to aE who have given
their minds to the subject, i.e. — all virtue
and goodness tends to make men powerful in
this world; but they who aim at the power
have not the virtue.' Again : 'Virtue is its
OAvn reward, and brings with it its truest
and highest pleasures ; but they who cultivate
it for the pleasure sake are selfish, not
religious, and will never gain the pleasure,
because they never can have the virtue.'

PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING. 287
The saying is of wider import in practical
life than might perhaps be thought. In
ordinary, average, ' respectable English life,
many people strive to be virtuous and
good — not for the sake of virtue and goodness
— but on account of the pressure of public
opinion brought to bear upon them. Men
live in the full glare of a mutually-destructive
criticism. They accommodate their actions to a
certain semblance and standard. They may
gain influence, but may not attain to virtue ;
they may gain the respect of others, but
hardly their own respect. The man who
does well in deference to the current opinion
of his class, the standard of conduct amongst
his friends, must always be haunted by
the unhappy suspicion of hypocrisy, and
¦ must be liable to fall back into the very con-
tary of his professions whenever the exterior
pressure is withdrawn. Let the incubus be
removed, and there is a rebound of the
spring; the character reverts to its natural
type. But to desire to do weE because our
life is Enked with the Divine life, and we seek
to be the children of our Father in heaven, must

288 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
be a well-spring of joy, and source of the purest
delight. ' From Me is thy fruit found ! ' ' AE
my fresh springs shall be in Thee ! '
The well-doing can only be accomplished by
the Divine energising power of Love. Love
the imperishable, the indestructible, ennobling,
purifying, ' the very bond of peace and of all
virtue'. This must be the principle in the
heart, which is abhorrent to every form of evil
and injustice, and ever seeks the highest good of
all. Or rather, let us say, that the glorious
Three — Faith, Hope, and Charity — must
assist; but Love shall hereafter be all in all
—one God, one Lord, one Life. ' I venture
to assert,' says Schlegel, 'that the human
consciousness, which otherwise ends in itself, is
entirely a prey to discord, and beset with
irreconcilable contraries, is by Faith, Hope and
Love, relieved from this dissension, is raised
from its innate law of an erring and dead
thought, and of an absolute will which is no less
dead, and will bring mankind gradually to a
perfect state of union and harmony.' We have
spoken of Love as the great motive power ; let
us also speak of Faith and Hope.

PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING. 289
By this faith, I understand a simple, ob
jective faith in God and His revealed truth,
belief in the objective truth of religion. Our
idea is that man's thought, aspirations, and
system of life, must be based on the ex
ternal facts of revelation, which are preter-
naturally revealed to us. There must be a
firm belief in the living Fatherhood of God.
The soul that finds no rest in itself, must
come to rest in God as its source and centre,
to believe the Heavenly Father's declaration,
' I have loved thee with an everlasting love ; '
that before ever the world was formed, God's
infinite love contemplated His creatures and
loved them, and rejoiced in them. To it,
God wEl be no mere abstraction, but a living,
loving, Personal Being. Our weak erring
wills will be submitted to the Divine will,
and in that submission the discords of life
will be hushed. Our faith wEl rest in God
our Saviour, on the finished work of Jesus,
and the righteousness which He both imputes
and imparts, on His sympathy with us as the
Divine Friend and Brother, on His helping us
and pleading for us as our Mediator and
vol. 11. u

290 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
Intercessor. It will include a humble, firm
reliance on the help of a Divine Spirit. We
shall learn to look beyond this world for
real enlightenment and comfort. Not from
scenes of earth, but from the golden gates of
heaven, must come those salutary airs which
shall purify, revive and invigorate the soul.
That blessed Spirit is the source of peace, the
very focus and centre of the soul; by It, our
darkness is Eluminated, and the soul is re
stored after the likeness of the moral image
ofthe Creator.
True living faith is the reception into the
soul of God's eternal truth, bringing it into
harmony with itself, and into unity with God.
Even in this world Faith is the greatest force
in life, leading us to rely on human testi
mony, and to trust in the recorded facts of
experimental science, and in the Divine plan
this is made the great agency of human hap
piness and salvation.
The third great force of the soul is Hope,
the 'better hope,' as it is patheticaEy described.
We have spoken of the Elusions and disap
pointments of life. It is sad to speak and to

PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING. 291
think of them. But we may believe th'at
there is no hope of youth, however ardent,
no illusion of life, however brilliant, that shall
not receive an infinite accomplishment in the
infinite future. We are told that ' the parched
ground shaE become a pool; ' according to the
true meaning — ' the mirage shall become the
lake ; ' the Elusions shall be accomplishments,
appearances realities. The heart of man is so
constituted that it is full of a divine despair
and a noble longing. ' In this noble hope, is
longing, that marveEous flower of the soul,
expanded into its perfect and boldest poEit.'
StUl is the eye unsatisfied Avith seeing and the
ear with hearing, and we have those vague
dreams of happiness, which our human ex
perience may sternly assure us can never be
satisfied on earth. Evermore there is unrest
and dissatisfaction, and a yearning, a longing,
an aspiration for something that eludes our
reach and lies beyond the region of our Efe.
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the day for the morrow ;
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
Now to divine hope we look for the realisa-
v 2

292 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
tion of whatever is true and good in the dreams
of the soul. And we are sure that this hope
will not fail us, for it rests upon an anchor
sure and steadfast — even upon God; 'round
our incompleteness His completeness, round
our restlessness His rest.' In Him lies our
better hope, the hope of that blessed state
Avhere pain and disease and error and miscon
ception, and the sense of sin and want will be
removed ; the ' better hope ' that eAxen all these
things, by some Divine alchemy shall be over
ruled for good — the ' blessed hope of eternal
life.' x
The time comes when, perhaps, we are
tempted to grow weary and faint in our minds.
The fresh morning yields to the hot white
light of the long dull afternoon of Efe. There
1 Schlegel, in speaking of the relation of knowledge to
belief, has these words on the relation of faith and love to
knowledge. ' The free spirit of knowledge cannot look
down on its own height and pay no regard either to faith
or love. In the depths of sensuous observation, amid all
the rich treasures of physical and historical science, it
cannot move as sovereign without being first invested with
the luxurious garment of pure faith and love. Otherwise,
it does only hasten from one error to another, to fall from
the first abyss into a second and still deeper one.'

PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING. 293
seems a monotony about existence. We find
that we are compassed about with petty cares,
and the routine of commonplace duties. We
do not see that our work is prosperous, or
that Ave are making any real or wide impres
sion where we would most desire to do so.
Life seems hardly worth the having. It is dull,
emotionless, stereotyped, uninteresting. Such
are the complaints which one hears ; and indeed,
it is not uncommon to hear men of elevated
minds, and of happy external circumstances,
declare that they would not continue life at
their own option, and, indeed, if the power of
choice had been given them, they would have
elected never to have been born. It is here
that the true science of life comes into play.
It was never meant that the glorious existence
conferred upon us should be barren of interest
and devoid of sympathy. That this should
be the case would augur somethhig strangely
amiss both in heart and mind. The play of
thought and feeling ought to be fountain-like
and fresh. There is always friend, child, or
kinsman to own our love, and in the Christian
heart love is wider than this, and can even

294 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
take in the loneliness of the most estranged
and degraded and most distant, and expand
beyond the barriers of one's own land and age.
By the skilful management of life we are able
to take more and more out of it, we are able
to alternate rest and activity, recreation and
work. We are able to add new objects of in
tellectual interest ; to win ' fresh woods and
pastures new ; ' to attain and retain the hearing
ear and the seeing eye. We may believe also
the effort of moral and religious progress is truly
germmant, that we may learn and act down to
the last day of our lives, and that whatever we
learn and act here in some sort of way will
have a relation to the fruition of a future life.
Then there comes the supreme Turning Point
of all, the transition between life and death, or
rather between Efe and Efe — this dim shadowy
incomplete life, and that which has the fulness
of joy and pleasures for evermore. In one
sense, all life is but a preparation for this great
Turning Point, and, it is obvious that the
Turning Point is determined by the whole
antecedent life. The whole life, not only the
religious part of life — if indeed any part of

PATIENT CONTINUANCE IN WELL-DOING. 295

human life can be separated from a religious
aspect — has gone towards the issues of that
supreme event. We may so prepare for a
crisis that when it comes it shall be deter
mined in the foreseen direction. So to speak,
Ave go into training for it. I remember a
man who had just accomplished a matter very
dear to his heart in the ascent of Monte Rosa.
He had steadily prepared for it. When the
day for the effort came, it was reaEy no effort
for' him. The feat, now no uncommon one,
was without difficulty and without danger.
Which things are an allegory. Night after night
we die and are born again. It has been truly
said, that he who lies down in his bed as in his
grave wiE one day lie down in his grave as in
his bed. We may so prepare that the time
shall not come unawares, but whenever it
may happen it shall be at 'a convenient
season.' As Dean MEman said —
It little matters at what hour o' the day
The righteous falls asleep. Death cannot come
To him untimely who has learned to die.
The less of this brief life the more of heaven ;
The shorter time the longer immortality.

296 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
That great change comes and for such a one
as that it shall be a happy one, yea, the happiest
Turning Point of all: The soul, refusing the
lower aims of life, has thirsted for glory, honour,
and immortality; and by that living faith in a
Saviour which consists in following His laAV of
love, the law of the patient continuance in
well-doing, has been brought through the
changes and chances of existence, and has
gained that boon beyond all boons, Eternal
Life.

INDEX.

Abbotsfoed, ii. 101
Alderson, Baron, i. 1 1 1
Alison, Sir A., ii. 174, 179
Alford, Dean, i. 32, 69
Arnold, Dr., on the Ethics of Ar
istotle, i. 68 ; his influence, i.
76; on ancient and modern
history, ii. 110; on children
and the poor, i. 282
Arnold, Matthew, quoted, i. 274 ;
ii. 216
Aristotle on habit, i. 4
Arkwright, the inventor, ii. 83
Art, 'moments' in, i. 279
' Ars vivendi,' ii. 262
Atavism, doctrine of, i. 49
Aubrey, quoted, ii. 80
Auckland correspondence, ii. 112
Audubon, i. 94
Augustine, St., on advocacy, i.
168 ; ladder of, ii. 204
Austerlitz, battle of, i. 122

Bacon, Lord, i. 69, 275
Bar, the, and profession, i. 153
Baring, Henry, marriage of, i. 84
Barristers, briefless, i. 154
Beckwith, General, story of, i. 99
Bell, Sir Charles, on the argu
ment from design, i. 295 ; his
love of fishing, i. 296
Bemerton, George Herbert at, i.
267
Blomfield, Bishop, quoted, ii. 50

Bonehurch, tomb of W. Adams
at, i. 267
Bowdler, John, ii. 87
Bowles, W. L., the poet, ii. 17
Brewster, Sir David, anecdote of
recovery of eyesight, i. 1 3
Brodie, Sir Benjamin, i. 14
Bronte, Charlotte, quoted, i. 64 ;
difficulties of, i. 279
Browning, Robert, his poem of
'Lazarus,' i. 37
Budgett, Mr. ' The Successful
Merchant,' ii. 36
Buffon, i. 28
Buller, Mr. Justice, points in his
history, ii. 1 9
Burke, Edmund, i. 245, 274 ; ii.
118
Burns, i. 277
Butler, Bishop, i. 69
Byron, Lord, i. 23, 277

Cambridge, peculiarities of sys
tem, i. 116; wrangling, i.
131 ; compared with Oxford, i.
139
Campbell, the poet, ii. 101
Campbell, Lord, his ' Lives,' i.
20, 160; ii. 17
Canning, Mr., ii. 26
Carpenter, Dr., dredging opera
tions of, i. 28
Chancellor, Lord, Church pat
ronage of, i. 195

298

INDEX.

Chelmsford, Lord, i. 84
Cicero, i. 69
Circumstances, force of, ii. 192
Civil Service as a profession, i.
176
Clevedon, epitaphs of Hallam
family at, ii. 106
Clifton Suspension Bridge, i. 317
Coleridge, Hartley, quoted, i. 56
Coleridge, S. T, i. 87
Colquhoun, Mr., on ' Contempo
raries of Wilberforce,' ii. 87
Columbus, i. 26, 323
Coplestone, Bishop, on Necessity
and Predestination, ii. 228
Cornish miner, story of, i. 81
Cornish railway, i. 317
Cotton, Bishop, i. 75, 78
Cotton, William, sketch of, ii. 54
Cowper, William, i. IS
Crabbe, i. 25
Cranworth, Lord (Baron Rolfe),,
i. 233
Culture and the ' Culturists,' ii.
216

D'Alembeet, story of, ii. 99
Dalling, Lord, on M. Guizot, ii.
113; on Mr. Huslrisson,ii.l56
Darwin, Mr., ou Atavism, i. 46
Dart, scenery of the, and Rhine,
1. 260
Davy, Sir Humphry, at Royal
Institution, i. 25
Decisive battles, ii. 150
Denison, Edward, sketch of, i.
183
Descartes and Pascal, i. 287
Dickens, Charles, quoted, i. 222 ;
his Brothers Cheeryble, ii. 41,
203
Discipline of life, ii. 253
Dissenting Ministry, i. 162
Dumas, Alexander, anecdotes of,
ii. 103
Dupanloup, Bishop, on married

life, i. 242 ; on the plan of
life, ii. 239 ; La Femme stu-
dieuse, i. 240

Eastlake, Sir Charles, sketch
ing portrait of Napoleon, i. 22
Eldoii, Lord, John Scott, i. 35,
196
Eliot, George, Spanish Gipsy
quoted, i. 51, 221
Elliott, Henry Venn, his mar
riage, i. 240

Faraday's introduction to Royal
Institution, i. 26
Fenelon, ii. 241
Flaxman's recollections of Rom-
ney, i. 67
Forbes, Edward, the naturalist,
i. 301
Fox, Charles James, events in
life of, ii. 122; his death,!.
125
Freeman, Mr. E. A., i. 262
France, invasion of in 1794 and
1870
Froude, Mr. J. A., i. 262

Galileo, first view of phases of
Venus, i. 28
Galton's Hereditary Genius
quoted, i. 80 ; note, i. 313
George the Third on English
law, ii. 8 -
Gilly, Dean, on the Waldenses,
i. 103
Gisborne, Rev. T., home at Need
ham, ii. 90
Gladstone, Mr., i. 247 ; ii. 51
Goodsir, John, the anatomist,
sketch of, i. 297
Gothe, i. 233 ; ii. 218, 263
Grant, Sir W., ii. 3
Granville, Earl, ii. 114

INDEX.

299

Grief, discipline of, ii. 248
Grote, George, on the Sophists,
i. 36
Guardian, quoted, ii. 64
Guizot, supposed feeling towards
England, ii. 113
Gunning, Reminiscences of Cam
bridge, ii. 195

Habits, considerations on, i. . 33
Haddo, Lord (Earl of Aberdeen),
i. 139
Hale, SirM., anecdote of, ii. 221
Hale, Bishop, quoted, i. 215
Hall, Dr. Marshall, discoveries
in nervous system, i. 294
Hallam, A. H, ii. 106
Hallam, Henry, ii. 105, 154
Hamilton, Dr. James, i. 237,
258
Hastings, Warren, intrigues
against, ii. 120
Hatherley, Lord, ii. 2
Hawkins, Sir John, i. 87
Henslow, Professor, his discove
ries in botany, i. 305 ; Dar
win's character of, i. 306 ;
among agricultural labourers,
i. 308 ; objections toDarwin's
theories, i. 310; death, i. 312
Herbert, George, i. 267
Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury,
quoted, i. 96
Holland, Sir Henry, on travel, i.
241
Hooker and his wife, i. 228 ; say
ing of, ii. 8
Howson, Dean, on obedience, i.
44
Hume, Joseph, story of life of,
i. 83
Hursley, Church at, i. 258
Huxley, Professor, ii. 214
Hyde, Edward (Lord Clarendon),
sketch of, ii . 129 ; extracts from
correspondence of, ii. 140

Ifs of history, ii. 158
Inglis, Sir Robert Harry, ii. 94
Iona, i. 268
Isaiah, text from, i. 57
Ivybridge, viaduct at, i. 317

Jeffrey on Wordsworth, i. 278
Johnson, Dr., on genius, i. 145 ;
at Iona, i. 268
Johnson, Ben, Valiant Man, ii.
276
Jowett, Professor, i. 68
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with
Trypho, i. 12

Keats, i. 278
Keble, Rev. J., i. 75, 268 ; ii.
227
Keble College, i. 140
Kingsley, Rev. Charles, i. 28,
135 ; ii. 258
Kingsdown, Lord (Pemberton
Leigh), ii. 5

Latimer, Bishop, habit of story
telling, i. 90
Lee, Master William, and his in
vention, i. 291
Lewes, Mr. G. H, on Gothe, i.
253
Lewis, Sir G. C, on ' Turning-
Point' in Fox's career, ii. 124;
sketch of, i. 146
Lichfield, Bishop of (Selwyn),
i. 199 note
Liverpool from the Morsey, i. 41
Longley, Archbishop, ii. 62
Lynedoch, Lord, story of, i. 85
Lugano, evening at, i. 93
Lunardi's balloon, ii. 1 7

Macaulay, Lord, i. 67, 250 ;
ii.105, 150 ; anecdote of, ii. 198

3°°

INDEX.

Maclise, story of, i. 281
Macmillan, Rev. Hugh, writings
of, i. 26
Malesherbes, i. 67
Marlborough, Duke of, incident
in life of, ii. 179
Marsh, Herbert, Bishop of Peter
borough, i. 21
Maurice, Rev. J. D. F., i. 126
Merrill, Canon, ii. 63
Melville, Lord, condemnation of,
ii. 121
Miller, Hugh, memoirs of, i. 38 ;
his marriage, i. 236
Milman, Dean, ii. 295
Milner, President of Queen's
College, Cambridge ii. 88
Milton, i.24, 106; Lyeidas quoted,
i. 179
Mitford (first Lord Redesdale),
ii. 6
Moore, Thomas, ii. 85
Miiller, the physiologist, i. 294

Napoleon I. in Torbay, ii.
38
Napoleon III., ii. 53, 155
Newman, F. A., at Bagdad, i.
71 ; conversation with a Ma-
homedan at Aleppo, id.
Newman, J. H., citation from
the Apologia, quoted, i. 191,
259 ; law in ethics, ii. 286
Newton, Sir Isaac, i. 292
Newton, Rev. John, ii. 88
Novel Writers, confessions of, ii.
225

Occam, days of, at Oxford, i.
108
Orders, taking holy, i. 192
Oriel College, fellowships at, i.
123
Oxestierna, saying of, ii. 113
Oxford compared with Cam

bridge, i. 166; class lists, i.
129 ; school of law and modern
history, i. 132 ; view of, i. 135

Paget, Sir James, i. 47
Paley's teleoloirical watch, i. 8
Palgrave, Mr. F. T., quoted, ii.
212
Palmerston, Lord, i. 196
Pall Mall Gazette quoted, i. 300
Parallels, Historical, ii. 106
Patience, plan of the Christian
life, ii. 279
Pascal Blaise, sketch of, i. 279 ;
his accident at Neuilly, i. 268
Paul, St., a tent maker, i. 512 ;
on marriage, i. 223 ; as atravel-
ler, i. 269
Peel, Sir Robert, ii. 55, 114, 151
Penal servitude, long sentences
of, ii. 59
Pepys quoted, ii. 81, 137
Perorations of speeches, ii. 112
Persius quoted, i. 31
Petty, SirW., sketch of, ii. 79
Philippe, King Louis, i. 113
Philosophy of life, ii. 217
Phipps, SirW., sketch of, ii. 79
Pitt, William, Wilberforce on, ii.
101 ; entrance on public lifp,
ii. 117; possible retribution
on, i. 122 ; meets Sir Arthur
Wellesley, i. 123; death of,
i. 128
Prodicus' fable of Hercules, i. 30
Profession, choice of, i. 144 ;
comparison ofprofessions,i.l56
Providence, theories of, ii. 227

Rennie the engineer, ii. 99
Romilly, Sir Samuel, i. 239
Romney the painter, i. 67
Rush the murderer, i. 233
Russell, Earl, on Pitt and Fox, ii.
145, 145

INDEX.

301

Saturday Seview quoted, i. 183 ;
ii. 160
Schlegel on marriage, i. 217 ; on
connection between faith and
knowledge, i. 322 ; on ' Turn-
ing-Points ' in history, ii. 190,
292
Schubert, sayings of, ii. 248
Scott, Thomas, Forceof Truth.i.86
Scott, Sir AValter, ii. 101
Sequoia gigantea, i. 27
Seville, religious reformation in,
i. 257
Shairp, Principal, Culture and
Eeligion, ii. 21 3 ; quoted, ii. 235
Shelley, i. 291
Smeaton's last illness, i. 293
Smith, Sydney, his fits of de
pression, i. 62
Spencer, Mr. Herbert,on Atavism,
i. 49
Stael, Madame de, i. 269
Stephen, (Master in Chancery),
ii. 89
Stowell,Lord(William Scott), ii. 3
Strutt, Jedediah, sketch of, ii. 8
Taine, M., quoted, i. 138
Talfourd,Mr. Justice.i. 165 ;ii. 29
Taylor, Sir Henry, quoted,ii. 211
Taylor, Jeremy, Apologue on
Marriage.i. 227; on Providence,
ii. 211
Telford the engineer.i. 317; ii. 98
Temple, Bp.,on scruples, i. 10 ; on
education of the world, ii. 165
Tennyson, Alfred, on first view
of London, i. 36; on travel, i.248;
lines from, i. 256 ; Lincolnshire
scenery, i. 260 ; on work, i. 274 ;
on fame and use, i. 322 ; his
' Palace of Art,' ii. 220 ; ' wages,'
ii. 258
Tenterden, first Lord (Charles
Abbott), sketch of, ii. 10
Thackeray, i. 279 ; ii. 127, 193
Thiers. M., ii. 172, 177
Thomson, Castle of Indolence,
quoted, i. 268

Thomson, Sir William, dis
coveries in electricity, i. 293
Thorntons, the two, ii. 91
Travel, i. 244
Trench,Archbishop,quoted,ii. 206
Truro, Lord (Serjeant Wilde),
ii. 9
Tucker, Abraham, on Provi
dence, ii. 223
Tyndall, Professor, i. 50
Tytler, Patrick Eraser, i. 165

University Careers, i. 109,
funds, i. 139; extension,!. 140
Universities, Scottish, i. 112

Van Mildert, Bishop, ii. 48
Vasari, i. 280
Vauban, ii. 183
Voltaire, last days of, ii. 104

Waldenses of Piedmont, i. 105
Ward, E. M., painting by, ii. 137
Walton, Izaak, i. 229, 267 ; ii. 46
Wallace, Mr., the Naturalist,
quoted, ii. 161
Washington, incident in life of,
i. 87
Watson, Joshua, sketch of, ii.
46, 113
Wellington, Duke of, i. 77, 99
West, the painter, anecdote of,
i. 280
Westminster Abbey, i. 95
Wickham, the diplomatist, i. 87
Wilberforce, William, ii. 101
Winslow, Dr. Forbes, on mental
disease, ii. 200
Woolner, on a protuberance of
the ear, i. 50
Wissembourg, battles of, in 1793
and 1870, ii. 166
Worcester, Bishop of (Philpott),
i. 199
Wordsworth, William, i. 133,
278 ; ii. 275

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