The Discipline of Experience

"I would the great would grow like thee. Who grewest not alone in power And knowledge, but by year and hour In reverence and in charity."--TENNYSON.

"Not to be unhappy is unhappynesse, And misery not t'have known miserie; For the best way unto discretion is The way that leades us by adversitie; And men are better shew'd what is amisse, By th'expert finger of calamitie, Than they can be with all that fortune brings, Who never shewes them the true face of things."--DANIEL.

"A lump of wo affliction is, Yet thence I borrow lumps of bliss; Though few can see a blessing in't, It is my furnace and my mint." --ERSKINE'S GOSPEL SONNETS.

"Crosses grow anchors, bear as thou shouldst so Thy cross, and that cross grows an anchor too."--DONNE.

"Be the day weary, or be the day long, At length it ringeth to Evensong."--ANCIENT COUPLET.

Practical wisdom is only to be learnt in the school of experience. Precepts and instructions are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only. The hard facts of existence have to be faced, to give that touch of truth to character which can never be imparted by reading or tuition, but only by contact with the broad instincts of common men and women.

To be worth anything, character must be capable of standing firm upon its feet in the world of daily work, temptation, and trial; and able to bear the wear-and-tear of actual life. Cloistered virtues do not count for much. The life that rejoices in solitude may be only rejoicing in selfishness. Seclusion may indicate contempt for others; though more usually it means indolence, cowardice, or self-indulgence. To every human being belongs his fair share of manful toil and human duty; and it cannot be shirked without loss to the individual himself, as well as to the community to which he belongs. It is only by mixing in the daily life of the world, and taking part in its affairs, that practical knowledge can be acquired, and wisdom learnt. It is there that we find our chief sphere of duty, that we learn the discipline of work, and that we educate ourselves in that patience, diligence, and endurance which shape and consolidate the character. There we encounter the difficulties, trials, and temptations which, according as we deal with them, give a colour to our entire after-life; and there, too, we become subject to the great discipline of suffering, from which we learn far more than from the safe seclusion of the study or the cloister.

Contact with others is also requisite to enable a man to know himself. It is only by mixing freely in the world that one can form a proper estimate of his own capacity. Without such experience, one is apt to become conceited, puffed-up, and arrogant; at all events, he will remain ignorant of himself, though he may heretofore have enjoyed no other company.

Swift once said: "It is an uncontroverted truth, that no man ever made an ill-figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them." Many persons, however, are readier to take measure of the capacity of others than of themselves. "Bring him to me," said a certain Dr. Tronchin, of Geneva, speaking of Rousseau--"Bring him to me, that I may see whether he has got anything in him!"--the probability being that Rousseau, who knew himself better, was much more likely to take measure of Tronchin than Tronchin was to take measure of him.

A due amount of self-knowledge is, therefore, necessary for those who would BE anything or DO anything in the world. It is also one of the first essentials to the formation of distinct personal convictions. Frederic Perthes once said to a young friend: "You know only too well what you CAN do; but till you have learned what you CANNOT do, you will neither accomplish anything of moment, nor know inward peace."

Any one who would profit by experience will never be above asking for help. He who thinks himself already too wise to learn of others, will never succeed in doing anything either good or great. We have to keep our minds and hearts open, and never be ashamed to learn, with the assistance of those who are wiser and more experienced than ourselves.

The man made wise by experience endeavours to judge correctly of the thugs which come under his observation, and form the subject of his daily life. What we call common sense is, for the most part, but the result of common experience wisely improved. Nor is great ability necessary to acquire it, so much as patience, accuracy, and watchfulness. Hazlitt thought the most sensible people to be met with are intelligent men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.

For the same reason, women often display more good sense than men, having fewer pretensions, and judging of things naturally, by the involuntary impression they make on the mind. Their intuitive powers are quicker, their perceptions more acute, their sympathies more lively, and their manners more adaptive to particular ends. Hence their greater tact as displayed in the management of others, women of apparently slender intellectual powers often contriving to control and regulate the conduct of men of even the most impracticable nature. Pope paid a high compliment to the tact and good sense of Mary, Queen of William III., when he described her as possessing, not a science, but [21what was worth all else] prudence.

The whole of life may be regarded as a great school of experience, in which men and women are the pupils. As in a school, many of the lessons learnt there must needs be taken on trust. We may not understand them, and may possibly think it hard that we have to learn them, especially where the teachers are trials, sorrows, temptations, and difficulties; and yet we must not only accept their lessons, but recognise them as being divinely appointed.

To what extent have the pupils profited by their experience in the school of life? What advantage have they taken of their opportunities for learning? What have they gained in discipline of heart and mind?--how much in growth of wisdom, courage, self-control? Have they preserved their integrity amidst prosperity, and enjoyed life in temperance and moderation? Or, has life been with them a mere feast of selfishness, without care or thought for others? What have they learnt from trial and adversity? Have they learnt patience, submission, and trust in God?--or have they learnt nothing but impatience, querulousness, and discontent?

The results of experience are, of course, only to be achieved by living; and living is a question of time. The man of experience learns to rely upon Time as his helper. "Time and I against any two," was a maxim of Cardinal Mazarin. Time has been described as a beautifier and as a consoler; but it is also a teacher. It is the food of experience, the soil of wisdom. It may be the friend or the enemy of youth; and Time will sit beside the old as a consoler or as a tormentor, according as it has been used or misused, and the past life has been well or ill spent.

"Time," says George Herbert, "is the rider that breaks youth." To the young, how bright the new world looks!--how full of novelty, of enjoyment, of pleasure! But as years pass, we find the world to be a place of sorrow as well as of joy. As we proceed through life, many dark vistas open upon us--of toil, suffering, difficulty, perhaps misfortune and failure. Happy they who can pass through and amidst such trials with a firm mind and pure heart, encountering trials with cheerfulness, and standing erect beneath even the heaviest burden!

A little youthful ardour is a great help in life, and is useful as an energetic motive power. It is gradually cooled down by Time, no matter how glowing it has been, while it is trained and subdued by experience. But it is a healthy and hopeful indication of character,--to be encouraged in a right direction, and not to be sneered down and repressed. It is a sign of a vigorous unselfish nature, as egotism is of a narrow and selfish one; and to begin life with egotism and self-sufficiency is fatal to all breadth and vigour of character. Life, in such a case, would be like a year in which there was no spring. Without a generous seedtime, there will be an unflowering summer and an unproductive harvest. And youth is the springtime of life, in which, if there be not a fair share of enthusiasm, little will be attempted, and still less done. It also considerably helps the working quality, inspiring confidence and hope, and carrying one through the dry details of business and duty with cheerfulness and joy.

"It is the due admixture of romance and reality," said Sir Henry Lawrence, "that best carries a man through life... The quality of romance or enthusiasm is to be valued as an energy imparted to the human mind to prompt and sustain its noblest efforts." Sir Henry always urged upon young men, not that they should repress enthusiasm, but sedulously cultivate and direct the feeling, as one implanted for wise and noble purposes. "When the two faculties of romance and reality," he said, "are duly blended, reality pursues a straight rough path to a desirable and practicable result; while romance beguiles the road by pointing out its beauties--by bestowing a deep and practical conviction that, even in this dark and material existence, there may be found a joy with which a stranger intermeddleth not--a light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." [211]

It was characteristic of Joseph Lancaster, when a boy of only fourteen years of age, after reading 'Clarkson on the Slave Trade,' to form the resolution of leaving his home and going out to the West Indies to teach the poor blacks to read the Bible. And he actually set out with a Bible and 'Pilgrim's Progress' in his bundle, and only a few shillings in his purse. He even succeeded in reaching the West Indies, doubtless very much at a loss how to set about his proposed work; but in the meantime his distressed parents, having discovered whither he had gone, had him speedily brought back, yet with his enthusiasm unabated; and from that time forward he unceasingly devoted himself to the truly philanthropic work of educating the destitute poor. [212]

There needs all the force that enthusiasm can give to enable a man to succeed in any great enterprise of life. Without it, the obstruction and difficulty he has to encounter on every side might compel him to succumb; but with courage and perseverance, inspired by enthusiasm, a man feels strong enough to face any danger, to grapple with any difficulty. What an enthusiasm was that of Columbus, who, believing in the existence of a new world, braved the dangers of unknown seas; and when those about him despaired and rose up against him, threatening to cast him into the sea, still stood firm upon his hope and courage until the great new world at length rose upon the horizon!

The brave man will not be baffled, but tries and tries again until he succeeds. The tree does not fall at the first stroke, but only by repeated strokes and after great labour. We may see the visible success at which a man has arrived, but forget the toil and suffering and peril through which it has been achieved. When a friend of Marshal Lefevre was complimenting him on his possessions and good fortune, the Marshal said: "You envy me, do you? Well, you shall have these things at a better bargain than I had. Come into the court: I'll fire at you with a gun twenty times at thirty paces, and if I don't kill you, all shall be your own. What! you won't! Very well; recollect, then, that I have been shot at more than a thousand times, and much nearer, before I arrived at the state in which you now find me!"

The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve. It is usually the best stimulus and discipline of character. It often evokes powers of action that, but for it, would have remained dormant. As comets are sometimes revealed by eclipses, so heroes are brought to light by sudden calamity. It seems as if, in certain cases, genius, like iron struck by the flint, needed the sharp and sudden blow of adversity to bring out the divine spark. There are natures which blossom and ripen amidst trials, which would only wither and decay in an atmosphere of ease and comfort.

Thus it is good for men to be roused into action and stiffened into self-reliance by difficulty, rather than to slumber away their lives in useless apathy and indolence. [213] It is the struggle that is the condition of victory. If there were no difficulties, there would be no need of efforts; if there were no temptations, there would be no training in self-control, and but little merit in virtue; if there were no trial and suffering, there would be no education in patience and resignation. Thus difficulty, adversity, and suffering are not all evil, but often the best source of strength, discipline, and virtue.

For the same reason, it is often of advantage for a man to be under the necessity of having to struggle with poverty and conquer it. "He who has battled," says Carlyle, "were it only with poverty and hard toil, will be found stronger and more expert than he who could stay at home from the battle, concealed among the provision waggons, or even rest unwatchfully 'abiding by the stuff.'"

Scholars have found poverty tolerable compared with the privation of intellectual food. Riches weigh much more heavily upon the mind. "I cannot but choose say to Poverty," said Richter, "Be welcome! so that thou come not too late in life." Poverty, Horace tells us, drove him to poetry, and poetry introduced him to Varus and Virgil and Maecenas. "Obstacles," says Michelet, "are great incentives. I lived for whole years upon a Virgil, and found myself well off. An odd volume of Racine, purchased by chance at a stall on the quay, created the poet of Toulon."

The Spaniards are even said to have meanly rejoiced the poverty of Cervantes, but for which they supposed the production of his great works might have been prevented. When the Archbishop of Toledo visited the French ambassador at Madrid, the gentlemen in the suite of the latter expressed their high admiration of the writings of the author of 'Don Quixote,' and intimated their desire of becoming acquainted with one who had given them so much pleasure. The answer they received was, that Cervantes had borne arms in the service of his country, and was now old and poor. "What!" exclaimed one of the Frenchmen, "is not Senor Cervantes in good circumstances? Why is he not maintained, then, out of the public treasury?" "Heaven forbid!" was the reply, "that his necessities should be ever relieved, if it is those which make him write; since it is his poverty that makes the world rich!" [214]

It is not prosperity so much as adversity, not wealth so much as poverty, that stimulates the perseverance of strong and healthy natures, rouses their energy and developes their character. Burke said of himself: "I was not rocked, and swaddled, and dandled into a legislator. 'NITOR IN ADVERSUM' is the motto for a man like you." Some men only require a great difficulty set in their way to exhibit the force of their character and genius; and that difficulty once conquered becomes one of the greatest incentives to their further progress.

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure. By far the best experience of men is made up of their remembered failures in dealing with others in the affairs of life. Such failures, in sensible men, incite to better self-management, and greater tact and self-control, as a means of avoiding them in the future. Ask the diplomatist, and he will tell you that he has learned his art through being baffled, defeated, thwarted, and circumvented, far more than from having succeeded. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done. It has disciplined them experimentally, and taught them what to do as well as what NOT to do--which is often still more important in diplomacy.

Many have to make up their minds to encounter failure again and again before they succeed; but if they have pluck, the failure will only serve to rouse their courage, and stimulate them to renewed efforts. Talma, the greatest of actors, was hissed off the stage when he first appeared on it. Lacordaire, one of the greatest preachers of modern times, only acquired celebrity after repeated failures. Montalembert said of his first public appearance in the Church of St. Roch: "He failed completely, and on coming out every one said, 'Though he may be a man of talent, he will never be a preacher.'" Again and again he tried until he succeeded; and only two years after his DEBUT, Lacordaire was preaching in Notre Dame to audiences such as few French orators have addressed since the time of Bossuet and Massillon.

When Mr. Cobden first appeared as a speaker, at a public meeting in Manchester, he completely broke down, and the chairman apologized for his failure. Sir James Graham and Mr. Disraeli failed and were derided at first, and only succeeded by dint of great labour and application. At one time Sir James Graham had almost given up public speaking in despair. He said to his friend Sir Francis Baring: "I have tried it every way--extempore, from notes, and committing all to memory--and I can't do it. I don't know why it is, but I am afraid I shall never succeed." Yet, by dint of perseverance, Graham, like Disraeli, lived to become one of the most effective and impressive of parliamentary speakers.

Failures in one direction have sometimes had the effect of forcing the farseeing student to apply himself in another. Thus Prideaux's failure as a candidate for the post of parish-clerk of Ugboro, in Devon, led to his applying himself to learning, and to his eventual elevation to the bishopric of Worcester. When Boileau, educated for the bar, pleaded his first cause, he broke down amidst shouts of laughter. He next tried the pulpit, and failed there too. And then he tried poetry, and succeeded. Fontenelle and Voltaire both failed at the bar. So Cowper, through his diffidence and shyness, broke down when pleading his first cause, though he lived to revive the poetic art in England. Montesquieu and Bentham both failed as lawyers, and forsook the bar for more congenial pursuits--the latter leaving behind him a treasury of legislative procedure for all time. Goldsmith failed in passing as a surgeon; but he wrote the 'Deserted Village' and the 'Vicar of Wakefield;' whilst Addison failed as a speaker, but succeeded in writing 'Sir Roger de Coverley,' and his many famous papers in the 'Spectator.'

Even the privation of some important bodily sense, such as sight or hearing, has not been sufficient to deter courageous men from zealously pursuing the struggle of life. Milton, when struck by blindness, "still bore up and steered right onward." His greatest works were produced during that period of his life in which he suffered most--when he was poor, sick, old, blind, slandered, and persecuted.

The lives of some of the greatest men have been a continuous struggle with difficulty and apparent defeat. Dante produced his greatest work in penury and exile. Banished from his native city by the local faction to which he was opposed, his house was given up to plunder, and he was sentenced in his absence to be burnt alive. When informed by a friend that he might return to Florence, if he would consent to ask for pardon and absolution, he replied: "No! This is not the way that shall lead me back to my country. I will return with hasty steps if you, or any other, can open to me a way that shall not derogate from the fame or the honour of Dante; but if by no such way Florence can be entered, then to Florence I shall never return." His enemies remaining implacable, Dante, after a banishment of twenty years, died in exile. They even pursued him after death, when his book, 'De Monarchia,' was publicly burnt at Bologna by order of the Papal Legate.

Camoens also wrote his great poems mostly in banishment. Tired of solitude at Santarem, he joined an expedition against the Moors, in which he distinguished himself by his bravery. He lost an eye when boarding an enemy's ship in a sea-fight. At Goa, in the East Indies, he witnessed with indignation the cruelty practised by the Portuguese on the natives, and expostulated with the governor against it. He was in consequence banished from the settlement, and sent to China. In the course of his subsequent adventures and misfortunes, Camoens suffered shipwreck, escaping only with his life and the manuscript of his 'Lusiad.' Persecution and hardship seemed everywhere to pursue him. At Macao he was thrown into prison. Escaping from it, he set sail for Lisbon, where he arrived, after sixteen years' absence, poor and friendless. His 'Lusiad,' which was shortly after published, brought him much fame, but no money. But for his old Indian slave Antonio, who begged for his master in the streets, Camoens must have perished. [215] As it was, he died in a public almshouse, worn out by disease and hardship. An inscription was placed over his grave:--"Here lies Luis de Camoens: he excelled all the poets of his time: he lived poor and miserable; and he died so, MDLXXIX." This record, disgraceful but truthful, has since been removed; and a lying and pompous epitaph, in honour of the great national poet of Portugal, has been substituted in its stead.

Even Michael Angelo was exposed, during the greater part of his life, to the persecutions of the envious--vulgar nobles, vulgar priests, and sordid men of every degree, who could neither sympathise with him, nor comprehend his genius. When Paul IV. condemned some of his work in 'The Last Judgment,' the artist observed that "The Pope would do better to occupy himself with correcting the disorders and indecencies which disgrace the world, than with any such hypercriticisms upon his art."

Tasso also was the victim of almost continual persecution and calumny. After lying in a madhouse for seven years, he became a wanderer over Italy; and when on his deathbed, he wrote: "I will not complain of the malignity of fortune, because I do not choose to speak of the ingratitude of men who have succeeded in dragging me to the tomb of a mendicant."

But Time brings about strange revenges. The persecutors and the persecuted often change places; it is the latter who are great--the former who are infamous. Even the names of the persecutors would probably long ago have been forgotten, but for their connection with the history of the men whom they have persecuted. Thus, who would now have known of Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, but for his imprisonment of Tasso? Or, who would have heard of the existence of the Grand Duke of Wurtemburg of some ninety years back, but for his petty persecution of Schiller?

Science also has had its martyrs, who have fought their way to light through difficulty, persecution, and suffering. We need not refer again to the cases of Bruno, Galileo, and others, [216] persecuted because of the supposed heterodoxy of their views. But there have been other unfortunates amongst men of science, whose genius has been unable to save them from the fury of their enemies. Thus Bailly, the celebrated French astronomer [21who had been mayor of Paris], and Lavoisier, the great chemist, were both guillotined in the first French Revolution. When the latter, after being sentenced to death by the Commune, asked for a few days' respite, to enable him to ascertain the result of some experiments he had made during his confinement, the tribunal refused his appeal, and ordered him for immediate execution--one of the judges saying, that "the Republic had no need of philosophers." In England also, about the same time, Dr. Priestley, the father of modern chemistry, had his house burnt over his head, and his library destroyed, amidst shouts of "No philosophers!" and he fled from his native country to lay his bones in a foreign land.

The work of some of the greatest discoverers has been done in the midst of persecution, difficulty, and suffering. Columbus, who discovered the New World and gave it as a heritage to the Old, was in his lifetime persecuted, maligned, and plundered by those whom he had enriched. Mungo Park's drowning agony in the African river he had discovered, but which he was not to live to describe; Clapperton's perishing of fever on the banks of the great lake, in the heart of the same continent, which was afterwards to be rediscovered and described by other explorers; Franklin's perishing in the snow--it might be after he had solved the long-sought problem of the North-west Passage--are among the most melancholy events in the history of enterprise and genius.

The case of Flinders the navigator, who suffered a six years' imprisonment in the Isle of France, was one of peculiar hardship. In 1801, he set sail from England in the INVESTIGATOR, on a voyage of discovery and survey, provided with a French pass, requiring all French governors [21notwithstanding that England and France were at war] to give him protection and succour in the sacred name of science. In the course of his voyage he surveyed great part of Australia, Van Diemen's Land, and the neighbouring islands. The INVESTIGATOR, being found leaky and rotten, was condemned, and the navigator embarked as passenger in the PORPOISE for England, to lay the results of his three years' labours before the Admiralty. On the voyage home the PORPOISE was wrecked on a reef in the South Seas, and Flinders, with part of the crew, in an open boat, made for Port Jackson, which they safely reached, though distant from the scene of the wreck not less than 750 miles. There he procured a small schooner, the CUMBERLAND, no larger than a Gravesend sailing-boat, and returned for the remainder of the crew, who had been left on the reef. Having rescued them, he set sail for England, making for the Isle of France, which the CUMBERLAND reached in a sinking condition, being a wretched little craft badly found. To his surprise, he was made a prisoner with all his crew, and thrown into prison, where he was treated with brutal harshness, his French pass proving no protection to him. What aggravated the horrors of Flinders' confinement was, that he knew that Baudin, the French navigator, whom he had encountered while making his survey of the Australian coasts, would reach Europe first, and claim the merit of all the discoveries he had made. It turned out as he had expected; and while Flinders was still imprisoned in the Isle of France, the French Atlas of the new discoveries was published, all the points named by Flinders and his precursors being named afresh. Flinders was at length liberated, after six years' imprisonment, his health completely broken; but he continued correcting his maps, and writing out his descriptions to the last. He only lived long enough to correct his final sheet for the press, and died on the very day that his work was published!

Courageous men have often turned enforced solitude to account in executing works of great pith and moment. It is in solitude that the passion for spiritual perfection best nurses itself. The soul communes with itself in loneliness until its energy often becomes intense. But whether a man profits by solitude or not will mainly depend upon his own temperament, training, and character. While, in a large-natured man, solitude will make the pure heart purer, in the small-natured man it will only serve to make the hard heart still harder: for though solitude may be the nurse of great spirits, it is the torment of small ones.

It was in prison that Boetius wrote his 'Consolations of Philosophy,' and Grotius his 'Commentary on St. Matthew,' regarded as his masterwork in Biblical Criticism. Buchanan composed his beautiful 'Paraphrases on the Psalms' while imprisoned in the cell of a Portuguese monastery. Campanella, the Italian patriot monk, suspected of treason, was immured for twenty-seven years in a Neapolitan dungeon, during which, deprived of the sun's light, he sought higher light, and there created his 'Civitas Solis,' which has been so often reprinted and reproduced in translations in most European languages. During his thirteen years' imprisonment in the Tower, Raleigh wrote his 'History of the World,' a project of vast extent, of which he was only able to finish the first five books. Luther occupied his prison hours in the Castle of Wartburg in translating the Bible, and in writing the famous tracts and treatises with which he inundated all Germany.

It was to the circumstance of John Bunyan having been cast into gaol that we probably owe the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' He was thus driven in upon himself; having no opportunity for action, his active mind found vent in earnest thinking and meditation; and indeed, after his enlargement, his life as an author virtually ceased. His 'Grace Abounding' and the 'Holy War' were also written in prison. Bunyan lay in Bedford Gaol, with a few intervals of precarious liberty, during not less than twelve years; [217] and it was most probably to his prolonged imprisonment that we owe what Macaulay has characterised as the finest allegory in the world.

All the political parties of the times in which Bunyan lived, imprisoned their opponents when they had the opportunity and the power. Bunyan's prison experiences were principally in the time of Charles II. But in the preceding reign of Charles I., as well as during the Commonwealth, illustrious prisoners were very numerous. The prisoners of the former included Sir John Eliot, Hampden, Selden, Prynne [218] [21a most voluminous prison-writer], and many more. It was while under strict confinement in the Tower, that Eliot composed his noble treatise, 'The Monarchy of Man.' George Wither, the poet, was another prisoner of Charles the First, and it was while confined in the Marshalsea that he wrote his famous 'Satire to the King.' At the Restoration he was again imprisoned in Newgate, from which he was transferred to the Tower, and he is supposed by some to have died there.

The Commonwealth also had its prisoners. Sir William Davenant, because of his loyalty, was for some time confined a prisoner in Cowes Castle, where he wrote the greater part of his poem of 'Gondibert': and it is said that his life was saved principally through the generous intercession of Milton. He lived to repay the debt, and to save Milton's life when "Charles enjoyed his own again." Lovelace, the poet and cavalier, was also imprisoned by the Roundheads, and was only liberated from the Gatehouse on giving an enormous bail. Though he suffered and lost all for the Stuarts, he was forgotten by them at the Restoration, and died in extreme poverty.

Besides Wither and Bunyan, Charles II. imprisoned Baxter, Harrington [21the author of 'Oceana'], Penn, and many more. All these men solaced their prison hours with writing. Baxter wrote some of the most remarkable passages of his 'Life and Times' while lying in the King's Bench Prison; and Penn wrote his 'No Cross no Crown' while imprisoned in the Tower. In the reign of Queen Anne, Matthew Prior was in confinement on a vamped-up charge of treason for two years, during which he wrote his 'Alma, or Progress of the Soul.'

Since then, political prisoners of eminence in England have been comparatively few in number. Among the most illustrious were De Foe, who, besides standing three times in the pillory, spent much of his time in prison, writing 'Robinson Crusoe' there, and many of his best political pamphlets. There also he wrote his 'Hymn to the Pillory,' and corrected for the press a collection of his voluminous writings. [219] Smollett wrote his 'Sir Lancelot Greaves' in prison, while undergoing confinement for libel. Of recent prison-writers in England, the best known are James Montgomery, who wrote his first volume of poems while a prisoner in York Castle; and Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, who wrote his 'Purgatory of Suicide' in Stafford Gaol.

Silvio Pellico was one of the latest and most illustrious of the prison writers of Italy. He lay confined in Austrian gaols for ten years, eight of which he passed in the Castle of Spielberg in Moravia. It was there that he composed his charming 'Memoirs,' the only materials for which were furnished by his fresh living habit of observation; and out of even the transient visits of his gaoler's daughter, and the colourless events of his monotonous daily life, he contrived to make for himself a little world of thought and healthy human interest.

Kazinsky, the great reviver of Hungarian literature, spent seven years of his life in the dungeons of Buda, Brunne, Kufstein, and Munkacs, during which he wrote a 'Diary of his Imprisonment,' and amongst other things translated Sterno's 'Sentimental Journey;' whilst Kossuth beguiled his two years' imprisonment at Buda in studying English, so as to be able to read Shakspeare in the original.

Men who, like these, suffer the penalty of law, and seem to fail, at least for a time, do not really fail. Many, who have seemed to fail utterly, have often exercised a more potent and enduring influence upon their race, than those whose career has been a course of uninterupted success. The character of a man does not depend on whether his efforts are immediately followed by failure or by success. The martyr is not a failure if the truth for which he suffered acquires a fresh lustre through his sacrifice. [2110] The patriot who lays down his life for his cause, may thereby hasten its triumph; and those who seem to throw their lives away in the van of a great movement, often open a way for those who follow them, and pass over their dead bodies to victory. The triumph of a just cause may come late; but when it does come, it is due as much to those who failed in their first efforts, as to those who succeeded in their last.

The example of a great death may be an inspiration to others, as well as the example of a good life. A great act does not perish with the life of him who performs it, but lives and grows up into like acts in those who survive the doer thereof and cherish his memory. Of some great men, it might almost be said that they have not begun to live until they have died.

The names of the men who have suffered in the cause of religion, of science, and of truth, are the men of all others whose memories are held in the greatest esteem and reverence by mankind. They perished, but their truth survived. They seemed to fail, and yet they eventually succeeded. [2111] Prisons may have held them, but their thoughts were not to be confined by prison-walls. They have burst through, and defied the power of their persecutors. It was Lovelace, a prisoner, who wrote:

"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage."

It was a saying of Milton that, "who best can suffer best can do." The work of many of the greatest men, inspired by duty, has been done amidst suffering and trial and difficulty. They have struggled against the tide, and reached the shore exhausted, only to grasp the sand and expire. They have done their duty, and been content to die. But death hath no power over such men; their hallowed memories still survive, to soothe and purify and bless us. "Life," said Goethe, "to us all is suffering. Who save God alone shall call us to our reckoning? Let not reproaches fall on the departed. Not what they have failed in, nor what they have suffered, but what they have done, ought to occupy the survivors."

Thus, it is not ease and facility that tries men, and brings out the good that is in them, so much as trial and difficulty. Adversity is the touchstone of character. As some herbs need to be crushed to give forth their sweetest odour, so some natures need to be tried by suffering to evoke the excellence that is in them. Hence trials often unmask virtues, and bring to light hidden graces. Men apparently useless and purposeless, when placed in positions of difficulty and responsibility, have exhibited powers of character before unsuspected; and where we before saw only pliancy and self-indulgence, we now see strength, valour, and self-denial.

As there are no blessings which may not be perverted into evils, so there are no trials which may not be converted into blessings. All depends on the manner in which we profit by them or otherwise. Perfect happiness is not to be looked for in this world. If it could be secured, it would be found profitless. The hollowest of all gospels is the gospel of ease and comfort. Difficulty, and even failure, are far better teachers. Sir Humphry Davy said: "Even in private life, too much prosperity either injures the moral man, and occasions conduct which ends in suffering; or it is accompanied by the workings of envy, calumny, and malevolence of others."

Failure improves tempers and strengthens the nature. Even sorrow is in some mysterious way linked with joy and associated with tenderness. John Bunyan once said how, "if it were lawful, he could even pray for greater trouble, for the greater comfort's sake." When surprise was expressed at the patience of a poor Arabian woman under heavy affliction, she said, "When we look on God's face we do not feel His hand."

Suffering is doubtless as divinely appointed as joy, while it is much more influential as a discipline of character. It chastens and sweetens the nature, teaches patience and resignation, and promotes the deepest as well as the most exalted thought. [2112]

"The best of men That e'er wore earth about Him was a sufferer; A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit The first true gentleman that ever breathed." [2113]

Suffering may be the appointed means by which the highest nature of man is to be disciplined and developed. Assuming happiness to be the end of being, sorrow may be the indispensable condition through which it is to be reached. Hence St. Paul's noble paradox descriptive of the Christian life,--"as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things."

Even pain is not all painful. On one side it is related to suffering, and on the other to happiness. For pain is remedial as well as sorrowful. Suffering is a misfortune as viewed from the one side, and a discipline as viewed from the other. But for suffering, the best part of many men's nature would sleep a deep sleep. Indeed, it might almost be said that pain and sorrow were the indispensable conditions of some men's success, and the necessary means to evoke the highest development of their genius. Shelley has said of poets:

"Most wretched men are cradled into poetry by wrong, They learn in suffering what they teach in song."

Does any one suppose that Burns would have sung as he did, had he been rich, respectable, and "kept a gig;" or Byron, if he had been a prosperous, happily-married Lord Privy Seal or Postmaster-General?

Sometimes a heartbreak rouses an impassive nature to life. "What does he know," said a sage, "who has not suffered?" When Dumas asked Reboul, "What made you a poet?" his answer was, "Suffering!" It was the death, first of his wife, and then of his child, that drove him into solitude for the indulgence of his grief, and eventually led him to seek and find relief in verse. [2114] It was also to a domestic affliction that we owe the beautiful writings of Mrs. Gaskell. "It was as a recreation, in the highest sense of the word," says a recent writer, speaking from personal knowledge, "as an escape from the great void of a life from which a cherished presence had been taken, that she began that series of exquisite creations which has served to multiply the number of our acquaintances, and to enlarge even the circle of our friendships." [2115]

Much of the best and most useful work done by men and women has been done amidst affliction--sometimes as a relief from it, sometimes from a sense of duty overpowering personal sorrow. "If I had not been so great an invalid," said Dr. Darwin to a friend, "I should not have done nearly so much work as I have been able to accomplish." So Dr. Donne, speaking of his illnesses, once said: "This advantage you and my other friends have by my frequent fevers is, that I am so much the oftener at the gates of Heaven; and by the solitude and close imprisonment they reduce me to, I am so much the oftener at my prayers, in which you and my other dear friends are not forgotten."

Schiller produced his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical suffering almost amounting to torture. Handel was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music. Mozart composed his great operas, and last of all his 'Requiem,' when oppressed by debt, and struggling with a fatal disease. Beethoven produced his greatest works amidst gloomy sorrow, when oppressed by almost total deafness. And poor Schubert, after his short but brilliant life, laid it down at the early age of thirty-two; his sole property at his death consisting of his manuscripts, the clothes he wore, and sixty-three florins in money. Some of Lamb's finest writings were produced amidst deep sorrow, and Hood's apparent gaiety often sprang from a suffering heart. As he himself wrote,

"There's not a string attuned to mirth, But has its chord in melancholy."

Again, in science, we have the noble instance of the suffering Wollaston, even in the last stages of the mortal disease which afflicted him, devoting his numbered hours to putting on record, by dictation, the various discoveries and improvements he had made, so that any knowledge he had acquired, calculated to benefit his fellow-creatures, might not be lost.

Afflictions often prove but blessings in disguise. "Fear not the darkness," said the Persian sage; it "conceals perhaps the springs of the waters of life." Experience is often bitter, but wholesome; only by its teaching can we learn to suffer and be strong. Character, in its highest forms, is disciplined by trial, and "made perfect through suffering." Even from the deepest sorrow, the patient and thoughtful mind will gather richer wisdom than pleasure ever yielded.

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made."

"Consider," said Jeremy Taylor, "that sad accidents, and a state of afflictions, is a school of virtue. It reduces our spirits to soberness, and our counsels to moderation; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning.... God, who in mercy and wisdom governs the world, would never have suffered so many sadnesses, and have sent them, especially, to the most virtuous and the wisest men, but that He intends they should be the seminary of comfort, the nursery of virtue, the exercise of wisdom, the trial of patience, the venturing for a crown, and the gate of glory." [2116]

And again:--"No man is more miserable than he that hath no adversity. That man is not tried, whether he be good or bad; and God never crowns those virtues which are only FACULTIES and DISPOSITIONS; but every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward." [2117]

Prosperity and success of themselves do not confer happiness; indeed, it not unfrequently happens that the least successful in life have the greatest share of true joy in it. No man could have been more successful than Goethe--possessed of splendid health, honour, power, and sufficiency of this world's goods--and yet he confessed that he had not, in the course of his life, enjoyed five weeks of genuine pleasure. So the Caliph Abdalrahman, in surveying his successful reign of fifty years, found that he had enjoyed only fourteen days of pure and genuine happiness. [2118] After this, might it not be said that the pursuit of mere happiness is an illusion?

Life, all sunshine without shade, all happiness without sorrow, all pleasure without pain, were not life at all--at least not human life. Take the lot of the happiest--it is a tangled yarn. It is made up of sorrows and joys; and the joys are all the sweeter because of the sorrows; bereavements and blessings, one following another, making us sad and blessed by turns. Even death itself makes life more loving; it binds us more closely together while here. Dr. Thomas Browne has argued that death is one of the necessary conditions of human happiness; and he supports his argument with great force and eloquence. But when death comes into a household, we do not philosophise--we only feel. The eyes that are full of tears do not see; though in course of time they come to see more clearly and brightly than those that have never known sorrow.

The wise person gradually learns not to expect too much from life. While he strives for success by worthy methods, he will be prepared for failures, he will keep his mind open to enjoyment, but submit patiently to suffering. Wailings and complainings of life are never of any use; only cheerful and continuous working in right paths are of real avail.

Nor will the wise man expect too much from those about him. If he would live at peace with others, he will bear and forbear. And even the best have often foibles of character which have to be endured, sympathised with, and perhaps pitied. Who is perfect? Who does not suffer from some thorn in the flesh? Who does not stand in need of toleration, of forbearance, of forgiveness? What the poor imprisoned Queen Caroline Matilda of Denmark wrote on her chapel-window ought to be the prayer of all,--"Oh! keep me innocent! make others great."

Then, how much does the disposition of every human being depend upon their innate constitution and their early surroundings; the comfort or discomfort of the homes in which they have been brought up; their inherited characteristics; and the examples, good or bad, to which they have been exposed through life! Regard for such considerations should teach charity and forbearance to all men.

At the same time, life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it. Each mind makes its own little world. The cheerful mind makes it pleasant, and the discontented mind makes it miserable. "My mind to me a kingdom is," applies alike to the peasant as to the monarch. The one may be in his heart a king, as the other may be a slave. Life is for the most part but the mirror of our own individual selves. Our mind gives to all situations, to all fortunes, high or low, their real characters. To the good, the world is good; to the bad, it is bad. If our views of life be elevated--if we regard it as a sphere of useful effort, of high living and high thinking, of working for others' good as well as our own--it will be joyful, hopeful, and blessed. If, on the contrary, we regard it merely as affording opportunities for self-seeking, pleasure, and aggrandisement, it will be full of toil, anxiety, and disappointment.

There is much in life that, while in this state, we can never comprehend. There is, indeed, a great deal of mystery in life--much that we see "as in a glass darkly." But though we may not apprehend the full meaning of the discipline of trial through which the best have to pass, we must have faith in the completeness of the design of which our little individual lives form a part.

We have each to do our duty in that sphere of life in which we have been placed. Duty alone is true; there is no true action but in its accomplishment. Duty is the end and aim of the highest life; the truest pleasure of all is that derived from the consciousness of its fulfilment. Of all others, it is the one that is most thoroughly satisfying, and the least accompanied by regret and disappointment. In the words of George Herbert, the consciousness of duty performed "gives us music at midnight."

And when we have done our work on earth--of necessity, of labour, of love, or of duty,--like the silkworm that spins its little cocoon and dies, we too depart. But, short though our stay in life may be, it is the appointed sphere in which each has to work out the great aim and end of his being to the best of his power; and when that is done, the accidents of the flesh will affect but little the immortality we shall at last put on:

"Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust Half that we have Unto an honest faithful grave; Making our pillows either down or dust!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 101: Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, Lord High Treasurer under Elizabeth and James I.]

[Footnote 102: 'Life of Perthes,' ii. 217.]

[Footnote 103: Lockhart's 'Life of Scott.']

[Footnote 104: Debate on the Petition of Right, A.D. 1628.]

[Footnote 105: The Rev. F. W. Farrer's 'Seekers after God,' p. 241.]

[Footnote 106: 'The Statesman,' p. 30.]

[Footnote 107: 'Queen of the Air,' p. 127]

[Footnote 108: "Instead of saying that man is the creature of Circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of Circumstance. It is Character which builds an existence out of Circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels: one warehouses, another villas. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks, until the architect can make them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives for ever amid ruins: the block of granite, which was an obstacle on the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone on the pathway of the strong."--G. H. Lewes, LIFE OF GOETHE.]

[Footnote 109: Introduction to 'The Principal Speeches and Addresses of H.R.H. the Prince Consort' [101862], pp. 39-40.]

[Footnote 1010: Among the latest of these was Napoleon "the Great," a man of abounding energy, but destitute of principle. He had the lowest opinion of his fellowmen. "Men are hogs, who feed on gold," he once said: "Well, I throw them gold, and lead them whithersoever I will." When the Abbe de Pradt, Archbishop of Malines, was setting out on his embassy to Poland in 1812, Napoleon's parting instruction to him was, "Tenez bonne table et soignez les femmes,"--of which Benjamin Constant said that such an observation, addressed to a feeble priest of sixty, shows Buonaparte's profound contempt for the human race, without distinction of nation or sex.]

[Footnote 1011: Condensed from Sir Thomas Overbury's 'Characters' [101614].]

[Footnote 1012: 'History of the Peninsular War,' v. 319.--Napier mentions another striking illustration of the influence of personal qualities in young Edward Freer, of the same regiment [10the 43rd], who, when he fell at the age of nineteen, at the Battle of the Nivelle, had already seen more combats and sieges than he could count years. "So slight in person, and of such surpassing beauty, that the Spaniards often thought him a girl disguised in man's clothing, he was yet so vigorous, so active, so brave, that the most daring and experienced veterans watched his looks on the field of battle, and, implicitly following where he led, would, like children, obey his slightest sign in the most difficult situations."]

[Footnote 1013: When the dissolution of the Union at one time seemed imminent, and Washington wished to retire into private life, Jefferson wrote to him, urging his continuance in office. "The confidence of the whole Union," he said, "centres in you. Your being at the helm will be more than an answer to every argument which can be used to alarm and lead the people in any quarter into violence and secession.... There is sometimes an eminence of character on which society has such peculiar claims as to control the predilection of the individual for a particular walk of happiness, and restrain him to that alone arising from the present and future benedictions of mankind. This seems to be your condition, and the law imposed on you by Providence in forming your character and fashioning the events on which it was to operate; and it is to motives like these, and not to personal anxieties of mine or others, who have no right to call on you for sacrifices, that I appeal from your former determination, and urge a revisal of it, on the ground of change in the aspect of things."--Sparks' Life of Washington, i. 480.]

[Footnote 1014: Napier's 'History of the Peninsular War,' v. 226.]

[Footnote 1015: Sir W. Scott's 'History of Scotland,' vol. i. chap. xvi.]

[Footnote 1016: Michelet's 'History of Rome,' p. 374.]

[Footnote 1017: Erasmus so reverenced the character of Socrates that he said, when he considered his life and doctrines, he was inclined to put him in the calendar of saints, and to exclaim, "SANCTE SOCRATES, ORA PRO NOBIS." (Holy Socrates, pray for us!)]

[Footnote 1018: "Honour to all the brave and true; everlasting honour to John Knox one of the truest of the true! That, in the moment while he and his cause, amid civil broils, in convulsion and confusion, were still but struggling for life, he sent the schoolmaster forth to all corners, and said, 'Let the people be taught:' this is but one, and, and indeed, an inevitable and comparatively inconsiderable item in his great message to men. This message, in its true compass, was, 'Let men know that they are men created by God, responsible to God who work in any meanest moment of time what will last through eternity...' This great message Knox did deliver, with a man's voice and strength; and found a people to believe him. Of such an achievement, were it to be made once only, the results are immense. Thought, in such a country, may change its form, but cannot go out; the country has attained MAJORITY thought, and a certain manhood, ready for all work that man can do, endures there.... The Scotch national character originated in many circumstances: first of all, in the Saxon stuff there was to work on; but next, and beyond all else except that, is the Presbyterian Gospel of John Knox."--(Carlyle's MISCELLANIES, iv. 118.)]

[Footnote 1019: Moore's 'Life of Byron,' 8vo. ed. p.484.--Dante was a religious as well as a political reformer. He was a reformer three hundred years before the Reformation, advocating the separation of the spiritual from the civil power, and declaring the temporal government of the Pope to be a usurpation. The following memorable words were written over five hundred and sixty years ago, while Dante was still a member of the Roman Catholic Church:--"Every Divine law is found in one or other of the two Testaments; but in neither can I find that the care of temporal matters was given to the priesthood. On the contrary, I find that the first priests were removed from them by law, and the later priests, by command of Christ, to His disciples."--DE MONARCHIA, lib. iii. cap. xi.

Dante also, still clinging to 'the Church he wished to reform,' thus anticipated the fundamental doctrine of the Reformation:-"Before the Church are the Old and New Testament; after the Church are traditions. It follows, then, that the authority of the Church depends, not on traditions, but traditions on the Church."]

[Footnote 1020: 'Blackwood's Magazine,' June, 1863, art. 'Girolamo Savonarola.']

[Footnote 1021: One of the last passages in the Diary of Dr. Arnold, written the year before his death, was as follows:--"It is the misfortune of France that her 'past' cannot be loved or respected--her future and her present cannot be wedded to it; yet how can the present yield fruit, or the future have promise, except their roots be fixed in the past? The evil is infinite, but the blame rests with those who made the past a dead thing, out of which no healthful life could be produced."--LIFE, ii. 387-8, Ed. 1858.]

[Footnote 1022: A public orator lately spoke with contempt of the Battle of Marathon, because only 192 perished on the side of the Athenians, whereas by improved mechanism and destructive chemicals, some 50,000 men or more may now be destroyed within a few hours. Yet the Battle of Marathon, and the heroism displayed in it, will probably continue to be remembered when the gigantic butcheries of modern times have been forgotten.]

[Footnote 111: Civic virtues, unless they have their origin and consecration in private and domestic virtues, are but the virtues of the theatre. He who has not a loving heart for his child, cannot pretend to have any true love for humanity.--Jules Simon's LE DEVOIR.]

[Footnote 112: 'Levana; or, The Doctrine of Education.']

[Footnote 113: Speaking of the force of habit, St. Augustine says in his 'Confessions' "My will the enemy held, and thence had made a chain for me, and bound me. For of a froward will was a lust made; and a lust served became custom; and custom not resisted became necessity. By which links, as it were, joined together [11whence I called it a chain] a hard bondage held me enthralled."]

[Footnote 114: Mr. Tufnell, in 'Reports of Inspectors of Parochial School Unions in England and Wales,' 1850.]

[Footnote 115: See the letters [11January 13th, 16th, 18th, 20th, and 23rd, 1759], written by Johnson to his mother when she was ninety, and he himself was in his fiftieth year.--Crokers BOSWELL, 8vo. Ed. pp. 113, 114.]

[Footnote 116: Jared Sparks' 'Life of Washington.']

[Footnote 117: Forster's 'Eminent British Statesmen' [11Cabinet Cyclop.] vi. 8.]

[Footnote 118: The Earl of Mornington, composer of 'Here in cool grot,' &c.]

[Footnote 119: Robert Bell's 'Life of Canning,' p. 37.]

[Footnote 1110: 'Life of Curran,' by his son, p. 4.]

[Footnote 1111: The father of the Wesleys had even determined at one time to abandon his wife because her conscience forbade her to assent to his prayers for the then reigning monarch, and he was only saved from the consequences of his rash resolve by the accidental death of William III. He displayed the same overbearing disposition in dealing with his children; forcing his daughter Mehetabel to marry, against her will, a man whom she did not love, and who proved entirely unworthy of her.]

[Footnote 1112: Goethe himself says--"Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur, Des Lebens ernstes Fuhren; Von Mutterchen die Frohnatur Und Lust zu fabuliren."]

[Footnote 1113: Mrs. Grote's 'Life of Ary Scheffer,' p. 154.]

[Footnote 1114: Michelet, 'On Priests, Women, and Families.']

[Footnote 1115: Mrs. Byron is said to have died in a fit of passion, brought on by reading her upholsterer's bills.]

[Footnote 1116: Sainte-Beuve, 'Causeries du Lundi,' i. 23.]

[Footnote 1117: Ibid. i. 22.]

[Footnote 1118: Ibid. 1. 23.]

[Footnote 1119: That about one-third of all the children born in this country die under five years of age, can only he attributable to ignorance of the natural laws, ignorance of the human constitution, and ignorance of the uses of pure air, pure water, and of the art of preparing and administering wholesome food. There is no such mortality amongst the lower animals.]

[Footnote 1120: Beaumarchais' 'Figaro,' which was received with such enthusiasm in France shortly before the outbreak of the Revolution, may be regarded as a typical play; it represented the average morality of the upper as well as the lower classes with respect to the relations between the sexes. "Label men how you please," says Herbert Spencer, "with titles of 'upper' and 'middle' and 'lower,' you cannot prevent them from being units of the same society, acted upon by the same spirit of the age, moulded after the same type of character. The mechanical law, that action and reaction are equal, has its moral analogue. The deed of one man to another tends ultimately to produce a like effect upon both, be the deed good or bad. Do but put them in relationship, and no division into castes, no differences of wealth, can prevent men from assimilating.... The same influences which rapidly adapt the individual to his society, ensure, though by a slower process, the general uniformity of a national character.... And so long as the assimilating influences productive of it continue at work, it is folly to suppose any one grade of a community can be morally different from the rest. In whichever rank you see corruption, be assured it equally pervades all ranks--be assured it is the symptom of a bad social diathesis. Whilst the virus of depravity exists in one part of the body-politic, no other part can remain healthy."--SOCIAL STATICS, chap. xx. 7.]

[Footnote 1121: Some twenty-eight years since, the author wrote and published the following passage, not without practical knowledge of the subject; and notwithstanding the great amelioration in the lot of factory-workers, effected mainly through the noble efforts of Lord Shaftesbury, the description is still to a large extent true:--"The factory system, however much it may have added to the wealth of the country, has had a most deleterious effect on the domestic condition of the people. It has invaded the sanctuary of home, and broken up family and social ties. It has taken the wife from the husband, and the children from their parents. Especially has its tendency been to lower the character of woman. The performance of domestic duties is her proper office,--the management of her household, the rearing of her family, the economizing of the family means, the supplying of the family wants. But the factory takes her from all these duties. Homes become no longer homes. Children grow up uneducated and neglected. The finer affections become blunted. Woman is no more the gentle wife, companion, and friend of man, but his fellow-labourer and fellow-drudge. She is exposed to influences which too often efface that modesty of thought and conduct which is one of the best safeguards of virtue. Without judgment or sound principles to guide them, factory-girls early acquire the feeling of independence. Ready to throw off the constraint imposed on them by their parents, they leave their homes, and speedily become initiated in the vices of their associates. The atmosphere, physical as well as moral, in which they live, stimulates their animal appetites; the influence of bad example becomes contagious among them and mischief is propagated far and wide."--THE UNION, January, 1843.]

[Footnote 1122: A French satirist, pointing to the repeated PLEBISCITES and perpetual voting of late years, and to the growing want of faith in anything but votes, said, in 1870, that we seemed to be rapidly approaching the period when the only prayer of man and woman would be, "Give us this day our daily vote!"]

[Footnote 1123: "Of primeval and necessary and absolute superiority, the relation of the mother to the child is far more complete, though less seldom quoted as an example, than that of father and son.... By Sir Robert Filmer, the supposed necessary as well as absolute power of the father over his children, was taken as the foundation and origin, and thence justifying cause, of the power of the monarch in every political state. With more propriety he might have stated the absolute dominion of a woman as the only legitimate form of government."--DEONTOLOGY, ii. 181.]

[Footnote 121: 'Letters of Sir Charles Bell,' p. 10. [122: 'Autobiography of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck,' p. 179.]

[Footnote 123: Dean Stanley's 'Life of Dr. Arnold,' i. 151 [12Ed. 1858].]

[Footnote 124: Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials,' pp. 25-6.]

[Footnote 125: From a letter of Canon Moseley, read at a Memorial Meeting held shortly after the death of the late Lord Herbert of Lea.]

[Footnote 126: Izaak Walton's 'Life of George Herbert.']

[Footnote 127: Stanley's 'Life and Letters of Dr. Arnold,' i. 33.]

[Footnote 128: Philip de Comines gives a curious illustration of the subservient, though enforced, imitation of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, by his courtiers. When that prince fell ill, and had his head shaved, he ordered that all his nobles, five hundred in number, should in like manner shave their heads; and one of them, Pierre de Hagenbach, to prove his devotion, no sooner caught sight of an unshaven nobleman, than he forthwith had him seized and carried off to the barber!--Philip de Comines [12Bohn's Ed.], p. 243.]

[Footnote 129: 'Life,' i. 344.]

[Footnote 1210: Introduction to 'The Principal Speeches and Addresses of H.R.H. the Prince Consort,' p. 33.]

[Footnote 1211: Speech at Liverpool, 1812.]

[Footnote 131:In the third chapter of his Natural History, Pliny relates in what high honour agriculture was held in the earlier days of Rome; how the divisions of land were measured by the quantity which could be ploughed by a yoke of oxen in a certain time [13JUGERUM, in one day; ACTUS, at one spell]; how the greatest recompence to a general or valiant citizen was a JUGERUM; how the earliest surnames were derived from agriculture (Pilumnus, from PILUM, the pestle for pounding corn; Piso, from PISO, to grind coin; Fabius, from FABA, a bean; Lentulus, from LENS, a lentil; Cicero, from CICER, a chickpea; Babulcus, from BOS, &c.); how the highest compliment was to call a man a good agriculturist, or a good husbandman (LOCUPLES, rich, LOCI PLENUS, PECUNIA, from PECUS, &c.); how the pasturing of cattle secretly by night upon unripe crops was a capital offence, punishable by hanging; how the rural tribes held the foremost rank, while those of the city had discredit thrown upon them as being an indolent race; and how "GLORIAM DENIQUE IPSAM, A FARRIS HONORE, 'ADOREAM' APPELLABANT;" ADOREA, or Glory, the reward of valour, being derived from Ador, or spelt, a kind of grain.]

[Footnote 132: 'Essay on Government,' in 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.']

[Footnote 133: Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' Part i., Mem. 2, Sub. 6.]

[Footnote 134: Ibid. End of concluding chapter.]

[Footnote 135: It is characteristic of the Hindoos to regard entire inaction as the most perfect state, and to describe the Supreme Being as "The Unmoveable."]

[Footnote 136: Lessing was so impressed with the conviction that stagnant satisfaction was fatal to man, that he went so far as to say: "If the All-powerful Being, holding in one hand Truth, and in the other the search for Truth, said to me, 'Choose,' I would answer Him, 'O All-powerful, keep for Thyself the Truth; but leave to me the search for it, which is the better for me.'" On the other hand, Bossuet said: "Si je concevais une nature purement intelligente, il me semble que je n'y mettrais qu'entendre et aimer la verite, et que cela seul la rendrait heureux."]

[Footnote 137: The late Sir John Patteson, when in his seventieth year, attended an annual ploughing-match dinner at Feniton, Devon, at which he thought it worth his while to combat the notion, still too prevalent, that because a man does not work merely with his bones and muscles, he is therefore not entitled to the appellation of a workingman. "In recollecting similar meetings to the present," he said, "I remember my friend, John Pyle, rather throwing it in my teeth that I had not worked for nothing; but I told him, 'Mr. Pyle, you do not know what you are talking about. We are all workers. The man who ploughs the field and who digs the hedge is a worker; but there are other workers in other stations of life as well. For myself, I can say that I have been a worker ever since I have been a boy.'... Then I told him that the office of judge was by no means a sinecure, for that a judge worked as hard as any man in the country. He has to work at very difficult questions of law, which are brought before him continually, giving him great anxiety; and sometimes the lives of his fellow-creatures are placed in his hands, and are dependent very much upon the manner in which he places the facts before the jury. That is a matter of no little anxiety, I can assure you. Let any man think as he will, there is no man who has been through the ordeal for the length of time that I have, but must feel conscious of the importance and gravity of the duty which is cast upon a judge."]

[Footnote 138: Lord Stanley's Address to the Students of Glasgow University, on his installation as Lord Rector, 1869.]

[Footnote 139: Writing to an abbot at Nuremberg, who had sent him a store of turning-tools, Luther said: "I have made considerable progress in clockmaking, and I am very much delighted at it, for these drunken Saxons need to be constantly reminded of what the real time is; not that they themselves care much about it, for as long as their glasses are kept filled, they trouble themselves very little as to whether clocks, or clockmakers, or the time itself, go right."--Michelet's LUTHER [13Bogue Ed.], p. 200.]

[Footnote 1310: "Life of Perthes," ii. 20.]

[Footnote 1311: Lockhart's 'Life of Scott' [138vo. Ed.], p. 442.]

[Footnote 1312: Southey expresses the opinion in 'The Doctor', that the character of a person may be better known by the letters which other persons write to him than by what he himself writes.]

[Footnote 1313: 'Dissertation on the Science of Method.']

[Footnote 1314: The following passage, from a recent article in the PALL MALL GAZETTE, will commend itself to general aproval:--"There can be no question nowadays, that application to work, absorption in affairs, contact with men, and all the stress which business imposes on us, gives a noble training to the intellect, and splendid opportunity for discipline of character. It is an utterly low view of business which regards it as only a means of getting a living. A man's business is his part of the world's work, his share of the great activities which render society possible. He may like it or dislike it, but it is work, and as such requires application, self-denial, discipline. It is his drill, and he cannot be thorough in his occupation without putting himself into it, checking his fancies, restraining his impulses, and holding himself to the perpetual round of small details--without, in fact, submitting to his drill. But the perpetual call on a man's readiness, sell-control, and vigour which business makes, the constant appeal to the intellect, the stress upon the will, the necessity for rapid and responsible exercise of judgment--all these things constitute a high culture, though not the highest. It is a culture which strengthens and invigorates if it does not refine, which gives force if not polish--the FORTITER IN RE, if not the SUAVITER IN MODO. It makes strong men and ready men, and men of vast capacity for affairs, though it does not necessarily make refined men or gentlemen."]

[Footnote 1315: On the first publication of his 'Despatches,' one of his friends said to him, on reading the records of his Indian campaigns: "It seems to me, Duke, that your chief business in India was to procure rice and bullocks." "And so it was," replied Wellington: "for if I had rice and bullocks, I had men; and if I had men, I knew I could beat the enemy."]

[Footnote 1316: Maria Edgeworth, 'Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth,' ii. 94.]

[Footnote 1317: A friend of Lord Palmerston has communicated to us the following anecdote. Asking him one day when he considered a man to be in the prime of life, his immediate reply was, "Seventy-nine!" "But," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "as I have just entered my eightieth year, perhaps I am myself a little past it."]

[Footnote 1318: 'Reasons of Church Government,' Book II.]

[Footnote 1319: Coleridge's advice to his young friends was much to the same effect. "With the exception of one extraordinary man," he says, "I have never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius, healthy or happy without a profession: i.e., some regular employment which does not depend on the will of the moment, and which can be carried on so far mechanically, that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unalloyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a change and recreation, will suffice to realise in literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks of compulsion.... If facts are required to prove the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent employment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon, among the ancients--of Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Baxter, or [13to refer at once to later and contemporary instances] Darwin and Roscoe, are at once decisive of the question."--BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA, Chap. xi.]

[Footnote 1320: Mr. Ricardo published his celebrated 'Theory of Rent,' at the urgent recommendation of James Mill [13like his son, a chief clerk in the India House], author of the 'History of British India.' When the 'Theory of Rent' was written, Ricardo was so dissatisfied with it that he wished to burn it; but Mr. Mill urged him to publish it, and the book was a great success.]

[Footnote 1321: The late Sir John Lubbock, his father, was also eminent as a mathematician and astronomer.]

[Footnote 1322: Thales, once inveighing in discourse against the pains and care men put themselves to, to become rich, was answered by one in the company that he did like the fox, who found fault with what he could not obtain. Thereupon Thales had a mind, for the jest's sake, to show them the contrary; and having upon this occasion for once made a muster of all his wits, wholly to employ them in the service of profit, he set a traffic on foot, which in one year brought him in so great riches, that the most experienced in that trade could hardly in their whole lives, with all their industry, have raked so much together. --Montaignes ESSAYS, Book I., chap. 24.]

[Footnote 1323: "The understanding," says Mr. Bailey, "that is accustomed to pursue a regular and connected train of ideas, becomes in some measure incapacitated for those quick and versatile movements which are learnt in the commerce of the world, and are indispensable to those who act a part in it. Deep thinking and practical talents require indeed habits of mind so essentially dissimilar, that while a man is striving after the one, he will be unavoidably in danger of losing the other." "Thence," he adds, "do we so often find men, who are 'giants in the closet,' prove but 'children in the world.'"--'Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions,' pp.251-3.]

[Footnote 1324: Mr. Gladstone is as great an enthusiast in literature as Canning was. It is related of him that, while he was waiting in his committee-room at Liverpool for the returns coming in on the day of the South Lancashire polling, he occupied himself in proceeding with the translation of a work which he was then preparing for the press.]

[Footnote 141: James Russell Lowell.]

[Footnote 142: Yet Bacon himself had written, "I would rather believe all the faiths in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind."]

[Footnote 143: Aubrey, in his 'Natural History of Wiltshire,' alluding to Harvey, says: "He told me himself that upon publishing that book he fell in his practice extremely."]

[Footnote 144: Sir Thomas More's first wife, Jane Colt, was originally a young country girl, whom he himself instructed in letters, and moulded to his own tastes and manners. She died young, leaving a son and three daughters, of whom the noble Margaret Roper most resembled More himself. His second wife was Alice Middleton, a widow, some seven years older than More, not beautiful--for he characterized her as "NEC BELLA, NEC PUELLA"--but a shrewd worldly woman, not by any means disposed to sacrifice comfort and good cheer for considerations such as those which so powerfully influenced the mind of her husband.]

[Footnote 145: Before being beheaded, Eliot said, "Death is but a little word; but ''tis a great work to die.'" In his 'Prison Thoughts' before his execution, he wrote: "He that fears not to die, fears nothing.... There is a time to live, and a time to die. A good death is far better and more eligible than an ill life. A wise man lives but so long as his life is worth more than his death. The longer life is not always the better."]

[Footnote 146: Mr. J. S. Mill, in his book 'On Liberty,' describes "the masses," as "collective mediocrity." "The initiation of all wise or noble things," he says, "comes, and must come, from individuals--generally at first from some one individual. The honour and glory of the average man is that he is capable of following that imitation; that he can respond internally to wise and noble things, and be led to them with his eyes open.... In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."--Pp. 120-1.]

[Footnote 147: Mr. Arthur Helps, in one of his thoughtful books, published in 1845, made some observations on this point, which are not less applicable now. He there said: "it is a grievous thing to see literature made a vehicle for encouraging the enmity of class to class. Yet this, unhappily, is not unfrequent now. Some great man summed up the nature of French novels by calling them the Literature of Despair; the kind of writing that I deprecate may be called the Literature of Envy.... Such writers like to throw their influence, as they might say, into the weaker scale. But that is not the proper way of looking at the matter. I think, if they saw the ungenerous nature of their proceedings, that alone would stop them. They should recollect that literature may fawn upon the masses as well as the aristocracy; and in these days the temptation is in the former direction. But what is most grievous in this kind of writing is the mischief it may do to the working-people themselves. If you have their true welfare at heart, you will not only care for their being fed and clothed, but you will be anxious not to encourage unreasonable expectations in them--not to make them ungrateful or greedy-minded. Above all, you will be solicitous to preserve some self-reliance in them. You will be careful not to let them think that their condition can be wholly changed without exertion of their own. You would not desire to have it so changed. Once elevate your ideal of what you wish to happen amongst the labouring population, and you will not easily admit anything in your writings that may injure their moral or their mental character, even if you thought it might hasten some physical benefit for them. That is the way to make your genius most serviceable to mankind. Depend upon it, honest and bold things require to be said to the lower as well as the higher classes; and the former are in these times much less likely to have, such things addressed to them."-Claims of Labour, pp. 253-4.]

[Footnote 148: 'Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson' [14Bohn's Ed.], p. 32.]

[Footnote 149: At a public meeting held at Worcester, in 1867, in recognition of Sir J. Pakington's services as Chairman of Quarter Sessions for a period of twenty-four years, the following remarks, made by Sir John on the occasion, are just and valuable as they are modest:-"I am indebted for whatever measure of success I have attained in my public life, to a combination of moderate abilities, with honesty of intention, firmness of purpose, and steadiness of conduct. If I were to offer advice to any young man anxious to make himself useful in public life, I would sum up the results of my experience in three short rules--rules so simple that any man may understand them, and so easy that any man may act upon them. My first rule would be--leave it to others to judge of what duties you are capable, and for what position you are fitted; but never refuse to give your services in whatever capacity it may be the opinion of others who are competent to judge that you may benefit your neighbours or your country. My second rule is--when you agree to undertake public duties, concentrate every energy and faculty in your possession with the determination to discharge those duties to the best of your ability. Lastly, I would counsel you that, in deciding on the line which you will take in public affairs, you should be guided in your decision by that which, after mature deliberation, you believe to be right, and not by that which, in the passing hour, may happen to be fashionable or popular."]

[Footnote 1410: The following illustration of one of his minute acts of kindness is given in his biography:--"He was one day taking a long country walk near Freshford, when he met a little girl, about five years old, sobbing over a broken bowl; she had dropped and broken it in bringing it back from the field to which she had taken her father's dinner in it, and she said she would be beaten on her return home for having broken it; when, with a sudden gleam of hope, she innocently looked up into his face, and said, 'But yee can mend it, can't ee?'

"My father explained that he could not mend the bowl, but the trouble he could, by the gift of a sixpence to buy another. However, on opening his purse it was empty of silver, and he had to make amends by promising to meet his little friend in the same spot at the same hour next day, and to bring the sixpence with him, bidding her, meanwhile, tell her mother she had seen a gentleman who would bring her the money for the bowl next day. The child, entirely trusting him, went on her way comforted. On his return home he found an invitation awaiting him to dine in Bath the following evening, to meet some one whom he specially wished to see. He hesitated for some little time, trying to calculate the possibility of giving the meeting to his little friend of the broken bowl and of still being in time for the dinner-party in Bath; but finding this could not be, he wrote to decline accepting the invitation on the plea of 'a pre-engagement,' saying to us, 'I cannot disappoint her, she trusted me so implicitly.'"]

[Footnote 1411: Miss Florence Nightingale has related the following incident as having occurred before Sebastopol:--"I remember a sergeant who, on picket, the rest of the picket killed and himself battered about the head, stumbled back to camp, and on his way picked up a wounded man and brought him in on his shoulders to the lines, where he fell down insensible. When, after many hours, he recovered his senses, I believe after trepanning, his first words were to ask after his comrade, 'Is he alive?' 'Comrade, indeed; yes, he's alive--it is the general.' At that moment the general, though badly wounded, appeared at the bedside. 'Oh, general, it's you, is it, I brought in? I'm so glad; I didn't know your honour. But, ----, if I'd known it was you, I'd have saved you all the same.' This is the true soldier's spirit."

In the same letter, Miss Nightingale says: "England, from her grand mercantile and commercial successes, has been called sordid; God knows she is not. The simple courage, the enduring patience, the good sense, the strength to suffer in silence--what nation shows more of this in war than is shown by her commonest soldier? I have seen men dying of dysentery, but scorning to report themselves sick lest they should thereby throw more labour on their comrades, go down to the trenches and make the trenches their deathbed. There is nothing in history to compare with it...."]

"Say what men will, there is something more truly Christian in the man who gives his time, his strength, his life, if need be, for something not himself--whether he call it his Queen, his country, or his colours--than in all the asceticism, the fasts, the humiliations, and confessions which have ever been made: and this spirit of giving one's life, without calling it a sacrifice, is found nowhere so truly as in England."]

[Footnote 1412: Mrs. Grote's 'Life of Ary Scheffer,' pp. 154-5.]

[Footnote 1413: The sufferings of this noble woman, together with those of her unfortunate husband, were touchingly described in a letter afterwards addressed by her to a female friend, which was published some years ago at Haarlem, entitled, 'Gertrude von der Wart; or, Fidelity unto Death.' Mrs. Hemans wrote a poem of great pathos and beauty, commemorating the sad story in her 'Records of Woman.']

[Footnote 151: 'Social Statics,' p. 185.]

[Footnote 152: "In all cases," says Jeremy Bentham, "when the power of the will can be exercised over the thoughts, let those thoughts be directed towards happiness. Look out for the bright, for the brightest side of things, and keep your face constantly turned to it.... A large part of existence is necessarily passed in inaction. By day [15to take an instance from the thousand in constant recurrence], when in attendance on others, and time is lost by being kept waiting; by night when sleep is unwilling to close the eyelids, the economy of happiness recommends the occupation of pleasurable thought. In walking abroad, or in resting at home, the mind cannot be vacant; its thoughts may be useful, useless, or pernicious to happiness. Direct them aright; the habit of happy thought will spring up like any other habit." DEONTOLOGY, ii. 105-6.]

[Footnote 153: The following extract from a letter of M. Boyd, Esq., is given by Earl Stanhope in his 'Miscellanies':--"There was a circumstance told me by the late Mr. Christmas, who for many years held an important official situation in the Bank of England. He was, I believe, in early life a clerk in the Treasury, or one of the government offices, and for some time acted for Mr. Pitt as his confidential clerk, or temporary private secretary. Christmas was one of the most obliging men I ever knew; and, from the, position he occupied, was constantly exposed to interruptions, yet I never saw his temper in the least ruffled. One day I found him more than usually engaged, having a mass of accounts to prepare for one of the law-courts--still the same equanimity, and I could not resist the opportunity of asking the old gentleman the secret. 'Well, Mr. Boyd, you shall know it. Mr. Pitt gave it to me:--NOT TO LOSE MY TEMPER, IF POSSIBLE, AT ANY TIME, AND NEVER DURING THE HOURS OF BUSINESS. My labours here [15Bank of England] commence at nine and end at three; and, acting on the advice of the illustrious statesman, I NEVER LOSE MY TEMPER DURING THOSE HOURS.'"]

[Footnote 154: 'Strafford Papers,' i. 87.]

[Footnote 155: Jared Sparks' 'Life of Washington,' pp. 7, 534.]

[Footnote 156: Brialmont's 'Life of Wellington.']

[Footnote 157: Professor Tyndall, on 'Faraday as a Discoverer,' p. 156.]

[Footnote 158: 'Life of Perthes,' ii. 216.]

[Footnote 159: Lady Elizabeth Carew.]

[Footnote 1510: Francis Horner, in one of his letters, says: "It is among the very sincere and zealous friends of liberty that you will find the most perfect specimens of wrongheadedness; men of a dissenting, provincial cast of virtue--who [15according to one of Sharpe's favourite phrases] WILL drive a wedge the broad end foremost--utter strangers to all moderation in political business."--Francis Horner's LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE [151843], ii. 133.]

[Footnote 1511: Professor Tyndall on 'Faraday as a Discoverer,' pp. 40-1.]

[Footnote 1512: Yet Burke himself; though capable of giving Barry such excellent advice, was by no means immaculate as regarded his own temper. When he lay ill at Beaconsfield, Fox, from whom he had become separated by political differences arising out of the French Revolution, went down to see his old friend. But Burke would not grant him an interview; he positively refused to see him. On his return to town, Fox told his friend Coke the result of his journey; and when Coke lamented Burke's obstinacy, Fox only replied, goodnaturedly: "Ah! never mind, Tom; I always find every Irishman has got a piece of potato in his head." Yet Fox, with his usual generosity, when he heard of Burke's impending death, wrote a most kind and cordial letter to Mrs. Burke, expressive of his grief and sympathy; and when Burke was no more, Fox was the first to propose that he should be interred with public honours in Westminster Abbey--which only Burke's own express wish, that he should be buried at Beaconsfield, prevented being carried out.]

[Footnote 1513: When Curran, the Irish barrister, visited Burns's cabin in 1810, he found it converted into a public house, and the landlord who showed it was drunk. "There," said he, pointing to a corner on one side of the fire, with a most MALAPROPOS laugh-"there is the very spot where Robert Burns was born." "The genius and the fate of the man," says Curran, "were already heavy on my heart; but the drunken laugh of the landlord gave me such a view of the rock on which he had foundered, that I could not stand it, but burst into tears."]

[Footnote 1514: The chaplain of Horsemongerlane Gaol, in his annual report to the Surrey justices, thus states the result of his careful study of the causes of dishonesty: "From my experience of predatory crime, founded upon careful study of the character of a great variety of prisoners, I conclude that habitual dishonesty is to be referred neither to ignorance, nor to drunkenness, nor to poverty, nor to overcrowding in towns, nor to temptation from surrounding wealth--nor, indeed, to any one of the many indirect causes to which it is sometimes referred--but mainly TO A DISPOSITION TO ACQUIRE PROPERTY WITH A LESS DEGREE OF LABOUR THAN ORDINARY INDUSTRY." The italics are the author's.]

[Footnote 1515: S. C. Hall's 'Memories.']

[Footnote 1516: Moore's 'Life of Byron,' 8vo. Ed., p. 182.]

[Footnote 1517: Captain Basil Hall records the following conversation with Scott:-"It occurs to me," I observed, "that people are apt to make too much fuss about the loss of fortune, which is one of the smallest of the great evils of life, and ought to be among the most tolerable."--"Do you call it a small misfortune to be ruined in money-matters?" he asked. "It is not so painful, at all events, as the loss of friends."--"I grant that," he said. "As the loss of character?"--"True again." "As the loss of health?"--"Ay, there you have me," he muttered to himself, in a tone so melancholy that I wished I had not spoken. "What is the loss of fortune to the loss of peace of mind?" I continued. "In short," said he, playfully, "you will make it out that there is no harm in a man's being plunged over-head-and-ears in a debt he cannot remove." "Much depends, I think, on how it was incurred, and what efforts are made to redeem it--at least, if the sufferer be a rightminded man." "I hope it does," he said, cheerfully and firmly.--FRAGMENTS OF VOYAGES AND TRAVELS, 3rd series, pp. 308-9.]

[Footnote 1518: "These battles," he wrote in his Diary, "have been the death of many a man, I think they will be mine."]

[Footnote 1519: Scott's Diary, December 17th, 1827.]

[Footnote 161: From Lovelace's lines to Lucusta [16Lucy Sacheverell], 'Going to the Wars.']

[Footnote 162: Amongst other great men of genius, Ariosto and Michael Angelo devoted to her their service and their muse.]

[Footnote 163: See the Rev. F. W. Farrar's admirable book, entitled 'Seekers after God' [16Sunday Library]. The author there says: "Epictetus was not a Christian. He has only once alluded to the Christians in his works, and then it is under the opprobrious title of 'Galileans,' who practised a kind of insensibility in painful circumstances, and an indifference to worldly interests, which Epictetus unjustly sets down to 'mere habit.' Unhappily, it was not granted to these heathen philosophers in any true sense to know what Christianity was. They thought that it was an attempt to imitate the results of philosophy, without having passed through the necessary discipline. They viewed it with suspicion, they treated it with injustice. And yet in Christianity, and in Christianity alone, they would have found an ideal which would have surpassed their loftiest anticipations."]

[Footnote 164: Sparks' 'Life of Washington,' pp. 141-2.]

[Footnote 165: Wellington, like Washington, had to pay the penalty of his adherence to the cause he thought right, in his loss of "popularity." He was mobbed in the streets of London, and had his windows smashed by the mob, while his wife lay dead in the house. Sir Walter Scott also was hooted and pelted at Hawick by "the people," amidst cries of "Burke Sir Walter!"]

[Footnote 166: Robertson's 'Life and Letters,' ii. 157.]

[Footnote 167: We select the following passages from this remarkable report of Baron Stoffel, as being of more than merely temporary interest:--Who that has lived here [16Berlin] will deny that the Prussians are energetic, patriotic, and teeming with youthful vigour; that they are not corrupted by sensual pleasures, but are manly, have earnest convictions, do not think it beneath them to reverence sincerely what is noble and lofty? What a melancholy contrast does France offer in all this? Having sneered at everything, she has lost the faculty of respecting anything. Virtue, family life, patriotism, honour, religion, are represented to a frivolous generation as fitting subjects of ridicule. The theatres have become schools of shamelessness and obscenity. Drop by drop, poison is instilled into the very core of an ignorant and enervated society, which has neither the insight nor the energy left to amend its institutions, nor--which would be the most necessary step to take--become better informed or more moral. One after the other the fine qualities of the nation are dying out. Where is the generosity, the loyalty, the charm of our ESPRIT, and our former elevation of soul? If this goes on, the time will come when this noble race of France will be known only by its faults. And France has no idea that while she is sinking, more earnest nations are stealing the march upon her, are distancing her on the road to progress, and are preparing for her a secondary position in the world.

"I am afraid that these opinions will not be relished in France. However correct, they differ too much from what is usually said and asserted at home. I should wish some enlightened and unprejudiced Frenchmen to come to Prussia and make this country their study. They would soon discover that they were living in the midst of a strong, earnest, and intelligent nation, entirely destitute, it is true, of noble and delicate feelings, of all fascinating charms, but endowed with every solid virtue, and alike distinguished for untiring industry, order, and economy, as well as for patriotism, a strong sense of duty, and that consciousness of personal dignity which in their case is so happily blended with respect for authority and obedience to the law. They would see a country with firm, sound, and moral institutions, whose upper classes are worthy of their rank, and, by possessing the highest degree of culture, devoting themselves to the service of the State, setting an example of patriotism, and knowing how to preserve the influence legitimately their own. They would find a State with an excellent administration where everything is in its right place, and where the most admirable order prevails in every branch of the social and political system. Prussia may be well compared to a massive structure of lofty proportions and astounding solidity, which, though it has nothing to delight the eye or speak to the heart, cannot but impress us with its grand symmetry, equally observable in its broad foundations as in its strong and sheltering roof.

"And what is France? What is French society in these latter days? A hurly-burly of disorderly elements, all mixed and jumbled together; a country in which everybody claims the right to occupy the highest posts, yet few remember that a man to be employed in a responsible position ought to have a well-balanced mind, ought to be strictly moral, to know something of the world, and possess certain intellectual powers; a country in which the highest offices are frequently held by ignorant and uneducated persons, who either boast some special talent, or whose only claim is social position and some versatility and address. What a baneful and degrading state of things! And how natural that, while it lasts, France should be full of a people without a position, without a calling, who do not know what to do with themselves, but are none the less eager to envy and malign every one who does....

"The French do not possess in any very marked degree the qualities required to render general conscription acceptable, or to turn it to account. Conceited and egotistic as they are, the people would object to an innovation whose invigorating force they are unable to comprehend, and which cannot be carried out without virtues which they do not possess--self-abnegation, conscientious recognition of duty, and a willingness to sacrifice personal interests to the loftier demands of the country. As the character of individuals is only improved by experience, most nations require a chastisement before they set about reorganising their political institutions. So Prussia wanted a Jena to make her the strong and healthy country she is."]

[Footnote 168: Yet even in De Tocqueville's benevolent nature, there was a pervading element of impatience. In the very letter in which the above passage occurs, he says: "Some persons try to be of use to men while they despise them, and others because they love them. In the services rendered by the first, there is always something incomplete, rough, and contemptuous, that inspires neither confidence nor gratitude. I should like to belong to the second class, but often I cannot. I love mankind in general, but I constantly meet with individuals whose baseness revolts me. I struggle daily against a universal contempt for my fellow, creatures."--MEMOIRS AND REMAINS OF DE TOCQUEVILLE, vol. i. p. 813. [Footnote 16Letter to Kergorlay, Nov. 13th, 1833].]

[Footnote 169: Gleig's 'Life of Wellington,' pp. 314, 315.]

[Footnote 1610: 'Life of Arnold,' i. 94.]

[Footnote 1611: See the 'Memoir of George Wilson, M.D., F.R.S.E.' By his sister [Footnote 16Edinburgh, 1860].]

[Footnote 1612: Such cases are not unusual. We personally knew a young lady, a countrywoman of Professor Wilson, afflicted by cancer in the breast, who concealed the disease from her parents lest it should occasion them distress. An operation became necessary; and when the surgeons called for the purpose of performing it, she herself answered the door, received them with a cheerful countenance, led them upstairs to her room, and submitted to the knife; and her parents knew nothing of the operation until it was all over. But the disease had become too deeply seated for recovery, and the noble self-denying girl died, cheerful and uncomplaining to the end.

[Footnote 1613: "One night, about eleven o'clock, Keats returned home in a state of strange physical excitement--it might have appeared, to those who did not know him, one of fierce intoxication. He told his friend he had been outside the stage-coach, had received a severe chill, was a little fevered, but added, 'I don't feel it now.' He was easily persuaded to go to bed, and as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head was on the pillow, he slightly coughed and said, 'That is blood from my mouth; bring me the candle; let me see this blood' He gazed steadfastly for some moments at the ruddy stain, and then, looking in his friend's face with an expression of sudden calmness never to be forgotten, said, 'I know the colour of that blood--it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die!'"--Houghton's LIFE OF KEATS, Ed. 1867, p. 289.

In the case of George Wilson, the bleeding was in the first instance from the stomach, though he afterwards suffered from lung haemorrhage like Keats. Wilson afterwards, speaking of the Lives of Lamb and Keats, which had just appeared, said he had been reading them with great sadness. "There is," said he, "something in the noble brotherly love of Charles to brighten, and hallow, and relieve that sadness; but Keats's deathbed is the blackness of midnight, unmitigated by one ray of light!"]

[Footnote 1614: On the doctors, who attended him in his first attack, mistaking the haemorrhage from the stomach for haemorrhage from the lungs, he wrote: "It would have been but poor consolation to have had as an epitaph:--

"Here lies George Wilson, Overtaken by Nemesis; He died not of Haemoptysis, But of Haematemesis."]

[Footnote 1615: 'Memoir,' p. 427.]

[Footnote 171: Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living.']

[Footnote 172: 'Michelet's 'Life of Luther,' pp. 411-12.]

[Footnote 173: Sir John Kaye's 'Lives of Indian Officers.']

[Footnote 174: 'Deontology,' pp. 130-1, 144.]

[Footnote 175: 'Letters and Essays,' p. 67.]

[Footnote 176: 'Beauties of St. Francis de Sales.']

[Footnote 177: Ibid.]

[Footnote 178: 'Life of Perthes,' ii. 449.]

[Footnote 179: Moore's 'Life of Byron,' 8vo. Ed., p. 483.]

[Footnote 181: Locke thought it of greater importance that an educator of youth should be well-bred and well-tempered, than that he should be either a thorough classicist or man of science. Writing to Lord Peterborough on his son's education, Locke said: "Your Lordship would have your son's tutor a thorough scholar, and I think it not much matter whether he be any scholar or no: if he but understand Latin well, and have a general scheme of the sciences, I think that enough. But I would have him WELL-BRED and WELL-TEMPERED."]

[Footnote 182: Mrs. Hutchinson's 'Memoir of the Life of Lieut.-Colonel Hutchinson,' p. 32.]

[Footnote 183: 'Letters and Essays,' p. 59.]

[Footnote 184: 'Lettres d'un Voyageur.']

[Footnote 185: Sir Henry Taylor's 'Statesman,' p. 59.]

[Footnote 186: Introduction to the 'Principal Speeches and Addresses of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort,' 1862.]

[Footnote 187:

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beween my outcast state, And troubled deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate; WISHING ME LIKE TO ONE MORE RICH IN HOPE, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy, contented least; Yet in these thoughts, MYSELF ALMOST DESPISING, Haply I think on thee," &c.--SONNET XXIX.

"So I, MADE LAME by sorrow's dearest spite," &c.--SONNET XXXVI]

[Footnote 188: "And strength, by LIMPING sway disabled," &c.--SONNET LXVI.

"Speak of MY LAMENESS, and I straight will halt."--SONNET LXXXIX.]

[Footnote 189:

"Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And MADE MYSELF A MOTLEY TO THE VIEW, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new," &c.--SONNET CX.

"Oh, for my sake do you with fortune chide! The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, THAN PUBLIC MEANS, WHICH PUBLIC MANNERS BREED; Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued, To what it works in like the dyer's hand," &c.--SONNET CXI.]

[Footnote 1810:

"In our two loves there is but one respect, Though in our loves a separable spite, Which though it alter not loves sole effect; Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight, I may not evermore acknowledge thee, Lest MY BEWAILED GUILT SHOULD DO THEE SHAME."--SONNET XXXVI.]

[Footnote 1811: It is related of Garrick, that when subpoenaed on Baretti's trial, and required to give his evidence before the court--though he had been accustomed for thirty years to act with the greatest self-possession in the presence of thousands--he became so perplexed and confused, that he was actually sent from the witness-box by the judge, as a man from whom no evidence could be obtained.]

[Footnote 1812: Mrs. Mathews' 'Life and Correspondence of Charles Mathews,' [18Ed. 1860: p. 232.]

[Footnote 1813: Archbishop Whately's 'Commonplace Book.']

[Footnote 1814: Emerson is said to have had Nathaniel Hawthorne in his mind when writing the following passage in his 'Society and Solitude:'--"The most agreeable compliment you could pay him was, to imply that you had not observed him in a house or a street where you had met him. Whilst he suffered at being seen where he was, he consoled himself with the delicious thought of the inconceivable number of places where he was not. All he wished of his tailor was to provide that sober mean of colour and cut which would never detain the eye for a moment.... He had a remorse, running to despair, of his social GAUCHERIES, and walked miles and miles to get the twitchings out of his face, and the starts and shrugs out of his arms and shoulders. 'God may forgive sins,' he said, 'but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.'"]

[Footnote 1815: In a series of clever articles in the REVUE DES DEUX MONDES, entitled, 'Six mille Lieues a toute Vapeur,' giving a description of his travels in North America, Maurice Sand keenly observed the comparatively anti-social proclivities of the American compared with the Frenchman. The one, he says, is inspired by the spirit of individuality, the other by the spirit of society. In America he sees the individual absorbing society; as in France he sees society absorbing the individual. "Ce peuple Anglo-Saxon," he says, "qui trouvait devant lui la terre, l'instrument de travail, sinon inepuisable, du mons inepuise, s'est mis a l'exploiter sous l'inspiration de l'egoisme; et nous autres Francais, nous n'avons rien su en faire, parceque NOUS NE POUVONS RIEN DANS L'ISOLEMENT.... L'Americain supporte la solitude avec un stoicisme admirable, mais effrayant; il ne l'aime pas, il ne songe qu'a la detruire.... Le Francais est tout autre. Il aime son parent, son ami, son compagnon, et jusqu'a son voisin d'omnibus ou de theatre, si sa figure lui est sympathetique. Pourquoi? Parce qu'il le regarde et cherche son ame, parce qu'il vit dans son semblable autant qu'en lui-meme. Quand il est longtemps seul, il deperit, et quand il est toujours seul, it meurt."]

All this is perfectly true, and it explains why the comparatively unsociable Germans, English, and Americans, are spreading over the earth, while the intensely sociable Frenchmen, unable to enjoy life without each other's society, prefer to stay at home, and France fails to extend itself beyond France.]

[Footnote 1816: The Irish have, in many respects, the same strong social instincts as the French. In the United States they cluster naturally in the towns, where they have their "Irish Quarters," as in England. They are even more Irish there than at home, and can no more forget that they are Irishmen than the French can that they are Frenchmen. "I deliberately assert," says Mr. Maguire, in his recent work on 'The Irish in America,' "that it is not within the power of language to describe adequately, much less to exaggerate, the evils consequent on the unhappy tendency of the Irish to congregate in the large towns of America." It is this intense socialism of the Irish that keeps them in a comparatively hand-to-mouth condition in all the States of the Union.]

[Footnote 1817: 'The Statesman,' p. 35.]

[Footnote 1818: Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his 'First Impressions of France and Italy,' says his opinion of the uncleanly character of the modern Romans is so unfavourable that he hardly knows how to express it "But the fact is that through the Forum, and everywhere out of the commonest foot-track and roadway, you must look well to your steps.... Perhaps there is something in the minds of the people of these countries that enables them to dissever small ugliness from great sublimity and beauty. They spit upon the glorious pavement of St. Peter's, and wherever else they like; they place paltry-looking wooden confessionals beneath its sublime arches, and ornament them with cheap little coloured prints of the Crucifixion; they hang tin hearts, and other tinsel and trumpery, at the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels that are encrusted with gems, or marbles almost as precious; they put pasteboard statues of saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon;--in short, they let the sublime and the ridiculous come close together, and are not in the least troubled by the proximity."]

[Footnote 1819: Edwin Chadwick's 'Address to the Economic Science and Statistic Section,' British Association [18Meeting, 1862].]

[Footnote 191: 'Kaye's 'Lives of Indian Officers.']

[Footnote 192: Emerson, in his 'Society and Solitude,' says "In contemporaries, it is not so easy to distinguish between notoriety and fame. Be sure, then, to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press or the gossip of the hour.... The three practical rules I have to offer are these:--1. Never read a book that is not a year old; 2. Never read any but famed books; 3. Never read any but what you like." Lord Lytton's maxim is: "In science, read by preference the newest books; in literature, the oldest."]

[Footnote 193: A friend of Sir Walter Scott, who had the same habit, and prided himself on his powers of conversation, one day tried to "draw out" a fellow-passenger who sat beside him on the outside of a coach, but with indifferent success. At length the conversationalist descended to expostulation. "I have talked to you, my friend," said he, "on all the ordinary subjects--literature, farming, merchandise, gaming, game-laws, horse-races, suits at law, politics, and swindling, and blasphemy, and philosophy: is there any one subject that you will favour me by opening upon?" The wight writhed his countenance into a grin: "Sir," said he, "can you say anything clever about BEND-LEATHER?" As might be expected, the conversationalist was completely nonplussed.]

[Footnote 194: Coleridge, in his 'Lay Sermon,' points out, as a fact of history, how large a part of our present knowledge and civilization is owing, directly or indirectly, to the Bible; that the Bible has been the main lever by which the moral and intellectual character of Europe has been raised to its present comparative height; and he specifies the marked and prominent difference of this book from the works which it is the fashion to quote as guides and authorities in morals, politics, and history. "In the Bible," he says, "every agent appears and acts as a self-substituting individual: each has a life of its own, and yet all are in life. The elements of necessity and freewill are reconciled in the higher power of an omnipresent Providence, that predestinates the whole in the moral freedom of the integral parts. Of this the Bible never suffers us to lose sight. The root is never detached from the ground, it is God everywhere; and all creatures conform to His decrees--the righteous by performance of the law, the disobedient by the sufferance of the penalty."]

[Footnote 195: Montaigne's Essay [19Book I. chap. xxv.]--'Of the Education of Children.']

[Footnote 196: "Tant il est vrai," says Voltaire, "que les hommes, qui sont audessus des autres par les talents, s'en RAPPROCHENT PRESQUE TOUJOURS PAR LES FAIBLESSES; car pourquoi les talents nous mettraient-ils audessous de l'humanite."--VIE DE MOLIERE.]

[Footnote 197: 'Life,' 8vo Ed., p. 102.]

[Footnote 198: 'Autobiography of Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart.,' vol. i. p. 91.]

[Footnote 199: It was wanting in Plutarch, in Southey [19'Life of Nelson'], and in Forster [19'Life of Goldsmith']; yet it must be acknowledged that personal knowledge gives the principal charm to Tacitus's 'Agricola,' Roper's 'Life of More,' Johnson's 'Lives of Savage and Pope,' Boswell's 'Johnson,' Lockhart's 'Scott,' Carlyle's 'Sterling,' and Moore's 'Byron,']

[Footnote 1910: The 'Dialogus Novitiorum de Contemptu Mundi.']

[Footnote 1911: The Life of Sir Charles Bell, one of our greatest physiologists, was left to be written by Amedee Pichot, a Frenchman; and though Sir Charles Bell's letters to his brother have since been published, his Life still remains to be written. It may also be added that the best Life of Goethe has been written by an Englishman, and the best Life of Frederick the Great by a Scotchman.]

[Footnote 1912: It is not a little remarkable that the pious Schleiermacher should have concurred in opinion with Goethe as to the merits of Spinoza, though he was a man excommunicated by the Jews, to whom he belonged, and denounced by the Christians as a man little better than an atheist. "The Great Spirit of the world," says Schleiermacher, in his REDE UBER DIE RELIGION, "penetrated the holy but repudiated Spinoza; the Infinite was his beginning and his end; the universe his only and eternal love. He was filled with religion and religious feeling: and therefore is it that he stands alone unapproachable, the master in his art, but elevated above the profane world, without adherents, and without even citizenship."]

Cousin also says of Spinoza:--"The author whom this pretended atheist most resembles is the unknown author of 'The Imitation of Jesus Christ.'"]

[Footnote 1913: Preface to Southeys 'Life of Wesley' [191864].]

[Footnote 1914: Napoleon also read Milton carefully, and it has been related of him by Sir Colin Campbell, who resided with Napoleon at Elba, that when speaking of the Battle of Austerlitz, he said that a particular disposition of his artillery, which, in its results, had a decisive effect in winning the battle, was suggested to his mind by the recollection of four lines in Milton. The lines occur in the sixth book, and are descriptive of Satan's artifice during the war with Heaven.

"In hollow cube Training his devilish engin'ry, impal'd On every side WITH SHADOWING SQUADRONS DEEP TO HIDE THE FRAUD."

"The indubitable fact," says Mr. Edwards, in his book 'On Libraries,' "that these lines have a certain appositeness to an important manoeuvre at Austerlitz, gives an independent interest to the story; but it is highly imaginative to ascribe the victory to that manoeuvre. And for the other preliminaries of the tale, it is unfortunate that Napoleon had learned a good deal about war long before he had learned anything about Milton."]

[Footnote 1915: 'Biographia Literaria,' chap. i.]

[Footnote 1916: Sir John Bowring's 'Memoirs of Bentham,' p. 10.]

[Footnote 1917: Notwithstanding recent censures of classical studies as a useless waste of time, there can be no doubt that they give the highest finish to intellectual culture. The ancient classics contain the most consummate models of literary art; and the greatest writers have been their most diligent students. Classical culture was the instrument with which Erasmus and the Reformers purified Europe. It distinguished the great patriots of the seventeenth century; and it has ever since characterised our greatest statesmen. "I know not how it is," says an English writer, "but their commerce with the ancients appears to me to produce, in those who constantly practise it, a steadying and composing effect upon their judgment, not of literary works only, but of men and events in general. They are like persons who have had a weighty and impressive experience; they are more truly than others under the empire of facts, and more independent of the language current among those with whom they live."]

[Footnote 1918: Hazlitt's TABLE TALK: 'On Thought and Action.']

[Footnote 201: Mungo Park declared that he was more affected by this incident than by any other that befel him in the course of his travels. As he lay down to sleep on the mat spread for him on the floor of the hut, his benefactress called to the female part of the family to resume their task of spinning cotton, in which they continued employed far into the night. "They lightened their labour with songs," says the traveller, "one of which was composed extempore, for I was myself the subject of it; it was sung by one of the young women, the rest joining in a chorus. The air was sweet and plaintive, and the words, literally translated, were these: 'The winds roared, and the rains fell. The poor white man, faint and weary, came and sat under our tree. He has no mother to bring him milk, no wife to grind his corn.' Chorus--'Let us pity the white man, no mother has he!' Trifling as this recital may appear, to a person in my situation the circumstance was affecting in the highest degree. I was so oppressed by such unexpected kindness, that sleep fled before my eyes."]

[Footnote 202: 'Transformation, or Monte Beni.']

[Footnote 203: 'Portraits Contemporains,' iii. 519.]

[Footnote 204: Mr. Arthur Helps, in one of his Essays, has wisely said: "You observe a man becoming day by day richer, or advancing in station, or increasing in professional reputation, and you set him down as a successful man in life. But if his home is an ill-regulated one, where no links of affection extend throughout the family--whose former domestics [20and he has had more of them than he can well remember] look back upon their sojourn with him as one unblessed by kind words or deeds--I contend that that man has not been successful. Whatever good fortune he may have in the world, it is to be remembered that he has always left one important fortress untaken behind him. That man's life does not surely read well whose benevolence has found no central home. It may have sent forth rays in various directions, but there should have been a warm focus of love--that home-nest which is formed round a good mans heart."--CLAIMS OF LABOUR.]

[Footnote 205: "The red heart sends all its instincts up to the white brain, to be analysed, chilled, blanched, and so become pure reason--which is just exactly what we do NOT want of women as women. The current should run the other way. The nice, calm, cold thought, which, in women, shapes itself so rapidly that they hardly know it as thought, should always travel to the lips VIA the heart. It does so in those women whom all love and admire.... The brain-women never interest us like the heart-women; white roses please less than red."--THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE, by Oliver Wendell Holmes.]

[Footnote 206: 'The War and General Culture,' 1871.]

[Footnote 207: "Depend upon it, men set more value on the cultivated minds than on the accomplishments of women, which they are rarely able to appreciate. It is a common error, but it is an error, that literature unfits women for the everyday business of life. It is not so with men. You see those of the most cultivated minds constantly devoting their time and attention to the most homely objects. Literature gives women a real and proper weight in society, but then they must use it with discretion."--THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.]

[Footnote 208: 'The Statesman,' pp. 73-75.]

[Footnote 209: Fuller, the Church historian, with his usual homely mother-wit, speaking of the choice of a wife, said briefly, "Take the daughter of a good mother."]

[Footnote 2010: She was an Englishwoman--a Miss Motley. It maybe mentioned that amongst other distinguished Frenchmen who have married English wives, were Sismondi, Alfred de Vigny, and Lamartine.]

[Footnote 2011: "Plus je roule dans ce monde, et plus je suis amene a penser qu'il n'y a que le bonheur domestique qui signifie quelque chose."--OEUVRES ET CORRESPONDENCE.]

[Footnote 2012: De Tocqueville's 'Memoir and Remains,' vol. i. p. 408.]

[Footnote 2013: De Tocqueville's 'Memoir and Remains,' vol. ii. p. 48.]

[Footnote 2014: Colonel Hutchinson was an uncompromising republican, thoroughly brave, highminded, and pious. At the Restoration, he was discharged from Parliament, and from all offices of state for ever. He retired to his estate at Owthorp, near Nottingham, but was shortly after arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. From thence he was removed to Sandown Castle, near Deal, where he lay for eleven months, and died on September 11th, 1664. The wife petitioned for leave to share his prison, but was refused. When he felt himself dying, knowing the deep sorrow which his death would occasion to his wife, he left this message, which was conveyed to her: "Let her, as she is above other women, show herself on this occasion a good Christian, and above the pitch of ordinary women." Hence the wife's allusion to her husband's "command" in the above passage.]

[Footnote 2015: Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson to her children concerning their father: 'Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson' [20Bohn's Ed.], pp. 29-30.]

[Footnote 2016: On the Declaration of American Independence, the first John Adams, afterwards President of the United States, bought a copy of the 'Life and Letters of Lady Russell,' and presented it to his wife, "with an express intent and desire" [20as stated by himself], "that she should consider it a mirror in which to contemplate herself; for, at that time, I thought it extremely probable, from the daring and dangerous career I was determined to run, that she would one day find herself in the situation of Lady Russell, her husband without a head:" Speaking of his wife in connection with the fact, Mr. Adams added: "Like Lady Russell, she never, by word or look, discouraged me from running all hazards for the salvation of my country's liberties. She was willing to share with me, and that her children should share with us both, in all the dangerous consequences we had to hazard."]

[Footnote 2017: 'Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romily,' vol. i. p. 41.]

[Footnote 2018: It is a singular circumstance that in the parish church of St. Bride, Fleet Street, there is a tablet on the wall with an inscription to the memory of Isaac Romilly, F.R.S., who died in 1759, of a broken heart, seven days after the decease of a beloved wife--CHAMBERS' BOOK OF DAYS, vol. ii. p. 539.]

[Footnote 2019: Mr. Frank Buckland says "During the long period that Dr. Buckland was engaged in writing the book which I now have the honour of editing, my mother sat up night after night, for weeks and months consecutively, writing to my father's dictation; and this often till the sun's rays, shining through the shutters at early morn, warned the husband to cease from thinking, and the wife to rest her weary hand. Not only with her pen did she render material assistance, but her natural talent in the use of her pencil enabled her to give accurate illustrations and finished drawings, many of which are perpetuated in Dr. Buckland's works. She was also particularly clever and neat in mending broken fossils; and there are many specimens in the Oxford Museum, now exhibiting their natural forms and beauty, which were restored by her perseverance to shape from a mass of broken and almost comminuted fragments."]

[Footnote 2020: Veitch's 'Memoirs of Sir William Hamilton.']

[Footnote 2021: The following extract from Mr. Veitch's biography will give one an idea of the extraordinary labours of Lady Hamilton, to whose unfailing devotion to the service of her husband the world of intellect has been so much indebted: "The number of pages in her handwriting," says Mr. Veitch,--"filled with abstruse metaphysical matter, original and quoted, bristling with proportional and syllogistic formulae--that are still preserved, is perfectly marvellous. Everything that was sent to the press, and all the courses of lectures, were written by her, either to dictation, or from a copy. This work she did in the truest spirit of love and devotion. She had a power, moreover, of keeping her husband up to what he had to do. She contended wisely against a sort of energetic indolence which characterised him, and which, while he was always labouring, made him apt to put aside the task actually before him--sometimes diverted by subjects of inquiry suggested in the course of study on the matter in hand, sometimes discouraged by the difficulty of reducing to order the immense mass of materials he had accumulated in connection with it. Then her resolution and cheerful disposition sustained and refreshed him, and never more so than when, during the last twelve years of his life, his bodily strength was broken, and his spirit, though languid, yet ceased not from mental toil. The truth is, that Sir William's marriage, his comparatively limited circumstances, and the character of his wife, supplied to a nature that would have been contented to spend its mighty energies in work that brought no reward but in the doing of it, and that might never have been made publicly known or available, the practical force and impulse which enabled him to accomplish what he actually did in literature and philosophy. It was this influence, without doubt, which saved him from utter absorption in his world of rare, noble, and elevated, but ever-increasingly unattainable ideas. But for it, the serene sea of abstract thought might have held him becalmed for life; and in the absence of all utterance of definite knowledge of his conclusions, the world might have been left to an ignorant and mysterious wonder about the unprofitable scholar."]

[Footnote 211: 'Calcutta Review,' article on 'Romance and Reality of Indian Life.']

[Footnote 212: Joseph Lancaster was only twenty years of age when [21in 1798: he opened his first school in a spare room in his father's house, which was soon filled with the destitute children of the neighbourhood. The room was shortly found too small for the numbers seeking admission, and one place after another was hired, until at length Lancaster had a special building erected, capable of accommodating a thousand pupils; outside of which was placed the following notice:--"All that will, may send their children here, and have them educated freely; and those that do not wish to have education for nothing, may pay for it if they please." Thus Joseph Lancaster was the precursor of our present system of National Education.]

[Footnote 213: A great musician once said of a promising but passionless cantatrice--"She sings well, but she wants something, and in that something everything. If I were single, I would court her; I would marry her; I would maltreat her; I would break her heart; and in six months she would be the greatest singer in Europe!"--BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.]

[Footnote 214: Prescot's 'Essays,' art. Cervantes.]

[Footnote 215: A cavalier, named Ruy de Camera, having called upon Camoens to furnish a poetical version of the seven penitential psalms, the poet, raising his head from his miserable pallet, and pointing to his faithful slave, exclaimed: "Alas! when I was a poet, I was young, and happy, and blest with the love of ladies; but now, I am a forlorn deserted wretch! See--there stands my poor Antonio, vainly supplicating FOURPENCE to purchase a little coals. I have not them to give him!" The cavalier, Sousa quaintly relates, in his 'Life of Camoens,' closed his heart and his purse, and quitted the room. Such were the grandees of Portugal!--Lord Strangford's REMARKS ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF CAMOENS, 1824.]

[Footnote 216: See chapter v. p. 125.]

[Footnote 217: A Quaker called on Bunyan one day with "a message from the Lord," saying he had been to half the gaols of England, and was glad at last to have found him. To which Bunyan replied: "If the Lord sent thee, you would not have needed to take so much trouble to find me out, for He knew that I have been in Bedford Gaol these seven years past."]

[Footnote 218: Prynne, besides standing in the pillory and having his ears cut off, was imprisoned by turns in the Tower, Mont Orgueil [21Jersey], Dunster Castle, Taunton Castle, and Pendennis Castle. He after-wards pleaded zealously for the Restoration, and was made Keeper of the Records by Charles II. It has been computed that Prynne wrote, compiled, and printed about eight quarto pages for every working-day of his life, from his reaching man's estate to the day of his death. Though his books were for the most part appropriated by the trunkmakers, they now command almost fabulous prices, chiefly because of their rarity.]

[Footnote 219: He also projected his 'Review' in prison--the first periodical of the kind, which pointed the way to the host of 'Tatlers,' 'Guardians,' and 'Spectators,' which followed it. The 'Review' consisted of 102 numbers, forming nine quarto volumes, all of which were written by De Foe himself, while engaged in other and various labours.]

[Footnote 2110: A passage in the Earl of Carlisles Lecture on Pope--'Heaven was made for those who have failed in this world'--struck me very forcibly several years ago when I read it in a newspaper, and became a rich vein of thought, in which I often quarried, especially when the sentence was interpreted by the Cross, which was failure apparently."--LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERTSON [21of Brighton], ii. 94.]

[Footnote 2111:

"Not all who seem to fail, have failed indeed; Not all who fail have therefore worked in vain: For all our acts to many issues lead; And out of earnest purpose, pure and plain, Enforced by honest toil of hand or brain, The Lord will fashion, in His own good time, [21Be this the labourer's proudly-humble creed,] Such ends as, to His wisdom, fitliest chime With His vast love's eternal harmonies. There is no failure for the good and wise: What though thy seed should fall by the wayside And the birds snatch it;--yet the birds are fed; Or they may bear it far across the tide, To give rich harvests after thou art dead." POLITICS FOR THE PEOPLE, 1848.]

[Footnote 2112: "What is it," says Mr. Helps, "that promotes the most and the deepest thought in the human race? It is not learning; it is not the conduct of business; it is not even the impulse of the affections. It is suffering; and that, perhaps, is the reason why there is so much suffering in the world. The angel who went down to trouble the waters and to make them healing, was not, perhaps, entrusted with so great a boon as the angel who benevolently inflicted upon the sufferers the disease from which they suffered."--BREVIA.]

[Footnote 2113: These lines were written by Deckar, in a spirit of boldness equal to its piety. Hazlitt has or said of them, that they "ought to embalm his memory to every one who has a sense either of religion, or philosophy, or humanity, or true genius."]

[Footnote 2114: Reboul, originally a baker of Nismes, was the author of many beautiful poems--amongst others, of the exquisite piece known in this country by its English translation, entitled 'The Angel and the Child.']

[Footnote 2115: 'Cornhill Magazine,' vol. xvi. p. 322.]

[Footnote 2116: 'Holy Living and Dying,' ch. ii. sect. 6.]

[Footnote 2117: Ibid., ch. iii. sect. 6.]

[Footnote 2118: Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' vol. x. p. 40.]