[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.]

THE END