SALVATOR ROSA.

THE
TRIUMPHS OF PERSEVERANCE
AND
ENTERPRISE.

MICHAEL ANGELO.

LONDON:
DALTON AND CO., HOLBORN HILL.

THE

TRIUMPHS OF PERSEVERANCE

AND

ENTERPRISE:

Recorded as Examples for the Young.

“Lives of great men all remind us

We may make our lives sublime;

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.”—Longfellow.

LONDON
DARTON AND CO., HOLBORN HILL.

LONDON:
WILLIAM STEVENS, PRINTER, 37, BELL YARD,
TEMPLE BAR.

PREFACE.

These records of the Triumphs of Perseverance and Enterprise have been written with the view to inspire the youthful reader with a glow of emulation, and to induce him to toil and to advance in the peaceful achievements of science and benevolence, remembering the adage, “Whatever man has done, man may do.”

CONTENTS
TO
THE TRIUMPHS OF PERSEVERANCE.

CONTENTS
TO
THE TRIUMPHS OF ENTERPRISE.

THE

TRIUMPHS OF PERSEVERANCE.

CHAPTER I.
LINGUISTS.

SIR WILLIAM JONES.—DR. SAMUEL LEE.

“If that boy were left naked and friendless on Salisbury Plain, he would find the road to fame and riches!” the tutor of Sir William Jones was accustomed to say of his illustrious pupil. His observation of the great quality of perseverance, evinced in every act of study prescribed to his scholar, doubtless impelled the teacher to utter that remarkable affirmation. A discernment of high genius in young Jones, with but little of the great quality we have named, would have led Dr. Thackeray to modify his remark. It would have been couched in some such form as this: “If that boy had as much perseverance as genius, he would find the road to fame and riches, even if he were left naked and friendless on Salisbury Plain.” But, had the instructor regarded his pupil as one endowed with the most brilliant powers of mind, yet entirely destitute of perseverance, he would have pronounced a judgment very widely different from the first. “Alas, for this boy!” he might have said, “how will these shining qualities, fitfully bursting forth in his wayward course through life, displaying their lustre in a thousand beginnings which will lead to nothing, leave him to be regarded as an object of derision where he might have won general admiration and esteem, and cast him for subsistence on the bounty or pity of others, when he might have been a noble example of self-dependence!”

Let the reflection we would awaken by these introductory sentences be of a healthy character. It is not meant that celebrity or wealth are the most desirable rewards of a well-spent life; but that the most resplendent natural powers, unless combined with application and industry, fail to bring happiness to the heart and mind of the possessor, or to render him useful to his brother men. It is sought to impress deeply and enduringly on the youthful understanding, the irrefragable truth that, while genius is a gift which none can create for himself, and may be uselessly possessed, perseverance has enabled many, who were born with only ordinary faculties of imagination, judgment, and memory, to attain a first-rate position in literature or science, or in the direction of human affairs, and to leave a perpetual name in the list of the world’s benefactors.

Has the youthful reader formed a purpose for life? We ask not whether he has conceived a vulgar passion for fame or riches, but earnestly exhort him to self-enquiry, whether he be wasting existence in what is termed amusement, or be daily devoting the moments at his command to a diligent preparation for usefulness? Whether he has hitherto viewed life as a journey to be trod without aims and ends, or a grand field of enterprise in which it is both his duty and interest to become an industrious and honourable worker? Has he found, by personal experience, even in the outset of life, that time spent in purposeless inactivity or frivolity produces no results on which the mind can dwell with satisfaction? And has he learned, from the testimony of others, that years so misspent bring only a feeling of self-accusation, which increases in bitterness as the loiterer becomes older, and the possibility of “redeeming the time” becomes more doubtful? Did he ever reflect that indolence never yet led to real distinction; that sloth never yet opened the path to independence; that trifling never yet enabled a man to make useful or solid acquirements?

If such reflections have already found a place in the reader’s mind, and created in him some degree of yearning to make his life not only a monument of independence, but of usefulness, we invite him to a rapid review of the lives of men among whom he will not only find the highest exemplars of perseverance, but some whose peculiar difficulties may resemble his own, and whose triumphs may encourage him to pursue a course of similar excellence. Purposing to awaken the spirit of exertion by the presentation of striking examples rather than the rehearsal of formal precepts, we proceed to open our condensed chronicle with a notice of the universal scholar just named, and whose world-famed career has entitled him to a first place in the records of the “Triumphs of Perseverance.”

SIR WILLIAM JONES,

Happily, had early admonitions of perseverance from his mother, in whose widowed care he was left at three years old; and who, “to his incessant importunities for information, which she watchfully stimulated,” says his biographer, Lord Teignmouth, “perpetually answered, ‘Read, and you will know,’” His earnest mind cleaved to the injunction. He could read any English book rapidly at four years of age; and, though his right eye was injured by an accident at five, and the sight of it ever remained imperfect, his determination to learn triumphed over that impediment. Again, the commencement of life seemed discouraging: he had been placed at Harrow School, at the age of seven, but had his thigh-bone broken at nine, and was compelled to be from school for twelve months. Such was his progress, in spite of these untoward circumstances, and although characterised, let it be especially observed, as a boy “remarkable for diligence and application rather than superiority of talent,” that he was removed into the upper school, at Harrow, in his twelfth year. At this period he is found writing out the entire play of the “Tempest,” from memory, his companions intending to perform it, and not having a copy in their possession. Virgil’s Pastorals and Ovid’s Epistles are, at the same age, turned into melodious English verse by him; he has learned the Greek characters for his amusement, and now applies himself to the language in earnest; his mother has taught him drawing, during the vacations; and he next composes a drama, on the classic story of “Meleager,” which is acted in the school. During the next two years he “wrote out the exercises of many of the boys in the upper classes, and they were glad to become his pupils;” meanwhile, in the holidays, he learned French and arithmetic.

But this early and unremitting tension of the mind, did it not leave the heart uncultured? Were not pride and overweening growing within, and did not sourness of temper display itself, and repel some whom the young scholar’s acquirements might otherwise have attached to him? Ah! youthful reader, thou wilt never find any so proud as the ignorant; and, if thou wouldst not have thy heart become a garden of rank and pestilential weeds, leave not the key thereof in the soft hand of Indolence, but entrust it to the sinewed grasp of Industry. What testimony give his early companions to the temper and hearing of young Jones? The celebrated Dr. Parr—in his own person also a high exemplar of the virtue we are inculcating—was his playmate in boyhood, remained his ardent friend in manhood, and never spoke of their early attachment without deep feeling. Dr. Bennet, afterwards Bishop of Cloyne, thus speaks of Sir William Jones: “I knew him from the early age of eight or nine, and he was always an uncommon boy. I loved him and revered him: and, though one or two years older than he was, was always instructed by him.” ... “In a word, I can only say of this amiable and wonderful man, that he had more virtues and less faults than I ever yet saw in any human being; and that the goodness of his head, admirable as it was, was exceeded by that of his heart.”

With the boys, generally, he was a favourite. Dr. Sumner, who succeeded Dr. Thackeray, used to say Jones knew more Greek than himself. He soon learned the Arabic characters, and was already able to read Hebrew. A mere stripling, yet he would devote whole nights to study, taking coffee or tea as an antidote to drowsiness. Strangers were accustomed to enquire for him, at the school, under the title of “the great scholar.” But Dr. Sumner, during the last months spent at Harrow, was obliged to interdict the juvenile “great scholar’s” application, in consequence of a returning weakness in his injured eye: yet he continued to compose, and dictated to younger students; alternately practising the games of Philidor and acquiring a knowledge of chess. He had added a knowledge of botany and fossils to the acquirements already mentioned, and had learned Italian during his last vacation.

Let us mark, again, whether all this ardent intellectual activity cramps the right growth of the affections, and warps the heart’s sense of filial duty. “His mother,” says his excellent biographer, “allowed him unlimited credit on her purse; but of this indulgence, as he knew her finances were restricted, he availed himself no further than to purchase such books as were essential to his improvement.” And when he is removed, at the age of seventeen, to University College, Oxford, he is not anxious to enter the world without restraint; his mother goes to reside at Oxford, “at her son’s request.” And how he toiled, and wished for college honours, not for vain distinction, not for love of gain, but from the healthy growth of that filial affection, which had strengthened with his judgment and power of reflection! He “anxiously wished for a fellowship,” says Lord Teignmouth, “to enable him to draw less frequently upon his mother, knowing the contracted nature of her income.” His heart was soon to be gratified.

He commenced Arabic zealously, soon after reaching the University; he perused, with assiduity, all the Greek poets and historians of note; he read the entire works of Plato and Lucian, with commentaries, constantly ready, with a pen in his hand, to make any remark that he judged worth preserving. What a contrast to the “reader for amusement,” who will leave the priceless treasure of a book ungathered, because it is hid in what he calls a “lumbering folio,” and it wearies his hands, or it is inconvenient to read it while lying along at ease on the sofa! Yet this “great scholar” was no mere musty book-worm; he did not claim kindred with Dryasdust. While passing his vacations in London, he daily attended the noted schools of Angelo, and acquired a skill in horsemanship and fencing, as elegant accomplishments; his evenings, at these seasons, being devoted to the perusal of the best Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese writers. At the University, how was the stripling urging his way into the regions of oriental learning—that grand high-road of his fame that was to be! He had found Mirza, a Syrian, who possessed a knowledge of the vernacular Arabic, and spent some portion of every morning in writing out a translation of Galland’s French version of the Arabian Tales into Arabic, from the mouth of the Syrian; and he then corrected the grammatical inaccuracies by the help of lexicons. From the Arabic he urged his way into the Persian, becoming soon enraptured with that most elegant of all eastern languages. Such was this true disciple of “Perseverance” at the age of nineteen.

And now some measure of the rewards of industry, honour, and virtue begin to alight upon him. He is appointed tutor to Lord Althorpe, son of the literary Earl Spencer; finds his pupil possessed of a mind and disposition that will render his office delightful; has the range of one of the most splendid private libraries in the kingdom, together with the refined and agreeable society of Wimbledon Park; and is presented, soon after, with a fellowship by his college.

Mark well, from two incidents which occur about this time, what high conscientiousness, deep modesty, and sterling independence characterise the true scholar. The Duke of Grafton, then premier, offered him the situation of government interpreter for eastern languages. He declined it, recommending the Syrian, Mirza, as one better qualified to fill it than himself. His recommendation was neglected; and his biographer remarks that “a better knowledge of the world would have led him to accept the office, and to convey the emoluments to his friend Mirza. He was too ingenuous to do so. He saw the excellent lady who afterwards became his wife and devoted companion in study; but ‘his fixed idea of an honourable independence, and a determined resolution never to owe his fortune to a wife, or her kindred, excluded all ideas of a matrimonial connection,’” at that period, although the affection he had conceived was ardent.

In the year of his majority, we find him commencing his famous “Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry;” copying the keys of the Chinese language; learning German, by conversation, grammar, and dictionary, during three weeks passed at Spa with his noble pupil; acquiring a knowledge of the broad-sword exercise from an old pensioner at Chelsea; continuing to attend the two schools of Signor Angelo; and secretly taking lessons in dancing from Gallini, the dancing-master of Earl Spencer’s family, until he surprises the elegant inhabitants of Wimbledon by joining with grace in the amusements of their evening parties.

Such was the truly magnificent advancement made by this illustrious disciple of “Perseverance,” up to the age of twenty-one. Think, reader, how much may be done in the opening of life! How elevated the course of Sir William Jones! What cheering self-approval must he have experienced, in looking back on the youthful years thus industriously spent; but what humbling reflection, what severe self-laceration would he have felt, had he allowed indolence to master him, ease to enervate him, listlessness and dissipation to render him a nameless and worthless nothing in the world!

At the close of his twenty-first year he peruses the little treatise of our ancient lawyer, Fortescue, in praise of the laws of England. His large learning enabled him to compare the laws of other countries with his own; and though he had, hitherto, enthusiastically preferred the laws of republican Greece, reflection, on the perusal of this treatise, led him to prefer the laws of England to all others. His noble biographer adds a remark which indicates the solidity and perspicacity of Sir William Jones’s judgment:—“He was not, however, regardless of the deviations in practice from the theoretical perfection of the constitution, in a contested election, of which he was an unwilling spectator.” Yet the perfect theory of our constitution so far attracted him, as to lead him, from this time, to the resolve of uniting the study of the law to his great philological acquirements; his purpose was neither rashly formed, nor soon relinquished, like the miscalled “purposes” of weak men and idlers; it resulted in his elevation to high and honourable usefulness, in the lapse of a few years.

In his twenty-second year the “great scholar” undertakes a task which no other quality than perseverance could have enabled him to accomplish. The King of Denmark, then on a visit to this country, brought over with him an eastern manuscript, containing a life of Nadir Shah, and expressed his wish to the officers of government to have it translated into French, by an English scholar. The under secretary of state applied to Sir William Jones, who recommended Major Dow, the able translator of a Persian history, to perform the work. Major Dow refused: and, though hints of greater patronage did not influence the inclination of Sir William Jones, his reflection that the reputation of English learning would be dishonoured by the Danish king taking back the manuscript, with a report that no scholar in our country had courage to undertake the difficult labour, impelled him to enter on it. The fact that he had a French style to acquire, in order to discharge his task, and had, even then, to get a native Frenchman to go over the translation, to render it a scholar-like production, made the undertaking extremely arduous. It was, however, accomplished magnificently; and the adventurous translator added a treatise on oriental poetry, “such as no other person in England could then have written.” He was immediately afterwards made a member of the Royal Society of Copenhagen, and was recommended by the King of Denmark to the particular patronage of his own sovereign.

At twenty-six he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of England, and took his degree of Master of Arts the year after. Meanwhile he was composing his celebrated Persian Grammar; had found the means of entering effectively on the study of Chinese, a language at that time surrounded with unspeakable difficulties; had written part of a Turkish history; and was assiduously copying Arabic manuscripts in the Bodleian. The “Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry” were published in his twenty-eighth year, being five years after they were finished; his modesty, that invariable attendant of true merit, and his love of correctness, having induced him to lay the manuscript before Dr. Parr, and other profound judges, ere he ventured to give his composition to the world. Amidst so many absorbing engagements his biographer still notes the correct state of his heart. He was a regular correspondent with his excellent mother, and ever paid the most affectionate attention to her and his sister.

In his twenty-eighth year he devotes himself more exclusively to his legal studies, goes the Oxford circuit after being called to the bar, and afterwards attends regularly at Westminster Hall. Except the publication of a translation of the speeches of Isæus, he performs no remarkable literary labour for the next few years; his professional practice having become very considerable, and his thoughts being strongly directed towards a vacant judgeship, at Calcutta, as the situation in which he felt assured, by the union of his legal knowledge with his skill in oriental languages, he could best serve the interests of learning and of mankind.

Before this object of his laudable ambition was attained, however, Sir William Jones gave proof, as our great Englishman, Milton, had given before him, that the mightiest erudition does not narrow, but serves truly to enlarge the mind, and to nourish its sympathies with the great brotherhood of humanity. The war with the United States of America had commenced, and he declared himself against it; he wrote a splendid Latin ode, entitled “Liberty,” in which his patriotic and philanthropic sentiments are most nobly embodied; and became a candidate, on what are now called “liberal principles,” for the representation of Oxford. He withdrew, after further reflection, from the candidateship, still purposing to devote his life to the East, but not before he had testified his disapproval of harsh ministerial measures, by publishing an “Enquiry into the legal mode of suppressing riots, with a constitutional plan for their suppression.” Finally, to the record of this part of his life, Lord Teignmouth adds the relation, that Sir William Jones had found time to attend the lectures of the celebrated John Hunter, and to acquire some knowledge of anatomy; while he had advanced sufficiently far into the mathematics to be able to read and understand the “Principia” of Sir Isaac Newton.

The last eleven years of the illustrious scholar’s life form the most brilliant part of his career, and only leave us to lament that his days were not more extended. In the month of March, 1783, being then in his thirty-seventh year, he was appointed a judge of the supreme court of judicature, Fortwilliam, Calcutta, and on that occasion received the honour of knighthood. In the following month he married the eldest daughter of Dr. Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, and thus happy in a union with the lady to whom he had been long devoted, almost immediately embarked for India.

As a concluding lesson from the life of Sir William Jones, let us note how unsubduable is the intellect trained by long and early habits of perseverance, under the corrupting and enfeebling influences of honours and prosperity. On the voyage, the “great scholar” drew up a list of “Objects of Enquiry.” If he could have fulfilled the gigantic schemes which were thus unfolding themselves to his ardent mind, the world must have been stricken with amazement. The list is too long to be detailed here; suffice it to say, that it enumerates the “Laws of the Hindus and Mahommedans,” “The History of the Ancient World;” all the sciences, all the arts and inventions of all the Asiatic nations, and the various kinds of government in India. Following the list of “Objects of Enquiry,” is a sketch of works he purposes to write and publish; including “Elements of the Laws of England,” “History of the American War,” an epic poem, to be entitled “Britain Discovered,” “Speeches, Political and Forensic,” “Dialogues, Philosophical and Historical,” and a volume of letters, with translations of some portions of the Scriptures into Arabic and Persian.

Intense and indefatigable labour enabled him to complete his masterly “Digest of Mahommedan and Hindu Law,” but to accomplish this work, so invaluable to the European conquerors of Hindoostan, he had first, critically, to master the Sanscrit, at once the most perfect and most difficult of known languages. If it be remembered that Sir William Jones was also most active in the discharge of his judicial duties, our admiration will be increased. His translation of the “Ordinances of Menu,” a Sanscrit work, displaying the Hindoo system of religious and civil duties—and of the Indian drama of “Sacontala,” written a century before the Christian era—and his production of a “Dissertation on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and Rome,” were among the last of his complete works. He also edited the first volume of the “Asiatic Researches;” and gave an impetus to eastern enquiry among Europeans, by instituting the Asiatic Society, of which he was the first president. His annual discourses before that assembly have been published, and are well known and highly valued.

The death of this great and good man, though sudden, being occasioned by the rapid liver complaint of Bengal, was as peaceful as his life had been noble and virtuous. A friend, who saw him die, says that he expired “without a groan, and with a serene and complacent look.” His death took place on the 27th April, 1794, when he was only in his forty-eighth year; yet he had acquired a “critical knowledge” of eight languages—English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Sanscrit; he knew eight others less perfectly, but was able to read them with the occasional use of a dictionary—Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runic, Hebrew, Bengalee, Hindostanee, Turkish; and he knew so much of twelve other tongues, that they were perfectly attainable by him, had life and leisure permitted his continued application to them—Tibetian, Pâli, Phalavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, Chinese. Twenty-eight languages in all; such is his own account. When you sum up the other diversified accomplishments and attainments of the scarce forty-eight years of Sir William Jones, reflect deeply, youthful reader, on what may be achieved by “perseverance,” and when you have reflected—resolve.

To that emphatic early lesson of “read and you will learn,” and to his ready opportunities and means of culture, we must, undoubtedly, attribute much of the “great scholar’s” success. In the life of one still living, and enjoying the honours and rewards of virtuous perseverance, it will be seen that even devoid of help, unstimulated by any affectionate voice in the outset, and surrounded with discouragements, almost at every step, the cultivation of this grand quality infallibly leads on to signal triumph.

DR. SAMUEL LEE,

Now Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, being the son of a poor widow, who was left to struggle for the support of two younger children, was apprenticed to a carpenter, at twelve years of age, after receiving a merely elementary instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic in the charity-school of the village of Longmore, in Shropshire. His love of books became fervent, and the Latin quotations he found in such as were within his reach kindled a desire to penetrate the mystery of their meaning. The sounds of the language, too, which he heard in a Catholic chapel, where his master had undertaken some repairs, increased this desire. At seventeen he purchased “Ruddiman’s Latin Rudiments,” and soon committed the whole to memory. With the help of “Corderius’ Colloquies,” “Entick’s Dictionary,” and “Beza’s Testament,” he began to make his way into the vestibule of Roman learning; but of the magnificent inner-glory he had, as yet, scarcely caught a glimpse. The obstacles seemed so great for an unassisted adventurer, that he one day besought a priest of the chapel, where he was still at work, to afford him some help. “Charity begins at home!” was the repelling reply to his application; but, whether meant to indicate the priest’s own need of instruction, or sordid unwillingness to afford his help without pecuniary remuneration, does not appear. Unchilled by this repulse, the young and unfriended disciple of “perseverance” girt up “the loins of his mind” for his solitary but onward travel. Yet how uncheering the landscape around him! Think of it, and blush, young reader, if thou art surrounded with ease and comfort, but hast yielded to indolence; ponder on it, and take courage, if thou art the companion of hardship, but resolvest to be a man, one day, amongst men. Young Lee’s wages were but six shillings weekly at seventeen years old; and from this small sum he had not only to find food, but to pay for his washing and lodging. The next year his weekly income was increased one shilling, and the year following another. Privation, even of the necessaries of life, he had to suffer, not seldom, in order to enable himself to possess what he desired, now more intensely than ever. He successively purchased a Latin Bible, Cæsar, Justin, Sallust, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Ovid; having frequently to sell his volume as soon as he had mastered it in order to buy another. But what of that? The true disciple of perseverance looks onward with hope—hope which is not fantastic, but founded in the firmest reason—to the day when his meritorious and ennobling toil shall have its happy fruition, and he shall know no scarcity of books.

Conquest of one language has inspired him with zeal for further victory; it is the genuine nature of enterprise. Freed from his apprenticeship he purchases a Greek grammar, testament, lexicon, and exercises; and soon, the self-taught carpenter, the scholar of toil and privation, holds converse, in their own superlative tongue, with the simple elegance of Xenophon, the eloquence and wisdom of Plato, and the wit of Lucian; he becomes familiar with the glorious “Iliad,” with the pathos and refinement, the force and splendour, of the “Antigone,” of Sophocles.

“Unaided by any instructor, uncheered by any literary companion,” says one who narrates the circumstances of his early career, “he still persevered.” What wonder, when he had discovered so much to cheer him in the delectable mental realm he was thus subduing for himself! And he was now endued with the full energy of conquest. He purchased “Bythner’s Hebrew Grammar,” and “Lyra Prophetica,” with a Hebrew Psalter, and was soon able to read the Psalms in the original. Buxtorf’s grammar and lexicon with a Hebrew Bible followed; an accident threw in his way the “Targum” of Onkelos, and with the Chaldee grammar in Bythner, and Schindler’s lexicon, he was soon able to read it. Another effort, and he was able to read the Syriac Testament and the Samaritan Pentateuch, thus gaining acquaintance with four branches of the ancient Aramœan or Shemitic family of languages, in addition to his knowledge of the two grand Pelasgic dialects.

He was now five-and-twenty, and had mastered six languages, without the slightest help from any living instructor; some of the last-named books were heavily expensive; yet, true to the nobility of life that had distinguished his early youth, he had not relaxed the reins of economy, but had purchased a chest of tools, which had cost him twenty-five pounds.

Suddenly an event befel him which seemed to wither not only his prospects of further mental advancement, but plunged him into the deepest distress. A fire, which broke out in a house he was repairing, consumed his chest of tools; and, as he had no money to purchase more, and had now to feel solicitude for the welfare of an affectionate wife, as well as for himself, his affliction was heavy. In this distracting difficulty he turned his thoughts towards commencing a village school, but even for this he lacked the means of procuring the necessary, though scanty, furniture. Uprightness and meritorious industry, however, seldom fail to attract benevolent help to a man in need. Archdeacon Corbett, the resident philanthropic clergyman of Longmore, heard of Samuel Lee’s distress, sent for him, and on hearing the relation of his laudable struggles, used his interest to place him in the mastership of Shrewsbury Charity School, giving him what was of still higher value, an introduction to the great oriental scholar, Dr. Jonathan Scott.

New triumphs succeeded his misfortunes, and a cheering and honourable future was preparing. Dr. Scott put into the hands of his new and humble friend elementary books on Arabic, Persian, and Hindostanee; and, in a few months, the disciple of perseverance was not only able to read and translate, but even essayed to compose in his newly-acquired languages. So effectually had he mastered these eastern tongues, that the good doctor used his influence in introducing him as private tutor to sons of gentlemen going out to India; and, after another brief probation, procured him admission into Queen’s College, Cambridge.

Our sketch of this remarkable living scholar may here be cut short. He has made himself master of twenty languages, distinguished himself alike by the virtue of his private life, his practical eloquence in the pulpit and zeal for the church, of which he is an honoured member; and, in addition to the service he has rendered to oriental literature, by his new Hebrew grammar and lexicon, his revision of Sir William Jones’s Persian grammar, and a number of philological tracts, has won respect and gratitude, by diligent and laborious supervision of numerous translations of the Scriptures into eastern tongues, prepared by the direction and at the cost of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

If the young scholar be bent on the acquirement of languages, he will find, in the lives of Alexander, Murray, Leyden, Heyne, Carey, Marshman, Morrison, Magliabechi, and a hundred others, striking proofs of the ease with which the mind overcomes all difficulties when it is armed with determination, and never becomes a recreant from the banner of perseverance.

CHAPTER II.
AUTHORS.

SHAKSPEARE.—SPENSER.—-JOHNSON.—GIFFORD.—GIBBON.

Creative genius is popularly held to be dependent on faculties widely diverse from those required by the mere man of learning. The linguist is usually regarded as a traveller on a beaten track; the poet, as a discoverer of new regions. Success for the man of learning is considered to depend on diligence in the exercise of the memory and judgment; while obedience to impulse seems to be the mental law popularly allotted to poets. Let the young reader inquire for himself, whether there is not something of fallacy in this popular notion.

SHAKSPEARE,

The most highly endowed of human intelligences, was under as great necessity of learning the vocabulary of the English tongue as the very commonest mind. He, like all other men, however inferior to him in understanding or imagination, was born without any innate knowledge of things, or their natures, words, or the rules for fashioning them in order, or combining them with grace and harmony, eloquence and strength. Every author of the first class was in the same predicament mentally at birth; they had everything to learn, and the perfection of their learning depended on their own effort. It may be equally affirmed, then, of the highest poet and the greatest linguist, of Shakspeare and Sir William Jones, that neither had any “royal road” for gaining his peculiar eminence.

The little we know of the personal history of Shakspeare renders it necessary for us to attribute a very ample measure of his unrivalled excellence to that quality of the mind which we are insisting upon as requisite for the performance of great and exalted labours. If it be true that schoolmasters taught him little, how indefatigable must have been that perseverance which enabled him, not simply to equal, but so immeasurably to transcend his more learned contemporaries and fellow-workers, in the wealth of his language, and in the beauty and fitness of its application! If his helps were few, so much the more astonishing is the energy and continuity of effort which issued in securing for him who exerted it the highest name in the world’s literature. Nor can minds of primal order be satisfied with a passing ovation that may be forgotten; they thirst to render their triumphs monumental. Our grand dramatist piled effort upon effort, until he left to the world the priceless legacy of his thirty-seven plays. His mind had none of the sickly quality which views a settled form of composition as irksome, and indulges its unhealthy fantasies in irregular and useless essays. He wrought out his magnificent and self-appointed task to the end; he made his own monument worthy of himself.

Birthplace of Shakspeare.

SPENSER,

Was not less an exemplar of diligence than of skill in the architecture of verse. The mere task-work of constructing three thousand eight hundred and fifty-four stanzas, comprising forty-four thousand six hundred and sixty-eight lines, would have wearied out the industry of any mind whose powers were not indefatigable. He died, too, before his magnificent design was complete, or the elaborate monument of his fame might have been still more colossal. Superiority to mental indolence, so manifest in the lives of Shakspeare and Spenser, is equally noticeable in the cases of Chaucer and Milton, of Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher, of Dryden and Pope, of Byron and Wordsworth, our other great poets; and, indeed, in the histories of the great poets of all nations. When the quantity of their composition is considered, and it is remembered how much thought must have been expended in the bringing together of choice materials, how much care in the polishing and adorning of each part, and of the whole, of their seemly fabrics, the degree of perseverance exercised in the erection of so many immortal superstructures of the mind is presented to reflection with commanding self-evidence. But let us track, more circumstantially, the life-path, so proverbial for vicissitude, of some of the children of genius, that we may see how the energy of true men is neither quelled by difficulty nor enervated by success.

JOHNSON,

Afterwards so famous as the great arbiter of literary criticism, is found leaving college without a degree, and, from sheer poverty, at the age of twenty-two. The sale of his deceased father’s effects, a few months after, affords him but twenty pounds, and he is constrained to become an usher in a grammar school in Leicestershire. In the next year he performs a translation of “Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia” for a Birmingham bookseller, returns to Lichfield, his birth-place, and publishes proposals for printing, by subscription, the Latin poems of Politian, the life of that author, and a history of Latin poetry from the era of Petrarch to the time of Politian. His project failed to attract patrons, and he next offered his services to Cave, the original projector of the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” Cave accepted his offer, but on conditions which compelled Johnson to make application elsewhere for earning the means of living. He again offered to become assistant to the master of a grammar school; but, in spite of the great learning he had even then acquired, he was rejected, from the fear that his peculiar nervous and involuntary gestures would render him an object of ridicule with his pupils. Such was one of the disabilities of constitution under which this humbly-born and strong-minded man laboured through life.

Won, not by his ungainly person, but by the high qualities of his mind, a widow, with a little fortune of eight hundred pounds, yielded him her hand, in this season of his poverty; and he immediately opened a classical school in his native town. The celebrated Garrick, then about eighteen years old, became his pupil. His scheme, however, did not succeed; his newly acquired property was exhausted; and he and Garrick, then eight years his junior, set out together for London, with the resolve to seek their fortunes in the larger world. Garrick in a short time was acknowledged as the first genius on the stage, and made his way to wealth almost without difficulty. A longer and more toilful period of trial fell to the lot of the scholar and author. He first offered to the booksellers a manuscript tragedy, supposed to be his “Irene,” but could find no one willing to accept it. Cave gave him an engagement to translate the “History of the Council of Trent.” He received forty-nine pounds for part of the translation, but it was never completed for lack of sale. His pecuniary condition was so low, soon after this, that he and Savage, having walked, conversing, round Grosvenor Square, till four in the morning, and beginning to feel the want of refreshment, could not muster between them more than fourpence-halfpenny! He received ten guineas for his celebrated poem of “London;” but though Pope said, “The author, whoever he was, could not be long concealed,” no further advantage was derived by Johnson from its publication. Hearing of a vacancy in the mastership of another grammar school in Leicestershire, he, once more, proceeds thither as a candidate. The consequences of the poverty which had prevented him from remaining at the university till he could take a degree were now grievously felt. The statutes of the place required that the person chosen should be a Master of Arts. Some interest was made to obtain him that degree from the Dublin University; but it failed, and he was again thrown back on London.

In spite of his melancholic constitution, these repeated disappointments, so far from filling him with despair, seem only to have quickened his invention, and strengthened his resolution to continue the struggle for fame. He formed numerous projects on his return to the metropolis; but none succeeded except his contributions to the “Gentleman’s Magazine;” these were, chiefly, the “Parliamentary Debates,” which the world read with the belief that they were thus becoming acquainted with the eloquence of Chatham, Walpole, and their compeers, and little dreaming that those speeches were “written in a garret in Exeter Street,” by a poverty-stricken author. The talent displayed in this anonymous labour did not serve, as yet, to free him from difficulties. He next undertook to collect and arrange the tracts forming the miscellany, entitled “Harleian.” Osborne, the bookseller, was his employer in this work; and, having purchased Lord Oxford’s library, the bookseller also employed Johnson to form a catalogue. To relieve his drudgery, Johnson occasionally paused to peruse the book that came to hand; Osborne complained of this; a dispute arose; and the bookseller, with great roughness, gave the author the lie. The incident so characteristic of Johnson, and so often related, now took place—Johnson seized a folio, and knocked the bookseller down. The act was far from justifiable; but his indignation under the offence must have been great, as his rigid adherence to speaking the truth was so observable, that one of his most intimate friends declared “he always talked as if he were speaking on oath.”

He escaped, at length, from some degree of the humiliation which attaches to poverty. He projected his great work—the English Dictionary; several of the wealthiest booksellers entered into the scheme, and Johnson now left lodging in the courts and alleys about the Strand, and took a house in Gough Square, Fleet Street. This did not occur till he was eight-and-thirty; so great a portion of life had he passed in almost perpetual contest with pecuniary difficulties; nor was he entirely freed from them for some years to come. During the years spent in the exhausting labour of his Dictionary, the fifteen hundred guineas he received for the copyright were consumed on amanuenses, and the provision necessary for himself and his wife. The “Rambler” was written during these years in which his Dictionary was in course of publication, and the circumstances of its composition are most note-worthy among the “Triumphs of Perseverance.” With the exception of five numbers, every essay was written by Johnson himself; and it was regularly issued every Tuesday and Friday, for two years. The perseverance which enabled him so punctually to execute a stated task, even while continuously labouring in the greater work in which he was engaged, is remarkable: but the young reader’s thought ought to be more deeply fixed on the consideration that a life of unremitting devotion to study—unconquered by difficulty, and straitness of circumstances—had rendered him able easily to pour forth the treasures of a full mind. Although apparently the product of great care, and stored with the richest moral reflections, these essays were usually written in haste, frequently while the printer’s boy was waiting, and not even read over before given to him. This was not recklessness in Johnson, though it would have been folly in one whose mind was not most opulently stored with matured thought, and who had not attained such a habit of modulating sentences, as to render it almost mechanical. Such attainments can only be reached by the most determined disciple of perseverance. “A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it,” was Johnson’s own saying; but he could not have verified it, unless his mind, by assiduous application, had been filled with the materials of writing. He was, likewise, held in high celebrity as the best converser of his age; but he acknowledged that he had attained his extraordinary accuracy and flow of language by having early laid it down as a fixed rule to arrange his thoughts before expressing them, and never to suffer a careless or unmeaning expression to escape from him.

The profits of a second periodical, “The Idler,” and the subscriptions for his edition of Shakspeare, were the means by which he supported himself for the four or five years immediately preceding the age of fifty. His wife had already died, and his aged mother being near her dissolution, in order to reach Lichfield, and pay her the last offices of filial piety, he devoted one fortnight to the composition of his beautiful and immortal tale of “Rasselas,” for which he received one hundred pounds. He did not arrive in time to close her eyes, but saw her decently interred, and then hastened back to London, to go, once more, into lodgings and retrench expenses. The next three years of his life appear to have been passed in even more than his early poverty; but the end of his difficulties was approaching.

The last twenty-two years of his existence—from the age of fifty-three to seventy-five—were spent in the receipt of a royal pension of three hundred pounds per annum; in the society of persons of fortune, who considered themselves honoured by the company of the once poverty-stricken and unknown scholar; in the companionship of Edmund Burke, and Oliver Goldsmith, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Joseph Warton, and others whose names are durably written on the roll of genius, and in the receipt of the highest honours of learning—for the Universities, both of Dublin and Oxford, conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, and the Oxford University had previously sent him the degree of Master of Arts. Regarded as the great umpire of literary taste, receiving deference and respect wherever he went, and no longer driven to his pen by necessity, this honoured exemplar of perseverance did not pass through his remaining course in unproductive indolence. In addition to less important works, his “Lives of the Poets” was produced in this closing period of his life, and is well known as the most valuable and useful of his labours, with the exception of his great Dictionary.

WILLIAM GIFFORD,

In the early circumstances of his life, is a still more striking exemplar of the virtue of perseverance. He was left an orphan at thirteen years of age, was sent to sea for a twelvemonth, and was then taken home by his godfather, who had seized upon whatever his mother had left, as a means of repaying himself for money lent to her, and was now constrained to pay some attention to the boy, by the keen remonstrances of his neighbours. He was sent to school, and made such rapid progress in arithmetic that, in a few months, he was at the head of the school, and frequently assisted his master. The receipt of a trifle for these services raised in him the thought of one day becoming a schoolmaster, in the room of a teacher in the town of Ashburton, who was growing old and infirm. He mentioned his scheme to his godfather, who treated it with contempt, and forthwith apprenticed him to a shoemaker. His new master subjected him to the greatest degradation, made him the common drudge of his household, and took from him the means of pursuing his favourite study of arithmetic.

“I could not guess the motives for this at first,” he says—for his narrative is too remarkable at this period of his struggles, to be told in any other than his own language—“but at length discovered that my master destined his youngest son for the situation to which I aspired. I possessed, at this time, but one book in the world, it was a treatise on algebra, given to me by a young woman, who had found it in a lodging-house. I considered it as a treasure, but it was a treasure locked up, for it supposed the reader to be well acquainted with simple equations, and I knew nothing of the matter. My master’s son had purchased ‘Fenning’s Introduction;’ this was precisely what I wanted; but he carefully concealed it from me, and I was indebted to chance alone for stumbling upon his hiding-place. I sat up for the greatest part of several nights, successively; and, before he suspected that his treatise was discovered, had completely mastered it. I could now enter upon my own, and that carried me pretty far into the science. This was not done without difficulty. I had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give me one; pen, ink, and paper, therefore, were, for the most part, as completely out of my reach as a crown and sceptre. There was, indeed, a resource, but the utmost caution and secrecy were necessary in applying to it. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrought my problems on them with a blunted awl; for the rest, my memory was tenacious, and I could multiply and divide by it to a great extent.”

He essayed the composition of rhyme, and the rehearsal of his verses secured him a few pence from his acquaintances. He now furnished himself with pens, ink, and paper, and even bought some books of geometry and of the higher branches of algebra; but was obliged to conceal them, and to pursue his studies by continued caution. Some of his verses, however, were shown to his master, and were understood to contain satirical reflections upon his oppressor. His books and papers were seized upon, by way of punishment; and he was reduced to the deepest despair. “I look back,” he says, in his own admirable narrative, “on that part of my life which immediately followed this event with little satisfaction: it was a period of gloom, and savage unsociability: by degrees I sunk into a kind of corporeal torpor; or, if roused into activity by the spirit of youth, wasted the exertion in splenetic and vexatious tricks, which alienated the few acquaintances compassion had left me.”

The heart revolts at the brutal injustice which drove Gifford’s young nature thus to harden itself into gloomy endurance of his lot, by “savage unsociability;” but a mind like his could not take that stamp for life. His disposition grew again buoyant, and his aspirations began to rekindle, as the term of his bondage grew shorter. Had he found no deliverance till it had legally expired, it may be safely affirmed that he would then have forced his way into eminence by self-assisted efforts; but an accidental circumstance emancipated him a year before the legal expiry of his apprenticeship. Mr. Cookesley, a philanthropic surgeon, having learnt from Gifford himself the facts of his hard history, through mere curiosity awakened by hearing some of his rhymes repeated, started ‘A subscription for purchasing the remainder of the time of William Gifford, and for enabling him to improve himself in writing and English grammar.’ Enough was collected to satisfy his master’s demand, he was placed at school with a clergyman, made his way into the classics, displayed such diligence that more money was raised to continue him in his promising course; and in two years and two months from the day of his liberation, he was considered by his instructor to be fit for the University, and was sent to Exeter College, Oxford.

Perseverance! what can it not effect? It enabled Gifford to surmount difficulties arising from the most vulgar and brutifying influences, and to make his way triumphantly into an intellectual region of delectable enjoyment. From a boy neglected and degraded—from a youth baffled and thwarted in his aims at a higher state of existence than that of merely living to labour in order to eat, drink, and be clothed—from one fastening his desire upon knowledge, only to be scorned and mocked, and treated as a criminal where he was meriting applause—from a poor pitiable straggler longing for mental breathing-room, amid the coarse conversation he would undoubtedly hear from his master, and those who were his associates, and sinking for some period into sullen despair with his hardship, that like an untoward sky seemed to promise no break of relieving light—he becomes a glad and easier student; is enabled not merely ‘to improve himself in writing and English grammar,’ but, in six-and-twenty months, becomes a converser, in their own noble language, with the great spirits of Rome and Greece: and enters the most venerable arena of learning in Britain, to become a rival in elegant scholarship with the young heirs to coronets and titles, and to England’s widest wealth and influence. What a change did those ancient halls of architectural grandeur, with all their associations of great intellectual names, present for the young and ardent toiler who, but six-and-twenty months before, had bent over the last from morning to night, shut out from all that could cheer or elevate the mind, and surrounded with nought but that which tended to disgust and degrade it!

Nor did the career of the young disciple of perseverance, when arrived at his new and loftier stage of struggle, discredit the foresight of those who had assisted him. His first benefactor died before Gifford took his degree, but he was enabled by the generosity of Lord Grosvenor to pursue his studies at the University to a successful issue. After some absence on the continent, as travelling tutor to the nobleman just mentioned, he entered on his course as an author, and gained some distinction; but won his chief celebrity, as well as most substantial rewards, while Editor of the “Quarterly Review”—an office he held from the commencement of that periodical, 1809, till his death, on the last day of 1826, when he had reached the age of seventy-one. In the performance of this critical service he had a salary of one thousand a year; and it is a noble conclusion to the history of this successful scholar of Perseverance, that true-hearted gratitude led him to bequeath the bulk of his fortune to Mr. Cookesley, the son of his early benefactor.

The superiority of genius to difficulties, and the certainty with which it achieves high triumphs through longer or shorter paths of vicissitude, might be shown from the memoirs of Erasmus, and Mendelsohn, and Goldsmith, and Holcroft, and Kirke White, and others, almost a countless host. Early poverty may be said, however, to stimulate the children of Genius to exertion; and its influence may be judged to weaken the merit of their perseverance, since their triumphs may be dated from deep desire to escape from its disadvantages. That such a feeling has been participated by many, or all, of the illustrious climbers after literary distinction, it may not be denied; though the world usually attributes more to its workings in the minds of men of genius than the interior truth, if known, would warrant: the strong necessity to create—the restless power to embody their thinkings—these deep-seated springs of exertion in intellectual men, if understood, would afford a truer solution of their motives for beginning, and the determination to excel for continuing their course, than any mere sordid impulses with which they are often charged. Let us turn to a celebrated name, around which no irksome influences of poverty gathered, either at the outset of his life, or in his progress to literary distinction. His systematic direction of the knowledge acquired by inquiries as profound as they were diversified, and his application of the experience of life, alike to the same great end, afford an admirable spectacle of the noblest perseverance, and of memorable victory over the seductions of ease and competence.

GIBBON,

The author of the unrivalled “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” was born to considerable fortune. He left the University at eighteen, after great loss of time, as he tells us in his instructive autobiography, and with what was worse, habits of expense and dissipation. His father being under distressing anxiety on account of his son’s irregularities, and, afterwards, from what he deemed of greater moment, young Gibbon’s sudden avowal of conversion to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church, placed him abroad, under the strict care of a Protestant minister. Gibbon began to awake to reflection; and, without prescription from his new guardian, voluntarily entered on severe study. He diligently translated the best Roman writers, turned them into French, and then again into Latin, comparing Cicero and Livy, and Seneca and Horace, with the best orators and historians, philosophers and poets, of the moderns. He next advanced to the Greek, and pursued a similar course with the treasures of that noble literature. He afterwards commenced an inquiry into the Law of Nations, and sedulously perused the treatises of Grotius, Puffendorf, Locke, Bayle, and Montesquieu, the acknowledged authorities on that great subject. He mentions three books which absorbed more than the usual interest he felt in whatever he read: “Pascal’s Provincial Letters,” the “Abbe de la Bléterie’s Life of the Emperor Julian,” and “Giannone’s Civil History of Naples:” the character of these works shadows forth the grand design which was gradually forming in his mind.

Yet without method, without taking care to store up this various knowledge in such a mode that it might not be mere lumber in the memory, he speedily discerned that even years spent in industrious reading would be, comparatively, of little worth. He, therefore, began to digest his various reading in a common-place book, according to the method recommended by Locke. The eager and enthusiastic student—for such he had now become—by this systematic arrangement of his knowledge under heads, perceived his wants more distinctly, and entered into correspondence for the solution of historic difficulties, with some of the most illustrious scholars of his time, among whom were Professors Crevier of Paris, Breittinger of Zurich, and Matth. Gesner of Göttingen. From each of these learned men he received such flattering notice of the acuteness of his inquiries, as proved how well he had employed the time and means at his command. His first work, written in French, the “Essay on the Study of Literature,” was produced at three-and-twenty, after his laborious reading of the best English and French, as well as Latin and Greek authors.

A transition was now made by him, from retired leisure to active life. His father was made major of the Hampshire Militia, himself captain of grenadiers, and the regiment was called out on duty. He had to devote two years and a half to this employ, and expresses considerable discontent with his “wandering life of military servitude;” but thus judiciously tempers his observations: “In every state there exists, however, a balance of good and evil. The habits of a sedentary life were usefully broken by the duties of an active profession.”... “After my foreign education, with my reserved temper, I should long have continued a stranger to my native country, had I not been shaken in this various scene of new faces and new friends; had not experience forced me to feel the characters of our leading men, the state of parties, the forms of office, and the operation of our civil and military system. In this peaceful service I imbibed the rudiments and the language and science of tactics, which opened a new field of study and observation.... The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire.”

Let the young reader observe how, even when a purpose is not as yet distinctly formed, the leading events of life, as well as study, may be made by the regal mind to bend and contribute to the realising of one. Our great paramount duty is to husband time well, to let not an hour glide uselessly, to go on extending our range of knowledge, and resolving to act our part well, even while we are in uncertainty as to what our part may be. The seed well sown, the germs well watered, and a useful harvest must result, though neither we, nor any who look on, for a while, may be able to prophesy of the quality or abundance of the grain, seeing it is but yet in its growth. “From my early youth I aspired to the character of an historian,” says Gibbon; “while I served in the militia, before and after the publication of my ‘Essay,’ this idea ripened in my mind.”

Yet, he was for a time undecided as to a subject: the Expedition of Charles the Eighth of France into Italy; the Crusade of Cœur de Lion; the Barons’ Wars against John and Henry the Third; the History of Edward the Black Prince; Lives and comparisons of Henry the Fifth and the Emperor Titus; the Life of Sir Philip Sidney, of the Marquis of Montrose, of Raleigh—and other subjects of high interest, but each and all inferior to the one he at length undertook, and for which his studies had all along peculiarly fitted him, successively attracted his attention. Amidst the colossal ruins of the amphitheatre of Titus, the idea at length was formed in his mind of tracing the vicissitudes of Rome; and this idea swelled until his conception extended to such a history as should depicture the thousand years of change which fill up the period between the reign of the Antonines and the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks. Years of laborious study and research were necessary to accomplish this gigantic labour; but it was perfected, and remains the grandest historic monument ever raised by an Englishman. The recent investigations of Guizot have more fully confirmed the fact of the minute and careful inquiries of Gibbon, in bringing together the vast and multifarious materials necessary for the accurate completion of his design. His great work is, emphatically, for strictness of statement, combined with such comprehensiveness of subjects, for depth and clearness of disquisition, and for splendour of style, one of the most magnificent “Triumphs of Perseverance.”

And is the roll of these triumphs complete? Have the labours of the past pretermitted the possibility of equal victories in the future? Never, while the human mind exists, can the catalogue of its successes be deemed to have found a limit or an end. Immense fields of history remain yet untrodden and uncultivated; innumerable facts throughout the ages which are gone remain to be collected by industry and arranged by judgment; the ever-varying phases of human affairs offer perpetual material for new chronicle: let none who meditates to devote his youth to historical inquiry, with the meritorious resolve to distinguish his manhood by some useful monument of solid thought, imagine that his ground has been narrowed, but rather understand that it has been cleared and enlarged by the noble workmen who have gone before.

Neither let the young and gifted, in whom the kindlings of creative genius are felt, listen to the dull voices who say, “The last epic has been written—no more great dramas shall be produced—the lyrics of the past will never be equalled!” If such vaticinations were true, it would show that the human mind was dwarfed. Shakspere did not believe that, or he would not have excelled Sophocles. None but intellectual cravens will affright themselves with the belief that they cannot equal the doings of those who have gone before. True courage says, “The laurel is never sere: its leaves are evergreen. The laurels have not all been won: they flourish still, in abundance. The bright examples of the past shall not deter, but cheer me. I will go on to equal them. My life, like the lives of the earth’s truly great, shall be devoted to thought, to research—to deep converse with the mighty spirits who still live in their works, though their clay is dissolved; I will prepare to build, and build carefully and wisely, as they built; I also will rear my lasting memorial among “The Triumphs of Perseverance!”

CHAPTER III.
ARTISTS.

CANOVA.—CHANTREY.—SALVATOR ROSA.—BENJAMIN WEST.

If a rude image of the South Sea islanders be compared with one of Chantrey’s sculptures, or a Chinese picture with some perfect performance of Raffaelle or Claude, what a world of reflection unfolds itself on the countless steps taken by the mind, from its first attempt at imitating the human form, or depicturing a landscape, to the periods of its most successful effort in statuary or painting. The first childish essay of a great artist, compared with one of the masterpieces of his maturity, calls up kindred thoughts. How often must the eye re-measure an object; how often retrace the direction or inclination of the lines by which a figure is bounded; what an infinite number of comparisons must perception store up in the memory, as to the resemblance of one form to another; what repeated scrutiny must the judgment exercise over what most delights the ideal faculty, till the source of delight—the harmony arising from combination of forms—be discovered and understood; and how unweariedly must the intellect return, again and again, to these its probationary labours, before the capability for realising great triumphs in Art be attained.

Doubtless, the mind of a young artist, like the mind under any other process of training, exercises many of these acts with little self-consciousness; but observation and comparison have, inevitably, to be practised, and their results to be stored up in the mind, before the hand can be directed and employed in accurate delineation and embodiment of forms. Without diligence in this training, the chisel of Chantrey would have failed to bring more life-like shapes from a block of marble than the knife of a Sandwich islander carves out of the trunk of a tree; and the canvas of Claude would have failed as utterly to realise proportion, and sunlight, and distance, as a piece of porcelain figured and coloured by a native of China. As it is in the elaboration of Literature’s most perfect products so it is in Art: into the mind his images must be taken; there they must be wrought up into new combinations and shapes of beauty or of power; and from this grand repository the statuary or painter, like the poet, must summon his forms anew, evermore returning, dutifully, to compare them with Nature and actual life, and sparing no effort to clothe them with the attribute of veri-similitude.

Need it be argued, then, that without perseverance the world would have beheld none of the wonders of high Art? If the mind, by her own mysterious power, have, first, to pencil the forms of the outward upon her tablets within; if she have, then, a greater work of combination and creation to perform, ere a statue or a picture of the ideal can be realised; if the hand, in a word, can only successfully carve, limn, and colour, from the pattern laid up in the wealth of the trained and experienced mind, how absolute the necessity for perseverance to enrich and perfect that mind which is to direct the hand! That neglect of this evident truth has marked the lives of unsuccessful artists may, too often, be seen in the records of them: while the deepest conviction of a duty to obey its dictates has distinguished the world’s most glorious names in painting and sculpture. Let us glance at the steps taken by a few of these, in their way to triumphs; not unheedful, meanwhile, how their exhibition of the great moral quality of perseverance enabled them to trample on the difficulties of actual life, as well as to overcome obstacles in their progress to perfect art.

ANTONIA CANOVA,

The greatest of modern sculptors, was born in a mud-walled cabin of an Alpine valley within the Venetian territories; and remained in the care of Pasino, his grandfather, who was a stone-cutter, till his twelfth year. Pasino, evermore employing enticement and tenderness rather than compulsion began to instruct the child in drawing, as soon as his little hand could hold a pencil; and even taught him to model in clay at an early age. At nine years old, however, he was set to work at stone-cutting; and, thenceforward, his essays in art were but pursued as relaxations. Yet his boyish performances were sufficiently remarkable to attract notice from the chief of the patrician family of Falieri, for whom Pasino worked. This nobleman took young Canova under his patronage, and placed him with Toretto, a sculptor. His new preceptor was not very liberal in his instructions; but the young genius secretly pursued his high bent, and one day surprised Toretto by producing the figures of two angels of singular beauty. His yearnings after excellence, at this period, grew vast; but were indefinite. He often became disgusted with what he had done; and to fitful dreams of beauty in Art succeeded moods of despair; but he invariably returned to his models, imperfect as he perceived them to be, and resolved to labour on from the point of his present knowledge up to the mastery he coveted.

On the death of Toretto, in Canova’s fifteenth year, Falieri removed the aspiring boy to Venice. He was lodged in his patron’s palace; but was too truly a man, in spite of his youth, to brook entire dependence on another, and formed an engagement to work during the afternoons for a sculptor in the city. “I laboured for a mere pittance, but it was sufficient,” is the language of one of his letters. “It was the fruit of my own resolution; and, as I then flattered myself, the foretaste of more honourable rewards—for I never thought of wealth.” Under successive masters, Canova acquired a knowledge of what were then held to be the established rules of sculpture, but made no important essay, except his Eurydice, which was of the size of nature, and had “great merit” in the estimation of his patron, although Canova himself thought not so highly of it. Indeed, his genius was preparing to break away from the mannerism of his instructors almost as soon as it was learnt. The works of Bernini, Algardi, and other comparatively inferior artists, were then taken for models rather than the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Venus, or the Gladiator—the transcendent remains of ancient statuary. “The unaffected majesty of the antique,” observes Mr. Mernes, Canova’s English biographer, was then “regarded as destitute of force and impression.” And as for Nature, “her simplicity was then considered as poverty, devoid of elegance or grace.” Nature, therefore, was not imitated by this school of sculptors; but, in the critical language of one of their own countrymen, she was but “translated according to conventional modes.” Canova spurned subjection to the trammels of corrupt taste; and, after deep thought, his resolve was taken, and he entered on a new and arduous path. He thenceforth “took Nature as the text, and formed the commentary from his own elevated taste, fancy, and judgment.”

The exhibition of his Orpheus, the companion-statue to his Eurydice, in his twentieth year, gave commencement to Canova’s success and reputation, and proved the devotion with which he had applied himself to the study of the anatomy of life, to whatever he observed to be striking in the attitudes of living men, in the expression of their countenances, in “the sculpture of the heart.” (Il scolpir del cuore), as he so beautifully termed it. His style was foreign to prevailing false taste; but it was so true to Nature that its excellence won him general admiration.

Rome, the great capital of Art, naturally became the theatre of his ambition at this period; and, soon after his twenty-third birthday, he enters on his career in the Eternal City, under the patronage of the Venetian ambassador, obtained through Falieri’s friendship. With rapture he beheld a mass of marble, which had cost what would equal sixty-three pounds sterling, arrive at the ambassador’s palace, as an assurance that he would have the material for accomplishing a great work he had devised. Yet, with an overawed sense of the perfection he now saw in the remains of ancient sculpture, and believing himself deficient in the conception of ideal beauty, he studied deeply and worked in secret, shutting himself up in a room of the ambassador’s palace, after each daily visit to the grand galleries. His Theseus and Minotaur was, at length, shown; and he was considered to have placed himself at the head of living sculptors.

Ten successive years of his life, after this triumph, were devoted to funeral monuments of the Popes Clement the Fourteenth (Ganganelli), and Clement the Twelfth (Rezzonico). “They were,” says his biographer, “years of unceasing toil and solicitude, both as the affairs of the artist did not permit of having recourse to the assistance of inferior workmen, and as he meditated technical improvements and modes of execution unknown to contemporaries. Much valuable time was thus lost to all the nobler purposes of study, while the conducting from their rude and shapeless state to their final and exquisite forms such colossal masses was no less exhausting to the mind than to the body. The method, however, which was now first adopted, and subsequently perfected, not only allowed, in future, exclusive attention to the higher provinces of art, but enabled this master to produce a greater number of original works than any other of modern times can boast.” These observations show Canova to have been one of the noblest disciples of perseverance; slighting the readier triumphs he might have won, by exerting his skill with the customary appliances, he aimed to invent methods whereby gigantic works in art might be more readily achieved, both by himself and his successors: he prescribed for himself the work of a discoverer, and he magnanimously toiled till he succeeded.

Canova’s most perfect works were, of course, accomplished in his full manhood. These were his Cupid and Psyche, Venus, Perseus, Napoleon, Boxers, and Hercules and Lichas: creations which have made so truthfully applicable to his glorious genius the immortal line of Byron:

“Europe, the world, has but one Canova.”

Titles of honour were showered on him during his latter years; among the rest that of “Marquis of Ischia;” but he esteemed all of them as inferior to the triumph of his advocacy for the restoration of the precious works of ancient art to Italy. He was commissioned by the Pope for this undertaking, and his great name will be imperishably united with the memory of its success.

To all who are commencing the struggle of life the moral course of Canova demands equally close imitation, with his persevering zeal in the attainment of artistic excellence. He ever refused pecuniary dependence; subjected himself to great disadvantages in carrying out his designs, rather than submit to such dependence; and when a pension of three thousand crowns was conferred upon him, towards the close of his career, he refused to apply any portion of it to his own gratification of a personal kind, and systematically devoted it, yearly, to premiums for young competitors in art, instruction of scholars in painting and sculpture, and pensions for poor and decayed artists. Young reader, let the words of Canova, on his death-bed, sink deeply into your mind, that they may actuate your whole life as fully and nobly as they actuated his own:—“First of all we ought to do our own duty; but—first of all!”

CHANTREY,

The most eminent of our sculptors, was another noble example of successful perseverance. From a boy, accustomed to drive an ass laden with sand into Sheffield, he rose to the highest honours of an exalted profession; a large proportion of the persons of rank and distinction in his own time sat to him for busts and statues: he was knighted, and, like Canova, left considerable wealth at his death, to be devoted through future time to the encouragement of Art. His father, who was a small farmer in the neighbourhood of Sheffield, wished to place him with a grocer or an attorney; but, at his own urgent desire, he was apprenticed with a carver and gilder in that town. An engraver and portrait-painter, perceiving his devotion to Art, gave him some valuable instruction; but his master did not incline to forward his favourite pursuits, fearing they would interfere with his duties as an apprentice. Young Chantrey, however, resolved not to be defeated in his aims, and hired a room for a few pence a week, secretly making it his studio. His apprenticeship to the carver and gilder having expired, he advertised in Sheffield to take portraits in crayons; and two years afterwards announced that he had commenced taking models from the life. Like Canova, but untaught, he began to model in clay when a child; and, at two-and-twenty, he thus began to realise his early bent. Yet patronage was but scanty at Sheffield, and he successively visited Dublin, Edinburgh, and London, working as a modeller in clay. But neither in these larger arenas of merit did he immediately succeed according to his wish. Returning to Sheffield, he modelled four busts of well-known characters there as large as life, one of them being the likeness of the lately-deceased vicar. This was a performance of such excellence that he was offered a commission, by a number of the deceased clergyman’s friends, to execute a monument to the same reverend personage for the parish church. Chantrey had never yet lifted chisel to marble; and it, therefore, required all the courage which consciousness of genius alone could give to undertake such a task. It was the great turning point of his life. He accepted the commission, employed a marble mason to rough-hew the block, set about the completion himself, and finished it most successfully. Thenceforward his course was open to the excellence he displayed in giving life-like expression to historic portraits, as in his marble statue of Watt in Westminster Abbey, and his bronze statue of Pitt in Hanover Square; and, above all, in infusing poetry into marble, as in his exquisite sculpture of the Lady Louisa Russell at Woburn Abbey, and his unsurpassed group, “the Sleeping Children,” in Lichfield cathedral.

In the lives of the great Michael Angelo himself, of Benvenuto Cellini, and others, may also be found inspiring records of the tameless and tireless energy which has secured to us many of the great triumphs of sculpture. Our limits demand that we devote the remainder of a brief chapter to a glance at the struggles of painters.

SALVATOR ROSA,

One of those high names which are everlasting monuments of the success with which true genius bids defiance to the hostilities of poverty and envy might be claimed, with pride and fondness, by either of the sister arts of Poetry and Music, were it not that his greatest triumphs were won in Painting. The wildness and sublimity of his canvas had their types in the scenery of his birth-place—the ancient and decayed villa of Renella, within view of Mount Vesuvius, and near to Naples. His father was a poverty-stricken artist, and descended from a family to whom poverty and painting had been heirlooms for generations. Determined to avert the continuance of this inauspicious union of inheritances in the life of his child, he took counsel with his wife, and they resolved to dedicate him to the service of the Church. He was, accordingly, taken to the font in the grand church pertaining to the “Monks of the Certosa,” and piously named “Salvatore,” as a sign and seal of the religious life to which his parents had vowed to devote him. But the method they took to bind him down to religious lessons was not wise, though their meaning was no doubt good; and the boyish Rosa often became a truant, wandered away for days among the rocks and trees, and frequently slept out in the open air of that beautiful climate. His worship of the sublime scenery with which he thus became familiar was soon evinced in the fidelity of numerous sketches of picturesque he drew upon the walls of one of the rooms in the large old house his father inhabited. Unchecked by the reprehension of his parents, who dreaded nothing more than the event of their child becoming an artist, he one day entered the monastery of the Certosa, with his burnt sticks in his hand—his only instruments of design—and began, secretly and silently, to scrawl his wild sketches upon such vacant spaces as he could find, on walls that abounded in the most splendid decorations of gold and vermilion and ultra-marine. The monks caught him at his daring labour, and inflicted upon him a severe whipping; but neither did this subdue his thirst to become an artist.

The perplexity of Salvator’s parents was now very great, and they saw no chance of restraining the wayward spirit of their boy but in confiding him to other tutelage; not reflecting that he had displayed talents which it was peculiarly in their own power to direct and foster into a perfection, the result of which might have been their own relief and their child’s happiness. He was, at length, sent to a monastic school; and “Salvatoriello,” the nickname his restlessness and ingenious caprices had gained him, was thenceforth clad in the long gown of a monk, in common with his young schoolfellows. Repulsive as confinement might prove to his vehement disposition, it was at this period that his mind received the solid culture which enabled it to produce claims to literary distinction at a future time. So long as his lessons were confined to Homer, Horace, and Sallust, he manifested no disquiet in his restraint; but when the day came that he must enter on the subtleties of the scholastic philosophy, all his youthful rebelliousness against the forced and injudicious religious tasks imposed on him by his own parents rose up, and he was expelled the school of the monastery for contumacy. The grief of his father and mother, at beholding their boy, in his sixteenth year, thus sent back in disgrace to his indigent home, may be easily conjectured. Yet this heavier disaster does not, in the slightest degree, appear to have opened their eyes, as to the want of judgment they had displayed in their child’s training: the mother grew increasingly passionate in her desire that “Salvatoriello” should be a churchman; and the father resolved, let the cast-out schoolboy take whatever stamp he might, he should not, by his parents’ help, become a painter.

The occurrence of his eldest sister’s marriage to Francanzani, a painter of considerable genius, opened, in another year, the way for Salvator’s instruction in the art to which nature so strongly inclined him. He had already essayed his powers in poetry and music, having composed several lyrics, and set them to airs dictated by his own imagination, feeling, and taste. These were great favourites with the crowds of Naples, and were daily sung by the women who sat to knit in the sunshine. His devotion to the composition of canzonets was, however, ardently shared with the novel lessons of the studio, as soon as the house of his sister’s husband was opened to him for an asylum from the harshness of his parental home. To the teaching of Francanzani he speedily added the copying of nature in the wilds of his truant childhood: and often, when he returned from the mountains with his primed paper full of sketches, his teacher would pat him on the shoulder encouragingly, and say, “Rub on, rub on, Salvatoriello—that is good!” The great painter often related to his friends, in the after days of his fame, what energy he had derived from those simple words of friendly approbation.

Having learnt the elements of his profession, the young Rosa set out to take his giro, according to the custom of all young painters at that period. He did not, however, take his way through the cities of Italy most famous for their galleries of Art, like other youthful artists; but yielding to the bent of his natural genius struck up, adventurously, into the mountains of the Abruzzi and the wilds of Calabria. Here he was taken prisoner by banditti, and suffered great hardships. Whether he escaped from them, or was, in the end, liberated, is not clear; but when he returned to Naples, his mind was full of the wondrous pictures of wild volcanic and forest scenery, and striking forms and features of mountain robbers, which he, forthwith, began to realise.

New and more severe difficulties than he had ever yet had to encounter fell to his lot, at his return. His father died in his arms; a few days after, his brother-in-law, Francanzani, was overwhelmed with poverty, and Salvator was left to struggle for the support of his mother and sisters. Yet his strong spirit did not sink. He laid aside music and poetry, and although too poor to purchase canvas, began to depict his wild conceptions on primed paper; and, at night, used to steal out and sell his sketches to some shrewd Jew chapman for a vile price. His gains were pitiful, but he strove, by redoubled industry, to swell their amount for a sufficient supply of the family’s necessities.

An accident served to bring into notice the genius whose high merit had hitherto met with no public recognition. Lanfranco, the artist who, with the courtly Spagnuoletto, shared the patronage of the rich in Naples, stopped his equipage, one day, in the “Street of Charity,” and called for a picture to be brought to him which arrested his eye in the collection of one of the rivendotori, or second-hand dealers. It was a masterly sketch of “Hagar in the Wilderness,” and the obscure name of “Salvatoriello” was subscribed at the corner of it. Lanfranco gave orders that all sketches which could be found bearing that name should be bought for him. Rosa immediately raised his prices; but, although this high acknowledgment of his merit brought him the acquaintance of several influential names in his profession, he was speedily so deeply disgusted with the jealousy and envy of others, that he strapped all his fortune to his back, and at the age of twenty set out on foot to seek better treatment at Rome. There he studied energetically, worshipping, above all, the kindred genius of Michael Angelo; but meeting with a renewal of neglect, and taking a fever from the malaria, once more returned to Naples. The misery in which his family was plunged was still greater than at his departure; and another period of keen life-combat followed. This repeated struggle did not depress him; but it gave his mind that bitter tendency which he afterwards displayed in his poetical “Satires.”

At twenty-four, under the humble patronage of a domestic of the Cardinal Brancaccia, he again went to Rome; and through the friendship of the same plain acquaintance had a large and lonely apartment provided for him, as a studio, in the cardinal’s palace. Dependence nevertheless revolted his lofty spirit, and he again returned to Naples, but engaged to send his pictures to his friend for public exposure in Rome. His “Prometheus” was the first of his pictures exhibited at one of the annual shows in the Pantheon, and the public voice adjudged it to be the greatest. He obeyed a renewed invitation to Rome, but it was still to meet with disappointment. The next carnival furnished his versatile genius with an occasion for winning, by humorous stratagem, the attention denied to his more sterling merit. He put on a mask, and played the charlatan and improvisatore in the public streets, among a crowd of such exhibitors as abound in Rome at such seasons; but soon eclipsed them all by the splendour of his wit. Curiosity was raised to the highest pitch, at the close of the carnival, respecting the identity of this unequalled exhibitor; and when he was proclaimed to be the painter of the “Prometheus” the admiration was unbounded. Salvator, now, for some successive months, gave himself up to conversaziones, wherever invited; and there, by his wit, his lute, and canzonettes, paved the way for his greater acceptance as a painter.

Jealousy, in that age of corrupt patronage and jealous artists, still pursued him; but his genius, thenceforth, rose above all opposition. His landscapes were in every palace, and he soon rose to affluence. Yet the remainder of his life was chequered with difficulties into which the vehemence of his nature perpetually plunged him. That nature was unsubduable amidst all vicissitudes. The magnificent creations of his “Socrates swallowing Poison,” “Purgatory,” “Prodigal Son,” “St. Jerome,” “Babilonia,” and “Conspiracy of Catiline,” with an almost innumerable catalogue of lesser pieces, flowed from his pencil, during a life alternately marked by devotion to each of the sister Arts, and, during one portion of it, to political contest—for he flew to Naples, with all the ardour of patriotism, and joined Masaniello, in his sincere but short-lived effort to rescue his countrymen from a crushing despotism. His participation in the celebrated fisherman’s conspiracy placed him in danger of the Inquisition on his return to Rome; but, on retiring to Florence, he became the favourite of the Grand Duke, Cosmo the Third, and entered on a career of opulent success, which attended him to the end of life.

The life-passages of Salvator Rosa, by injudicious thwarting of his nature, were rendered thorny beyond those of the great majority of men, and the amazing versatility of his talents, combined with almost volcanic ardour of spirit, defied common rules; but the strength of his judgment so completely gave him the victory over influences that might have destroyed him, as to lead him to seek the memorable “Triumphs of Perseverance” he secured by his supreme devotion to that Art, in which there is reckoned no greater name for sublimity and originality, and none of greater general excellence than those of Raffaelle and Michael Angelo. Let the brief sketch of Salvator Rosa be compared with the much more “even tenor” of the life of another, that it may be seen how clearly, in spite of contrast, many of the same valuable lessons are deducible from it.

BENJAMIN WEST,

An American Quaker by birth, was the youngest of a family of ten children, and was nurtured with great tenderness and care; a prophecy uttered by a preacher of the sect having impressed his parents with the belief that their child would, one day, become a great man. In what way the prophecy was to be realised they had formed to themselves no definite idea; but an incident, which occurred in young West’s sixth year, led his father to ponder deeply as to whether its fulfilment were not begun. Benjamin, being left to watch the infant child of one of his relatives while it was left asleep in the cradle, had drawn its smiling portrait, in red and black ink, there being paper and pens on the table in the room. This spontaneous and earliest essay of his genius was so strikingly truthful that it was instantly and rapturously recognised by the family. During the next year he drew flowers and birds with pen and ink; but a party of Indians, coming on a visit to the neighbourhood, taught him to prepare and use red and yellow ochre and indigo. Soon after, he heard of camel-hair pencils, and the thought seized him that he could make use of a substitute, so he plucked hairs from the tail of a black cat that was kept in the house, fashioned his new instrument, and began to lay on colours, much to his boyish satisfaction. In the course of another year a visitant friend, having seen his pictures, sent him a box of colours, oils, and pencils, with some pieces of prepared canvas and a few engravings. Benjamin’s fascination was now indescribable. The seductions presented by his new means of creation were irresistible, and he played truant from school for some days, stealing up into a garret, and devoting the time, with all the throbbing wildness of delight, to painting. The schoolmaster called, the truant was sought, and found in the garret by his mother. She beheld what he had done; and instead of reprehending him fell on his neck and kissed him, with tears of ecstatic fondness. How different from the training experienced by the poor, persecuted and tormented “Salvatoriello!” What wonder, that the fiery-natured Italian afterwards drew human nature with a severe hand; and how greatly might his vehement disposition have been softened, had his nurture resembled that of the child of these gentle Quakers!

The friend who had presented him with the box of colours some time after took him to Philadelphia, where he was introduced to a painter, saw his pictures, the first he had ever seen except his own, and wept with emotion at the sight of them. Some books on Art increased his attachment to it; and some presents enabled him to purchase materials for further exercises. Up to his eighteenth year, strange as the facts seem, he received no instruction in painting, had to carve out his entire course himself, and yet advanced so far as to create his first historical picture, “The Death of Socrates,” and to execute portraits for several persons of taste. His father, however, had never yet assisted him; for, with all his ponderings on the preacher’s prophecy, he could not shake off some doubts respecting the lawfulness of the profession of a painter, to which no one of the conscientious sect had ever yet devoted himself. A counsel of “Friends” was therefore called together, and the perplexed father stated his difficulty and besought their advice. After deep consideration, their decision was unanimous that the youth should be permitted to pursue the objects to which he was now both by nature and habit attached; and young Benjamin was called in, and solemnly set apart by the primitive brethren for his chosen profession. The circumstances of this consecration were so remarkable, that, coupled with the early prophecy already mentioned, they made an impression on West’s mind that served to strengthen greatly his resolution for advancement in Art, and for devotion to it as his supreme object through life.

On the death of his affectionate mother he finally left his father’s house, and, not being yet nineteen, set up in Philadelphia as a portrait-painter, and soon found plenty of employment. For the three or four succeeding years he worked unremittingly, making his second essay at historic painting within that term, but labouring at portraits, chiefly with the view of winning the means to enable himself to visit Italy. His desire was at length accomplished, a merchant of New York generously presenting him with fifty guineas as an additional outfit, and thus assisting him to reach Rome without the uneasiness that would have arisen from straitness of means in a strange land.

The appearance of a Quaker artist of course caused great excitement in the metropolis of Art; crowds of wonderers were formed around him; but, when in the presence of the great relics of Grecian genius, he was the wildest wonderer of all. “How like a young Mohawk!” he exclaimed, on first seeing the “Apollo Belvidere,” its life-like perfection bringing before his mind, instantaneously, the free forms of the desert children of Nature in his native America. The excitement of little more than one month in Rome threw him into a dangerous illness, from which it was some time before he recovered. He visited the other great cities of Italy, and also painted and exhibited two great historical pictures, which were successful, ere the three years were completed which he stayed in that country. He would have returned to Philadelphia; but a letter from his father recommended him first to visit England.

West’s success in London was speedily so decided, that he gave up all thoughts of returning to America. For thirty years of his life he was chiefly employed in executing, for King George the Third, the great historical and scriptural pictures which now adorn Windsor Palace and the Royal Chapel. After the abrupt termination of the commission given him by the King, he continued still to be a laborious painter. His pictures in oil amount to about four hundred, and many of them are of very large dimensions and contain a great number of figures. Among these may be mentioned, for its wide celebrity, the representation of “Christ healing the Sick,” familiar to every visitor of the National Gallery. If polished taste be more highly charmed with other treasures there, the heart irresistibly owns the excellence of this great realisation by the child of the American Quaker. He received three thousand guineas for this picture, and his rewards were of the most substantial kind ever after his settlement in England. He was also appointed President of the Royal Academy, on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and held the office at his own death, in the eighty-second year of his age.

Though exposed to no opposition from envy or jealousy at any time of his career, and though encouraged in his childish bent, and helped by all who knew him and had the power to help him, without Perseverance of the most energetic character Benjamin West would not have continued without pattern or instruction to labour on to excellence, nor would he have sustained his prosperity so firmly, or increased its productiveness so wondrously.

CHAPTER IV.
MUSICIANS.

HANDEL.

The time may come when Music will be universally recognised as the highest branch of Art; as the most powerful divulger of the intellect’s profoundest conceptions and noblest aspirations; as the truest interpreter of the heart’s loves and hates, joys and woes; as the purest, least sensual, disperser of mortal care and sorrow; as the all-glorious tongue in which refined, good, and happy beings can most perfectly utter their thoughts and emotions. Perhaps this cannot be till the realm of the physical world be more fully subdued by man. The human faculties have hitherto been, necessarily, too much occupied with the struggle for existence, for security against want and protection from the elements, with the invention of better and swifter modes of locomotion and of transmission of thought, to advance to a general apprehension of the superior nature of Music. “Practical men”—men fitted for the discharge of the world’s present duties by the manifestation of the readiest and fullest capacity for meeting its present wants—are, naturally and justly, those whom the world most highly values in its current state of civilisation.

This necessary preference of the practical to the ideal may lead many, who cannot spare a thought from the every-day concerns of the world, to deem hastily that the stern and energetic quality of Perseverance cannot be fully developed in the character of a devotee to Music. But, dismissing the greater question just hinted at, it may be replied that it is the evident tendency of man to form the lightest pleasures of the mind, as well as his gravest discoveries, into what is called “science;” and the lives of numerous musicians show that vast powers of application have been continuously devoted to the elaboration of the rules of harmony, while others have employed their genius as ardently in the creation of melody. These creations, when the symbols are learnt in which they are written, the mind, by its refined exorcism, can enable the voice, or the hand of the instrumental performer, to summon into renewed existence to the end of time. Before symbols were invented and rules constructed, the wealth of Music must necessarily have been restricted to a few simple airs such as the memory could retain and easily reproduce. Perseverance—Perseverance—has guided and sinewed men’s love of the beautiful and powerful in melody and harmony, until, from the simple utterance of a few notes of feeling, rudely conveyed from sire to son by renewed utterance, Music has grown up into a science, dignified and adorned by profound theorists, like Albrechtsberger, and by sublime creative geniuses, such as the majestic Handel and sweetest Haydn and universal Mozart and sublime Beethoven.

For their successful encounter of the great “battle of life,” a hasty thinker would also judge that the extreme susceptibility of musicians must unfit them; extreme susceptibility, which is, perhaps, more peculiarly their inheritance than it is that even of poets. Yet the records of the lives of musical men prove, equally with the biographies of artists, authors, and linguists, that true genius, whatever may be the object of its high devotion, is unsubduable by calamity and opposition. The young inquirer will find ample proof of this in various biographies: our limits demand that we confine ourselves to one musician, as an exemplar of the grand attribute of Perseverance.

GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL,

The first of the four highest names in Music, was the son of a physician of Halle, in Lower Saxony, and was designed by his father for the study of the civil law. The child’s early attachment to music—for he could play well on the old instrument called a clavichord before he was seven years old—was, therefore, witnessed by his parent with great displeasure. Unable to resist the dictates of his nature, the boy used to climb up into a lonely garret, shut himself up, and practise, chiefly when the family were asleep. He attached himself so diligently to the practice of his clavichord, that it enabled him, without ever having received the slightest instruction, to become an expert performer on the harpsichord. It was at this early age that the resolution of young Handel was manifested in the singular incident often told of his childhood. His father set out in a chaise to go and visit a relative who was valet-de-chambre to the Duke of Saxe-Weisenfels, but refused to admit the boy as a partner in his journey. After the carriage, however, the boy ran, kept closely behind it for some miles, unconquerable in his determination to proceed, and was at last taken into the chaise by his father. When arrived, it was impossible to keep him from the harpsichords in the duke’s palace; and, in the chapel, he contrived to get into the organ-loft, and began to play with such skill on an instrument he had never before touched, that the duke, overhearing him, was surprised, asked who he was, and then used every argument to induce the father to make the child a musician, and promised to patronise him.

Overcome by the reasonings of this influential personage, the physician gave up the thought of thwarting his child’s disposition: and, at their return to Halle, placed young Handel under the tuition of Zackau, the organist of the cathedral. The young “giant”—a designation afterwards so significantly bestowed upon him by Pope—grew up so rapidly into mastery of the instrument, that he was soon able to conduct the music of the cathedral in the organist’s absence; and, at nine years old, composed church services both for voices and instruments. At fourteen he excelled his master; and his father resolved to send him, for higher instruction, to a musical friend who was a professor at Berlin. The opera then flourished in that city more highly than in any other in Germany; the king marked the precocious genius of the young Saxon, and offered to send him into Italy for still more advantageous study: but his father, who was now seventy years old, would not consent to his leaving his “fatherland.”

Handel next went to Hamburgh, where the opera was only little inferior to Berlin. His father died soon after; and, although but in his fourteenth year, the noble boy entered the orchestra as a salaried performer, took scholars, and thus not only secured his own independent maintenance, but sent frequent pecuniary help to his mother. How worshipfully the true children of Genius blend their convictions of moral duty with the untiring aim to excel!

On the resignation of Keser, composer to the opera, and first harpsichord in Hamburgh, a contest for the situation took place between Handel and the person who had hitherto been Keser’s second. Handel’s decided superiority of skill secured him the office, although he was but fifteen years of age; but his success had nearly cost him his life, for his disappointed antagonist made a thrust with a sword at his breast, where a music book Handel had buttoned under his coat prevented the entrance of the weapon. Numerous sonatas, three operas, and other admired pieces, were composed during Handel’s superintendence of the Hamburgh opera; but, at nineteen, being invited by the brother of the Grand Duke, he left that city for Tuscany. He received high patronage at Florence, and afterwards visited Venice, Rome, and Naples, residing, for shorter or longer periods, in each city, producing numerous operas, cantatas, and other pieces, reaping honours and rewards, and becoming acquainted with Corelli, Scarletti, and other musicians; till, after spending six years in Italy, he returned to Germany.

Through the friendship of Baron Kilmansegg he was introduced to the Elector of Hanover, was made “chapel-master” to the court, and had a pension conferred upon him of fifteen hundred crowns a year. In order to secure the services of the “great musician,” as he was acknowledged now to be, the King provided that he should be allowed, at will, to be absent for a year at a time. The very next year he took advantage of this provision and set out for England, having first visited his old master Zackau, and his aged and blind mother for the last time—still true, amidst the dazzling influences of his popularity, to the most correct emotions of the heart!

His opera of “Rinaldo” was performed with great success during his stay in this country, and after one year he returned to Hanover; yet his predilection for England, above every other country he had seen, was so strong, that after the lapse of another year he was again in London. The peace of Utrecht occurred a few months after his second arrival, and having composed a Te Deum and Jubilate in celebration of it, and thereby won such favour that Queen Anne was induced to solicit his continuance in England, and to confer upon him a pension of £200 a year, Handel resolved to forfeit his Hanoverian pension, and made up his mind to remain in London. But, two years afterwards, the Queen died, and the great musician was now in deep dread that his slight of the Elector’s favours would be resented by that personage on becoming King of England. George the First, indeed, expressed himself very indignantly respecting Handel’s conduct; but the Baron Kilmansegg again rendered his friend good service. He instructed Handel to compose music of a striking character, to be played on the water, as the King took amusement with a gay company. Handel created his celebrated “Water Music,” chiefly adapted for horns; and the effect was so striking that the King was delighted. Kilmansegg seized the opportunity, and sued for the restoration of his friend to favour. The boon was richly obtained, for Handel’s pension was raised to £400 per annum, and he was appointed musical teacher to the young members of the Royal Family.

Prosperity seemed to have selected Handel, up to this period, for her favourite; but severe reverses were coming. The opera in this country had hitherto been conducted on worn-out and absurd principles, and a large body of the people of taste united to promote a reform. Rival opera-houses (as at the present period) were opened; and during nine years Handel superintended one establishment. It was one perpetual quarrel: when his opponents, by any change, had become so feeble that he seemed on the eve of a final triumph, one or other of the singers in his own company would grow unmanageable: Senesino was the chief of these, and Handel’s refusal to accept the mediation of several of the nobility, and be reconciled to him, caused the establishment over which he presided to be finally broken up. The great powers of Farinelli, the chief singer at the rival house, to whom an equal could not then be found in Europe, also largely contributed to Handel’s ruin. He withdrew, with a loss of ten thousand pounds; his constitution seemed completely broken with the years of harassment he had experienced; and he retired to the baths of Aix-la-Chapelle, scarcely with the hope, on the part of his friends, that they would ever see him in England again.

His paralysis and other ailments, however, disappeared with wondrous suddenness; after he reached the medical waters, he recovered full health and vigour, and, at the age of fifty-two, returned to England with the manly resolve to struggle till he had paid his debts, and once more retrieved a fortune equal to his former condition. It was now that the whole strength of the man was tried. He produced his “Alexander’s Feast;” but, in spite of its acknowledged merit, the nobility whom he had offended would not patronise him. He produced other pieces, but they failed from the same cause. He then bent his mighty genius on the creation of newer and grander attractions than had ever been yet introduced in music, and produced his unequalled “Messiah,” which was performed at Covent Garden during Lent. Yet the combination against him was maintained, until he sunk into deeper difficulties than ever.

Unsubdued by the failures which had accumulated around him during the five years which had elapsed since his return to England, he set out for Ireland, at fifty-seven, and had his “Messiah” performed in Dublin, for the benefit of the city prison. His success was instantaneous; several performances took place for his own benefit, and the next year he renewed the war against Fortune, in London, by producing his magnificent “Samson,” and having it performed, together with his “Messiah,” at Covent Garden. The first renewed performance of the “Messiah” was for the benefit of the Foundling Hospital; and the funds of that philanthropic institution were thenceforth annually benefited by the repetition of that sublime Oratorio. Prejudice was now subdued, the “mighty master” triumphed, and his darling wish for honourable independence was fully realised; for more than he had lost was retrieved.

Handel’s greatest works, like those of Haydn, were produced in his advanced years. His “Jephthah” was produced at the age of sixty-seven. Paralysis returned upon him at fifty-nine, and gutta serena—Milton’s memorable affliction—reduced him to “total eclipse” of sight some years after: but he submitted cheerfully to his lot, after brief murmuring, and continued, by dictation to an amanuensis, the creation of new works, and the performance of his Oratorios to the last. He conducted his last Oratorio but a week before his death, and died, as he had always desired to do, on Good Friday, at the age of seventy-five. He was interred, with distinguished honours, among the great and good of that country which had naturalised him, in Westminster Abbey. May the sight of his monument inspire the young reader with an unquenchable zeal to emulate, in whatever path wisdom may direct life to be passed, the moral and intellectual excellencies of this glorious disciple of Perseverance!

CHAPTER V.
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERERS AND MECHANICIANS.

If great proficiency in tongues, skill to depicture human thought and character, and enthusiastic devotion to art, he worthy of our admiration, the toiling intelligences who have taught us to subdue the physical world, and to bring it to subserve our wants and wishes, claim scarcely less homage. Art and literature could never have sprung into existence if men had remained mere strugglers for life, in their inability to contend with the elements of nature, because ignorant of its laws; and an acquaintance with the languages of tribes merely barbarous would have been but a worthless kind of knowledge. To scientific discoverers—the pioneers of civilization, who make the world worth living in, and render man’s tenancy of it more valuable by every successive step of discovery—our primary tribute of admiration and gratitude seems due. They are the grand revealers of the physical security, health, plenty, and means of locomotion, which give the mind vantage-ground for its reach after higher refinement and purer pleasures.

Should the common observation be urged, that many of the most important natural discoveries have resulted from accident, let it be remembered, that, but for the existence of some of our race, more attentive than the rest, Nature might still have spoken in vain, as she had undoubtedly done to thousands before she found an intelligent listener, in each grand instance of physical discovery. Grant all the truth that may attach to the observation just quoted, and yet the weighty reflection remains—that it was only by men who, in the sailor’s phrase, were “on the look-out,” that the revelations of Nature were caught. The natural laws were in operation for ages, but were undiscovered, because men guessed rather than inquired, or lived on without heed to mark, effort to comprehend, industry to register, and, above all, without perseverance to proceed from step to step in discovery, till entire truths were learnt. That these have been the attributes of those to whom we owe the rich boon of science, a rapid survey of some of their lives will manifest.

SIR HUMPHREY DAVY,

The son of a wood carver of Penzance, was apprenticed by his father to a surgeon and apothecary of that town, and afterwards with another of the same profession, but gave little satisfaction to either of his masters. Natural philosophy had become his absorbing passion; and, even while a boy, he dreamt of future fame as a chemist. The rich diversity of minerals in Cornwall offered the finest field for his empassioned inquiries; and he was in the habit of rambling alone for miles, bent upon his yearning investigation into the wonders of Nature. In his master’s garret, and with the assistance of such a laboratory as he could form for himself from the phials and gallipots of the apothecary’s shop, and the pots and pans of the kitchen, he brought the mineral and other substances he collected to the test. The surgeon of a French vessel wrecked on the coast gave him a case of instruments, among which was one that he contrived to fashion into an air-pump, and he was soon enabled to extend the range of his experiments; but the proper use of many of the instruments was unknown to him.

A fortunate accident brought him the acquaintanceship of Davies Gilbert, an eminent man of science. Young Davy was leaning one day on the gate of his father’s house, when a friend, who was passing by with Mr. Gilbert, said, “That is young Davy, who is so fond of chemistry.” Mr. Gilbert immediately entered into conversation with the youth, and offered him assistance in his studies. By the kind offices of his new friend he was afterwards introduced to Dr. Beddoes, who had formed a pneumatic institution at Bristol, and was in want of a superintendent for it. At the age of nineteen Davy received this appointment, and immediately began the splendid course of chemical discovery which has rendered his name immortal as one of the greatest benefactors as well as geniuses of the race.

At twenty-one he published his “Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide, and its respiration.” The singularly intoxicating quality of this gas when breathed was unknown before Davy’s publication of his experiments in this treatise. The attention it drew upon him from the scientific world issued in his being invited to leave Bristol, and take the chair of chemistry which had just been established in the London Royal Institution. Although but a youth of two-and-twenty, his lectures in the metropolis were attended by breathless crowds of men of science and title; and, in another year, he was also appointed Professor of Chemistry to the Board of Agriculture. His lectures in that capacity greatly advanced chemical knowledge, and were published at the request of the Board. When twenty-five he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and, on the death of Sir Joseph Banks, was made its President by a unanimous vote. It was in the delivery of his Bakerian lectures, before this learned body, that he laid the foundation of the new science called “electro-chemistry.” The Italians, Volta and Galvani, had some years before discovered and made known the surprising effects produced on the muscles of dead animals by two metals being brought into contact with each other. Davy showed that the metals underwent chemical changes, not by what had been hitherto termed “electricity,” but by affinity; and that the same effects might be produced by one of the metals, provided a fluid were brought to act on its surface in a certain manner. The composition and decomposition of substances by the application of the galvanic energy, as displayed in the experiments of the young philosopher, filled the minds of men of science with wonder.

His grand discoveries of the metallic bases of the alkalies and earths, of the various properties of the gases, and of the connexion of electricity and magnetism, continued to absorb the attention of the scientific world through succeeding years; but a simple invention, whereby human life was rescued from danger in mines, the region whence so great a portion of the wealth of England is derived, placed him before the minds of millions, learned and illiterate, as one of the guardians of man’s existence. This was the well-known “safety lamp,” an instrument which is provided at a trifling expense, and with which the toiling miner can enter subterranean regions unpierceable before, without danger of explosion of the “fire-damp,” so destructive, before this discovery, to the lives of thousands. The humblest miner rejects any other name but that of “Davy Lamp” for this apparently insignificant protector; and ventures, with it in his hand, cheerfully and boldly into the realms of darkness, where the “black diamonds” lie so many fathoms beneath the surface of the earth, and, not seldom, under the bed of the sea. The proprietors of the northern coal mines presented the discoverer with a service of plate of the value of £2000, at a public dinner, as a manifestation of their sense of his merits. He was the first person knighted by the Prince Regent, afterwards King George IV., and was a few years after raised to the baronetage. Such honours served to mark the estimation in which he was held by those who had it in their power to confer them; but Davy’s enduring distinctions, like those of the unequalled Newton, are derived from the increase of power over nature, which he has secured for millions yet unborn, by the force of his genius, girt up, tirelessly by Perseverance, till its grand triumphs were won.

From this hasty survey of the magnificent course of one of the great penetrators into the secrets of nature, and preservers of human life, let us cast a glance on the struggles of one who has been the means of multiplying man’s hands and fingers—to use a strong figure—of opening up sources of employment for millions, and of showing the road to wealth for thousands.

SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT,

Was a poor barber till the age of thirty, and then changed his trade for that of an itinerant dealer in hair. Nothing is known of any early attachment he had for mechanical inventions; but, about four years after he had given up shaving beards, he is found enthusiastically bent on the project of discovering the “perpetual motion,” and, in his quest for a person to make him some wheels, gets acquainted with a clockmaker of Warrington, named Kay. This individual had also been for some time bent on the construction of new mechanic powers, and, either to him alone, or to the joint wit of the two, is to be attributed their entry on an attempt at Preston, in Lancashire, to erect a novel machine for spinning cotton-thread. The partnership was broken, and the endeavour given up, in consequence of the threats uttered by the working spinners, who dreaded that such an invention would rob them of bread, by lessening the necessity for human labour; and Arkwright alone, bent on the accomplishment of the design, went to Nottingham. A firm of bankers in that town made him some advances of capital, with a view to partake in the benefits arising from his invention; but, as Arkwright’s first machines did not answer his end efficiently, they grew weary of the connection, and refused further supplies. Unshaken in his own belief of future success, Arkwright now took his models to a firm of stocking weavers, one of whom, Mr. Strutt—a name which has also become eminent in the manufacturing enterprise of the country—was a man of intelligence, and of some degree of acquaintance with science. This firm entered into a partnership with Arkwright, and, he having taken out a patent for his invention, they built a spinning-mill, to be driven by horse-power, and filled it with frames. Two years afterwards they built another mill at Cromford, in Derbyshire, moved by water-power; but it was in the face of losses and discouragements that they thus pushed their speculations. During five years they sunk twelve thousand pounds, and his partners were often on the point of giving up the scheme. But Arkwright’s confidence only increased by failure, and, by repeated essays at contrivance, he finally and most triumphantly succeeded. He lived to realise an immense fortune, and his present descendant is understood to be one of the wealthiest persons in the kingdom. The weight of cotton imported now is three hundred times greater than it was a century ago; and its manufacture, since the invention of Arkwright, has become the greatest in England.

Origin of the Stocking-loom.

THE REV. EDMUND CARTWRIGHT, D.D.,

Must be mentioned as the meritorious individual who completed the discovery of cotton manufacture, by the invention of the power-loom. His tendency towards mechanical contrivances had often displayed itself in his youth; but his love of literature, and settlement in the church, led him to lay aside such pursuits as trifles, and it was not till his fortieth year that a conversation occurred which roused his dormant faculty. His own account of it must be given, not only for the sake of its striking character, but for the powerful negative it puts upon the hackneyed observation, that almost all great and useful discoveries have resulted from “accident.” The narrative first appeared in the “Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica.”

“Happening to be at Matlock, in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Arkwright’s spinning-machinery. One of the company observed that, as soon as Arkwright’s patent expired, so many mills would be erected, and so much cotton spun, that hands would never be found to weave it. To this observation I replied, that Arkwright must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving-mill. This brought on a conversation upon the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable, and, in defence of their opinion, they adduced arguments which I was certainly incompetent to answer, or even to comprehend, being totally ignorant of the subject, having never at the time seen a person weave. I controverted, however, the impracticability of the thing by remarking that there had been lately exhibited in London an automaton figure which played at chess. ‘Now, you will not assert, gentlemen,’ said I, ‘that it is more difficult to construct a machine that shall weave, than one that shall make all the variety of moves that are required in that complicated game.’ Some time afterwards, a particular circumstance recalling this conversation to my mind, it struck me that, as in plain weaving, according to the conception I then had of the business, there could be only three movements, which were to follow each other in succession, there could be little difficulty in producing and repeating them. Full of these ideas, I immediately employed a carpenter and smith to carry them into effect. As soon as the machine was finished I got a weaver to put in the warp, which was of such materials as sail-cloth is usually made of. To my great delight, a piece of cloth, such as it was, was the produce. As I had never before turned my thoughts to mechanism, either in theory or practice, nor had seen a loom at work, nor knew anything of its construction, you will readily suppose that my first loom must have been a most rude piece of machinery. The warp was laid perpendicularly; the reed fell with a force of at least half-a-hundred weight; and the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a congreve rocket. In short, it required the strength of two powerful men to work the machine, at a slow rate, and only for a short time. Conceiving, in my simplicity, that I had accomplished all that was required, I then secured what I thought a most valuable property by a patent, 4th of April, 1785. This being done, I then condescended to see how other people wove; and you will guess my astonishment when I compared their easy modes of operation with mine. Availing myself, however, of what I then saw, I made a loom in its general principles nearly as they are now made. But it was not till the year 1787 that I completed my invention, when I took out my last weaving patent, August the 1st of that year.”

Challenged by a manufacturer who came to see his machine, to render it capable of weaving checks or fancy patterns, Dr. Cartwright applied his mind to the discovery, and succeeded so perfectly, that when the manufacturer visited him again some weeks after, the visitor declared he was assisted by something beyond human power. Were these discoveries the fruit of “accident,” or were they attributable to the power of mind, unswervingly bent to attain its object by Perseverance?

Numerous additional inventions in manufactures and agriculture owe their origin to this good, as well as ingenious man, whose mind was so utterly uncorrupted by any sordid passion that he neglected to turn his discoveries to any great pecuniary benefit, even when secured to him by patent. The merchants and manufacturers of Manchester, however, memorialised the Lords of the Treasury in his behalf, during his latter years, and Parliament made him a grant of 10,000l. Dr. Cartwright directed his mind to the steam-engine, among his other thoughts, and told his son, many years before the prophecy was realised, that, if he lived to manhood, he would see both ships and land-carriages moved by steam. From seeing one of his models of a steam-vessel, it is asserted Fulton, then a painter in this country, urged the idea of steam navigation upon his countrymen, on his return to America, until he saw it triumphantly carried out.

The new and vast motive power just mentioned conducts us to another illustrious name in the list of the disciples of Perseverance. Like the names of Newton, Gutenberg the inventor of printing, and a few others, the name to which we allude has claims upon the gratitude of mankind which can never be fully rendered until the entire race participate in the superior civilization it is the certain destiny of these grand discoveries to institute.

JAMES WATT,

Was the son of a small merchant of Greenock, and, on account of his weakly state when a child, was unable at first to enjoy the advantages of school tuition, and was therefore taught chiefly at home. When but six years old he was frequently caught chalking diagrams and solving problems on the hearth; and at fourteen he made a rude electrical machine with his own hands. His aunt, it is related, often chided him for indolence and mischief when he was found playing with the tea-kettle on the fire, watching the steam coming out of the spout, and trying the steam’s force by obstructing its escape; the might of the vaporous element seeming even then to have begun to present itself, unavoidably, to his imagination and understanding. He grew to be an extensive manufacturer of philosophical toys while a boy, and used to increase his pocket-money by standing with them at the college gate, in Glasgow, and vending them to the students as they passed out. At eighteen years of age his father apprenticed him to a mathematical instrument maker in London, but in little more than a year his weak health rendered it necessary to send him home to Scotland.

James Watt—when a Boy—playing With the Tea-kettle.

At twenty-one, although he had received so little instruction in that profession, his skill secured him the appointment of mathematical instrument maker to the college of Glasgow. His appointment, however, was not sufficiently productive to render it worth keeping; and, seven years afterwards, he began to practise as a general engineer, for which diligent study during this term had fitted him. He was soon sought after for almost every undertaking of public improvement; whether for the making of bridges, canals, harbours, or any other engineering design projected in Scotland. But the circumstance of a small model of a steam-engine being sent him to repair, fixed his attention powerfully upon the element which had so often excited the attention of his boyish understanding.

Watt found this model so imperfect, although it was the most perfect then known, that he could with difficulty get it to work. The more he examined it, the more deeply he became convinced that the properties of steam had never been understood; the engine was, in fact, an atmospheric rather than a steam engine. By laborious investigation he ascertained that the evaporation of water proceeded more or less rapidly in proportion to the degree of heat made to enter it; that the process of evaporation was quickened as a greater surface of water was exposed to heat, the quantity of coals necessary to raise a certain weight of water into steam, and the degrees of heat at which water boils under different pressures. He had now learnt enough of the nature of the great element he proposed to wield; but it required long thought and the most exhaustless application of contrivance to give his vaporous giant a fitting body, limbs, joints, and sinews, and so to adapt these as to render them a self-regulating mechanism. Watt found a coadjutor in the person of Boulton, of Birmingham, who was possessed of capital, and the will to embark it; and he now set to work to perfect his discovery, and did perfect it; thus revealing to man the greatest instrument of power yet put into his possession.

“In the present perfect state of the engine,” says Dr. Arnott, in his “Elements of Physics,” “it appears a thing almost endowed with intelligence. It regulates with perfect accuracy and uniformity the number of its strokes in a given time; counting or recording them, moreover, to tell how much work it has done, as a clock records the beats of its pendulum; it regulates the quantity of steam admitted to work; the briskness of the fire; the supply of water to the boiler; the supply of coals to the fire; it opens and shuts its valves with absolute precision as to time and manner; it oils its joints; it takes out any air which may accidentally enter into parts which should be vacuous; and when anything goes wrong, which it cannot itself rectify, it warns its attendants by ringing a bell: yet with all these talents and qualities, and even when exerting the power of six hundred horses, it is obedient to the hand of a child; its aliment is coal, wood, charcoal, or other combustible; it consumes none while idle; it never tires, and wants no sleep; it is not subject to malady when originally well made, and only refuses to work when worn out with age; it is equally active in all climates, and will do work of any kind; it is a water pumper, a miner, a sailor, a cotton-spinner, a weaver, a blacksmith, a miller, &c., &c.; and a small engine, in the character of a steam-pony, may be seen dragging after it on a railroad a hundred tons of merchandise, or a regiment of soldiers, with greater speed than that of our fleetest coaches. It is the king of machines, and a permanent realisation of the genii of Eastern fable, whose supernatural powers were occasionally at the command of man.”

And what was the greater instrument? The mind of Watt, whose powers were manifested by the creation of this grandest physical instrument. Could such a display of resources, such amazing circumspection of the wants and needs of his machine, and wisdom in the adaptation of its members to the perfect working of the whole, have been given forth from an intellect untrained itself to rule, uninured itself to toil, and to toil with certitude for an end, by persevering collection of all that could increase its aptitude to reach it? The estimate of James Watt’s character by the eloquent Lord Jeffrey, will afford a weighty answer.

“Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt was an extraordinary, and, in many respects, a wonderful man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and such varied and exact information—had read so much, or remembered what he had read so accurately and well. He had infinite quickness of apprehension, a prodigious memory, and a certain rectifying and methodising power of understanding, which extracted something precious out of all that was presented to it. His stores of miscellaneous knowledge were immense, and yet less astonishing than the command he had at all times over them. It seemed as if every subject that was casually started in conversation had been that which he had been last occupied in studying and exhausting; such was the copiousness, the precision, the admirable clearness of the information which he poured out upon it without effort or hesitation. Nor was this promptitude and compass of knowledge confined in any degree to the studies connected with his ordinary pursuits. That he should have been minutely and extensively skilled in chemistry and the arts, and in most of the branches of physical science might, perhaps, have been conjectured; but it could not have been inferred from his usual occupations, and, probably, is not generally known, that he was curiously learned in many branches of antiquity, metaphysics, medicine, and etymology, and perfectly at home in all the details of architecture, music, and law. He was well acquainted, too, with most of the modern languages, and familiar with their most recent literature. Nor was it at all extraordinary to hear the great mechanician and engineer detailing and expounding, for hours together, the metaphysical theories of the German logicians, or criticising the measures or the matter of the German poetry.

“His astonishing memory was aided, no doubt, in a great measure, by a still higher and rarer faculty—by his power of digesting and arranging in its proper place all the information he received, and of casting aside and rejecting, as it were instinctively, whatever was worthless or immaterial. Every conception that was suggested to his mind seemed instantly to take its place among its other rich furniture, and to be condensed into the smallest and most convenient form. He never appeared, therefore, to be at all encumbered or perplexed with the verbiage of the dull books he perused, or the idle talk to which he listened, but to have at once extracted, by a kind of intellectual alchemy, all that was worthy of attention, and to have reduced it for his own use to its true value and to its simplest form. And thus it often happened that a great deal more was learned, from his brief and vigorous account of the theories and arguments of tedious writers, than an ordinary student could have derived from the most faithful study of the originals; and that errors and absurdities became manifest from the mere clearness and plainness of his statement of them, which might have deluded and perplexed most of his hearers without that invaluable assistance.”

Such was the activity, industry, discipline, and perseverance in acquirement, of the mind which gave to the world its greatest physical transformer—the instrument which is changing the entire civilization of the world, “doing the work of multitudes, overcoming the difficulties of depth, distance, minuteness, magnitude, wind, and tide; exhibiting stranger wonders than those of romance or magic; annihilating time and space; giving wings even to thought, and sending knowledge like light through the human universe; most mighty, with power that Watt knew not of, and with more than we know, for futurity. The discovery of America,” says the same eloquent writer, W. J. Fox, in his “Lectures to the Working Classes,” “was of matter to be worked upon: this is power to work upon the world.”

COLUMBUS,

Starts before the mind with the enunciation of the sentence just quoted. He whose indomitable perseverance carried his mutinous sailors onward—and onward—across the dreary Atlantic, in a frail bark, until fidelity to his own convictions issued in the magnificent proof of their verity, the discovery of the new world. But our space demands that we pass to the incomparable name which towers, alone, above that of James Watt, in the world’s list of the scientific benefactors of mankind; and, perhaps, above all human names in its peerless excellence.

Return of Columbus.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON,

It is so well known, as scarcely to need repeating here, displayed his wondrous and incontrollable tendency for scientific inquiry in boyhood. In him, too, as in the minds of almost all philosophical discoverers, was evinced the faculty for mechanical contrivance, as well as acuteness for demonstration. The anecdotes of his boyish invention, of his windmill with a mouse for the miller, his water-clock, carriage, and sun-dials, and of his kites and paper lanterns, are familiar. His mother having been persuaded, by an intelligent relative, to give him up from agricultural cares, to which his genius could not be tied down, he was sent to Cambridge, and entered Trinity College in his eighteenth year. He proceeded, at once, to the study of “Descartes’ Geometry,” regarding “Euclid’s Elements” as containing self-evident truths, when he had gone through the titles of the propositions. Yet he afterwards regretted this neglect of the rigid method of demonstration, in the outset, as a great mistake, and wished he had not attached himself so closely to modes of solution by algebra. He successively studied, and wrote commentaries on, “Wallis’s Arithmetic of Infinities,” “Saunderson’s Logic,” and “Kepler’s Optics;” and, for testing the doctrines of the latter science, bought a prism, and made numerous experiments with it. While but a very young man, Dr. Isaac Barrow, the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, gathered hints of new truths from his conversation; and in the publication of his lectures on optics, a few years after, the Doctor acknowledged his obligations to young Newton, and characterised him very highly. A year after this publication, Barrow resigned his chair in favour of Newton, who had recently taken the degree of Master of Arts.

Zeal to acquit himself well in his professorship, a situation so congenial to his mind, led him to devote the most profound attention to the doctrines of light and vision. Realities were what he sought, even in the most abstract pursuits; and he expended considerable manual labour in constructing reflecting telescopes. One of these most valued relics of his mechanical toil is now in the library of the Royal Society. The result of his studies and experiments was not fully known before the publication of his “Opticks,” in his sixty-second year; but it is believed his entire discovery of the nature of light was made many years before, being at length “put together out of scattered papers.” The modesty of this great man was, indeed, the most distinguishing mark of his intellect. Arrogant satisfaction, or pride of superior genius, never sullied his greatness. Even in giving this scientific treasure to the world, he says, he designed to repeat most of his observations with more care and exactness, and to make some new ones for determining the manner how the rays of light are bent in their passage by bodies, for making the fringes of colours with the dark lines between them.

How much are we indebted to the patient perseverance of all the true discoverers in science! This is the quality of mind which ever distinguished them. Rashness and presumption, haste to place his crude theories before the world, and to gain assent to them before proof, on the other hand, are the sure marks of the empiric or pretender. The popular author of “The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties”—a work the young student should carry about with him as a never-failing stimulus to perseverance—thus admirably treats this pre-eminent characteristic of the mind of Newton:—“On some occasions he was wont to say, that, if there was any mental habit or endowment in which he excelled the generality of men, it was that of patience in the examination of the facts and phenomena of his subject. This was merely another form of that teachableness which constituted the character of the man. He loved truth, and wooed her with the unwearying ardour of a lover. Other speculators had consulted the book of nature, principally for the purpose of seeking in it the defence of some favourite theory: partially, therefore, and hastily, as one would consult a dictionary. Newton perused it as a volume altogether worthy of being studied for its own sake. Hence proceeded both the patience with which he traced its characters, and the rich and plentiful discoveries with which the search rewarded him. If he afterwards classified and systematised his knowledge like a philosopher, he had first, to use his own language, gathered it like a child.”

This transcendent combination of qualities, modesty, patient investigation, and indefatigable perseverance, was still more wondrously shown in his superlative discovery of the theory of gravitation, than in his promulgation of the laws of light and vision. The anecdote of his observation of the fall of an apple from a tree, while sitting in his garden, is among the most familiar of all anecdotes to general readers. This incident, it was affirmed by his niece, as well as his friend Dr. Pemberton, occurred in Newton’s twenty-third year; and it instantly raised in him the inquiry whether the infinite universe were not held in order and kept in motion by the very power which drew the apple to the earth.

Galileo had already shown the tendency of all bodies near the earth to gravitate towards its centre, and had calculated and fixed the proportions of their speed in descent to their distance from the earth’s centre. Newton’s general application of Galileo’s rule to the planets of the solar system led him to regard his conjecture as strongly probable. He next devoted his powers to the consideration of its verity, by examining the question whether the force of gravitation by which the planets preserved their orbits and motions round the sun would precisely account for the moon’s preservation of her orbit and motion round the earth. But here the precision of his calculations was frustrated by the imperfect knowledge then existing as to the real measurement of the earth—the gravitating centre of the revolving moon. An empiric would have trumpeted his discovery to the world, in spite of the fact that this faulty admeasurement of the earth, by not affording a true calculation of her gravitating power, failed to lead him to an agreement with truth. Newton was silent for long years, until a degree of the earth’s latitude was ascertained, by actual experiment, to be sixty-nine and a half degrees instead of sixty; he then resumed his calculations, and their result was that he had probed the grand secret of the laws by which worlds move in obedience to the suns which are their centres. It only remains to be observed, as a significant reminder to the young reader, that—though he may assent to the great doctrine of Newton, and consider it to be established, he can never fully know its mathematical and mechanical verity, unless study enables him to read the “Principia”—the work in which the truth of gravitation and its laws are demonstrated. Let it be an additional motive to strive for the ability to read such a book, that in having read it the student has become acquainted with the greatest effort in abstract truth ever yet produced by the human intellect.

The moral as well as the intellectual grandeur of the life of Newton would tempt us to enlarge, but we must merely say, ere we pass on, to the youthful inquirer—read about Newton, think about Newton, and the more you know of him the more will your understanding honour him, your heart love him, and your desire strengthen to approach him in virtue, wisdom, and usefulness.

SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL,

Newton’s greatest successor in astronomical discovery, may claim an equality with him, as a true and noble disciple of perseverance. The son of a poor Hanoverian musician, he was brought over to England, with his father, in the band of the Guards. The father returned to Hanover, but young Herschel remained, and at the age of twenty began to seek his fortune in this country. After many difficulties, wanderings from place to place, as a teacher of music in families, and a few slight glimpses of favour from fortune, he obtained the office of organist in the Octagon Chapel at Bath. The emoluments of this situation, with his receipts from tuition of pupils and other engagements, were such that an ordinary mortal would have been content “to make himself comfortable” upon them, in worldly phrase. But ease and competence were not the object of Herschel’s ambition. In the midst of his wanderings, he had not only striven to acquire a sound knowledge of English, but of Italian, Latin, and Greek, and had entered on the study of counterpoint, in order to make himself a profound theorist, as well as a performer, in music. In order to comprehend the doctrines of harmonics, he found it necessary to get some acquaintance with the mathematics; and this led him at once to the line of study for which his natural genius was best fitted. On his settlement at Bath, he applied himself with ardour to these abstract inquiries, and from the mathematics proceeded to astronomy and optics. Desire to view the wonders of the heavens for himself made him eager to possess a telescope; and, deeming the price of a sufficiently powerful one more than he could afford, he set about making a five-feet reflector, and, after much difficulty, accomplished his task.

Success only stimulated him to bolder attempts, and he rapidly constructed telescopes of seven, ten, and twenty-feet focal distance. Pupils and professional engagements were given up, until he reduced his income to a bare sufficiency, in order that he might have more time for the sciences to which he was now become inseparably attached. So tireless was his perseverance in the fashioning of mirrors for his telescopes, that he would sit to polish them for twelve or fourteen hours, without intermission; and, rather than take his hand from the delicate labour, his sister was requested to put the little food he ate into his mouth. With one of his seven-feet reflectors—the most perfect instrument he had constructed—after having been engaged for a year and a half, at intervals, in a regular survey of the heavens, he at length made the discovery of the planet which, until the very recent discovery of “Neptune” by Leverrier and Adams, was regarded as the most distant member of the solar system. The Astronomer-Royal, Dr. Maskelyne, to whom Herschel made known what he had observed, together with his doubts as to the nature of the new celestial body, first affirmed it to be a comet. In a few months this error was dissipated, and the grandeur of Herschel’s discovery was acknowledged by the whole scientific world. King George the Third, in whose honour he had named the new planet Georgium Sidus (a name which has been very properly set aside for that of Uranus), conferred upon him a pension of £300 a year, that he might be enabled to give up entirely the profession of music; and the son of the poor Hanoverian musician took his station among the first in the highest of the sciences. The order of knighthood was afterwards bestowed upon him; but it could not add to the splendour of the names of either Herschel or Newton.

Inquiry will put the young reader in possession of a knowledge of many other interesting and important discoveries of the persevering Herschel. A few pages must be devoted to a brief mention of others who have benefited mankind by their unremitting labours; and they must be selected from a list where it is difficult to tell a single name unmarked by some peculiar excellence—so abundant in exemplars of meritorious toil is the vast muster-roll of science and mechanical invention.

REAUMUR,

May be instanced as one of the most industrious toilers for the advancement of useful science, though he does not take rank with the unfolders of sublime truths. During a life of seventy-five years he was incessantly engaged in endeavouring to add something to the compass of human knowledge and convenience. At one time he is found pursuing an investigation into the mode of formation and growth of shells, endeavouring to account for the progressive motion of the different kinds of testaceous animals; anon, he publishes a “Natural History of Cobwebs,” evincing a mind capable of the most minute and ingenious search; and is afterwards found showing the facility with which iron and steel may be made magnetic by percussion. For revealing to his countrymen, the French, a method of converting forged or bar-iron into steel, of making steel of what quality they pleased, and of rendering even cast-iron ductile, a pension of twelve hundred livres yearly was settled upon him. This allowance, at his death, was settled, by his own request, on the Academy of Sciences, to be applied to the defraying of expenses for future attempts to improve the arts. He also made known the useful secret of tinning plates of iron, an article for which the French, till his time, had been compelled to resort to Germany.

Continuing his researches into natural science, he showed the means by which marine animals attach themselves to solid bodies; discussed the cause of the electric effect from the stroke of a torpedo; displayed the proof that in crabs, lobsters, and crayfish, nature reproduces a lost claw; set forth a treatise showing, by experiments, that the digestive process is performed in granivorous birds by trituration, and in carnivorous by solution; and published a systematic “History of Insects.” Engaged at one period of life in proving, by experiment, that the less a cord is twisted the stronger it is—that is, that the best mode of uniting the threads of a cord is that which causes their tension to be equal in whatever direction the cord is strained; we find him, at another period, discovering the art of preserving eggs, so that they might be kept fresh and fit for incubation many years, and breeds of fowls propagated at home or abroad, by the eggs being washed with a varnish of oil, grease, or any other substance that would effectually stop the pores of the shell, and prevent the contents from evaporating. Valuable secrets in the making of glass were also discovered by him; he devised a method of making porcelain, and showed that the requisite materials were to be found in France in greater abundance than in the East; and lastly, he rendered enduring service to science by reducing thermometers to a common standard, which continental nations gratefully commemorate by still calling thermometers by his name. A life passed in mental occupations so multifarious as well as useful, surely entitles Reaumur to be termed a true scholar of perseverance.

THE HONOURABLE ROBERT BOYLE,

By a life of virtue and usefulness, merits the epithet to which his birth by courtesy entitled him. He was the youngest son of the first Earl of Cork, and after being educated at Eton was sent out to travel on the continent. A residence at Florence at the time of Galileo’s death, and the almost universal conversation then caused by the discoveries of that great philosopher, seem to have induced Boyle’s first attention to science. On returning to this country he very soon joined a knot of scientific men, who had begun to meet at each other’s houses, on a certain day in each week, for inquiry and discussion into what was then called “The New or Experimental Philosophy.” These weekly meetings eventually gave rise to the Royal Society of London; but part of the original members of the little club, a few years after its commencement, removed to Oxford, and Boyle, influenced by his attachment to these philosophic friends, in process of time took up his residence in that city. Their weekly meetings were held in his house; and here he began to prosecute with earnestness his researches into the nature of air. By his experiments and invention, the air-pump was first brought into so useful a form that he may be called its discoverer, though the genius of others has since greatly improved that important instrument. He also demonstrated the necessity of the presence of air for the support of animal life and of combustion; showing not only that a flame is instantly extinguished beneath an exhausted receiver, but that even a fish could not live under it, though immersed in water. His demonstration of the expansibility of air was still more important. Aristotle, three hundred years before the Christian era, taught that if air were rarefied till it filled ten times its usual space, it would become fire. Boyle succeeded in dilating a portion of the air of the common atmosphere, till it filled nearly fourteen thousand times its natural space.

His other discoveries were numerous, every hour of his existence might be said to be devoted to usefulness: and his wealth and station, so far from disposing him to ease and inertion, were nobly turned by him into grand aids for the advancement of knowledge. Mr. Craik thus admirably sums up his life of effort:—“From his boyhood till his death he may be said to have been almost constantly occupied in making philosophical experiments; collecting and ascertaining facts in natural science; inventing or improving instruments for the examination of nature; maintaining a regular correspondence with scientific men in all parts of Europe; receiving the daily visits of great numbers of the learned, both of his own and other countries; perusing and studying not only all the new works that appeared in the large and rapidly widening department of natural history and mathematical and experimental physics, including medicine, anatomy, chemistry, geography, &c., but many others, relating especially to theology and oriental literature; and, lastly, writing so profusely upon all these subjects, that those of his works alone which have been preserved and collected, independently of many others that are lost, fill, in one edition, six large quarto volumes. So vast an amount of literary performance, from a man who was at the same time so much of a public character, and gave so considerable a portion of his time to the service of others, shows strikingly what may be done by industry, perseverance, and such a method of life as never suffers an hour of the day to run to waste.”

The lives of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, and Kepler, among astronomers; of Napier of Murchiston, the inventor of logarithms; of Dolland and Ramsden, the improvers of optical glasses; of Cavendish, the discoverer of the composition of water; of Linnæus and Cuvier, the greatest naturalists; of Lavoisier, Fourcroy, Black, and, indeed, a host of modern chemists; might be singly and in order adduced as inspiring lessons of perseverance. The young inquirer, if he have caught a spark of zeal from the ardour of the tireless minds we have hastily endeavoured to portray, will, if he act worthily, strive to make himself acquainted more fully with the doings of these and other great men, and “gird up the loins of his mind” to follow them in their glorious path of wisdom and beneficence.

CHAPTER VI.
MEN OF BUSINESS.

Examples of a successful pursuit of wealth, either from the beginnings of a moderate fortune, or from absolute penury, are abundant. A life devoted to the acquirement of money, for its own sake, cannot be made the subject of moral eulogy; it can only be introduced among the “Triumphs of Perseverance,” as a proof of the efficacy of that quality of the mind to enable the wealth-winner to compass his resolves. It by no means follows, however, that a career towards opulence is impelled by the mere sordid passion for gain. Happily, among those who have started with a moderate fortune, progressive increase in riches has often been found united with increasing purposes of the noblest philanthropy and public beneficence; while the manly aim for independence has equally distinguished many who have risen to wealth from poverty. A brief rehearsal of the biographies of two persons, of widely different station and character, but whose names have alike become inseparably connected with the history of the first commercial city in the world, will suffice to illustrate our position.

SIR THOMAS GRESHAM,

The younger son of Sir Richard, who was a knight, alderman, sheriff, and Lord Mayor of London, and a prosperous merchant, had the twofold example set him by his father, of an intelligent pursuit of trade, and of public spirit and munificence. He was sent to Cambridge, distinguished himself in study, and might, undoubtedly, have risen to reputation in one of the learned professions; but, by his father’s wish, he turned his attention to business, and was admitted a member of the Mercers’ Company at the age of twenty-four. Having, through his father’s eminence as a merchant, succeeded in obtaining the trust of agent to King Edward the Sixth, for taking up money of the merchants of Antwerp, he quickly discerned the abuses under which the king’s interest suffered. He proposed methods for preventing the Flemish merchants from extorting unfair commissions and brokages, and so turned the current of advantage to the king’s favour, that the young prince was enabled to pay all the debts for which his father and the Protector—Somerset—had left him responsible. During the short reign of Edward, this active and enterprising merchant made forty journeys from England to Antwerp; and, by the application of his genius, retrieved English commerce from the disadvantage into which it had fallen by mismanagement at home, and the superior shrewdness of the Netherland merchants. The precious metals had become scarce in our country, but Gresham brought them back again; our commodities were low in price, and foreign ones high, but he reversed their conditions of sale: while the king’s credit, from being very low abroad, was, by Gresham’s skill, raised so high, that he could have borrowed what sums he pleased. For such services the young and acute negotiator had a pension of £100 a year appointed him for life, and estates to the value of £300 a year were also conferred upon him by the king.

At the accession of Mary, Gresham was discharged from his agency; but, on his drawing up a memorial, and its allegements being proved, he was re-instated. Queen Elizabeth immediately re-engaged him, at her accession, and employed him to provide and buy up arms for the national defence. She knighted him a year afterwards, and he then built himself the mansion known by his name in Bishopsgate Street; and, till lately, occupied by the “Gresham professors.”

His noblest public work was performed soon after. His father had striven to move King Henry the Eighth to build an Exchange for the city merchants, who then met in the open air in Lombard Street, but could not. Sir Thomas Gresham now publicly proposed, if the citizens would purchase a piece of ground large enough, and in the proper place, to build an Exchange at his own expense, with covered walks, and all necessary conveniences for the assemblage of merchants. This was done; the site was cleared; Gresham himself laid the foundation stone; and Queen Elizabeth, when the building was complete, “attended by nobility, came from Somerset House, and caused it, by trumpet and herald, to be proclaimed the ‘Royal Exchange.’” This building, as our young readers know, was burnt down some years ago, and the present stately fabric, opened by Queen Victoria, has been erected on its site.

About the time that the building of the Royal Exchange was commenced, Gresham was again employed to take up moneys for the royal use at Antwerp. Experience had so fully shown him the evil of pursuing this system, that he at length persuaded the Queen to discontinue it, and to borrow of her own merchants in the city of London. Yet his views were so much in advance of the contracted commercial spirit of that age, that the London citizens, in their common hall, blind to their own interests, negatived his proposition when it was first made to them. But, on more mature consideration, several merchants and aldermen raised £16,000, and lent it to the Queen for six months, at six per cent. interest; and the loan was prolonged for six months more, at the same interest, with brokage. This illustrious London citizen, by his superior intelligence, thus opened the way for increasing others’ as well as his own gains.

Sir Thomas Gresham’s successful negotiations issued in so large an increase of his own wealth, that he purchased large estates in several counties, and bought Osterley Park, near Brentford, where he built a large mansion, in which he was accustomed to receive the visits of Elizabeth. Even here the ideas of the merchant were predominant. “The house,” says a writer of the period, “standeth in a parke, well wooded and garnished with many faire ponds, which affoorded not onely fish and fowle, as swannes and other water fowle, but also great use for milles, as paper milles, oyle milles, and corn milles.” On his retirement to Osterley, he transformed his residence in Bishopsgate Street into a “college,” for the abode of seven bachelor professors, who were to read lectures there on “divinity, law, physic, astronomy, geometry, music, and rhetoric,” and to have £50 each per year.

He was the richest commoner in England—such were what is usually termed “the substantial” rewards of his perseverance; while his name deserves lasting honour as the patron of learning, and the exemplar of merchant-beneficence. He left, by will, not only ample funds for continuing his “professorships,” but endowments for almshouses, and yearly sums for ten of the city prisons and hospitals.

JAMES LACKINGTON,

The son of a journeyman shoemaker and of a weaver’s daughter, passed his early years amidst circumstances which must have enduringly impressed him with the miseries of vice and poverty. His father was a selfish and habitual drunkard, and his mother frequently worked nineteen or twenty hours out of the four-and-twenty to support her family. He was the eldest child of a numerous family, and was put two or three years to a dame’s school; but was less intent on learning than on “getting on in the world,” even while a boy. He heard a pieman cry his wares, and soon proposed to a baker to sell pies for him; and so successful did young Lackington prove as a pie-vender, that he heard the baker declare, a twelvemonth after, that he had been the means of extricating him from embarrassment. A boyish prank put an end to this engagement; and when the baker wished to renew it Lackington’s father insisted on placing him at the stall. Again, however, his pedlar inclinations, which in after life led him to affluence, rescued him from the disagreeable treatment he expected to receive under his father’s rule. He heard a man cry almanacks in the street, and importuned his father till he obtained leave to start on the same itinerant enterprise. In this he succeeded so well that he deeply aggrieved the other venders, who, as he tells us in his very whimsical but interesting biography, would have “done him a mischief had he not possessed a light pair of heels.” Resolute on not continuing at home, he persuaded his father, at length, to bind him apprentice with a shoemaker in a neighbouring town, and at fourteen years of age sat down to learn his trade.

We will not follow this singular specimen of human nature, spoilt by want of education and by evil example, through all the vagaries of his youth. Taking him up at four-and-twenty, after he had experienced considerable changes in religious feeling, and gathered some smatterings of knowledge from reading, we find him marrying, and beginning the world the next morning with one halfpenny. Yet he and his wife set cheerfully to work, he tells us; and by great industry and self-denial, they not only earned a living, but paid off a debt of forty shillings, which was somewhat summarily claimed by a friend of whom he had borrowed that sum. Trials very soon fell to his lot which tended to make him deeply thoughtful. His wife was ill for six months; and, at the end of that period, he was compelled to remove her from Bristol to Taunton, for her health’s sake. During two years and a half the poor woman was removed five times to and from Taunton without permanent recovery; and Lackington, despairing of an amendment of his circumstances under such discouragements, resolved to leave his native district. He therefore gave his wife all the money he had, except what he thought would suffice to bring him to London; and, mounting a stage coach, reached town with but half-a-crown in his pocket. He got work the next morning, saved enough in a month to bring up his wife, and she had tolerable health, and obtained “binding work” from his employer.

Lackington was now fairly entered on the path to prosperity. His partner was a pattern of self-denial and economy; they began to save money, bought clothes, and then household furniture, left lodgings, and had a house of their own. A friend, not long after, proposed that Lackington should take a little shop and parlour, which were “to let” in Featherstone-street, City-road, and commence master shoemaker. Lackington agreed, but also formed the resolution to sell old books. With his own scanty collection, a bagful of old volumes he purchased for a guinea, and his scraps of leather, altogether worth about 5l., he accordingly commenced master tradesman. He soon sold off, and increased his stock of books; and next borrowed 5l. of John Wesley’s people—“a sum of money kept on purpose to lend out for three months, without interest, to such of their society whose characters were good, and who wanted temporary relief.” Much to his shame he traduces the character of the philanthropic Wesley and of his brother religionists, in his “Confessions,” even while acknowledging that this benevolent loan was “of great service” to him. He afterwards endeavoured to make the amende honorable, but the mode in which it was made was as unadmirable as his ungrateful offence. But, to return to his narrative.

“In our new situation,” says he, “we lived in a very frugal manner, often dining on potatoes, and quenching our thirst with water, being determined, if possible, to make some provision for such dismal times as sickness and shortness of work, which had often been our lot, and might be again.” In six months he became worth five-and-twenty pounds in old book stock, removed into Chiswell-street, to a more commodious shop, though the street, he says, was then (in 1775) a dull street, gave up shoemaking, “turned his leather into books,” and soon began to have a great sale. Another series of reverses, during which his wife died, his shop was closed, while he himself was prostrate with fever, and was robbed by nurses, only served to sharpen his intents and strengthen his perseverance, when he recovered. His second marriage, with an intelligent woman, he found of immense advantage, since his new partner was a very efficient helpmate in the book-shop. Next, his friend Dennis became partaker in his business, and advanced a small capital, by which they “doubled stock,” and printed their first catalogue of 12,000 volumes. They took 20l. the first week, and Dennis then advanced 200l. more towards the trade; but, after two years, Lackington was left once more to himself, his friend being weary of the business. A resolution not to give credit gave him great difficulty, he says, for at least seven years, but he carried his plan at last, principally by selling at very small profits. His business premises were successively enlarged, and his sales likewise, until his trade and himself became wonders. At the age of fifty-two he went out of business, leaving his cousin head of the firm. He sold 100,000 volumes annually, during the latter years of his personal attention to trade, kept his carriage, purchased two estates, and built himself a genteel house. He once more became a professor of religion, on retiring from business, and built several chapels. He was, in the close of life, benevolent in visiting the sick and indigent, and in relieving the distressed.

“As the first king of Bohemia kept his country shoes by him to remind him from whence he was taken,” says the bookseller, in his “Confessions,” “so I have put a motto on the doors of my carriage, constantly to remind me to what I am indebted for my prosperity, viz. ‘Small profits do great things;’ and reflecting on the means by which I have been enabled to support a carriage, adds not a little to the pleasure of riding in it.” Alluding to the stories that were rife respecting his success, attributing it to his purchasing a “fortunate lottery-ticket,” or “finding bank-notes in an old book,” he says, very emphatically, “I found the whole that I am possessed of, in—small profits, bound by industry, and clasped by economy.”

CHAPTER VII.
PHILANTHROPISTS.

One conviction forms the basis of all correct admiration for the heroism and intrepidity of scientific discoverers, the marvellous inventions of mechanicians; the sublime enthusiasm of poets, artists, and musicians; the laborious devotion of scholars; and even of the intelligent industry of the accumulators of wealth: it is that all their efforts and achievements tend, by the law of our nature, to the amelioration of man’s condition. In every mind swayed by reflection, and not by impulse or prejudice, the world’s admiration for warriors is regarded as mistaken, because the deeds of the soldier are the infliction of suffering and destruction, spring from the most evil passions, and serve but to keep up the real hindrances of civilization and human happiness. Statues and columns erected in honour of conquerors, excellent as they may be for the display of art, serve, therefore, in every correct mind, for subjects of regretful rather than encouraging and satisfactory contemplation. The self-sacrificing enterprises of the philanthropist, on the contrary, create in every properly regulated mind, still purer admiration, still more profound and enduring esteem, than even the noblest and grandest efforts of the children of Mind and Imagination. The Divine Exemplar himself is at the head of their class; and they seem, of all the sons of men, most transcendently to reflect his image, because their deeds are direct acts of mercy and goodness, and misery and suffering flee at their approach. Harbingers of the benign reign of Human Brotherhood which the popular spirit of our age devoutly regards as the eventual destiny of the world, they will be venerated, and their memories cherished and loved, when laurelled conquerers are mentioned no more with praise, or are forgotten. Emulation is sometimes termed a motive of questionable morality; but to emulate the high and holy in enterprises of self-sacrificing beneficence can never be an unworthy passion; for half the value of a good man’s life would be lost, if his example did not serve to fill others with such a plenitude of love for his goodness, as to impel them to imitate him.

It is the example of the philanthropist, then, that we commend, above all other examples, to the imitation of all who are beginning life. We would say, scorn indolence, ignorance, and reckless imprudence that makes you dependent on others’ effort instead of your own; but, more than all, scorn selfishness and a life useless to man, your brother, cleave to knowledge, industry, and refinement; but, beyond all, cleave to goodness.

In a world where so much is wrong—where, for ages, the cupidity of some, and the ignorance and improvidence of a greater number—has increased the power of wrong, it need not be said how dauntless must be the soul of perseverance needed to overcome this wrong by the sole and only effectual efforts of gentleness and goodness. That wisdom—deeply calculating wisdom—not impulsive and indiscriminate “charity,” as it is falsely named—should also lend its calm but energetic guidance to him who aims to assist in removing the miseries of the world, must be equally evident. To understand to what morally resplendent deeds this dauntless spirit can conduct, when thus guided by wisdom, and armed with the sole power of gentleness, we need to fix our observance but on one name—the most worshipful soldier of humanity our honoured land has ever produced: the true champion of persevering goodness.

JOHN HOWARD,

Inheriting a handsome competence from his father, whom he lost while young, went abroad early, and in Italy acquired a taste for art. He made purchases of such specimens of the great masters as his means would allow, and embellished therewith his paternal seat of Cardington, in Bedfordshire. His first wife, who had attended him with the utmost kindness during a severe illness, and whom, though much older than himself, he had married from a principle of gratitude, died within three years of their union; and to relieve his mind from the melancholy occasioned by her death, he resolved on leaving England for another tour. The then recent earthquake which had laid Lisbon in ruins, rendered Portugal a clime of interest with him, and he set sail for that country. The packet, however, was captured by a French privateer; and he and other prisoners were carried into Brest, and placed in the castle. They had been kept forty hours without food or water before entering the filthy dungeon into which they were cast, and it was still a considerable time before a joint of mutton was thrown into the midst of them, which, for want of the accommodation even of a solitary knife, they were obliged to tear to pieces and gnaw like dogs. For nearly a week Howard and his companions were compelled to lie on the floor of this dungeon, with nothing but straw to shelter them from its noxious and unwholesome damps. He was then removed to another town where British prisoners were kept; and though permitted to reside in the town on his “parole,” or word of honour, he had evidence, he says, that many hundreds of his countrymen perished in their imprisonment, and that, at one place, thirty-six were buried in a hole in one day. He was at length permitted to return home, but it was upon his promise to go back to France, if his own government should refuse to exchange him for a French naval officer. As he was only a private individual, it was doubtful whether government would consent to this; and he desired his friends to forbear the congratulations with which they welcomed his return, assuring them he should perform his promise, if government expressed a refusal. Happily the negotiation terminated favourably, and Howard felt himself, once more, at complete freedom in his native land.

It is to this event, comprising much personal suffering for himself, and the grievous spectacle of so much distress endured by his sick and dying fellow-countrymen in bonds, that the first great emotion in the mind of this exalted philanthropist must be dated. Yet, like many deep thoughts which have resulted in noble actions, Howard’s grand life-thought lay a long time in the germ within the recesses of his reflective faculty. He first returned to his Cardington estate, and, together with his delight in the treasures of art, occupied his mind with meteorological observations, which he followed up with such assiduity as to draw upon himself some notice from men of science, and to be chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society.

After his second marriage, he continued to reside upon his estate, and to improve and beautify it. The grounds were, indeed, laid out with a degree of taste only equalled on the estates of the nobility. But it was impossible for such a nature as Howard’s to be occupied solely with a consideration of his pleasures and comforts. His tenantry were the constant objects of his care, and in the improvement of their habitations and modes of life he found delightful employment for by far the greater portion of his time. In his beneficent plans for the amelioration of the condition of the poor he was nobly assisted by the second Mrs. Howard, who was a woman of exemplary and self-sacrificing benevolence. One act alone affords delightful proof of this. She sold her jewels soon after her marriage, and put the money into a purse called, by herself and her husband, “the charity-purse,” from the consecration of its contents to the relief of the poor and destitute.

The death of this excellent woman plunged him again into sorrow, from which he, at first, sought relief in watching over the nurture of the infant son she had left him, having breathed her last soon after giving birth to the child. When his son was old enough to be transferred entirely to the care of a tutor, Howard renewed his visits to the continent. His journal contains proof that his mind was deeply engaged in reflection on all he saw; but neither yet does the master-thought of his life appear to have strengthened to such a degree as to make itself very evident in the workings of his heart and understanding. His election to the office of high sheriff of the county of Bedford, on his return, seems to have been the leading occurrence in his life, judging by the influence it threw on the tone of his thinkings and the character of his acts, to the end of his mortal career. He was forty-six years of age at the time of his election to this office, intellectual culture had refined his character, and much personal trial and affliction had deepened his experience: the devotion of such a man as John Howard to his great errand of philanthropy was not, therefore, any vulgar and merely impulsive enthusiasm. We have seen that the germ of his design had lain for years in his mind, scarcely fructifying or unfolding itself, except in the kindly form of homely charity. The power was now about to be breathed upon it which should quicken it into the mightiest energy of human goodness.

He thus records the grievances he now began to grow ardent for removing: “The distress of prisoners, of which there are few who have not some imperfect idea, came more immediately under my notice when I was sheriff of the county of Bedford; and the circumstance which excited me to activity in their behalf was, the seeing some, who by the verdict of juries were declared not guilty—some, on whom the grand jury did not find such an appearance of guilt as subjected them to trial—and some whose prosecutors did not appear against them—after having been confined for months, dragged back to gaol, and locked up again till they could pay sundry fees to the gaoler, the clerk of assize, &c. In order to redress this hardship, I applied to the justices of the county for a salary to the gaoler in lieu of his fees. The bench were properly affected with the grievance, and willing to grant the relief desired; but they wanted a precedent for charging the county with the expense. I therefore rode into several neighbouring counties in search of a precedent; but I soon learned that the same injustice was practised in them; and looking into the prisons, I beheld scenes of calamity which I grew daily more and more anxious to alleviate.” How free from violence of emotion and exaggerated expression is his statement; how calmly, rationally, and thoughtfully he commenced his glorious enterprise!

He commences, soon after this, a series of journeys for the inspection of English prisons; and visits, successively, the gaols of Cambridge, Huntingdon, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Warwick, Worcester, Gloucester, Oxford, and Buckingham. In many of the gaols he found neither court-yard, water, beds, nor even straw, for the use of the prisoners: no sewers, most miserable provisions, and those extremely scanty, and the whole of the rooms gloomy, filthy, and loathsome. The greatest oppressions and cruelties were practised on the wretched inmates: they were heavily ironed for trivial offences, and frequently confined in dungeons under ground. The Leicester gaol presented more inhuman features than any other; the free ward for debtors who could not afford to pay for better accommodation, was a long dungeon called a cellar, down seven steps—damp, and having but two windows in it, the largest about a foot square; the rooms in which the felons were confined night and day were also dungeons from five to seven steps under ground.

In the course of another tour he visited the gaols of Hertford, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Hampshire, and Sussex; set out again to revisit the prisons of the Midlands; spent a fortnight in viewing the gaols of London and Surrey; and then went once more on the same great errand of mercy into the west of England. Shortly after his return he was examined before a Committee of the whole House of Commons, gave full and satisfactory answers to the questions proposed to him, and was then called before the bar of the House to receive from the Speaker the assurance “that the House were very sensible of the humanity and zeal which had led him to visit the several gaols of this kingdom, and to communicate to the House the interesting observations he had made upon that subject.”

The intention of the Legislature to proceed to the correction of prison abuses, which the noble philanthropist might infer from this expression of thanks, did not cause him to relax in the pursuit of the high mission he was now so earnestly entered upon. After examining thoroughly the shameless abuses of the Marshalsea, in London, he proceeded to Durham, from thence through Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, and inspected not only the prisons in those counties, but a third time went through the degraded gaols of the Midlands. A week’s rest at Cardington, and away he departs to visit the prisons in Kent, and to examine all he had not yet entered in London. North and South Wales and the gaols of Chester, and again Worcester and Oxford, he next surveys, and discovers another series of subjects for the exertion of his benevolence.

“Seeing,” says he, in his uniform and characteristic vein of modesty, “in two or three of the county gaols some poor creatures whose aspect was singularly deplorable, and asking the cause of it, I was answered they were lately brought from the Bridewells. This started a fresh subject of inquiry. I resolved to inspect the Bridewells; and for that purpose I travelled again into the counties where I had been, and indeed into all the rest, examining houses of correction and city and town gaols. I beheld in many of them, as well as in county gaols, a complication of distress; but my attention was particularly fixed by the gaol-fever and small-pox which I saw prevailing to the destruction of multitudes, not only of felons in their dungeons, but of debtors also.” His holy mission now comprehended for the philanthropist the enterprise of lessening the disease as well as unjust and inhuman treatment of prisoners.

The most striking scene of wrong detailed in any of his narratives is in the account of the “Clink” prison of Plymouth, a part of the town gaol. This place was seventeen feet by eight, and five feet and a half high. It was utterly dark, and had no air except what could be derived through an extremely small wicket in the door. To this wicket, the dimensions of which were about seven inches by five, three prisoners under sentence of transportation came by turns to breathe, being confined in that wretched hole for nearly two months. When Howard visited this place the door had not been opened for five weeks. With considerable difficulty he entered, and with deeply wounded feelings beheld an emaciated human being, the victim of barbarity, who had been confined there ten weeks. This unfortunate creature, who was under sentence of transportation, declared to the humane visitor who thus risked his health and was happy to forego ease and comfort to relieve the oppressed sufferer, that he would rather have been hanged than thrust into that loathsome dungeon.

The electors of Bedford, two years after Howard had held the shrievalty of their county, urged him to become a candidate for the representation of their borough in Parliament. He gave a reluctant consent, but through unfair dealing was unsuccessful. We may, for a moment, regret that the great philanthropist was not permitted to introduce into the Legislature of England measures for the relief of the oppressed suggested by his own large sympathies and experience; but it was far better that he was freed from the shackles of attendance on debates, and spared for ministration not only to the sufferings of the injured in England but in Europe.

He had long purposed to give to the world in a printed form the result of his laborious investigations into the state of prisons in this country; but “conjecturing,” he says, “that something useful to his purpose might be collected abroad, he laid aside his papers and travelled into France, Flanders, Holland, and Germany.” We have omitted to state that he had already visited many of the prisons in Scotland and Ireland. At Paris he gained admission to some of the prisons with extreme difficulty; but to get access to the state prisons the jealousy of the governments rendered it almost impossible, and under any circumstances dangerous. The intrepid heart of Howard, however, was girt up to adventure, and he even dared to attempt an entrance into the infamous Bastille itself! “I knocked hard,” he says, “at the outer gate, and immediately went forward through the guard to the drawbridge before the entrance of the castle; but while I was contemplating this gloomy mansion, an officer came out of the castle much surprised, and I was forced to retreat through the mute guard, and thus regained that freedom, which, for one locked up within those walls, it would be next to impossible to obtain.” In the space of four centuries, from the foundation to the destruction of the Bastille, it has been observed that Howard was the only person ever compelled to quit it with reluctance.

By taking advantage of some regulations of the Paris Parliament, he succeeded in gaining admission to other prisons, and found even greater atrocities committed there than in the very worst gaols in England. Flanders presented a striking contrast. “However rigorous they may be,” says he, speaking of the regulations for the prisons of Brussels, “yet their great care and attention to their prisons is worthy of commendation: all fresh and clean, no gaol distemper, no prisoners ironed. The bread allowance far exceeds that of any of our gaols; every prisoner here has two pounds of bread per day, soup once every day, and on Sunday one pound of meat.” He notes afterwards that he “carefully visited some Prussian, Austrian, and Hessian gaols,” and “with the utmost difficulty” gained access to “many dismal abodes” of prisoners.

Returning to England, he travelled through every county repursuing his mission, and after devoting three months to a renewed inspection of the London prisons again set out for the continent. Our space will not allow of a record of the numerous evils he chronicles in these renewed visits. The prisoners of Switzerland, but more than all, of Holland, afforded him a relief to the vision of horrors he witnessed elsewhere. We must find room for some judicious observations he makes on his return from this tour. “When I formerly made the tour of Europe,” are his words, “I seldom had occasion to envy foreigners anything I saw with respect to their situation, their religion, manners, or government. In my late journeys to view their prisons I was sometimes put to the blush for my native country. The reader will scarcely feel, from my narration, the same emotions of shame and regret as the comparison excited in me on beholding the difference with my own eyes; but from the account I have given him of foreign prisons, he may judge whether a design for reforming their own be merely visionary—whether idleness, debauchery, disease, and famine, be the necessary attendants of a prison, or only connected with it in our ideas for want of a more perfect knowledge and more enlarged views. I hope, too, that he will do me the justice to think that neither an indiscriminate admiration of every thing foreign, nor a fondness for censuring every thing at home, has influenced me to adopt the language of a panegyrist in this part of my work, or that of a complainant in the rest. Where I have commended I have mentioned my reasons for so doing; and I have dwelt, perhaps, more minutely upon the management of foreign prisons because it was more agreeable to praise than to condemn. Another motive induced me to be very particular in my accounts of foreign houses of correction, especially those of the freest states. It was to counteract a notion prevailing among us that compelling prisoners to work, especially in public, was inconsistent with the principles of English liberty; at the same time that taking away the lives of such numbers, either by executions or the diseases of our prisons, seems to make little impression upon us; of such force are custom and prejudice in silencing the voice of good sense and humanity. I have only to add that, fully sensible of the imperfections which must attend the cursory survey of a traveller, it was my study to remedy that defect by a constant attention to the one object of my pursuit alone during the whole of my two last journeys abroad.”

He did not allow himself a single day’s rest on returning to England, but immediately recommenced his work here. He notes some pleasing improvements, particularly in the Nottingham gaol, since his last preceding visit; but narrates other discoveries of a most revolting description. The gaol at Knaresborough was in the ruined castle, and had but two rooms without a window. The keeper lived at a distance, there being no accommodation for him in the prison. The debtors’ gaol was horrible; it consisted of only one room difficult of access, had an earthen floor, no fire-place, and there was a common sewer from the town running through it uncovered! In this miserable and disgusting hole Howard learned that an officer had been confined some years before, who took with him his dog to defend him from vermin: his face was, however, much disfigured by their attacks, and the dog was actually destroyed by them.

At length he prepared to print his “State of the Prisons of England and Wales, with preliminary observations, and an Account of some Foreign Prisons.” In this laborious and valuable work, he was largely assisted by the excellent Dr. Aikin, a highly congenial mind; and it was completed in a form which, even in a literary point of view, makes it valuable. The following very brief extract from it, is full of golden reflection: “Most gentlemen who, when they are told of the misery which our prisoners suffer, content themselves with saying, ‘Let them take care to keep out,’ prefaced, perhaps, with an angry prayer, seem not duly sensible of the favour of Providence, which distinguishes them from the sufferers: they do not remember that we are required to imitate our gracious Heavenly Parent, who is ‘kind to the unthankful and the evil!’ They also forget the vicissitudes of human affairs; the unexpected changes, to which all men are liable; and that those whose circumstances are affluent, may, in time, be reduced to indigence, and become debtors and prisoners.”

As soon as his book was published he presented copies of it to most of the principal persons in the kingdom,—thus devoting his wealth, in another form, to the cause of humanity. When it is recounted that he had not only spent large sums in almost incessant travelling, during four years, but had paid the prison fees of numbers who could not otherwise have been liberated, although their periods of sentence had transpired, some idea may be formed of the heart that was within this great devotee of mercy and goodness—the purest of all worships.

The spirits of all reflecting men were roused by this book: the Parliament passed an act for the better regulation of the “hulk” prisons; and on Howard’s visiting the hulks and detecting the evasions practised by the superintendents, the government proceeded to rectify the abuses. Learning that government projected further prison reforms, he again set out for the continent to gain additional information in order to lay it before the British Parliament. An accident at the Hague confined him to his room for six weeks, by throwing him into an inflammatory fever; but he was no sooner recovered than he proceeded to enter on his work anew, by visiting the prison at Rotterdam,—departing thence through Osnaburgh and Hanover, into Germany, Prussia, Bohemia, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and back through France, again reaching England. Not to enumerate any of his statements respecting his prison visits, let us point the young reader to the answer he gave to Prince Henry of Prussia, who, in the course of his first conversation with the earnest philanthropist, asked him whether he ever went to any public place in the evening, after the labours of the day were over. “Never,” he replied, “as I derive more pleasure from doing my duty than from any amusement whatever.” What a thorough putting-on of the great martyr spirit there was in the life of this pure-souled man!

Listen, too, to the evidence of his careful employment of the faculty of reason, while thus enthusiastically devoted to the tenderest offices of humanity: “I have frequently been asked what precautions I used to preserve myself from infection in the prisons and hospitals which I visit. I here answer once for all, that next to the free goodness and mercy of the Author of my being, temperance and cleanliness are my preservatives. Trusting in Divine Providence, and being myself in the way of my duty, I visit the most noxious cells, and while thus employed ‘I fear no evil!’ I never enter an hospital or prison before breakfast, and in an offensive room I seldom draw my breath deeply.”

Mark his intrepid championship of Truth, too, as well as of Mercy. He was dining at Vienna, with the English ambassador to the Austrian court, and one of the ambassador’s party, a German, had been uttering some praises of the Emperor’s abolition of torture. Howard declared it was only to establish a worse torture, and instanced an Austrian prison which, he said, was “as bad as the black hole at Calcutta,” and that prisoners were only taken from it when they confessed what was laid to their charge. “Hush!” said the English ambassador (Sir Robert Murray Keith), “your words will be reported to his Majesty!” “What!” exclaimed Howard, “shall my tongue be tied from speaking truth by any king or emperor in the world? I repeat what I asserted, and maintain its veracity.” Profound silence ensued, and “every one present,” says Dr. Brown, “admired the intrepid boldness of the man of humanity.”

Another return to England, another survey of prisons here, and he sets out on his fourth continental tour of humanity, travelling through Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Poland, and then, again, Holland and Germany. Another general and complete revisitation of prisons in England followed, and then a fifth continental pilgrimage of goodness through Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Holland. During his absence from England this time, his friends proposed to erect a monument to him; but he was gloriously great in humility as in truth, benevolence, and intrepidity. “Oh, why could not my friends,” says he, in writing to them, “who know how much I detest such parade, have stopped such a hasty measure?... It deranges and confounds all my schemes. My exaltation is my fall—my misfortune.”

He summed up the number of miles he had travelled for the reform of prisons, on his return to England after his journey, and another re-examination of the prisons at home, and found that the total was 42,033. Glorious perseverance! But he is away again! having found a new object for the yearnings of his ever-expanding heart. He conceived, from inquiries of his medical friends, that that most dreadful scourge of man’s race—the plague—could be arrested in its destructive course. He visits Holland, France, Italy, Malta, Zante, the Levant, Turkey, Venice, Austria, Germany, and returns also by Holland to England. The narrative glows with interest in this tour; but the young reader—and how can he resist it if he have a heart to love what is most deserving of love—must turn to one of the larger biographies of Howard for the circumstances. Alas! a stroke was prepared for him on his return. His son, his darling son, had become disobedient, progressed fearfully in vice, and his father found him a raving maniac!

Howard’s only refuge from this poignant affliction was in the renewal of the great mission of his life. He again visited the prisons of Ireland and Scotland, and left England to renew his humane course abroad, but never to return. From Amsterdam this tour extended to Cherson, in Russian Tartary. Attending one afflicted with the plague there, he fell ill, and in a few days breathed his last. He wished to be buried where he died, and without pomp or monument: “Lay me quietly in the earth,” said he; “place a sun-dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten!” Who would not desire at death that he had forgone every evanescent pleasure a life of selfishness could bring, to live and die like John Howard?

CONCLUSION.

Work, and the true nobility of being devoted to it, distinguished every exemplar recorded in our sketch; and no name of eminence or excellence can be selected in human annals who has ever used the phrase, which can only console idiots, that “he is perfectly happy, for he has nothing to do, and nothing to think about!” “Nothing to do!” in a world whose elements are, as yet, but partially subdued by man, and whose happiness can be augmented so incalculably by the perfecting of his dominion over Nature. “Nothing to think about!” when language, and poetry, and art, and music, and science, and invention, afford ecstatic occupation for thought which could not be exhausted if a man’s life were even extended on the earth to a million of years. “Nothing to do, and nothing to think about!” while millions are doing and thinking,—for a human creature to profess that he derives pleasure from such a state of consciousness, is to confess his willingness to be fed, clothed, and attended by others, while he is meanly and despicably indolent and degradingly dependent.

Young reader, spurn the indulgence of a thought so unworthy of a human being! Remember, that happiness, worth the name, can never be gained unless in the discharge of duty, or under the sense of duty done. And work is duty—thy duty—the duty of all mankind. Whatever may be a man’s situation, from the lowliest to the highest he has a work to perform as a bounden duty. Such was glorious Alfred’s conviction as a king: such was Lackington’s conviction as a tradesman. For every diversity of mind and genius the universe in which we live affords work, and the peculiar work for which each mind is filled becomes its bounden duty by natural laws. “First of all we ought to do our own duty—but, first of all,” were the memorable death-bed words of Canova; and the conviction they expressed constituted the soul-spring of every illustrious man’s life. The life of Canova was—work: so was the life of Shakspere, of Milton, of Jones, of Johnson, of Handel, of Davy, of Watt, of Newton, of all-glorious Howard. Their lives were “Triumphs of Perseverance:” even their deaths did not lessen their triumphs. “Being dead, they yet speak.” They are ever present with us in their great words and thoughts, and in their great acts. Their spirits thus still conjoin to purify and enlighten the world: they are still transforming it, in some senses more effectually than if still living, from ignorance, and vice, and wrong and suffering, into a maturing sphere of knowledge and might over Nature, and justice and brotherhood. Let every earnest heart and mind be resolved on treading in their footsteps, and aiding in the realisation of the cheering trust that the world shall yet be a universally happy world, and so man reach that perfect consummation of the “Triumphs of Perseverance!”