Character

FOOTNOTES:

101 (return)
[ Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, Lord High Treasurer under Elizabeth and James I.]

102 (return)
[ 'Life of Perthes,' ii. 217.]

103 (return)
[ Lockhart's 'Life of Scott.']

104 (return)
[ Debate on the Petition of Right, A.D. 1628.]

105 (return)
[ The Rev. F. W. Farrer's 'Seekers after God,' p. 241.]

106 (return)
[ 'The Statesman,' p. 30.]

107 (return)
[ 'Queen of the Air,' p. 127]

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

109 (return)
[ Introduction to 'The Principal Speeches and Addresses of H.R.H. the Prince Consort' (1862, pp. 39-40.)]

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

1011 (return)
[ Condensed from Sir Thomas Overbury's 'Characters' [101614].]

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

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

1014 (return)
[ Napier's 'History of the Peninsular War,' v. 226.]

1015 (return)
[ Sir W. Scott's 'History of Scotland,' vol. i. chap. xvi.]

1016 (return)
[ Michelet's 'History of Rome,' p. 374.]

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

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

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

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

1020 (return)
[ 'Blackwood's Magazine,' June, 1863, art. 'Girolamo Savonarola.']

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

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

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

112 (return)
[ 'Levana; or, The Doctrine of Education.']

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

114 (return)
[ Mr. Tufnell, in 'Reports of Inspectors of Parochial School Unions in England and Wales,' 1850.]

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

116 (return)
[ Jared Sparks' 'Life of Washington.']

117 (return)
[ Forster's 'Eminent British Statesmen' [11Cabinet Cyclop.] vi. 8.]

118 (return)
[ The Earl of Mornington, composer of 'Here in cool grot,' &c.]

119 (return)
[ Robert Bell's 'Life of Canning,' p. 37.]

1110 (return)
[ 'Life of Curran,' by his son, p. 4.]

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

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

1113 (return)
[ Mrs. Grote's 'Life of Ary Scheffer,' p. 154.]

1114 (return)
[ Michelet, 'On Priests, Women, and Families.']

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

1116 (return)
[ Sainte-Beuve, 'Causeries du Lundi,' i. 23.]

1117 (return)
[ Ibid. i. 22.]

1118 (return)
[ Ibid. 1. 23.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

123 (return)
[ Dean Stanley's 'Life of Dr. Arnold,' i. 151 [12Ed. 1858].]

124 (return)
[ Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials,' pp. 25-6.]

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

126 (return)
[ Izaak Walton's 'Life of George Herbert.']

127 (return)
[ Stanley's 'Life and Letters of Dr. Arnold,' i. 33.]

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

129 (return)
[ 'Life,' i. 344.]

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

1211 (return)
[ Speech at Liverpool, 1812.]

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

132 (return)
[ 'Essay on Government,' in 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.']

133 (return)
[ Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' Part i., Mem. 2, Sub. 6.]

134 (return)
[ Ibid. End of concluding chapter.]

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

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

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

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

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

1310 (return)
[ "Life of Perthes," ii. 20.]

1311 (return)
[ Lockhart's 'Life of Scott' [138vo. Ed.], p. 442.]

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

1313 (return)
[ 'Dissertation on the Science of Method.']

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

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

1316 (return)
[ Maria Edgeworth, 'Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth,' ii. 94.]

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

1318 (return)
[ 'Reasons of Church Government,' Book II.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

141 (return)
[ James Russell Lowell.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

148 (return)
[ 'Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson' [14Bohn's Ed.], p. 32.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

1412 (return)
[ Mrs. Grote's 'Life of Ary Scheffer,' pp. 154-5.]

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

151 (return)
[ 'Social Statics,' p. 185.]

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

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

154 (return)
[ 'Strafford Papers,' i. 87.]

155 (return)
[ Jared Sparks' 'Life of Washington,' pp. 7, 534.]

156 (return)
[ Brialmont's 'Life of Wellington.']

157 (return)
[ Professor Tyndall, on 'Faraday as a Discoverer,' p. 156.]

158 (return)
[ 'Life of Perthes,' ii. 216.]

159 (return)
[ Lady Elizabeth Carew.]

1510 (return)
[ Francis Horner, in one of his letters, says: "It is among the very sincere and zealous friends of liberty that you will find the most perfect specimens of wrongheadedness; men of a dissenting, provincial cast of virtue—who [15according to one of Sharpe's favourite phrases] WILL drive a wedge the broad end foremost—utter strangers to all moderation in political business."—Francis Horner's LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE (1843, ii. 133.)]

1511 (return)
[ Professor Tyndall on 'Faraday as a Discoverer,' pp. 40-1.]

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

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

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

1515 (return)
[ S. C. Hall's 'Memories.']

1516 (return)
[ Moore's 'Life of Byron,' 8vo. Ed., p. 182.]

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

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

1519 (return)
[ Scott's Diary, December 17th, 1827.]

161 (return)
[ From Lovelace's lines to Lucusta [16Lucy Sacheverell], 'Going to the Wars.']

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

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

164 (return)
[ Sparks' 'Life of Washington,' pp. 141-2.]

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

166 (return)
[ Robertson's 'Life and Letters,' ii. 157.]

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

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

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

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

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

169 (return)
[ Gleig's 'Life of Wellington,' pp. 314, 315.]

1610 (return)
[ 'Life of Arnold,' i. 94.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

1615 (return)
[ 'Memoir,' p. 427.]

171 (return)
[ Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living.']

172 (return)
[ 'Michelet's 'Life of Luther,' pp. 411-12.]

173 (return)
[ Sir John Kaye's 'Lives of Indian Officers.']

174 (return)
[ 'Deontology,' pp. 130-1, 144.]

175 (return)
[ 'Letters and Essays,' p. 67.]

176 (return)
[ 'Beauties of St. Francis de Sales.']

177 (return)
[ Ibid.]

178 (return)
[ 'Life of Perthes,' ii. 449.]

179 (return)
[ Moore's 'Life of Byron,' 8vo. Ed., p. 483.]

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

182 (return)
[ Mrs. Hutchinson's 'Memoir of the Life of Lieut.-Colonel Hutchinson,' p. 32.]

183 (return)
[ 'Letters and Essays,' p. 59.]

184 (return)
[ 'Lettres d'un Voyageur.']

185 (return)
[ Sir Henry Taylor's 'Statesman,' p. 59.]

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

187 (return)
[

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

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

188 (return)
[ "And strength, by LIMPING sway disabled," &c.—SONNET LXVI.

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

189 (return)
[

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

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

1810 (return)
[

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

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

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

1813 (return)
[ Archbishop Whately's 'Commonplace Book.']

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

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

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

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

1817 (return)
[ 'The Statesman,' p. 35.]

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

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

191 (return)
[ 'Kaye's 'Lives of Indian Officers.']

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

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

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

195 (return)
[ Montaigne's Essay [19Book I. chap. xxv.]—'Of the Education of Children.']

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

197 (return)
[ 'Life,' 8vo Ed., p. 102.]

198 (return)
[ 'Autobiography of Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart.,' vol. i. p. 91.]

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

1910 (return)
[ The 'Dialogus Novitiorum de Contemptu Mundi.']

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

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

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

1913 (return)
[ Preface to Southeys 'Life of Wesley' [191864].]

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

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

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

1915 (return)
[ 'Biographia Literaria,' chap. i.]

1916 (return)
[ Sir John Bowring's 'Memoirs of Bentham,' p. 10.]

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

1918 (return)
[ Hazlitt's TABLE TALK: 'On Thought and Action.']

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

202 (return)
[ 'Transformation, or Monte Beni.']

203 (return)
[ 'Portraits Contemporains,' iii. 519.]

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

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

206 (return)
[ 'The War and General Culture,' 1871.]

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

208 (return)
[ 'The Statesman,' pp. 73-75.]

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

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

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

2012 (return)
[ De Tocqueville's 'Memoir and Remains,' vol. i. p. 408.]

2013 (return)
[ De Tocqueville's 'Memoir and Remains,' vol. ii. p. 48.]

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

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

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

2017 (return)
[ 'Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romily,' vol. i. p. 41.]

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

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

2020 (return)
[ Veitch's 'Memoirs of Sir William Hamilton.']

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

211 (return)
[ 'Calcutta Review,' article on 'Romance and Reality of Indian Life.']

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

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

214 (return)
[ Prescot's 'Essays,' art. Cervantes.]

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

216 (return)
[ See chapter v. p. 125.]

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

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

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

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

2111 (return)
[

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

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

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

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

2115 (return)
[ 'Cornhill Magazine,' vol. xvi. p. 322.]

2116 (return)
[ 'Holy Living and Dying,' ch. ii. sect. 6.]

2117 (return)
[ Ibid., ch. iii. sect. 6.]

2118 (return)
[ Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' vol. x. p. 40.]

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