Take, again, the case of Fichte, in whose history his courtship and
marriage form a beautiful episode. He was a poor German student, living
with a family at Zurich in the capacity of tutor, when he first made the
acquaintance of Johanna Maria Hahn, a niece of Klopstock. Her position
in life was higher than that of Fichte; nevertheless, she regarded him
with sincere admiration. When Fichte was about to leave Zurich, his
troth plighted to her, she, knowing him to be very poor, offered him
a gift of money before setting out. He was inexpressibly hurt by the
offer, and, at first, even doubted whether she could really love him;
but, on second thoughts, he wrote to her, expressing his deep thanks,
but, at the same time, the impossibility of his accepting such a gift
from her. He succeeded in reaching his destination, though entirely
destitute of means. After a long and hard struggle with the world,
extending over many years, Fichte was at length earning money enough to
enable him to marry. In one of his charming letters to his betrothed
he said:--"And so, dearest, I solemnly devote myself to thee, and thank
thee that thou hast thought me not unworthy to be thy companion on the
journey of life.... There is no land of happiness here below--I know it
now--but a land of toil, where every joy but strengthens us for greater
labour. Hand-in-hand we shall traverse it, and encourage and strengthen
each other, until our spirits--oh, may it be together!--shall rise to
the eternal fountain of all peace."

The married life of Fichte was very happy. His wife proved a true and
highminded helpmate. During the War of Liberation she was assiduous
in her attention to the wounded in the hospitals, where she caught a
malignant fever, which nearly carried her off. Fichte himself caught the
same disease, and was for a time completely prostrated; but he lived for
a few more years and died at the early age of fifty-two, consumed by his
own fire.

What a contrast does the courtship and married life of the blunt and
practical William Cobbett present to the aesthetical and sentimental
love of these highly refined Germans! Not less honest, not less true,
but, as some would think, comparatively coarse and vulgar. When he first
set eyes upon the girl that was afterwards to become his wife, she was
only thirteen years old, and he was twenty-one--a sergeant-major in a
foot regiment stationed at St. John's in New Brunswick. He was passing
the door of her father's house one day in winter, and saw the girl
out in the snow, scrubbing a washing-tub. He said at once to himself,
"That's the girl for me." He made her acquaintance, and resolved that
she should be his wife so soon as he could get discharged from the army.

On the eve of the girl's return to Woolwich with her father, who was a
sergeant-major in the artillery, Cobbett sent her a hundred and fifty
guineas which he had saved, in order that she might be able to live
without hard work until his return to England. The girl departed, taking
with her the money; and five years later Cobbett obtained his discharge.
On reaching London, he made haste to call upon the sergeant-major's
daughter. "I found," he says, "my little girl a servant-of-all-work
[20and hard work it was], at five pounds a year, in the house of a Captain
Brisac; and, without hardly saying a word about the matter, she put
into my hands the whole of my hundred and fifty guineas, unbroken."
Admiration of her conduct was now added to love of her person, and
Cobbett shortly after married the girl, who proved an excellent wife. He
was, indeed, never tired of speaking her praises, and it was his pride
to attribute to her all the comfort and much of the success of his
after-life.

Though Cobbett was regarded by many in his lifetime as a coarse, hard,
practical man, full of prejudices, there was yet a strong undercurrent
of poetry in his nature; and, while he declaimed against sentiment,
there were few men more thoroughly imbued with sentiment of the best
kind. He had the tenderest regard for the character of woman. He
respected her purity and her virtue, and in his 'Advice to Young
Men,' he has painted the true womanly woman--the helpful, cheerful,
affectionate wife--with a vividness and brightness, and, at the same
time, a force of good sense, that has never been surpassed by any
English writer. Cobbett was anything but refined, in the conventional
sense of the word; but he was pure, temperate, self-denying,
industrious, vigorous, and energetic, in an eminent degree. Many of his
views were, no doubt, wrong, but they were his own, for he insisted on
thinking for himself in everything. Though few men took a firmer grasp
of the real than he did, perhaps still fewer were more swayed by the
ideal. In word-pictures of his own emotions, he is unsurpassed. Indeed,
Cobbett might almost be regarded as one of the greatest prose poets of
English real life.




CHAPTER XII--THE DISCIPLINE OF EXPERIENCE.



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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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