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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1117: Ibid. i. 22.]

[Footnote 1118: Ibid. 1. 23.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1211: Speech at Liverpool, 1812.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 141: James Russell Lowell.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 159: Lady Elizabeth Carew.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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