"And what is France? What is French society in these latter days? A
hurly-burly of disorderly elements, all mixed and jumbled together; a
country in which everybody claims the right to occupy the highest posts,
yet few remember that a man to be employed in a responsible position
ought to have a well-balanced mind, ought to be strictly moral, to
know something of the world, and possess certain intellectual powers; a
country in which the highest offices are frequently held by ignorant and
uneducated persons, who either boast some special talent, or whose
only claim is social position and some versatility and address. What a
baneful and degrading state of things! And how natural that, while it
lasts, France should be full of a people without a position, without a
calling, who do not know what to do with themselves, but are none the
less eager to envy and malign every one who does....
"The French do not possess in any very marked degree the qualities
required to render general conscription acceptable, or to turn it to
account. Conceited and egotistic as they are, the people would object
to an innovation whose invigorating force they are unable to comprehend,
and which cannot be carried out without virtues which they do not
possess--self-abnegation, conscientious recognition of duty, and a
willingness to sacrifice personal interests to the loftier demands
of the country. As the character of individuals is only improved by
experience, most nations require a chastisement before they set about
reorganising their political institutions. So Prussia wanted a Jena to
make her the strong and healthy country she is."]
[Footnote 168: Yet even in De Tocqueville's benevolent nature, there was a
pervading element of impatience. In the very letter in which the above
passage occurs, he says: "Some persons try to be of use to men while
they despise them, and others because they love them. In the services
rendered by the first, there is always something incomplete, rough, and
contemptuous, that inspires neither confidence nor gratitude. I should
like to belong to the second class, but often I cannot. I love mankind
in general, but I constantly meet with individuals whose baseness
revolts me. I struggle daily against a universal contempt for my fellow,
creatures."--MEMOIRS AND REMAINS OF DE TOCQUEVILLE, vol. i. p. 813.
[Footnote 16Letter to Kergorlay, Nov. 13th, 1833].]
[Footnote 169: Gleig's 'Life of Wellington,' pp. 314, 315.]
[Footnote 1610: 'Life of Arnold,' i. 94.]
[Footnote 1611: See the 'Memoir of George Wilson, M.D., F.R.S.E.' By his sister
[Footnote 16Edinburgh, 1860].]
[Footnote 1612: Such cases are not unusual. We personally knew a young lady, a
countrywoman of Professor Wilson, afflicted by cancer in the breast,
who concealed the disease from her parents lest it should occasion them
distress. An operation became necessary; and when the surgeons called
for the purpose of performing it, she herself answered the door,
received them with a cheerful countenance, led them upstairs to her
room, and submitted to the knife; and her parents knew nothing of the
operation until it was all over. But the disease had become too deeply
seated for recovery, and the noble self-denying girl died, cheerful and
uncomplaining to the end.
[Footnote 1613: "One night, about eleven o'clock, Keats returned home in a state
of strange physical excitement--it might have appeared, to those who did
not know him, one of fierce intoxication. He told his friend he had
been outside the stage-coach, had received a severe chill, was a little
fevered, but added, 'I don't feel it now.' He was easily persuaded to go
to bed, and as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head was on
the pillow, he slightly coughed and said, 'That is blood from my mouth;
bring me the candle; let me see this blood' He gazed steadfastly for
some moments at the ruddy stain, and then, looking in his friend's face
with an expression of sudden calmness never to be forgotten, said,
'I know the colour of that blood--it is arterial blood. I cannot
be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must
die!'"--Houghton's LIFE OF KEATS, Ed. 1867, p. 289.
In the case of George Wilson, the bleeding was in the first instance
from the stomach, though he afterwards suffered from lung haemorrhage
like Keats. Wilson afterwards, speaking of the Lives of Lamb and Keats,
which had just appeared, said he had been reading them with great
sadness. "There is," said he, "something in the noble brotherly love of
Charles to brighten, and hallow, and relieve that sadness; but Keats's
deathbed is the blackness of midnight, unmitigated by one ray of light!"]
[Footnote 1614: On the doctors, who attended him in his first attack, mistaking the
haemorrhage from the stomach for haemorrhage from the lungs, he wrote:
"It would have been but poor consolation to have had as an epitaph:--
"Here lies George Wilson,
Overtaken by Nemesis;
He died not of Haemoptysis,
But of Haematemesis."]
[Footnote 1615: 'Memoir,' p. 427.]
[Footnote 171: Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living.']
[Footnote 172: 'Michelet's 'Life of Luther,' pp. 411-12.]
[Footnote 173: Sir John Kaye's 'Lives of Indian Officers.']
[Footnote 174: 'Deontology,' pp. 130-1, 144.]
[Footnote 175: 'Letters and Essays,' p. 67.]
[Footnote 176: 'Beauties of St. Francis de Sales.']
[Footnote 177: Ibid.]
[Footnote 178: 'Life of Perthes,' ii. 449.]
[Footnote 179: Moore's 'Life of Byron,' 8vo. Ed., p. 483.]
[Footnote 181: Locke thought it of greater importance that an educator of youth
should be well-bred and well-tempered, than that he should be either a
thorough classicist or man of science. Writing to Lord Peterborough on
his son's education, Locke said: "Your Lordship would have your son's
tutor a thorough scholar, and I think it not much matter whether he be
any scholar or no: if he but understand Latin well, and have a general
scheme of the sciences, I think that enough. But I would have him
WELL-BRED and WELL-TEMPERED."]
[Footnote 182: Mrs. Hutchinson's 'Memoir of the Life of Lieut.-Colonel Hutchinson,'
p. 32.]
[Footnote 183: 'Letters and Essays,' p. 59.]
[Footnote 184: 'Lettres d'un Voyageur.']
[Footnote 185: Sir Henry Taylor's 'Statesman,' p. 59.]
[Footnote 186: Introduction to the 'Principal Speeches and Addresses of His Royal
Highness the Prince Consort,' 1862.]
[Footnote 187:
"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beween my outcast state,
And troubled deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate;
WISHING ME LIKE TO ONE MORE RICH IN HOPE,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy, contented least;
Yet in these thoughts, MYSELF ALMOST DESPISING,
Haply I think on thee," &c.--SONNET XXIX.
"So I, MADE LAME by sorrow's dearest spite," &c.--SONNET XXXVI]
[Footnote 188: "And strength, by LIMPING sway disabled," &c.--SONNET LXVI.
"Speak of MY LAMENESS, and I straight will halt."--SONNET LXXXIX.]
[Footnote 189:
"Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And MADE MYSELF A MOTLEY TO THE VIEW,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new," &c.--SONNET CX.
"Oh, for my sake do you with fortune chide!
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
THAN PUBLIC MEANS, WHICH PUBLIC MANNERS BREED;
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued,
To what it works in like the dyer's hand," &c.--SONNET CXI.]
[Footnote 1810:
"In our two loves there is but one respect,
Though in our loves a separable spite,
Which though it alter not loves sole effect;
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight,
I may not evermore acknowledge thee,
Lest MY BEWAILED GUILT SHOULD DO THEE SHAME."--SONNET XXXVI.]
[Footnote 1811: It is related of Garrick, that when subpoenaed on Baretti's trial,
and required to give his evidence before the court--though he had been
accustomed for thirty years to act with the greatest self-possession in
the presence of thousands--he became so perplexed and confused, that he
was actually sent from the witness-box by the judge, as a man from whom
no evidence could be obtained.]
[Footnote 1812: Mrs. Mathews' 'Life and Correspondence of Charles Mathews,' [18Ed.
1860: p. 232.]
[Footnote 1813: Archbishop Whately's 'Commonplace Book.']
[Footnote 1814: Emerson is said to have had Nathaniel Hawthorne in his mind when
writing the following passage in his 'Society and Solitude:'--"The most
agreeable compliment you could pay him was, to imply that you had not
observed him in a house or a street where you had met him. Whilst
he suffered at being seen where he was, he consoled himself with the
delicious thought of the inconceivable number of places where he was
not. All he wished of his tailor was to provide that sober mean of
colour and cut which would never detain the eye for a moment.... He
had a remorse, running to despair, of his social GAUCHERIES, and walked
miles and miles to get the twitchings out of his face, and the starts
and shrugs out of his arms and shoulders. 'God may forgive sins,' he
said, 'but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.'"]
[Footnote 1815: In a series of clever articles in the REVUE DES DEUX MONDES,
entitled, 'Six mille Lieues a toute Vapeur,' giving a description of his
travels in North America, Maurice Sand keenly observed the comparatively
anti-social proclivities of the American compared with the Frenchman.
The one, he says, is inspired by the spirit of individuality, the other
by the spirit of society. In America he sees the individual absorbing
society; as in France he sees society absorbing the individual. "Ce
peuple Anglo-Saxon," he says, "qui trouvait devant lui la terre,
l'instrument de travail, sinon inepuisable, du mons inepuise, s'est mis
a l'exploiter sous l'inspiration de l'egoisme; et nous autres Francais,
nous n'avons rien su en faire, parceque NOUS NE POUVONS RIEN DANS
L'ISOLEMENT.... L'Americain supporte la solitude avec un stoicisme
admirable, mais effrayant; il ne l'aime pas, il ne songe qu'a la
detruire.... Le Francais est tout autre. Il aime son parent, son ami,
son compagnon, et jusqu'a son voisin d'omnibus ou de theatre, si sa
figure lui est sympathetique. Pourquoi? Parce qu'il le regarde et
cherche son ame, parce qu'il vit dans son semblable autant qu'en
lui-meme. Quand il est longtemps seul, il deperit, et quand il est
toujours seul, it meurt."]
All this is perfectly true, and it explains why the comparatively
unsociable Germans, English, and Americans, are spreading over the
earth, while the intensely sociable Frenchmen, unable to enjoy life
without each other's society, prefer to stay at home, and France fails
to extend itself beyond France.]
[Footnote 1816: The Irish have, in many respects, the same strong social instincts
as the French. In the United States they cluster naturally in the towns,
where they have their "Irish Quarters," as in England. They are even
more Irish there than at home, and can no more forget that they are
Irishmen than the French can that they are Frenchmen. "I deliberately
assert," says Mr. Maguire, in his recent work on 'The Irish in America,'
"that it is not within the power of language to describe adequately,
much less to exaggerate, the evils consequent on the unhappy tendency
of the Irish to congregate in the large towns of America." It is this
intense socialism of the Irish that keeps them in a comparatively
hand-to-mouth condition in all the States of the Union.]
[Footnote 1817: 'The Statesman,' p. 35.]
[Footnote 1818: Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his 'First Impressions of France and
Italy,' says his opinion of the uncleanly character of the modern Romans
is so unfavourable that he hardly knows how to express it "But the
fact is that through the Forum, and everywhere out of the commonest
foot-track and roadway, you must look well to your steps.... Perhaps
there is something in the minds of the people of these countries that
enables them to dissever small ugliness from great sublimity and beauty.
They spit upon the glorious pavement of St. Peter's, and wherever else
they like; they place paltry-looking wooden confessionals beneath its
sublime arches, and ornament them with cheap little coloured prints of
the Crucifixion; they hang tin hearts, and other tinsel and trumpery, at
the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels that are encrusted with
gems, or marbles almost as precious; they put pasteboard statues of
saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon;--in short, they let the
sublime and the ridiculous come close together, and are not in the least
troubled by the proximity."]
[Footnote 1819: Edwin Chadwick's 'Address to the Economic Science and Statistic
Section,' British Association [18Meeting, 1862].]
[Footnote 191: 'Kaye's 'Lives of Indian Officers.']
[Footnote 192: Emerson, in his 'Society and Solitude,' says "In contemporaries, it
is not so easy to distinguish between notoriety and fame. Be sure, then,
to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press or the gossip of the
hour.... The three practical rules I have to offer are these:--1. Never
read a book that is not a year old; 2. Never read any but famed books;
3. Never read any but what you like." Lord Lytton's maxim is: "In
science, read by preference the newest books; in literature, the
oldest."]
[Footnote 193: A friend of Sir Walter Scott, who had the same habit, and prided
himself on his powers of conversation, one day tried to "draw out" a
fellow-passenger who sat beside him on the outside of a coach, but
with indifferent success. At length the conversationalist descended to
expostulation. "I have talked to you, my friend," said he, "on all the
ordinary subjects--literature, farming, merchandise, gaming, game-laws,
horse-races, suits at law, politics, and swindling, and blasphemy, and
philosophy: is there any one subject that you will favour me by opening
upon?" The wight writhed his countenance into a grin: "Sir," said he,
"can you say anything clever about BEND-LEATHER?" As might be expected,
the conversationalist was completely nonplussed.]
[Footnote 194: Coleridge, in his 'Lay Sermon,' points out, as a fact of history,
how large a part of our present knowledge and civilization is owing,
directly or indirectly, to the Bible; that the Bible has been the main
lever by which the moral and intellectual character of Europe has been
raised to its present comparative height; and he specifies the marked
and prominent difference of this book from the works which it is the
fashion to quote as guides and authorities in morals, politics, and
history. "In the Bible," he says, "every agent appears and acts as a
self-substituting individual: each has a life of its own, and yet all
are in life. The elements of necessity and freewill are reconciled in
the higher power of an omnipresent Providence, that predestinates the
whole in the moral freedom of the integral parts. Of this the Bible
never suffers us to lose sight. The root is never detached from
the ground, it is God everywhere; and all creatures conform to His
decrees--the righteous by performance of the law, the disobedient by the
sufferance of the penalty."]
[Footnote 195: Montaigne's Essay [19Book I. chap. xxv.]--'Of the Education of
Children.']
[Footnote 196: "Tant il est vrai," says Voltaire, "que les hommes, qui sont
audessus des autres par les talents, s'en RAPPROCHENT PRESQUE TOUJOURS
PAR LES FAIBLESSES; car pourquoi les talents nous mettraient-ils
audessous de l'humanite."--VIE DE MOLIERE.]
[Footnote 197: 'Life,' 8vo Ed., p. 102.]
[Footnote 198: 'Autobiography of Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart.,' vol. i. p. 91.]
[Footnote 199: It was wanting in Plutarch, in Southey [19'Life of Nelson'], and in
Forster [19'Life of Goldsmith']; yet it must be acknowledged that personal
knowledge gives the principal charm to Tacitus's 'Agricola,' Roper's
'Life of More,' Johnson's 'Lives of Savage and Pope,' Boswell's
'Johnson,' Lockhart's 'Scott,' Carlyle's 'Sterling,' and Moore's
'Byron,']
[Footnote 1910: The 'Dialogus Novitiorum de Contemptu Mundi.']
[Footnote 1911: The Life of Sir Charles Bell, one of our greatest physiologists,
was left to be written by Amedee Pichot, a Frenchman; and though Sir
Charles Bell's letters to his brother have since been published, his
Life still remains to be written. It may also be added that the best
Life of Goethe has been written by an Englishman, and the best Life of
Frederick the Great by a Scotchman.]
[Footnote 1912: It is not a little remarkable that the pious Schleiermacher should
have concurred in opinion with Goethe as to the merits of Spinoza,
though he was a man excommunicated by the Jews, to whom he belonged, and
denounced by the Christians as a man little better than an atheist. "The
Great Spirit of the world," says Schleiermacher, in his REDE UBER DIE
RELIGION, "penetrated the holy but repudiated Spinoza; the Infinite was
his beginning and his end; the universe his only and eternal love. He
was filled with religion and religious feeling: and therefore is it
that he stands alone unapproachable, the master in his art, but
elevated above the profane world, without adherents, and without even
citizenship."]
Cousin also says of Spinoza:--"The author whom this pretended atheist
most resembles is the unknown author of 'The Imitation of Jesus
Christ.'"]
[Footnote 1913: Preface to Southeys 'Life of Wesley' [191864].]
[Footnote 1914: Napoleon also read Milton carefully, and it has been related of
him by Sir Colin Campbell, who resided with Napoleon at Elba, that
when speaking of the Battle of Austerlitz, he said that a particular
disposition of his artillery, which, in its results, had a decisive
effect in winning the battle, was suggested to his mind by the
recollection of four lines in Milton. The lines occur in the sixth book,
and are descriptive of Satan's artifice during the war with Heaven.
"In hollow cube
Training his devilish engin'ry, impal'd
On every side WITH SHADOWING SQUADRONS DEEP
TO HIDE THE FRAUD."
"The indubitable fact," says Mr. Edwards, in his book 'On Libraries,'
"that these lines have a certain appositeness to an important manoeuvre
at Austerlitz, gives an independent interest to the story; but it is
highly imaginative to ascribe the victory to that manoeuvre. And for
the other preliminaries of the tale, it is unfortunate that Napoleon had
learned a good deal about war long before he had learned anything about
Milton."]
[Footnote 1915: 'Biographia Literaria,' chap. i.]
[Footnote 1916: Sir John Bowring's 'Memoirs of Bentham,' p. 10.]
[Footnote 1917: Notwithstanding recent censures of classical studies as a useless
waste of time, there can be no doubt that they give the highest
finish to intellectual culture. The ancient classics contain the most
consummate models of literary art; and the greatest writers have been
their most diligent students. Classical culture was the instrument with
which Erasmus and the Reformers purified Europe. It distinguished
the great patriots of the seventeenth century; and it has ever since
characterised our greatest statesmen. "I know not how it is," says an
English writer, "but their commerce with the ancients appears to me to
produce, in those who constantly practise it, a steadying and composing
effect upon their judgment, not of literary works only, but of men and
events in general. They are like persons who have had a weighty and
impressive experience; they are more truly than others under the empire
of facts, and more independent of the language current among those with
whom they live."]
[Footnote 1918: Hazlitt's TABLE TALK: 'On Thought and Action.']
[Footnote 201: Mungo Park declared that he was more affected by this incident than
by any other that befel him in the course of his travels. As he lay
down to sleep on the mat spread for him on the floor of the hut, his
benefactress called to the female part of the family to resume their
task of spinning cotton, in which they continued employed far into the
night. "They lightened their labour with songs," says the traveller,
"one of which was composed extempore, for I was myself the subject of
it; it was sung by one of the young women, the rest joining in a chorus.
The air was sweet and plaintive, and the words, literally translated,
were these: 'The winds roared, and the rains fell. The poor white man,
faint and weary, came and sat under our tree. He has no mother to bring
him milk, no wife to grind his corn.' Chorus--'Let us pity the white
man, no mother has he!' Trifling as this recital may appear, to a person
in my situation the circumstance was affecting in the highest degree. I
was so oppressed by such unexpected kindness, that sleep fled before my
eyes."]
[Footnote 202: 'Transformation, or Monte Beni.']
[Footnote 203: 'Portraits Contemporains,' iii. 519.]
[Footnote 204: Mr. Arthur Helps, in one of his Essays, has wisely said: "You
observe a man becoming day by day richer, or advancing in station,
or increasing in professional reputation, and you set him down as a
successful man in life. But if his home is an ill-regulated one,
where no links of affection extend throughout the family--whose former
domestics [20and he has had more of them than he can well remember] look
back upon their sojourn with him as one unblessed by kind words or
deeds--I contend that that man has not been successful. Whatever good
fortune he may have in the world, it is to be remembered that he has
always left one important fortress untaken behind him. That man's life
does not surely read well whose benevolence has found no central home.
It may have sent forth rays in various directions, but there should have
been a warm focus of love--that home-nest which is formed round a good
mans heart."--CLAIMS OF LABOUR.]
[Footnote 205: "The red heart sends all its instincts up to the white brain, to be
analysed, chilled, blanched, and so become pure reason--which is just
exactly what we do NOT want of women as women. The current should run
the other way. The nice, calm, cold thought, which, in women, shapes
itself so rapidly that they hardly know it as thought, should always
travel to the lips VIA the heart. It does so in those women whom
all love and admire.... The brain-women never interest us like the
heart-women; white roses please less than red."--THE PROFESSOR AT THE
BREAKFAST TABLE, by Oliver Wendell Holmes.]
[Footnote 206: 'The War and General Culture,' 1871.]
[Footnote 207: "Depend upon it, men set more value on the cultivated minds than on
the accomplishments of women, which they are rarely able to appreciate.
It is a common error, but it is an error, that literature unfits women
for the everyday business of life. It is not so with men. You see
those of the most cultivated minds constantly devoting their time and
attention to the most homely objects. Literature gives women a real
and proper weight in society, but then they must use it with
discretion."--THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.]
[Footnote 208: 'The Statesman,' pp. 73-75.]
[Footnote 209: Fuller, the Church historian, with his usual homely mother-wit,
speaking of the choice of a wife, said briefly, "Take the daughter of a
good mother."]
[Footnote 2010: She was an Englishwoman--a Miss Motley. It maybe mentioned that
amongst other distinguished Frenchmen who have married English wives,
were Sismondi, Alfred de Vigny, and Lamartine.]
[Footnote 2011: "Plus je roule dans ce monde, et plus je suis amene a penser qu'il
n'y a que le bonheur domestique qui signifie quelque chose."--OEUVRES ET
CORRESPONDENCE.]
[Footnote 2012: De Tocqueville's 'Memoir and Remains,' vol. i. p. 408.]
[Footnote 2013: De Tocqueville's 'Memoir and Remains,' vol. ii. p. 48.]
[Footnote 2014: Colonel Hutchinson was an uncompromising republican, thoroughly
brave, highminded, and pious. At the Restoration, he was discharged from
Parliament, and from all offices of state for ever. He retired to his
estate at Owthorp, near Nottingham, but was shortly after arrested and
imprisoned in the Tower. From thence he was removed to Sandown Castle,
near Deal, where he lay for eleven months, and died on September
11th, 1664. The wife petitioned for leave to share his prison, but was
refused. When he felt himself dying, knowing the deep sorrow which
his death would occasion to his wife, he left this message, which was
conveyed to her: "Let her, as she is above other women, show herself on
this occasion a good Christian, and above the pitch of ordinary women."
Hence the wife's allusion to her husband's "command" in the above
passage.]
[Footnote 2015: Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson to her children concerning their father:
'Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson' [20Bohn's Ed.], pp. 29-30.]
[Footnote 2016: On the Declaration of American Independence, the first John Adams,
afterwards President of the United States, bought a copy of the 'Life
and Letters of Lady Russell,' and presented it to his wife, "with an
express intent and desire" [20as stated by himself], "that she should
consider it a mirror in which to contemplate herself; for, at that time,
I thought it extremely probable, from the daring and dangerous career
I was determined to run, that she would one day find herself in the
situation of Lady Russell, her husband without a head:" Speaking of his
wife in connection with the fact, Mr. Adams added: "Like Lady Russell,
she never, by word or look, discouraged me from running all hazards for
the salvation of my country's liberties. She was willing to share
with me, and that her children should share with us both, in all the
dangerous consequences we had to hazard."]
[Footnote 2017: 'Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romily,' vol. i. p. 41.]
[Footnote 2018: It is a singular circumstance that in the parish church of St.
Bride, Fleet Street, there is a tablet on the wall with an inscription
to the memory of Isaac Romilly, F.R.S., who died in 1759, of a broken
heart, seven days after the decease of a beloved wife--CHAMBERS' BOOK OF
DAYS, vol. ii. p. 539.]
[Footnote 2019: Mr. Frank Buckland says "During the long period that Dr. Buckland
was engaged in writing the book which I now have the honour of editing,
my mother sat up night after night, for weeks and months consecutively,
writing to my father's dictation; and this often till the sun's rays,
shining through the shutters at early morn, warned the husband to cease
from thinking, and the wife to rest her weary hand. Not only with her
pen did she render material assistance, but her natural talent in
the use of her pencil enabled her to give accurate illustrations and
finished drawings, many of which are perpetuated in Dr. Buckland's
works. She was also particularly clever and neat in mending broken
fossils; and there are many specimens in the Oxford Museum, now
exhibiting their natural forms and beauty, which were restored by
her perseverance to shape from a mass of broken and almost comminuted
fragments."]
[Footnote 2020: Veitch's 'Memoirs of Sir William Hamilton.']
[Footnote 2021: The following extract from Mr. Veitch's biography will give one an
idea of the extraordinary labours of Lady Hamilton, to whose unfailing
devotion to the service of her husband the world of intellect has been
so much indebted: "The number of pages in her handwriting," says Mr.
Veitch,--"filled with abstruse metaphysical matter, original and quoted,
bristling with proportional and syllogistic formulae--that are still
preserved, is perfectly marvellous. Everything that was sent to the
press, and all the courses of lectures, were written by her, either to
dictation, or from a copy. This work she did in the truest spirit of
love and devotion. She had a power, moreover, of keeping her husband up
to what he had to do. She contended wisely against a sort of energetic
indolence which characterised him, and which, while he was always
labouring, made him apt to put aside the task actually before
him--sometimes diverted by subjects of inquiry suggested in the course
of study on the matter in hand, sometimes discouraged by the difficulty
of reducing to order the immense mass of materials he had accumulated
in connection with it. Then her resolution and cheerful disposition
sustained and refreshed him, and never more so than when, during the
last twelve years of his life, his bodily strength was broken, and his
spirit, though languid, yet ceased not from mental toil. The truth is,
that Sir William's marriage, his comparatively limited circumstances,
and the character of his wife, supplied to a nature that would have been
contented to spend its mighty energies in work that brought no reward
but in the doing of it, and that might never have been made publicly
known or available, the practical force and impulse which enabled him
to accomplish what he actually did in literature and philosophy. It was
this influence, without doubt, which saved him from utter absorption
in his world of rare, noble, and elevated, but ever-increasingly
unattainable ideas. But for it, the serene sea of abstract thought might
have held him becalmed for life; and in the absence of all utterance of
definite knowledge of his conclusions, the world might have been left to
an ignorant and mysterious wonder about the unprofitable scholar."]
[Footnote 211: 'Calcutta Review,' article on 'Romance and Reality of Indian Life.']
[Footnote 212: Joseph Lancaster was only twenty years of age when [21in 1798: he
opened his first school in a spare room in his father's house, which was
soon filled with the destitute children of the neighbourhood. The room
was shortly found too small for the numbers seeking admission, and one
place after another was hired, until at length Lancaster had a special
building erected, capable of accommodating a thousand pupils; outside of
which was placed the following notice:--"All that will, may send their
children here, and have them educated freely; and those that do not
wish to have education for nothing, may pay for it if they please." Thus
Joseph Lancaster was the precursor of our present system of National
Education.]
[Footnote 213: A great musician once said of a promising but passionless
cantatrice--"She sings well, but she wants something, and in that
something everything. If I were single, I would court her; I would marry
her; I would maltreat her; I would break her heart; and in six months
she would be the greatest singer in Europe!"--BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.]
[Footnote 214: Prescot's 'Essays,' art. Cervantes.]
[Footnote 215: A cavalier, named Ruy de Camera, having called upon Camoens to
furnish a poetical version of the seven penitential psalms, the poet,
raising his head from his miserable pallet, and pointing to his faithful
slave, exclaimed: "Alas! when I was a poet, I was young, and happy, and
blest with the love of ladies; but now, I am a forlorn deserted wretch!
See--there stands my poor Antonio, vainly supplicating FOURPENCE to
purchase a little coals. I have not them to give him!" The cavalier,
Sousa quaintly relates, in his 'Life of Camoens,' closed his heart
and his purse, and quitted the room. Such were the grandees of
Portugal!--Lord Strangford's REMARKS ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF
CAMOENS, 1824.]
[Footnote 216: See chapter v. p. 125.]
[Footnote 217: A Quaker called on Bunyan one day with "a message from the Lord,"
saying he had been to half the gaols of England, and was glad at last
to have found him. To which Bunyan replied: "If the Lord sent thee, you
would not have needed to take so much trouble to find me out, for He
knew that I have been in Bedford Gaol these seven years past."]
[Footnote 218: Prynne, besides standing in the pillory and having his ears cut off,
was imprisoned by turns in the Tower, Mont Orgueil [21Jersey], Dunster
Castle, Taunton Castle, and Pendennis Castle. He after-wards pleaded
zealously for the Restoration, and was made Keeper of the Records
by Charles II. It has been computed that Prynne wrote, compiled, and
printed about eight quarto pages for every working-day of his life, from
his reaching man's estate to the day of his death. Though his books
were for the most part appropriated by the trunkmakers, they now command
almost fabulous prices, chiefly because of their rarity.]
[Footnote 219: He also projected his 'Review' in prison--the first periodical of
the kind, which pointed the way to the host of 'Tatlers,' 'Guardians,'
and 'Spectators,' which followed it. The 'Review' consisted of 102
numbers, forming nine quarto volumes, all of which were written by De
Foe himself, while engaged in other and various labours.]
[Footnote 2110: A passage in the Earl of Carlisles Lecture on Pope--'Heaven was
made for those who have failed in this world'--struck me very forcibly
several years ago when I read it in a newspaper, and became a rich vein
of thought, in which I often quarried, especially when the sentence
was interpreted by the Cross, which was failure apparently."--LIFE AND
LETTERS OF ROBERTSON [21of Brighton], ii. 94.]
[Footnote 2111:
"Not all who seem to fail, have failed indeed;
Not all who fail have therefore worked in vain:
For all our acts to many issues lead;
And out of earnest purpose, pure and plain,
Enforced by honest toil of hand or brain,
The Lord will fashion, in His own good time,
[21Be this the labourer's proudly-humble creed,]
Such ends as, to His wisdom, fitliest chime
With His vast love's eternal harmonies.
There is no failure for the good and wise:
What though thy seed should fall by the wayside
And the birds snatch it;--yet the birds are fed;
Or they may bear it far across the tide,
To give rich harvests after thou art dead."
POLITICS FOR THE PEOPLE, 1848.]
[Footnote 2112: "What is it," says Mr. Helps, "that promotes the most and the
deepest thought in the human race? It is not learning; it is not the
conduct of business; it is not even the impulse of the affections. It
is suffering; and that, perhaps, is the reason why there is so much
suffering in the world. The angel who went down to trouble the waters
and to make them healing, was not, perhaps, entrusted with so great
a boon as the angel who benevolently inflicted upon the sufferers the
disease from which they suffered."--BREVIA.]
[Footnote 2113: These lines were written by Deckar, in a spirit of boldness equal
to its piety. Hazlitt has or said of them, that they "ought to
embalm his memory to every one who has a sense either of religion, or
philosophy, or humanity, or true genius."]
[Footnote 2114: Reboul, originally a baker of Nismes, was the author of many
beautiful poems--amongst others, of the exquisite piece known in this
country by its English translation, entitled 'The Angel and the Child.']
[Footnote 2115: 'Cornhill Magazine,' vol. xvi. p. 322.]
[Footnote 2116: 'Holy Living and Dying,' ch. ii. sect. 6.]
[Footnote 2117: Ibid., ch. iii. sect. 6.]
[Footnote 2118: Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' vol. x. p. 40.]
