Practical success in life depends more upon physical health than is
generally imagined.  Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, writing home to a
friend in England, said, "I believe, if I get on well in India, it
will be owing, physically speaking, to a sound digestion."  The
capacity for continuous working in any calling must necessarily
depend in a great measure upon this; and hence the necessity for
attending to health, even as a means of intellectual labour.  It is
perhaps to the neglect of physical exercise that we find amongst
students so frequent a tendency towards discontent, unhappiness,
inaction, and reverie,--displaying itself in contempt for real life
and disgust at the beaten tracks of men,--a tendency which in
England has been called Byronism, and in Germany Wertherism.  Dr.
Channing noted the same growth in America, which led him to make
the remark, that "too many of our young men grow up in a school of
despair."  The only remedy for this green-sickness in youth is
physical exercise--action, work, and bodily occupation.

The use of early labour in self-imposed mechanical employments may
be illustrated by the boyhood of Sir Isaac Newton.  Though a
comparatively dull scholar, he was very assiduous in the use of his
saw, hammer, and hatchet--"knocking and hammering in his lodging
room"--making models of windmills, carriages, and machines of all
sorts; and as he grew older, he took delight in making little
tables and cupboards for his friends.  Smeaton, Watt, and
Stephenson, were equally handy with tools when mere boys; and but
for such kind of self-culture in their youth, it is doubtful
whether they would have accomplished so much in their manhood.
Such was also the early training of the great inventors and
mechanics described in the preceding pages, whose contrivance and
intelligence were practically trained by the constant use of their
hands in early life.  Even where men belonging to the manual labour
class have risen above it, and become more purely intellectual
labourers, they have found the advantages of their early training
in their later pursuits.  Elihu Burritt says he found hard labour
NECESSARY to enable him to study with effect; and more than once he
gave up school-teaching and study, and, taking to his leather-apron
again, went back to his blacksmith's forge and anvil for his health
of body and mind's sake.

The training of young men in the use of tools would, at the same
time that it educated them in "common things," teach them the use
of their hands and arms, familiarize them with healthy work,
exercise their faculties upon things tangible and actual, give them
some practical acquaintance with mechanics, impart to them the
ability of being useful, and implant in them the habit of
persevering physical effort.  This is an advantage which the
working classes, strictly so called, certainly possess over the
leisure classes,--that they are in early life under the necessity
of applying themselves laboriously to some mechanical pursuit or
other,--thus acquiring manual dexterity and the use of their
physical powers.  The chief disadvantage attached to the calling of
the laborious classes is, not that they are employed in physical
work, but that they are too exclusively so employed, often to the
neglect of their moral and intellectual faculties.  While the
youths of the leisure classes, having been taught to associate
labour with servility, have shunned it, and been allowed to grow up
practically ignorant, the poorer classes, confining themselves
within the circle of their laborious callings, have been allowed to
grow up in a large proportion of cases absolutely illiterate.  It
seems possible, however, to avoid both these evils by combining
physical training or physical work with intellectual culture:  and
there are various signs abroad which seem to mark the gradual
adoption of this healthier system of education.

The success of even professional men depends in no slight degree on
their physical health; and a public writer has gone so far as to
say that "the greatness of our great men is quite as much a bodily
affair as a mental one." {28}  A healthy breathing apparatus is as
indispensable to the successful lawyer or politician as a well-
cultured intellect.  The thorough aeration of the blood by free
exposure to a large breathing surface in the lungs, is necessary to
maintain that full vital power on which the vigorous working of the
brain in so large a measure depends.  The lawyer has to climb the
heights of his profession through close and heated courts, and the
political leader has to bear the fatigue and excitement of long and
anxious debates in a crowded House.  Hence the lawyer in full
practice and the parliamentary leader in full work are called upon
to display powers of physical endurance and activity even more
extraordinary than those of the intellect,--such powers as have
been exhibited in so remarkable a degree by Brougham, Lyndhurst,
and Campbell; by Peel, Graham, and Palmerston--all full-chested
men.

Though Sir Walter Scott, when at Edinburgh College, went by the
name of "The Greek Blockhead," he was, notwithstanding his
lameness, a remarkably healthy youth:  he could spear a salmon with
the best fisher on the Tweed, and ride a wild horse with any hunter
in Yarrow.  When devoting himself in after life to literary
pursuits, Sir Walter never lost his taste for field sports; but
while writing 'Waverley' in the morning, he would in the afternoon
course hares.  Professor Wilson was a very athlete, as great at
throwing the hammer as in his flights of eloquence and poetry; and
Burns, when a youth, was remarkable chiefly for his leaping,
putting, and wrestling.  Some of our greatest divines were
distinguished in their youth for their physical energies.  Isaac
Barrow, when at the Charterhouse School, was notorious for his
pugilistic encounters, in which he got many a bloody nose; Andrew
Fuller, when working as a farmer's lad at Soham, was chiefly famous
for his skill in boxing; and Adam Clarke, when a boy, was only
remarkable for the strength displayed by him in "rolling large
stones about,"--the secret, possibly, of some of the power which he
subsequently displayed in rolling forth large thoughts in his
manhood.

While it is necessary, then, in the first place to secure this
solid foundation of physical health, it must also be observed that
the cultivation of the habit of mental application is quite
indispensable for the education of the student.  The maxim that
"Labour conquers all things" holds especially true in the case of
the conquest of knowledge.  The road into learning is alike free to
all who will give the labour and the study requisite to gather it;
nor are there any difficulties so great that the student of
resolute purpose may not surmount and overcome them.  It was one of
the characteristic expressions of Chatterton, that God had sent his
creatures into the world with arms long enough to reach anything if
they chose to be at the trouble.  In study, as in business, energy
is the great thing.  There must be the "fervet opus":  we must not
only strike the iron while it is hot, but strike it till it is made
hot.  It is astonishing how much may be accomplished in self-
culture by the energetic and the persevering, who are careful to
avail themselves of opportunities, and use up the fragments of
spare time which the idle permit to run to waste.  Thus Ferguson
learnt astronomy from the heavens, while wrapt in a sheep-skin on
the highland hills.  Thus Stone learnt mathematics while working as
a journeyman gardener; thus Drew studied the highest philosophy in
the intervals of cobbling shoes; and thus Miller taught himself
geology while working as a day labourer in a quarry.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, as we have already observed, was so earnest a
believer in the force of industry that he held that all men might
achieve excellence if they would but exercise the power of
assiduous and patient working.  He held that drudgery lay on the
road to genius, and that there was no limit to the proficiency of
an artist except the limit of his own painstaking.  He would not
believe in what is called inspiration, but only in study and
labour.  "Excellence," he said, "is never granted to man but as the
reward of labour."  "If you have great talents, industry will
improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will
supply their deficiency.  Nothing is denied to well-directed
labour; nothing is to be obtained without it."  Sir Fowell Buxton
was an equal believer in the power of study; and he entertained the
modest idea that he could do as well as other men if he devoted to
the pursuit double the time and labour that they did.  He placed
his great confidence in ordinary means and extraordinary
application.

"I have known several men in my life," says Dr. Ross, "who may be
recognized in days to come as men of genius, and they were all
plodders, hard-working, INTENT men.  Genius is known by its works;
genius without works is a blind faith, a dumb oracle.  But
meritorious works are the result of time and labour, and cannot be
accomplished by intention or by a wish. . . . Every great work is
the result of vast preparatory training.  Facility comes by labour.
Nothing seems easy, not even walking, that was not difficult at
first.  The orator whose eye flashes instantaneous fire, and whose
lips pour out a flood of noble thoughts, startling by their
unexpectedness, and elevating by their wisdom and truth, has
learned his secret by patient repetition, and after many bitter
disappointments." {29}

Thoroughness and accuracy are two principal points to be aimed at
in study.  Francis Horner, in laying down rules for the cultivation
of his mind, placed great stress upon the habit of continuous
application to one subject for the sake of mastering it thoroughly;
he confined himself, with this object, to only a few books, and
resisted with the greatest firmness "every approach to a habit of
desultory reading."  The value of knowledge to any man consists not
in its quantity, but mainly in the good uses to which he can apply
it.  Hence a little knowledge, of an exact and perfect character,
is always found more valuable for practical purposes than any
extent of superficial learning.

One of Ignatius Loyola's maxims was, "He who does well one work at
a time, does more than all."  By spreading our efforts over too
large a surface we inevitably weaken our force, hinder our
progress, and acquire a habit of fitfulness and ineffective
working.  Lord St. Leonards once communicated to Sir Fowell Buxton
the mode in which he had conducted his studies, and thus explained
the secret of his success.  "I resolved," said he, "when beginning
to read law, to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and
never to go to a second thing till I had entirely accomplished the
first.  Many of my competitors read as much in a day as I read in a
week; but, at the end of twelve months, my knowledge was as fresh
as the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from
recollection."

It is not the quantity of study that one gets through, or the
amount of reading, that makes a wise man; but the appositeness of
the study to the purpose for which it is pursued; the concentration
of the mind for the time being on the subject under consideration;
and the habitual discipline by which the whole system of mental
application is regulated.  Abernethy was even of opinion that there
was a point of saturation in his own mind, and that if he took into
it something more than it could hold, it only had the effect of
pushing something else out.  Speaking of the study of medicine, he
said, "If a man has a clear idea of what he desires to do, he will
seldom fail in selecting the proper means of accomplishing it."

The most profitable study is that which is conducted with a
definite aim and object.  By thoroughly mastering any given branch
of knowledge we render it more available for use at any moment.
Hence it is not enough merely to have books, or to know where to
read for information as we want it.  Practical wisdom, for the
purposes of life, must be carried about with us, and be ready for
use at call.  It is not sufficient that we have a fund laid up at
home, but not a farthing in the pocket:  we must carry about with
us a store of the current coin of knowledge ready for exchange on
all occasions, else we are comparatively helpless when the
opportunity for using it occurs.

Decision and promptitude are as requisite in self-culture as in
business.  The growth of these qualities may be encouraged by
accustoming young people to rely upon their own resources, leaving
them to enjoy as much freedom of action in early life as is
practicable.  Too much guidance and restraint hinder the formation
of habits of self-help.  They are like bladders tied under the arms
of one who has not taught himself to swim.  Want of confidence is
perhaps a greater obstacle to improvement than is generally
imagined.  It has been said that half the failures in life arise
from pulling in one's horse while he is leaping.  Dr. Johnson was
accustomed to attribute his success to confidence in his own
powers.  True modesty is quite compatible with a due estimate of
one's own merits, and does not demand the abnegation of all merit.
Though there are those who deceive themselves by putting a false
figure before their ciphers, the want of confidence, the want of
faith in one's self, and consequently the want of promptitude in
action, is a defect of character which is found to stand very much
in the way of individual progress; and the reason why so little is
done, is generally because so little is attempted.

There is usually no want of desire on the part of most persons to
arrive at the results of self-culture, but there is a great
aversion to pay the inevitable price for it, of hard work.  Dr.
Johnson held that "impatience of study was the mental disease of
the present generation;" and the remark is still applicable.  We
may not believe that there is a royal road to learning, but we seem
to believe very firmly in a "popular" one.  In education, we invent
labour-saving processes, seek short cuts to science, learn French
and Latin "in twelve lessons," or "without a master."  We resemble
the lady of fashion, who engaged a master to teach her on condition
that he did not plague her with verbs and participles.  We get our
smattering of science in the same way; we learn chemistry by
listening to a short course of lectures enlivened by experiments,
and when we have inhaled laughing gas, seen green water turned to
red, and phosphorus burnt in oxygen, we have got our smattering, of
which the most that can be said is, that though it may be better
than nothing, it is yet good for nothing.  Thus we often imagine we
are being educated while we are only being amused.

The facility with which young people are thus induced to acquire
knowledge, without study and labour, is not education.  It occupies
but does not enrich the mind.  It imparts a stimulus for the time,
and produces a sort of intellectual keenness and cleverness; but,
without an implanted purpose and a higher object than mere
pleasure, it will bring with it no solid advantage.  In such cases
knowledge produces but a passing impression; a sensation, but no
more; it is, in fact, the merest epicurism of intelligence--
sensuous, but certainly not intellectual.  Thus the best qualities
of many minds, those which are evoked by vigorous effort and
independent action, sleep a deep sleep, and are often never called
to life, except by the rough awakening of sudden calamity or
suffering, which, in such cases, comes as a blessing, if it serves
to rouse up a courageous spirit that, but for it, would have slept
on.

Accustomed to acquire information under the guise of amusement,
young people will soon reject that which is presented to them under
the aspect of study and labour.  Learning their knowledge and
science in sport, they will be too apt to make sport of both; while
the habit of intellectual dissipation, thus engendered, cannot
fail, in course of time, to produce a thoroughly emasculating
effect both upon their mind and character.  "Multifarious reading,"
said Robertson of Brighton, "weakens the mind like smoking, and is
an excuse for its lying dormant.  It is the idlest of all
idlenesses, and leaves more of impotency than any other."

The evil is a growing one, and operates in various ways.  Its least
mischief is shallowness; its greatest, the aversion to steady
labour which it induces, and the low and feeble tone of mind which
it encourages.  If we would be really wise, we must diligently
apply ourselves, and confront the same continuous application which
our forefathers did; for labour is still, and ever will be, the
inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.  We must be
satisfied to work with a purpose, and wait the results with
patience.  All progress, of the best kind, is slow; but to him who
works faithfully and zealously the reward will, doubtless, be
vouchsafed in good time.  The spirit of industry, embodied in a
man's daily life, will gradually lead him to exercise his powers on
objects outside himself, of greater dignity and more extended
usefulness.  And still we must labour on; for the work of self-
culture is never finished.  "To be employed," said the poet Gray,
"is to be happy."  "It is better to wear out than rust out," said
Bishop Cumberland.  "Have we not all eternity to rest in?"
exclaimed Arnauld.  "Repos ailleurs" was the motto of Marnix de St.
Aldegonde, the energetic and ever-working friend of William the
Silent.

It is the use we make of the powers entrusted to us, which
constitutes our only just claim to respect.  He who employs his one
talent aright is as much to be honoured as he to whom ten talents
have been given.  There is really no more personal merit attaching
to the possession of superior intellectual powers than there is in
the succession to a large estate.  How are those powers used--how
is that estate employed?  The mind may accumulate large stores of
knowledge without any useful purpose; but the knowledge must be
allied to goodness and wisdom, and embodied in upright character,
else it is naught.  Pestalozzi even held intellectual training by
itself to be pernicious; insisting that the roots of all knowledge
must strike and feed in the soil of the rightly-governed will.  The
acquisition of knowledge may, it is true, protect a man against the
meaner felonies of life; but not in any degree against its selfish
vices, unless fortified by sound principles and habits.  Hence do
we find in daily life so many instances of men who are well-
informed in intellect, but utterly deformed in character; filled
with the learning of the schools, yet possessing little practical
wisdom, and offering examples for warning rather than imitation.
An often quoted expression at this day is that "Knowledge is
power;" but so also are fanaticism, despotism, and ambition.
Knowledge of itself, unless wisely directed, might merely make bad
men more dangerous, and the society in which it was regarded as the
highest good, little better than a pandemonium.

It is possible that at this day we may even exaggerate the
importance of literary culture.  We are apt to imagine that because
we possess many libraries, institutes, and museums, we are making
great progress.  But such facilities may as often be a hindrance as
a help to individual self-culture of the highest kind.  The
possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes
learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.
Though we undoubtedly possess great facilities it is nevertheless
true, as of old, that wisdom and understanding can only become the
possession of individual men by travelling the old road of
observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.  The possession
of the mere materials of knowledge is something very different from
wisdom and understanding, which are reached through a higher kind
of discipline than that of reading,--which is often but a mere
passive reception of other men's thoughts; there being little or no
active effort of mind in the transaction.  Then how much of our
reading is but the indulgence of a sort of intellectual dram-
drinking, imparting a grateful excitement for the moment, without
the slightest effect in improving and enriching the mind or
building up the character.  Thus many indulge themselves in the
conceit that they are cultivating their minds, when they are only
employed in the humbler occupation of killing time, of which
perhaps the best that can be said is that it keeps them from doing
worse things.

It is also to be borne in mind that the experience gathered from
books, though often valuable, is but of the nature of LEARNING;
whereas the experience gained from actual life is of the nature of
WISDOM; and a small store of the latter is worth vastly more than
any stock of the former.  Lord Bolingbroke truly said that
"Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us
better men and citizens, is at best but a specious and ingenious
sort of idleness, and the knowledge we acquire by it, only a
creditable kind of ignorance--nothing more."

Useful and instructive though good reading may be, it is yet only
one mode of cultivating the mind; and is much less influential than
practical experience and good example in the formation of
character.  There were wise, valiant, and true-hearted men bred in
England, long before the existence of a reading public.  Magna
Charta was secured by men who signed the deed with their marks.
Though altogether unskilled in the art of deciphering the literary
signs by which principles were denominated upon paper, they yet
understood and appreciated, and boldly contended for, the things
themselves.  Thus the foundations of English liberty were laid by
men, who, though illiterate, were nevertheless of the very highest
stamp of character.  And it must be admitted that the chief object
of culture is, not merely to fill the mind with other men's
thoughts, and to be the passive recipient of their impressions of
things, but to enlarge our individual intelligence, and render us
more useful and efficient workers in the sphere of life to which we
may be called.  Many of our most energetic and useful workers have
been but sparing readers.  Brindley and Stephenson did not learn to
read and write until they reached manhood, and yet they did great
works and lived manly lives; John Hunter could barely read or write
when he was twenty years old, though he could make tables and
chairs with any carpenter in the trade.  "I never read," said the
great physiologist when lecturing before his class; "this"--
pointing to some part of the subject before him--"this is the work
that you must study if you wish to become eminent in your
profession."  When told that one of his contemporaries had charged
him with being ignorant of the dead languages, he said, "I would
undertake to teach him that on the dead body which he never knew in
any language, dead or living."

It is not then how much a man may know, that is of importance, but
the end and purpose for which he knows it.  The object of knowledge
should be to mature wisdom and improve character, to render us
better, happier, and more useful; more benevolent, more energetic,
and more efficient in the pursuit of every high purpose in life.
"When people once fall into the habit of admiring and encouraging
ability as such, without reference to moral character--and
religious and political opinions are the concrete form of moral
character--they are on the highway to all sorts of degradation."
{30}  We must ourselves BE and DO, and not rest satisfied merely
with reading and meditating over what other men have been and done.
Our best light must be made life, and our best thought action.  At
least we ought to be able to say, as Richter did, "I have made as
much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man should
require more;" for it is every man's duty to discipline and guide
himself, with God's help, according to his responsibilities and the
faculties with which he has been endowed.

Self-discipline and self-control are the beginnings of practical
wisdom; and these must have their root in self-respect.  Hope
springs from it--hope, which is the companion of power, and the
mother of success; for whoso hopes strongly has within him the gift
of miracles.  The humblest may say, "To respect myself, to develop
myself--this is my true duty in life.  An integral and responsible
part of the great system of society, I owe it to society and to its
Author not to degrade or destroy either my body, mind, or
instincts.  On the contrary, I am bound to the best of my power to
give to those parts of my constitution the highest degree of
perfection possible.  I am not only to suppress the evil, but to
evoke the good elements in my nature.  And as I respect myself, so
am I equally bound to respect others, as they on their part are
bound to respect me."  Hence mutual respect, justice, and order, of
which law becomes the written record and guarantee.

Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man may clothe
himself--the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be
inspired.  One of Pythagoras's wisest maxims, in his 'Golden
Verses,' is that with which he enjoins the pupil to "reverence
himself."  Borne up by this high idea, he will not defile his body
by sensuality, nor his mind by servile thoughts.  This sentiment,
carried into daily life, will be found at the root of all the
virtues--cleanliness, sobriety, chastity, morality, and religion.
"The pious and just honouring of ourselves," said Milton, may be
thought the radical moisture and fountain-head from whence every
laudable and worthy enterprise issues forth."  To think meanly of
one's self, is to sink in one's own estimation as well as in the
estimation of others.  And as the thoughts are, so will the acts
be.  Man cannot aspire if he look down; if he will rise, he must
look up.  The very humblest may be sustained by the proper
indulgence of this feeling.  Poverty itself may be lifted and
lighted up by self-respect; and it is truly a noble sight to see a
poor man hold himself upright amidst his temptations, and refuse to
demean himself by low actions.

One way in which self-culture may be degraded is by regarding it
too exclusively as a means of "getting on."  Viewed in this light,
it is unquestionable that education is one of the best investments
of time and labour.  In any line of life, intelligence will enable
a man to adapt himself more readily to circumstances, suggest
improved methods of working, and render him more apt, skilled and
effective in all respects.  He who works with his head as well as
his hands, will come to look at his business with a clearer eye;
and he will become conscious of increasing power--perhaps the most
cheering consciousness the human mind can cherish.  The power of
self-help will gradually grow; and in proportion to a man's self-
respect, will he be armed against the temptation of low
indulgences.  Society and its action will be regarded with quite a
new interest, his sympathies will widen and enlarge, and he will
thus be attracted to work for others as well as for himself.

Self-culture may not, however, end in eminence, as in the numerous
instances above cited.  The great majority of men, in all times,
however enlightened, must necessarily be engaged in the ordinary
avocations of industry; and no degree of culture which can be
conferred upon the community at large will ever enable them--even
were it desirable, which it is not--to get rid of the daily work of
society, which must be done.  But this, we think, may also be
accomplished.  We can elevate the condition of labour by allying it
to noble thoughts, which confer a grace upon the lowliest as well
as the highest rank.  For no matter how poor or humble a man may
be, the great thinker of this and other days may come in and sit
down with him, and be his companion for the time, though his
dwelling be the meanest hut.  It is thus that the habit of well-
directed reading may become a source of the greatest pleasure and
self-improvement, and exercise a gentle coercion, with the most
beneficial results, over the whole tenour of a man's character and
conduct.  And even though self-culture may not bring wealth, it
will at all events give one the companionship of elevated thoughts.
A nobleman once contemptuously asked of a sage, "What have you got
by all your philosophy?"  "At least I have got society in myself,"
was the wise man's reply.

But many are apt to feel despondent, and become discouraged in the
work of self-culture, because they do not "get on" in the world so
fast as they think they deserve to do.  Having planted their acorn,
they expect to see it grow into an oak at once.  They have perhaps
looked upon knowledge in the light of a marketable commodity, and
are consequently mortified because it does not sell as they
expected it would do.  Mr. Tremenheere, in one of his 'Education
Reports' (for 1840-1), states that a schoolmaster in Norfolk,
finding his school rapidly falling off, made inquiry into the
cause, and ascertained that the reason given by the majority of the
parents for withdrawing their children was, that they had expected
"education was to make them better off than they were before," but
that having found it had "done them no good," they had taken their
children from school, and would give themselves no further trouble
about education!

The same low idea of self-culture is but too prevalent in other
classes, and is encouraged by the false views of life which are
always more or less current in society.  But to regard self-culture
either as a means of getting past others in the world, or of
intellectual dissipation and amusement, rather than as a power to
elevate the character and expand the spiritual nature, is to place
it on a very low level.  To use the words of Bacon, "Knowledge is
not a shop for profit or sale, but a rich storehouse for the glory
of the Creator and the relief of man's estate."  It is doubtless
most honourable for a man to labour to elevate himself, and to
better his condition in society, but this is not to be done at the
sacrifice of himself.  To make the mind the mere drudge of the
body, is putting it to a very servile use; and to go about whining
and bemoaning our pitiful lot because we fail in achieving that
success in life which, after all, depends rather upon habits of
industry and attention to business details than upon knowledge, is
the mark of a small, and often of a sour mind.  Such a temper
cannot better be reproved than in the words of Robert Southey, who
thus wrote to a friend who sought his counsel:  "I would give you
advice if it could be of use; but there is no curing those who
choose to be diseased.  A good man and a wise man may at times be
angry with the world, at times grieved for it; but be sure no man
was ever discontented with the world if he did his duty in it.  If
a man of education, who has health, eyes, hands, and leisure, wants
an object, it is only because God Almighty has bestowed all those
blessings upon a man who does not deserve them."

Another way in which education may be prostituted is by employing
it as a mere means of intellectual dissipation and amusement.  Many
are the ministers to this taste in our time.  There is almost a
mania for frivolity and excitement, which exhibits itself in many
forms in our popular literature.  To meet the public taste, our
books and periodicals must now be highly spiced, amusing, and
comic, not disdaining slang, and illustrative of breaches of all
laws, human and divine.  Douglas Jerrold once observed of this
tendency, "I am convinced the world will get tired (at least I hope
so) of this eternal guffaw about all things.  After all, life has
something serious in it.  It cannot be all a comic history of
humanity.  Some men would, I believe, write a Comic Sermon on the
Mount.  Think of a Comic History of England, the drollery of
Alfred, the fun of Sir Thomas More, the farce of his daughter
begging the dead head and clasping it in her coffin on her bosom.
Surely the world will be sick of this blasphemy."  John Sterling,
in a like spirit, said:- "Periodicals and novels are to all in this
generation, but more especially to those whose minds are still
unformed and in the process of formation, a new and more effectual
substitute for the plagues of Egypt, vermin that corrupt the
wholesome waters and infest our chambers."

As a rest from toil and a relaxation from graver pursuits, the
perusal of a well-written story, by a writer of genius, is a high
intellectual pleasure; and it is a description of literature to
which all classes of readers, old and young, are attracted as by a
powerful instinct; nor would we have any of them debarred from its
enjoyment in a reasonable degree.  But to make it the exclusive
literary diet, as some do,--to devour the garbage with which the
shelves of circulating libraries are filled,--and to occupy the
greater portion of the leisure hours in studying the preposterous
pictures of human life which so many of them present, is worse than
waste of time:  it is positively pernicious.  The habitual novel-
reader indulges in fictitious feelings so much, that there is great
risk of sound and healthy feeling becoming perverted or benumbed.
"I never go to hear a tragedy," said a gay man once to the
Archbishop of York, "it wears my heart out."  The literary pity
evoked by fiction leads to no corresponding action; the
susceptibilities which it excites involve neither inconvenience nor
self-sacrifice; so that the heart that is touched too often by the
fiction may at length become insensible to the reality.  The steel
is gradually rubbed out of the character, and it insensibly loses
its vital spring.  "Drawing fine pictures of virtue in one's mind,"
said Bishop Butler, "is so far from necessarily or certainly
conducive to form a HABIT of it in him who thus employs himself,
that it may even harden the mind in a contrary course, and render
it gradually more insensible."

Amusement in moderation is wholesome, and to be commended; but
amusement in excess vitiates the whole nature, and is a thing to be
carefully guarded against.  The maxim is often quoted of "All work
and no play makes Jack a dull boy;" but all play and no work makes
him something greatly worse.  Nothing can be more hurtful to a
youth than to have his soul sodden with pleasure.  The best
qualities of his mind are impaired; common enjoyments become
tasteless; his appetite for the higher kind of pleasures is
vitiated; and when he comes to face the work and the duties of
life, the result is usually aversion and disgust.  "Fast" men waste
and exhaust the powers of life, and dry up the sources of true
happiness.  Having forestalled their spring, they can produce no
healthy growth of either character or intellect.  A child without
simplicity, a maiden without innocence, a boy without truthfulness,
are not more piteous sights than the man who has wasted and thrown
away his youth in self-indulgence.  Mirabeau said of himself, "My
early years have already in a great measure disinherited the
succeeding ones, and dissipated a great part of my vital powers."
As the wrong done to another to-day returns upon ourselves to-
morrow, so the sins of our youth rise up in our age to scourge us.
When Lord Bacon says that "strength of nature in youth passeth over
many excesses which are owing a man until he is old," he exposes a
physical as well as a moral fact which cannot be too well weighed
in the conduct of life.  "I assure you," wrote Giusti the Italian
to a friend, "I pay a heavy price for existence.  It is true that
our lives are not at our own disposal.  Nature pretends to give
them gratis at the beginning, and then sends in her account."  The
worst of youthful indiscretions is, not that they destroy health,
so much as that they sully manhood.  The dissipated youth becomes a
tainted man; and often he cannot be pure, even if he would.  If
cure there be, it is only to be found in inoculating the mind with
a fervent spirit of duty, and in energetic application to useful
work.

One of the most gifted of Frenchmen, in point of great intellectual
endowments, was Benjamin Constant; but, blase at twenty, his life
was only a prolonged wail, instead of a harvest of the great deeds
which he was capable of accomplishing with ordinary diligence and
self-control.  He resolved upon doing so many things, which he
never did, that people came to speak of him as Constant the
Inconstant.  He was a fluent and brilliant writer, and cherished
the ambition of writing works, "which the world would not willingly
let die."  But whilst Constant affected the highest thinking,
unhappily he practised the lowest living; nor did the
transcendentalism of his books atone for the meanness of his life.
He frequented the gaming-tables while engaged in preparing his work
upon religion, and carried on a disreputable intrigue while writing
his 'Adolphe.'  With all his powers of intellect, he was powerless,
because he had no faith in virtue.  "Bah!" said he, "what are
honour and dignity?  The longer I live, the more clearly I see
there is nothing in them."  It was the howl of a miserable man.  He
described himself as but "ashes and dust."  "I pass," said he,
"like a shadow over the earth, accompanied by misery and ennui."
He wished for Voltaire's energy, which he would rather have
possessed than his genius.  But he had no strength of purpose--
nothing but wishes:  his life, prematurely exhausted, had become
but a heap of broken links.  He spoke of himself as a person with
one foot in the air.  He admitted that he had no principles, and no
moral consistency.  Hence, with his splendid talents, he contrived
to do nothing; and, after living many years miserable, he died worn
out and wretched.

The career of Augustin Thierry, the author of the 'History of the
Norman Conquest,' affords an admirable contrast to that of
Constant.  His entire life presented a striking example of
perseverance, diligence, self culture, and untiring devotion to
knowledge.  In the pursuit he lost his eyesight, lost his health,
but never lost his love of truth.  When so feeble that he was
carried from room to room, like a helpless infant, in the arms of a
nurse, his brave spirit never failed him; and blind and helpless
though he was, he concluded his literary career in the following
noble words:- "If, as I think, the interest of science is counted
in the number of great national interests, I have given my country
all that the soldier, mutilated on the field of battle, gives her.
Whatever may be the fate of my labours, this example, I hope, will
not be lost.  I would wish it to serve to combat the species of
moral weakness which is THE DISEASE of our present generation; to
bring back into the straight road of life some of those enervated
souls that complain of wanting faith, that know not what to do, and
seek everywhere, without finding it, an object of worship and
admiration.  Why say, with so much bitterness, that in the world,
constituted as it is, there is no air for all lungs--no employment
for all minds?  Is not calm and serious study there? and is not
that a refuge, a hope, a field within the reach of all of us?  With
it, evil days are passed over without their weight being felt.
Every one can make his own destiny--every one employ his life
nobly.  This is what I have done, and would do again if I had to
recommence my career; I would choose that which has brought me
where I am.  Blind, and suffering without hope, and almost without
intermission, I may give this testimony, which from me will not
appear suspicious.  There is something in the world better than
sensual enjoyments, better than fortune, better than health itself-
-it is devotion to knowledge."

Coleridge, in many respects, resembled Constant.  He possessed
equally brilliant powers, but was similarly infirm of purpose.
With all his great intellectual gifts, he wanted the gift of
industry, and was averse to continuous labour.  He wanted also the
sense of independence, and thought it no degradation to leave his
wife and children to be maintained by the brain-work of the noble
Southey, while he himself retired to Highgate Grove to discourse
transcendentalism to his disciples, looking down contemptuously
upon the honest work going forward beneath him amidst the din and
smoke of London.  With remunerative employment at his command he
stooped to accept the charity of friends; and, notwithstanding his
lofty ideas of philosophy, he condescended to humiliations from
which many a day-labourer would have shrunk.  How different in
spirit was Southey! labouring not merely at work of his own choice,
and at taskwork often tedious and distasteful, but also
unremittingly and with the utmost eagerness seeking and storing
knowledge purely for the love of it.  Every day, every hour had its
allotted employment:  engagements to publishers requiring punctual
fulfilment; the current expenses of a large household duty to
provide:  for Southey had no crop growing while his pen was idle.
"My ways," he used to say, "are as broad as the king's high-road,
and my means lie in an inkstand."

Robert Nicoll wrote to a friend, after reading the 'Recollections
of Coleridge,' "What a mighty intellect was lost in that man for
want of a little energy--a little determination!"  Nicoll himself
was a true and brave spirit, who died young, but not before he had
encountered and overcome great difficulties in life.  At his
outset, while carrying on a small business as a bookseller, he
found himself weighed down with a debt of only twenty pounds, which
he said he felt "weighing like a millstone round his neck," and
that, "if he had it paid he never would borrow again from mortal
man."  Writing to his mother at the time he said, "Fear not for me,
dear mother, for I feel myself daily growing firmer and more
hopeful in spirit.  The more I think and reflect--and thinking, not
reading, is now my occupation--I feel that, whether I be growing
richer or not, I am growing a wiser man, which is far better.
Pain, poverty, and all the other wild beasts of life which so
affrighten others, I am so bold as to think I could look in the
face without shrinking, without losing respect for myself, faith in
man's high destinies, or trust in God.  There is a point which it
costs much mental toil and struggling to gain, but which, when once
gained, a man can look down from, as a traveller from a lofty
mountain, on storms raging below, while he is walking in sunshine.
That I have yet gained this point in life I will not say, but I
feel myself daily nearer to it."

It is not ease, but effort--not facility, but difficulty, that
makes men.  There is, perhaps, no station in life, in which
difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any
decided measure of success can be achieved.  Those difficulties
are, however, our best instructors, as our mistakes often form our
best experience.  Charles James Fox was accustomed to say that he
hoped more from a man who failed, and yet went on in spite of his
failure, than from the buoyant career of the successful.  "It is
all very well," said he, "to tell me that a young man has
distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech.  He may go on,
or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young
man who has NOT succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on,
and I will back that young man to do better than most of those who
have succeeded at the first trial."

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.  We often
discover what WILL do, by finding out what will not do; and
probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.  It
was the failure in the attempt to make a sucking-pump act, when the
working bucket was more than thirty-three feet above the surface of
the water to be raised, that led observant men to study the law of
atmospheric pressure, and opened a new field of research to the
genius of Galileo, Torrecelli, and Boyle.  John Hunter used to
remark that the art of surgery would not advance until professional
men had the courage to publish their failures as well as their
successes.  Watt the engineer said, of all things most wanted in
mechanical engineering was a history of failures:  "We want," he
said, "a book of blots."  When Sir Humphry Davy was once shown a
dexterously manipulated experiment, he said--"I thank God I was not
made a dexterous manipulator, for the most important of my
discoveries have been suggested to me by failures."  Another
distinguished investigator in physical science has left it on
record that, whenever in the course of his researches he
encountered an apparently insuperable obstacle, he generally found
himself on the brink of some discovery.  The very greatest things--
great thoughts, discoveries, inventions--have usually been nurtured
in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length
established with difficulty.

Beethoven said of Rossini, that he had in him the stuff to have
made a good musician if he had only, when a boy, been well flogged;
but that he had been spoilt by the facility with which he produced.
Men who feel their strength within them need not fear to encounter
adverse opinions; they have far greater reason to fear undue praise
and too friendly criticism.  When Mendelssohn was about to enter
the orchestra at Birmingham, on the first performance of his
'Elijah,' he said laughingly to one of his friends and critics,
"Stick your claws into me!  Don't tell me what you like, but what
you don't like!"

It has been said, and truly, that it is the defeat that tries the
general more than the victory.  Washington lost more battles than
he gained; but he succeeded in the end.  The Romans, in their most
victorious campaigns, almost invariably began with defeats.  Moreau
used to be compared by his companions to a drum, which nobody hears
of except it be beaten.  Wellington's military genius was perfected
by encounter with difficulties of apparently the most overwhelming
character, but which only served to nerve his resolution, and bring
out more prominently his great qualities as a man and a general.
So the skilful mariner obtains his best experience amidst storms
and tempests, which train him to self-reliance, courage, and the
highest discipline; and we probably own to rough seas and wintry
nights the best training of our race of British seamen, who are,
certainly, not surpassed by any in the world.

Necessity may be a hard schoolmistress, but she is generally found
the best.  Though the ordeal of adversity is one from which we
naturally shrink, yet, when it comes, we must bravely and manfully
encounter it.  Burns says truly,


"Though losses and crosses
Be lessons right severe,
There's wit there, you'll get there,
You'll find no other where."


"Sweet indeed are the uses of adversity."  They reveal to us our
powers, and call forth our energies.  If there be real worth in the
character, like sweet herbs, it will give forth its finest
fragrance when pressed.  "Crosses," says the old proverb, "are the
ladders that lead to heaven."  "What is even poverty itself," asks
Richter, "that a man should murmur under it?  It is but as the pain
of piercing a maiden's ear, and you hang precious jewels in the
wound."  In the experience of life it is found that the wholesome
discipline of adversity in strong natures usually carries with it a
self-preserving influence.  Many are found capable of bravely
bearing up under privations, and cheerfully encountering
obstructions, who are afterwards found unable to withstand the more
dangerous influences of prosperity.  It is only a weak man whom the
wind deprives of his cloak:  a man of average strength is more in
danger of losing it when assailed by the beams of a too genial sun.
Thus it often needs a higher discipline and a stronger character to
bear up under good fortune than under adverse.  Some generous
natures kindle and warm with prosperity, but there are many on whom
wealth has no such influence.  Base hearts it only hardens, making
those who were mean and servile, mean and proud.  But while
prosperity is apt to harden the heart to pride, adversity in a man
of resolution will serve to ripen it into fortitude.  To use the
words of Burke, "Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by
the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and instructor, who
knows us better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our
skill:  our antagonist is thus our helper."  Without the necessity
of encountering difficulty, life might be easier, but men would be
worth less.  For trials, wisely improved, train the character, and
teach self-help; thus hardship itself may often prove the
wholesomest discipline for us, though we recognise it not.  When
the gallant young Hodson, unjustly removed from his Indian command,
felt himself sore pressed down by unmerited calumny and reproach,
he yet preserved the courage to say to a friend, "I strive to look
the worst boldly in the face, as I would an enemy in the field, and
to do my appointed work resolutely and to the best of my ability,
satisfied that there is a reason for all; and that even irksome
duties well done bring their own reward, and that, if not, still
they ARE duties."

The battle of life is, in most cases, fought up-hill; and to win it
without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honour.  If there
were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were
nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
Difficulties may intimidate the weak, but they act only as a
wholesome stimulus to men of resolution and valour.  All experience
of life indeed serves to prove that the impediments thrown in the
way of human advancement may for the most part be overcome by
steady good conduct, honest zeal, activity, perseverance, and above
all by a determined resolution to surmount difficulties, and stand
up manfully against misfortune.