His punctuality was one of the most carefully cultivated of his
habits, otherwise it had not been possible for him to get through
so enormous an amount of literary labour.  He made it a rule to
answer every letter received by him on the same day, except where
inquiry and deliberation were requisite.  Nothing else could have
enabled him to keep abreast with the flood of communications that
poured in upon him and sometimes put his good nature to the
severest test.  It was his practice to rise by five o'clock, and
light his own fire.  He shaved and dressed with deliberation, and
was seated at his desk by six o'clock, with his papers arranged
before him in the most accurate order, his works of reference
marshalled round him on the floor, while at least one favourite dog
lay watching his eye, outside the line of books.  Thus by the time
the family assembled for breakfast, between nine and ten, he had
done enough--to use his own words--to break the neck of the day's
work.  But with all his diligent and indefatigable industry, and
his immense knowledge, the result of many years' patient labour,
Scott always spoke with the greatest diffidence of his own powers.
On one occasion he said, "Throughout every part of my career I have
felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance."

Such is true wisdom and humility; for the more a man really knows,
the less conceited he will be.  The student at Trinity College who
went up to his professor to take leave of him because he had
"finished his education," was wisely rebuked by the professor's
reply, "Indeed!  I am only beginning mine."  The superficial person
who has obtained a smattering of many things, but knows nothing
well, may pride himself upon his gifts; but the sage humbly
confesses that "all he knows is, that he knows nothing," or like
Newton, that he has been only engaged in picking shells by the sea
shore, while the great ocean of truth lies all unexplored before
him.

The lives of second-rate literary men furnish equally remarkable
illustrations of the power of perseverance.  The late John Britton,
author of 'The Beauties of England and Wales,' and of many valuable
architectural works, was born in a miserable cot in Kingston,
Wiltshire.  His father had been a baker and maltster, but was
ruined in trade and became insane while Britton was yet a child.
The boy received very little schooling, but a great deal of bad
example, which happily did not corrupt him.  He was early in life
set to labour with an uncle, a tavern-keeper in Clerkenwell, under
whom he bottled, corked, and binned wine for more than five years.
His health failing him, his uncle turned him adrift in the world,
with only two guineas, the fruits of his five years' service, in
his pocket.  During the next seven years of his life he endured
many vicissitudes and hardships.  Yet he says, in his
autobiography, "in my poor and obscure lodgings, at eighteenpence a
week, I indulged in study, and often read in bed during the winter
evenings, because I could not afford a fire."  Travelling on foot
to Bath, he there obtained an engagement as a cellarman, but
shortly after we find him back in the metropolis again almost
penniless, shoeless, and shirtless.  He succeeded, however, in
obtaining employment as a cellarman at the London Tavern, where it
was his duty to be in the cellar from seven in the morning until
eleven at night.  His health broke down under this confinement in
the dark, added to the heavy work; and he then engaged himself, at
fifteen shillings a week, to an attorney,--for he had been
diligently cultivating the art of writing during the few spare
minutes that he could call his own.  While in this employment, he
devoted his leisure principally to perambulating the bookstalls,
where he read books by snatches which he could not buy, and thus
picked up a good deal of odd knowledge.  Then he shifted to another
office, at the advanced wages of twenty shillings a week, still
reading and studying.  At twenty-eight he was able to write a book,
which he published under the title of 'The Enterprising Adventures
of Pizarro;' and from that time until his death, during a period of
about fifty-five years, Britton was occupied in laborious literary
occupation.  The number of his published works is not fewer than
eighty-seven; the most important being 'The Cathedral Antiquities
of England,' in fourteen volumes, a truly magnificent work; itself
the best monument of John Britton's indefatigable industry.

London, the landscape gardener, was a man of somewhat similar
character, possessed of an extraordinary working power.  The son of
a farmer near Edinburgh, he was early inured to work.  His skill in
drawing plans and making sketches of scenery induced his father to
train him for a landscape gardener.  During his apprenticeship he
sat up two whole nights every week to study; yet he worked harder
during the day than any labourer.  In the course of his night
studies he learnt French, and before he was eighteen he translated
a life of Abelard for an Encyclopaedia.  He was so eager to make
progress in life, that when only twenty, while working as a
gardener in England, he wrote down in his note-book, "I am now
twenty years of age, and perhaps a third part of my life has passed
away, and yet what have I done to benefit my fellow men?" an
unusual reflection for a youth of only twenty.  From French he
proceeded to learn German, and rapidly mastered that language.
Having taken a large farm, for the purpose of introducing Scotch
improvements in the art of agriculture, he shortly succeeded in
realising a considerable income.  The continent being thrown open
at the end of the war, he travelled abroad for the purpose of
inquiring into the system of gardening and agriculture in other
countries.  He twice repeated his journeys, and the results were
published in his Encyclopaedias, which are among the most
remarkable works of their kind,--distinguished for the immense mass
of useful matter which they contain, collected by an amount of
industry and labour which has rarely been equalled.

The career of Samuel Drew is not less remarkable than any of those
which we have cited.  His father was a hard-working labourer of the
parish of St. Austell, in Cornwall.  Though poor, he contrived to
send his two sons to a penny-a-week school in the neighbourhood.
Jabez, the elder, took delight in learning, and made great progress
in his lessons; but Samuel, the younger, was a dunce, notoriously
given to mischief and playing truant.  When about eight years old
he was put to manual labour, earning three-halfpence a day as a
buddle-boy at a tin mine.  At ten he was apprenticed to a
shoemaker, and while in this employment he endured much hardship,--
living, as he used to say, "like a toad under a harrow."  He often
thought of running away and becoming a pirate, or something of the
sort, and he seems to have grown in recklessness as he grew in
years.  In robbing orchards he was usually a leader; and, as he
grew older, he delighted to take part in any poaching or smuggling
adventure.  When about seventeen, before his apprenticeship was
out, he ran away, intending to enter on board a man-of-war; but,
sleeping in a hay-field at night cooled him a little, and he
returned to his trade.

Drew next removed to the neighbourhood of Plymouth to work at his
shoemaking business, and while at Cawsand he won a prize for
cudgel-playing, in which he seems to have been an adept.  While
living there, he had nearly lost his life in a smuggling exploit
which he had joined, partly induced by the love of adventure, and
partly by the love of gain, for his regular wages were not more
than eight shillings a-week.  One night, notice was given
throughout Crafthole, that a smuggler was off the coast, ready to
land her cargo; on which the male population of the place--nearly
all smugglers--made for the shore.  One party remained on the rocks
to make signals and dispose of the goods as they were landed; and
another manned the boats, Drew being of the latter party.  The
night was intensely dark, and very little of the cargo had been
landed, when the wind rose, with a heavy sea.  The men in the
boats, however, determined to persevere, and several trips were
made between the smuggler, now standing farther out to sea, and the
shore.  One of the men in the boat in which Drew was, had his hat
blown off by the wind, and in attempting to recover it, the boat
was upset.  Three of the men were immediately drowned; the others
clung to the boat for a time, but finding it drifting out to sea,
they took to swimming.  They were two miles from land, and the
night was intensely dark.  After being about three hours in the
water, Drew reached a rock near the shore, with one or two others,
where he remained benumbed with cold till morning, when he and his
companions were discovered and taken off, more dead than alive.  A
keg of brandy from the cargo just landed was brought, the head
knocked in with a hatchet, and a bowlfull of the liquid presented
to the survivors; and, shortly after, Drew was able to walk two
miles through deep snow, to his lodgings.

This was a very unpromising beginning of a life; and yet this same
Drew, scapegrace, orchard-robber, shoemaker, cudgel-player, and
smuggler, outlived the recklessness of his youth and became
distinguished as a minister of the Gospel and a writer of good
books.  Happily, before it was too late, the energy which
characterised him was turned into a more healthy direction, and
rendered him as eminent in usefulness as he had before been in
wickedness.  His father again took him back to St. Austell, and
found employment for him as a journeyman shoemaker.  Perhaps his
recent escape from death had tended to make the young man serious,
as we shortly find him attracted by the forcible preaching of Dr.
Adam Clarke, a minister of the Wesleyan Methodists.  His brother
having died about the same time, the impression of seriousness was
deepened; and thenceforward he was an altered man.  He began anew
the work of education, for he had almost forgotten how to read and
write; and even after several years' practice, a friend compared
his writing to the traces of a spider dipped in ink set to crawl
upon paper.  Speaking of himself, about that time, Drew afterwards
said, "The more I read, the more I felt my own ignorance; and the
more I felt my ignorance, the more invincible became my energy to
surmount it.  Every leisure moment was now employed in reading one
thing or another.  Having to support myself by manual labour, my
time for reading was but little, and to overcome this disadvantage,
my usual method was to place a book before me while at meat, and at
every repast I read five or six pages."  The perusal of Locke's
'Essay on the Understanding' gave the first metaphysical turn to
his mind.  "It awakened me from my stupor," said he, "and induced
me to form a resolution to abandon the grovelling views which I had
been accustomed to entertain."

Drew began business on his own account, with a capital of a few
shillings; but his character for steadiness was such that a
neighbouring miller offered him a loan, which was accepted, and,
success attending his industry, the debt was repaid at the end of a
year.  He started with a determination to "owe no man anything,"
and he held to it in the midst of many privations.  Often he went
to bed supperless, to avoid rising in debt.  His ambition was to
achieve independence by industry and economy, and in this he
gradually succeeded.  In the midst of incessant labour, he
sedulously strove to improve his mind, studying astronomy, history,
and metaphysics.  He was induced to pursue the latter study chiefly
because it required fewer books to consult than either of the
others.  "It appeared to be a thorny path," he said, "but I
determined, nevertheless, to enter, and accordingly began to tread
it."

Added to his labours in shoemaking and metaphysics, Drew became a
local preacher and a class leader.  He took an eager interest in
politics, and his shop became a favourite resort with the village
politicians.  And when they did not come to him, he went to them to
talk over public affairs.  This so encroached upon his time that he
found it necessary sometimes to work until midnight to make up for
the hours lost during the day.  His political fervour become the
talk of the village.  While busy one night hammering away at a
shoe-sole, a little boy, seeing a light in the shop, put his mouth
to the keyhole of the door, and called out in a shrill pipe,
"Shoemaker! shoe-maker! work by night and run about by day!"  A
friend, to whom Drew afterwards told the story, asked, "And did not
you run after the boy, and strap him?"  "No, no," was the reply;
"had a pistol been fired off at my ear, I could not have been more
dismayed or confounded.  I dropped my work, and said to myself,
'True, true! but you shall never have that to say of me again.'  To
me that cry was as the voice of God, and it has been a word in
season throughout my life.  I learnt from it not to leave till to-
morrow the work of to-day, or to idle when I ought to be working."

From that moment Drew dropped politics, and stuck to his work,
reading and studying in his spare hours:  but he never allowed the
latter pursuit to interfere with his business, though it frequently
broke in upon his rest.  He married, and thought of emigrating to
America; but he remained working on.  His literary taste first took
the direction of poetical composition; and from some of the
fragments which have been preserved, it appears that his
speculations as to the immateriality and immortality of the soul
had their origin in these poetical musings.  His study was the
kitchen, where his wife's bellows served him for a desk; and he
wrote amidst the cries and cradlings of his children.  Paine's 'Age
of Reason' having appeared about this time and excited much
interest, he composed a pamphlet in refutation of its arguments,
which was published.  He used afterwards to say that it was the
'Age of Reason' that made him an author.  Various pamphlets from
his pen shortly appeared in rapid succession, and a few years
later, while still working at shoemaking, he wrote and published
his admirable 'Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the
Human Soul,' which he sold for twenty pounds, a great sum in his
estimation at the time.  The book went through many editions, and
is still prized.

Drew was in no wise puffed up by his success, as many young authors
are, but, long after he had become celebrated as a writer, used to
be seen sweeping the street before his door, or helping his
apprentices to carry in the winter's coals.  Nor could he, for some
time, bring himself to regard literature as a profession to live
by.  His first care was, to secure an honest livelihood by his
business, and to put into the "lottery of literary success," as he
termed it, only the surplus of his time.  At length, however, he
devoted himself wholly to literature, more particularly in
connection with the Wesleyan body; editing one of their magazines,
and superintending the publication of several of their
denominational works.  He also wrote in the 'Eclectic Review,' and
compiled and published a valuable history of his native county,
Cornwall, with numerous other works.  Towards the close of his
career, he said of himself,--"Raised from one of the lowest
stations in society, I have endeavoured through life to bring my
family into a state of respectability, by honest industry,
frugality, and a high regard for my moral character.  Divine
providence has smiled on my exertions, and crowned my wishes with
success."

The late Joseph Hume pursued a very different career, but worked in
an equally persevering spirit.  He was a man of moderate parts, but
of great industry and unimpeachable honesty of purpose.  The motto
of his life was "Perseverance," and well, he acted up to it.  His
father dying while he was a mere child, his mother opened a small
shop in Montrose, and toiled hard to maintain her family and bring
them up respectably.  Joseph she put apprentice to a surgeon, and
educated for the medical profession.  Having got his diploma, he
made several voyages to India as ship's surgeon, {19} and
afterwards obtained a cadetship in the Company's service.  None
worked harder, or lived more temperately, than he did, and,
securing the confidence of his superiors, who found him a capable
man in the performance of his duty, they gradually promoted him to
higher offices.  In 1803 he was with the division of the army under
General Powell, in the Mahratta war; and the interpreter having
died, Hume, who had meanwhile studied and mastered the native
languages, was appointed in his stead.  He was next made chief of
the medical staff.  But as if this were not enough to occupy his
full working power, he undertook in addition the offices of
paymaster and post-master, and filled them satisfactorily.  He also
contracted to supply the commissariat, which he did with advantage
to the army and profit to himself.  After about ten years'
unremitting labour, he returned to England with a competency; and
one of his first acts was to make provision for the poorer members
of his family.

But Joseph Hume was not a man to enjoy the fruits of his industry
in idleness.  Work and occupation had become necessary for his
comfort and happiness.  To make himself fully acquainted with the
actual state of his own country, and the condition of the people,
he visited every town in the kingdom which then enjoyed any degree
of manufacturing celebrity.  He afterwards travelled abroad for the
purpose of obtaining a knowledge of foreign states. Returned to
England, he entered Parliament in 1812, and continued a member of
that assembly, with a short interruption, for a period of about
thirty-four years.  His first recorded speech was on the subject of
public education, and throughout his long and honourable career he
took an active and earnest interest in that and all other questions
calculated to elevate and improve the condition of the people--
criminal reform, savings-banks, free trade, economy and
retrenchment, extended representation, and such like measures, all
of which he indefatigably promoted.  Whatever subject he undertook,
he worked at with all his might.  He was not a good speaker, but
what he said was believed to proceed from the lips of an honest,
single-minded, accurate man.  If ridicule, as Shaftesbury says, be
the test of truth, Joseph Hume stood the test well.  No man was
more laughed at, but there he stood perpetually, and literally, "at
his post."  He was usually beaten on a division, but the influence
which he exercised was nevertheless felt, and many important
financial improvements were effected by him even with the vote
directly against him.  The amount of hard work which he contrived
to get through was something extraordinary.  He rose at six, wrote
letters and arranged his papers for parliament; then, after
breakfast, he received persons on business, sometimes as many as
twenty in a morning.  The House rarely assembled without him, and
though the debate might be prolonged to two or three o'clock in the
morning, his name was seldom found absent from the division.  In
short, to perform the work which he did, extending over so long a
period, in the face of so many Administrations, week after week,
year after year,--to be outvoted, beaten, laughed at, standing on
many occasions almost alone,--to persevere in the face of every
discouragement, preserving his temper unruffled, never relaxing in
his energy or his hope, and living to see the greater number of his
measures adopted with acclamation, must be regarded as one of the
most remarkable illustrations of the power of human perseverance
that biography can exhibit.



CHAPTER V--HELPS AND OPPORTUNITIES--SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS



"Neither the naked hand, nor the understanding, left to itself, can
do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps, of
which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand."--
Bacon.

"Opportunity has hair in front, behind she is bald; if you seize
her by the forelock you may hold her, but, if suffered to escape,
not Jupiter himself can catch her again."--From the Latin.


Accident does very little towards the production of any great
result in life.  Though sometimes what is called "a happy hit" may
be made by a bold venture, the common highway of steady industry
and application is the only safe road to travel.  It is said of the
landscape painter Wilson, that when he had nearly finished a
picture in a tame, correct manner, he would step back from it, his
pencil fixed at the end of a long stick, and after gazing earnestly
on the work, he would suddenly walk up and by a few bold touches
give a brilliant finish to the painting.  But it will not do for
every one who would produce an effect, to throw his brush at the
canvas in the hope of producing a picture.  The capability of
putting in these last vital touches is acquired only by the labour
of a life; and the probability is, that the artist who has not
carefully trained himself beforehand, in attempting to produce a
brilliant effect at a dash, will only produce a blotch.

Sedulous attention and painstaking industry always mark the true
worker.  The greatest men are not those who "despise the day of
small things," but those who improve them the most carefully.
Michael Angelo was one day explaining to a visitor at his studio,
what he had been doing at a statue since his previous visit.  "I
have retouched this part--polished that--softened this feature--
brought out that muscle--given some expression to this lip, and
more energy to that limb."  "But these are trifles," remarked the
visitor.  "It may be so," replied the sculptor, "but recollect that
trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle."  So it was
said of Nicholas Poussin, the painter, that the rule of his conduct
was, that "whatever was worth doing at all was worth doing well;"
and when asked, late in life, by his friend Vigneul de Marville, by
what means he had gained so high a reputation among the painters of
Italy, Poussin emphatically answered, "Because I have neglected
nothing."

Although there are discoveries which are said to have been made by
accident, if carefully inquired into, it will be found that there
has really been very little that was accidental about them.  For
the most part, these so-called accidents have only been
opportunities, carefully improved by genius.  The fall of the apple
at Newton's feet has often been quoted in proof of the accidental
character of some discoveries.  But Newton's whole mind had already
been devoted for years to the laborious and patient investigation
of the subject of gravitation; and the circumstance of the apple
falling before his eyes was suddenly apprehended only as genius
could apprehend it, and served to flash upon him the brilliant
discovery then opening to his sight.  In like manner, the
brilliantly-coloured soap-bubbles blown from a common tobacco pipe-
-though "trifles light as air" in most eyes--suggested to Dr. Young
his beautiful theory of "interferences," and led to his discovery
relating to the diffraction of light.  Although great men are
popularly supposed only to deal with great things, men such as
Newton and Young were ready to detect the significance of the most
familiar and simple facts; their greatness consisting mainly in
their wise interpretation of them.

The difference between men consists, in a great measure, in the
intelligence of their observation.  The Russian proverb says of the
non-observant man, "He goes through the forest and sees no
firewood."  "The wise man's eyes are in his head," says Solomon,
"but the fool walketh in darkness."  "Sir," said Johnson, on one
occasion, to a fine gentleman just returned from Italy, "some men
will learn more in the Hampstead stage than others in the tour of
Europe."  It is the mind that sees as well as the eye.  Where
unthinking gazers observe nothing, men of intelligent vision
penetrate into the very fibre of the phenomena presented to them,
attentively noting differences, making comparisons, and recognizing
their underlying idea.  Many before Galileo had seen a suspended
weight swing before their eyes with a measured beat; but he was the
first to detect the value of the fact.  One of the vergers in the
cathedral at Pisa, after replenishing with oil a lamp which hung
from the roof, left it swinging to and fro; and Galileo, then a
youth of only eighteen, noting it attentively, conceived the idea
of applying it to the measurement of time.  Fifty years of study
and labour, however, elapsed, before he completed the invention of
his Pendulum,--the importance of which, in the measurement of time
and in astronomical calculations, can scarcely be overrated.  In
like manner, Galileo, having casually heard that one Lippershey, a
Dutch spectacle-maker, had presented to Count Maurice of Nassau an
instrument by means of which distant objects appeared nearer to the
beholder, addressed himself to the cause of such a phenomenon,
which led to the invention of the telescope, and proved the
beginning of the modern science of astronomy.  Discoveries such as
these could never have been made by a negligent observer, or by a
mere passive listener.

While Captain (afterwards Sir Samuel) Brown was occupied in
studying the construction of bridges, with the view of contriving
one of a cheap description to be thrown across the Tweed, near
which he lived, he was walking in his garden one dewy autumn
morning, when he saw a tiny spider's net suspended across his path.
The idea immediately occurred to him, that a bridge of iron ropes
or chains might be constructed in like manner, and the result was
the invention of his Suspension Bridge.  So James Watt, when
consulted about the mode of carrying water by pipes under the
Clyde, along the unequal bed of the river, turned his attention one
day to the shell of a lobster presented at table; and from that
model he invented an iron tube, which, when laid down, was found
effectually to answer the purpose.  Sir Isambert Brunel took his
first lessons in forming the Thames Tunnel from the tiny shipworm:
he saw how the little creature perforated the wood with its well-
armed head, first in one direction and then in another, till the
archway was complete, and then daubed over the roof and sides with
a kind of varnish; and by copying this work exactly on a large
scale, Brunel was at length enabled to construct his shield and
accomplish his great engineering work.

It is the intelligent eye of the careful observer which gives these
apparently trivial phenomena their value.  So trifling a matter as
the sight of seaweed floating past his ship, enabled Columbus to
quell the mutiny which arose amongst his sailors at not discovering
land, and to assure them that the eagerly sought New World was not
far off.  There is nothing so small that it should remain
forgotten; and no fact, however trivial, but may prove useful in
some way or other if carefully interpreted.  Who could have
imagined that the famous "chalk cliffs of Albion" had been built up
by tiny insects--detected only by the help of the microscope--of
the same order of creatures that have gemmed the sea with islands
of coral!  And who that contemplates such extraordinary results,
arising from infinitely minute operations, will venture to question
the power of little things?

It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of
success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in
life.  Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts, made
by successive generations of men, the little bits of knowledge and
experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a
mighty pyramid.  Though many of these facts and observations seemed
in the first instance to have but slight significance, they are all
found to have their eventual uses, and to fit into their proper
places.  Even many speculations seemingly remote, turn out to be
the basis of results the most obviously practical.  In the case of
the conic sections discovered by Apollonius Pergaeus, twenty
centuries elapsed before they were made the basis of astronomy--a
science which enables the modern navigator to steer his way through
unknown seas and traces for him in the heavens an unerring path to
his appointed haven.  And had not mathematicians toiled for so
long, and, to uninstructed observers, apparently so fruitlessly,
over the abstract relations of lines and surfaces, it is probable
that but few of our mechanical inventions would have seen the
light.

When Franklin made his discovery of the identity of lightning and
electricity, it was sneered at, and people asked, "Of what use is
it?"  To which his reply was, "What is the use of a child?  It may
become a man!"  When Galvani discovered that a frog's leg twitched
when placed in contact with different metals, it could scarcely
have been imagined that so apparently insignificant a fact could
have led to important results.  Yet therein lay the germ of the
Electric Telegraph, which binds the intelligence of continents
together, and, probably before many years have elapsed, will "put a
girdle round the globe."  So too, little bits of stone and fossil,
dug out of the earth, intelligently interpreted, have issued in the
science of geology and the practical operations of mining, in which
large capitals are invested and vast numbers of persons profitably
employed.

The gigantic machinery employed in pumping our mines, working our
mills and manufactures, and driving our steam-ships and
locomotives, in like manner depends for its supply of power upon so
slight an agency as little drops of water expanded by heat,--that
familiar agency called steam, which we see issuing from that common
tea-kettle spout, but which, when put up within an ingeniously
contrived mechanism, displays a force equal to that of millions of
horses, and contains a power to rebuke the waves and set even the
hurricane at defiance.  The same power at work within the bowels of
the earth has been the cause of those volcanoes and earthquakes
which have played so mighty a part in the history of the globe.

It is said that the Marquis of Worcester's attention was first
accidentally directed to the subject of steam power, by the tight
cover of a vessel containing hot water having been blown off before
his eyes, when confined a prisoner in the Tower.  He published the
result of his observations in his 'Century of Inventions,' which
formed a sort of text-book for inquirers into the powers of steam
for a time, until Savary, Newcomen, and others, applying it to
practical purposes, brought the steam-engine to the state in which
Watt found it when called upon to repair a model of Newcomen's
engine, which belonged to the University of Glasgow.  This
accidental circumstance was an opportunity for Watt, which he was
not slow to improve; and it was the labour of his life to bring the
steam-engine to perfection.

This art of seizing opportunities and turning even accidents to
account, bending them to some purpose is a great secret of success.
Dr. Johnson has defined genius to be "a mind of large general
powers accidentally determined in some particular direction."  Men
who are resolved to find a way for themselves, will always find
opportunities enough; and if they do not lie ready to their hand,
they will make them.  It is not those who have enjoyed the
advantages of colleges, museums, and public galleries, that have
accomplished the most for science and art; nor have the greatest
mechanics and inventors been trained in mechanics' institutes.
Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention;
and the most prolific school of all has been the school of
difficulty.  Some of the very best workmen have had the most
indifferent tools to work with.  But it is not tools that make the
workman, but the trained skill and perseverance of the man himself.
Indeed it is proverbial that the bad workman never yet had a good
tool.  Some one asked Opie by what wonderful process he mixed his
colours.  "I mix them with my brains, sir," was his reply.  It is
the same with every workman who would excel.  Ferguson made
marvellous things--such as his wooden clock, that accurately
measured the hours--by means of a common penknife, a tool in
everybody's hand; but then everybody is not a Ferguson.  A pan of
water and two thermometers were the tools by which Dr. Black
discovered latent heat; and a prism, a lens, and a sheet of
pasteboard enabled Newton to unfold the composition of light and
the origin of colours.  An eminent foreign savant once called upon
Dr. Wollaston, and requested to be shown over his laboratories in
which science had been enriched by so many important discoveries,
when the doctor took him into a little study, and, pointing to an
old tea-tray on the table, containing a few watch-glasses, test
papers, a small balance, and a blowpipe, said, "There is all the
laboratory that I have!"

Stothard learnt the art of combining colours by closely studying
butterflies' wings:  he would often say that no one knew what he
owed to these tiny insects.  A burnt stick and a barn door served
Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas.  Bewick first practised
drawing on the cottage walls of his native village, which he
covered with his sketches in chalk; and Benjamin West made his
first brushes out of the cat's tail.  Ferguson laid himself down in
the fields at night in a blanket, and made a map of the heavenly
bodies by means of a thread with small beads on it stretched
between his eye and the stars.  Franklin first robbed the
thundercloud of its lightning by means of a kite made with two
cross sticks and a silk handkerchief.  Watt made his first model of
the condensing steam-engine out of an old anatomist's syringe, used
to inject the arteries previous to dissection.  Gifford worked his
first problems in mathematics, when a cobbler's apprentice, upon
small scraps of leather, which he beat smooth for the purpose;
whilst Rittenhouse, the astronomer, first calculated eclipses on
his plough handle.

The most ordinary occasions will furnish a man with opportunities
or suggestions for improvement, if he be but prompt to take
advantage of them.  Professor Lee was attracted to the study of
Hebrew by finding a Bible in that tongue in a synagogue, while
working as a common carpenter at the repairs of the benches.  He
became possessed with a desire to read the book in the original,
and, buying a cheap second-hand copy of a Hebrew grammar, he set to
work and learnt the language for himself.  As Edmund Stone said to
the Duke of Argyle, in answer to his grace's inquiry how he, a poor
gardener's boy, had contrived to be able to read Newton's Principia
in Latin, "One needs only to know the twenty-four letters of the
alphabet in order to learn everything else that one wishes."
Application and perseverance, and the diligent improvement of
opportunities, will do the rest.

Sir Walter Scott found opportunities for self-improvement in every
pursuit, and turned even accidents to account.  Thus it was in the
discharge of his functions as a writer's apprentice that he first
visited the Highlands, and formed those friendships among the
surviving heroes of 1745 which served to lay the foundation of a
large class of his works.  Later in life, when employed as
quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light Cavalry, he was accidentally
disabled by the kick of a horse, and confined for some time to his
house; but Scott was a sworn enemy to idleness, and he forthwith
set his mind to work.  In three days he had composed the first
canto of 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' which he shortly after
finished,--his first great original work.

The attention of Dr. Priestley, the discoverer of so many gases,
was accidentally drawn to the subject of chemistry through his
living in the neighbourhood of a brewery.  When visiting the place
one day, he noted the peculiar appearances attending the extinction
of lighted chips in the gas floating over the fermented liquor.  He
was forty years old at the time, and knew nothing of chemistry.  He
consulted books to ascertain the cause, but they told him little,
for as yet nothing was known on the subject.  Then he began to
experiment, with some rude apparatus of his own contrivance.  The
curious results of his first experiments led to others, which in
his hands shortly became the science of pneumatic chemistry.  About
the same time, Scheele was obscurely working in the same direction
in a remote Swedish village; and he discovered several new gases,
with no more effective apparatus at his command than a few
apothecaries' phials and pigs' bladders.

Sir Humphry Davy, when an apothecary's apprentice, performed his
first experiments with instruments of the rudest description.  He
extemporised the greater part of them himself, out of the motley
materials which chance threw in his way,--the pots and pans of the
kitchen, and the phials and vessels of his master's surgery.  It
happened that a French ship was wrecked off the Land's End, and the
surgeon escaped, bearing with him his case of instruments, amongst
which was an old-fashioned glyster apparatus; this article he
presented to Davy, with whom he had become acquainted.  The
apothecary's apprentice received it with great exultation, and
forthwith employed it as a part of a pneumatic apparatus which he
contrived, afterwards using it to perform the duties of an air-pump
in one of his experiments on the nature and sources of heat.

In like manner Professor Faraday, Sir Humphry Davy's scientific
successor, made his first experiments in electricity by means of an
old bottle, white he was still a working bookbinder.  And it is a
curious fact that Faraday was first attracted to the study of
chemistry by hearing one of Sir Humphry Davy's lectures on the
subject at the Royal Institution.  A gentleman, who was a member,
calling one day at the shop where Faraday was employed in binding
books, found him poring over the article "Electricity" in an
Encyclopaedia placed in his hands to bind.  The gentleman, having
made inquiries, found that the young bookbinder was curious about
such subjects, and gave him an order of admission to the Royal
Institution, where he attended a course of four lectures delivered
by Sir Humphry.  He took notes of them, which he showed to the
lecturer, who acknowledged their scientific accuracy, and was
surprised when informed of the humble position of the reporter.
Faraday then expressed his desire to devote himself to the
prosecution of chemical studies, from which Sir Humphry at first
endeavoured to dissuade him:  but the young man persisting, he was
at length taken into the Royal Institution as an assistant; and
eventually the mantle of the brilliant apothecary's boy fell upon
the worthy shoulders of the equally brilliant bookbinder's
apprentice.

The words which Davy entered in his note-book, when about twenty
years of age, working in Dr. Beddoes' laboratory at Bristol, were
eminently characteristic of him:  "I have neither riches, nor
power, nor birth to recommend me; yet if I live, I trust I shall
not be of less service to mankind and my friends, than if I had
been born with all these advantages."  Davy possessed the
capability, as Faraday does, of devoting the whole power of his
mind to the practical and experimental investigation of a subject
in all its bearings; and such a mind will rarely fail, by dint of
mere industry and patient thinking, in producing results of the
highest order.  Coleridge said of Davy, "There is an energy and
elasticity in his mind, which enables him to seize on and analyze
all questions, pushing them to their legitimate consequences.
Every subject in Davy's mind has the principle of vitality.  Living
thoughts spring up like turf under his feet."  Davy, on his part,
said of Coleridge, whose abilities he greatly admired, "With the
most exalted genius, enlarged views, sensitive heart, and
enlightened mind, he will be the victim of a want of order,
precision, and regularity."

The great Cuvier was a singularly accurate, careful, and
industrious observer.  When a boy, he was attracted to the subject
of natural history by the sight of a volume of Buffon which
accidentally fell in his way.  He at once proceeded to copy the
drawings, and to colour them after the descriptions given in the
text.  While still at school, one of his teachers made him a
present of 'Linnaeus's System of Nature;' and for more than ten
years this constituted his library of natural history.  At eighteen
he was offered the situation of tutor in a family residing near
Fecamp, in Normandy.  Living close to the sea-shore, he was brought
face to face with the wonders of marine life.  Strolling along the
sands one day, he observed a stranded cuttlefish.  He was attracted
by the curious object, took it home to dissect, and thus began the
study of the molluscae, in the pursuit of which he achieved so
distinguished a reputation.  He had no books to refer to, excepting
only the great book of Nature which lay open before him.  The study
of the novel and interesting objects which it daily presented to
his eyes made a much deeper impression on his mind than any written
or engraved descriptions could possibly have done.  Three years
thus passed, during which he compared the living species of marine
animals with the fossil remains found in the neighbourhood,
dissected the specimens of marine life that came under his notice,
and, by careful observation, prepared the way for a complete reform
in the classification of the animal kingdom.  About this time
Cuvier became known to the learned Abbe Teissier, who wrote to
Jussieu and other friends in Paris on the subject of the young
naturalist's inquiries, in terms of such high commendation, that
Cuvier was requested to send some of his papers to the Society of
Natural History; and he was shortly after appointed assistant-
superintendent at the Jardin des Plantes.  In the letter written by
Teissier to Jussieu, introducing the young naturalist to his
notice, he said, "You remember that it was I who gave Delambre to
the Academy in another branch of science:  this also will be a
Delambre."  We need scarcely add that the prediction of Teissier
was more than fulfilled.

It is not accident, then, that helps a man in the world so much as
purpose and persistent industry.  To the feeble, the sluggish and
purposeless, the happiest accidents avail nothing,--they pass them
by, seeing no meaning in them.  But it is astonishing how much can
be accomplished if we are prompt to seize and improve the
opportunities for action and effort which are constantly presenting
themselves.  Watt taught himself chemistry and mechanics while
working at his trade of a mathematical-instrument maker, at the
same time that he was learning German from a Swiss dyer.
Stephenson taught himself arithmetic and mensuration while working
as an engineman during the night shifts; and when he could snatch a
few moments in the intervals allowed for meals during the day, he
worked his sums with a bit of chalk upon the sides of the colliery
waggons.  Dalton's industry was the habit of his life.  He began
from his boyhood, for he taught a little village-school when he was
only about twelve years old,--keeping the school in winter, and
working upon his father's farm in summer.  He would sometimes urge
himself and companions to study by the stimulus of a bet, though
bred a Quaker; and on one occasion, by his satisfactory solution of
a problem, he won as much as enabled him to buy a winter's store of
candles.  He continued his meteorological observations until a day
or two before he died,--having made and recorded upwards of 200,000
in the course of his life.

With perseverance, the very odds and ends of time may be worked up
into results of the greatest value.  An hour in every day withdrawn
from frivolous pursuits would, if profitably employed, enable a
person of ordinary capacity to go far towards mastering a science.
It would make an ignorant man a well-informed one in less than ten
years.  Time should not be allowed to pass without yielding fruits,
in the form of something learnt worthy of being known, some good
principle cultivated, or some good habit strengthened.  Dr. Mason
Good translated Lucretius while riding in his carriage in the
streets of London, going the round of his patients.  Dr. Darwin
composed nearly all his works in the same way while driving about
in his "sulky" from house to house in the country,--writing down
his thoughts on little scraps of paper, which he carried about with
him for the purpose.  Hale wrote his 'Contemplations' while
travelling on circuit.  Dr. Burney learnt French and Italian while
travelling on horseback from one musical pupil to another in the
course of his profession.  Kirke White learnt Greek while walking
to and from a lawyer's office; and we personally know a man of
eminent position who learnt Latin and French while going messages
as an errand-boy in the streets of Manchester.

Daguesseau, one of the great Chancellors of France, by carefully
working up his odd bits of time, wrote a bulky and able volume in
the successive intervals of waiting for dinner, and Madame de
Genlis composed several of her charming volumes while waiting for
the princess to whom she gave her daily lessons.  Elihu Burritt
attributed his first success in self-improvement, not to genius,
which he disclaimed, but simply to the careful employment of those
invaluable fragments of time, called "odd moments."  While working
and earning his living as a blacksmith, he mastered some eighteen
ancient and modern languages, and twenty-two European dialects.

What a solemn and striking admonition to youth is that inscribed on
the dial at All Souls, Oxford--"Pereunt et imputantur"--the hours
perish, and are laid to our charge.  Time is the only little
fragment of Eternity that belongs to man; and, like life, it can
never be recalled.  "In the dissipation of worldly treasure," says
Jackson of Exeter, "the frugality of the future may balance the
extravagance of the past; but who can say, 'I will take from
minutes to-morrow to compensate for those I have lost to-day'?"
Melancthon noted down the time lost by him, that he might thereby
reanimate his industry, and not lose an hour.  An Italian scholar
put over his door an inscription intimating that whosoever remained
there should join in his labours.  "We are afraid," said some
visitors to Baxter, "that we break in upon your time."  "To be sure
you do," replied the disturbed and blunt divine.  Time was the
estate out of which these great workers, and all other workers,
formed that rich treasury of thoughts and deeds which they have
left to their successors.

The mere drudgery undergone by some men in carrying on their
undertakings has been something extraordinary, but the drudgery
they regarded as the price of success.  Addison amassed as much as
three folios of manuscript materials before he began his
'Spectator.'  Newton wrote his 'Chronology' fifteen times over
before he was satisfied with it; and Gibbon wrote out his 'Memoir'
nine times.  Hale studied for many years at the rate of sixteen
hours a day, and when wearied with the study of the law, he would
recreate himself with philosophy and the study of the mathematics.
Hume wrote thirteen hours a day while preparing his 'History of
England.'  Montesquieu, speaking of one part of his writings, said
to a friend, "You will read it in a few hours; but I assure you it
has cost me so much labour that it has whitened my hair."

The practice of writing down thoughts and facts for the purpose of
holding them fast and preventing their escape into the dim region
of forgetfulness, has been much resorted to by thoughtful and
studious men.  Lord Bacon left behind him many manuscripts entitled
"Sudden thoughts set down for use."  Erskine made great extracts
from Burke; and Eldon copied Coke upon Littleton twice over with
his own hand, so that the book became, as it were, part of his own
mind.  The late Dr. Pye Smith, when apprenticed to his father as a
bookbinder, was accustomed to make copious memoranda of all the
books he read, with extracts and criticisms.  This indomitable
industry in collecting materials distinguished him through life,
his biographer describing him as "always at work, always in
advance, always accumulating."  These note-books afterwards proved,
like Richter's "quarries," the great storehouse from which he drew
his illustrations.

The same practice characterized the eminent John Hunter, who
adopted it for the purpose of supplying the defects of memory; and
he was accustomed thus to illustrate the advantages which one
derives from putting one's thoughts in writing:  "It resembles," he
said, "a tradesman taking stock, without which he never knows
either what he possesses or in what he is deficient."  John Hunter-
-whose observation was so keen that Abernethy was accustomed to
speak of him as "the Argus-eyed"--furnished an illustrious example
of the power of patient industry.  He received little or no
education till he was about twenty years of age, and it was with
difficulty that he acquired the arts of reading and writing.  He
worked for some years as a common carpenter at Glasgow, after which
he joined his brother William, who had settled in London as a
lecturer and anatomical demonstrator.  John entered his dissecting-
room as an assistant, but soon shot ahead of his brother, partly by
virtue of his great natural ability, but mainly by reason of his
patient application and indefatigable industry.  He was one of the
first in this country to devote himself assiduously to the study of
comparative anatomy, and the objects he dissected and collected
took the eminent Professor Owen no less than ten years to arrange.
The collection contains some twenty thousand specimens, and is the
most precious treasure of the kind that has ever been accumulated
by the industry of one man.  Hunter used to spend every morning
from sunrise until eight o'clock in his museum; and throughout the
day he carried on his extensive private practice, performed his
laborious duties as surgeon to St. George's Hospital and deputy
surgeon-general to the army; delivered lectures to students, and
superintended a school of practical anatomy at his own house;
finding leisure, amidst all, for elaborate experiments on the
animal economy, and the composition of various works of great
scientific importance.  To find time for this gigantic amount of
work, he allowed himself only four hours of sleep at night, and an
hour after dinner.  When once asked what method he had adopted to
insure success in his undertakings, he replied, "My rule is,
deliberately to consider, before I commence, whether the thing be
practicable.  If it be not practicable, I do not attempt it.  If it
be practicable, I can accomplish it if I give sufficient pains to
it; and having begun, I never stop till the thing is done.  To this
rule I owe all my success."