Character

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

101 (return)
[ Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, Lord High Treasurer under Elizabeth and James I.]

102 (return)
[ 'Life of Perthes,' ii. 217.]

103 (return)
[ Lockhart's 'Life of Scott.']

104 (return)
[ Debate on the Petition of Right, A.D. 1628.]

105 (return)
[ The Rev. F. W. Farrer's 'Seekers after God,' p. 241.]

106 (return)
[ 'The Statesman,' p. 30.]

107 (return)
[ 'Queen of the Air,' p. 127]

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

109 (return)
[ Introduction to 'The Principal Speeches and Addresses of H.R.H. the Prince Consort' (1862, pp. 39-40.)]

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

1011 (return)
[ Condensed from Sir Thomas Overbury's 'Characters' [101614].]

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

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

1014 (return)
[ Napier's 'History of the Peninsular War,' v. 226.]

1015 (return)
[ Sir W. Scott's 'History of Scotland,' vol. i. chap. xvi.]

1016 (return)
[ Michelet's 'History of Rome,' p. 374.]

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

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

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

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

1020 (return)
[ 'Blackwood's Magazine,' June, 1863, art. 'Girolamo Savonarola.']

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

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

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

112 (return)
[ 'Levana; or, The Doctrine of Education.']

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

114 (return)
[ Mr. Tufnell, in 'Reports of Inspectors of Parochial School Unions in England and Wales,' 1850.]

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

116 (return)
[ Jared Sparks' 'Life of Washington.']

117 (return)
[ Forster's 'Eminent British Statesmen' [11Cabinet Cyclop.] vi. 8.]

118 (return)
[ The Earl of Mornington, composer of 'Here in cool grot,' &c.]

119 (return)
[ Robert Bell's 'Life of Canning,' p. 37.]

1110 (return)
[ 'Life of Curran,' by his son, p. 4.]

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

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

1113 (return)
[ Mrs. Grote's 'Life of Ary Scheffer,' p. 154.]

1114 (return)
[ Michelet, 'On Priests, Women, and Families.']

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

1116 (return)
[ Sainte-Beuve, 'Causeries du Lundi,' i. 23.]

1117 (return)
[ Ibid. i. 22.]

1118 (return)
[ Ibid. 1. 23.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

123 (return)
[ Dean Stanley's 'Life of Dr. Arnold,' i. 151 [12Ed. 1858].]

124 (return)
[ Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials,' pp. 25-6.]

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

126 (return)
[ Izaak Walton's 'Life of George Herbert.']

127 (return)
[ Stanley's 'Life and Letters of Dr. Arnold,' i. 33.]

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

129 (return)
[ 'Life,' i. 344.]

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

1211 (return)
[ Speech at Liverpool, 1812.]

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

132 (return)
[ 'Essay on Government,' in 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.']

133 (return)
[ Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' Part i., Mem. 2, Sub. 6.]

134 (return)
[ Ibid. End of concluding chapter.]

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

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

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

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

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

1310 (return)
[ "Life of Perthes," ii. 20.]

1311 (return)
[ Lockhart's 'Life of Scott' [138vo. Ed.], p. 442.]

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

1313 (return)
[ 'Dissertation on the Science of Method.']

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

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

1316 (return)
[ Maria Edgeworth, 'Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth,' ii. 94.]

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

1318 (return)
[ 'Reasons of Church Government,' Book II.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

141 (return)
[ James Russell Lowell.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

148 (return)
[ 'Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson' [14Bohn's Ed.], p. 32.]

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

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

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

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

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

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