PART SECOND. (continued 3)

2. They pass mournfully by us, and they return no more. Two centuries ago, and the smoke of their wigwams,[451] and the fires of their councils rose in every valley, from the Hudson Bay to the farthest Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes. The shouts of victory and the war-dance rang through the mountains and glades. The thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled through the forests; and the hunter’s trace and dark encampment startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to the song of other days. The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. The aged sat down, but they wept not: they should soon be at rest in finer regions, where the Great Spirit dwells, in a home prepared for the brave beyond the western skies.

3. Braver men never lived; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage, and fortitude, and sagacity, and perseverance beyond most of the human race. They shrank from no dangers, and they feared no hardships. If they had the vices of savage life, they had its virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends, and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hatred, stopped not this side of the grave.

4. But where are they? Where are the villagers and warriors and youth; the sachems and the tribes; the hunters and their families? They have perished; they are consumed. The wasting pestilence[452] has not alone done the mighty work. No, nor famine—nor war; there has been a mightier power; a moral canker, which has eaten into their heart cores—a plague, which the touch of the white man communicated—a poison which betrayed them to lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may call their own. Already the last feeble remnant of their race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable homes—the aged, the helpless, the men, and the warriors—“few and faint, yet fearless still.”

5. The ashes are cold upon their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls around their lowly cabins. They move on with slow, unsteady steps. The white man is upon their heels for terror or dispatch, but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their desolate villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears; they utter no cry; they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterance; which has no aim or method. It is courage, absorbed by despair. They linger but a moment. Their look is onward.

6. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them, no—never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know and feel that there is for them still one remove farther, not distant nor unseen. It is to the general burial-ground of their race.

7. Reason as we may, it is impossible not to read in such a fate much which we know not how to interpret; much of provocation to cruel deeds and deep resentments; much of apology for wrong and perfidy; much of pity, mingling with indignation; much of doubt and misgiving as to the past; much of painful recollections, much of dark forebodings.

LXII.—INDIAN NAMES.

SIGOURNEY.

LXIII.—THE FRIARS AND THE KNIGHT.

DIGBY.

Kenelm H. Digby is the author of several very valuable and interesting works. His “Mores Catholici,” “Broad Stone of Honor,” “Compitum,” and “Lover’s Seat,” prove him to be a writer of high culture and great research.

1. Two friars of Paris, traveling in the depth of winter, came, at the first hour of the night, fatigued, covered with mud, and wet with rain, to the gate of a house where they hoped to receive hospitality, not knowing that it belonged to a knight who hated all friars, and who for twenty years had never made his confession. The mother of the family replied to their petition, “I know not, good fathers, what to do. If I admit you under our roof, I fear my husband; and if I send you away cruelly in this tempestuous[453] night, I shall dread the indignation[454] of God. Enter, and hide yourselves till my husband returns from hunting, and has supped, for then I shall be able to supply you secretly with what is needful.”

2. Shortly, the husband returns, sups joyfully, but, perceiving that his wife is sad, desires to know the cause. She replies that she dares not disclose[455] it. Pressed and encouraged, she at length relates what has happened, adding, that she fears God’s judgment, seeing that His servants are afflicted with cold and hunger, while they are feasting at their ease. The knight, becoming more gentle, orders them to be led forth from their hiding-place, and to be supplied with food.

3. The poor friars came forth, and drew near the fire; and when he sees their emaciated[456] faces, humid[457] raiment,[458] and their feet stained with blood, the hand of the Lord is upon him, and from a lion he becomes a lamb. With his own hands he washes their feet, places the table, and prepares their beds, bringing in fresh straw. After the supper, with altered look and tone, he addresses the elder friar, and asks whether a shameless sinner, who hath not confessed since many years, can hope for pardon from God?

4. “Yea, in sooth,” replied the friar; “hope in the Lord, and do good, and he will deal with thee according to his mercy; for in whatever day the sinner repents, he will remember his iniquity no more.” The contrite host declares that he will not then defer any longer approaching the sacraments. “This very night,” said he, “I will unburden my conscience, lest my soul should be required of me.” The friar, however, little suspecting danger of death, advised him to wait till morning. All retired to rest; but during the night the friar became alarmed, rose, prostrated himself on the earth, and besought God to spare the sinner.

5. In the morning, however, the master of the house was found dead. The man of God, judging from what had passed, consoled the widow, declared that in his dreams he had been assured of the salvation of her husband; and the man was buried honorably, bells tolled, and Mass was sung, and the friars departed on their way.

6. It is to instances of this kind that St. Jerome alludes in his beautiful epistle to Lacta, where he says, “A holy and faithful family must needs sanctify its infidel chief. That man cannot be far from entering upon the career of faith, who is surrounded by sons and grandsons enlightened by the faith.”

LXIV.—WHERE THERE’S A WILL THERE’S A WAY.

ELIZA COOK.

LXV.—NOW, TO-DAY.

ADELAIDE A. PROCTOR.

LXVI.—PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

CHATEAUBRIAND.

1. But it is the Christian religion that has invested[477] patriotism[478] with its true character. This sentiment led to the commission of crime among the ancients, because it was carried to excess; Christianity has made it one of the principal affections in man, but not an exclusive[479] one. It commands us above all things to be just; it requires us to cherish the whole family of Adam, since we ourselves belong to it, though our countrymen have the first claim to our attachment.

2. This morality was unknown before the coming of the Christian law-giver, who had been unjustly accused of attempting to extirpate[480] the passions: God destroys not his own work. The Gospel is not the destroyer of the heart, but its regulator. It is to our feelings what taste is to the fine arts; it retrenches all that is exaggerated, false, common, and trivial.[481] It leaves all that is fair, and good, and true. The Christian religion, rightly understood, is only primitive[482] nature washed from original[483] pollution.[484]

3. It is when at a distance from our country that we feel the full force of the instinct by which we are attached to it. For want of the reality, we try to feed upon dreams; for the heart is expert in deception, and there is no one who has been suckled at the breast of a woman but has drunk of the cup of illusion.[485] Sometimes it is a cottage which is situated like the paternal habitation; sometimes it is a wood, a valley, a hill, on which we bestow some of the sweet appellations[486] of our native land. Andromache gives the name of Simois to a brook. And what an affecting object is this little rill, which recalls the idea of a mighty river to her native country! Remote from the soil which gave us birth, nature appears to us diminished, and but the shadow of that which we have lost.

4. Another artifice of the love of country is to attach a great value to an object of little intrinsic worth, but which comes from our native land, and which we have brought with us into exile. The soul seems to dwell even upon the inanimate things which have shared our destiny: we remain attached to the down on which our prosperity has slumbered, and still more to the straw on which we counted the days of our adversity. The vulgar have an energetic expression, to describe the languor which oppresses the soul when away from our country. “That man,” they say, “is home-sick.”

5. A sickness it really is, and the only cure for it is to return. If, however, we have been absent for a few years, what do we find in the place of our nativity? How few of those whom we left behind in the vigor of health are still alive! Here are tombs where once stood palaces; there rise palaces where once stood tombs. The paternal field is overgrown with briers, or cultivated by the plow of a stranger; and the tree beneath which we frolicked in our boyish days has disappeared.

6. Were we asked, what are those powerful ties which bind us to the place of nativity, we should find some difficulty in answering the question. It is, perhaps, the smile of a mother, of a father, of a sister; it is, perhaps, the recollection of an old preceptor[487] who instructed us, and of the young companions of our childhood; it is, perhaps, the care bestowed upon us by a tender nurse or by some aged domestic, so essential a part of the household; finally, it is something most simple, and, if you please, trivial,—a dog that barked at night in the fields, a nightingale that returned every year to the orchard, the nest of the swallow over the window, the village clock that appeared above the trees, the churchyard yew, or the Gothic tomb. Yet these simple things demonstrate the more clearly the reality of a Providence, as they could not possibly be the source of patriotism, or of the great virtues which it begets, unless by the appointment of the Almighty himself.

LXVII.—BEST KIND OF REVENGE.

CHAMBERS.

1. Some years ago, a warehouseman in Manchester, England, published a scurrilous[488] pamphlet, in which he endeavored to hold up the house of Grant Brothers to ridicule. William Grant remarked upon the occurrence that the man would live to repent what he had done; and this was conveyed by some tale-bearer to the libeller, who said, “Oh, I suppose he thinks I shall some time or other be in his debt; but I will take good care of that.” It happens, however, that a man in business cannot always choose who shall be his creditors. The pamphleteer became a bankrupt, and the brothers held an acceptance[489] of his which had been indorsed[490] to them by the drawer, who had also become a bankrupt[491].

2. The wantonly libelled men had thus become creditors of the libeller! They had it in their power to make him repent of his audacity.[492] He could not obtain his certificate without their signature, and without it he could not enter into business again. He had obtained the number of signatures required by the bankrupt law, except one. It seemed folly to hope that the firm of “the brothers” would supply the deficiency.[493] What! they, who had cruelly been made the laughing stock of the public, forget the wrong and favor the wrong doer? He despaired. But the claims of a wife and children forced him at last to make the application. Humbled by misery, he presented himself at the counting house of the wronged.

3. Mr. William Grant was there alone, and his first words to the delinquent[494] were, “Shut the door, sir!” sternly uttered. The door was shut, and the libeller stood trembling before the libelled. He told his tale, and produced his certificate, which was instantly clutched by the injured merchant. “You wrote a pamphlet against us once!” exclaimed Mr. Grant. The supplicant expected to see his parchment thrown into the fire. But this was not its destination. Mr. Grant took a pen, and writing something upon the document, handed it back to the bankrupt. He, poor wretch, expected to see “rogue, scoundrel, libeller,” inscribed, but there was, in fair round characters, the signature of the firm.

4. “We make it a rule,” said Mr. Grant, “never to refuse signing the certificate of an honest tradesman, and we have never heard that you were anything else.” The tears started into the poor man’s eyes. “Ah,” said Mr. Grant, “my saying was true. I said you would live to repent writing that pamphlet. I did not mean it as a threat. I only meant that some day you would know us better, and be sorry you had tried to injure us. I see you repent of it now.” “I do, I do!” said the grateful man. “I bitterly repent it.” “Well, well, my dear fellow, you know us now. How do you get on? What are you going to do?” The poor man stated that he had friends who could assist him when his certificate was obtained. “But how are you off in the meantime?”

5. And the answer was, that, having given up every farthing to his creditors, he had been compelled to stint his family of even common necessaries, that he might be enabled to pay the cost of his certificate. “My dear fellow, this will not do; your family must not suffer. Be kind enough to take this ten-pound note to your wife from me. There, there, my dear fellow! Nay, don’t cry; it will be all well with you yet. Keep up your spirits, set to work like a man, and you will raise your head among us yet.” The overpowered man endeavored in vain to express his thanks: the swelling in his throat forbade words. He put his handkerchief to his face, and went out of the door crying like a child.

LXVIII—QUEEN ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY.

MONTALEMBERT.

1. Generosity to the poor, particularly that exercised by princes, was one of the most remarkable features of the age in which she lived; but we perceive that, in her, charity did not proceed from rank, still less from the desire of acquiring praises or purely human gratitude, but from an interior and heavenly inspiration. From her cradle, she could not bear the sight of a poor person without feeling her heart pierced with grief, and now that her husband had granted her full liberty in all that concerned the honor of God and the good of her neighbor, she unreservedly abandoned herself to her natural inclination to solace[495] the suffering members of Christ.

2. This was her ruling thought each hour and moment: to the use of the poor she dedicated[496] all that she retrenched from the superfluities[497] usually required by her sex and rank. Yet, notwithstanding the resources which the charity of her husband placed at her disposal, she gave away so quickly all that she possessed, that it often happened that she would despoil[498] herself of her clothes in order to have the means of assisting the unfortunate.

3. Elizabeth loved to carry secretly to the poor, not alone money, but provisions and other matters which she destined for them. She went thus laden, by the winding and rugged paths that led from the castle to the city, and to cabins of the neighboring valleys.

4. One day, when accompanied by one of her favorite maidens, as she descended by a rude little path (still pointed out) and carried under her mantle, bread, meat, eggs, and other food to distribute to the poor, she suddenly encountered her husband, who was returning from hunting. Astonished to see her thus toiling on under the weight of her burden, he said to her, “Let us see what you carry,” and at the same time drew open the mantle which she held closely clasped to her bosom; but beneath it were only red and white roses, the most beautiful he had ever seen—and this astonished him, as it was no longer the season of flowers.

5. Seeing that Elizabeth was troubled, he sought to console her by his caresses; but he ceased suddenly, on seeing over her head a luminous[499] appearance in the form of a crucifix. He then desired her to continue her route without being disturbed by him, and he returned to Wartbourg, meditating with recollection on what God did for her, and carrying with him one of these wonderful roses, which he preserved all his life.

6. At the spot where this meeting took place, he erected a pillar, surmounted by a cross, to consecrate forever the remembrance of that which he had seen hovering over the head of his wife. Among the unfortunate who particularly attracted her compassion, those who occupied the greatest part in her heart were the lepers;[500] the mysterious and special character of their malady rendered them, throughout the middle ages, objects of a solicitude and affection mingled with fear.

LXIX.—WILLIAM TELL.

KNOWLES.

Switzerland was at one time subject to Austria. Gesler (pronounced Gesˊler), at the time of these events, in 1307, was the Austrian governor of Switzerland. He was a most cruel tyrant, and even pushed his tyranny so far as to require the Swiss to uncover their heads and bow down to his hat placed upon a pole. William Tell, a brave Swiss, refused to perform this act of servility. He was seized for punishment. Tell’s son, Albert, without his father’s knowledge, had been taken prisoner on the preceding day by Gesler. The truth of the narrative of the exploits of William Tell has been recently called in question.

LXX.—THE PRESUMPTION OF YOUTH.

ROLLIN.

Charles Rollin was born at Paris, January 30, 1661, and died September 14, 1741. His father, who was a cutler, intended him to follow his own trade; but through the kindness of a Benedictine monk, he was educated at the college of Plesseis. He afterward became Rector of the University of Paris. His “Ancient History,” a work of considerable merit, continues still to be republished and extensively read.

1. The young people of Athens, amazed at the glory of Themistocles,[514] of Cimon[515] of Pericles,[516] and full of a foolish ambition, after having received some lessons from the sophists,[517] who promised to render them very great politicians, believed themselves capable of every thing, and aspired to fill the highest places. One of them, named Glaucon, took it so strongly in his head that he had a peculiar genius for public affairs, although he was not yet twenty years of age, that no person in his family, nor among his friends, had the power to divert him from a notion so little befitting his age and capacity.

2. Socrates, who liked him on account of Plato,[518] his brother, was the only one who succeeded in making him change his resolution. Meeting him one day, he accosted[519] him with so dexterous a discourse that he induced[520] him to listen. He had already gained much influence over him. “You have a desire to govern the republic?” said Socrates. “True,” replied Glaucon. “You can not have a finer design,” said the philosopher,[521] “since, if you succeed in it, you will be in a state to serve your friends, to enlarge your house, and to extend the limits of your native country.”

3. “You will become known not only in Athens but through all Greece, and it may be that your renown, like that of Themistocles, will reach even to the barbarous[522] nations. At last, you will gain the respect and admiration of everybody.” A beginning so flattering pleased the young man exceedingly, and he very willingly continued the conversation. “Since you desire to make yourself esteemed and respected, it is clear that you think to render yourself useful to the public.” “Assuredly.” “Tell me, then, I beseech you, what is the first service that you intend to render the state?”

4. As Glaucon appeared to be perplexed, and considered what he ought to answer,—“Probably,” replied Socrates, “it will be to enrich the republic, that is to say, to increase its revenues.” “Exactly so.” “And, undoubtedly, you know in what the revenues of the state consist, and the extent to which they may be increased. You will not have failed to make it a private study, to the end that if one source should suddenly fail, you may be able to supply its place immediately with another.” “I assure you,” answered Glaucon, “that this is what I have never thought of.”

5. “Tell me, at least, then, the necessary expenses of maintaining the republic. You can not fail to know of what importance it is to retrench[523] those which are superfluous[524].” “I confess to you that I am not more instructed with regard to this article than the other.” “Then it is necessary to defer till another time the design that you have of enriching the republic; for it is impossible for you to benefit the state while you are ignorant of its revenues and expenses.”

6. “But,” said Glaucon, “there is still another means that you pass over in silence; one can enrich a state by the ruin of its enemies.” “You are right,” replied Socrates; “but in order to do that, you must be the more powerful; otherwise you run the risk of losing that which you possess. So, he who speaks of undertaking a war, ought to know the power of both parties, to the end that if he finds his party the stronger, he may boldly risk the adventure; but, if he find it the weaker, he should dissuade the people from undertaking it.”

7. “But, do you know what are the forces of our republic, by sea and by land, and what are those of our enemies? Have you a statement of them in writing? You will do me the pleasure to allow me a perusal of it.” “I have none yet,” replied Glaucon. “I see, then,” said Socrates, “that we shall not make war so soon, if they intrust you with the government; for there remain many things for you to know, and many cares to take.”

8. The sage mentioned many other articles, not less important, in which he found Glaucon equally inexperienced, and he pointed out how ridiculous they render themselves, who have the rashness to intermeddle with government, without bringing any other preparation to the task than a great degree of self-esteem and excessive ambition. “Fear, my dear Glaucon,” said Socrates, “fear, lest a too ardent desire for honors should blind you; and cause you to take a part that would cover you with shame, in bringing to light your incapacity,[525] and want of talent.”

9. The youth was wise enough to profit by the good advice of his instructor, and took some time to gain private information, before he ventured to appear in public. This lesson is for all ages.

LXXI.—MARY MAGDALEN.

CALLANAN.

J. J. Callanan was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1795. He was an associate of Dr. Maginn, and, through him, became a contributor to “Blackwood’s Magazine.” He died in Lisbon in 1829.

LXXII.—THE WEXFORD MASSACRE.

The Mayor and Governor offered to capitulate; but whilst their Commissioners were treating with Cromwell, an officer perfidiously opened the castle to the enemy; the adjacent wall was immediately scaled, and after a stubborn but unavailing resistance in the Marketplace, Wexford was abandoned to the mercy of the assailants. The tragedy so recently acted at Drogheda was renewed. No distinction was made between the defenceless inhabitants and the armed soldiers; nor could the shrieks and prayers of three hundred females, who had gathered around the great Cross, preserve them from these ruthless barbarians.—Lingard’s History of England: New York Edition, vol. 10, p. 297.

LXXIII.—A PICTURE OF HUMAN LIFE.

JOHNSON.

Doctor Samuel Johnson, born 1709, died 1784, was distinguished as an essayist and lexicographer.

1. Obidah, the son of Abensina, left the caravansary[526] early in the morning, and pursued his journey through the plains of Indostan. He was fresh and vigorous with rest; he was animated with hope; he was incited by desire; he walked swiftly forward over the valleys, and saw the hills gradually rising before him.

2. As he passed along, his ears were delighted with the morning song of the bird of paradise, he was fanned by the last flutter of the sinking breeze, and sprinkled with dew by groves of spices; he sometimes contemplated the towering height of the oak, monarch of the hills; and sometimes caught the gentle fragrance of the primrose, eldest daughter of the spring: all his senses were gratified, and all care was banished from his heart.

3. Thus he went on till the sun approached his meridian,[527] and the increasing heat preyed upon his strength; he then looked round about him for some more commodious path. He saw, on his right hand, a grove that seemed to wave its shades as a sign of invitation: he entered it, and found the coolness and verdure irresistibly pleasant.

4. He did not, however, forget whither he was traveling, but found a narrow way, bordered with flowers, which appeared to have the same direction with the main road, and was pleased, that, by this happy experiment, he had found means to unite pleasure with business, and to gain the reward of diligence without suffering its fatigues. He, therefore, still continued to walk, for a time, without the least remission[528] of his ardor, except that he was sometimes tempted to stop by the music of the birds, whom the heat had assembled in the shade, and sometimes amused himself with plucking the flowers that covered the bank on either side, or the fruits that hung upon the branches.

5. At last, the green path began to decline from its first tendency, and to wind among hills and thickets, cooled with fountains, and murmuring with waterfalls. Here Obidah paused for a time, and began to consider whether it were longer safe to forsake the known and common track, but remembering that the heat was now in its greatest violence, and that the plain was dusty and uneven, he resolved to pursue the new path, which he supposed only to make a few meanders,[529] in compliance with the varieties of the ground, and to end at last in the common road.

6. Having thus calmed his solicitude, he renewed his pace, though he suspected he was not gaining ground. This uneasiness of his mind inclined him to lay hold on every new object, and give way to every sensation that might soothe or divert him. He listened to every echo, he mounted every hill for a fresh prospect, he turned aside to every cascade,[530] and pleased himself with tracing the course of a gentle river, that rolled among the trees, and watered a large region, with innumerable circumlocutions.[531]

7. In these amusements the hours passed away unaccounted, his deviations[532] had perplexed his memory, and he knew not toward what point to travel. He stood pensive[533] and confused, afraid to go forward, lest he should go wrong, yet conscious that the time of loitering was now past. While he was thus tortured with uncertainty, the sky was overspread with clouds, the day vanished from before him, and a sudden tempest gathered round his head.

8. He was now roused by his danger to a quick and painful remembrance of his folly; he now saw how happiness is lost when ease is consulted; he lamented the unmanly impatience that prompted him to seek shelter in the grove, and despised the petty curiosity that led him on from trifle to trifle. While he was thus reflecting, the air grew blacker, and a clap of thunder broke his meditation.[534]

9. He now resolved to do what remained yet in his power, to tread back the ground which he had passed, and try to find some issue, where the wood might open into the plain. He prostrated himself upon the ground, and commended his life to the Lord of nature.

10. He rose with confidence and tranquillity,[535] and pressed on with his saber in his hand; for the beasts of the desert were in motion, and on every hand were heard the mingled howls of rage and fear, and ravage[536] and expiration:[537] all the horrors of darkness and solitude surrounded him:—the wind roared in the woods, and the torrents tumbled from the hills.

11. Thus forlorn and distressed, he wandered through the wild, without knowing whither he was going, or whether he was every moment drawing nearer to safety or to destruction. At length, not fear but labor began to overcome him; his breath grew short, and his knees trembled, and he was on the point of lying down, in resignation to his fate, when he beheld, through the brambles, the glimmer of a taper. He advanced toward the light, and finding that it proceeded from the cottage of a hermit, he called humbly at the door, and obtained admission. The old man set before him such provisions as he had collected for himself, on which Obidah fed with eagerness and gratitude.

12. When the repast was over, “Tell me,” said the hermit, “by what chance thou hast been brought hither; I have been now twenty years an inhabitant of the wilderness, in which I never saw a man before.” Obidah then related the occurrences of his journey, without any concealment or palliation.[538]

13 “Son,” said the hermit, “let the errors and follies, the dangers and escapes of this day, sink deep into thy heart. Remember, my son, that human life is the journey of a day. We rise in the morning of youth, full of vigor, and full of expectation; we set forward with spirit and hope, with gayety and with diligence, and travel on awhile in the straight road of piety, toward the mansion of rest.

14. “In a short time we remit our fervor, and endeavor to find some mitigation[539] of our duty, and some more easy means of obtaining the same end. We then relax our vigor, and resolve no longer to be terrified with crimes at a distance, but rely upon our own constancy,[540] and venture to approach what we resolve never to touch.

15. “We thus enter the bowers of ease, and repose in the shades of security. Here the heart softens, and vigilance[541] subsides;[542] we are then willing to inquire whether another advance cannot be made, and whether we may not, at least, turn our eyes upon the gardens of pleasure. We approach them with scruple and hesitation; we enter them, but enter timorous and trembling, and always hope to pass through them without losing the road of virtue, which we for awhile keep in our sight, and to which we propose to return. But temptation succeeds temptation, and one compliance prepares us for another; we in time lose the happiness of innocence, and solace[543] our disquiet with sensual[544] gratifications.

16. “By degrees we let fall the remembrance of our original intention, and quit the only adequate[545] object of rational desire. We entangle ourselves in business, immerge ourselves in luxury, and rove through the labyrinths[546] of inconstancy,[547] till the darkness of old age begins to invade us, and disease and anxiety obstruct our way. We then look back upon our lives with horror, with sorrow, with repentance; and wish, but too often vainly wish, that we had not forsaken the ways of virtue.

17. “Happy are they, my son, who shall learn from thy example not to despair, but shall remember, that though the day is past, and their strength is wasted, there yet remains one effort to be made; that reformation is never hopeless, nor sincere endeavors ever unassisted; that the wanderer may at length return, after all his errors; and that he who implores strength and courage from above, shall find danger and difficulty give way before him. Go now, my son, to thy repose; commit thyself to the care of Omnipotence;[548] and when the morning comes again to toil, begin anew thy journey and thy life.”

LXXIV.—THE DOUBTING HEART.

ADELAIDE A. PROCTOR.

LXXV.—ON THE WASTE OF TIME.

FRANKLIN.

Benjamin Franklin, distinguished as a statesman, a patriot, and a philosopher, was born at Boston in 1706. He began his career as a printer, and by diligence, integrity and rare sagacity, became one of the foremost of that able and brilliant band of men who were the leaders of the American Revolution. He died in 1790.

1. Amergus was a gentleman of good estate: he was bred to no business, and could not contrive how to waste his hours agreeably; he had no relish for any of the proper works of life, nor any taste for the improvement of the mind; he spent generally ten hours of the four-and-twenty in bed; he dozed away two or three more on his couch; and as many more were dissolved in good liquor every evening, if he met with company of his own humor. Thus he made a shift to wear off ten years of his life since the paternal[549] estate fell into his hands.

2. One evening as he was musing alone, his thoughts happened to take a most unusual turn, for they cast a glance backward, and he began to reflect on his manner of life. He bethought himself what a number of living beings had been made a sacrifice[550] to support his carcass, and how much corn and wine had been mingled with these offerings; and he set himself to compute what he had devoured since he came to the age of man.

3. “About a dozen feathered creatures, small and great, have, one week with another,” said he, “given up their lives to prolong mine, which, in ten years, amounts to at least six thousand. Fifty sheep have been sacrificed in a year, with half a hecatomb[551] of black-cattle,[552] that I might have the choicest parts offered weekly upon my table. Thus a thousand beasts, out of the flock and the herd, have been slain in ten years’ time to feed me beside what the forest has supplied me with.

4. “Many hundreds of fishes have, in all their variety, been robbed of life for my repast,[553] and of the smaller fry, some thousands. A measure of corn would hardly suffice[554] me fine flour enough for a month’s provision, and this arises to about six score bushels; and many hogsheads of wine and other liquors have passed through this body of mine—this wretched strainer of meat and drink! And what have I done all this time for God and man? What a vast profusion[555] of good things wasted upon a useless life and a worthless liver!

5. “There is not the meanest creature among all those that I have devoured, but hath answered the end of its creation better than I. It was made to support human nature, and it has done so. Every crab and oyster I have eaten, and every grain of corn I have devoured, hath filled up its place in the rank of beings with more propriety and honor than I have done. Oh, shameful waste of life and time!”

6. In short, he carried on his moral reflections[556] with so just and severe a force of reason, as constrained[557] him to change his whole course of life; to break off his follies at once, and to apply himself to gain some useful knowledge, when he was more than thirty years of age. He lived many following years, with the character of a worthy man and an excellent Christian;[558] he died with a peaceful conscience,[559] and the tears of his country were dropped upon his tomb.

7. The world, that knew the whole series of his life, were amazed at the mighty change. They beheld him as a wonder of reformation, while he himself confessed and adored the Divine power and mercy which had transformed him from a brute to a man. But this was a single instance, and we may almost venture to write miracle[560] upon it. Are there not numbers, in this degenerate[561] age, whose lives thus run to utter waste, without the least tendency[562] to usefulness?

LXXVI.—THE REAPER, DEATH.

LONGFELLOW.

LXXVII.—DIALOGUE WITH THE GOUT.

FRANKLIN.

1. Franklin. Eh! Oh! Eh! What have I done to merit these cruel sufferings?

Gout. Many things: you have ate and drank too freely, and too much indulged those legs of yours in their indolence.[563]

Franklin. Who is it that accuses me?

Gout. It is I, even I, the Gout.

Franklin. What! my enemy in person?

Gout. No; not your enemy.

Franklin. I repeat it, my enemy; for you would not only torment[564] my body to death, but ruin my good name. You reproach me as a glutton and a tippler;[565] now all the world that knows me will allow that I am neither the one nor the other.

2. Gout. The world may think as it pleases. It is always very complaisant[566] to itself, and sometimes to its friends; but I very well know that the quantity of meat and drink proper for a man who takes a reasonable degree of exercise would be too much for another who never takes any.

Franklin. I take—Eh! Oh!—as much exercise—Eh!—as I can, Madam Gout. You know my sedentary[567] state; and on that account, it would seem, Madam Gout, as if you might spare me a little, seeing it is not altogether my own fault.

3. Gout. Not a jot; your rhetoric and your politeness are thrown away; your apology avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your recreations, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or if the weather prevents that, play at something.

But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast: four dishes of tea, with cream, one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef; which I fancy are not things the most easily digested.

4. Immediately afterward, you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition; but what is your practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful gardens of those friends with whom you have dined would be the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixed down to chess, where you are found engaged for two or three hours.

5. This is your perpetual recreation; the least eligible[568] of any for a sedentary man, because, instead of accelerating[569] the motion of the fluids, the rigid[570] attention it requires helps to retard the circulation and obstruct internal secretions.[571] Wrapt in the speculations of this wretched game, you destroy your constitution. What can be expected from such a course of living but a body replete with stagnant humors, ready to fall a prey to all kinds of dangerous maladies,[572] if I, the Gout, did not occasionally bring you relief by agitating those humors, and so purifying or dissipating them? Fie, then, Mr. Franklin! But, amidst my instructions, I had almost forgotten to administer my wholesome corrections; so take that twinge, and that.

6. Franklin. Oh! Eh! Oh! Oh! As much instruction as you please, Madam Gout, and as many reproaches; but pray, Madam, a truce with your corrections!

Gout. No, sir, no; I will not abate a particle of what is so much for your good, therefore—

Franklin. Oh! Eh! It is not fair to say I take no exercise, when I do, very often, go out to dine, and return in my carriage.

7. Gout. That, of all imaginable exercises, is the most slight and insignificant, if you allude to the motion of a carriage suspended on springs. By observing the degree of heat obtained from different kinds of motion, we may form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given by each. Thus, for example, if you turn out to walk in winter with cold feet, in an hour’s time you will be in a glow all over; ride on horseback, the same effect will scarcely be perceived by four hours’ round trotting; but if you loll in a carriage, such as you have mentioned, you may travel all day, and gladly enter the last inn to warm your feet by a fire.

8. Flatter yourself, then, no longer, that half an hour’s airing in your carriage deserves the name of exercise. Providence has appointed few to roll in carriages, while he has given to all a pair of legs, which are machines infinitely more commodious and serviceable. Be grateful, then, and make a proper use of yours.

LXXVIII.—THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

LXXIX.—EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.

LINGARD.

John Lingard, D. D., was born in England in 1771; died in 1851. With the completion of the “History of England,” which has been republished in New York in thirteen volumes, the literary fame of Dr. Lingard became established throughout Europe. Cardinal Wiseman speaks of this history, and its learned author, in the following terms: “It is a Providence that in history we have had given to the nation a writer like Lingard, whose gigantic merit will be better appreciated in each successive generation, as it sees his work standing calm and erect amidst the shoals of petty pretenders to usurp his station. When Hume shall have fairly taken his place among the classical writers of our tongue, and Macaulay shall have been transferred to the shelves of romances and poets, and each thus have received his due meed of praise, then Lingard will be still more conspicuous as the only impartial historian of our country.”

1. If we estimate the character of a sovereign by the test of popular affection, we must rank Edward among the best princes of his time. The goodness of his heart was adored by his subjects, who lamented his death with tears of undissembled grief, and bequeathed his memory as an object of veneration to their posterity. The blessings of his reign are the constant theme of our ancient writers: not, indeed, that he displayed any of those brilliant qualities which attract admiration, while they inflict misery.

2. He could not boast of the victories which he had achieved; but he exhibited the interesting spectacle of a king, negligent of his private interests, and wholly devoted to the welfare of his people; and, by his labors to restore the dominion of the laws, his vigilance to ward off foreign aggression, his constant, and ultimately successful, solicitude to appease the feuds of his nobles,—if he did not prevent the interruption, he secured, at least, a longer duration of public tranquillity, than had been enjoyed in England for half a century.

3. He was pious, kind, and compassionate; the father of the poor, and the protector of the weak; more willing to give than to receive, the better pleased to pardon than to punish. Under the preceding kings, force generally supplied the place of justice, and the people were impoverished by the rapacity of the sovereign. But Edward enforced the laws of his Saxon predecessors, and disdained the riches that were wrung from the labors of his subjects.

4. Temperate in his diet, unostentatious in his person, pursuing no pleasures but those which his hawks and hounds afforded, he was content with the patrimonial domains of the crown; and was able to assert, even after the abolition of that fruitful source of revenue, the Danegelt, that he possessed a greater portion of wealth than any of his predecessors enjoyed. To him, the principle that the king can do no wrong, was literally applied by the gratitude of his people, who, if they occasionally complained of the measures of the government, attributed the blame not to the monarch himself, of whose benevolence they entertained no doubt, but to the ministers, who had abused his confidence, or deceived his credulity.

5. It was, however, a fortunate circumstance for the memory of Edward, that he occupied the interval between the Danish and Norman conquests. Writers were induced to view his character with more partiality, from the hatred with which they looked upon his successors and predecessors. They were foreigners; he was a native: they held the crown by conquest; he by descent: they ground to the dust the slaves whom they had made; he became known to his countrymen only by his benefits. Hence he appeared to shine with purer light amid the gloom with which he was surrounded; and whenever the people under the despotism of the Norman kings, had any opportunity of expressing their real wishes, they constantly called for “the laws and customs of the good King Edward”.

LXXX.—THE COMING OF WINTER.

T. B. READ.

LXXXI.—THE SISTER OF CHARITY.

WILLIAMS.

Richard Dalton Williams was born in Ireland. He had been for several years previous to his death, Professor of Belles Letters in the Catholic College, Mobile. His poems all bear the unmistakable stamp of poetic genius.

LXXXII.—WASHINGTON AND BONAPARTE COMPARED.

CHATEAUBRIAND.

1. If Washington and Bonaparte are compared, man with man, the genius of the first will seem to take a less lofty flight than that of the second. Washington belongs not, like Bonaparte, to the race of Alexanders and Cæsars, who surpassed the ordinary stature of the human race; he creates no sentiment of astonishment; he is not seen contending, on a vast theatre, for glory, with the greatest captains and most powerful monarchs of the earth, he traverses[579] no seas; he hurries not from Memphis to Vienna, from Cadiz to Moscow; his work is a simple one of defending himself, with a handful of citizens, within the narrow limits of domestic hearths, in a land without a past and without celebrity.

2. He gains none of those battles which renew the bloody triumphs of Arbela[580] and Pharsalia;[581] he puts not his foot upon the necks of kings; he does not say to them, waiting on the vestibule of his palace, how often you come! and how you weary Attila![582] A certain spirit of silence envelops the actions of Washington: slow caution marks them all. One would say that he had ever the sentiment of his great mission with him, and that he feared to compromise it by rashness.

3. His own personal destiny seems not to have entered into the calculations of this hero of a new species; the destinies of his country alone occupied him, and he did not permit himself to risk or gamble with what did not belong to him. But from this profound obscurity what light breaks forth! Seek through the unknown forests where the sword of Washington glittered, and what will you find there? Tombs? No! A world. Washington has left the United States as a trophy of his field of battle.

4. Bonaparte possessed no single trait of this great American. His wars were all waged on an ancient continent, environed[583] by splendor and stunning with noise. His object was personal glory: his individual destiny filled all his thoughts. He seems to have known that his mission would be short: that the torrent that fell from such a height would quickly expend its force. He hurried forward to enjoy and to abuse his glory, as if aware that it was a fugitive dream of youth. Like the gods of Homer, four steps must suffice him to reach the end of the world.

5. Each of these men has been recompensed according to his works. Washington, after having raised a nation to independence, slept peacefully, as a retired magistrate, under his paternal roof, amid the regrets of his countrymen, and the veneration of all people, Bonaparte, having robbed a nation of its independence was hurled, a dethroned emperor, into exile, and the terrified earth hardly thought him secure enough under the custody of the ocean.

6. Even while exhausted and chained to a rock, he was struggling with death: Europe dared not lay down her arms, for fear of him. He died; and this event, published at the gate of the palace before which the conqueror had proclaimed so many funerals, hardly arrested the passer-by. What, indeed, had citizens to weep for!

7. Washington and Bonaparte both arose out of the bosom of a republic. Both were born of liberty; the first was faithful to it, the second betrayed it. Their lot will be according to the different part they chose: very different with future generations. The name of Washington will spread with liberty from age to age, and mark the commencement of a new era for the human race: the name of Bonaparte will be pronounced also by distant generations, but no benedictions will be attached to it; it will serve on the contrary, as an authority to oppressors, great and petty of all times.

8. Washington represented completely the wants, the ideas, the state of enlightenment and opinions of his epoch. He seconded, instead of thwarting, the advancing movement: he willed that which he ought to have willed; the fulfilment of the mission to which he was called. Hence the coherence[584] and perpetuity of his work.

9. This man, who strikes the imagination so slightly, because he was natural, and kept within his just proportions, has confounded his history with that of his country: his glory is the common patrimony of increased civilization: his renown rises like one of those sanctuaries whence a stream, pure and inexhaustible, flows forth for ever, for the solace of the people.

10. Bonaparte might also have enriched the public domain. His action was on the nation the most civilized, the most intelligent, the most brave, the most brilliant of the earth. What a rank would he have occupied at present in the universe, if he had joined magnanimity to his other heroic qualities! if—Washington and Bonaparte at the same time—he had nominated liberty the inheritor of his glory!

11. But the disproportioned giant did not completely identify his destiny with that of his country. His genius belonged to modern, his ambition to ancient times. He did not perceive that the miracles of his life by far surpassed the value of a diadem, and that this gothic ornament but ill became him. Sometimes one might see him take a step with the age; at others he would retrograde toward the past. But whether he reascended the stream of time or followed its course, the prodigious force of his genius seemed to command a flow or a flux at his will.

12. Men were, in his eyes, only a means of power: there was no sympathy between their welfare and his own. He promised to liberate, and he enchained them: he separated himself from them, and they shrunk back from him. The kings of Egypt built their funeral pyramids, not amid fertile plains, but sterile sands. On a like site has Bonaparte constructed the monument of his renown.

LXXXIII.—CHARACTER OF FRANKLIN.

BROUGHAM.

1. One of the most remarkable men certainly of our times as a politician, or of any age as a philosopher, was Franklin; who also stands alone in combining together these two characters, the greatest that man can sustain, and in this, that, having borne the first part in enlarging science by one of the greatest discoveries ever made, he bore the second part in founding one of the greatest empires in the world.

2. In this truly great man every thing seems to concur that goes toward the constitution of exalted merit. First, he was the architect of his own fortune. Born in the humblest station, he raised himself by his talents and industry, first to the place in society which may be attained with the help only of ordinary abilities, great application, and good luck; but next, to the loftier heights which a daring and happy genius alone can scale; and the printers’ boy who at one period of his life had no covering to shelter his head from the dews of night, rent in twain the proud dominion of England, and lived to be the ambassador of a commonwealth which he had formed, at the court of the haughty monarchs of France, who had been his allies.

3. Then he had been tried by prosperity as well as by adverse fortune, and had passed unhurt through the perils of both. No ordinary apprentice, no commonplace journeyman, ever laid the foundation of his independence in habits of industry and temperance more deep than he did, whose genius was afterwards to rank him with the Galileos and Newtons of the old world. No patrician born to shine in courts, or assist at the councils of monarchs, ever bore his honors in a lofty station more easily, or was less spoiled by the enjoyment of them, than this common workman did when negotiating with royal representatives, or caressed by all the beauty and fashion of the most brilliant court in Europe.

4. Again, he was self-taught in all he knew. His hours of study were stolen from those of sleep and of meals, or gained by some ingenious contrivance for reading while the work of his daily calling went on. Assisted by none of the helps which affluence tenders to the studies of the rich, he had to supply the place of tutors by redoubled diligence, and of commentaries by repeated perusal. Nay, the possession of books was to be obtained by copying what the art which he himself exercised furnished easily to others.

5. Next, the circumstances under which others succumb he made to yield, and bent to his own purposes—a successful leader of a revolt that ended in complete triumph after appearing desperate for years: a great discoverer in philosophy without the ordinary helps to knowledge; a writer famed for his chaste style without a classical education; a skillful negotiator, though never bred to politics; ending as a favorite, nay, a pattern of fashion when the guest of frivolous courts, the life which he had begun in garrets and in workshops.

6. Lastly, combinations of faculties, in others deemed impossible, appeared easy and natural in him. The philosopher, delighting in speculation, was also eminently a man of action. Ingenious reasoning, refined and subtle consultation, were in him combined with prompt resolution and inflexible firmness of purpose. To a lively fancy he joined a learned and deep reflection; his original and inventive genius stooped to the convenient alliance of the most ordinary prudence in every day affairs; the mind that soared above the clouds, and was conversant with the loftiest human contemplations, disdained not to make proverbs and feign parables for the guidance of apprenticed youths and maidens at service; and the hands that sketched a free constitution for a whole continent, or drew down the lightning from heaven, easily and cheerfully lent themselves to simplify the apparatus by which truths were to be illustrated or discoveries pursued.

7. His whole course, both in acting and in speculation, was simple and plain, ever preferring the easiest and shortest road, nor ever having recourse to any but the simplest means to compass his ends. His policy rejected all refinements, and aimed at accomplishing its purposes by the most rational and obvious expedients. His language was unadorned, and used as the medium of communicating his thoughts, not of raising admiration; but it was pure, expressive, racy. His manner of reasoning was manly and cogent, the address of a rational being to others of the same order; and so concise, that preferring decision to discussion, he never exceeded a quarter of an hour in any public address. His correspondence on business, whether private or on state affairs, is a model of clearness and compendious shortness; nor can any state papers surpass in dignity and impressiveness those of which he is believed to have been the author in the earlier part of the American revolutionary war.

8. His mode of philosophizing was the purest application of the inductive principle, so eminently adapted to his nature, and so clearly dictated by common sense, that we can have little doubt that it would have been suggested by Franklin, if it had not been unfolded by Bacon, though it is clear that in this case it would have been expounded in far more simple terms. But of all this great man’s scientific excellencies, the most remarkable is the smallness, the simplicity, the apparent inadequacy of the means which he employed in his experimental researches. His discoveries were made with hardly any apparatus at all; and if, at any time, he had been led to employ instruments of a less ordinary description, he never rested satisfied until he had, as it were, afterward translated the process, by resolving the problem with such simple machinery, that you might say he had done it wholly unaided by apparatus. The experiments by which the identity of lightning and electricity was demonstrated were made with a sheet of brown paper, a bit of twine, a silk thread, and an iron key. Upon the integrity of this great man, whether in public or in private life, there rests no stain. Strictly honest, and even scrupulously punctual in all his dealings, he preserved in the highest fortune that regularity which he had practiced, as well as inculcated, in the lowest.

9. In domestic life he was faultless, and in the intercourse of society, delightful. There was a constant good humor and a playful wit, easy and of high relish, without any ambition to shine, the natural fruit of his lively fancy, his solid, natural good-sense, and his cheerful temper, that gave his conversation an unspeakable charm, and alike suited every circle, from the humblest to the most elevated.

LXXXIV.—THE LAST MINSTREL.

SCOTT.

Sir Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, August 15, 1771, died September 21, 1832. He was distinguished as a poet, and unrivaled as a novelist.

LXXXV.—THE MINSTREL BOY.

THOMAS MOORE.

LXXXVI.—ARMY HYMN.

O. W. HOLMES.

LXXXVII.—THE ROMAN PONTIFFS.

ARCHBISHOP SPALDING.

M. J. Spalding, D. D. Archbishop of Baltimore, is a native of Kentucky. He is a man of great learning and ability, and of untiring industry. He is the author of a very valuable “History of the Protestant Reformation,” and of several volumes of Essays and Lectures. The following is from his brilliant Introduction to the “History of the Church,” by Darras.

1. Take them all in all, the two hundred and fifty Popes and more, who have successively occupied the Chair of Peter, constitute the most respectable and venerable body of men whose deeds are recorded on the pages of history. Nearly all of them were highly respectable men, learned, enlightened, and pious, far beyond their age; very many of them were venerable for their personal sanctity. Seventy-nine of them—nearly a third of the entire number—were so remarkable for their holiness of character as to merit being inscribed on the Calendar of Saints; and this number includes thirty-three who willingly laid down their lives for Christ and His Church.

2. A very large proportion of the others were men of blameless life, and of indefatigable[585] zeal for the propagation[586] of the faith, while not a few of them were possessed of great learning and capacity. Such, for instance, were Innocent III., Innocent IV., Boniface VIII., and Benedict XIV.,—not to name a host of others in the earlier ages of the Church.

3. In this connection, it is a remarkable fact, and one which shows how effectually Christ has watched over His Church, in the person of His Vicars on earth; that during the last three centuries—since the so-called Reformation—not a single unworthy or immoral Pope has occupied the venerable Chair of Peter. While wickedness has abounded[587], and the very foundations of the faith have been boldly undermined by wicked men “lying in wait to deceive,” God has taken care of His own, and has spared scandals in the high places of His Church.

4. The Reformation, has, perhaps, been instrumental in involuntarily and indirectly rendering this signal service to the cause of the Church, which it so unblushingly maligned. By removing from the pale of Catholic Christendom the most turbulent[588] and unrestrained of its members, it has contributed to purify the atmosphere breathed by the great body of Christians, who remained faithful; while by its bitter opposition, it has quickened their zeal and nourished their vigilance. Thus God’s providence hath drawn good out of evil.

5. Compare the Popes with the sovereigns who have contemporaneously[589] filled the various thrones of Europe and the world; and mark the difference, or rather the contrast. While among the latter it is very difficult to discover even one just man, in a long line of incumbents;[590] in the former, it is almost as difficult to find one who is wicked. Among the latter, personal morality, self-restraint, and purity are the exception; among the former, they are the rule. Among the latter, a ruler now and then appears clad with the virtues which mark the saint, as if to show that sanctity is compatible with every condition in life; among the former so many blameless and saintly men appear, that we cease to wonder, and yield to no surprise on discovering a new Pope who is true to the traditions[591] of his order. When we find a solitary flower in the bleak and dreary desert, we are startled into unbounded admiration; when we behold whole clusters of them in a flower-garden, we look with calm pleasure on the beautiful spectacle, but take it as a matter of course, and are not at all astonished.

LXXXVIII.—LABOR AND GENIUS

SYDNEY SMITH.

Sydney Smith was born in 1791, and died in 1845. His miscellaneous writings, comprising essays, reviews, and occasional pieces, are characterized by a happy combination of strong sense and brilliant wit.

1. The prevailing idea with young people has been, the incompatibility[592] of labor and genius; and, therefore, from the fear of being thought dull, they have thought it necessary to remain ignorant. I have seen, at school and at college, a great many young men completely destroyed by having been so unfortunate as to produce an excellent copy of verses. Their genius being now established, all that remained for them to do, was to act up to the dignity of the character; and as this dignity consisted in reading nothing new, in forgetting what they had already read, and in pretending to be acquainted with all subjects by a sort of off-hand exertion of talents, they soon collapsed[593] into the most frivolous and insignificant of men.

2. It would be an extremely profitable thing to draw up a short and well-authenticated account of the habits of study of the most celebrated writers with whose style of literary industry we happen to be most acquainted. It would go very far to destroy the absurd and pernicious[594] association of genius and idleness, by showing that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians—men of the most brilliant and imposing talents—have actually labored as hard as the makers of dictionaries and the arrangers of indexes; and that the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men is, that they have taken more pains than other men.

3. Gibbon was in his study every morning, winter and summer, at six o’clock: Burke was the most laborious and indefatigable[595] of human beings: Leibnitz[596] was never out of his library: Pascal killed himself by study: Cicero narrowly escaped death from the same cause: Milton was at his books with as much regularity as a merchant or an attorney; he had mastered all the knowledge of his time: so had Homer. Raphael lived but thirty-seven years; and in that short space carried the art of painting so far beyond what it had before reached, that he appears to stand alone as a model to his successors.

4. There are instances to the contrary; but, generally speaking, the life of all truly great men has been a life of intense and incessant[597] labor. They have commonly passed the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigent humility—overlooked, mistaken, contemned by weaker men,—thinking while others slept, reading while others rioted, feeling something within them that told them they should not always be kept down among the dregs of the world; and then, when their time has come, and some little accident has given them their first occasion, they have burst out into the light and glory of public life, rich with the spoils of time, and mighty in all the labors and struggles of the mind.

5. Then do the multitude cry out, “A miracle of genius!” Yes, he is a miracle of genius, because he is a miracle of labor; because, instead of trusting to the resources of his own single mind, he has ransacked a thousand minds; because he makes use of the accumulation of ages, and takes, as his point of departure, the very last line and boundary to which science has advanced; because it has ever been the object of his life to assist every intellectual gift of nature, however munificent,[598] and however splendid, with every resource that art could suggest, and every attention diligence could bestow.

6. But, while I am descanting[599] upon the conduct of the understanding, and the best mode of acquiring knowledge, some men may be disposed to ask, “Why conduct my understanding with such endless care? and what is the use of so much knowledge?” What is the use of so much knowledge? What is the use of so much life? What are we to do with the seventy years of existence allotted to us? and how are we to live them out to the last?

7. I solemnly declare that, but for the love of knowledge, I should consider the life of the meanest hedger and ditcher as preferable to that of the greatest and richest man in existence; for the fire of our minds is like the fire which the Persians burn on the mountains: it flames night and day, and is immortal, and not to be quenched! Upon something it must act and feed—upon the pure spirit of knowledge, or upon the foul dregs of polluting passions.

8. Therefore, when I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love coeval[600] with life, what do I say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune which has made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you and never quit you,—which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conceptions, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the outer world,—that which will make your motives habitually great and honorable, and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud.

9. Therefore, if any young man have embarked his life in pursuit of knowledge, let him go on without doubting or fearing the event; let him not be intimidated by the cheerless beginnings of knowledge, by the darkness from which she springs, by the difficulties which hover around her, by the wretched habitations in which she dwells, by the want and sorrow which sometimes journey in her train; but let him ever follow her as the Angel that guards him, and as the Genius of his life. She will bring him out at last into the light of day, and exhibit him to the world comprehensive in acquirements, fertile in resources, rich in imagination, strong in reasoning, prudent and powerful above his fellows in all the relations and in all the offices of his life.

LXXXIX.—THE DYING GIRL.

WILLIAMS.