Character Part 25

[Footnote 1317: 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."]

[Footnote 1318: 'Reasons of Church Government,' Book II.]

[Footnote 1319: 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.]

[Footnote 1320: 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.]

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

[Footnote 1322: 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.]

[Footnote 1323: "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.]

[Footnote 1324: 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 Lancas.h.i.+re polling, he occupied himself in proceeding with the translation of a work which he was then preparing for the press.]

[Footnote 141: James Russell Lowell.]

[Footnote 142: 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."]

[Footnote 143: Aubrey, in his 'Natural History of Wilts.h.i.+re,' alluding to Harvey, says: "He told me himself that upon publis.h.i.+ng that book he fell in his practice extremely."]

[Footnote 144: 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 n.o.ble 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.]

[Footnote 145: 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."]

[Footnote 146: Mr. J. S. Mill, in his book 'On Liberty,' describes "the ma.s.ses," as "collective mediocrity." "The initiation of all wise or n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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.]

[Footnote 147: 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 cla.s.s to cla.s.s. 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 ma.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses; and the former are in these times much less likely to have, such things addressed to them."-Claims of Labour, pp. 253-4.]

[Footnote 148: 'Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson' [14Bohn's Ed.], p. 32.]

[Footnote 149: 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 pa.s.sing hour, may happen to be fas.h.i.+onable or popular."]

[Footnote 1410: The following ill.u.s.tration 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.'"]

[Footnote 1411: 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; G.o.d 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."]

[Footnote 1412: Mrs. Grote's 'Life of Ary Scheffer,' pp. 154-5.]

[Footnote 1413: The sufferings of this n.o.ble woman, together with those of her unfortunate husband, were touchingly described in a letter afterwards addressed by her to a female friend, which was published some years ago at Haarlem, ent.i.tled, 'Gertrude von der Wart; or, Fidelity unto Death.'

Mrs. Hemans wrote a poem of great pathos and beauty, commemorating the sad story in her 'Records of Woman.']

[Footnote 151: 'Social Statics,' p. 185.]

[Footnote 152: "In all cases," says Jeremy Bentham, "when the power of the will can be exercised over the thoughts, let those thoughts be directed towards happiness. Look out for the bright, for the brightest side of things, and keep your face constantly turned to it.... A large part of existence is necessarily pa.s.sed in inaction. By day [15to take an instance from the thousand in constant recurrence], when in attendance on others, and time is lost by being kept waiting; by night when sleep is unwilling to close the eyelids, the economy of happiness recommends the occupation of pleasurable thought. In walking abroad, or in resting at home, the mind cannot be vacant; its thoughts may be useful, useless, or pernicious to happiness. Direct them aright; the habit of happy thought will spring up like any other habit." DEONTOLOGY, ii. 105-6.]

[Footnote 153: The following extract from a letter of M. Boyd, Esq., is given by Earl Stanhope in his 'Miscellanies':--"There was a circ.u.mstance told me by the late Mr. Christmas, who for many years held an important official situation in the Bank of England. He was, I believe, in early life a clerk in the Treasury, or one of the government offices, and for some time acted for Mr. Pitt as his confidential clerk, or temporary private secretary. Christmas was one of the most obliging men I ever knew; and, from the, position he occupied, was constantly exposed to interruptions, yet I never saw his temper in the least ruffled. One day I found him more than usually engaged, having a ma.s.s of accounts to prepare for one of the law-courts--still the same equanimity, and I could not resist the opportunity of asking the old gentleman the secret. 'Well, Mr. Boyd, you shall know it. Mr. Pitt gave it to me:--NOT TO LOSE MY TEMPER, IF POSSIBLE, AT ANY TIME, AND NEVER DURING THE HOURS OF BUSINESS. My labours here [15Bank of England] commence at nine and end at three; and, acting on the advice of the ill.u.s.trious statesman, I NEVER LOSE MY TEMPER DURING THOSE HOURS.'"]

[Footnote 154: 'Strafford Papers,' i. 87.]

[Footnote 155: Jared Sparks' 'Life of Was.h.i.+ngton,' pp. 7, 534.]

[Footnote 156: Brialmont's 'Life of Wellington.']

[Footnote 157: Professor Tyndall, on 'Faraday as a Discoverer,' p. 156.]

[Footnote 158: 'Life of Perthes,' ii. 216.]

[Footnote 159: Lady Elizabeth Carew.]

[Footnote 1510: Francis Horner, in one of his letters, says: "It is among the very sincere and zealous friends of liberty that you will find the most perfect specimens of wrongheadedness; men of a dissenting, provincial cast of virtue--who [15according to one of Sharpe's favourite phrases]

WILL drive a wedge the broad end foremost--utter strangers to all moderation in political business."--Francis Horner's LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE [151843], ii. 133.]

[Footnote 1511: Professor Tyndall on 'Faraday as a Discoverer,' pp. 40-1.]

[Footnote 1512: Yet Burke himself; though capable of giving Barry such excellent advice, was by no means immaculate as regarded his own temper. When he lay ill at Beaconsfield, Fox, from whom he had become separated by political differences arising out of the French Revolution, went down to see his old friend. But Burke would not grant him an interview; he positively refused to see him. On his return to town, Fox told his friend c.o.ke the result of his journey; and when c.o.ke lamented Burke's obstinacy, Fox only replied, goodnaturedly: "Ah! never mind, Tom; I always find every Irishman has got a piece of potato in his head."

Yet Fox, with his usual generosity, when he heard of Burke's impending death, wrote a most kind and cordial letter to Mrs. Burke, expressive of his grief and sympathy; and when Burke was no more, Fox was the first to propose that he should be interred with public honours in Westminster Abbey--which only Burke's own express wish, that he should be buried at Beaconsfield, prevented being carried out.]

[Footnote 1513: When Curran, the Irish barrister, visited Burns's cabin in 1810, he found it converted into a public house, and the landlord who showed it was drunk. "There," said he, pointing to a corner on one side of the fire, with a most MALAPROPOS laugh-"there is the very spot where Robert Burns was born." "The genius and the fate of the man," says Curran, "were already heavy on my heart; but the drunken laugh of the landlord gave me such a view of the rock on which he had foundered, that I could not stand it, but burst into tears."]

[Footnote 1514: The chaplain of Horsemongerlane Gaol, in his annual report to the Surrey justices, thus states the result of his careful study of the causes of dishonesty: "From my experience of predatory crime, founded upon careful study of the character of a great variety of prisoners, I conclude that habitual dishonesty is to be referred neither to ignorance, nor to drunkenness, nor to poverty, nor to overcrowding in towns, nor to temptation from surrounding wealth--nor, indeed, to any one of the many indirect causes to which it is sometimes referred--but mainly TO A DISPOSITION TO ACQUIRE PROPERTY WITH A LESS DEGREE OF LABOUR THAN ORDINARY INDUSTRY." The italics are the author's.]

[Footnote 1515: S. C. Hall's 'Memories.']

[Footnote 1516: Moore's 'Life of Byron,' 8vo. Ed., p. 182.]

[Footnote 1517: Captain Basil Hall records the following conversation with Scott:-"It occurs to me," I observed, "that people are apt to make too much fuss about the loss of fortune, which is one of the smallest of the great evils of life, and ought to be among the most tolerable."--"Do you call it a small misfortune to be ruined in money-matters?" he asked.

"It is not so painful, at all events, as the loss of friends."--"I grant that," he said. "As the loss of character?"--"True again." "As the loss of health?"--"Ay, there you have me," he muttered to himself, in a tone so melancholy that I wished I had not spoken. "What is the loss of fortune to the loss of peace of mind?" I continued. "In short," said he, playfully, "you will make it out that there is no harm in a man's being plunged over-head-and-ears in a debt he cannot remove." "Much depends, I think, on how it was incurred, and what efforts are made to redeem it--at least, if the sufferer be a rightminded man." "I hope it does,"

he said, cheerfully and firmly.--FRAGMENTS OF VOYAGES AND TRAVELS, 3rd series, pp. 308-9.]

[Footnote 1518: "These battles," he wrote in his Diary, "have been the death of many a man, I think they will be mine."]

[Footnote 1519: Scott's Diary, December 17th, 1827.]