p. 314Chapter XI — Self-Culture—Facilities and Difficulties

“Every person has two educations, one which
he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives
to himself.”—Gibbon.

“Is there one whom difficulties dishearten—who
bends to the storm? He will do little. Is there one
who will conquer? That kind of man never
fails.”—John Hunter.

“The wise and active conquer difficulties,
By daring to attempt them: sloth and folly
Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and danger,
And make the impossibility they
fear.”—Rowe.

“The best part of every
man’s education,” said Sir Walter Scott, “is
that which he gives to himself.” The late Sir
Benjamin Brodie delighted to remember this saying, and he used to
congratulate himself on the fact that professionally he was
self-taught. But this is necessarily the case with all men
who have acquired distinction in letters, science, or art.
The education received at school or college is but a beginning,
and is valuable mainly inasmuch as it trains the mind and
habituates it to continuous application and study. That
which is put into us by others is always far less ours than that
which we acquire by our own diligent and persevering
effort. Knowledge conquered by labour becomes a
possession—a property entirely our own. A greater
vividness and permanency of impression is secured; and facts thus
acquired become registered in the mind in a way that mere
imparted information can never effect. This kind of
self-culture also calls forth power and cultivates
strength. The solution of one problem helps the mastery of
another; and thus knowledge is carried into faculty. Our
own active effort is the essential thing; and no facilities, no
books, no teachers, no amount of lessons learnt by rote will
enable us to dispense with it.

The best teachers have been the readiest to recognize the
importance of self-culture, and of stimulating the student to
acquire knowledge by the active exercise of his own
faculties. They have relied more upon training than
upon telling, and sought to make their pupils themselves active
parties to the work in which they were engaged; thus making
teaching something far higher than the mere passive reception of
the scraps and details of knowledge. This was the spirit in
which the great Dr. Arnold worked; he strove to teach his pupils
to rely upon themselves, and develop their powers by their own
active efforts, himself merely guiding, directing, stimulating,
and encouraging them. “I would far rather,” he
said, “send a boy to Van Diemen’s Land, where he must
work for his bread, than send him to Oxford to live in luxury,
without any desire in his mind to avail himself of his
advantages.” “If there be one thing on
earth,” he observed on another occasion, “which is
truly admirable, it is to see God’s wisdom blessing an
inferiority of natural powers, when they have been honestly,
truly, and zealously cultivated.” Speaking of a pupil
of this character, he said, “I would stand to that man hat
in hand.” Once at Laleham, when teaching a rather
dull boy, Arnold spoke somewhat sharply to him, on which the
pupil looked up in his face and said, “Why do you speak
angrily, sir? indeed, I am doing the best I
can.” Years afterwards, Arnold used to tell the story
to his children, and added, “I never felt so much in my
life—that look and that speech I have never
forgotten.”

From the numerous instances already cited of men of humble
station who have risen to distinction in science and literature,
it will be obvious that labour is by no means incompatible with
the highest intellectual culture. Work in moderation is
healthy, as well as agreeable to the human constitution.
Work educates the body, as study educates the mind; and that is
the best state of society in which there is some work for every
man’s leisure, and some leisure for every man’s
work. Even the leisure classes are in a measure compelled
to work, sometimes as a relief from ennui, but in most
cases to gratify an instinct which they cannot resist. Some
go foxhunting in the English counties, others grouse-shooting on
the Scotch hills, while many wander away every summer to climb
mountains in Switzerland. Hence the boating, running,
cricketing, and athletic sports of the public schools, in which
our young men at the same time so healthfully cultivate their
strength both of mind and body. It is said that the Duke of
Wellington, when once looking on at the boys engaged in their
sports in the play-ground at Eton, where he had spent many of his
own younger days, made the remark, “It was there that the
battle of Waterloo was won!”

Daniel Malthus urged his son when at college to be most
diligent in the cultivation of knowledge, but he also enjoined
him to pursue manly sports as the best means of keeping up the
full working power of his mind, as well as of enjoying the
pleasures of intellect. “Every kind of
knowledge,” said he, “every acquaintance with nature
and art, will amuse and strengthen your mind, and I am perfectly
pleased that cricket should do the same by your arms and legs; I
love to see you excel in exercises of the body, and I think
myself that the better half, and much the most agreeable part, of
the pleasures of the mind is best enjoyed while one is upon
one’s legs.” But a still more important use of
active employment is that referred to by the great divine, Jeremy
Taylor. “Avoid idleness,” he says, “and
fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful
employment; for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where
the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; for no easy,
healthful, idle person was ever chaste if he could be tempted;
but of all employments bodily labour is the most useful, and of
the greatest benefit for driving away the devil.”

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

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

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

The success of even professional men depends in no slight
degree on their physical health; and a public writer has gone so
far as to say that “the greatness of our great men is quite
as much a bodily affair as a mental one.” [319] A healthy breathing apparatus is
as indispensable to the successful lawyer or politician as a
well-cultured intellect. The thorough aëration of the
blood by free exposure to a large breathing surface in the lungs,
is necessary to maintain that full vital power on which the
vigorous working of the brain in so large a measure
depends. The lawyer has to climb the heights of his
profession through close and heated courts, and the political
leader has to bear the fatigue and excitement of long and anxious
debates in a crowded House. Hence the lawyer in full
practice and the parliamentary leader in full work are called
upon to display powers of physical endurance and activity even
more extraordinary than those of the intellect,—such powers
as have been exhibited in so remarkable a degree by Brougham,
Lyndhurst, and Campbell; by Peel, Graham, and
Palmerston—all full-chested men.

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

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

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

“I have known several men in my life,” says Dr.
Ross, “who may be recognized in days to come as men of
genius, and they were all plodders, hard-working, intent
men. Genius is known by its works; genius without works is
a blind faith, a dumb oracle. But meritorious works are the
result of time and labour, and cannot be accomplished by
intention or by a wish. . . . Every great work is the result of
vast preparatory training. Facility comes by labour.
Nothing seems easy, not even walking, that was not difficult at
first. The orator whose eye flashes instantaneous fire, and
whose lips pour out a flood of noble thoughts, startling by their
unexpectedness, and elevating by their wisdom and truth, has
learned his secret by patient repetition, and after many bitter
disappointments.” [321]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is not then how much a man may know, that is of importance,
but the end and purpose for which he knows it. The object
of knowledge should be to mature wisdom and improve character, to
render us better, happier, and more useful; more benevolent, more
energetic, and more efficient in the pursuit of every high
purpose in life. “When people once fall into the
habit of admiring and encouraging ability as such, without
reference to moral character—and religious and political
opinions are the concrete form of moral character—they are
on the highway to all sorts of degradation.” [329] We must ourselves be and
do, and not rest satisfied merely with reading and
meditating over what other men have been and done. Our best
light must be made life, and our best thought action. At
least we ought to be able to say, as Richter did, “I have
made as much out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no
man should require more;” for it is every man’s duty
to discipline and guide himself, with God’s help, according
to his responsibilities and the faculties with which he has been
endowed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The school of Difficulty is the best school of moral
discipline, for nations as for individuals. Indeed, the
history of difficulty would be but a history of all the great and
good things that have yet been accomplished by men. It is
hard to say how much northern nations owe to their encounter with
a comparatively rude and changeable climate and an originally
sterile soil, which is one of the necessities of their
condition,—involving a perennial struggle with difficulties
such as the natives of sunnier climes know nothing of. And
thus it may be, that though our finest products are exotic, the
skill and industry which have been necessary to rear them, have
issued in the production of a native growth of men not surpassed
on the globe.

Wherever there is difficulty, the individual man must come out
for better for worse. Encounter with it will train his
strength, and discipline his skill; heartening him for future
effort, as the racer, by being trained to run against the hill,
at length courses with facility. The road to success may be
steep to climb, and it puts to the proof the energies of him who
would reach the summit. But by experience a man soon learns
that obstacles are to be overcome by grappling with
them,—that the nettle feels as soft as silk when it is
boldly grasped,—and that the most effective help towards
realizing the object proposed is the moral conviction that we can
and will accomplish it. Thus difficulties often fall away
of themselves before the determination to overcome them.

Much will be done if we do but try. Nobody knows what he
can do till he has tried; and few try their best till they have
been forced to do it. “If I could do such and
such a thing,” sighs the desponding youth. But
nothing will be done if he only wishes. The desire must
ripen into purpose and effort; and one energetic attempt is worth
a thousand aspirations. It is these thorny
“ifs”—the mutterings of impotence and
despair—which so often hedge round the field of
possibility, and prevent anything being done or even
attempted. “A difficulty,” said Lord Lyndhurst,
“is a thing to be overcome;” grapple with it at once;
facility will come with practice, and strength and fortitude with
repeated effort. Thus the mind and character may be trained
to an almost perfect discipline, and enabled to act with a grace,
spirit, and liberty, almost incomprehensible to those who have
not passed through a similar experience.

Everything that we learn is the mastery of a difficulty; and
the mastery of one helps to the mastery of others. Things
which may at first sight appear comparatively valueless in
education—such as the study of the dead languages, and the
relations of lines and surfaces which we call
mathematics—are really of the greatest practical value, not
so much because of the information which they yield, as because
of the development which they compel. The mastery of these
studies evokes effort, and cultivates powers of application,
which otherwise might have lain dormant, Thus one thing leads to
another, and so the work goes on through life—encounter
with difficulty ending only when life and culture end. But
indulging in the feeling of discouragement never helped any one
over a difficulty, and never will. D’Alembert’s
advice to the student who complained to him about his want of
success in mastering the first elements of mathematics was the
right one—“Go on, sir, and faith and strength will
come to you.”

The danseuse who turns a pirouette, the violinist who plays a
sonata, have acquired their dexterity by patient repetition and
after many failures. Carissimi, when praised for the ease
and grace of his melodies, exclaimed, “Ah! you little know
with what difficulty this ease has been acquired.”
Sir Joshua Reynolds, when once asked how long it had taken him to
paint a certain picture, replied, “All my
life.” Henry Clay, the American orator, when giving
advice to young men, thus described to them the secret of his
success in the cultivation of his art: “I owe my success in
life,” said he, “chiefly to one
circumstance—that at the age of twenty-seven I commenced,
and continued for years, the process of daily reading and
speaking upon the contents of some historical or scientific
book. These off-hand efforts were made, sometimes in a
cornfield, at others in the forest, and not unfrequently in some
distant barn, with the horse and the ox for my auditors. It
is to this early practice of the art of all arts that I am
indebted for the primary and leading impulses that stimulated me
onward and have shaped and moulded my whole subsequent
destiny.”

Curran, the Irish orator, when a youth, had a strong defect in
his articulation, and at school he was known as “stuttering
Jack Curran.” While he was engaged in the study of
the law, and still struggling to overcome his defect, he was
stung into eloquence by the sarcasms of a member of a debating
club, who characterised him as “Orator Mum;” for,
like Cowper, when he stood up to speak on a previous occasion,
Curran had not been able to utter a word. The taunt stung
him and he replied in a triumphant speech. This accidental
discovery in himself of the gift of eloquence encouraged him to
proceed in his studies with renewed energy. He corrected
his enunciation by reading aloud, emphatically and distinctly,
the best passages in literature, for several hours every day,
studying his features before a mirror, and adopting a method of
gesticulation suited to his rather awkward and ungraceful
figure. He also proposed cases to himself, which he argued
with as much care as if he had been addressing a jury.
Curran began business with the qualification which Lord Eldon
stated to be the first requisite for distinction, that is,
“to be not worth a shilling.” While working his
way laboriously at the bar, still oppressed by the diffidence
which had overcome him in his debating club, he was on one
occasion provoked by the Judge (Robinson) into making a very
severe retort. In the case under discussion, Curran
observed “that he had never met the law as laid down by his
lordship in any book in his library.” “That may
be, sir,” said the judge, in a contemptuous tone,
“but I suspect that your library is very
small.” His lordship was notoriously a furious
political partisan, the author of several anonymous pamphlets
characterised by unusual violence and dogmatism. Curran,
roused by the allusion to his straitened circumstances, replied
thus; “It is very true, my lord, that I am poor, and the
circumstance has certainly curtailed my library; my books are not
numerous, but they are select, and I hope they have been perused
with proper dispositions. I have prepared myself for this
high profession by the study of a few good works, rather than by
the composition of a great many bad ones. I am not ashamed
of my poverty; but I should be ashamed of my wealth, could I have
stooped to acquire it by servility and corruption. If I
rise not to rank, I shall at least be honest; and should I ever
cease to be so, many an example shows me that an ill-gained
elevation, by making me the more conspicuous, would only make me
the more universally and the more notoriously
contemptible.”

The extremest poverty has been no obstacle in the way of men
devoted to the duty of self-culture. Professor Alexander
Murray, the linguist, learnt to write by scribbling his letters
on an old wool-card with the end of a burnt heather stem.
The only book which his father, who was a poor shepherd,
possessed, was a penny Shorter Catechism; but that, being thought
too valuable for common use, was carefully preserved in a
cupboard for the Sunday catechisings. Professor Moor, when
a young man, being too poor to purchase Newton’s
‘Principia,’ borrowed the book, and copied the whole
of it with his own hand. Many poor students, while
labouring daily for their living, have only been able to snatch
an atom of knowledge here and there at intervals, as birds do
their food in winter time when the fields are covered with
snow. They have struggled on, and faith and hope have come
to them. A well-known author and publisher, William
Chambers, of Edinburgh, speaking before an assemblage of young
men in that city, thus briefly described to them his humble
beginnings, for their encouragement: “I stand before
you,” he said, “a self-educated man. My
education was that which is supplied at the humble parish schools
of Scotland; and it was only when I went to Edinburgh, a poor
boy, that I devoted my evenings, after the labours of the day, to
the cultivation of that intellect which the Almighty has given
me. From seven or eight in the morning till nine or ten at
night was I at my business as a bookseller’s apprentice,
and it was only during hours after these, stolen from sleep, that
I could devote myself to study. I did not read novels: my
attention was devoted to physical science, and other useful
matters. I also taught myself French. I look back to
those times with great pleasure, and am almost sorry I have not
to go through the same experience again; for I reaped more
pleasure when I had not a sixpence in my pocket, studying in a
garret in Edinburgh, then I now find when sitting amidst all the
elegancies and comforts of a parlour.”

William Cobbett’s account of how he learnt English
Grammar is full of interest and instruction for all students
labouring under difficulties. “I learned
grammar,” said he, “when I was a private soldier on
the pay of sixpence a day. The edge of my berth, or that of
my guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my
book-case; a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing-table;
and the task did not demand anything like a year of my
life. I had no money to purchase candle or oil; in winter
time it was rarely that I could get any evening light but that of
the fire, and only my turn even of that. And if I, under
such circumstances, and without parent or friend to advise or
encourage me, accomplished this undertaking, what excuse can
there be for any youth, however poor, however pressed with
business, or however circumstanced as to room or other
conveniences? To buy a pen or a sheet of paper I was
compelled to forego some portion of food, though in a state of
half-starvation: I had no moment of time that I could call my
own; and I had to read and to write amidst the talking, laughing,
singing, whistling, and brawling of at least half a score of the
most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of their
freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the farthing
that I had to give, now and then, for ink, pen, or paper!
That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me! I was as tall
as I am now; I had great health and great exercise. The
whole of the money, not expended for us at market, was two-pence
a week for each man. I remember, and well I may! that on
one occasion I, after all necessary expenses, had, on a Friday,
made shifts to have a halfpenny in reserve, which I had destined
for the purchase of a redherring in the morning; but, when I
pulled off my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly
able to endure life, I found that I had lost my halfpenny!
I buried my head under the miserable sheet and rug, and cried
like a child! And again I say, if, I, under circumstances
like these, could encounter and overcome this task, is there, can
there be, in the whole world, a youth to find an excuse for the
non-performance?”

We have been informed of an equally striking instance of
perseverance and application in learning on the part of a French
political exile in London. His original occupation was that
of a stonemason, at which he found employment for some time; but
work becoming slack, he lost his place, and poverty stared him in
the face. In his dilemma he called upon a fellow exile
profitably engaged in teaching French, and consulted him what he
ought to do to earn a living. The answer was, “Become
a professor!” “A professor?” answered the
mason—“I, who am only a workman, speaking but a
patois! Surely you are jesting?” “On the
contrary, I am quite serious,” said the other, “and
again I advise you—become a professor; place yourself under
me, and I will undertake to teach you how to teach
others.” “No, no!” replied the mason,
“it is impossible; I am too old to learn; I am too little
of a scholar; I cannot be a professor.” He went away,
and again he tried to obtain employment at his trade. From
London he went into the provinces, and travelled several hundred
miles in vain; he could not find a master. Returning to
London, he went direct to his former adviser, and said, “I
have tried everywhere for work, and failed; I will now try to be
a professor!” He immediately placed himself under
instruction; and being a man of close application, of quick
apprehension, and vigorous intelligence, he speedily mastered the
elements of grammar, the rules of construction and composition,
and (what he had still in a great measure to learn) the correct
pronunciation of classical French. When his friend and
instructor thought him sufficiently competent to undertake the
teaching of others, an appointment, advertised as vacant, was
applied for and obtained; and behold our artisan at length become
professor! It so happened, that the seminary to which he
was appointed was situated in a suburb of London where he had
formerly worked as a stonemason; and every morning the first
thing which met his eyes on looking out of his dressing-room
window was a stack of cottage chimneys which he had himself
built! He feared for a time lest he should be recognised in
the village as the quondam workman, and thus bring discredit on
his seminary, which was of high standing. But he need have
been under no such apprehension, as he proved a most efficient
teacher, and his pupils were on more than one occasion publicly
complimented for their knowledge of French. Meanwhile, he
secured the respect and friendship of all who knew
him—fellow-professors as well as pupils; and when the story
of his struggles, his difficulties, and his past history, became
known to them, they admired him more than ever.

Sir Samuel Romilly was not less indefatigable as a
self-cultivator. The son of a jeweller, descended from a
French refugee, he received little education in his early years,
but overcame all his disadvantages by unwearied application, and
by efforts constantly directed towards the same end.
“I determined,” he says, in his autobiography,
“when I was between fifteen and sixteen years of age, to
apply myself seriously to learning Latin, of which I, at that
time, knew little more than some of the most familiar rules of
grammar. In the course of three or four years, during which
I thus applied myself, I had read almost every prose writer of
the age of pure Latinity, except those who have treated merely of
technical subjects, such as Varro, Columella, and Celsus. I
had gone three times through the whole of Livy, Sallust, and
Tacitus. I had studied the most celebrated orations of
Cicero, and translated a great deal of Homer. Terence,
Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Juvenal, I had read over and over
again.” He also studied geography, natural history,
and natural philosophy, and obtained a considerable acquaintance
with general knowledge. At sixteen he was articled to a
clerk in Chancery; worked hard; was admitted to the bar; and his
industry and perseverance ensured success. He became
Solicitor-General under the Fox administration in 1806, and
steadily worked his way to the highest celebrity in his
profession. Yet he was always haunted by a painful and
almost oppressive sense of his own disqualifications, and never
ceased labouring to remedy them. His autobiography is a
lesson of instructive facts, worth volumes of sentiment, and well
deserves a careful perusal.

Sir Walter Scott was accustomed to cite the case of his young
friend John Leyden as one of the most remarkable illustrations of
the power of perseverance which he had ever known. The son
of a shepherd in one of the wildest valleys of Roxburghshire, he
was almost entirely self educated. Like many Scotch
shepherds’ sons—like Hogg, who taught himself to
write by copying the letters of a printed book as he lay watching
his flock on the hill-side—like Cairns, who from tending
sheep on the Lammermoors, raised himself by dint of application
and industry to the professor’s chair which he now so
worthily holds—like Murray, Ferguson, and many more, Leyden
was early inspired by a thirst for knowledge. When a poor
barefooted boy, he walked six or eight miles across the moors
daily to learn reading at the little village schoolhouse of
Kirkton; and this was all the education he received; the rest he
acquired for himself. He found his way to Edinburgh to
attend the college there, setting the extremest penury at
defiance. He was first discovered as a frequenter of a
small bookseller’s shop kept by Archibald Constable,
afterwards so well known as a publisher. He would pass hour
after hour perched on a ladder in mid-air, with some great folio
in his hand, forgetful of the scanty meal of bread and water
which awaited him at his miserable lodging. Access to books
and lectures comprised all within the bounds of his wishes.
Thus he toiled and battled at the gates of science until his
unconquerable perseverance carried everything before it.
Before he had attained his nineteenth year he had astonished all
the professors in Edinburgh by his profound knowledge of Greek
and Latin, and the general mass of information he had
acquired. Having turned his views to India, he sought
employment in the civil service, but failed. He was however
informed that a surgeon’s assistant’s commission was
open to him. But he was no surgeon, and knew no more of the
profession than a child. He could however learn. Then
he was told that he must be ready to pass in six months!
Nothing daunted, he set to work, to acquire in six months what
usually required three years. At the end of six months he
took his degree with honour. Scott and a few friends helped
to fit him out; and he sailed for India, after publishing his
beautiful poem ‘The Scenes of Infancy.’ In
India he promised to become one of the greatest of oriental
scholars, but was unhappily cut off by fever caught by exposure,
and died at an early age.

The life of the late Dr. Lee, Professor of Hebrew at
Cambridge, furnishes one of the most remarkable instances in
modern times of the power of patient perseverance and resolute
purpose in working out an honourable career in literature.
He received his education at a charity school at Lognor, near
Shrewsbury, but so little distinguished himself there, that his
master pronounced him one of the dullest boys that ever passed
through his hands. He was put apprentice to a carpenter,
and worked at that trade until he arrived at manhood. To
occupy his leisure hours he took to reading; and, some of the
books containing Latin quotations, he became desirous of
ascertaining what they meant. He bought a Latin grammar,
and proceeded to learn Latin. As Stone, the Duke of
Argyle’s gardener, said, long before, “Does one need
to know anything more than the twenty-four letters in order to
learn everything else that one wishes?” Lee rose
early and sat up late, and he succeeded in mastering the Latin
before his apprenticeship was out. Whilst working one day
in some place of worship, a copy of a Greek Testament fell in his
way, and he was immediately filled with the desire to learn that
language. He accordingly sold some of his Latin books, and
purchased a Greek Grammar and Lexicon. Taking pleasure in
learning, he soon mastered the language. Then he sold his
Greek books, and bought Hebrew ones, and learnt that language,
unassisted by any instructor, without any hope of fame or reward,
but simply following the bent of his genius. He next
proceeded to learn the Chaldee, Syriac, and Samaritan
dialects. But his studies began to tell upon his health,
and brought on disease in his eyes through his long night
watchings with his books. Having laid them aside for a time
and recovered his health, he went on with his daily work.
His character as a tradesman being excellent, his business
improved, and his means enabled him to marry, which he did when
twenty-eight years old. He determined now to devote himself
to the maintenance of his family, and to renounce the luxury of
literature; accordingly he sold all his books. He might
have continued a working carpenter all his life, had not the
chest of tools upon which he depended for subsistence been
destroyed by fire, and destitution stared him in the face.
He was too poor to buy new tools, so he bethought him of teaching
children their letters,—a profession requiring the least
possible capital. But though he had mastered many
languages, he was so defective in the common branches of
knowledge, that at first he could not teach them. Resolute
of purpose, however, he assiduously set to work, and taught
himself arithmetic and writing to such a degree as to be able to
impart the knowledge of these branches to little children.
His unaffected, simple, and beautiful character gradually
attracted friends, and the acquirements of the “learned
carpenter” became bruited abroad. Dr. Scott, a
neighbouring clergyman, obtained for him the appointment of
master of a charity school in Shrewsbury, and introduced him to a
distinguished Oriental scholar. These friends supplied him
with books, and Lee successively mastered Arabic, Persic, and
Hindostanee. He continued to pursue his studies while on
duty as a private in the local militia of the county; gradually
acquiring greater proficiency in languages. At length his
kind patron, Dr. Scott, enabled Lee to enter Queen’s
College, Cambridge; and after a course of study, in which he
distinguished himself by his mathematical acquirements, a vacancy
occurring in the professorship of Arabic and Hebrew, he was
worthily elected to fill the honourable office. Besides
ably performing his duties as a professor, he voluntarily gave
much of his time to the instruction of missionaries going forth
to preach the Gospel to eastern tribes in their own tongue.
He also made translations of the Bible into several Asiatic
dialects; and having mastered the New Zealand language, he
arranged a grammar and vocabulary for two New Zealand chiefs who
were then in England, which books are now in daily use in the New
Zealand schools. Such, in brief, is the remarkable history
of Dr. Samuel Lee; and it is but the counterpart of numerous
similarly instructive examples of the power of perseverance in
self-culture, as displayed in the lives of many of the most
distinguished of our literary and scientific men.

There are many other illustrious names which might be cited to
prove the truth of the common saying that “it is never too
late to learn.” Even at advanced years men can do
much, if they will determine on making a beginning. Sir
Henry Spelman did not begin the study of science until he was
between fifty and sixty years of age. Franklin was fifty
before he fully entered upon the study of Natural
Philosophy. Dryden and Scott were not known as authors
until each was in his fortieth year. Boccaccio was
thirty-five when he commenced his literary career, and Alfieri
was forty-six when he began the study of Greek. Dr. Arnold
learnt German at an advanced age, for the purpose of reading
Niebuhr in the original; and in like manner James Watt, when
about forty, while working at his trade of an instrument maker in
Glasgow, learnt French, German, and Italian, to enable himself to
peruse the valuable works on mechanical philosophy which existed
in those languages. Thomas Scott was fifty-six before he
began to learn Hebrew. Robert Hall was once found lying
upon the floor, racked by pain, learning Italian in his old age,
to enable him to judge of the parallel drawn by Macaulay between
Milton and Dante. Handel was forty-eight before he
published any of his great works. Indeed hundreds of
instances might be given of men who struck out an entirely new
path, and successfully entered on new studies, at a comparatively
advanced time of life. None but the frivolous or the
indolent will say, “I am too old to learn.” [354]

And here we would repeat what we have said before, that it is
not men of genius who move the world and take the lead in it, so
much as men of steadfastness, purpose, and indefatigable
industry. Notwithstanding the many undeniable instances of
the precocity of men of genius, it is nevertheless true that
early cleverness gives no indication of the height to which the
grown man will reach. Precocity is sometimes a symptom of
disease rather than of intellectual vigour. What becomes of
all the “remarkably clever children?” Where are
the duxes and prize boys? Trace them through life, and it
will frequently be found that the dull boys, who were beaten at
school, have shot ahead of them. The clever boys are
rewarded, but the prizes which they gain by their greater
quickness and facility do not always prove of use to them.
What ought rather to be rewarded is the endeavour, the struggle,
and the obedience; for it is the youth who does his best, though
endowed with an inferiority of natural powers, that ought above
all others to be encouraged.

An interesting chapter might be written on the subject of
illustrious dunces—dull boys, but brilliant men. We
have room, however, for only a few instances. Pietro di
Cortona, the painter, was thought so stupid that he was nicknamed
“Ass’s Head” when a boy; and Tomaso Guidi was
generally known as “Heavy Tom” (Massaccio
Tomasaccio), though by diligence he afterwards raised himself to
the highest eminence. Newton, when at school, stood at the
bottom of the lowest form but one. The boy above Newton
having kicked him, the dunce showed his pluck by challenging him
to a fight, and beat him. Then he set to work with a will,
and determined also to vanquish his antagonist as a scholar,
which he did, rising to the top of his class. Many of our
greatest divines have been anything but precocious. Isaac
Barrow, when a boy at the Charterhouse School, was notorious
chiefly for his strong temper, pugnacious habits, and proverbial
idleness as a scholar; and he caused such grief to his parents
that his father used to say that, if it pleased God to take from
him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, the least
promising of them all. Adam Clarke, when a boy, was
proclaimed by his father to be “a grievous dunce;”
though he could roll large stones about. Dean Swift was
“plucked” at Dublin University, and only obtained his
recommendation to Oxford “speciali gratia.” The
well-known Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Cook [356a] were boys together at the parish
school of St. Andrew’s; and they were found so stupid and
mischievous, that the master, irritated beyond measure, dismissed
them both as incorrigible dunces.

The brilliant Sheridan showed so little capacity as a boy,
that he was presented to a tutor by his mother with the
complimentary accompaniment that he was an incorrigible
dunce. Walter Scott was all but a dunce when a boy, always
much readier for a “bicker,” than apt at his
lessons. At the Edinburgh University, Professor Dalzell
pronounced upon him the sentence that “Dunce he was, and
dunce he would remain.” Chatterton was returned on
his mother’s hands as “a fool, of whom nothing could
be made.” Burns was a dull boy, good only at athletic
exercises. Goldsmith spoke of himself, as a plant that
flowered late. Alfieri left college no wiser than he
entered it, and did not begin the studies by which he
distinguished himself, until he had run half over Europe.
Robert Clive was a dunce, if not a reprobate, when a youth; but
always full of energy, even in badness. His family, glad to
get rid of him, shipped him off to Madras; and he lived to lay
the foundations of the British power in India. Napoleon and
Wellington were both dull boys, not distinguishing themselves in
any way at school. [356b] Of the
former the Duchess d’Abrantes says, “he had good
health, but was in other respects like other boys.”

Ulysses Grant, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States,
was called “Useless Grant” by his mother—he was
so dull and unhandy when a boy; and Stonewall Jackson,
Lee’s greatest lieutenant, was, in his youth, chiefly noted
for his slowness. While a pupil at West Point Military
Academy he was, however, equally remarkable for his indefatigable
application and perseverance. When a task was set him, he
never left it until he had mastered it; nor did he ever feign to
possess knowledge which he had not entirely acquired.
“Again and again,” wrote one who knew him,
“when called upon to answer questions in the recitation of
the day, he would reply, ‘I have not yet looked at it; I
have been engaged in mastering the recitation of yesterday or the
day before.’ The result was that he graduated
seventeenth in a class of seventy. There was probably in
the whole class not a boy to whom Jackson at the outset was not
inferior in knowledge and attainments; but at the end of the race
he had only sixteen before him, and had outstripped no fewer than
fifty-three. It used to be said of him by his
contemporaries, that if the course had been for ten years instead
of four, Jackson would have graduated at the head of his
class.” [357]

John Howard, the philanthropist, was another illustrious
dunce, learning next to nothing during the seven years that he
was at school. Stephenson, as a youth, was distinguished
chiefly for his skill at putting and wrestling, and attention to
his work. The brilliant Sir Humphry Davy was no cleverer
than other boys: his teacher, Dr. Cardew, once said of him,
“While he was with me I could not discern the faculties by
which he was so much distinguished.” Indeed, Davy
himself in after life considered it fortunate that he had been
left to “enjoy so much idleness” at school.
Watt was a dull scholar, notwithstanding the stories told about
his precocity; but he was, what was better, patient and
perseverant, and it was by such qualities, and by his carefully
cultivated inventiveness, that he was enabled to perfect his
steam-engine.

What Dr. Arnold said of boys is equally true of men—that
the difference between one boy and another consists not so much
in talent as in energy. Given perseverance and energy soon
becomes habitual. Provided the dunce has persistency and
application he will inevitably head the cleverer fellow without
those qualities. Slow but sure wins the race. It is
perseverance that explains how the position of boys at school is
so often reversed in real life; and it is curious to note how
some who were then so clever have since become so commonplace;
whilst others, dull boys, of whom nothing was expected, slow in
their faculties but sure in their pace, have assumed the position
of leaders of men. The author of this book, when a boy,
stood in the same class with one of the greatest of dunces.
One teacher after another had tried his skill upon him and
failed. Corporal punishment, the fool’s cap, coaxing,
and earnest entreaty, proved alike fruitless. Sometimes the
experiment was tried of putting him at the top of his class, and
it was curious to note the rapidity with which he gravitated to
the inevitable bottom. The youth was given up by his
teachers as an incorrigible dunce—one of them pronouncing
him to be a “stupendous booby.” Yet, slow
though he was, this dunce had a sort of dull energy of purpose in
him, which grew with his muscles and his manhood; and, strange to
say, when he at length came to take part in the practical
business of life, he was found heading most of his school
companions, and eventually left the greater number of them far
behind. The last time the author heard of him, he was chief
magistrate of his native town.

The tortoise in the right road will beat a racer in the
wrong. It matters not though a youth be slow, if he be but
diligent. Quickness of parts may even prove a defect,
inasmuch as the boy who learns readily will often forget as
readily; and also because he finds no need of cultivating that
quality of application and perseverance which the slower youth is
compelled to exercise, and which proves so valuable an element in
the formation of every character. Davy said “What I
am I have made myself;” and the same holds true
universally.

To conclude: the best culture is not obtained from teachers
when at school or college, so much as by our own diligent
self-education when we have become men. Hence parents need
not be in too great haste to see their children’s talents
forced into bloom. Let them watch and wait patiently,
letting good example and quiet training do their work, and leave
the rest to Providence. Let them see to it that the youth
is provided, by free exercise of his bodily powers, with a full
stock of physical health; set him fairly on the road of
self-culture; carefully train his habits of application and
perseverance; and as he grows older, if the right stuff be in
him, he will be enabled vigorously and effectively to cultivate
himself.