Character by Samuel Smiles (page 4)

the unrestrained appetite for drink was in his time, as it continues to be now, the most prevalent, popular, degrading, and destructive.

Were it possible to conceive the existence of a tyrant who should compel his people to give up to him one-third or more of their earnings, and require them at the same time to consume a commodity that should brutalise and degrade them, destroy the peace and comfort of their families, and sow in themselves the seeds of disease and premature death–what indignation meetings, what monster processions there would be! ‘What eloquent speeches and apostrophes to the spirit of liberty!–what appeals against a despotism so monstrous and so unnatural! And yet such a tyrant really exists amongst us–the tyrant of unrestrained appetite, whom no force of arms, or voices, or votes can resist, while men are willing to be his slaves.

The power of this tyrant can only be overcome by moral means–by self-discipline, self-respect, and self-control. There is no other way of withstanding the despotism of appetite in any of its forms. No reform of institutions, no extended power of voting, no improved form of government, no amount of scholastic instruction, can possibly elevate the character of a people who voluntarily abandon themselves to sensual indulgence. The pursuit of ignoble pleasure is the degradation of true happiness; it saps the morals, destroys the energies, and degrades the manliness and robustness of individuals as of nations.

The courage of self-control exhibits itself in many ways, but in none more clearly than in honest living. Men without the virtue of self-denial are not only subject to their own selfish desires, but they are usually in bondage to others who are likeminded with themselves. What others do, they do. They must live according to the artificial standard of their class, spending like their neighbours, regardless of the consequences, at the same time that all are, perhaps, aspiring after a style of living higher than their means. Each carries the others along with him, and they have not the moral courage to stop. They cannot resist the temptation of living high, though it may be at the expense of others; and they gradually become reckless of debt, until it enthrals them. In all this there is great moral cowardice, pusillanimity, and want of manly independence of character.

A rightminded man will shrink from seeming to be what he is not, or pretending to be richer than he really is, or assuming a style of living that his circumstances will not justify. He will have the courage to live honestly within his own means, rather than dishonestly upon the means of other people; for he who incurs debts in striving to maintain a style of living beyond his income, is in spirit as dishonest as the man who openly picks your pocket.

To many, this may seem an extreme view, but it will bear the strictest test. Living at the cost of others is not only dishonesty, but it is untruthfulness in deed, as lying is in word. The proverb of George Herbert, that “debtors are liars,” is justified by experience. Shaftesbury somewhere says that a restlessness to have something which we have not, and to be something which we are not, is the root of all immorality. (14) No reliance is to be placed on the saying–a very dangerous one–of Mirabeau, that “LA PETITE MORALE ETAIT L’ENNEMIE DE LA GRANDE.” On the contrary, strict adherence to even the smallest details of morality is the foundation of all manly and noble character.

The honourable man is frugal of his means, and pays his way honestly. He does not seek to pass himself off as richer than he is, or, by running into debt, open an account with ruin. As that man is not poor whose means are small, but whose desires are uncontrolled, so that man is rich whose means are more than sufficient for his wants. When Socrates saw a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniture of great value, carried in pomp through Athens, he said, “Now do I see how many things I do NOT desire.” “I can forgive everything but selfishness,” said Perthes. “Even the narrowest circumstances admit of greatness with reference to ‘mine and thine’; and none but the very poorest need fill their daily life with thoughts of money, if they have but prudence to arrange their housekeeping within the limits of their income.”

A man may be indifferent to money because of higher considerations, as Faraday was, who sacrificed wealth to pursue science; but if he would have the enjoyments that money can purchase, he must honestly earn it, and not live upon the earnings of others, as those do who habitually incur debts which they have no means of paying. When Maginn, always drowned in debt, was asked what he paid for his wine, he replied that he did not know, but he believed they “put something down in a book.” (15)

This “putting-down in a book” has proved the ruin of a great many weakminded people, who cannot resist the temptation of taking things upon credit which they have not the present means of paying for; and it would probably prove of great social benefit if the law which enables creditors to recover debts contracted under certain circumstances were altogether abolished. But, in the competition for trade, every encouragement is given to the incurring of debt, the creditor relying upon the law to aid him in the last extremity. When Sydney Smith once went into a new neighbourhood, it was given out in the local papers that he was a man of high connections, and he was besought on all sides for his “custom.” But he speedily undeceived his new neighbours. “We are not great people at all,” he said: “we are only common honest people–people that pay our debts.”

Hazlitt, who was a thoroughly honest though rather thriftless man, speaks of two classes of persons, not unlike each other–those who cannot keep their own money in their hands, and those who cannot keep their hands from other people’s. The former are always in want of money, for they throw it away on any object that first presents itself, as if to get rid of it; the latter make away with what they have of their own, and are perpetual borrowers from all who will lend to them; and their genius for borrowing, in the long run, usually proves their ruin.

Sheridan was one of such eminent unfortunates. He was impulsive and careless in his expenditure, borrowing money, and running into debt with everybody who would trust him. When he stood for Westminster, his unpopularity arose chiefly from his general indebtedness. “Numbers of poor people,” says Lord Palmerston in one of his letters, “crowded round the hustings, demanding payment for the bills he owed them.” In the midst of all his difficulties, Sheridan was as lighthearted as ever, and cracked many a good joke at his creditors’ expense. Lord Palmerston was actually present at the dinner given by him, at which the sheriff’s in possession were dressed up and officiated as waiters

Yet however loose Sheridan’s morality may have been as regarded his private creditors, he was honest(so far as the public money was concerned. Once, at dinner, at which Lord Byron happened to be present, an observation happened to be made as to the sturdiness of the Whigs in resisting office, and keeping to their principles–on which Sheridan turned sharply and said: “Sir, it is easy for my Lord this, or Earl that, or the Marquis of t’other, with thousands upon thousands a year, some of it either presently derived or inherited in sinecure or acquisitions from the public money, to boast of their patriotism, and keep aloof from temptation; but they do not know from what temptation those have kept aloof who had equal pride, at least equal talents, and not unequal passions, and nevertheless knew not, in the course of their lives, what it was to have a shilling of their own.” And Lord Byron adds, that, in saying this, Sheridan wept. (16)

The tone of public morality in money-matters was very low in those days. Political peculation was not thought discreditable; and heads of parties did not hesitate to secure the adhesion of their followers by a free use of the public money. They were generous, but at the expense of others–like that great local magnate, who,

“Out of his great bounty,
Built a bridge at the expense of the county.”

When Lord Cornwallis was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, he pressed upon Colonel Napier, the father of THE Napiers, the comptrollership of army accounts. “I want,” said his Lordship, “AN HONEST MAN, and this is the only thing I have been able to wrest from the harpies around me.”

It is said that Lord Chatham was the first to set the example of disdaining to govern by petty larceny; and his great son was alike honest in his administration. While millions of money were passing through Pitt’s hands, he himself was never otherwise than poor; and he died poor. Of all his rancorous libellers, not one ever ventured to call in question his honesty.

In former times, the profits of office were sometimes enormous. When Audley, the famous annuity-monger of the sixteenth century, was asked the value of an office which he had purchased in the Court of Wards, he replied:- “Some thousands to any one who wishes to get to heaven immediately; twice as much to him who does not mind being in purgatory; and nobody knows what to him who is not afraid of the devil.”

Sir Walter Scott was a man who was honest to the core of his nature and his strenuous and determined efforts to pay his debts, or rather the debts of the firm with which he had become involved, has always appeared to us one of the grandest things in biography. When his publisher and printer broke down, ruin seemed to stare him in the face. There was no want of sympathy for him in his great misfortune, and friends came forward who offered to raise money enough to enable him to arrange with his creditors. “No! “said he, proudly; “this right hand shall work it all off!” “If we lose everything else,” he wrote to a friend, “we will at least keep our honour unblemished.” (17) While his health was already becoming undermined by overwork, he went on “writing like a tiger,” as he himself expressed it, until no longer able to wield a pen; and though he paid the penalty of his supreme efforts with his life, he nevertheless saved his honour and his self-respect.

Everybody knows bow Scott threw off ‘Woodstock,’ the ‘Life of Napoleon’ (which he thought would be his death (18)), articles for the ‘Quarterly,’ ‘Chronicles of the Canongate,’ ‘Prose Miscellanies,’ and ‘Tales of a Grandfather’–all written in the midst of pain, sorrow, and ruin. The proceeds of those various works went to his creditors. “I could not have slept sound,” he wrote, “as I now can, under the comfortable impression of receiving the thanks of my creditors, and the conscious feeling of discharging my duty as a man of honour and honesty. I see before me a long, tedious, and dark path, but it leads to stainless reputation. If I die in the harrows, as is very likely, I shall die with honour. If I achieve my task, I shall have the thanks of all concerned, and the approbation of my own conscience.” (19)

And then followed more articles, memoirs, and even sermons–‘The Fair Maid of Perth,’ a completely revised edition of his novels, ‘Anne of Geierstein,’ and more ‘Tales of a Grandfather’–until he was suddenly struck down by paralysis. But he had no sooner recovered sufficient strength to be able to hold a pen, than we find him again at his desk writing the ‘Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,’ a volume of Scottish History for ‘Lardner’s Cyclopaedia,’ and a fourth series of ‘Tales of a Grandfather’ in his French History. In vain his doctors told him to give up work; he would not be dissuaded. “As for bidding me not work,” he said to Dr. Abercrombie, “Molly might just as well put the kettle on the fire and say, ‘Now, kettle, don’t boil;'” to which he added, “If I were to be idle I should go mad!”

By means of the profits realised by these tremendous efforts, Scott saw his debts in course of rapid diminution, and he trusted that, after a few more years’ work, he would again be a free man. But it was not to be. He went on turning out such works as his ‘Count Robert of Paris’ with greatly impaired skill, until he was prostrated by another and severer attack of palsy. He now felt that the plough was nearing the end of the furrow; his physical strength was gone; he was “not quite himself in all things,” and yet his courage and perseverance never failed. “I have suffered terribly,” he wrote in his Diary, “though rather in body than in mind, and I often wish I could lie down and sleep without waking. But I WILL FIGHT IT OUT IF I CAN.” He again recovered sufficiently to be able to write ‘Castle Dangerous,’ though the cunning of the workman’s hand had departed. And then there was his last tour to Italy in search of rest and health, during which, while at Naples, in spite of all remonstrances, he gave several hours every morning to the composition of a new novel, which, however, has not seen the light.

Scott returned to Abbotsford to die. “I have seen much,” he said on his return, “but nothing like my own house–give me one turn more.” One of the last things he uttered, in one of his lucid intervals, was worthy of him. “I have been,” he said, “perhaps the most voluminous author of my day, and it IS a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man’s faith, to corrupt no man’s principles, and that I have written nothing which on my deathbed I should wish blotted out.” His last injunction to his son-in-law was: “Lockhart, I may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be virtuous–be religious–be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here.”

The devoted conduct of Lockhart himself was worthy of his great relative. The ‘Life of Scott,’ which he afterwards wrote, occupied him several years, and was a remarkably successful work. Yet he himself derived no pecuniary advantage from it; handing over the profits of the whole undertaking to Sir Walter’s creditors in payment of debts which he was in no way responsible, but influenced entirely by a spirit of honour, of regard for the memory of the illustrious dead.

NOTES

(1) ‘Social Statics,’ p. 185.

(2) “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 passed in inaction. By day (to 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.

(3) The following extract from a letter of M. Boyd, Esq., is given by Earl Stanhope in his ‘Miscellanies’:- “There was a circumstance 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 mass 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 (Bank of England) commence at nine and end at three; and, acting on the advice of the illustrious statesman, I NEVER LOSE MY TEMPER DURING THOSE HOURS.'”

(4) ‘Strafford Papers,’ i. 87.

(5) Jared Sparks’ ‘Life of Washington,’ pp. 7, 534.

(6) Brialmont’s ‘Life of Wellington.’

(7) Professor Tyndall, on ‘Faraday as a Discoverer,’ p. 156.

(8) ‘Life of Perthes,’ ii. 216.

(9) Lady Elizabeth Carew.

(10) 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 (according 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 (1843), ii. 133.

(11) Professor Tyndall on ‘Faraday as a Discoverer,’ pp. 40-1.

(12) 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 Coke the result of his journey; and when Coke 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.

(13) 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.”

(14) 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.

(15) S. C. Hall’s ‘Memories.’

(16) Moore’s ‘Life of Byron,’ 8vo. Ed., p. 182.

(17) 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.

(18) “These battles,” he wrote in his Diary, “have been the death of many a man, I think they will be mine.”

(19) Scott’s Diary, December 17th, 1827.

CHAPTER VII.–DUTY–TRUTHFULNESS.

“I slept, and dreamt that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty.”

“Duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law in the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not always obedience; before whom all appetites are dumb, however secretly they rebel”–KANT.

“How happy is he born and taught, That serveth not another’s will!
Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill!

“Whose passions not his masters are, Whose soul is still prepared for death; Unti’d unto the world by care
Of public fame, or private breath.

“This man is freed from servile bands, Of hope to rise, or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of land; And having nothing, yet hath all.”–WOTTON.

“His nay was nay without recall; His yea was yea, and powerful all; He gave his yea with careful heed,
His thoughts and words were well agreed; His word, his bond and seal.”
INSCRIPTION ON BARON STEIN’S TOMB.

DUTY is a thing that is due, and must be paid by every man who would avoid present discredit and eventual moral insolvency. It is an obligation–a debt–which can only be discharged by voluntary effort and resolute action in the affairs of life.

Duty embraces man’s whole existence. It begins in the home, where there is the duty which children owe to their parents on the one hand, and the duty which parents owe to their children on the other. There are, in like manner, the respective duties of husbands and wives, of masters and servants; while outside the home there are the duties which men and women owe to each other as friends and neighbours, as employers and employed, as governors and governed.

“Render, therefore,” says St. Paul, “to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. Owe no man anything, but to love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law,”

Thus duty rounds the whole of life, from our entrance into it until our exit from it–duty to superiors, duty to inferiors, and duty to equals–duty to man, and duty to God. Wherever there is power to use or to direct, there is duty. For we are but as stewards, appointed to employ the means entrusted to us for our own and for others’ good.

The abiding sense of duty is the very crown of character. It is the upholding law of man in his highest attitudes. Without it, the individual totters and falls before the first puff of adversity or temptation; whereas, inspired by it, the weakest becomes strong and full of courage. “Duty,” says Mrs. Jameson, “is the cement which binds the whole moral edifice together; without which, all power, goodness, intellect, truth, happiness, love itself, can have no permanence; but all the fabric of existence crumbles away from under us, and leaves us at last sitting in the midst of a ruin, astonished at our own desolation.”

Duty is based upon a sense of justice–justice inspired by love, which is the most perfect form of goodness. Duty is not a sentiment, but a principle pervading the life: and it exhibits itself in conduct and in acts, which are mainly determined by man’s conscience and freewill.

The voice of conscience speaks in duty done; and without its regulating and controlling influence, the brightest and greatest intellect may be merely as a light that leads astray. Conscience sets a man upon his feet, while his will holds him upright. Conscience is the moral governor of the heart–the governor of right action, of right thought, of right faith, of right life– and only through its dominating influence can the noble and upright character be fully developed.

The conscience, however, may speak never so loudly, but without energetic will it may speak in vain. The will is free to choose between the right course and the wrong one, but the choice is nothing unless followed by immediate and decisive action. If the sense of duty be strong, and the course of action clear, the courageous will, upheld by the conscience, enables a man to proceed on his course bravely, and to accomplish his purposes in the face of all opposition and difficulty. And should failure be the issue, there will remain at least this satisfaction, that it has been in the cause of duty.

“Be and continue poor, young man,” said Heinzelmann,” while others around you grow rich by fraud and disloyalty; be without place or power while others beg their way upwards; bear the pain of disappointed hopes, while others gain the accomplishment of theirs by flattery; forego the gracious pressure of the hand, for which others cringe and crawl. Wrap yourself in your own virtue, and seek a friend and your daily bread. If you have in your own cause grown gray with unbleached honour, bless God and die!”

Men inspired by high principles are often required to sacrifice all that they esteem and love rather than fail in their duty. The old English idea of this sublime devotion to duty was expressed by the loyalist poet to his sweetheart, on taking up arms for his sovereign:-

“I could love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.’ (1)

And Sertorius has said: “The man who has any dignity of character, should conquer with honour, and not use any base means even to save his life.” So St. Paul, inspired by duty and faith, declared himself as not only “ready to be bound, but to die at Jerusalem.”

When the Marquis of Pescara was entreated by the princes of Italy to desert the Spanish cause, to which he was in honour bound, his noble wife, Vittoria Colonna, reminded him of his duty. She wrote to him: “Remember your honour, which raises you above fortune and above kings; by that alone, and not by the splendour of titles, is glory acquired–that glory which it will be your happiness and pride to transmit unspotted to your posterity.” Such was the dignified view which she took of her husband’s honour; and when he fell at Pavia, though young and beautiful, and besought by many admirers, she betook herself to solitude, that she might lament over her husband’s loss and celebrate his exploits. (2)

To live really, is to act energetically. Life is a battle to be fought valiantly. Inspired by high and honourable resolve, a man must stand to his post, and die there, if need be. Like the old Danish hero, his determination should be, “to dare nobly, to will strongly, and never to falter in the path of duty.” The power of will, be it great or small, which God has given us, is a Divine gift; and we ought neither to let it perish for want of using on the one hand, nor profane it by employing it for ignoble purposes on the other. Robertson, of Brighton, has truly said, that man’s real greatness consists not in seeking his own pleasure, or fame, or advancement–“not that every one shall save his own life, not that every man shall seek his own glory–but that every man shall do his own duty.”

What most stands in the way of the performance of duty, is irresolution, weakness of purpose, and indecision. On the one side are conscience and the knowledge of good and evil; on the other are indolence, selfishness, love of pleasure, or passion. The weak and ill-disciplined will may remain suspended for a time between these influences; but at length the balance inclines one way or the other, according as the will is called into action or otherwise. If it be allowed to remain passive, the lower influence of selfishness or passion will prevail; and thus manhood suffers abdication, individuality is renounced, character is degraded, and the man permits himself to become the mere passive slave of his senses.

Thus, the power of exercising the will promptly, in obedience to the dictates of conscience, and thereby resisting the impulses of the lower nature, is of essential importance in moral discipline, and absolutely necessary for the development of character in its best forms. To acquire the habit of well-doing, to resist evil propensities, to fight against sensual desires, to overcome inborn selfishness, may require a long and persevering discipline; but when once the practice of duty is learnt, it becomes consolidated in habit, and thence-forward is comparatively easy.

The valiant good man is he who, by the resolute exercise of his freewill, has so disciplined himself as to have acquired the habit of virtue; as the bad man is he who, by allowing his freewill to remain inactive, and giving the bridle to his desires and passions, has acquired the habit of vice, by which he becomes, at last, bound as by chains of iron.

A man can only achieve strength of purpose by the action of his own freewill. If he is to stand erect, it must be by his own efforts; for he cannot be kept propped up by the help of others. He is master of himself and of his actions. He can avoid falsehood, and be truthful; he can shun sensualism, and be continent; he can turn aside from doing a cruel thing, and be benevolent and forgiving. All these lie within the sphere of individual efforts, and come within the range of self-discipline. And it depends upon men themselves whether in these respects they will be free, pure, and good on the one hand; or enslaved, impure, and miserable on the other.

Among the wise sayings of Epictetus we find the following: “We do not choose our own parts in life, and have nothing to do with those parts: our simple duty is confined to playing them well. The slave may be as free as the consul; and freedom is the chief of blessings; it dwarfs all others; beside it all others are insignificant; with it all others are needless; without it no others are possible…. You must teach men that happiness is not where, in their blindness and misery, they seek it. It is not in strength, for Myro and Ofellius were not happy; not in wealth, for Croesus was not happy; not in power, for the Consuls were not happy; not in all these together, for Nero and Sardanapulus and Agamemnon sighed and wept and tore their hair, and were the slaves of circumstances and the dupes of semblances. It lies in yourselves; in true freedom, in the absence or conquest of every ignoble fear; in perfect self-government; and in a power of contentment and peace, and the even flow of life amid poverty, exile, disease, and the very valley of the shadow of death.” (3)

The sense of duty is a sustaining power even to a courageous man. It holds him upright, and makes him strong. It was a noble saying of Pompey, when his friends tried to dissuade him from embarking for Rome in a storm, telling him that he did so at the great peril of his life: “It is necessary for me to go,” he said; “it is not necessary for me to live.” What it was right that he should do, he would do, in the face of danger and in defiance of storms.

As might be expected of the great Washington, the chief motive power in his life was the spirit of duty. It was the regal and commanding element in his character which gave it unity, compactness, and vigour. When he clearly saw his duty before him, he did it at all hazards, and with inflexible integrity. He did not do it for effect; nor did he think of glory, or of fame and its rewards; but of the right thing to be done, and the best way of doing it.

Yet Washington had a most modest opinion of himself; and when offered the chief command of the American patriot army, he hesitated to accept it until it was pressed upon him. When acknowledging in Congress the honour which had been done him in selecting him to so important a trust, on the execution of which the future of his country in a great measure depended, Washington said: “I beg it may be remembered, lest some unlucky event should happen unfavourable to my reputation, that I this day declare, with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honoured with.”

And in his letter to his wife, communicating to her his appointment as Commander-in-Chief, he said: “I have used every endeavour in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity; and that I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home, than I have the most distant prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were to be seven times seven years. But, as it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed for some good purpose. It was utterly out of my power to refuse the appointment, without exposing my character to such censures as would have reflected dishonour upon myself, and given pain to my friends. This, I am sure, could not, and ought not, to be pleasing to you, and must have lessened me considerably in my own esteem.” (4)

Washington pursued his upright course through life, first as Commander-in-Chief, and afterwards as President, never faltering in the path of duty. He had no regard for popularity, but held to his purpose, through good and through evil report, often at the risk of his power and influence. Thus, on one occasion, when the ratification of a treaty, arranged by Mr. Jay with Great Britain, was in question, Washington was urged to reject it. But his honour, and the honour of his country, was committed, and he refused to do so. A great outcry was raised against the treaty, and for a time Washington was so unpopular that he is said to have been actually stoned by the mob. But he, nevertheless, held it to be his duty to ratify the treaty; and it was carried out, in despite of petitions and remonstrances from all quarters. “While I feel,” he said, in answer to the remonstrants, “the most lively gratitude for the many instances of approbation from my country, I can no otherwise deserve it than by obeying the dictates of my conscience.”
Wellington’s watchword, like Washington’s, was duty; and no man could be more loyal to it than he was. (5) “There is little or nothing,” he once said, “in this life worth living for; but we can all of us go straight forward and do our duty.” None recognised more cheerfully than he did the duty of obedience and willing service; for unless men can serve faithfully, they will not rule others wisely. There is no motto that becomes the wise man better than ICH DIEN, “I serve;” and “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

When the mortification of an officer, because of his being appointed to a command inferior to what he considered to be his merits, was communicated to the Duke, he said: “In the course of my military career, I have gone from the command of a brigade to that of my regiment, and from the command of an army to that of a brigade or a division, as I was ordered, and without any feeling of mortification.”

Whilst commanding the allied army in Portugal, the conduct of the native population did not seem to Wellington to be either becoming or dutiful. “We have enthusiasm in plenty,” he said, “and plenty of cries of ‘VIVA!’ We have illuminations, patriotic songs, and FETES everywhere. But what we want is, that each in his own station should do his duty faithfully, and pay implicit obedience to legal authority.”

This abiding ideal of duty seemed to be the governing principle of Wellington’s character. It was always uppermost in his mind, and directed all the public actions of his life. Nor did it fail to communicate itself to those under him, who served him in the like spirit. When he rode into one of his infantry squares at Waterloo, as its diminished numbers closed up to receive a charge of French cavalry, he said to the men, “Stand steady, lads; think of what they will say of us in England;” to which the men replied, “Never fear, sir–we know our duty.”

Duty was also the dominant idea in Nelson’s mind. The spirit in which he served his country was expressed in the famous watchword, “England expects every man to do his duty,” signalled by him to the fleet before going into action at Trafalgar, as well as in the last words that passed his lips,–“I have done my duty; I praise God for it!”

And Nelson’s companion and friend–the brave, sensible, homely- minded Collingwood–he who, as his ship bore down into the great sea-fight, said to his flag-captain, “Just about this time our wives are going to church in England,”–Collingwood too was, like his commander, an ardent devotee of duty. “Do your duty to the best of your ability,” was the maxim which he urged upon many young men starting on the voyage of life. To a midshipman he once gave the following manly and sensible advice:- “You may depend upon it, that it is more in your own power than in anybody else’s to promote both your comfort and advancement. A strict and unwearied attention to your duty, and a complacent and respectful behaviour, not only to your superiors but to everybody, will ensure you their regard, and the reward will surely come; but if it should not, I am convinced you have too much good sense to let disappointment sour you. Guard carefully against letting discontent appear in you. It will be sorrow to your friends, a triumph to your competitors, and cannot be productive of any good. Conduct yourself so as to deserve the best that can come to you, and the consciousness of your own proper behaviour will keep you in spirits if it should not come. Let it be your ambition to be foremost in all duty. Do not be a nice observer of turns, but ever present yourself ready for everything, and, unless your officers are very inattentive men, they will not allow others to impose more duty on you than they should.”

This devotion to duty is said to be peculiar to the English nation; and it has certainly more or less characterised our greatest public men. Probably no commander of any other nation ever went into action with such a signal flying as Nelson at Trafalgar–not “Glory,” or “Victory,” or “Honour,” or “Country”– but simply “Duty!” How few are the nations willing to rally to such a battle-cry!

Shortly after the wreck of the BIRKENHEAD off the coast of Africa, in which the officers and men went down firing a FEU-DE-JOIE after seeing the women and children safely embarked in the boats,– Robertson of Brighton, referring to the circumstance in one of his letters, said: “Yes! Goodness, Duty, Sacrifice,–these are the qualities that England honours. She gapes and wonders every now and then, like an awkward peasant, at some other things–railway kings, electro-biology, and other trumperies; but nothing stirs her grand old heart down to its central deeps universally and long, except the Right. She puts on her shawl very badly, and she is awkward enough in a concert-room, scarce knowing a Swedish nightingale from a jackdaw; but–blessings large and long upon her!–she knows how to teach her sons to sink like men amidst sharks and billows, without parade, without display, as if Duty were the most natural thing in the world; and she never mistakes long an actor for a hero, or a hero for an actor.” (6)

It is a grand thing, after all, this pervading spirit of Duty in a nation; and so long as it survives, no one need despair of its future. But when it has departed, or become deadened, and been supplanted by thirst for pleasure, or selfish aggrandisement, or “glory”–then woe to that nation, for its dissolution is near at hand!

If there be one point on which intelligent observers are agreed more than another as to the cause of the late deplorable collapse of France as a nation, it was the utter absence of this feeling of duty, as well as of truthfulness, from the mind, not only of the men, but of the leaders of the French people. The unprejudiced testimony of Baron Stoffel, French military attache at Berlin, before the war, is conclusive on this point. In his private report to the Emperor, found at the Tuileries, which was written in August, 1869, about a year before the outbreak of the war, Baron Stoffel pointed out that the highly-educated and disciplined German people were pervaded by an ardent sense of duty, and did not think it beneath them to reverence sincerely what was noble and lofty; whereas, in all respects, France presented a melancholy contrast. There the people, having sneered at everything, had lost the faculty of respecting anything, and virtue, family life, patriotism, honour, and religion, were represented to a frivolous generation as only fitting subjects for ridicule. (7) Alas! how terribly has France been punished for her sins against truth and duty!

Yet the time was, when France possessed many great men inspired by duty; but they were all men of a comparatively remote past. The race of Bayard, Duguesclin, Coligny, Duquesne, Turenne, Colbert, and Sully, seems to have died out and left no lineage. There has been an occasional great Frenchman of modern times who has raised the cry of Duty; but his voice has been as that of one crying in the wilderness. De Tocqueville was one of such; but, like all men of his stamp, he was proscribed, imprisoned, and driven from public life. Writing on one occasion to his friend Kergorlay, he said: “Like you, I become more and more alive to the happiness which consists in the fulfilment of Duty. I believe there is no other so deep and so real. There is only one great object in the world which deserves our efforts, and that is the good of mankind.” (8)

Although France has been the unquiet spirit among the nations of Europe since the reign of Louis XIV., there have from time to time been honest and faithful men who have lifted up their voices against the turbulent warlike tendencies of the people, and not only preached, but endeavoured to carry into practice, a gospel of peace. Of these, the Abbe de St.-Pierre was one of the most courageous. He had even the boldness to denounce the wars of Louis XIV., and to deny that monarch’s right to the epithet of ‘Great,’ for which he was punished by expulsion from the Academy. The Abbe was as enthusiastic an agitator for a system of international peace as any member of the modern Society of Friends. As Joseph Sturge went to St. Petersburg to convert the Emperor of Russia to his views, so the Abbe went to Utrecht to convert the Conference sitting there, to his project for a Diet; to secure perpetual peace. Of course he was regarded as an enthusiast, Cardinal Dubois characterising his scheme as “the dream of an honest man.” Yet the Abbe had found his dream in the Gospel; and in what better way could he exemplify the spirit of the Master he served than by endeavouring to abate the horrors and abominations of war? The Conference was an assemblage of men representing Christian States: and the Abbe merely called upon them to put in practice the doctrines they professed to believe. It was of no use: the potentates and their representatives turned to him a deaf ear.

The Abbe de St.-Pierre lived several hundred years too soon. But he determined that his idea should not be lost, and in 1713 he published his ‘Project of Perpetual Peace.’ He there proposed the formation of a European Diet, or Senate, to be composed of representatives of all nations, before which princes should be bound, before resorting to arms, to state their grievances and require redress. Writing about eighty years after the publication of this project, Volney asked: “What is a people?–an individual of the society at large. What a war?–a duel between two individual people. In what manner ought a society to act when two of its members fight?–Interfere, and reconcile or repress them. In the days of the Abbe de St.-Pierre, this was treated as a dream; but, happily for the human race, it begins to be realised.” Alas for the prediction of Volney! The twenty-five years that followed the date at which this passage was written, were distinguished by more devastating and furious wars on the part of France than had ever been known in the world before.

The Abbe was not, however, a mere dreamer. He was an active practical philanthropist and anticipated many social improvements which have since become generally adopted. He was the original founder of industrial schools for poor children, where they not only received a good education, but learned some useful trade, by which they might earn an honest living when they grew up to manhood. He advocated the revision and simplification of the whole code of laws–an idea afterwards carried out by the First Napoleon. He wrote against duelling, against luxury, against gambling, against monasticism, quoting the remark of Segrais, that “the mania for a monastic life is the smallpox of the mind.” He spent his whole income in acts of charity–not in almsgiving, but in helping poor children, and poor men and women, to help themselves. His object always was to benefit permanently those whom he assisted. He continued his love of truth and his freedom of speech to the last. At the age of eighty he said: “If life is a lottery for happiness, my lot has been one of the best.” When on his deathbed, Voltaire asked him how he felt, to which he answered, “As about to make a journey into the country.” And in this peaceful frame of mind he died. But so outspoken had St.- Pierre been against corruption in high places, that Maupertius, his Successor at the Academy, was not permitted to pronounce his ELOGE; nor was it until thirty-two years after his death that this honour was done to his memory by D’Alembert. The true and emphatic epitaph of the good, truth-loving, truth-speaking Abbe was this–“HE LOVED MUCH!”

Duty is closely allied to truthfulness of character; and the dutiful man is, above all things, truthful in his words as in his actions. He says and he does the right thing, in the right way, and at the right time.

There is probably no saying of Lord Chesterfield that commends itself more strongly to the approval of manly-minded men, than that it is truth that makes the success of the gentleman. Clarendon, speaking of one of the noblest and purest gentlemen of his age, says of Falkland, that he “was so severe an adorer of truth that he could as easily have given himself leave to steal as to dissemble.”

It was one of the finest things that Mrs. Hutchinson could say of her husband, that he was a thoroughly truthful and reliable man: “He never professed the thing he intended not, nor promised what he believed out of his power, nor failed in the performance of anything that was in his power to fulfil.”

Wellington was a severe admirer of truth. An illustration may be given. When afflicted by deafness he consulted a celebrated aurist, who, after trying all remedies in vain, determined, as a last resource, to inject into the ear a strong solution of caustic. It caused the most intense pain, but the patient bore it with his usual equanimity. The family physician accidentally calling one day, found the Duke with flushed cheeks and bloodshot eyes, and when he rose he staggered about like a drunken man. The doctor asked to be permitted to look at his ear, and then he found that a furious inflammation was going on, which, if not immediately checked, must shortly reach the brain and kill him. Vigorous remedies were at once applied, and the inflammation was checked. But the hearing of that ear was completely destroyed. When the aurist heard of the danger his patient had run, through the violence of the remedy he had employed, he hastened to Apsley House to express his grief and mortification; but the Duke merely said: “Do not say a word more about it–you did all for the best.” The aurist said it would be his ruin when it became known that he had been the cause of so much suffering and danger to his Grace. “But nobody need know anything about it: keep your own counsel, and, depend upon it, I won’t say a word to any one.” “Then your Grace will allow me to attend you as usual, which will show the public that you have not withdrawn your confidence from me?” “No,” replied the Duke, kindly but firmly; “I can’t do that, for that would be a lie.” He would not act a falsehood any more than he would speak one. (9)

Another illustration of duty and truthfulness, as exhibited in the fulfilment of a promise, may be added from the life of Blucher. When he was hastening with his army over bad roads to the help of Wellington, on the 18th of June, 1815, he encouraged his troops by words and gestures. “Forwards, children–forwards!” “It is impossible; it can’t be done,” was the answer. Again and again he urged them. “Children, we must get on; you may say it can’t be done, but it MUST be done! I have promised my brother Wellington –PROMISED, do you hear? You wouldn’t have me BREAK MY WORD!” And it was done.

Truth is the very bond of society, without which it must cease to exist, and dissolve into anarchy and chaos. A household cannot be governed by lying; nor can a nation. Sir Thomas Browne once asked, “Do the devils lie?” “No,” was his answer; “for then even hell could not subsist.” No considerations can justify the sacrifice of truth, which ought to be sovereign in all the relations of life.

Of all mean vices, perhaps lying is the meanest. It is in some cases the offspring of perversity and vice, and in many others of sheer moral cowardice. Yet many persons think so lightly of it that they will order their servants to lie for them; nor can they feel surprised if, after such ignoble instruction, they find their servants lying for themselves.

Sir Harry Wotton’s description of an ambassador as “an honest man sent to lie abroad for the benefit of his country,” though meant as a satire, brought him into disfavour with James I. when it became published; for an adversary quoted it as a principle of the king’s religion. That it was not Wotton’s real view of the duty of an honest man, is obvious from the lines quoted at the head of this chapter, on ‘The Character of a Happy Life,’ in which he eulogises the man

“Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill.”

But lying assumes many forms–such as diplomacy, expediency, and moral reservation; and, under one guise or another, it is found more or less pervading all classes of society. Sometimes it assumes the form of equivocation or moral dodging–twisting and so stating the things said as to convey a false impression–a kind of lying which a Frenchman once described as “walking round about the truth.”

There are even men of narrow minds and dishonest natures, who pride themselves upon their jesuitical cleverness in equivocation, in their serpent-wise shirking of the truth and getting out of moral back-doors, in order to hide their real opinions and evade the consequences of holding and openly professing them. Institutions or systems based upon any such expedients must necessarily prove false and hollow. “Though a lie be ever so well dressed,” says George Herbert, “it is ever overcome.” Downright lying, though bolder and more vicious, is even less contemptible than such kind of shuffling and equivocation.

Untruthfulness exhibits itself in many other forms: in reticency on the one hand, or exaggeration on the other; in disguise or concealment; in pretended concurrence in others opinions; in assuming an attitude of conformity which is deceptive; in making promises, or allowing them to be implied, which are never intended to be performed; or even in refraining from speaking the truth when to do so is a duty. There are also those who are all things to all men, who say one thing and do another, like Bunyan’s Mr. Facing-both-ways; only deceiving themselves when they think they are deceiving others–and who, being essentially insincere, fail to evoke confidence, and invariably in the end turn out failures, if not impostors.

Others are untruthful in their pretentiousness, and in assuming merits which they do not really possess. The truthful man is, on the contrary, modest, and makes no parade of himself and his deeds. When Pitt was in his last illness, the news reached England of the great deeds of Wellington in India. “The more I hear of his exploits,” said Pitt, “the more I admire the modesty with which he receives the praises he merits for them. He is the only man I ever knew that was not vain of what he had done, and yet had so much reason to be so.”

So it is said of Faraday by Professor Tyndall, that “pretence of all kinds, whether in life or in philosophy, was hateful to him.” Dr. Marshall Hall was a man of like spirit–courageously truthful, dutiful, and manly. One of his most intimate friends has said of him that, wherever he met with untruthfulness or sinister motive, he would expose it, saying–“I neither will, nor can, give my consent to a lie.” The question, “right or wrong,” once decided in his own mind, the right was followed, no matter what the sacrifice or the difficulty–neither expediency nor inclination weighing one jot in the balance.

There was no virtue that Dr. Arnold laboured more sedulously to instil into young men than the virtue of truthfulness, as being the manliest of virtues, as indeed the very basis of all true manliness. He designated truthfulness as “moral transparency,” and he valued it more highly than any other quality. When lying was detected, he treated it as a great moral offence; but when a pupil made an assertion, he accepted it with confidence. “If you say so, that is quite enough; OF COURSE I believe your word.” By thus trusting and believing them, he educated the young in truthfulness; the boys at length coming to say to one another: “It’s a shame to tell Arnold a lie–he always believes one.” (10)

One of the most striking instances that could be given of the character of the dutiful, truthful, laborious man, is presented in the life of the late George Wilson, Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh. (11) Though we bring this illustration under the head of Duty, it might equally have stood under that of Courage, Cheerfulness, or Industry, for it is alike illustrative of these several qualities.

Wilson’s life was, indeed, a marvel of cheerful laboriousness; exhibiting the power of the soul to triumph over the body, and almost to set it at defiance. It might be taken as an illustration of the saying of the whaling-captain to Dr. Kane, as to the power of moral force over physical: “Bless you, sir, the soul will any day lift the body out of its boots!”

A fragile but bright and lively boy, he had scarcely entered manhood ere his constitution began to exhibit signs of disease. As early, indeed, as his seventeenth year, he began to complain of melancholy and sleeplessness, supposed to be the effects of bile. “I don’t think I shall live long,” he then said to a friend; “my mind will–must work itself out, and the body will soon follow it.” A strange confession for a boy to make! But he gave his physical health no fair chance. His life was all brain-work, study, and competition. When he took exercise it was in sudden bursts, which did him more harm than good. Long walks in the Highlands jaded and exhausted him; and he returned to his brain- work unrested and unrefreshed.

It was during one of his forced walks of some twenty-four miles in the neighbourhood of Stirling, that he injured one of his feet, and he returned home seriously ill. The result was an abscess, disease of the ankle-joint, and long agony, which ended in the amputation of the right foot. But he never relaxed in his labours. He was now writing, lecturing, and teaching chemistry. Rheumatism and acute inflammation of the eye next attacked him; and were treated by cupping, blisetring, and colchicum. Unable himself to write, he went on preparing his lectures, which he dictated to his sister. Pain haunted him day and night, and sleep was only forced by morphia. While in this state of general prostration, symptoms of pulmonary disease began to show themselves. Yet he continued to give the weekly lectures to which he stood committed to the Edinburgh School of Arts. Not one was shirked, though their delivery, before a large audience, was a most exhausting duty. “Well, there’s another nail put into my coffin,” was the remark made on throwing off his top-coat on returning home; and a sleepless night almost invariably followed.

At twenty-seven, Wilson was lecturing ten, eleven, or more hours weekly, usually with setons or open blister-wounds upon him–his “bosom friends,” he used to call them. He felt the shadow of death upon him; and he worked as if his days were numbered. “Don’t be surprised,” he wrote to a friend, “if any morning at breakfast you hear that I am gone.” But while he said so, he did not in the least degree indulge in the feeling of sickly sentimentality. He worked on as cheerfully and hopefully as if in the very fulness of his strength. “To none,” said he, “is life so sweet as to those who have lost all fear to die.”

Sometimes he was compelled to desist from his labours by sheer debility, occasioned by loss of blood from the lungs; but after a few weeks’ rest and change of air, he would return to his work, saying, “The water is rising in the well again!” Though disease had fastened on his lungs, and was spreading there, and though suffering from a distressing cough, he went on lecturing as usual. To add to his troubles, when one day endeavouring to recover himself from a stumble occasioned by his lameness, he overstrained his arm, and broke the bone near the shoulder. But he recovered from his successive accidents and illnesses in the most extraordinary way. The reed bent, but did not break: the storm passed, and it stood erect as before.

There was no worry, nor fever, nor fret about him; but instead, cheerfulness, patience, and unfailing perseverance. His mind, amidst all his sufferings, remained perfectly calm and serene. He went about his daily work with an apparently charmed life, as if he had the strength of many men in him. Yet all the while he knew he was dying, his chief anxiety being to conceal his state from those about him at home, to whom the knowledge of his actual condition would have been inexpressibly distressing. “I am cheerful among strangers,” he said, “and try to live day by day as a dying man.” (12)

He went on teaching as before–lecturing to the Architectural Institute and to the School of Arts. One day, after a lecture before the latter institute, he lay down to rest, and was shortly awakened by the rupture of a bloodvessel, which occasioned him the loss of a considerable quantity of blood. He did not experience the despair and agony that Keats did on a like occasion; (13) though he equally knew that the messenger of death had come, and was waiting for him. He appeared at the family meals as usual, and next day he lectured twice, punctually fulfilling his engagements; but the exertion of speaking was followed by a second attack of haemorrhage. He now became seriously ill, and it was doubted whether he would survive the night. But he did survive; and during his convalescence he was appointed to an important public office–that of Director of the Scottish Industrial Museum, which involved a great amount of labour, as well as lecturing, in his capacity of Professor of Technology, which he held in connection with the office.

From this time forward, his “dear museum,” as he called it, absorbed all his surplus energies. While busily occupied in collecting models and specimens for the museum, he filled up his odds-and-ends of time in lecturing to Ragged Schools, Ragged Kirks, and Medical Missionary Societies. He gave himself no rest, either of mind or body; and “to die working” was the fate he envied. His mind would not give in, but his poor body was forced to yield, and a severe attack of haemorrhage–bleeding from both lungs and stomach (14)–compelled him to relax in his labours. “For a month, or some forty days,” he wrote–“a dreadful Lent –the mind has blown geographically from ‘Araby the blest,’ but thermometrically from Iceland the accursed. I have been made a prisoner of war, hit by an icicle in the lungs, and have shivered and burned alternately for a large portion of the last month, and spat blood till I grew pale with coughing. Now I am better, and to-morrow I give my concluding lecture (on Technology), thankful that I have contrived, notwithstanding all my troubles, to carry on without missing a lecture to the last day of the Faculty of Arts, to which I belong.” (15)

How long was it to last? He himself began to wonder, for he had long felt his life as if ebbing away. At length he became languid, weary, and unfit for work; even the writing of a letter cost him a painful effort, and. he felt “as if to lie down and sleep were the only things worth doing.” Yet shortly after, to help a Sunday-school, he wrote his ‘Five Gateways of Knowledge,’ as a lecture, and afterwards expanded it into a book. He also recovered strength sufficient to enable him to proceed with his lectures to the institutions to which he belonged, besides on various occasions undertaking to do other people’s work. “I am looked upon as good as mad,” he wrote to his brother, “because, on a hasty notice, I took a defaulting lecturer’s place at the Philosophical Institution, and discoursed on the Polarization of Light…. But I like work: it is a family weakness.”

Then followed chronic malaise–sleepless nights, days of pain, and more spitting of blood. “My only painless moments,” he says, “were when lecturing.” In this state of prostration and disease, the indefatigable man undertook to write the ‘Life of Edward Forbes’; and he did it, like everything he undertook, with admirable ability. He proceeded with his lectures as usual. To an association of teachers he delivered a discourse on the educational value of industrial science. After he had spoken to his audience for an hour, he left them to say whether he should go on or not, and they cheered him on to another half-hour’s address. “It is curious,” he wrote, “the feeling of having an audience, like clay in your hands, to mould for a season as you please. It is a terribly responsible power…. I do not mean for a moment to imply that I am indifferent to the good opinion of others–far otherwise; but to gain this is much less a concern with me than to deserve it. It was not so once. I had no wish for unmerited praise, but I was too ready to settle that I did merit it. Now, the word DUTY seems to me the biggest word in the world, and is uppermost in all my serious doings.”

This was written only about four months before his death. A little later he wrote, “I spin my thread of life from week to week, rather than from year to year.” Constant attacks of bleeding from the lungs sapped his little remaining strength, but did not altogether disable him from lecturing. He was amused by one of his friends proposing to put him under trustees for the purpose of looking after his health. But he would not be restrained from working, so long as a vestige of strength remained.

One day, in the autumn of 1859, he returned from his customary lecture in the University of Edinburgh with a severe pain in his side. He was scarcely able to crawl upstairs. Medical aid was sent for, and he was pronounced to be suffering from pleurisy and inflammation of the lungs. His enfeebled frame was ill able to resist so severe a disease, and he sank peacefully to the rest he so longed for, after a few days’ illness:

“Wrong not the dead with tears!
A glorious bright to-morrow
Endeth a weary life of pain and sorrow.”

The life of George Wilson–so admirably and affectionately related by his sister–is probably one of the most marvellous records of pain and longsuffering, and yet of persistent, noble, and useful work, that is to be found in the whole history of literature. His entire career was indeed but a prolonged illustration of the lines which he himself addressed to his deceased friend, Dr. John Reid, a likeminded man, whose memoir he wrote:-

“Thou wert a daily lesson
Of courage, hope, and faith;
We wondered at thee living,
We envy thee thy death.

Thou wert so meek and reverent,
So resolute of will,
So bold to bear the uttermost, And yet so calm and still.”

NOTES

(1) From Lovelace’s lines to Lucusta (Lucy Sacheverell), ‘Going to the Wars.’

(2) Amongst other great men of genius, Ariosto and Michael Angelo devoted to her their service and their muse.

(3) See the Rev. F. W. Farrar’s admirable book, entitled ‘Seekers after God’ (Sunday Library). The author there says: “Epictetus was not a Christian. He has only once alluded to the Christians in his works, and then it is under the opprobrious title of ‘Galileans,’ who practised a kind of insensibility in painful circumstances, and an indifference to worldly interests, which Epictetus unjustly sets down to ‘mere habit.’ Unhappily, it was not granted to these heathen philosophers in any true sense to know what Christianity was. They thought that it was an attempt to imitate the results of philosophy, without having passed through the necessary discipline. They viewed it with suspicion, they treated it with injustice. And yet in Christianity, and in Christianity alone, they would have found an ideal which would have surpassed their loftiest anticipations.”

(4) Sparks’ ‘Life of Washington,’ pp. 141-2.

(5) Wellington, like Washington, had to pay the penalty of his adherence to the cause he thought right, in his loss of “popularity.” He was mobbed in the streets of London, and had his windows smashed by the mob, while his wife lay dead in the house. Sir Walter Scott also was hooted and pelted at Hawick by “the people,” amidst cries of “Burke Sir Walter!”

(6) Robertson’s ‘Life and Letters,’ ii. 157.

(7) We select the following passages from this remarkable report of Baron Stoffel, as being of more than merely temporary interest:-

Who that has lived here (Berlin) will deny that the Prussians are energetic, patriotic, and teeming with youthful vigour; that they are not corrupted by sensual pleasures, but are manly, have earnest convictions, do not think it beneath them to reverence sincerely what is noble and lofty? What a melancholy contrast does France offer in all this? Having sneered at everything, she has lost the faculty of respecting anything. Virtue, family life, patriotism, honour, religion, are represented to a frivolous generation as fitting subjects of ridicule. The theatres have become schools of shamelessness and obscenity. Drop by drop, poison is instilled into the very core of an ignorant and enervated society, which has neither the insight nor the energy left to amend its institutions, nor–which would be the most necessary step to take–become better informed or more moral. One after the other the fine qualities of the nation are dying out. Where is the generosity, the loyalty, the charm of our ESPRIT, and our former elevation of soul? If this goes on, the time will come when this noble race of France will be known only by its faults. And France has no idea that while she is sinking, more earnest nations are stealing the march upon her, are distancing her on the road to progress, and are preparing for her a secondary position in the world.

“I am afraid that these opinions will not be relished in France. However correct, they differ too much from what is usually said and asserted at home. I should wish some enlightened and unprejudiced Frenchmen to come to Prussia and make this country their study. They would soon discover that they were living in the midst of a strong, earnest, and intelligent nation, entirely destitute, it is true, of noble and delicate feelings, of all fascinating charms, but endowed with every solid virtue, and alike distinguished for untiring industry, order, and economy, as well as for patriotism, a strong sense of duty, and that consciousness of personal dignity which in their case is so happily blended with respect for authority and obedience to the law. They would see a country with firm, sound, and moral institutions, whose upper classes are worthy of their rank, and, by possessing the highest degree of culture, devoting themselves to the service of the State, setting an example of patriotism, and knowing how to preserve the influence legitimately their own. They would find a State with an excellent administration where everything is in its right place, and where the most admirable order prevails in every branch of the social and political system. Prussia may be well compared to a massive structure of lofty proportions and astounding solidity, which, though it has nothing to delight the eye or speak to the heart, cannot but impress us with its grand symmetry, equally observable in its broad foundations as in its strong and sheltering roof.

“And what is France? What is French society in these latter days? A hurly-burly of disorderly elements, all mixed and jumbled together; a country in which everybody claims the right to occupy the highest posts, yet few remember that a man to be employed in a responsible position ought to have a well-balanced mind, ought to be strictly moral, to know something of the world, and possess certain intellectual powers; a country in which the highest offices are frequently held by ignorant and uneducated persons, who either boast some special talent, or whose only claim is social position and some versatility and address. What a baneful and degrading state of things! And how natural that, while it lasts, France should be full of a people without a position, without a calling, who do not know what to do with themselves, but are none the less eager to envy and malign every one who does….

“The French do not possess in any very marked degree the qualities required to render general conscription acceptable, or to turn it to account. Conceited and egotistic as they are, the people would object to an innovation whose invigorating force they are unable to comprehend, and which cannot be carried out without virtues which they do not possess–self-abnegation, conscientious recognition of duty, and a willingness to sacrifice personal interests to the loftier demands of the country. As the character of individuals is only improved by experience, most nations require a chastisement before they set about reorganising their political institutions. So Prussia wanted a Jena to make her the strong and healthy country she is.”

(8) Yet even in De Tocqueville’s benevolent nature, there was a pervading element of impatience. In the very letter in which the above passage occurs, he says: “Some persons try to be of use to men while they despise them, and others because they love them. In the services rendered by the first, there is always something incomplete, rough, and contemptuous, that inspires neither confidence nor gratitude. I should like to belong to the second class, but often I cannot. I love mankind in general, but I constantly meet with individuals whose baseness revolts me. I struggle daily against a universal contempt for my fellow, creatures.”–MEMOIRS AND REMAINS OF DE TOCQUEVILLE, vol. i. p. 813. (Letter to Kergorlay, Nov. 13th, 1833).

(9) Gleig’s ‘Life of Wellington,’ pp. 314, 315.

(10) ‘Life of Arnold,’ i. 94.

(11) See the ‘Memoir of George Wilson, M.D., F.R.S.E.’ By his sister (Edinburgh, 1860).

(12) Such cases are not unusual. We personally knew a young lady, a countrywoman of Professor Wilson, afflicted by cancer in the breast, who concealed the disease from her parents lest it should occasion them distress. An operation became necessary; and when the surgeons called for the purpose of performing it, she herself answered the door, received them with a cheerful countenance, led them upstairs to her room, and submitted to the knife; and her parents knew nothing of the operation until it was all over. But the disease had become too deeply seated for recovery, and the noble self-denying girl died, cheerful and uncomplaining to the end.

(13) “One night, about eleven o’clock, Keats returned home in a state of strange physical excitement–it might have appeared, to those who did not know him, one of fierce intoxication. He told his friend he had been outside the stage-coach, had received a severe chill, was a little fevered, but added, ‘I don’t feel it now.’ He was easily persuaded to go to bed, and as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head was on the pillow, he slightly coughed and said, ‘That is blood from my mouth; bring me the candle; let me see this blood’ He gazed steadfastly for some moments at the ruddy stain, and then, looking in his friend’s face with an expression of sudden calmness never to be forgotten, said, ‘I know the colour of that blood–it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die!'” –Houghton’s LIFE OF KEATS, Ed. 1867, p. 289.

In the case of George Wilson, the bleeding was in the first instance from the stomach, though he afterwards suffered from lung haemorrhage like Keats. Wilson afterwards, speaking of the Lives of Lamb and Keats, which had just appeared, said he had been reading them with great sadness. “There is,” said he, “something in the noble brotherly love of Charles to brighten, and hallow, and relieve that sadness; but Keats’s deathbed is the blackness of midnight, unmitigated by one ray of light!”

(14) On the doctors, who attended him in his first attack, mistaking the haemorrhage from the stomach for haemorrhage from the lungs, he wrote: “It would have been but poor consolation to have had as an epitaph:-

“Here lies George Wilson,
Overtaken by Nemesis;
He died not of Haemoptysis,
But of Haematemesis.”

(15) ‘Memoir,’ p. 427.

CHAPTER VIII.–TEMPER.

“Temper is nine-tenths of Christianity.”–BISHOP WILSON.

“Heaven is a temper, not a place.”–DR. CHALMERS.

“And should my youth, as youth is apt I know, Some harshness show;
All vain asperities I day by day Would wear away,
Till the smooth temper of my age should be Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree”–SOUTHEY.

Even Power itself hath not one-half the might of Gentleness” –LEIGH HUNT.

It has been said that men succeed in life quite as much by their temper as by their talents. However this may be, it is certain that their happiness in life depends mainly upon their equanimity of disposition, their patience and forbearance, and their kindness and thoughtfulness for those about them. It is really true what Plato says, that in seeking the good of others we find our own.

There are some natures so happily constituted that they can find good in everything. There is no calamity so great but they can educe comfort or consolation from it–no sky so black but they can discover a gleam of sunshine issuing through it from some quarter or another; and if the sun be not visible to their eyes, they at least comfort themselves with the thought that it IS there, though veiled from them for some good and wise purpose.

Such happy natures are to be envied. They have a beam in the eye –a beam of pleasure, gladness, religious cheerfulness, philosophy, call it what you will. Sunshine is about their hearts, and their mind gilds with its own hues all that it looks upon. When they have burdens to bear, they bear them cheerfully– not repining, nor fretting, nor wasting their energies in useless lamentation, but struggling onward manfully, gathering up such flowers as lie along their path.

Let it not for a moment be supposed that men such as those we speak of are weak and unreflective. The largest and most comprehensive natures are generally also the most cheerful, the most loving, the most hopeful, the most trustful. It is the wise man, of large vision, who is the quickest to discern the moral sunshine gleaming through the darkest cloud. In present evil he sees prospective good; in pain, he recognises the effort of nature to restore health; in trials, he finds correction and discipline; and in sorrow and suffering, he gathers courage, knowledge, and the best practical wisdom.

When Jeremy Taylor had lost all–when his house had been plundered, and his family driven out-of-doors, and all his worldly estate had been sequestrated–he could still write thus: “I am fallen into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they have taken all from me; what now? Let me look about me. They have left me the sun and moon, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me; and I can still discourse, and, unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance and my cheerful spirit, and a good conscience; they have still left me the providence of God, and all the promises of the Gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them, too; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read and meditate…. And he that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loves all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns.” (1)

Although cheerfulness of disposition is very much a matter of inborn temperament, it is also capable of being trained and cultivated like any other habit. We may make the best of life, or we may make the worst of it; and it depends very much upon ourselves whether we extract joy or misery from it. There are always two sides of life on which we can look, according as we choose–the bright side or the gloomy. We can bring the power of the will to bear in making the choice, and thus cultivate the habit of being happy or the reverse. We can encourage the disposition of looking at the brightest side of things, instead of the darkest. And while we see the cloud, let us not shut our eyes to the silver lining.

The beam in the eye sheds brightness, beauty, and joy upon life in all its phases. It shines upon coldness, and warms it; upon suffering, and comforts it; upon ignorance, and enlightens it; upon sorrow, and cheers it. The beam in the eye gives lustre to intellect, and brightens beauty itself. Without it the sunshine of life is not felt, flowers bloom in vain, the marvels of heaven and earth are not seen or acknowledged, and creation is but a dreary, lifeless, soulless blank.

While cheerfulness of disposition is a great source of enjoyment in life, it is also a great safeguard of character. A devotional writer of the present day, in answer to the question, How are we to overcome temptations? says: “Cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness is the second, and cheerfulness is the third.” It furnishes the best soil for the growth of goodness and virtue. It gives brightness of heart and elasticity of spirit. It is the companion of charity, the nurse of patience the mother of wisdom. It is also the best of moral and mental tonics. “The best cordial of all,” said Dr. Marshall Hall to one of his patients, “is cheerfulness.” And Solomon has said that “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” When Luther was once applied to for a remedy against melancholy, his advice was: “Gaiety and courage– innocent gaiety, and rational honourable courage–are the best medicine for young men, and for old men, too; for all men against sad thoughts.” (2) Next to music, if not before it, Luther loved children and flowers. The great gnarled man had a heart as tender as a woman’s.

Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart. It gives harmony of soul, and is a perpetual song without words. It is tantamount to repose. It enables nature to recruit its strength; whereas worry and discontent debilitate it, involving constant wear-and-tear. How is it that we see such men as Lord Palmerston growing old in harness, working on vigorously to the end? Mainly through equanimity of temper and habitual cheerfulness. They have educated themselves in the habit of endurance, of not being easily provoked, of bearing and forbearing, of hearing harsh and even unjust things said of them without indulging in undue resentment, and avoiding worreting, petty, and self-tormenting cares. An intimate friend of Lord Palmerston, who observed him closely for twenty years, has said that he never saw him angry, with perhaps one exception; and that was when the ministry responsible for the calamity in Affghanistan, of which he was one, were unjustly accused by their opponents of falsehood, perjury, and wilful mutilation of public documents.

So far as can be learnt from biography, men of the greatest genius have been for the most part cheerful, contented men–not eager for reputation, money, or power–but relishing life, and keenly susceptible of enjoyment, as we find reflected in their works. Such seem to have been Homer, Horace, Virgil, Montaigne, Shakspeare, Cervantes. Healthy serene cheerfulness is apparent in their great creations. Among the same class of cheerful-minded men may also be mentioned Luther, More, Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo. Perhaps they were happy because constantly occupied, and in the pleasantest of all work–that of creating out of the fulness and richness of their great minds.

Milton, too, though a man of many trials and sufferings, must have been a man of great cheerfulness and elasticity of nature. Though overtaken by blindness, deserted by friends, and fallen upon evil days–“darkness before and danger’s voice behind” –yet did he not bate heart or hope, but “still bore up and steered right onward.”

Henry Fielding was a man borne down through life by debt, and difficulty, and bodily suffering; and yet Lady Mary Wortley Montague has said of him that, by virtue of his cheerful disposition, she was persuaded he “had known more happy moments than any person on earth.”

Dr. Johnson, through all his trials and sufferings and hard fights with fortune, was a courageous and cheerful-natured man. He manfully made the best of life, and tried to be glad in it. Once, when a clergyman was complaining of the dulness of society in the country, saying “they only talk of runts” (young cows), Johnson felt flattered by the observation of Mrs. Thrale’s mother, who said, “Sir, Dr. Johnson would learn to talk of runts”–meaning that he was a man who would make the most of his situation, whatever it was.

Johnson was of opinion that a man grew better as he grew older, and that his nature mellowed with age. This is certainly a much more cheerful view of human nature than that of Lord Chesterfield, who saw life through the eyes of a cynic, and held that “the heart never grows better by age: it only grows harder.” But both sayings may be true according to the point from which life is viewed, and the temper by which a man is governed; for while the good, profiting by experience, and disciplining themselves by self-control, will grow better, the ill-conditioned, uninfluenced by experience, will only grow worse.

Sir Walter Scott was a man full of the milk of human kindness. Everybody loved him. He was never five minutes in a room ere the little pets of the family, whether dumb or lisping, had found out his kindness for all their generation. Scott related to Captain Basil Hall an incident of his boyhood which showed the tenderness of his nature. One day, a dog coming towards him, he took up a big stone, threw it, and hit the dog. The poor creature had strength enough left to crawl up to him and lick his feet, although he saw its leg was broken. The incident, he said, had given him the bitterest remorse in his after-life; but he added, “An early circumstance of that kind, properly reflected on, is calculated to have the best effect on one’s character throughout life.”

“Give me an honest laugher,” Scott would say; and he himself laughed the heart’s laugh. He had a kind word for everybody, and his kindness acted all round him like a contagion, dispelling the reserve and awe which his great name was calculated to inspire. “He’ll come here,” said the keeper of the ruins of Melrose Abbey to Washington Irving–“he’ll come here some-times, wi’ great folks in his company, and the first I’ll know of it is hearing his voice calling out, ‘Johnny! Johnny Bower!’ And when I go out I’m sure to be greeted wi’ a joke or a pleasant word. He’ll stand and crack and laugh wi’ me, just like an auld wife; and to think that of a man that has SUCH AN AWFU’ KNOWLEDGE O’ HISTORY!”

Dr. Arnold was a man of the same hearty cordiality of manner– full of human sympathy. There was not a particle of affectation or pretence of condescension about him. “I never knew such a humble man as the doctor,” said the parish clerk at Laleham; “he comes and shakes us by the hand as if he was one of us.” “He used to come into my house,” said an old woman near Fox How, “and talk to me as if I were a lady.”

Sydney Smith was another illustration of the power of cheerfulness. He was ever ready to look on the bright side of things; the darkest cloud had to him its silver lining. Whether working as country curate, or as parish rector, he was always kind, laborious, patient, and exemplary; exhibiting in every sphere of life the spirit of a Christian, the kindness of a pastor, and the honour of a gentleman. In his leisure he employed his pen on the side of justice, freedom, education, toleration, emancipation; and his writings, though full of common-sense and bright humour, are never vulgar; nor did he ever pander to popularity or prejudice. His good spirits, thanks to his natural vivacity and stamina of constitution, never forsook him; and in his old age, when borne down by disease, he wrote to a friend: “I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise very well.” In one of the last letters he wrote to Lady Carlisle, he said: “If you hear of sixteen or eighteen pounds of flesh wanting an owner, they belong to me. I look as if a curate had been taken out of me.”

Great men of science have for the most part been patient, laborious, cheerful-minded men. Such were Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Laplace. Euler the mathematician, one of the greatest of natural philosophers, was a distinguished instance. Towards the close of his life he became completely blind; but he went on writing as cheerfully as before, supplying the want of sight by various ingenious mechanical devices, and by the increased cultivation of his memory, which became exceedingly tenacious. His chief pleasure was in the society of his grandchildren, to whom he taught their little lessons in the intervals of his severer studies.

In like manner, Professor Robison of Edinburgh, the first editor of the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica,’ when disabled from work by a lingering and painful disorder, found his chief pleasure in the society of his grandchild. “I am infinitely delighted,” he wrote to James Watt, “with observing the growth of its little soul, and particularly with its numberless instincts, which formerly passed unheeded. I thank the French theorists for more forcibly directing my attention to the finger of God, which I discern in every awkward movement and every wayward whim. They are all guardians of his life and growth and power. I regret indeed that I have not time to make infancy and the development of its powers my sole study.”

One of the sorest trials of a man’s temper and patience was that which befell Abauzit, the natural philosopher, while residing at Geneva; resembling in many respects a similar calamity which occurred to Newton, and which he bore with equal resignation. Amongst other things, Abauzit devoted much study to the barometer and its variations, with the object of deducing the general laws which regulated atmospheric pressure. During twenty-seven years he made numerous observations daily, recording them on sheets prepared for the purpose. One day, when a new servant was installed in the house, she immediately proceeded to display her zeal by “putting things to-rights.” Abauzit’s study, amongst other rooms, was made tidy and set in order. When he entered it, he asked of the servant, “What have you done with the paper that was round the barometer?” “Oh, sir,” was the reply, “it was so dirty that I burnt it, and put in its place this paper, which you will see is quite new.” Abauzit crossed his arms, and after some moments of internal struggle, he said, in a tone of calmness and resignation: “You have destroyed the results of twenty-seven years labour; in future touch nothing whatever in this room.”

The study of natural history more than that of any other branch of science, seems to be accompanied by unusual cheerfulness and equanimity of temper on the part of its votaries; the result of which is, that the life of naturalists is on the whole more prolonged than that of any other class of men of science. A member of the Linnaean Society has informed us that of fourteen members who died in 1870, two were over ninety, five were over eighty, and two were over seventy. The average age of all the members who died in that year was seventy-five.

Adanson, the French botanist, was about seventy years old when the Revolution broke out, and amidst the shock he lost everything– his fortune, his places, and his gardens. But his patience, courage, and resignation never forsook him. He became reduced to the greatest straits, and even wanted food and clothing; yet his ardour of investigation remained the same. Once, when the Institute invited him, as being one of its oldest members, to assist at a SEANCE, his answer was that he regretted he could not attend for want of shoes. “It was a touching sight,” says Cuvier, “to see the poor old man, bent over the embers of a decaying fire, trying to trace characters with a feeble hand on the little bit of paper which he held, forgetting all the pains of life in some new idea in natural history, which came to him like some beneficent fairy to cheer him in his loneliness.” The Directory eventually gave him a small pension, which Napoleon doubled; and at length, easeful death came to his relief in his seventy-ninth year. A clause in his will, as to the manner of his funeral, illustrates the character of the man. He directed that a garland of flowers, provided by fifty-eight families whom he had established in life, should be the only decoration of his coffin–a slight but touching image of the more durable monument which he had erected for himself in his works.

Such are only a few instances, of the cheerful-working-ness of great men, which might, indeed, be multiplied to any extent. All large healthy natures are cheerful as well as hopeful. Their example is also contagious and diffusive, brightening and cheering all who come within reach of their influence. It was said of Sir John Malcolm, when he appeared in a saddened camp in India, that “it was like a gleam of sunlight,…. no man left him without a smile on his face. He was ‘boy Malcolm’ still. It was impossible to resist the fascination of his genial presence.” (3)

There was the same joyousness of nature about Edmund Burke. Once at a dinner at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, when the conversation turned upon the suitability of liquors for particular temperaments, Johnson said, “Claret is for boys, port for men, and brandy for heroes.” “Then,” said Burke, “let me have claret: I love to be a boy, and to have the careless gaiety of boyish days.” And so it is, that there are old young men, and young old men–some who are as joyous and cheerful as boys in their old age, and others who are as morose and cheerless as saddened old men while still in their boyhood.

In the presence of some priggish youths, we have heard a cheerful old man declare that, apparently, there would soon be nothing but “old boys” left. Cheerfulness, being generous and genial, joyous and hearty, is never the characteristic of prigs. Goethe used to exclaim of goody-goody persons, “Oh! if they had but the heart to commit an absurdity!” This was when he thought they wanted heartiness and nature. “Pretty dolls!” was his expression when speaking of them, and turning away.

The true basis of cheerfulness is love, hope, and patience. Love evokes love, and begets loving kindness. Love cherishes hopeful and generous thoughts of others. It is charitable, gentle, and truthful. It is a discerner of good. It turns to the brightest side of things, and its face is ever directed towards happiness. It sees “the glory in the grass, the sunshine on the flower.” It encourages happy thoughts, and lives in an atmosphere of cheerfulness. It costs nothing, and yet is invaluable; for it blesses its possessor, and grows up in abundant happiness in the bosoms of others. Even its sorrows are linked with pleasures, and its very tears are sweet.

Bentham lays it down as a principle, that a man becomes rich in his own stock of pleasures in proportion to the amount he distributes to others. His kindness will evoke kindness, and his happiness be increased by his own benevolence. “Kind words,” he says, “cost no more than unkind ones. Kind words produce kind actions, not only on the part of him to whom they are addressed, but on the part of him by whom they are employed; and this not incidentally only, but habitually, in virtue of the principle of association.”…. “It may indeed happen, that the effort of beneficence may not benefit those for whom it was intended; but when wisely directed, it MUST benefit the person from whom it emanates. Good and friendly conduct may meet with an unworthy and ungrateful return; but the absence of gratitude on the part of the receiver cannot destroy the self-approbation which recompenses the giver, and we may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindliness around us at so little expense. Some of them will inevitably fall on good ground, and grow up into benevolence in the minds of others; and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the bosom whence they spring. Once blest are all the virtues always; twice blest sometimes.” (4)

The poet Rogers used to tell a story of a little girl, a great favourite with every one who knew her. Some one said to her, “Why does everybody love you so much?” She answered, “I think it is because I love everybody so much.” This little story is capable of a very wide application; for our happiness as human beings, generally speaking, will be found to be very much in proportion to the number of things we love, and the number of things that love us. And the greatest worldly success, however honestly achieved, will contribute comparatively little to happiness, unless it be accompanied by a lively benevolence towards every human being.

Kindness is indeed a great power in the world. Leigh Hunt has truly said that “Power itself hath not one half the might of gentleness.” Men are always best governed through their affections. There is a French proverb which says that, “LES HOMMES SE PRENNENT PAR LA DOUCEUR,” and a coarser English one, to the effect that “More wasps are caught by honey than by vinegar.” “Every act of kindness,” says Bentham, “is in fact an exercise of power, and a stock of friendship laid up; and why should not power exercise itself in the production of pleasure as of pain?”

Kindness does not consist in gifts, but in gentleness and generosity of spirit. Men may give their money which comes from the purse, and withhold their kindness which comes from the heart. The kindness that displays itself in giving money, does not amount to much, and often does quite as much harm as good; but the kindness of true sympathy, of thoughtful help, is never without beneficent results.

The good temper that displays itself in kindness must not be confounded with softness or silliness. In its best form, it is not a merely passive but an active condition of being. It is not by any means indifferent, but largely sympathetic. It does not characterise the lowest and most gelatinous forms of human life, but those that are the most highly organized. True kindness cherishes and actively promotes all reasonable instrumentalities for doing practical good in its own time; and, looking into futurity, sees the same spirit working on for the eventual elevation and happiness of the race.

It is the kindly-dispositioned men who are the active men of the world, while the selfish and the sceptical, who have no love but for themselves, are its idlers. Buffon used to say, that he would give nothing for a young man who did not begin life with an enthusiasm of some sort. It showed that at least he had faith in something good, lofty, and generous, even if unattainable.

Egotism, scepticism, and selfishness are always miserable companions in life, and they are especially unnatural in youth. The egotist is next-door to a fanatic. Constantly occupied with self, he has no thought to spare for others. He refers to himself in all things, thinks of himself, and studies himself, until his own little self becomes his own little god.

Worst of all are the grumblers and growlers at fortune–who find that “whatever is is wrong,” and will do nothing to set matters right–who declare all to be barren “from Dan even to Beersheba.” These grumblers are invariably found the least efficient helpers in the school of life. As the worst workmen are usually the readiest to “strike,” so the least industrious members of society are the readiest to complain. The worst wheel of all is the one that creaks.

There is such a thing as the cherishing of discontent until the feeling becomes morbid. The jaundiced see everything about them yellow. The ill-conditioned think all things awry, and the whole world out-of-joint. All is vanity and vexation of spirit. The little girl in PUNCH, who found her doll stuffed with bran, and forthwith declared everything to be hollow and wanted to “go into a nunnery,” had her counterpart in real life. Many full-grown people are quite as morbidly unreasonable. There are those who may be said to “enjoy bad health;” they regard it as a sort of property. They can speak of “MY headache”–“MY backache,” and so forth, until in course of time it becomes their most cherished possession. But perhaps it is the source to them of much coveted sympathy, without which they might find themselves of comparatively little importance in the world.

We have to be on our guard against small troubles, which, by encouraging, we are apt to magnify into great ones. Indeed, the chief source of worry in the world is not real but imaginary evil –small vexations and trivial afflictions. In the presence of a great sorrow, all petty troubles disappear; but we are too ready to take some cherished misery to our bosom, and to pet it there. Very often it is the child of our fancy; and, forgetful of the many means of happiness which lie within our reach, we indulge this spoilt child of ours until it masters us. We shut the door against cheerfulness, and surround ourselves with gloom. The habit gives a colouring to our life. We grow querulous, moody, and unsympathetic. Our conversation becomes full of regrets. We are harsh in our judgment of others. We are unsociable, and think everybody else is so. We make our breast a storehouse of pain, which we inflict upon ourselves as well as upon others.

This disposition is encouraged by selfishness: indeed, it is for the most part selfishness unmingled, without any admixture of sympathy or consideration for the feelings of those about us. It is simply wilfulness in the wrong direction. It is wilful, because it might be avoided. Let the necessitarians argue as they may, freedom of will and action is the possession of every man and woman. It is sometimes our glory, and very often it is our shame: all depends upon the manner in which it is used. We can choose to look at the bright side of things, or at the dark. We can follow good and eschew evil thoughts. We can be wrongheaded and wronghearted, or the reverse, as we ourselves determine. The world will be to each one of us very much what we make it. The cheerful are its real possessors, for the world belongs to those who enjoy it.

It must, however, be admitted that there are cases beyond the reach of the moralist. Once, when a miserable-looking dyspeptic called upon a leading physician and laid his case before him, “Oh!” said the doctor, “you only want a good hearty laugh: go and see Grimaldi.” “Alas!” said the miserable patient, “I am Grimaldi!” So, when Smollett, oppressed by disease, travelled over Europe in the hope of finding health, he saw everything through his own jaundiced eyes. “I’ll tell it,” said Smellfungus, “to the world.” “You had better tell it,” said Sterne, “to your physician.”
The restless, anxious, dissatisfied temper, that is ever ready to run and meet care half-way, is fatal to all happiness and peace of mind. How often do we see men and women set themselves about as if with stiff bristles, so that one dare scarcely approach them without fear of being pricked! For want of a little occasional command over one’s temper, an amount of misery is occasioned in society which is positively frightful. Thus enjoyment is turned into bitterness, and life becomes like a journey barefooted amongst thorns and briers and prickles. “Though sometimes small evils,” says Richard Sharp, “like invisible insects, inflict great pain, and a single hair may stop a vast machine, yet the chief secret of comfort lies in not suffering trifles to vex us; and in prudently cultivating an undergrowth of small pleasures, since very few great ones, alas! are let on long leases.” (5)

St. Francis de Sales treats the same topic from the Christian’s point of view. “How carefully,” he says, “we should cherish the little virtues which spring up at the foot of the Cross!” When the saint was asked, “What virtues do you mean?” he replied: “Humility, patience, meekness, benignity, bearing one another’s burden, condescension, softness of heart, cheerfulness, cordiality, compassion, forgiving injuries, simplicity, candour– all, in short of that sort of little virtues. They, like unobtrusive violets, love the shade; like them are sustained by dew; and though, like them, they make little show, they shed a sweet odour on all around.” (6)

And again he said: “If you would fall into any extreme, let it be on the side of gentleness. The human mind is so constructed that it resists rigour, and yields to softness. A mild word quenches anger, as water quenches the rage of fire; and by benignity any soil may be rendered fruitful. Truth, uttered with courtesy, is heaping coals of fire on the head–or rather, throwing roses in the face. How can we resist a foe whose weapons are pearls and diamonds?” (7)

Meeting evils by anticipation is not the way to overcome them. If we perpetually carry our burdens about with us, they will soon bear us down under their load. When evil comes, we must deal with it bravely and hopefully. What Perthes wrote to a young man, who seemed to him inclined to take trifles as well as sorrows too much to heart, was doubtless good advice: “Go forward with hope and confidence. This is the advice given thee by an old man, who has had a full share of the burden and heat of life’s day. We must ever stand upright, happen what may, and for this end we must cheerfully resign ourselves to the varied influences of this many- coloured life. You may call this levity, and you are partly right; for flowers and colours are but trifles light as air, but such levity is a constituent portion of our human nature, without which it would sink under the weight of time. While on earth we must still play with earth, and with that which blooms and fades upon its breast. The consciousness of this mortal life being but the way to a higher goal, by no means precludes our playing with it cheerfully; and, indeed, we must do so, otherwise our energy in action will entirely fail.” (8)

Cheerfulness also accompanies patience, which is one of the main conditions of happiness and success in life. “He that will be served,” says George Herbert, “must be patient.” It was said of the cheerful and patient King Alfred, that “good fortune accompanied him like a gift of God.” Marlborough’s expectant calmness was great, and a principal secret of his success as a general. “Patience will overcome all things,” he wrote to Godolphin, in 1702. In the midst of a great emergency, while baffled and opposed by his allies, he said, “Having done all that is possible, we should submit with patience.”

Last and chiefest of blessings is Hope, the most common of possessions; for, as Thales the philosopher said, “Even those who have nothing else have hope.” Hope is the great helper of the poor. It has even been styled “the poor man’s bread.” It is also the sustainer and inspirer of great deeds. It is recorded of Alexander the Great, that when he succeeded to the throne of Macedon, he gave away amongst his friends the greater part of the estates which his father had left him; and when Perdiccas asked him what he reserved for himself, Alexander answered, “The greatest possession of all,–Hope!”

The pleasures of memory, however great, are stale compared with those of hope; for hope is the parent of all effort and endeavour; and “every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by Hope’s perpetual breath.” It may be said to be the moral engine that moves the world, and keeps it in action; and at the end of all there stands before us what Robertson of Ellon styled “The Great Hope.” “If it were not for Hope,” said Byron, “where would the Future be?–in hell! It is useless to say where the Present is, for most of us know; and as for the Past, WHAT predominates in memory?–Hope baffled. ERGO, in all human affairs it is Hope, Hope, Hope!” (9)

NOTES

(1) Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Holy Living.’

(2) ‘Michelet’s ‘Life of Luther,’ pp. 411-12.

(3) Sir John Kaye’s ‘Lives of Indian Officers.’

(4) ‘Deontology,’ pp. 130-1, 144.

(5) ‘Letters and Essays,’ p. 67.

(6) ‘Beauties of St. Francis de Sales.’

(7) Ibid.

(8) ‘Life of Perthes,’ ii. 449.

(9) Moore’s ‘Life of Byron,’ 8vo. Ed., p. 483.

CHAPTER IX.–MANNER–ART.

“We must be gentle, now we are gentlemen.”–SHAKSPEARE.