Life must be measured rather by depth than by length, by thought and

action rather than by time. "A counted number of pulses only," says Pater,

"is given to us of a variegated, aromatic, life. How may we see in them

all that is to be seen by the finest senses? How can we pass most swiftly

from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest

number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with

this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

Failure is to form habits, for habit is relation to a stereotyped

world:... while all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any

exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge, that seems, by a

lifted horizon, to set the spirit free for a moment."

I would not quote Lord Chesterfield as generally a safe guide, but there

is certainly much shrewd wisdom in his advice to his son with reference to

time. "Every moment you now lose, is so much character and advantage lost;

as, on the other hand, every moment you now employ usefully, is so much

time wisely laid out, at prodigious interest."

And again, "It is astonishing that any one can squander away in absolute

idleness one single moment of that small portion of time which is allotted

to us in the world ... Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and

enjoy every moment of it."

"Are you in earnest? seize this very minute,

What you can do, or think you can, begin it." [3]

There is a Turkish proverb that the Devil tempts the Idle man, but the

Idle man tempts the Devil. I remember, says Hilliard, "a satirical poem,

in which the Devil is represented as fishing for men, and adapting his

bait to the tastes and temperaments of his prey; but the idlers were the

easiest victims, for they swallowed even the naked hook."

The mind of the idler indeed preys upon itself. "The human heart is like a

millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and

bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on--and

grinds itself away." [4]

It is not work, but care, that kills, and it is in this sense, I suppose,

that we are told to "take no thought for the morrow." To "consider the

lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

and yet even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and

to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye

of little faith?" It would indeed be a mistake to suppose that lilies are

idle or imprudent. On the contrary, plants are most industrious, and

lilies store up in their complex bulbs a great part of the nourishment of

one year to quicken the growth of the next. Care, on the other hand, they

certainly know not. [5]

"Hours have wings, fly up to the author of time, and carry news of our

usage. All our prayers cannot entreat one of them either to return or

slacken his pace. The misspents of every minute are a new record against

us in heaven. Sure if we thought thus, we should dismiss them with better

reports, and not suffer them to fly away empty, or laden with dangerous

intelligence. How happy is it when they carry up not only the messages,

but the fruits of good, and stay with the Ancient of Days to speak for us

before His glorious throne!" [6]

Time is often said to fly; but it is not so much the time that flies; as

we that waste it, and wasted time is worse than no time at all; "I wasted

time," Shakespeare makes Richard II. say, "and now doth time waste me."

"He that is choice of his time," says Jeremy Taylor, "will also be choice

of his company, and choice of his actions; lest the first engage him in

vanity and loss, and the latter, by being criminal, be a throwing his time

and himself away, and a going back in the accounts of eternity."

The life of man is seventy years, but how little of this is actually our

own. We must deduct the time required for sleep, for meals, for dressing

and undressing, for exercise, etc., and then how little remains really at

our own disposal!

"I have lived," said Lamb, "nominally fifty years, but deduct from them

the hours I have lived for other people, and not for myself, and you will

find me still a young fellow."

The hours we live for other people, however, are not those that should be

deducted, but rather those which benefit neither oneself nor any one else;

and these, alas! are often very numerous.

"There are some hours which are taken from us, some which are stolen from

us, and some which slip from us." [7] But however we may lose them, we can

never get them back. It is wonderful, indeed, how much innocent happiness

we thoughtlessly throw away. An Eastern proverb says that calamities sent

by heaven may be avoided, but from those we bring on ourselves there is no

escape.

Some years ago I paid a visit to the principal lake villages of

Switzerland in company with a distinguished archaeologist, M. Morlot. To

my surprise I found that his whole income was £100 a year, part of which,

moreover, he spent in making a small museum. I asked him whether he

contemplated accepting any post or office, but he said certainly not. He

valued his leisure and opportunities as priceless possessions far more

than silver or gold, and would not waste any of his time in making money.

Time indeed, is a sacred gift, and each day is a little life. Just think

of our advantages here in London! We have access to the whole literature

of the world; we may see in our National Gallery the most beautiful

productions of former generations, and in the Royal Academy and other

galleries the works of the greatest living artists. Perhaps there is no

one who has ever found time to see the British Museum thoroughly. Yet

consider what it contains; or rather, what does it not contain? The most

gigantic of living and extinct animals; the marvellous monsters of

geological ages; the most beautiful birds, shells, and minerals; precious

stones and fragments from other worlds; the most interesting antiquities;

curious and fantastic specimens illustrating different races of men;

exquisite gems, coins, glass, and china; the Elgin marbles; the remains of

the Mausoleum; of the temple of Diana of Ephesus; ancient monuments of

Egypt and Assyria; the rude implements of our predecessors in England, who

were coeval with the hippopotamus and rhinoceros, the musk-ox, and the

mammoth; and beautiful specimens of Greek and Roman art.

Suffering may be unavoidable, but no one has any excuse for being dull.

And yet some people _are_ dull. They talk of a better world to come, while

whatever dulness there may be here is all their own. Sir Arthur Helps has

well said: "What! dull, when you do not know what gives its loveliness of

form to the lily, its depth of color to the violet, its fragrance to the

rose; when you do not know in what consists the venom of the adder, any

more than you can imitate the glad movements of the dove. What! dull, when

earth, air, and water are all alike mysteries to you, and when as you

stretch out your hand you do not touch anything the properties of which

you have mastered; while all the time Nature is inviting you to talk

earnestly with her, to understand her, to subdue her, and to be blessed by

her! Go away, man; learn something, do something, understand something,

and let me hear no more of your dulness."

[1] Shakespeare.

[2] Waller.

[3] _Faust_.

[4] Luther.

[5] The word used [Greek: merimnaesaete] is translated in Liddell and

Scott "to be anxious about, to be distressed in mind, to be cumbered with

many cares."

[6] Milton.

[7] Seneca.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PLEASURES OF TRAVEL.

"I am a part of all that I have seen."--TENNYSON.

I am sometimes disposed to think that there are few things in which we of

this generation enjoy greater advantages over our ancestors than in the

increased facilities of travel; but I hesitate to say this, not because

our advantages are not great, but because I have already made the same

remark with reference to several other aspects of life.

The very word "travel" is suggestive. It is a form of "travail"--excessive

labor; and, as Skeat observes, it forcibly recalls the toil of travel in

olden days. How different things are now!

It is sometimes said that every one should travel on foot "like Thales,

Plato, and Pythagoras"; we are told that in these days of railroads people

rush through countries and see nothing. It may be so, but that is not the

fault of the railways. They confer upon us the inestimable advantage of

being able, so rapidly and with so little fatigue, to visit countries

which were much less accessible to our ancestors. What a blessing it is

that not our own islands only--our smiling fields and rich woods, the

mountains that are full of peace and the rivers of joy, the lakes and

heaths and hills, castles and cathedrals, and many a spot immortalized in

the history of our country:--not these only, but the sun and scenery of

the South, the Alps the palaces of Nature, the blue Mediterranean, and the

cities of Europe, with all their memories and treasures, are now brought

within a few hours of us.

Surely no one who has the opportunity should omit to travel. The world

belongs to him who has seen it. "But he that would make his travels

delightful must first make himself delightful." [1]

According to the old proverb, "the fool wanders, the wise man travels."

Bacon tells us that "the things to be seen and observed are the courts of

princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors; the courts of

justice while they sit and hear causes; and so of consistories

ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are

therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities and towns; and so

the havens and harbors, antiquities and ruins, libraries, colleges,

disputations and lectures, when any are; shipping and navies; houses and

gardens of state and pleasure near great cities; armories, arsenals,

magazines, exchanges, burses, warehouses, exercises of horsemanship,

fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such whereunto the

better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes; cabinets

and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable in the places

where they go."

But this depends on the time at our disposal, and the object with which we

travel. If we can stay long in any one place Bacon's advice is no doubt

excellent; but for the moment I am thinking rather of an annual holiday,

taken for the sake of rest and health; for fresh air and exercise rather

than for study. Yet even so, if we have eyes to see we cannot fail to lay

in a stock of new ideas as well as a store of health.

We may have read the most vivid and accurate description, we may have

pored over maps and plans and pictures, and yet the reality will burst on

us like a revelation. This is true not only of mountains and glaciers, of

palaces and cathedrals, but even of the simplest examples.

For instance, like every one else, I had read descriptions and seen

photographs and pictures of the Pyramids. Their form is simplicity itself.

I do not know that I could put into words any characteristic of the

original for which I was not prepared. It was not that they were larger;

it was not that they differed in form, in color, or situation. And yet,

the moment I saw them, I felt that my previous impression had been but a

faint shadow of the reality. The actual sight seemed to give life to the

idea.

Every one who has been in the East will agree that a week of oriental

travel brings out, with more than stereoscopic effect, the pictures of

patriarchal life as given us in the Old Testament. And what is true of the

Old Testament is true of history generally. To those who have been in

Athens or Rome, the history of Greece or Italy becomes far more

interesting; while, on the other hand, some knowledge of the history and

literature enormously enhances the interest of the scenes themselves.

Good descriptions and pictures, however, help us to see much more than we

should perhaps perceive for ourselves. It may even be doubted whether some

persons do not derive a more correct impression from a good drawing or

description, which brings out the salient points, than they would from

actual, but unaided, inspection. The idea may gain in accuracy, in

character, and even in detail, more than it misses in vividness. But,

however this may be, for those who cannot travel, descriptions and

pictures have an immense interest; while to those who _have_ traveled,

they will afford an inexhaustible delight in reviving the memories of

beautiful scenes and interesting expeditions.

It is really astonishing how little most of us see of the beautiful world

in which we live. Mr. Norman Lockyer tells me that while traveling on a

scientific mission in the Rocky Mountains, he was astonished to meet an

aged French Abbé, and could not help showing his surprise. The Abbé

observed this, and in the course of conversation explained his presence in

that distant region.

"You were," he said, "I easily saw, surprised to find me here. The fact

is, that some months ago I was very ill. My physicians gave me up: one

morning I seemed to faint and thought that I was already in the arms of

the Bon Dieu. I fancied one of the angels came and asked me, 'Well, M.

l'Abbé how did you like the beautiful world you have just left?' And then

it occurred to me that I who had been all my life preaching about heaven,

had seen almost nothing of the world in which I was living. I determined

therefore, if it pleased Providence to spare me, to see something of this

world; and so here I am."

Few of us are free, however much we might wish it, to follow the example

of the worthy Abbé. But although it may not be possible for us to reach

the Rocky Mountains, there are other countries nearer home which most of

us might find time to visit.

Though it is true that no descriptions can come near the reality, they may

at least persuade us to give ourselves this great advantage. Let me then

try to illustrate this by pictures in words, as realized by one of our

most illustrious countrymen; I will select references to foreign countries

only, not that we have not equal beauties here, but because everywhere in

England one feels oneself at home.

The following passage from _Tyndall's Hours of Exercise in the Alps_, is

almost as good as an hour in the Alps themselves:

"I looked over this wondrous scene toward Mont Blanc, the Grand Combin,

the Dent Blanche, the Weisshorn, the Dom, and the thousand lesser peaks

which seem to join in the celebration of the risen day. I asked myself, as

on previous occasions, How was this colossal work performed? Who chiselled

these mighty and picturesque masses out of a mere protuberance of the

earth? And the answer was at hand. Ever young, ever mighty-with the vigor

of a thousand worlds still within him-the real sculptor was even then

climbing up the eastern sky. It was he who raised aloft the waters which

cut out these ravines; it was he who planted the glaciers on the mountain

slopes, thus giving gravity a plough to open out the valleys; and it is

he who, acting through the ages, will finally lay low these mighty

monuments, rolling them gradually seaward, sowing the seeds of continents

to be; so that the people of an older earth may see mould spread, and corn

wave over the hidden rocks which at this moment bear the weight of the

Jungfrau." And the Alps lie within twenty-four hours of London!

Tyndall's writings also contain many vivid descriptions of glaciers; those

"silent and solemn causeways ... broad enough for the march of an army in

line of battle and quiet as a street of tombs in a buried city." [2] I do

not, however, borrow from him or from any one else any description of

glaciers, for they are so unlike anything else, that no one who has not

seen, can possibly visualize them.

The history of European rivers yet remains to be written, and is most

interesting. They did not always run in their present courses. The Rhone,

for instance, appears to have been itself a great traveler. At least there

seems reasons to believe that the upper waters of the Valais fell at first

into the Danube, and so into the Black Sea; subsequently joined the Rhine

and the Thames, and so ran far north over the plains which once connected

the mountains of Scotland and of Norway--to the Arctic Ocean; and to have

only comparatively of late years adopted their present course into the

Mediterranean.

But, however this may be, the Rhine of Germany and the Rhine of

Switzerland are very unlike. The catastrophe of Schaffhausen seems to

alter the whole character of the river, and no wonder. "Stand for half an

hour," says Ruskin, "beside the Fall of Schaffhausen, on the north side

where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first bends,

unbroken, in pure polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow of

the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick, so

swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above darts

over it like a falling star;... and how ever and anon, startling you with

its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall, like a

rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with

light; and how, through the curdling wreaths of the restless crushing

abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows

purer than the sky through white rain-cloud; ... their dripping masses

lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush

from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies

away."

But much as we may admire the majestic grandeur of a mighty river, either

in its eager rush or its calmer moments, there is something which

fascinates even more in the free life, the young energy, the sparkling

transparence, and merry music of smaller streams.

"The upper Swiss valleys," as the same great Seer says, "are sweet with

perpetual streamlets, that seem always to have chosen the steepest places

to come down, for the sake of the leaps, scattering their handfuls of

crystal this way and that, as the winds take them, with all the grace, but

with none of the formalism, of fountains ... until at last ... they find

their way down to the turf, and lose themselves in that, silently; with

quiet depth of clear water furrowing among the grass blades, and looking

only like their shadow, but presently emerging again in little startled

gushes and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered suddenly that the

day was too short for them to get down the hill."

How vividly does Symonds bring before us the sunny shores of the

Mediterranean, which he loves so well, and the contrast between the

scenery of the North and the South.

"In northern landscapes the eye travels through vistas of leafy boughs to

still, secluded crofts and pastures, where slow-moving oxen graze. The

mystery of dreams and the repose of meditation haunt our massive bowers.

But in the South, the lattice-work of olive boughs and foliage scarcely

veils the laughing sea and bright blue sky, while the hues of the

landscape find their climax in the dazzling radiance of the sun upon the

waves, and the pure light of the horizon. There is no concealment and no

melancholy here. Nature seems to hold a never-ending festival and dance,

in which the waves and sunbeams and shadows join. Again, in northern

scenery, the rounded forms of full-foliaged trees suit the undulating

country, with its gentle hills and brooding clouds; but in the South the

spiky leaves and sharp branches of the olive carry out the defined

outlines which are everywhere observable through the broader beauties of

mountain and valley and sea-shore. Serenity and intelligence characterize

this southern landscape, in which a race of splendid men and women lived

beneath the pure light of Phoebus, their ancestral god. Pallas protected

them, and golden Aphrodite favored them with beauty. Olives are not,

however, by any means the only trees which play a part in idyllic scenery.

The tall stone pine is even more important.... Near Massa, by Sorrento,

there are two gigantic pines so placed that, lying on the grass beneath

them, one looks on Capri rising from the sea, Baiae, and all the bay of

Naples sweeping round to the base of Vesuvius. Tangled growths of olives,

and rose-trees fill the garden-ground along the shore, while far away in

the distance pale Inarime sleeps, with her exquisite Greek name, a virgin

island on the deep.

"On the wilder hills you find patches of ilex and arbutus glowing with

crimson berries and white waxen bells, sweet myrtle rods and shafts of

bay, frail tamarisk and tall tree-heaths that wave their frosted boughs

above your head. Nearer the shore the lentisk grows, a savory shrub, with

cytisus and aromatic rosemary. Clematis and polished garlands of tough

sarsaparilla wed the shrubs with clinging, climbing arms; and here and

there in sheltered nooks the vine shoots forth luxuriant tendrils bowed

with grapes, stretching from branch to branch of mulberry or elm, flinging

festoons on which young loves might sit and swing, or weaving a

lattice-work of leaves across the open shed. Nor must the sounds of this

landscape be forgotten,--sounds of bleating flocks, and murmuring bees,

and nightingales, and doves that moan, and running streams, and shrill

cicadas, and hoarse frogs, and whispering pines. There is not a single

detail which a patient student may not verify from Theocritus.

"Then too it is a landscape in which sea and country are never sundered.

The higher we climb upon the mountain-side the more marvellous is the

beauty of the sea, which seems to rise as we ascend, and stretch into the

sky. Sometimes a little flake of blue is framed by olive boughs, sometimes

a turning in the road reveals the whole broad azure calm below. Or, after

toiling up a steep ascent we fall upon the undergrowth of juniper, and lo!

a double sea, this way and that, divided by the sharp spine of the jutting

hill, jewelled with villages along its shore, and smiling with fair

islands and silver sails."

To many of us the mere warmth of the South is a blessing and a delight.

The very thought of it is delicious. I have read over again and again

Wallace's graphic description of a tropical sunrise--of the "sun of the

early morning that turneth all into gold." [3]

"Up to about a quarter past five o'clock," he says, "the darkness is

complete; but about that time a few cries of birds begin to break the

silence of night, perhaps indicating that signs of dawn are perceptible in

the eastern horizon. A little later the melancholy voices of the

goatsuckers are heard, varied croakings of frogs, the plaintive whistle of

mountain thrushes, and strange cries of birds or mammals peculiar to each

locality. About half-past five the first glimmer of light becomes

perceptible; it slowly becomes lighter, and then increases so rapidly that

at about a quarter to six it seems full daylight. For the next quarter of

an hour this changes very little in character; when, suddenly, the sun's

rim appears above the horizon, decking the dew-laden foliage with

glittering gems sending gleams of golden light far into the woods, and

waking up all nature to life and activity. Birds chirp and flutter about,

parrots scream, monkeys chatter, bees hum among the flowers, and gorgeous

butterflies flutter lazily along or sit with full expanded wings exposed

to the warm and invigorating rays. The first hour of morning in the

equatorial regions possesses a charm and a beauty that can never be

forgotten. All nature seems refreshed and strengthened by the coolness and

moisture of the past night, new leaves and buds unfold almost before the

eye, and fresh shoots may often be observed to have grown many inches

since the preceding day. The temperature is the most delicious

conceivable. The slight chill of early dawn, which was itself agreeable,

is succeeded by an invigorating warmth; and the intense sunshine lights up

the glorious vegetation of the tropics, and realizes all that the magic

art of the painter or the glowing words of the poet have pictured as their

ideals of terrestrial beauty."

Or take Dean Stanley's description of the colossal statues of Amenophis

III., the Memnon of the Greeks, at Thebes--"The sun was setting, the

African range glowed red behind them; the green plain was dyed with a

deeper green beneath them, and the shades of evening veiled the vast rents

and fissures in their aged frames. As I looked back at them in the sunset,

and they rose up in front of the background of the mountain, they seemed,

indeed, as if they were part of it,--as if they belonged to some natural

creation."

But I must not indulge myself in more quotations, though it is difficult

to stop. Such extracts recall the memory of many glorious days: for the

advantages of travel last through life; and often, as we sit at home,

"some bright and perfect view of Venice, of Genoa, or of Monte Rosa comes

back on you, as full of repose as a day wisely spent in travel." [4]

So far is a thorough love and enjoyment of travel from interfering with

the love of home, that perhaps no one can thoroughly enjoy his home who

does not sometimes wander away. They are like exertion and rest, each the

complement of the other; so that, though it may seem paradoxical, one of

the greatest pleasures of travel is the return; and no one who has not

roamed abroad, can realize the devotion which the wanderer feels for

Domiduca--the sweet and gentle goddess who watches over our coming home.

[1] Seneca.

[2] Ruskin.

[3] Morris.

[4] Helps.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PLEASURES OF HOME.

"There's no place like Home."--_Old English Song_.

It may well be doubted which is more delightful,--to start for a holiday

which has been fully earned, or to return home from one which has been

thoroughly enjoyed; to find oneself, with renewed vigor, with a fresh

store of memories and ideas, back once more by one's own fireside, with

one's family, friends, and books.

"To sit at home," says Leigh Hunt, "with an old folio (?) book of romantic

yet credible voyages and travels to read, an old bearded traveller for its

hero, a fireside in an old country house to read it by, curtains drawn,

and just wind enough stirring out of doors to make an accompaniment to the

billows or forests we are reading of--this surely is one of the perfect

moments of existence."

It is no doubt a great privilege to visit foreign countries; to travel say

in Mexico or Peru, or to cruise among the Pacific Islands; but in some

respects the narratives of early travellers, the histories of Prescott or

the voyages of Captain Cook, are even more interesting; describing to us,

as they do, a state of society which was then so unlike ours, but which

has now been much changed and Europeanized.

Thus we may make our daily travels interesting, even though, like those of

the Vicar of Wakefield, all our adventures are by our own fireside, and

all our migrations from one room to another.

Moreover, even if the beauties of home are humble, they are still

infinite, and a man "may lie in his bed, like Pompey and his sons, in all

quarters of the earth." [1]

It is, then, wise to "cultivate a talent very fortunate for a man of my

disposition, that of travelling in my easy chair; of transporting myself,

without stirring from my parlor, to distant places and to absent friends;

of drawing scenes in my mind's eye; and of peopling them with the groups

of fancy, or the society of remembrance." [2]

We may indeed secure for ourselves endless variety without leaving our own

firesides.

In the first place, the succession of seasons multiplies every home. How

different is the view from our windows as we look on the tender green of

spring, the rich foliage of summer, the glorious tints of autumn, or the

delicate tracery of winter.

Our climate is so happy, that even in the worst months of the year, "calm

mornings of sunshine visit us at times, appearing like glimpses of

departed spring amid the wilderness of wet and windy days that lead to

winter. It is pleasant, when these interludes of silver light occur, to

ride into the woods and see how wonderful are all the colors of decay.

Overhead, the elms and chestnuts hang their wealth of golden leaves, while

the beeches darken into russet tones, and the wild cherry glows like

blood-red wine. In the hedges crimson haws and scarlet hips are wreathed

with hoary clematis or necklaces of coral briony-berries; the brambles

burn with many-colored flames; the dog-wood is bronzed to purple; and here

and there the spindle-wood puts forth its fruit, like knots of rosy buds,

on delicate frail twigs. Underneath lie fallen leaves, and the brown brake

rises to our knees as we thread the forest paths." [3]

Nay, every day gives us a succession of glorious pictures in never-ending

variety. It is remarkable how few people seem to derive any pleasure from

the beauty of the sky. Gray, after describing a sunrise--how it began with

a slight whitening, just tinged with gold and blue, lit up all at once by

a little line of insufferable brightness which rapidly grew to half an

orb, and so to a whole one too glorious to be distinctly seen--adds, "I

wonder whether any one ever saw it before. I hardly believe it." [4]

No doubt from the dawn of poetry, the splendors of the morning and evening

skies have delighted all those who have eyes to see. But we are especially

indebted to Ruskin for enabling us more vividly to realize these glorious

sky pictures. As he says, in language almost as brilliant as the sky

itself, the whole heaven, "from the zenith to the horizon, becomes one

molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every block bar turns into massy

gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless crimson, and

purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language,

and no ideas in the mind--things which can only be conceived while they

are visible; the intense hollow blue of the upper sky melting through it

all, showing here deep and pure, and lightness; there, modulated by the

filmy, formless body of the transparent vapor, till it is lost

imperceptibly in its crimson and gold."

It is in some cases indeed "not color but conflagration," and though the

tints are richer and more varied toward morning and at sunset, the

glorious kaleidoscope goes on all day long. Yet "it is a strange thing how

little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in

which Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole

and evident purpose of talking to him, and teaching him, than in any other

of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.

There are not many of her other works in which some more material or

essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every

part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might,

so far as we know, be answer, if once in three days, or thereabouts, a

great, ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and

everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with

perhaps a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this,

there is not a moment of any day of our lives when Nature is not producing

scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working

still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect

beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for

our perpetual pleasure." [5]

Nor does the beauty end with the day. "It is nothing to sleep under the

canopy of heaven, where we have the globe of the earth for our place of

repose, and the glories of the heavens for our spectacle?" [6] For my part

I always regret the custom of shutting up our rooms in the evening, as

though there was nothing worth seeing outside. What, however, can be more

beautiful than to "look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with

patines of bright gold," or to watch the moon journeying in calm and

silver glory through the night. And even if we do not feel that "the man

who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been

present like an Archangel at the creation of light and of the world," [7]

still "the stars say something significant to all of us: and each man has

a whole hemisphere of them, if he will but look up, to counsel and

befriend him"; [8] for it is not so much, as Helps elsewhere observes, "in

guiding us over the seas of our little planet, but out of the dark waters

of our own perturbed minds, that we may make to ourselves the most of

their significance." Indeed,

"How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;

No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,

Breaks the serene of heaven:

In full-orbed glory yonder moon divine

Rolls through the dark blue depths;

Beneath her steady ray

The desert circle spreads,

Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky;

How beautiful is night!" [9]

I have never wondered at those who worshipped the sun and moon.

On the other hand, when all outside is dark and cold; when perhaps

"Outside fall the snowflakes lightly;

Through the night loud raves the storm;

In my room the fire glows brightly,

And 'tis cosy, silent, warm.

"Musing sit I on the settle

By the firelight's cheerful blaze,

Listening to the busy kettle

Humming long forgotten lays." [10]

For after all the true pleasures of home are not without, but within; and

"the domestic man who loves no music so well as his own kitchen clock and

the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has

solaces which others never dream of." [11]

We love the ticking of the clock, and the flicker of the fire, like the

sound of the cawing of rooks, not so much for any beauty of their own as

for their associations.

It is a great truth that when we retire into ourselves we can call up what

memories we please.

"How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,

When fond recollection recalls them to view.--

The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wildwood

And every lov'd spot which my infancy knew." [12]

It is not so much the

"Fireside enjoyments,

And _all the comforts_ of the lowly roof," [13]

but rather, according to the higher and better ideal of Keble,

"Sweet is the smile of home; the mutual look,

When hearts are of each other sure;

Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook,

The haunt of all affections pure."

In ancient times, not only among savage races, but even among the Greeks

themselves, there seems to have been but little family life. What a

contrast was the home life of the Greeks, as it seems to have been, to

that, for instance, described by Cowley--a home happy "in books and

gardens," and above all, in a

"Virtuous wife, where thou dost meet

Both pleasures more refined and sweet;

The fairest garden in her looks

And in her mind the wisest books."

No one who has ever loved mother or wife, sister or daughter, can read

without astonishment and pity St. Chrysostom's description of woman as "a

necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic

peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill."

In few respects has mankind made a greater advance than in the relations

of men and women. It is terrible to think how women suffer in savage life;

and even among the intellectual Greeks, with rare exceptions, they seem to

have been treated rather as housekeepers or playthings than as the Angels

who make a Heaven of home.

The Hindoo proverb that you should "never strike a wife, even with a

flower," though a considerable advance, tells a melancholy tale of what

must previously have been.

In _The Origin of Civilization_ I have given many cases showing how small

a part family affection plays in savage life. Here I will only mention one

case in illustration. The Algonquin (North America) language contained no

word for "to love," so that when the missionaries translated the Bible

into it they were obliged to invent one. What a life, and what a language,

without love.

Yet in marriage even the rough passion of a savage may contrast favorably

with any cold calculation, which, like the enchanted hoard of the

Nibelungs, is almost sure to bring misfortune. In the Kalevala, the

Finnish epic, the divine smith, Ilmarinnen, forges a bride of gold and

silver for Wainamoinen, who was pleased at first to have so rich a wife,

but soon found her intolerably cold, for, in spite of fires and furs,

whenever he touched her she froze him.

Moreover, apart from mere coldness, how much we suffer from foolish

quarrels about trifles; from mere misunderstandings; from hasty words

thoughtlessly repeated, sometimes without the context or tone which would

have deprived them of any sting. How much would that charity which

"beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all

things," effect to smooth away the sorrows of life and add to the

happiness of home. Home indeed may be a sure haven of repose from the

storms and perils of the world. But to secure this we must not be content

to pave it with good intentions, but must make it bright and cheerful.

If our life be one of toil and of suffering, if the world outside be cold

and dreary, what a pleasure to return to the sunshine of happy faces and

the warmth of hearts we love.

[1] Sir T. Browne.

[2] Mackenzie, _The Lounger_.

[3] J. A. Symonds.

[4] Gray's Letters.

[5] Ruskin.

[6] Seneca.

[7] Emerson.

[8] Helps.

[9] Southey.

[10] Heine, trans. by E. A. Bowring.

[11] Emerson.

[12] Woodworth.

[13] Cowper.

CHAPTER IX.

SCIENCE.

"Happy is he that findeth wisdom,

And the man that getteth understanding:

For the merchandise of it is better than silver,

And the gain thereof than fine gold.

She is more precious than rubies:

And all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.

Length of days is in her right hand,

And in her left hand riches and honor.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness,

And all her paths are peace."

PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.

Those who have not tried for themselves can hardly imagine how much

Science adds to the interest and variety of life. It is altogether a

mistake to regard it as dry, difficult, or prosaic--much of it is as easy

as it is interesting. A wise instinct of old united the prophet and the

"seer." "The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walketh in

darkness." Technical works, descriptions of species, etc., bear the same

relation to science as dictionaries do to literature.

Occasionally, indeed, Science may destroy some poetical myth of antiquity,

such as the ancient Hindoo explanation of rivers, that "Indra dug out

their beds with his thunderbolts, and sent them forth by long continuous

paths;" but the real causes of natural phenomena are far more striking,

and contain more true poetry, than those which have occurred to the

untrained imagination of mankind.

In endless aspects science is as wonderful and interesting as a fairy

tale.

"There are things whose strong reality

Outshines our fairyland; in shape and hues

More beautiful than our fantastic sky,

And the strange constellations which the Muse

O'er her wild universe is skillful to diffuse." [1]

Mackay justly exclaims:

"Blessings on Science! When the earth seemed old,

When Faith grew doting, and our reason cold,

'Twas she discovered that the world was young,

And taught a language to its lisping tongue."

Botany, for instance, is by many regarded as a dry science. Yet though

without it we may admire flowers and trees, it is only as strangers, only

as one may admire a great man or a beautiful woman in a crowd. The

botanist, on the contrary--nay, I will not say the botanist, but one with

even a slight knowledge of that delightful science--when he goes out into

the woods, or into one of those fairy forests which we call fields, finds

himself welcomed by a glad company of friends, every one with something

interesting to tell. Dr. Johnson said that, in his opinion, when you had

seen one green field you had seen all; and a greater even than

Johnson--Socrates--the very type of intellect without science, said he was

always anxious to learn, and from fields and trees he could learn nothing.

It has, I know, been said that botanists

"Love not the flower they pluck and know it not.

And all their botany is but Latin names."

Contrast this, however, with the language of one who would hardly claim to

be a master in botany, though he is certainly a loving student.

"Consider," says Ruskin, "what we owe to the meadow grass, to the covering

of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those

soft, countless, and peaceful spears of the field! Follow but for a little

time the thought of all that we ought to recognize in those words. All

spring and summer is in them--the walks by silent scented paths, the rest

in noonday heat, the joy of the herds and flocks, the power of all

shepherd life and meditation; the life of the sunlight upon the world,

falling in emerald streaks and soft blue shadows, when else it would have

struck on the dark mould or scorching dust; pastures beside the pacing

brooks, soft banks and knolls of lowly hills, thymy slopes of down

overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea; crisp lawns all dim with early

dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet,

softening in their fall the sound of loving voices."

My own tastes and studies have led me mainly in the direction of Natural

History and Archaeology; but if you love one science, you cannot but feel

intense interest in them all. How grand are the truths of Astronomy!

Prudhomme, in a sonnet beautifully translated by Arthur O'Shaugnessy, has

pictured an Observatory. He says--

"'Tis late; the astronomer in his lonely height,

Exploring, all the dark, descries afar

Orbs that like distant isles of splendor are."

He notices a comet, and calculating its orbit, finds that it will return

in a thousand years--

"The star will come. It dare not by one hour

Cheat Science, or falsify her calculation;

Men will have passed, but, watchful in the tower,

Man shall remain in sleepless contemplation;

And should all men have perished in their turn,

Truth in their place would watch that star's return."

Ernest Rhys well says of a student's chamber--

"Strange things pass nightly in this little room,

All dreary as it looks by light of day;

Enchantment reigns here when at evening play

Red fire-light glimpses through the pallid gloom."

And the true student, in Ruskin's words, stands on an eminence from which

he looks back on the universe of God and forward over the generations of

men.

Even if it be true that science was dry when it was buried in huge folios,

that is certainly no longer the case now; and Lord Chesterfield's wise

wish, that Minerva might have three graces as well as Venus, has been

amply fulfilled.

The study of natural history indeed seems destined to replace the loss of

what is, not very happily I think, termed "sport;" engraven in us as it is

by the operation of thousands of years, during which man lived greatly on

the produce of the chase. Game is gradually becoming "small by degrees and

beautifully less." Our prehistoric ancestors hunted the mammoth, the

woolly-haired rhinoceros, and Irish elk; the ancient Britons had the wild

ox, the deer, and the wolf. We have still the pheasant, the partridge, the

fox, and the hare; but even these are becoming scarcer, and must be

preserved first, in order that they may be killed afterwards. Some of us

even now--and more, no doubt, will hereafter--satisfy instincts,

essentially of the same origin, by the study of birds, or insects, or even

infusoria--of creatures which more than make up by their variety what they

want in size.

Emerson avers that when a naturalist has "got all snakes and lizards in

his phials, science has done for him also, and has put the man into a

bottle." I do not deny that there are such cases, but they are quite

exceptional. The true naturalist is no mere dry collector.

I cannot resist, although it is rather long, quoting the following

description from Hudson and Gosse's beautiful work on the Rotifera:--

"On the Somersetshire side of the Avon, and not far from Clifton, is a

little combe, at the bottom of which lies an old fish-pond. Its slopes are

covered with plantations of beech and fir, so as to shelter the pond on

three sides, and yet leave it open to the soft south-western breezes, and

to the afternoon sun. At the head of the combe wells up a clear spring,

which sends a thread of water, trickling through a bed of osiers, into the

upper end of the pond. A stout stone wall has been drawn across the combe

from side to side, so as to dam up the stream; and there is a gap in one

corner through which the overflow finds its way in a miniature cascade,

down into the lower plantation.

"If we approach the pond by the gamekeeper's path from the cottage above,

we shall pass through the plantation, and come unseen right on the corner

of the wall; so that one quiet step will enable us to see at a glance its

whole surface, without disturbing any living thing that may be there.

"Far off at the upper end a water-hen is leading her little brood among

the willows; on the fallen trunk of an old beech, lying half way across

the pond, a vole is sitting erect, rubbing his right ear, and the splash

of a beech husk just at our feet tells of a squirrel who is dining

somewhere in the leafy crown above us.

"But see, the water-rat has spied us out, and is making straight for his

hole in the bank, while the ripple above him is the only thing that tells

of his silent flight. The water-hen has long ago got under cover, and the

squirrel drops no more husks. It is a true Silent Pond, and without a sign

of life.

"But if, retaining sense and sight, we could shrink into living atoms and

plunge under the water, of what a world of wonders should we then form

part! We should find this fairy kingdom peopled with the strangest

creatures--creatures that swim with their hair, that have ruby eyes

blazing deep in their necks, with telescopic limbs that now are withdrawn

wholly within their bodies and now stretched out to many times their own

length. Here are some riding at anchor, moored by delicate threads spun

out from their toes; and there are others flashing by in glass armor,

bristling with sharp spikes or ornamented with bosses and flowing curves;

while fastened to a great stem is an animal convolvulus that, by some

invisible power, draws a never-ceasing stream of victims into its gaping

cup, and tears them to death with hooked jaws deep down within its body.

"Close by it, on the same stem, is something that looks like a filmy

heart's-ease. A curious wheelwork runs round its four outspread petals;

and a chain of minute things, living and dead, is winding in and out of

their curves into a gulf at the back of the flower. What happens to them

there we cannot see; for round the stem is raised a tube of golden-brown

balls, all regularly piled on each other. Some creature dashes by, and

like a flash the flower vanishes within its tube.

"We sink still lower, and now see on the bottom slow gliding lumps of

jelly that thrust a shapeless arm out where they will, and grasping their

prey with these chance limbs, wrap themselves round their food to get a

meal; for they creep without feet, seize without hands, eat without

mouths, and digest without stomachs."

Too many, however, still feel only in Nature that which we share "with the

weed and the worm;" they love birds as boys do--that is, they love

throwing stones at them; or wonder if they are good to eat, as the

Esquimaux asked about the watch; or treat them as certain devout Afreedee

villagers are said to have treated a descendant of the Prophet--killed him

in order to worship at his tomb: but gradually we may hope that the love

of Science--the notes "we sound upon the strings of nature" [2]--will

become to more and more, as already it is to many, a "faithful and sacred

element of human feeling."

Science summons us

"To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,

Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;

Its choir the winds and waves, its organ thunder,

Its dome the sky." [3]

Where the untrained eye will see nothing but mire and dirt, Science will

often reveal exquisite possibilities. The mud we tread under our feet in

the street is a grimy mixture of clay and sand, soot and water. Separate

the sand, however, as Ruskin observes--let the atoms arrange themselves in

peace according to their nature--and you have the opal. Separate the clay,

and it becomes a white earth, fit for the finest porcelain; or if it still

further purifies itself, you have a sapphire. Take the soot, and if

properly treated it will give you a diamond. While, lastly, the water,

purified and distilled, will become a dew-drop, or crystallize into a

lovely star. Or, again, you may see as you will in any shallow pool either

the mud lying at the bottom, or the image of the heavens above.

Nay, even if we imagine beauties and charms which do not really exist;

still if we err at all it is better to do so on the side of charity; like

Nasmyth, who tells us in his delightful autobiography, that he used to

think one of his friends had a charming and kindly twinkle, and was one

day surprised to discover that he had a glass eye.

But I should err indeed were I to dwell exclusively on science as lending

interest and charm to our leisure hours. Far from this, it would be

impossible to overrate the importance of scientific training on the wise

conduct of life.

"Science," said the Royal Commission of 1861, "quickens and cultivates

directly the faculty of observation, which in very many persons lies

almost dormant through life, the power of accurate and rapid

generalization, and the mental habit of method and arrangement; it

accustoms young persons to trace the sequence of cause and effect; it

familiarizes them with a kind of reasoning which interests them, and which

they can promptly comprehend; and it is perhaps the best corrective for

that indolence which is the vice of half-awakened minds, and which shrinks

from any exertion that is not, like an effort of memory, merely

mechanical."

Again, when we contemplate the grandeur of science, if we transport

ourselves in imagination back into primeval times, or away into the

immensity of space, our little troubles and sorrows seem to shrink into

insignificance. "Ah, beautiful creations!" says Helps, speaking of the

stars, "it is not in guiding us over the seas of our little planet, but

out of the dark waters of our own perturbed minds, that we may make to

ourselves the most of your significance." They teach, he tells us

elsewhere, "something significant to all of us; and each man has a whole

hemisphere of them, if he will but look up, to counsel and befriend him."

There is a passage in an address given many years ago by Professor Huxley

to the South London Working Men's College which struck me very much at the

time, and which puts this in language more forcible than any which I could

use.

"Suppose," he said, "it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune

of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or

losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to

be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces?

Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to

scorn upon the father who allowed his son, or the State which allowed its

members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight? Yet it is a very

plain and elementary truth that the life, the fortune, and the happiness

of every one of us, and more or less of those who are connected with us,

do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely

more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been

played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two

players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the

pieces are the phenomena of the Universe, the rules of the game are what

we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from

us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we

know to our cost that he never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest

allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well the highest stakes are

paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity which with the strong shows

delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste,

but without remorse."

I have elsewhere endeavored to show the purifying and ennobling influence

of science upon religion; how it has assisted, if indeed it may not claim

the main share, in sweeping away the dark superstitions, the degrading

belief in sorcery and witchcraft, and the cruel, however well-intentioned,

intolerance which embittered the Christian world almost from the very days

of the Apostles themselves. In this she has surely performed no mean

service to religion itself. As Canon Fremantle has well and justly said,

men of science, and not the clergy only, are ministers of religion.

Again, the national necessity for scientific education is imperative. We

are apt to forget how much we owe to science, because so many of its

wonderful gifts have become familiar parts of our everyday life, that

their very value makes us forget their origin. At the recent celebration

of the sexcentenary of Peterhouse College, near the close of a long

dinner, Sir Frederick Bramwell was called on, some time after midnight, to

return thanks for Applied Science. He excused himself from making a long

speech on the ground that, though the subject was almost inexhaustible,

the only illustration which struck him as appropriate under the

circumstances was "the application of the domestic lucifer to the bedroom

candle." One cannot but feel how unfortunate was the saying of the poet

that

"The light-outspeeding telegraph

Bears nothing on its beam."

The report of the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, which has

recently been issued, teems with illustrations of the advantages afforded

by technical instruction. At the same time, technical training ought not

to begin too soon, for, as Bain truly observes, "in a right view of

scientific education the first principles and leading examples, with

select details, of all the great sciences, are the proper basis of the

complete and exhaustive study of any single science." Indeed, in the words

of Sir John Herschel, "it can hardly be pressed forcibly enough on the

attention of the student of Nature, that there is scarcely any natural

phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained in all its

circumstances, without a union of several, perhaps of all, the sciences."

The most important secrets of Nature are often hidden away in unexpected

places. Many valuable substances have been discovered in the refuse of

manufactories; and it was a happy thought of Glauber to examine what

everybody else threw away. There is perhaps no nation the future happiness

and prosperity of which depend more on science than our own. Our

population is over 35,000,000, and is rapidly increasing. Even at present

it is far larger than our acreage can support. Few people whose business

does not lie in the study of statistics realize that we have to pay

foreign countries no less than £140,000,000 a year for food. This, of

course, we purchase mainly by manufactured articles. We hear now a great

deal about depression of trade, and foreign, especially American,

competition, which, let me observe, will be much keener a few years hence,

when the United States have paid off their debt, and consequently reduced

taxation.

But let us look forward a hundred years--no long time in the history of a

nation. Our coal supplies will then be greatly diminished. The population

of Great Britain doubles at the present rate of increase in about fifty

years, so that we should, if the present rate continues, require to import

over £400,000,000 a year in food. How, then, is this to be paid for? We

have before us, as usual, three courses. The natural rate of increase may

be stopped, which means suffering and outrage; or the population may

increase, only to vegetate in misery and destitution; or, lastly, by the

development of scientific training and appliances, they may probably be

maintained in happiness and comfort. We have, in fact, to make our choice

between science and suffering. It is only by wisely utilizing the gifts of

science that we have any hope of maintaining our population in plenty and

comfort. Science, however, will do this for us if we will only let her.

She may be no Fairy Godmother indeed, but she will richly endow those who

love her.

That discoveries, innumerable, marvellous, and fruitful, await the

successful explorers of Nature no one can doubt. What would one not give

for a Science primer of the next century? for, to paraphrase a well-known

saying, even the boy at the plough will then know more of science than the

wisest of our philosophers do now. Boyle entitled one of his essays "Of

Man's great Ignorance of the Uses of Natural Things; or that there is no

one thing in Nature whereof the uses to human life are yet thoroughly

understood"--a saying which is still as true now as when it was written.

And, lest I should be supposed to be taking too sanguine a view, let me

give the authority of Sir John Herschel, who says: "Since it cannot but be

that innumerable and most important uses remain to be discovered among the

materials and objects already known to us, as well as among those which

the progress of science must hereafter disclose, we may hence conceive a

well-grounded expectation, not only of constant increase in the physical

resources of mankind, and the consequent improvement of their condition,

but of continual accession to our power of penetrating into the arcana of

Nature and becoming acquainted with her highest laws."

Nor is it merely in a material point of view that science would thus

benefit the nation. She will raise and strengthen the national, as surely

as the individual, character. The great gift which Minerva offered to

Paris is now freely tendered to all, for we may apply to the nation, as

well as to the individual, Tennyson's noble lines:--

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control:

These three alone lead life to sovereign power,

Yet not for power (power of herself

Would come uncalled for), but to live by law;

Acting the law we live by without fear."

"In the vain and foolish exultation of the heart," said John Quincy Adams,

at the close of his final lecture on resigning his chair at Boston, "which

the brighter prospects of life will sometimes excite, the pensive portress

of Science shall call you to the sober pleasures of her holy cell. In the

mortification of disappointment, her soothing voice shall whisper serenity

and peace. In social converse with the mighty dead of ancient days, you

will never smart under the galling sense of dependence upon the mighty

living of the present age. And in your struggles with the world, should a

crisis ever occur, when even friendship may deem it prudent to desert you,

when priest and Levite shall come and look on you and pass by on the other

side, seek refuge, my unfailing friends, and be assured you shall find it,

in the friendship of Laelius and Scipio, in the patriotism of Cicero,

Demosthenes, and Burke, as well as in the precepts and example of Him

whose law is love, and who taught us to remember injuries only to forgive

them."

Let me in conclusion quote the glowing description of our debt to science

given by Archdeacon Farrar in his address at Liverpool College--testimony,

moreover, all the more valuable, considering the source from which it

comes.

"In this great commercial city," he said, "where you are surrounded by the

triumphs of science and of mechanism--you, whose river is ploughed by the

great steamships whose white wake has been called the fittest avenue to

the palace front of a mercantile people--you know well that in the

achievements of science there is not only beauty and wonder, but also

beneficence and power. It is not only that she has revealed to us infinite

space crowded with unnumbered worlds; infinite time peopled by unnumbered

existences; infinite organisms hitherto invisible but full of delicate and

iridescent loveliness; but also that she has been, as a great Archangel of

Mercy, devoting herself to the service of man. She has labored, her

votaries have labored, not to increase the power of despots or to add to

the magnificence of courts, but to extend human happiness, to economize

human effort, to extinguish human pain. Where of old, men toiled, half

blinded and half naked, in the mouth of the glowing furnace to mix the

white-hot iron, she now substitutes the mechanical action of the viewless

air. She has enlisted the sunbeam in her service to limn for us, with

absolute fidelity, the faces of the friends we love. She has shown the

poor miner how he may work in safety, even amid the explosive fire-damp of

the mine. She hits, by her anaesthetics, enabled the sufferer to be hushed

and unconscious while the delicate hand of some skilled operator cuts a

fragment from the nervous circle of the unquivering eye. She points not to

pyramids built during weary centuries by the sweat of miserable nations,

but to the lighthouse and the steamship, to the railroad and the

telegraph. She has restored eyes to the blind and hearing to the deaf. She

has lengthened life, she has minimized danger, she has controlled madness,

she has trampled on disease. And on all these grounds, I think that none

of our sons should grow up wholly ignorant of studies which at once train

the reason and fire the imagination, which fashion as well as forge, which

can feed as well as fill the mind."

[1] Byron.

[2] Emerson.

[3] H. Smith.

CHAPTER X.

EDUCATION.

"No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the

vantage ground of truth."--BACON.

"Divine Philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets

Where no crude surfeit reigns."--MILTON.

It may seem rather surprising to include education among the pleasures of

life; for in too many cases it is made odious to the young, and is

supposed to cease with school; while, on the contrary, if it is to be

really successful it must be suitable, and therefore interesting, to

children, and must last through life. The very process of acquiring

knowledge is a privilege and a blessing. It used to be said that there was

no royal road to learning; it would be more true to say that the avenues

leading to it are all royal.

"It is not," says Jeremy Taylor, "the eye that sees the beauties of

heaven, nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music, or the glad tidings

of a prosperous accident; but the soul that perceives all the relishes of

sensual and intellectual perceptions: and the more noble and excellent the

soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions. And if a child

behold the rich ermine, or the diamonds of a starry night, or the order of

the world, or hears the discourses of an apostle; because he makes no

reflex act on himself and sees not what he sees, he can have but the

pleasure of a fool or the deliciousness of a mule."

Herein lies the importance of education. I say education rather than

instruction, because it is far more important to cultivate the mind than

to store the memory. Studies are a means and not an end. "To spend too

much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is

affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a

scholar: they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience.... Crafty

men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them." [1]

Moreover, though, as Mill says, "in the comparatively early state of human

development in which we now live, a person cannot indeed feel that

entireness of sympathy with all others which would make any real

discordance in the general direction of their conduct in life impossible,"

yet education might surely do more to root in us the feeling of unity with

our fellow-creatures. At any rate, if we do not study in this spirit, all

our learning will but leave us as weak and sad as Faust.

"I've now, alas! Philosophy,

Medicine and Jurisprudence too,

And to my cost Theology,

With ardent labor studied through,

And here I stand, with all my lore

Poor fool, no wiser than before." [2]

Our studies should be neither "a couch on which to rest; nor a cloister in

which to promenade alone; nor a tower from which to look down on others;

nor a fortress whence we may resist them; nor a workshop for gain and

merchandise; but a rich armory and treasury for the glory of the creator

and the ennoblement of life." [3]

For in the noble words of Epictetus, "you will do the greatest service to

the state if you shall raise, not the roofs of the houses, but the souls

of the citizens: for it is better that great souls should dwell in small

houses rather than for mean slaves to lurk in great houses."

It is then of great importance to consider whether our present system of

education is the one best calculated to fulfil these great objects. Does

it really give that love of learning which is better than learning itself?

Does all the study of the classics to which our sons devote so many years

give any just appreciation of them; or do they not on leaving college too

often feel with Byron--

"Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so!"

Too much concentration on any one subject is a great mistake, especially

in early life. Nature herself indicates the true system, if we would but

listen to her. Our instincts are good guides, though not infallible, and

children will profit little by lessons which do not interest them. In

cheerfulness, says Pliny, is the success of our studies--"studia

hilaritate proveniunt"--and we may with advantage take a lesson from

Theognis, who, in his Ode on the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia, makes

the Muses sing:

"What is good and fair,

Shall ever be our care;

Thus the burden of it rang,

That shall never be our care,

Which is neither good nor fair.

Such were the words your lips immortal sang."

There are some who seem to think that our educational system is as good as

possible, and that the only remaining points of importance are the number

of schools and scholars, the question of fees, the relation of voluntary

and board schools, etc. "No doubt," says Mr. Symonds, in his _Sketches in

Italy and Greece_, "there are many who think that when we not only

advocate education but discuss the best system we are simply beating the

air; that our population is as happy and cultivated as can be, and that no

substantial advance is really possible. Mr. Galton, however, has expressed

the opinion, and most of those who have written on the social condition of

Athens seem to agree with him, that the population of Athens, taken as a

whole, was as superior to us as we are to Australian savages."

That there is, indeed, some truth in this, probably no student of Greek

history will deny. Why, then, should this be so? I cannot but think that

our system of education is partly responsible.

Manual and science teaching need not in any way interfere with instruction

in other subjects. Though so much has been said about the importance of

science and the value of technical instruction, or of hand-training, as I

should prefer to call it, it is unfortunately true that in our system of

education, from the highest schools downward, both of them are sadly

neglected, and the study of language reigns supreme.

This is no new complaint. Ascham, in _The Schoolmaster_, long ago lamented

it; Milton, in his letter to Mr. Samuel Hartlib, complained "that our

children are forced to stick unreasonably in these grammatick flats and

shallows;" and observes that, "though a linguist should pride himself to

have all the tongues Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not

studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he

were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or

tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only;" and Locke said

that "schools fit us for the university rather than for the world."

Commission after commission, committee after committee, have reiterated

the same complaint. How then do we stand now?

I see it indeed constantly stated that, even if the improvement is not so

rapid as could be desired, still we are making considerable progress. But

is this so? I fear not. I fear that our present system does not really

train the mind, or cultivate the power of observation, or even give the

amount of information which we may reasonably expect from the time devoted

to it.

Sir M. E. Grant-Duff has expressed the opinion that a boy or girl of

fourteen might reasonably be expected to "read aloud clearly and

agreeably, to write a large distinct round hand, and to know the ordinary

rules of arithmetic, especially compound addition--a by no means universal

accomplishment; to speak and write French with ease and correctness, and

have some slight acquaintance with French literature; to translate _ad

aperturam libri_ from an ordinary French or German book; to have a

thoroughly good elementary knowledge of geography, under which are

comprehended some notions of astronomy--enough to excite his curiosity; a

knowledge of the very broadest facts of geology and history--enough to

make him understand, in a clear but perfectly general way, how the larger

features of the world he lives in, physical and political, came to be like

what they are; to have been trained from earliest infancy to use his

powers of observation on plants, or animals, or rocks, or other natural

objects; and to have gathered a general acquaintance with what is most

supremely good in that portion of the more important English classics

which is suitable to his time of life; to have some rudimentary

acquaintance with drawing and music."

To effect this, no doubt, "industry must be our oracle, and reason our

Apollo," as Sir T. Browne says; but surely it is no unreasonable estimate;

yet how far do we fall short of it? General culture is often deprecated

because it is said that smatterings are useless. But there is all the

difference in the world between having a smattering of, or being well

grounded in, a subject. It is the latter which we advocate--to try to

know, as Lord Brougham well said, "everything of something, and something

of everything."

"It can hardly," says Sir John Herschel, "be pressed forcibly enough on

the attention of the student of nature, that there is scarcely any natural

phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained, in all its

circumstances, without a union of several, perhaps of all, the sciences."

The present system in most of our public schools and colleges sacrifices

everything else to classics and arithmetic. They are most important

subjects, but ought not to exclude science and modern languages. Moreover,

after all, our sons leave college unable to speak either Latin or Greek,

and too often absolutely without any interest in classical history or

literature. But the boy who has been educated without any training in

science has grave reason to complain of "knowledge to one entrance quite

shut out."

By concentrating the attention, indeed, so much on one or two subjects, we

defeat our own object, and produce a feeling of distaste where we wish to

create an interest.

Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of

book-learning--the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the

memory instead of cultivating the mind. The children in our elementary

schools are wearied by the mechanical act of writing, and the interminable

intricacies of spelling; they are oppressed by columns of dates, by lists

of kings and places, which convey no definite idea to their minds, and

have no near relation to their daily wants and occupations; while in our

public schools the same unfortunate results are produced by the weary

monotony of Latin and Greek grammar. We ought to follow exactly the

opposite course with children--to give them a wholesome variety of mental

food, and endeavor to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their

minds with dry facts. The important thing is not so much that every child

should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.

What does it matter if the pupil know a little more or a little less? A

boy who leaves school knowing much, but hating his lessons, will soon have

forgotten almost all he ever learned; while another who had acquired a

thirst for knowledge, even if he had learned little, would soon teach

himself more than the first ever knew. Children are by nature eager for

information. They are always putting questions. This ought to be

encouraged. In fact, we may to a great extent trust to their instincts,

and in that case they will do much to educate themselves. Too often,

however, the acquirement of knowledge is placed before them in a form so

irksome and fatiguing that all desire for information is choked, or even

crushed out; so that our schools, in fact, become places for the

discouragement of learning, and thus produce the very opposite effect from

that at which we aim. In short, children should be trained to observe and

to think, for in that way there would be opened out to them a source of

the purest enjoyment for leisure hours, and the wisest judgment in the

work of life.

Another point in which I venture to think that our system of education

might be amended, is that it tends at present to give the impression that

everything is known.

Dr. Busby is said to have kept his hat on in the presence of King Charles,

that the boys might see what a great man he was. I doubt, however, whether

the boys were deceived by the hat; and am very skeptical about Dr. Busby's

theory of education.

Master John of Basingstoke, who was Archdeacon of Leicester in 1252,

learned Greek during a visit to Athens, from Constantina, daughter of the

Archbishop of Athens, and used to say afterwards that though he had

studied well and diligently at the University of Paris, yet he learned

more from an Athenian maiden of twenty. We cannot all study so pleasantly

as this, but the main fault I find with Dr. Busby's system is that it

keeps out of sight the great fact of human ignorance.

Boys are given the impression that the masters know everything. If, on the

contrary, the great lesson impressed on them was that what we know is as

nothing to what we do not know, that the "great ocean of truth lies all

undiscovered before us," surely this would prove a great stimulus, and

many would be nobly anxious to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge,

and extend the intellectual kingdom of man. Philosophy, says Aristotle,

begins in wonder, for Iris is the child of Thaumas.

Education ought not to cease when we leave school; but if well begun

there, will continue through life.

Moreover, whatever our occupation or profession in life may be, it is most

desirable to create for ourselves some other special interest. In the

choice of a subject every one should consult his own instincts and

interests, I will not attempt to suggest whether it is better to pursue

art or science; whether we should study the motes in the sunbeam, or the

heavenly bodies themselves. Whatever may be the subject of our choice, we

shall find enough, and more than enough, to repay the devotion of a

lifetime. Life no doubt is paved with enjoyments, but we must all expect

times of anxiety, of suffering, and of sorrow; and when these come it is

an inestimable comfort to have some deep interest which will, at any rate

to some extent, enable us to escape from ourselves.

"A cultivated mind," says Mill--"I do not mean that of a philosopher, but

any mind to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which

has been taught in any tolerable degree to exercise its faculties--will

find sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds it; in the

objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry,

the incidents of history, the ways of mankind, past and present, and their

prospects in the future. It is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to

all this, and that too without having exhausted a thousandth part of it;

but only when one has had from the beginning no moral or human interest in

these things, and has sought in them only the gratification of curiosity."

I have been subjected to some good-natured banter for having said that I

looked forward to a time when our artisans and mechanics would be great

readers. But it is surely not unreasonable to regard our social condition

as susceptible of great improvement. The spread of schools, the cheapness

of books, the establishment of free libraries will, it may be hoped,

exercise a civilizing and ennobling influence. They will even, I believe,

do much to diminish poverty and suffering, so much of which is due to

ignorance and to the want of interest and brightness in uneducated life.

So far as our elementary schools are concerned, there is no doubt much

difficulty in apportioning the National Grant without unduly stimulating

mere mechanical instruction. But this is not the place to discuss the

subject of religious or moral training, or the system of apportioning the

grant.

If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure

to follow.

We should therefore endeavor to educate our children so that every country

walk may be a pleasure; that the discoveries of science may be a living

interest; that our national history and poetry may be sources of

legitimate pride and rational enjoyment. In short, our schools, if they

are to be worthy of the name--if they are to fulfil their high

function--must be something more than mere places of dry study; they must

train the children educated in them so that they may be able to appreciate

and enjoy those intellectual gifts which might be, and ought to be, a

source of interest and of happiness, alike to the high and to the low, to

the rich and to the poor.

A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet

knows, how much he has still to learn; it will enable us to realize that

those who complain of the tiresome monotony of life have only themselves

to blame; and that knowledge is pleasure as well as power. It will lead us

all to try with Milton "to behold the bright countenance of truth in the

quiet and still air of study," and to feel with Bacon that "no pleasure is

comparable is the standing upon the vantage ground of truth."

We should then indeed realize in part, for as yet we cannot do so fully,

the "sacred trusts of health, strength, and time," and how thankful we

ought to be for the inestimable gift of life.

[1] Bacon.

[2] Goethe.

[3] Bacon.

END OF PART I.

THE PLEASURES OF LIFE.

PART II.

PREFACE

"And what is writ is writ--

Would it were worthier."

BYRON.

Herewith I launch the conclusion of my subject. Perhaps I am unwise in

publishing a second part. The first was so kindly received that I am

running a risk in attempting to add to it.

In the preface, however, to the first part I have expressed the hope that

the thoughts and quotations in which I have found most comfort and

delight, might be of use to others also.

In this my most sanguine hopes have been more than realized. Not only has

the book passed through thirteen editions in less than two years, but the

many letters which I have received have been most gratifying.

Two criticisms have been repeated by several of those who have done me the

honor of noticing my previous volume. It has been said in the first place

that my life has been exceptionally bright and full, and that I cannot

therefore judge for others. Nor do I attempt to do so. I do not forget, I

hope I am not ungrateful for, all that has been bestowed on me. But if I

have been greatly favored, ought I not to be on that very account

especially qualified to write on such a theme? Moreover, I have had,--who

has not,--my own sorrows.

Again, some have complained that there is too much quotation--too little

of my own. This I take to be in reality a great compliment. I have not

striven to be original.

If, as I have been assured by many, my book have proved a comfort, and

have been able to cheer in the hour of darkness, that is indeed an ample

reward, and is the utmost I have ever hoped.

HIGH ELMS, DOWN,

KENT, _April 1889_.

CHAPTER I.

AMBITION.

"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

(That last infirmity of noble minds)

To scorn delights and live laborious days."

MILTON.

CHAPTER I.

AMBITION.

If fame be the last infirmity of noble minds, ambition is often the first;

though, when properly directed, it may be no feeble aid to virtue.

Had not my youthful mind, says Cicero, "from many precepts, from many

writings, drunk in this truth, that glory and virtue ought to be the

darling, nay, the only wish in life; that, to attain these, the torments

of the flesh, with the perils of death and exile, are to be despised;

never had I exposed my person in so many encounters, and to these daily

conflicts with the worst of men, for your deliverance. But, on this head,

books are full; the voice of the wise is full; the examples of antiquity

are full: and all these the night of barbarism had still enveloped, had it

not been enlightened by the sun of science."

The poet tells us that

"The many fail: the one succeeds." [1]

But this is scarcely true. All succeed who deserve, though not perhaps as

they hoped. An honorable defeat is better than a mean victory, and no one

is really the worse for being beaten, unless he loses heart. Though we may

not be able to attain, that is no reason why we should not aspire.

I know, says Morris,

"How far high failure overleaps the bound

Of low successes."

And Bacon assures us that "if a man look sharp and attentively he shall

see fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible."

To give ourselves a reasonable prospect of success we must realize what we

hope to achieve; and then make the most of our opportunities. Of these the

use of time is one of the most important. What have we to do with time,

asks Oliver Wendell Holmes, but to fill it up with labor.

"At the battle of Montebello," said Napoleon, "I ordered Kellermann to

attack with 800 horse, and with these he separated the 6000 Hungarian

grenadiers before the very eyes of the Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was

half a league off, and required a quarter of an hour to arrive on the

field of action; and I have observed that it is always these quarters of

an hour that decide the fate of a battle," including, we may add, the

battle of life.

Nor must we spare ourselves in other ways, for

"He who thinks in strife

To earn a deathless fame, must do, nor ever care for life." [2]

In the excitement of the struggle, moreover, he will suffer comparatively

little from wounds and blows which would otherwise cause intense

suffering.

It is well to weigh scrupulously the object in view, to run as little risk

as may be, to count the cost with care.

But when the mind is once made up, there must be no looking back, you must

spare yourself no labor, nor shrink from danger.

"He either fears his fate too much

Or his deserts are small,

That dares not put it to the touch

To gain or lose it all." [3]

Glory, says Renan, "is after all the thing which has the best chance of

not being altogether vanity." But what is glory?

Marcus Aurelius observes that "a spider is proud when it has caught a fly,

a man when he has caught a hare, another when he has taken a little fish

in a net, another when he has taken wild boars, another when he has taken

bears, and another when he has taken Sarmatians;" [4] but this, if from

one point of view it shows the vanity of fame, also encourages us with the

evidence that every one may succeed if his objects are but reasonable.

Alexander may be taken as almost a type of Ambition in its usual form,

though carried to an extreme.

His desire was to conquer, not to inherit or to rule. When news was

brought that his father Philip had taken some town, or won some battle,

instead of appearing delighted with it, he used to say to his companions,

"My father will go on conquering, till there be nothing extraordinary left

for you and me to do." [5] He is said even to have been mortified at the

number of the stars, considering that he had not been able to conquer one

world. Such ambition is justly foredoomed to disappointment.

The remarks of Philosophers on the vanity of ambition refer generally to

that unworthy form of which Alexander may be taken as the type--the idea

of self-exaltation, not only without any reference to the happiness, but

even regardless of the sufferings, of others.

"A continual and restless search after fortune," says Bacon, "takes up too

much of their time who have nobler things to observe." Indeed he elsewhere

extends this, and adds, "No man's private fortune can be an end any way

worthy of his existence."

Goethe well observes that man "exists for culture; not for what he can

accomplish, but for what can be accomplished in him." [6]

As regards fame we must not confuse name and essence. To be remembered is

not necessarily to be famous. There is infamy as well as fame; and

unhappily almost as many are remembered for the one as for the other, and

not a few for the mixture of both.

Who would not rather be forgotten, than recollected as Ahab or Jezebel,

Nero or Commodus, Messalina or Heliogabalus, King John or Richard III.?

"To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The

Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name than Herodias with

one; and who would not rather have been the good thief than Pilate?" [7]

Kings and Generals are often remembered as much for their deaths as for

their lives, for their misfortunes as for their successes. The Hero of

Thermopylae was Leonidas, not Xerxes. Alexander's Empire fell to pieces at

his death. Napoleon was a great genius, though no Hero. But what came of

all his victories? They passed away like the smoke of his guns, and he

left France weaker, poorer, and smaller than he found her. The most

lasting result of his genius is no military glory, but the Code Napoléon.

A surer and more glorious title to fame is that of those who are

remembered for some act of justice or self-devotion: the self-sacrifice of

Leonidas, the good faith of Regulus, are the glories of history.

In some cases where men have been called after places, the men are

remembered, while the places are forgotten. When we speak of Palestrina or

Perugino, of Nelson or Wellington, of Newton or Darwin, who remembers the

towns? We think only of the men.

Goethe has been called the soul of his century.

It is true that we have but meagre biographies of Shakespeare or of Plato;

yet how much we know about them.

Statesmen and Generals enjoy great celebrity during their lives. The

newspapers chronicle every word and movement. But the fame of the

Philosopher and Poet is more enduring.

Wordsworth deprecates monuments to Poets, with some exceptions, on this

very account. The case of Statesmen, he says, is different. It is right to

commemorate them because they might otherwise be forgotten; but Poets live

in their books forever.

The real conquerors of the world indeed are not the generals but the

thinkers; not Genghis Khan and Akbar, Rameses, or Alexander, but Confucius

and Buddha, Aristotle, Plato, and Christ. The rulers and kings who reigned

over our ancestors have for the most part long since sunk into

oblivion--they are forgotten for want of some sacred bard to give them

life--or are remembered, like Suddhodana and Pilate, from their

association with higher spirits.

Such men's lives cannot be compressed into any biography. They lived not

merely in their own generation, but for all time. When we speak of the

Elizabethan period we think of Shakespeare and Bacon, Raleigh and Spenser.

The ministers and secretaries of state, with one or two exceptions, we

scarcely remember, and Bacon himself is recollected less as the Judge than

as the Philosopher.

Moreover, to what do Generals and Statesmen owe their fame? They were

celebrated for their deeds, but to the Poet and the Historian they owe

their fame, and to the Poet and Historian we owe their glorious memories

and the example of their virtues.

"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona

Multi; sed omnes illacrimabiles

Urgentur ignotique longâ

Nocte, carent quia vate sacro."

There were many brave men before Agamemnon, but their memory has perished

because they were celebrated by no divine Bard. Montrose happily combined

the two, when in "My dear and only love" he promises,

"I'll make thee glorious by my pen,

And famous by my sword."

It is remarkable, and encouraging, how many of the greatest men have risen

from the lowest rank, and triumphed over obstacles which might well have

seemed insurmountable; nay, even obscurity itself may be a source of

honor. The very doubts as to Homer's birthplace have contributed to this

glory, seven cities as we all know laying claim to the great poet--

"Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodos, Argos, Athenae."

To take men of Science only. Ray was the son of a blacksmith, Watt of a

shipwright, Franklin of a tallow-chandler, Dalton of a handloom weaver,

Fraünhofer of a glazier, Laplace of a farmer, Linnaeus of a poor curate,

Faraday of a blacksmith, Lamarck of a banker's clerk; Davy was an

apothecary's assistant, Galileo, Kepler, Sprengel, Cuvier, and Sir W.

Herschel were all children of very poor parents.

It is, on the other hand, sad to think how many of our greatest

benefactors are unknown even by name. Who discovered the art of procuring

fire? Prometheus is merely the personification of forethought. Who

invented letters? Cadmus is a mere name.

These inventions, indeed, are lost in the mists of antiquity, but even as

regards recent progress the steps are often so gradual, and so numerous,

that few inventions can be attributed entirely, or even mainly, to any one

person.

Columbus is said, and truly said, to have discovered America, though the

Northmen were there before him.

We Englishmen have every reason to be proud of our fellow-countrymen. To

take Philosophers and men of Science only, Bacon and Hobbes' Locke and

Berkeley, Hume and Hamilton, will always be associated with the progress

of human thought; Newton with gravitation, Adam Smith with Political

Economy, Young with the undulatory theory of light, Herschel with the

discovery of Uranus and the study of the star depths, Lord Worcester,

Trevethick, and Watt with the steam-engine, Wheatstone with the electric

telegraph, Jenner with the banishment of smallpox, Simpson with the

practical application of anaesthetics, and Darwin with the creation of

modern Natural History.

These men, and such as these, have made our history and moulded our

opinions; and though during life they may have occupied, comparatively, an

insignificant space in the eyes of their countrymen, they became at length

an irresistible power, and have now justly grown to a glorious memory.

[1] Tennyson.

[2] Beowulf.

[3] Montrose.

[4] He is referring here to one of his expeditions.

[5] Plutarch.

[6] Emerson.

[7] Sir J. Browne.

CHAPTER II.

WEALTH.

"The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of

them all."--PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.

CHAPTER II.

WEALTH.

Ambition often takes the form of a love of money. There are many who have

never attempted Art or Music, Poetry or Science; but most people do

something for a livelihood, and consequently an increase of income is not

only acceptable in itself, but gives a pleasant feeling of success.

Doubt is often expressed whether wealth is any advantage. I do not myself

believe that those who are born, as the saying is, with a silver spoon in

their mouth, are necessarily any the happier for it. No doubt wealth

entails almost more labor than poverty, and certainly more anxiety. Still

it must, I think, be confessed that the possession of an income, whatever

it may be, which increases somewhat as the years roll on, does add to the

comfort of life.

Unquestionably the possession of wealth is by no means unattended by

drawbacks. Money and the love of money often go together. The poor man, as

Emerson says, is the man who wishes to be rich; and the more a man has,

the more he often longs to be richer. Just as drinking often does but

increase thirst; so in many cases the craving for riches does grow with

wealth.

This is, of course, especially the case when money is sought for its own

sake. Moreover, it is often easier to make money than to keep or to enjoy

it. Keeping it is dull and anxious drudgery. The dread of loss may hang

like a dark cloud over life. Apicius, when he squandered most of his

patrimony, but had still 250,000 crowns left, committed suicide, as Seneca

tells us, for fear he should die of hunger.

Wealth is certainly no sinecure. Moreover, the value of money depends

partly on knowing what to do with it, partly on the manner in which it is

acquired.

"Acquire money, thy friends say, that we also may have some. If I can

acquire money and also keep myself modest, and faithful, and magnanimous,

point out the way, and I will acquire it. But if you ask me to love the

things which are good and my own, in order that you may gain things that

are not good, see how unfair and unwise you are. For which would you

rather have? Money, or a faithful and modest friend....

"What hinders a man, who has clearly comprehended these things, from

living with a light heart, and bearing easily the reins, quietly expecting

everything which can happen, and enduring that which has already happened?

Would you have me to bear poverty? Come, and you will know what poverty is

when it has found one who can act well the part of a poor man." [1]

We must bear in mind Solon's answer to Croesus, "Sir, if any other come

that hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this gold."

Midas is another case in point. He prayed that everything he touched might

be turned into gold, and this prayer was granted. His wine turned to gold,

his bread turned to gold, his clothes, his very bed.

"Attonitus novitate mali, divesque miserque,

Effugere optat opes, et quae modo voverat, odit."

He is by no means the only man who has suffered from too much gold.

The real truth I take to be that wealth is not necessarily an advantage,

but that whether it is so or not depends on the use we make of it. The

same, however, might be said of most other opportunities and privileges;

Knowledge and Strength, Beauty and Skill, may all be abused; if we neglect

or misuse them we are worse off than if we had never had them. Wealth is

only a disadvantage in the hands of those who do not know how to use it.

It gives the command of so many other things--leisure, the power of

helping friends, books, works of art, opportunities and means of travel.

It would, however, be easy to exaggerate the advantages of money. It is

well worth having, and worth working for, but it does not requite too

great a sacrifice; not indeed so great as is often offered up to it. A

wise proverb tells us that gold may be bought too dear. If wealth is to be

valued because it gives leisure, clearly it would be a mistake to

sacrifice leisure in the struggle for wealth. Money has no doubt also a

tendency to make men poor in spirit. But, on the other hand, what gift is

there which is without danger?

Euripides said that money finds friends for men, and has great (he said

the greatest) power among Mankind, cynically adding, "A mighty person

indeed is a rich man, especially if his heir be unknown."

Bossuet tells us that "he had no attachment to riches, still if he had

only what was barely necessary, he felt himself narrowed, and would lose

more than half his talents."

Shelley was certainly not an avaricious man, and yet "I desire money," he

said, "because I think I know the use of it. It commands labor, it gives

leisure; and to give leisure to those who will employ it in the forwarding

of truth is the noblest present an individual can make to the whole."

Many will have felt with Pepys when he quaintly and piously says, "Abroad

with my wife, the first time that ever I rode in my own coach; which do

make my heart rejoice and praise God, and pray him to bless it to me, and

continue it."

This, indeed, was a somewhat selfish satisfaction. Yet the merchant need

not quit nor be ashamed of his profession, bearing in mind only the

inscription on the Church of St. Giacomo de Rialto at Venice: "Around this

temple let the merchant's law be just, his weight true, and his covenants

faithful." [2]

If life has been sacrificed to the rolling up of money for its own sake,

the very means by which it was acquired will prevent its being enjoyed;

the chill of poverty will have entered into the very bones. The term Miser

was happily chosen for such persons; they are essentially miserable.

"A collector peeps into all the picture shops of Europe for a landscape of

Poussin, a crayon sketch of Salvator; but the Transfiguration, the Last

Judgment, the Communion of St. Jerome, and what are as transcendent as

these, are on the walls of the Vatican, the Uffizi, or the Louvre, where

every footman may see them: to say nothing of Nature's pictures in every

street, of sunsets and sunrises every day, and the sculpture of the human

body never absent. A collector recently bought at public auction in

London, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of

Shakespeare: but for nothing a schoolboy can read Hamlet, and can detect

secrets of highest concernment yet unpublished therein." [3] And yet

"What hath the owner but the sight of it with his eyes." [4]

We are really richer than we think. We often hear of Earth hunger. People

envy a great Landlord, and fancy how delightful it must be to possess a

large estate. But, as Emerson says, "if you own land, the land owns you."

Moreover, have we not all, in a better sense--have we not all thousands of

acres of our own? The commons, and roads, and footpaths, and the seashore,

our grand and varied coast--these are all ours. The sea-coast has,

moreover, two great advantages. In the first place, it is for the most

part but little interfered with by man, and in the second it exhibits most

instructively the forces of Nature. We are all great landed proprietors,

if we only knew it. What we lack is not land, but the power to enjoy it.

Moreover, this great inheritance has the additional advantage that it

entails no labor, requires no management. The landlord has the trouble,

but the landscape belongs to every one who has eyes to see it. Thus

Kingsley called the heaths round Eversley his "winter garden;" not because

they were his in the eye of the law, but in that higher sense in which ten

thousand persons may own the same thing.

[1] Epictetus.

[2] Ruskin.

[3] Emerson.

[4] Solomon.

CHAPTER III.

HEALTH.

"Health is best for mortal man; next beauty; thirdly, well gotten

wealth; fourthly, the pleasures of youth among friends."

SIMONIDES.

CHAPTER III

HEALTH.

But if there has been some difference of opinion as to the advantage of

wealth, with reference to health all are agreed.

"Health," said Simonides long ago, "is best for mortal man; next beauty;

thirdly, well gotten wealth; fourthly, the pleasure of youth among

friends." "Life," says Longfellow, "without health is a burden, with

health is a joy and gladness." Empedocles delivered the people of Selinus

from a pestilence by draining a marsh, and was hailed as a Demigod. We are

told that a coin was struck in his honor, representing the Philosopher in

the act of staying the hand of Phoebus.

We scarcely realize, I think, how much we owe to Doctors. Our system of

Medicine seems so natural and obvious that it hardly occurs to us as

somewhat new and exceptional. When we are ill we send for a Physician; he

prescribes some medicine; we take it, and pay his fee. But among the lower

races of men pain and illness are often attributed to the presence of evil

spirits. The Medicine Man is a Priest, or rather a Sorcerer, more than a

true Doctor, and his effort is to exorcise the evil spirit.

In other countries where some advance has been made, a charm is written on

a board, washed off, and drunk. In some cases the medicine is taken, not

by the patient, but by the Doctor. Such a system, however, is generally

transient; it is naturally discouraged by the Profession, and is indeed

incompatible with a large practice. Even as regards the payment we find

very different systems. The Chinese pay their medical man as long as they

are well, and stop his salary as soon as they are ill. In ancient Egypt we

are told that the patient feed the Doctor for the first few days, after

which the Doctor paid the patient until he made him well. This is a

fascinating system, but might afford too much temptation to heroic

remedies.

On the whole our plan seems the best, though it does not offer adequate

encouragement to discovery and research. We do not appreciate how much we

owe to the discoveries of such men as Hunter and Jenner, Simpson and

Lister. And yet in the matter of health we can generally do more for

ourselves than the greatest Doctors can for us.

But if all are agreed as to the blessing of health, there are many who

will not take the little trouble, or submit to the slight sacrifices,

necessary to maintain it. Many, indeed, deliberately ruin their own

health, and incur the certainty of an early grave, or an old age of

suffering.

No doubt some inherit a constitution which renders health almost

unattainable. Pope spoke of that long disease, his life. Many indeed may

say, "I suffer, therefore I am." But happily these cases are exceptional.

Most of us might be well, if we would. It is very much our own fault that

we are ill. We do those things which we ought not to do, and we leave

undone those things which we ought to have done, and then we wonder there

is no health in us.

We all know that we can make ourselves ill, but few perhaps realize how

much we can do to keep ourselves well. Much of our suffering is

self-inflicted. It has been observed that among the ancient Egyptians the

chief aim of life seemed to be to be well buried. Many, however, live even

now as if this were the principal object of their existence.

Like Naaman, we expect our health to be the subject of some miraculous

interference, and neglect the homely precautions by which it might be

secured.

I am inclined to doubt whether the study of health is sufficiently

impressed on the minds of those entering life. Not that it is desirable to

potter over minor ailments, to con over books on illnesses, or experiment

on ourselves with medicine. Far from it. The less we fancy ourselves ill,

or bother about little bodily discomforts, the more likely perhaps we are

to preserve our health.

It is, however, a different matter to study the general conditions of

health. A well-known proverb tells us that every one is a fool or a

physician at forty. Unfortunately, however, many persons are invalids at

forty as well as physicians.

Ill-health, however, is no excuse for moroseness. If we have one disease

we may at least congratulate ourselves that we are escaping all the rest.

Sydney Smith, ever ready to look on the bright side of things, once, when

borne down by suffering, wrote to a friend that he had gout, asthma, and

seven other maladies, but was "otherwise very well;" and many of the

greatest invalids have borne their sufferings with cheerfulness and good

spirits.

It is said that the celebrated physiognomist, Campanella, could so

abstract his attention from any sufferings of his body, that he was even

able to endure the rack without much pain; and whoever has the power of

concentrating his attention and controlling his will, can emancipate

himself from most of the minor miseries of life. He may have much cause

for anxiety, his body may be the seat of severe suffering, and yet his

mind will remain serene and unaffected; he may triumph over care and pain.

But many have undergone much unnecessary suffering, and valuable lives

have often been lost, through ignorance or carelessness. We cannot but

fancy that the lives of many great men might have been much prolonged by

the exercise of a little ordinary care.

If we take musicians only, what a grievous loss to the world it is that

Pergolesi should have died at twenty-six, Schubert at thirty-one, Mozart

at thirty-five, Purcell at thirty-seven, and Mendelssohn at thirty-eight.