EXAMPLE—MODELS.
“Ever their phantoms rise before us,
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood;
By bed and table they lord it o’er us,
With looks of beauty and words of good.”—_John Sterling_.
“Children may be strangled, but Deeds never; they have an
indestructible life, both in and out of our consciousness.”—_George
Eliot_.
“There is no action of man in this life, which is not the beginning
of so long a chain of consequences, as that no human providence is
high enough to give us a prospect to the end.”—_Thomas of
Malmesbury_.
EXAMPLE is one of the most potent of instructors, though it teaches
without a tongue. It is the practical school of mankind, working by
action, which is always more forcible than words. Precept may point to
us the way, but it is silent continuous example, conveyed to us by
habits, and living with us in fact, that carries us along. Good advice
has its weight: but without the accompaniment of a good example it is of
comparatively small influence; and it will be found that the common
saying of “Do as I say, not as I do,” is usually reversed in the actual
experience of life.
All persons are more or less apt to learn through the eye rather than the
ear; and, whatever is seen in fact, makes a far deeper impression than
anything that is merely read or heard. This is especially the case in
early youth, when the eye is the chief inlet of knowledge. Whatever
children see they unconsciously imitate. They insensibly come to
resemble those who are about them—as insects take the colour of the
leaves they feed on. Hence the vast importance of domestic training.
For whatever may be the efficiency of schools, the examples set in our
Homes must always be of vastly greater influence in forming the
characters of our future men and women. The Home is the crystal of
society—the nucleus of national character; and from that source, be it
pure or tainted, issue the habits, principles and maxims, which govern
public as well as private life. The nation comes from the nursery.
Public opinion itself is for the most part the outgrowth of the home; and
the best philanthropy comes from the fireside. “To love the little
platoon we belong to in society,” says Burke, “is the germ of all public
affections.” From this little central spot, the human sympathies may
extend in an ever widening circle, until the world is embraced; for,
though true philanthropy, like charity, begins at home, assuredly it does
not end there.
Example in conduct, therefore, even in apparently trivial matters, is of
no light moment, inasmuch as it is constantly becoming inwoven with the
lives of others, and contributing to form their natures for better or for
worse. The characters of parents are thus constantly repeated in their
children; and the acts of affection, discipline, industry, and
self-control, which they daily exemplify, live and act when all else
which may have been learned through the ear has long been forgotten.
Hence a wise man was accustomed to speak of his children as his “future
state.” Even the mute action and unconscious look of a parent may give a
stamp to the character which is never effaced; and who can tell how much
evil act has been stayed by the thought of some good parent, whose memory
their children may not sully by the commission of an unworthy deed, or
the indulgence of an impure thought? The veriest trifles thus become of
importance in influencing the characters of men. “A kiss from my
mother,” said West, “made me a painter.” It is on the direction of such
seeming trifles when children that the future happiness and success of
men mainly depend. Fowell Buxton, when occupying an eminent and
influential station in life, wrote to his mother, “I constantly feel,
especially in action and exertion for others, the effects of principles
early implanted by you in my mind.” Buxton was also accustomed to
remember with gratitude the obligations which he owed to an illiterate
man, a gamekeeper, named Abraham Plastow, with whom he played, and rode,
and sported—a man who could neither read nor write, but was full of
natural good sense and mother-wit. “What made him particularly
valuable,” says Buxton, “were his principles of integrity and honour. He
never said or did a thing in the absence of my mother of which she would
have disapproved. He always held up the highest standard of integrity,
and filled our youthful minds with sentiments as pure and as generous as
could be found in the writings of Seneca or Cicero. Such was my first
instructor, and, I must add, my best.”
Lord Langdale, looking back upon the admirable example set him by his
mother, declared, “If the whole world were put into one scale, and my
mother into the other, the world would kick the beam.” Mrs. Schimmel
Penninck, in her old age, was accustomed to call to mind the personal
influence exercised by her mother upon the society amidst which she
moved. When she entered a room it had the effect of immediately raising
the tone of the conversation, and as if purifying the moral
atmosphere—all seeming to breathe more freely, and stand more erectly.
“In her presence,” says the daughter, “I became for the time transformed
into another person.” So much does she moral health depend upon the
moral atmosphere that is breathed, and so great is the influence daily
exercised by parents over their children by living a life before their
eyes, that perhaps the best system of parental instruction might be
summed up in these two words: “Improve thyself.”
There is something solemn and awful in the thought that there is not an
act done or a word uttered by a human being but carries with it a train
of consequences, the end of which we may never trace. Not one but, to a
certain extent, gives a colour to our life, and insensibly influences the
lives of those about us. The good deed or word will live, even though we
may not see it fructify, but so will the bad; and no person is so
insignificant as to be sure that his example will not do good on the one
hand, or evil on the other. The spirits of men do not die: they still
live and walk abroad among us. It was a fine and a true thought uttered
by Mr. Disraeli in the House of Commons on the death of Richard Cobden,
that “he was one of those men who, though not present, were still members
of that House, who were independent of dissolutions, of the caprices of
constituencies, and even of the course of time.”
There is, indeed, an essence of immortality in the life of man, even in
this world. No individual in the universe stands alone; he is a
component part of a system of mutual dependencies; and by his several
acts he either increases or diminishes the sum of human good now and for
ever. As the present is rooted in the past, and the lives and examples
of our forefathers still to a great extent influence us, so are we by our
daily acts contributing to form the condition and character of the
future. Man is a fruit formed and ripened by the culture of all the
foregoing centuries; and the living generation continues the magnetic
current of action and example destined to bind the remotest past with the
most distant future. No man’s acts die utterly; and though his body may
resolve into dust and air, his good or his bad deeds will still be
bringing forth fruit after their kind, and influencing future generations
for all time to come. It is in this momentous and solemn fact that the
great peril and responsibility of human existence lies.
Mr. Babbage has so powerfully expressed this idea in a noble passage in
one of his writings that we here venture to quote his words: “Every
atom,” he says, “impressed with good or ill, retains at once the motions
which philosophers and sages have imparted to it, mixed and combined in
ten thousand ways with all that is worthless and base; the air itself is
one vast library, on whose pages are written _for ever_ all that man has
ever said or whispered. There, in their immutable but unerring
characters, mixed with the earliest as well as the latest sighs of
mortality, stand for ever recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled;
perpetuating, in the united movements of each particle, the testimony of
man’s changeful will. But, if the air we breathe is the never-failing
historian of the sentiments we have uttered, earth, air, and ocean, are,
in like manner, the eternal witnesses of the acts we have done; the same
principle of the equality of action and reaction applies to them. No
motion impressed by natural causes, or by human agency, is ever
obliterated. . . . If the Almighty stamped on the brow of the first
murderer the indelible and visible mark of his guilt, He has also
established laws by which every succeeding criminal is not less
irrevocably chained to the testimony of his crime; for every atom of his
mortal frame, through whatever changes its severed particles may migrate,
will still retain adhering to it, through every combination, some
movement derived from that very muscular effort by which the crime itself
was perpetrated.”
Thus, every act we do or word we utter, as well as every act we witness
or word we hear, carries with it an influence which extends over, and
gives a colour, not only to the whole of our future life, but makes
itself felt upon the whole frame of society. We may not, and indeed
cannot, possibly, trace the influence working itself into action in its
various ramifications amongst our children, our friends, or associates;
yet there it is assuredly, working on for ever. And herein lies the
great significance of setting forth a good example,—a silent teaching
which even the poorest and least significant person can practise in his
daily life. There is no one so humble, but that he owes to others this
simple but priceless instruction. Even the meanest condition may thus be
made useful; for the light set in a low place shines as faithfully as
that set upon a hill. Everywhere, and under almost all circumstances,
however externally adverse—in moorland shielings, in cottage hamlets, in
the close alleys of great towns—the true man may grow. He who tills a
space of earth scarce bigger than is needed for his grave, may work as
faithfully, and to as good purpose, as the heir to thousands. The
commonest workshop may thus be a school of industry, science, and good
morals, on the one hand; or of idleness, folly, and depravity, on the
other. It all depends on the individual men, and the use they make of
the opportunities for good which offer themselves.
A life well spent, a character uprightly sustained, is no slight legacy
to leave to one’s children, and to the world; for it is the most eloquent
lesson of virtue and the severest reproof of vice, while it continues an
enduring source of the best kind of riches. Well for those who can say,
as Pope did, in rejoinder to the sarcasm of Lord Hervey, “I think it
enough that my parents, such as they were, never cost me a blush, and
that their son, such as he is, never cost them a tear.”
It is not enough to tell others what they are to do, but to exhibit the
actual example of doing. What Mrs. Chisholm described to Mrs. Stowe as
the secret of her success, applies to all life. “I found,” she said,
“that if we want anything _done_, we must go to work and _do_: it is of
no use merely to talk—none whatever.” It is poor eloquence that only
shows how a person can talk. Had Mrs. Chisholm rested satisfied with
lecturing, her project, she was persuaded, would never have got beyond
the region of talk; but when people saw what she was doing and had
actually accomplished, they fell in with her views and came forward to
help her. Hence the most beneficent worker is not he who says the most
eloquent things, or even who thinks the most loftily, but he who does the
most eloquent acts.
True-hearted persons, even in the humblest station in life, who are
energetic doers, may thus give an impulse to good works out of all
proportion, apparently, to their actual station in society. Thomas
Wright might have talked about the reclamation of criminals, and John
Pounds about the necessity for Ragged Schools, and yet done nothing;
instead of which they simply set to work without any other idea in their
minds than that of doing, not talking. And how the example of even the
poorest man may tell upon society, hear what Dr. Guthrie, the apostle of
the Ragged School movement, says of the influence which the example of
John Pounds, the humble Portsmouth cobbler, exercised upon his own
working career:—
“The interest I have been led to take in this cause is an example of how,
in Providence, a man’s destiny—his course of life, like that of a
river—may be determined and affected by very trivial circumstances. It
is rather curious—at least it is interesting to me to remember—that it
was by a picture I was first led to take an interest in ragged schools—by
a picture in an old, obscure, decaying burgh that stands on the shores of
the Frith of Forth, the birthplace of Thomas Chalmers. I went to see
this place many years ago; and, going into an inn for refreshment, I
found the room covered with pictures of shepherdesses with their crooks,
and sailors in holiday attire, not particularly interesting. But above
the chimney-piece there was a large print, more respectable than its
neighbours, which represented a cobbler’s room. The cobbler was there
himself, spectacles on nose, an old shoe between his knees—the massive
forehead and firm mouth indicating great determination of character, and,
beneath his bushy eyebrows, benevolence gleamed out on a number of poor
ragged boys and girls who stood at their lessons round the busy cobbler.
My curiosity was awakened; and in the inscription I read how this man,
John Pounds, a cobbler in Portsmouth, taking pity on the multitude of
poor ragged children left by ministers and magistrates, and ladies and
gentlemen, to go to ruin on the streets—how, like a good shepherd, he
gathered in these wretched outcasts—how he had trained them to God and to
the world—and how, while earning his daily bread by the sweat of his
brow, he had rescued from misery and saved to society not less than five
hundred of these children. I felt ashamed of myself. I felt reproved
for the little I had done. My feelings were touched. I was astonished
at this man’s achievements; and I well remember, in the enthusiasm of the
moment, saying to my companion (and I have seen in my cooler and calmer
moments no reason for unsaying the saying)—‘That man is an honour to
humanity, and deserves the tallest monument ever raised within the shores
of Britain.’ I took up that man’s history, and I found it animated by
the spirit of Him who ‘had compassion on the multitude.’ John Pounds was
a clever man besides; and, like Paul, if he could not win a poor boy any
other way, he won him by art. He would be seen chasing a ragged boy
along the quays, and compelling him to come to school, not by the power
of a policeman, but by the power of a hot potato. He knew the love an
Irishman had for a potato; and John Pounds might be seen running holding
under the boy’s nose a potato, like an Irishman, very hot, and with a
coat as ragged as himself. When the day comes when honour will be done
to whom honour is due, I can fancy the crowd of those whose fame poets
have sung, and to whose memory monuments have been raised, dividing like
the wave, and, passing the great, and the noble, and the mighty of the
land, this poor, obscure old man stepping forward and receiving the
especial notice of Him who said ‘Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the
least of these, ye did it also to Me.’”
The education of character is very much a question of models; we mould
ourselves so unconsciously after the characters, manners, habits, and
opinions of those who are about us. Good rules may do much, but good
models far more; for in the latter we have instruction in action—wisdom
at work. Good admonition and bad example only build with one hand to
pull down with the other. Hence the vast importance of exercising great
care in the selection of companions, especially in youth. There is a
magnetic affinity in young persons which insensibly tends to assimilate
them to each other’s likeness. Mr. Edgeworth was so strongly convinced
that from sympathy they involuntarily imitated or caught the tone of the
company they frequented, that he held it to be of the most essential
importance that they should be taught to select the very best models.
“No company, or good company,” was his motto. Lord Collingwood, writing
to a young friend, said, “Hold it as a maxim that you had better be alone
than in mean company. Let your companions be such as yourself, or
superior; for the worth of a man will always be ruled by that of his
company.” It was a remark of the famous Dr. Sydenham that everybody some
time or other would be the better or the worse for having but spoken to a
good or a bad man. As Sir Peter Lely made it a rule never to look at a
bad picture if he could help it, believing that whenever he did so his
pencil caught a taint from it, so, whoever chooses to gaze often upon a
debased specimen of humanity and to frequent his society, cannot help
gradually assimilating himself to that sort of model.
It is therefore advisable for young men to seek the fellowship of the
good, and always to aim at a higher standard than themselves. Francis
Horner, speaking of the advantages to himself of direct personal
intercourse with high-minded, intelligent men, said, “I cannot hesitate
to decide that I have derived more intellectual improvement from them
than from all the books I have turned over.” Lord Shelburne (afterwards
Marquis of Lansdowne), when a young man, paid a visit to the venerable
Malesherbes, and was so much impressed by it, that he said,—“I have
travelled much, but I have never been so influenced by personal contact
with any man; and if I ever accomplish any good in the course of my life,
I am certain that the recollection of M. de Malesherbes will animate my
soul.” So Fowell Buxton was always ready to acknowledge the powerful
influence exercised upon the formation of his character in early life by
the example of the Gurney family: “It has given a colour to my life,” he
used to say. Speaking of his success at the Dublin University, he
confessed, “I can ascribe it to nothing but my Earlham visits.” It was
from the Gurneys he “caught the infection” of self-improvement.
Contact with the good never fails to impart good, and we carry away with
us some of the blessing, as travellers’ garments retain the odour of the
flowers and shrubs through which they have passed. Those who knew the
late John Sterling intimately, have spoken of the beneficial influence
which he exercised on all with whom he came into personal contact. Many
owed to him their first awakening to a higher being; from him they learnt
what they were, and what they ought to be. Mr. Trench says of him:—“It
was impossible to come in contact with his noble nature without feeling
one’s self in some measure _ennobled_ and _lifted up_, as I ever felt
when I left him, into a higher region of objects and aims than that in
which one is tempted habitually to dwell.” It is thus that the noble
character always acts; we become insensibly elevated by him, and cannot
help feeling as he does and acquiring the habit of looking at things in
the same light. Such is the magical action and reaction of minds upon
each other.
Artists, also, feel themselves elevated by contact with artists greater
than themselves. Thus Haydn’s genius was first fired by Handel. Hearing
him play, Haydn’s ardour for musical composition was at once excited, and
but for this circumstance, he himself believed that he would never have
written the ‘Creation.’ Speaking of Handel, he said, “When he chooses,
he strikes like the thunderbolt;” and at another time, “There is not a
note of him but draws blood.” Scarlatti was another of Handel’s ardent
admirers, following him all over Italy; afterwards, when speaking of the
great master, he would cross himself in token of admiration. True
artists never fail generously to recognise each other’s greatness. Thus
Beethoven’s admiration for Cherubini was regal: and he ardently hailed
the genius of Schubert: “Truly,” said he, “in Schubert dwells a divine
fire.” When Northcote was a mere youth he had such an admiration for
Reynolds that, when the great painter was once attending a public meeting
down in Devonshire, the boy pushed through the crowd, and got so near
Reynolds as to touch the skirt of his coat, “which I did,” says
Northcote, “with great satisfaction to my mind,”—a true touch of youthful
enthusiasm in its admiration of genius.
The example of the brave is an inspiration to the timid, their presence
thrilling through every fibre. Hence the miracles of valour so often
performed by ordinary men under the leadership of the heroic. The very
recollection of the deeds of the valiant stirs men’s blood like the sound
of a trumpet. Ziska bequeathed his skin to be used as a drum to inspire
the valour of the Bohemians. When Scanderbeg, prince of Epirus, was
dead, the Turks wished to possess his bones, that each might wear a piece
next his heart, hoping thus to secure some portion of the courage he had
displayed while living, and which they had so often experienced in
battle. When the gallant Douglas, bearing the heart of Bruce to the Holy
Land, saw one of his knights surrounded and sorely pressed by the
Saracens, he took from his neck the silver case containing the hero’s
bequest, and throwing it amidst the thickest press of his foes, cried,
“Pass first in fight, as thou wert wont to do, and Douglas will follow
thee, or die;” and so saying, he rushed forward to the place where it
fell, and was there slain.
The chief use of biography consists in the noble models of character in
which it abounds. Our great forefathers still live among us in the
records of their lives, as well as in the acts they have done, which live
also; still sit by us at table, and hold us by the hand; furnishing
examples for our benefit, which we may still study, admire and imitate.
Indeed, whoever has left behind him the record of a noble life, has
bequeathed to posterity an enduring source of good, for it serves as a
model for others to form themselves by in all time to come; still
breathing fresh life into men, helping them to reproduce his life anew,
and to illustrate his character in other forms. Hence a book containing
the life of a true man is full of precious seed. It is a still living
voice; it is an intellect. To use Milton’s words, “it is the precious
life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a
life beyond life.” Such a book never ceases to exercise an elevating and
ennobling influence. But, above all, there is the Book containing the
very highest Example set before us to shape our lives by in this
world—the most suitable for all the necessities of our mind and heart—an
example which we can only follow afar off and feel after,
“Like plants or vines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him.”
Again, no young man can rise from the perusal of such lives as those of
Buxton and Arnold, without feeling his mind and heart made better, and
his best resolves invigorated. Such biographies increase a man’s
self-reliance by demonstrating what men can be, and what they can do;
fortifying his hopes and elevating his aims in life. Sometimes a young
man discovers himself in a biography, as Correggio felt within him the
risings of genius on contemplating the works of Michael Angelo: “And I
too, am a painter,” he exclaimed. Sir Samuel Romilly, in his
autobiography, confessed himself to have been powerfully influenced by
the life of the great and noble-minded French Chancellor Daguesseau:—“The
works of Thomas,” says he, “had fallen into my hands, and I had read with
admiration his ‘Eloge of Daguesseau;’ and the career of honour which he
represented that illustrious magistrate to have run, excited to a great
degree my ardour and ambition, and opened to my imagination new paths of
glory.”
Franklin was accustomed to attribute his usefulness and eminence to his
having early read Cotton Mather’s ‘Essays to do Good’—a book which grew
out of Mather’s own life. And see how good example draws other men after
it, and propagates itself through future generations in all lands. For
Samuel Drew avers that he framed his own life, and especially his
business habits, after the model left on record by Benjamin Franklin.
Thus it is impossible to say where a good example may not reach, or where
it will end, if indeed it have an end. Hence the advantage, in
literature as in life, of keeping the best society, reading the best
books, and wisely admiring and imitating the best things we find in them.
“In literature,” said Lord Dudley, “I am fond of confining myself to the
best company, which consists chiefly of my old acquaintance, with whom I
am desirous of becoming more intimate; and I suspect that nine times out
of ten it is more profitable, if not more agreeable, to read an old book
over again, than to read a new one for the first time.”
Sometimes a book containing a noble exemplar of life, taken up at random,
merely with the object of reading it as a pastime, has been known to call
forth energies whose existence had not before been suspected. Alfieri
was first drawn with passion to literature by reading ‘Plutarch’s Lives.’
Loyola, when a soldier serving at the siege of Pampeluna, and laid up by
a dangerous wound in his leg, asked for a book to divert his thoughts:
the ‘Lives of the Saints’ was brought to him, and its perusal so inflamed
his mind, that he determined thenceforth to devote himself to the
founding of a religious order. Luther, in like manner, was inspired to
undertake the great labours of his life by a perusal of the ‘Life and
Writings of John Huss.’ Dr. Wolff was stimulated to enter upon his
missionary career by reading the ‘Life of Francis Xavier;’ and the book
fired his youthful bosom with a passion the most sincere and ardent to
devote himself to the enterprise of his life. William Carey, also, got
the first idea of entering upon his sublime labours as a missionary from
a perusal of the Voyages of Captain Cook.
Francis Horner was accustomed to note in his diary and letters the books
by which he was most improved and influenced. Amongst these were
Condorcet’s ‘Eloge of Haller,’ Sir Joshua Reynolds’ ‘Discourses,’ the
writings of Bacon, and ‘Burnet’s Account of Sir Matthew Hale.’ The
perusal of the last-mentioned book—the portrait of a prodigy of
labour—Horner says, filled him with enthusiasm. Of Condorcet’s ‘Eloge of
Haller,’ he said: “I never rise from the account of such men without a
sort of thrilling palpitation about me, which I know not whether I should
call admiration, ambition, or despair.” And speaking of the ‘Discourses’
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he said: “Next to the writings of Bacon, there is
no book which has more powerfully impelled me to self-culture. He is one
of the first men of genius who has condescended to inform the world of
the steps by which greatness is attained. The confidence with which he
asserts the omnipotence of human labour has the effect of familiarising
his reader with the idea that genius is an acquisition rather than a
gift; whilst with all there is blended so naturally and eloquently the
most elevated and passionate admiration of excellence, that upon the
whole there is no book of a more _inflammatory_ effect.” It is
remarkable that Reynolds himself attributed his first passionate impulse
towards the study of art, to reading Richardson’s account of a great
painter; and Haydon was in like manner afterwards inflamed to follow the
same pursuit by reading of the career of Reynolds. Thus the brave and
aspiring life of one man lights a flame in the minds of others of like
faculties and impulse; and where there is equally vigorous efforts like
distinction and success will almost surely follow. Thus the chain of
example is carried down through time in an endless succession of
links,—admiration exciting imitation, and perpetuating the true
aristocracy of genius.
One of the most valuable, and one of the most infectious examples which
can be set before the young, is that of cheerful working. Cheerfulness
gives elasticity to the spirit. Spectres fly before it; difficulties
cause no despair, for they are encountered with hope, and the mind
acquires that happy disposition to improve opportunities which rarely
fails of success. The fervent spirit is always a healthy and happy
spirit; working cheerfully itself, and stimulating others to work. It
confers a dignity on even the most ordinary occupations. The most
effective work, also, is usually the full-hearted work—that which passes
through the hands or the head of him whose heart is glad. Hume was
accustomed to say that he would rather possess a cheerful
disposition—inclined always to look at the bright side of things—than
with a gloomy mind to be the master of an estate of ten thousand a year.
Granville Sharp, amidst his indefatigable labours on behalf of the slave,
solaced himself in the evenings by taking part in glees and instrumental
concerts at his brother’s house, singing, or playing on the flute, the
clarionet or the oboe; and, at the Sunday evening oratorios, when Handel
was played, he beat the kettle-drums. He also indulged, though
sparingly, in caricature drawing. Fowell Buxton also was an eminently
cheerful man; taking special pleasure in field sports, in riding about
the country with his children, and in mixing in all their domestic
amusements.
In another sphere of action, Dr. Arnold was a noble and a cheerful
worker, throwing himself into the great business of his life, the
training and teaching of young men, with his whole heart and soul. It is
stated in his admirable biography, that “the most remarkable thing in the
Laleham circle was the wonderful healthiness of tone which prevailed
there. It was a place where a new comer at once felt that a great and
earnest work was going forward. Every pupil was made to feel that there
was a work for him to do; that his happiness, as well as his duty, lay in
doing that work well. Hence an indescribable zest was communicated to a
young man’s feeling about life; a strange joy came over him on discerning
that he had the means of being useful, and thus of being happy; and a
deep respect and ardent attachment sprang up towards him who had taught
him thus to value life and his own self, and his work and mission in the
world. All this was founded on the breadth and comprehensiveness of
Arnold’s character, as well as its striking truth and reality; on the
unfeigned regard he had for work of all kinds, and the sense he had of
its value, both for the complex aggregate of society and the growth and
protection of the individual. In all this there was no excitement; no
predilection for one class of work above another; no enthusiasm for any
one-sided object: but a humble, profound, and most religious
consciousness that work is the appointed calling of man on earth; the end
for which his various faculties were given; the element in which his
nature is ordained to develop itself, and in which his progressive
advance towards heaven is to lie.” Among the many valuable men trained
for public life and usefulness by Arnold, was the gallant Hodson, of
Hodson’s Horse, who, writing home from India, many years after, thus
spoke of his revered master: “The influence he produced has been most
lasting and striking in its effects. It is felt even in India; I cannot
say more than _that_.”
The useful influence which a right-hearted man of energy and industry may
exercise amongst his neighbours and dependants, and accomplish for his
country, cannot, perhaps, be better illustrated than by the career of Sir
John Sinclair; characterized by the Abbé Gregoire as “the most
indefatigable man in Europe.” He was originally a country laird, born to
a considerable estate situated near John o’ Groat’s House, almost beyond
the beat of civilization, in a bare wild country fronting the stormy
North Sea. His father dying while he was a youth of sixteen, the
management of the family property thus early devolved upon him; and at
eighteen he began a course of vigorous improvement in the county of
Caithness, which eventually spread all over Scotland. Agriculture then
was in a most backward state; the fields were unenclosed, the lands
undrained; the small farmers of Caithness were so poor that they could
scarcely afford to keep a horse or shelty; the hard work was chiefly
done, and the burdens borne, by the women; and if a cottier lost a horse
it was not unusual for him to marry a wife as the cheapest substitute.
The country was without roads or bridges; and drovers driving their
cattle south had to swim the rivers along with their beasts. The chief
track leading into Caithness lay along a high shelf on a mountain side,
the road being some hundred feet of clear perpendicular height above the
sea which dashed below. Sir John, though a mere youth, determined to
make a new road over the hill of Ben Cheilt, the old let-alone
proprietors, however, regarding his scheme with incredulity and derision.
But he himself laid out the road, assembled some twelve hundred workmen
early one summer’s morning, set them simultaneously to work,
superintending their labours, and stimulating them by his presence and
example; and before night, what had been a dangerous sheep track, six
miles in length, hardly passable for led horses, was made practicable for
wheel-carriages as if by the power of magic. It was an admirable example
of energy and well-directed labour, which could not fail to have a most
salutary influence upon the surrounding population. He then proceeded to
make more roads, to erect mills, to build bridges, and to enclose and
cultivate the waste lands. He introduced improved methods of culture,
and regular rotation of crops, distributing small premiums to encourage
industry; and he thus soon quickened the whole frame of society within
reach of his influence, and infused an entirely new spirit into the
cultivators of the soil. From being one of the most inaccessible
districts of the north—the very _ultima Thule_ of civilization—Caithness
became a pattern county for its roads, its agriculture, and its
fisheries. In Sinclair’s youth, the post was carried by a runner only
once a week, and the young baronet then declared that he would never rest
till a coach drove daily to Thurso. The people of the neighbourhood
could not believe in any such thing, and it became a proverb in the
county to say of an utterly impossible scheme, “Ou, ay, that will come to
pass when Sir John sees the daily mail at Thurso!” But Sir John lived to
see his dream realized, and the daily mail established to Thurso.
The circle of his benevolent operation gradually widened. Observing the
serious deterioration which had taken place in the quality of British
wool,—one of the staple commodities of the country,—he forthwith, though
but a private and little-known country gentleman, devoted himself to its
improvement. By his personal exertions he established the British Wool
Society for the purpose, and himself led the way to practical improvement
by importing 800 sheep from all countries, at his own expense. The
result was, the introduction into Scotland of the celebrated Cheviot
breed. Sheep farmers scouted the idea of south country flocks being able
to thrive in the far north. But Sir John persevered; and in a few years
there were not fewer than 300,000 Cheviots diffused over the four
northern counties alone. The value of all grazing land was thus
enormously increased; and Scotch estates, which before were comparatively
worthless, began to yield large rentals.
Returned by Caithness to Parliament, in which he remained for thirty
years, rarely missing a division, his position gave him farther
opportunities of usefulness, which he did not neglect to employ. Mr.
Pitt, observing his persevering energy in all useful public projects,
sent for him to Downing Street, and voluntarily proposed his assistance
in any object he might have in view. Another man might have thought of
himself and his own promotion; but Sir John characteristically replied,
that he desired no favour for himself, but intimated that the reward most
gratifying to his feelings would be Mr. Pitt’s assistance in the
establishment of a National Board of Agriculture. Arthur Young laid a
bet with the baronet that his scheme would never be established, adding,
“Your Board of Agriculture will be in the moon!” But vigorously setting
to work, he roused public attention to the subject, enlisted a majority
of Parliament on his side, and eventually established the Board, of which
he was appointed President. The result of its action need not be
described, but the stimulus which it gave to agriculture and
stock-raising was shortly felt throughout the whole United Kingdom, and
tens of thousands of acres were redeemed from barrenness by its
operation. He was equally indefatigable in encouraging the establishment
of fisheries; and the successful founding of these great branches of
British industry at Thurso and Wick was mainly due to his exertions. He
urged for long years, and at length succeeded in obtaining the enclosure
of a harbour for the latter place, which is perhaps the greatest and most
prosperous fishing town in the world.
Sir John threw his personal energy into every work in which he engaged,
rousing the inert, stimulating the idle, encouraging the hopeful, and
working with all. When a French invasion was threatened, he offered to
Mr. Pitt to raise a regiment on his own estate, and he was as good as his
word. He went down to the north, and raised a battalion of 600 men,
afterwards increased to 1000; and it was admitted to be one of the finest
volunteer regiments ever raised, inspired throughout by his own noble and
patriotic spirit. While commanding officer of the camp at Aberdeen he
held the offices of a Director of the Bank of Scotland, Chairman of the
British Wool Society, Provost of Wick, Director of the British Fishery
Society, Commissioner for issuing Exchequer Bills, Member of Parliament
for Caithness, and President of the Board of Agriculture. Amidst all
this multifarious and self-imposed work, he even found time to write
books, enough of themselves to establish a reputation. When Mr. Rush,
the American Ambassador, arrived in England, he relates that he inquired
of Mr. Coke of Holkham, what was the best work on Agriculture, and was
referred to Sir John Sinclair’s; and when he further asked of Mr.
Vansittart, Chancellor of the Exchequer, what was the best work on
British Finance, he was again referred to a work by Sir John Sinclair,
his ‘History of the Public Revenue.’ But the great monument of his
indefatigable industry, a work that would have appalled other men, but
only served to rouse and sustain his energy, was his ‘Statistical Account
of Scotland,’ in twenty-one volumes, one of the most valuable practical
works ever published in any age or country. Amid a host of other
pursuits it occupied him nearly eight years of hard labour, during which
he received, and attended to, upwards of 20,000 letters on the subject.
It was a thoroughly patriotic undertaking, from which he derived no
personal advantage whatever, beyond the honour of having completed it.
The whole of the profits were assigned by him to the Society for the Sons
of the Clergy in Scotland. The publication of the book led to great
public improvements; it was followed by the immediate abolition of
several oppressive feudal rights, to which it called attention; the
salaries of schoolmasters and clergymen in many parishes were increased;
and an increased stimulus was given to agriculture throughout Scotland.
Sir John then publicly offered to undertake the much greater labour of
collecting and publishing a similar Statistical Account of England; but
unhappily the then Archbishop of Canterbury refused to sanction it, lest
it should interfere with the tithes of the clergy, and the idea was
abandoned.
A remarkable illustration of his energetic promptitude was the manner in
which he once provided, on a great emergency, for the relief of the
manufacturing districts. In 1793 the stagnation produced by the war led
to an unusual number of bankruptcies, and many of the first houses in
Manchester and Glasgow were tottering, not so much from want of property,
but because the usual sources of trade and credit were for the time
closed up. A period of intense distress amongst the labouring classes
seemed imminent, when Sir John urged, in Parliament, that Exchequer notes
to the amount of five millions should be issued immediately as a loan to
such merchants as could give security. This suggestion was adopted, and
his offer to carry out his plan, in conjunction with certain members
named by him, was also accepted. The vote was passed late at night, and
early next morning Sir John, anticipating the delays of officialism and
red tape, proceeded to bankers in the city, and borrowed of them, on his
own personal security, the sum of 70,000_l._, which he despatched the
same evening to those merchants who were in the most urgent need of
assistance. Pitt meeting Sir John in the House, expressed his great
regret that the pressing wants of Manchester and Glasgow could not be
supplied so soon as was desirable, adding, “The money cannot be raised
for some days.” “It is already gone! it left London by to-night’s mail!”
was Sir John’s triumphant reply; and in afterwards relating the anecdote
he added, with a smile of pleasure, “Pitt was as much startled as if I
had stabbed him.” To the last this great, good man worked on usefully
and cheerfully, setting a great example for his family and for his
country. In so laboriously seeking others’ good, it might be said that
he found his own—not wealth, for his generosity seriously impaired his
private fortune, but happiness, and self-satisfaction, and the peace that
passes knowledge. A great patriot, with magnificent powers of work, he
nobly did his duty to his country; yet he was not neglectful of his own
household and home. His sons and daughters grew up to honour and
usefulness; and it was one of the proudest things Sir John could say,
when verging on his eightieth year, that he had lived to see seven sons
grown up, not one of whom had incurred a debt he could not pay, or caused
him a sorrow that could have been avoided.