Turning-points in life

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TURNING. POINTS IN LIFE

Vol. I.

LONDON : PRINTED BY

BrOTTlSWOODE AND CO.. KEW-8TBEBT BQUABB

AND PARLIAMENT STREET

TUKNUG-Pomrs in life

EEV. FREDERICK ARNOLD, B.A.

in two volumes
Vol. L

LONDON
lUCHAED BENTLEY AND SON

MBW BURUHOTOH SIESBT

1873

2p. j .' 3 3(3 ,

^

TO

HENEY WILMOTT ESQ,

OF HATHEBLET LAWN, CHBLTBNHAIC

Mt DBAB Wilmott

I ask your acceptance of this little work in: the
recollection of many pleasant hours spent at Hatherley
Lawn, and of the kindness^ sympathy, friendship, and
hospitality accorded to me there. You will, I am
sure, overlook its many imperfections in its attempt
to promote those supreme objects which are dear to
the hearts of all Christian people

Yours ever

FREDERICK ARNOLD

PEEFACE.

Some time ago it was kindly suggested to
me by a friend that an article which I had
written in one of the Magazines, entitled
Turning-Points in Life^ might receive an
ampler treatment, and bear expansion into
a volume. This is now done; and I thought
it best that the original paper, which is in-
serted by the kindness of the proprietors of
the Magazine, should form the initial chapter,
startiQg with which I might best sketch out
some of the subjects suggested by the title;
and in doing this some use has been made of
various papers I have contributed to periodical
literature.

London : Oct 24, 1872.

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME.

CHAPTER I.

OF TUBinNG-POINTS IN LIFE.

General aspect of the Subject— Confessions on Retrospects 6f
Life — Moral Laws of Human Life — Turning-points in Life
are not Arbitrary — To a large extent they are Determined
by the Force of Antecedent Events; so-called Fortuitous
Events are only such in a Limited Sens^— The Doctrine of
Providence in the incidents of Life— Turning-points in
Literature and Science— The Moral and Religious Aspect of
the Subject « Page 1

CHAPTER H.

HABIT.

Habit really Determines the Character of the Leading Events
of Life — No Chance is useful to the man who is unable to
avail himself of the Chance — The Habits of Youth tinge all
subsequent History — ^The Laws of Habit — Inherited and
Transmitted Habit— Atavism— The Tyranny of Habit— The
Substitute of Habit S3

x' CONTENTS OF

CHAPTER m.

CRITICAL MOMENTS IN LIFE.

Turning-points whicli are * Moments ' in Life, and Points of
Departure for a New Phase of Existence — A Sudden Choice
is often a foregone Conclusion — Some Examples in Art ; in
Education — Bishop Cotton and the two Newmans — What
is called ' Luck ' is often simply the Result of Skill and
Energy — Supreme Moral and Spiritual Moments in Life —
The Recollection of Special Days in Life — An Important
Ten Minutes ; the Story of General Beckwith . Page 61

CHAPTER IV.

UNIVERSITY CAREERS.

The University Career a special Epoch to a large Proportion of
Cultivated Men — This will be increasingly the case in the
Progress of University Extension — Different Views of
University Careers — Doubtful Destinies of College Dons —
The Differences between Oxford and Cambridge — Mr.
Maurice, Mr. Kingsley, and M. Taine — The Universities
should bring l^ome Education to the Poorest — The Con-
nection between Common Education and University Educa-
tion . 108

CHAPTER V.

ON THE CHOICE OP A PROFESSION.

Survey of the Professions — ^For most of them Conduct is re-
quired rather than Cleverness — ^The Church and the Dis-
senting Ministry — The Bar, its Delays and its Chances —
Morality of Advocacy — St, Augustine's Opinion — The
Medical Profession — The Scholastic Profession — The Civil
Service — ^Army and Navy — People with Leisure — Philan-
thropy — Edward Denison — The need of Divine Guid-
ance 144

THE FIRST VOLUME, xi

CHAPTER VL

TAKING HOLT ORDEBS.

How Men obtain Livings — Anecdotes of Chancellors — ^The
Process of Institution — I^etter of an Old Clergyman to a
Young Man thinking of Entering the Church . Page 192

CHAPTER VII.

MARRIAGE.

The Argument for arranged Maipriages — Case of Bishop Hall«-
Schlegel's Philosophy of the Subject — Restraint of Marriage
— The Language of St. Paul on Marriage — Jeremy Taylor —
Too much stress laid upon Pecuniary Considerations and
too little on more important Considerations — Goethe's Mar-
riage^Hugh Miller's — Henry Venn Elliott's — Lord Aber-
deen on Mamage — Bishop Dupanloup on Marriage . 214

CHAPTER VHL

TRAVEL. .

Foreign Travel often a Turning-point in Life — Salutary Effects
of Travel — On doing at Rome as the Romans do — The Effect
of Association — ^The Effect of Feeling — English Travel —
The Religious Use of Travel 244

CHAPTER IX.

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

On Honest Hard Work — Literary Life — Early Efforts— The
Struggles of Great Painters — Michael Angelo — The late
Mr. Maclise — The Youth of Pascal — Moments of Scientific
History — Newton's Uncertainty respecting the Doctrine of
Gravitation — Sir Charles Bell — Goodsir, the Anatomist —
FaU Mall Gazette quoted — Sketch of the late Professor
Henslow — Henslow at Buckingham Palace — His Death —
Sketch of Mr. Brunei — Schlegel on Faith as determining
Discovery 274

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

•«o^

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS.

Anyone who has arrived at that era of his
own history in which Memory more than Hope
governs the horizon of human life — who ana-
lyses the motives and muses on the events of
his own life-story, and who learns to watch
with intense human interest that drama of
life which day by day is unfolding in all the
relationships that surround him — will, I think,
understand the title of this work, and the
line of thought indicated by the phrase.
There are, unquestionably, 'turning-points'
both in the history of the race and in the history
of the individual. Such are the great battles,
the great revolutions, the great discoveries of

VOL. I. B

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

history. Each art, each science, has its * turn-
ing-points,' its moments. Such are evermore
to be found in the lives of individuals. These
turning-points are not mere accidents. They
have generally a moral significance and are
fraught with special lessons.

In what men regard as mere chance -work
there is often order and design. What we call
a ' turning-point ' is simply an occasion which
sums up and brings to a result previous train-
ing. Accidental circumstances are nothing
except to men who have been trained to take
advantage of them. For instance, Erskine
made himself famous when the chance came to
him of making a great forensic display, but
unless he had trained himself for the chance,
the chance would only have made him ridi-
culous. A great occasion is worth to a man
exactly what his antecedents have enabled
him to make of it.

Next the realm of the fortuitous is also the

. domain of Providence. The subject is difficult

enough, but some principles seem perfectly

clear, that the universe is not bereft of the

Fatherhood of God, that as the child is trained

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS.

and directed aright by its father, so, "vvith the
education of the individual, the education of
the world is progressively carried on. The
world is given to man that he may conquer
and subdue it ; the world is the appointed
theatre for the exercise of his intelligence and
his energies* We may expect that the pro-
vidence of God will interpose at critical con-
junctures to favour the ends which He designed.
That general training which is afforded to the
faculties with which we are endowed seems
subordinated through the events of life to a
law within the law, to a life beyond the life.

Every life as it unrolls has its turning-points,
its critical moments. Among these turning-
points there is often one that constitutes the
crisis of being. School, college, business,
friendship, love, accidents, deaths, may all
prove such to us. None the less are our
schemes, our chances, or our mistakes and dis-
appointments. There comes also a great spirit-
ual crisis to which ordinary life is related,
either as the preparation or the result. In
looking at the governing facts of individual:
human history there are certain distinction^

b2

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

which require to be carefully drawn. We may
see that in the moral world there are laws a8
certain as the laws of the material world. We
see that courage, energy, enterprise, good faith,
kindness, are truly fertile with results and with
rewards. These indicate the ordinary modes by
which our turning-points in life are affected.
Beyond this there is the vague, vast chapter
of incident, that seems capricious, but is prob-
ably an ordered plan. Taking a larger field
of vision, we see that this present life cannot
be understood without reference to super-
natural facts and another life. Those who
have achieved the most for our race or have
struggled to attain the loftiest ideal of charac-
ter for themselves, have often fallen in the
conflict* Their story is taken up and finished
in the life beyond. The banner of humanity,
soiled and torn here, Will be planted in triumph
on a happier shore.

Let me endeavour, at greater length, to
work out this line of discussion.

A man must have some self-knowledge,
some self-insight, before he can dispassionately
review his own history. A man cannot see

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS.

his blunders while he is playing his game ; but
when the game is very nearly over he can see
little else except his blunders. And yet he
may have played a very fair game after all.
And it is a truth in military science that no
battle is fought without blunders, and the
goodness of generalship practically consists in
the comparative fewness of blunders. It is
very touching to see such renowned statesmen
as Earl Russell and the late Sir James Graham
— ^men who zealously contended during their
political career for the absolute indefeasibility
of their conduct — as the shadows darken, con-
fess candidly the number and greatness of
their blunders. And if calm, meditative in -
trospection is rare, it is something still more
difficult to understand others, to do justice to
them, to ' put yourself in his place,' to forget
rivalries and feuds in sympathy and apprecia-
tion. Really to do so is a mixed moral and
intellectual achievement of a somewhat h%h
order. There are certain stages of growth
before a man can do this. First of all, man
has the sense of novelty, the desire, ever unsatis-
fied, to see, or hear, or do something fresh.

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

Then intelligent admiration succeeds the mere
sense of wonder. Men desire to have a know-
ledge of the laws that pervade the world of
matter and the world of mind around them.
Then comes, higher still, I think, in the scale,
the faculty that interests man in the human
interests that surround him. On the intel-
lectual side this faculty enables him to grasp
by mental acts the shifting panorama of his-
tory and the poetry and passion of life, and
on the moral side it gives him sympathy and
gumption, and the desire to act justly, cha-
ritably, and purely — with the practical wish
to do all the good he can in all the ways
he can to all the people he can.

Besides this conscious feeling of having
blundered, and the wholesome humility such
a feeling should inspire, there will ensue on
any such retrospect the feeling that there
have been great Huming-points in life.' Some
of^hese blunders will certainly be connected
with some of these turning-points, and some
of these turning-points will connect them-
selves with the very reverse of blunders, that
is, with what has been best and worthiest in

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS.

our imperfect lives. But many of them will
be odd, strange, inexplicable. After elimi-
nating all that can be explained as the legi-
timate results of certain practical lines of
conduct, it is still remarkable how large a
realm in human life is occupied by what is
simply and absolutely fortuitous. And this
presence of chance cannot really be a matter
of chance. So far from that, it is, I believe,
part of the constitution 6i things under which
we live. Just as we live in an order of na-
ture, where the seasons succeed each other,
not in mere arithmetical order, but in all
sweet variety, so events do not succeed each
other according to a clearly-defined system of
causation, but with a liability to the constant
recurrence of what is accidental and fortui-
tous. Probably all the phenomena of human
life, as of nature, are referable to law; but
ptill it would be wearisome work to us, consti-
tuted as we are, to watch all the unvaried
sequences of order. Instead of* that we only
dimly see the vague skirts, the vast shadowy
forms of such laws, and most things below
the skies remain as uncertain, uncertified.

8 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

transitory as the skies themselves. And this
weird, fortuitous realm is doubtless ordered
for the best, and is no mystery to the great
Lawgiver, although His laws are inexplicable
to us, and are to us as confused as the rush
and roar of compUcated machinery when first
from the sweet south we enter the grim
establishments of those masterful northern
manufacturers.

As I have been speaking of the fortuitous,
let us mark off clearly a set of cases pecu-
liarly likely to be coufounded with it. A
man finds a watch upon the ground. This
was Paley's famous illustration, which has a
regular pedigree in the history of literature.
To employ this used-up teleologic^l watch
once more, it is by no means a fortuitous
event, whether the man seeks to restore the
watch to its owner or forthwith appropriates
the same. To one man the watch will be an
overmastering temptation, and he will pocket
it ; to another the watch will be destitute of
the least power of exciting temptation, and
he would immediately deposit it with the
town crier. The result, in either case, i§

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS,

simply the result of a man's disposition, cha-
racter, and antecedent history. The same
sort of thing happens under much more diffi-
cult and complicated circumstances. A man
makes a certain decision, and in after-life he
is spoken of as having made such a very wise
or unwise decision; or it is said that in a
certain emergency he acted with such vigour,
or promptness, or justness, or the reverse.
Now what I wish to deny altogether is the
apparently fortuitous character of such trans-
actions. The whole previous life, so to speak,
had been a preparation for that particular
minute of momentous action. It was a sum,
duly cast up, giving the result in particular
figures. The practical force of these con-
siderations is evident. A man is dismissed
his ship for drunkenness. It seems a sharp
penalty. Tes, but the intoxication was not a
fortuitous event. There must have been a
crescendo series of ungentlemanly acts culmi-
nating in this punishable misdemeanour. A
woman runs away with her groom ; but what
a progressive debasement of heart and mind
there must have been before all culture and

lo TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

■ " I ■ ■ _ ■ ■ I ■ I ■ Mill !■ ■ ^ ■ !■! ■ I I ■ ■ ■!■■■■■ ■ 1^ ■ — Ma^^^M —

gentle associations are forgotten ! A man is
convicted of a criminal offence at the bar of
some tribunal. There are a crowd of wit-
nesses to character. He has not a witness
who would have thought him capable of such
an act. Yet his mind had been familiarised
with such acts, and probably his practice with
acts only just evading the character of trans-
gression against positive law. It often hap-
pens, also, that extenuating circumstances are,
in truth, aggravating circumstances. And this
.may suggest a consideration on the character
of scruples. Bishop Temple has a sermon
on the subject, and when I read it — and also
when I heard it preached by one of his ad-
mirers as his own — I thought the treatment
very unsatisfactory. Scruples are often te-
dious, tiresome things, mere matters of anise
and cummin. And yet, though their absolute
importance may be little, to some minds their
relative importance is very great. Scruples
are often the advanced outposts of conscience.
Sometimes they are outposts which command
the citadel. When the outposts fall, one by
one, there is oft^ no use at all in defeuding

IJSITRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. ii

the city. The lines are drawn round it and
it must fall. Which things are an allegory*
As consequents have their antecedents, so
apparently fortuitous acts have their anterior
order.

When, therefore, I speak of tuming-pointii
in life I mean, first, those events which un-
doubtedly have a fortuitous character, though
this is perhaps more apparent than real ; and
next, those events which, though they may
seem fortuitous, are distinctly nothing of the
sort ; and thirdly, those stages and crises in
individual history when a man, nolens volens^
is obliged to take his line, and when not to
take a line is the most distinct line of all,
i.e.^ whether a man will get married, or take
to a profession, or practically decides that he
will not marry and will not take to a pro-
fession. In human history, from time to
time, these turning-points emerge. Men tell
us so, and we see it. We all know how
Shakespeare says that there is a tide in the
affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,
leads on to fortune. That turning of the
tide is frequently dramatic or even ti'agic

12 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

enough. So we have heard of persons cut
off by the tide and left stranded on some rock
out at sea. The hungry, crawling foam
reaches the feet, the knees, the loins, the
breast, the lips. There is the death-agony
of apprehension. Then suddenly the water
recedes. It is the turn of the tide. The
romance is told of such unlooked-for safety,
but those erect no tablets who perish. We
sometimes see something analogous to this in
life. Once nothing succeeded, but now every-
thing turns to gold. Once they drew all
blanks, now the prizes are all before them.
As the Yankee parson said, ' So mote it be.'

Sometimes circumstances purely fortuitous
have coloured and influenced a whole life-
time. I have met with two instances of this
in my recent reading. The other day I was
within a magnificent library — a library that
belonged to one of the greatest scholars that
England has ever known. I took down a
tall thick folio, bound in vellum — such books
with such coverings its owner loved— and
opened the volume of Justin Martyr which
contained the dialogue with Trypho. I read

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 13

that remarkable passage in which Justin re-
counts to his chance companions the truest
and strangest of all passages of his history.
One day he had been musing on the
seashore when he was accosted by an aged
and benevolent stranger who ventured to
ask him the nature of his meditations.
Justin explained to him "how he was
inusmg on the philosophers ; but his new-
found companion asked him whether he
knew aught about the prophets. Theii en-
sued the conversation which determined the
tenour and complexion of all Justin's future
^life. Perhaps some of us may have had such
rare seasons of converse with gifted minds,
which have been as an o'pen sesame^ to open
up whole realms of thought and truth which
otherwise might have eluded our sphere of
observation. I noticed the other instance
in Mrs. Gordon's interesting little book re-
specting her illustrious father, Sir David
• Brewster. On the very threshold of his
great scientilBic researches his sight began
to fi^il him. He had every reason to fear
that his eyes must go ; and in his case most

14 Turning-points in life.

earthly good would have failed with his fail-
ing: vision. Then some one told him that,
for such cases, the great surgeon, Sir Ben-
jamin Brodie, recommended a particular pre-
scription. It was a very simple one, common
snuff being the chief ingredient. He took
it, and was completely cured. Years after
Sir David met Sir Benjamin ; but Sir Benja-
min was surprised at the matter, and said
the prescription was none of his.

Now let us take some illustrations from
life ; and truly that was a true saying, that
though alignments are pillars, yet illustrations
are the windows that let in the light.

There is no doubt but the moment in
which, at a family conclave, there is a choice
of school or college is a very important
turning-point of life. It is remarkable on
how slight a hinge the choice turns — what
a^ slight impulse settles the question. Unfor-
tunately the matter is often settled the wrong
way. There are some boys for whom the
public school is the very thing. It is espe-
cially the thing for those boys who are adapted
by nature for our English public life. It de-

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS: ij

velops the mind ; it forms the manners; it
carries the boy successfully on in his work;
it surrounds him with friends who often form
a phalanx around him on whose shoulders he
is carried onward to prosperity and eminence*
But, on the other hand, there are boys who
are peculiarly fitted for home education, or
the gentlest training abroad. They have deli-
cate flowers of character and feeling which
would blossom in the shade, but are withered
in the glare of sunshine. Cowper's misery
at Westminster has been often reproduced
in his sensitiveness, if not in his genius^ I
have a hearty love of Eton and Etonians. But
take some obtuse youth of eighteen, who haa
never received the individual separate atten-
tion which he has required — ^who has been
slowly shuflEled through class after class with-
out attaining to its level of attainnient — on
whom the distinctive advantages of the place
have been almost altogether thrown away,
and he has gained, I grant you, good man-
ners — ^that is the never-failing acquisition
which Eton always gives her sons — but
otherwise the early years of his life have

16 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

been almost irretrievably wasted. He is just
the sort of man on whom careful patient
training would have wrought everything that
could be wrought on a poor limited nature;
but now if he can get into the army or
smuggled into a family living, it is the only
use to which he is susceptible of being put.

Similarly ias to college. A man goes to
a certain college because his father was there
before him, or because his uncle had a fellow-
ship there, or because some paltry scholarship
is attached to his native county. But a know-
ing Cambridge tutor would say, * That is just
the man for Trinity,' or a knowing Oxford
tutor, * That is just the man for Christ Church,
or just the man for Balliol.' Why should
you send a hard-reading man to Exeter or
an indolent, dressy man to BalUol? Why
should a gentleman be sent to the drinking,
smoking set of a * fast,' which means a slow
college? gnd why should not some wavering
natures be developed into something better
by the best collegiate influences? All over
the world the square peg goes into the round
hole and vice versd. There is something very

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 17

odd about men at small colleges, but as the
Trinity man said, according to Mr. Leslie
Stephen, * They, too, are God's creatures.' A
man will go to his little college, where you
might live in a university town for a dozen
years without knowing it, and like it, and stand
up for it, and consider it the epitome of the
world, as some Oxonians stand up for Christ
Church or Balliol, and Cantabs for Trinity
and St. John's.

Let us now look at some instances of * turn-
ing-points' in our social life around us. In
professional life we often find anecdotes
of success that are very good, and, what
cannot always be said of good stories, very
well guaranteed. There was a London curate
sitting one day in his vestry, very much after
the manner of his order. These London
curates are sometimes a sort of reheving
officers. They often sit an hour a day in
the vestry, distributing dispensary tickets or
orders for soup and flannel, or writing down
the names of poor people who may be
in some dire distress and on whom they
intend to call. If you want to have a five

VOL. I.

1 8 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

minutes' chat with this sort of parson you
know when and where to find him. There
came a tap at a certain vestry door, and the
curate shouted his * come in/ with full belief
that there was another Irish pauper. A gen-
tleman came in, who asked after the aris-
tocratic and well-known rector. The curate
explained that his rector was out of town,
but that he himself would be very pleased
to do an3^hing he could for him. The
gentleman hummed and hesitated, but at
last explained his business. It so hap-
pened that he was the patron of a valuable
living which had just fallen in, and knowing
nothing about clergymen, he had called to
ask the rector whether he knew any one on
whom the presentation would be fittingly be-
stowjed. The curate was no fool. A turning-
point had come. He saw he had a chance,
and he took it. He said there was an indi-
vidual, whom modesty prevented him from
naming, who was admirably qualified for a
good living. The ingenuous shamefacedness
was overcome, and the curate gave ample
evidence that he had worked long and ardu-

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS, 19

ously. He dropped into a very good living,
rather to the disgust of the rector, who would
have liked better to have given it to some
of his own belongings. I remember another
lucky hit. It was that of a clergyman meet*
ing with a Lord Chancellor. The Chancellor
was not Lord Hatherley, but it was a pre-
decessor of his in no very remote degree.
The parson — ^he was a tutor at one of the
Oxford colleges — was a very early riser, and
so was the Lord Chancellor. It so happened
that they were visiting together at the same
country-house. They met one fresh early
morning in the library when all the rest of
the world was drowned in sleep. This simi-
larity led to a long conversation, in which
other similarities of taste and feeling were
developed. The result was that the Lord
Chancellor gave him a capital living. There
IS a great difference among Lord Chancellors.
Such a Chancellor as Lord Westbury did
not care for his small Church patronage, and
brought in a Bill which enabled him to get
rid of it. Other Chancellors, however, are
truly * grasping ' about it, if one may use that

c 2

ao TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

unpleasant term. The &ct is, Chancellors
ought not to be allowed to hold ecclesiastical
patronage. Livings are not the proper prizes
to be given away in recollection of electioneer-
ing contests or sharp legal businesses.

The readers of those somewhat mendacious
volumes, Lord Campbeirs * Lives of the Lord
Chancellors,' will recollect the sudden, un-
expected turns by which great lawyers have
trod to feme and fortune. I often think of
a great advocate, rising up to take advantage
of his first chance; and feeling as if his
wife and children were tugging at his robe
and exhorting him to do his best. Then
nearly every doctor in good practice has his
story of days when he had no practice at all,
and of the lucky incidents which brought
him into the notice which he deserved. Much
may be said of various other pursuits in life.
I once knew a man who got into Parliament
through the simple accident . of meeting a
man on the steps of the Carlton Club. This
man said that he was going to try for a
borough on the great Buff interest, and he
wanted another man, a Buff, like himself,

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 2X

but a better talker, to try along with him,
and he would stand all the expenses. The
two Buffs were duly returned. If you
believe Dr. Johnson's definition of genius —
I don't — ^that it is great natural ability acci-
dentally turned into a particular direction,
then every career of great intellectual emi-
nence has been accidentally determined by the
stress of some turning-point in life. A lucky
incident determined the career of that great
prelate and acute thinker. Bishop Herbert
Marsh. If you don't know much about
Bishop Marsh, just turn to that volume of
the British Museum library where his works
are enrolled ; or, better still, in that learned
mass of annotation with which Mr. Mayor
has supplemented the publication of the Baker
MS. on St. John's College. Herbert Marsh
wrote German with the force and facility
of a native. He published in that language,
in 1800, * The History of the Politics of Great
Britain and France . . . containing a Nar-
rative of the attempt made by the British
Government to restore peace.' This history
was based on authentic documents, which

23 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

showed that the French, and not the British,
were the authors of the war. Its publication
did our country a signal service at the time.
You will stiU find maiiy ignorant writers
who insist that Pitt's glorious continental
wars were quite a mistake, and altogether
unnecessary. I would only advise them to
go to their books and study the materials
of authentic history. Pitt sent for Marsh,
and gave him some five himdred a year until
he should give him a bishopric. Another
illustrious Englishman owed his fortune to
that evil genius of Europe, Napoleon. When
that monster of selfishness^ and cruelty was
caged in the * Bellerophon/ and the vessel
lay in Plymouth Sound, at the latter end of
that memorable July — oh, what a midsummer
was that for our England ! — a young painter
took boat day by day, and hovered about
the vessel for every glimpse of the captive.
Every evening, about six. Napoleon used to
appear on the gangway and make his bow
to the thousands who came out to see him.
There is some reason to believe that Napo-
leon divined, and approved of the artist's

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 23

intention. So, Charles Eastlake made a good
portrait, and jfrom it constructed a large
painting of the Emperor, for which the gen-
tlemen of Plymouth gave him a thousand
pounds, and sent him to Rome, and made the
fortune of the future President of the Royal
Academy.

Marriage is unquestionably as decided a
turning-point in human destiny as can be. It
is, however, a turning-point which, lea&t of
all, should be left to mere blind chance. Yet
mere blind chance often rules the result*
Everybody now recollects how Lord Byron
staked on a toss up whether he should make
his offer to Miss Milbanke or not. Mr. Grant
asserts that there is an English duke now
living, who wrote the following letter, when
marquis, to a friend with whom he had agreed
to inspect some carriages in Long Acre : * " It
will not be necessary to meet me to-morrow, to
go to Long Acre to look for a carriage. From
a remark made by the duke [his father] to-
daj^, I fancy I am going to be married." Not
only had the marquis left his father to choose
a bride for him and to make the other neces-

24 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

-*

sajy matrimonial arrangements, but when the
intimation was made to him by the duke that
the future marchioness had been fixed on^ he
seemed to view the whole affair as if it had
been one which did not concern him in the
least/ I should hope that sensible men do
not often leave the choice of a wife to be de-
termined in this indeterminate way. Nor yet,
I hope, for the matter of that, the choice of a
profession — ^more especially if that profession
is the Church. I see that a set of gentlemen
are now trying, vehemently, to release them-
selves from the shackles of their ordination
vows, and to a certain extent have done so.
They say, in effect, that they were young ;
that they were inexperienced ; that they have
seen what they have liked better ; that they
ought to have the liberty of another choice. I
offer no opinion on this reasoning. But it is
worth while to point out that every one of
these considerations would equally apply to a
claim to be released from marriage. Milton
set forth the whole claim in his ' Tetrachordon.'
Yet this is a length to which any Legislature
would decline to go.

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. is

Every now and then, in history, or in the
history of Kterature and science, we find some
strikmg historical instance of turning-points
in life. On such ground we see how a scandal
about a bracelet, or the prohibition of a
banquet, wrought a revolution, and precis
pitated a dynasty. Look at literary or scien-
tific biography. Think of Crabbe's timorously
calling on Edmund Burke, and inducing him
to look at his poetry. I have no doubt but
Burke was very busy. But with lightning
glance he looked over the lines, and satisfied
himself that real genius was there. When
Crabbe left the statesman, he was a made man.
Burke, ev^r generous and enlightened, had
made up his mind to take care of him. Or
look at Faraday. He was only a poor book-
seller's poor boy, working hard and honestly,
but disliking his employment and inspired
with a pure thirst for knowledge. He had
managed, somdbow or other, to hear the great
chemist, Humphry Davy, at the Royal Insti-
tution ; and, with- trembling solicitude, he
sends him a fair copy of the notes which he
had made of his lectures. The result is that

26 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

Michael Faraday receives an appointment at
the Royal Institution, and lays the foundation
of his splendid and beneficent career. Look-
ing back to the past, that was a great moment
in the life of Columbus, when, resting on a
sultry day beneath the fiei'ce Spanish sun, he
asked for a drink of cold water at a convent-
door. The prior entered mto a conversation
with him, and— struck by his appearance, and
afterwards by the magnificent simplicity of
his ideas — gave him the introductions he so
sorely needed ; and thus Columbus gave to
Castile and Aragon a new world.

And greater than any merely national event
of outward honour and importauce, a more
wondrous turning-point in life is that when
some great thought, some great discovery has
first loomed distinctly before the mind. One
of Mr, Hugh Macmillan's admirable works
reminds us of such a ' moment.' Seventeen
years ago, late one afternoon, a hunter, led by
the chase, came to a secluded spot in a forest
on a slope, four thousand feet high, of the
range of the Sierra Nevada. There, to his
astonishment, he beheld vast dark-red trunks

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. .127

of trees rising for three or foiir hundred feet
in the air, dwarfing all the surrounding forest,
whose tops were still aglow in the sunset
when darkness had fallen on all meaner
growths. Thus was discovered the WeUing-
toriea gigdntea of California, the most splendid
addition of this generation to natural history.^
You may walk, you may even ride on horse-
back through the trunk of a fallen tree. Those
^live are between two and three thousand
years old, and those prostrate may have lain
for thousands of years and have been thousands
of years old when they fell. The huntsman
*who first beheld them hastened away, as one
enchanted, to tell the marvellous story, and
was not believed until repeated visits and
^leasurements had been made. There is an
•eminent American writer who considers that
±here are two moments which stand pre-emi-
-jient in the intellectual history of our race.
.One of them was when Galileo for the first

^ The Americans don't like their great tree being called
the Wellingtonea, and so they call it. the Washingtonea^
arborists now give it the purely Scientific appellation of
-fSequoia gigantea.

28 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

time looked through the first telescope, and
the phases of A^enus and the moons of Jupiter
whispered to him the idea of myriad space
peopled with myriads of worlds like our own*
A second such * moment ' was, when a large
quantity of fossil bones and shells was placed
before the aged Buffon for inspection. To his
amazement he found that these remains cor-
responded with no known remains of living
creatures of the earth. In a moment there
came before the old man's mind the vast idea
of infinite time, peopled with other creations
than our own. * Filled with awe, the old
man, then over eighty years of age, published
his discovery. In a kind of sacred frenzy, he
spoke of the magnificence of the prospect, and
prophesied of the future glories of the new
science, which he was, alas ! too old to pursue.'
Only the other day we had a splendid scien-
tific generalisation, which Mr. Charles Kingsley
thinks will work a new era in bio-geology. Dn
Carpenter in his 'Report of the Dredging
Operations of the "Lightning,''' says that
* The globeigerina mud is not merely a chalk
formation, but a continuation of the chalk for-

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS. 119

mation ; so that we may be said to he sHU
living in the age of chalk.^ Yes, layer by layer,
the live atomies are laying the floorings of a
new continent, which we shall not see. It is
a sublime thought. Perhaps still more in-
teresting are his discoveries of abundance of
active life far down in depths where all the
philosophers had considered that life was im-
possible, thus checking the seemingly most
final and authoritative decisions of science.
Well, the philosopher may take a lesson, may
take to heart the first and humblest lesson of
science, to look on all opinions as in solution,
all hypotheses as tentative ; and if some of our
scientific luminaries become a little more
modest and a little less dogmatic, it wiU be a
wonderful era in their own lives and a special
blessing to the meetings of the British Associ-
ation.

Then a<5cidents are turning-points, which
may bring you to a sudden pause — ^to a dead
wall. There are many accidents, fatal acci-
dents, which, humanly speaking, might be
ayoided by taking things quietly. For in-
stance, I almost wish we had a statistical ac*

3a TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

count of the number of people who have
dropped down dead through running to catch
the train. I saw in a provincial paper the other
day a very queer account of a man attending
his own inquest ! A coroner's jury had been
summoned to hold an inquiry respecting the
end of some deceased person. One of the-
jurymen so summoned was rather late. He
and his fellow-jurors were to meet at a public^
house. From the door of the hostel they
watched him hastening very fast and presently
running. Suddenly he dropped. They hast-
ened to him, but found that life was altogether
extinct. The coroner, a shrewd, busy man,
suggested that as they were all there it would
be as well if they empanelled another jury-
man, and held both inquests at the same sitting.
This was done ; and within an hour or two of
the poor fellow's proceeding to attend the in-
quest, an inquest was held upon himself.

Then as to the morality of our theme. It
was an old Greek Sophist, Prodicus by name,
one of a body whom we think, despite Mr.
Grote, to be justly enough abused, who gave
us— Xenophon tells the story — ^that beautiful

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS, it

fable of the Choice of Hercules, which has been
repeated in many forms, and in many lan-
guages. It has been beautifully reproduced
by Mr. Tennyson, when lone (Enone tells
^ many-fountained Ida * of the choice of Paris,
when he turned away from Athene with her
wisdom to Aphrodite with her love. Pytha-
goras took the letter Y as the symbol of hu-
man life *.

* Et tibi, qiMB Samios diduxit litera ramos.' — ^Persius.

The stem of the letter denoted that part of
human life during which character is still un-
formed ; the right-hand branch, the finer of
the two, represents the path of virtue, the
other that of vice. As one of the commenta-
tors says, ' The fancy took mightily with the
ancients.'- There is a clearly defined turning-
point in life for you ! Of such turning-points as
I have here lightly touched upon, I shall in my
other pages endeavour to give some sort of
rationale. My thesis is that most of them are
to be eliminated from the catalogue of the con-
tingent and the accidental, as being the legiti-
mate efiect and product of character; and,

32 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

next, admitting the existence of what is for-
tuitous, I argue that the presence of chance
is not a matter of chance, but designed by the
great Artist who builds up individual life, and
weaves it into the common warp and woof of
all human life around us.

Once more, to quote some words of the late
Dean Alford's, novissima verba as they proved.
' There are moments that are worth more than
years. We cannot help it : there is no pro-
portion between spaces of time in importance
nor in value. A sick man may have the un-
wearied attendance of his physician for weeks,
and then may perish in a minute because he
is not by. A stray im-thought-of five minutes
may contain the event of a life. And this all-
important moment, this moment dispropor-
tionate to all other moments, who can tell
when it will be upon us ? What a lesson to
have our resources for meeting it available
and at hand ! '

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS. 33

CHAPTER II.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS.

Whe^ we speak of turning-points in life, pro-
bably the first notion suggested is that of some-
thing merely fortuitous and accidental ; some
port of sparkling incident which is the pivot of
a romance. There are such incidents certainly ;
one should neither deny their existence nor
exaggerate their importance. But of such in-
cidents habit makes the most essential part.
Given the most &vourable set of circumstances,
they are really nothing unless there is a dis-
position estabUshed, a training accomplished,
which will enable you to turn them to account.
Youth, that loves adventure, always looks
forward with eager interest to opening the
great campaign of life in London. There is a
sense in which the streets are paved with gold

VOL. I. D

34 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

or even with costlier things. As the Laureate
says:

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years

would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his Other's

field.
And at night along the dusky highway, near and nearer

drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary

dawn;
And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him
• then ;
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of

men.

In London, indeed, more than anjrwhere else,
habit is the groundwork on which all the che*
quered incidents of life are displayed.

For example, take the stock incident of the
feeble novelist. A young lady's horse runs
away with her. It is in danger of leaping a
cliif or of rushing down the line whUe the ex-
press rushes after it. Such an incident would
be obviously thrown away upon a hero who
was not used to horses, and who had not ac-
quired a steady eye and hand, and habits of
coolness and courage. There is a. noble house
which traces back all its prosperous fortunes

SOME^ CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS. 35

to the incident of a 'prentice lad plunging into
the Thames to recover his fair young mistress.
He married her and became partner in the
busiaess of his master. There must at least
have been a useful habit of swimming before he
could plunge into the river. And unless there
were those good habits which the merchants
of London so highly prize, he would not have
gone into the business, or if he had gone would
have done nothing at it.

It is very interesting to read of a great
advocate waiting patiently for his chance. It
comes at last, and he fancied that wife and
children were tugging at his robe and ex-
horting him for their sakes to do his best.
Then the full, brilliant speech is made. Or
hear the famous argument of plain John Scott,
afterwards Lord Eldon, in the leading case of
* Akroyd v. Smithson.* An attorney whispers
the homely, but heart-cheering words, ' Young
man, your bread and butter is made,' and, in-
deed, the young man has started straight and
fair for the Great Seal.

Such incidents do not happen so very un->
frequently after all. The man and the hour

1)2

36 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

approach. The man is equal to the occasion;
but often, perhaps oftener, the man is unequal
to it. What would have been the use of the
chance coming to men who are unequal to
the chance? There are hamsters who, if such
a chance came to them, would simply have to
sit down and tell the sitting judge, truly
enough, that they could not get on without
their leader. The lawyer who rises to con-
duct a diflSicult case in his leader's absence,
the surgeon or doctor that has a sudden chance
presented to him, must have had a long pre-
paratory training before he could skilfully
avail himself of any sort of emergency. These
are occasions for the exhibition of ability, and
are powerless to create the ability itself. So
even in what appear to be fortuitous events the
element of chance does not very much pre-
vail. Good men, by a natural gravitation,
come to the front, and accident, or want of
accident, only temporarily retards or repels
them.

So when a man looks forward to his
chances in life, his great business is to pre-
pare himself for those chances.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS, 37

^-W^^MB I _ ■ ■ I ■ _

Now habit is the subtlest and strongest of
all agencies. It is a second nature, or rather
the mould into which nature is thrown. All
the foundation of character must be laid in
the very earliest days. It is almost awful
to think at how early an age, humanly speak-
ing, the destinies of young children are
shaped and framed by their habits ; how their
future is in their own hands ; how, in Words-
worth's phrase, the boy is father to the man.
I believe some American author holds that
habits are formed by the age of twelve — a
curious iieory, which has nevertheless a basis
of truth.

Childhood is the secret laboratory where
all manner of hidden processes are being
evolved for development and perfection here-
after. In Eobert Browning's fine poem of
*' Lazarus,' the intense importance of the
actions of the young is shadowed forth. La-
zarus restored from the dead can view his
child in illness or danger, being altogether
unperturbed. But he is in a very agony of
sorrow and alarm if he notices any outburst
of sin or selfishness. There is a very in-

38 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

Rtructive lesson for the young to be learned
from the Memoirs of Hugh Miller. I remem-
ber, many years ago, hearing an account of
a gentleman who, journeying in a steamer,
saw an unwonted degree of attention be-
stowed on a mason who was sitting on the
right hand of the captain, and in whose
favour other people seemed slighted. When
he learned that it was Hugh Miller, and who
Hugh Miller was, he perfectly acquiesced in
the arrangement. But Hugh Miller never
had any business to be a stonemason. When
he was a child he obstinately refused to
learn, and played truant for weeks together.
He became a distinguished man, not by
reason of being a stonemason, but in spite
of it. We are told that during his hard
work in the quarry and under the shed, his
robust constitution was shaken, and the seeds
of ineradicable disease were sown in his
frame. He himself says that the obscurity
and hardship of his working life were a ' pun-
ishment for his early carelessness.' Perhaps
the dark catastrophe which terminated his
Jife might be traced to the foolishness of his

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS. 39

boyhood. His biographer, Mr. Bayne, truly
remarks : ' To check the lawlessness natural
to man, to break self-will to the yoke, to
change the faculties from a confused bar-
barian herd or horde {heer of the old German
tribes) into a disciplined or exercised com-
pany {exercitics of the Eomans) must ever be
an essential part of the training of youth.
Educated human nature is more natural than
uneducated.'

Look back on those old school days— days
as potent in their influence as in their asso-
ciations and recollections. There is no point
that requires nicer discrimination than the
line of early life to be marked out for a boy:
whether, for instance, he should go to a public
fichool or only to a small school, or should be
brought up at home. I believe that the
masters of our great public schools can discern
much more clearly than parents how certain
boys ought to be held disqualified for public
school life, although it is by no means very
<5lear on the surface why this should be the
case. There is the boy of weak health, who
is quite unfitted to rough it, even under

40 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

the improved condition of things at public
schools. We cannot, as was done in Spartan
days, subject all to the same conditions, and
let the strong live and the weak die. Again,
there is the boy who is morally weak, who
has little bone or sinew in his character,
easily led, unable to resist temptation, almost
inviting outrage and oppression. Once more,
there is the dull boy, always gravitating to
the bottom of his class, who in a mechanical
way is pushed through the routine of a school
without ever mastering any real knowledge.
A clever boy gets on well at a public school,
and receives every care and encouragement,
while the stupid boy ordinarily goes to the
wall. Schoolmasters do not even yet suffi-
ciently realise the fact that the true test of
the excellence of a school is not so much the
turning out of some brilliant scholars as
maintaining a high general average.

There are no days more important than
school days. Then the strongest habits are
fixed. Then the firmest friendships are con-
tracted. The permanent character of a man
is perhaps more truly shadowed forth in

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS. 41

•

school days' than in college days. In later
life a man is much more like what he was
at school than what he was at college. Then
line upon line, precept upon precept, here a
little, there a little, becomes the rule of life.

I remember very well my first view of
Liverpool across the Mersey. From the green
country side across the broad tidal river I
looked upon the magnificent great town which
has arisen upon the marshes over which
the lorn liver once croaked and flew. Far
up in the sky appeared a cloud, like a dense
pall — a cloud of smoke and fog — all the live-
long day overspreading the heavens. Of
course this would belong also to London and
all great towns, but I was never more struck
with it than those many years ago at Liver-
pool. When I journeyed about the great
town, moved about the streets and docks and
fiaUs of Liverpool, the consciousness of the
pall in which we were wrapped wore off;
after a fashion we felt the sun and the
breezes, and now in the populous city pent
we thought little how fi:om the green river-
side the aspect of the big town had seemed

42 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

SO cloudy and unwholesome. Even so from
the green riverside of childhood we look for-
ward with eager expectation to the crowded
thoroughfares of life; we detect in those
early generous days the gloom and worldli-
ness of things, but unconsciously we pass
into the cloud, and the pall is over us as
over others. Ah, happy those who on the
lawns and uplands lay in fresh stores of
vigour and health, who can at times seek
once more for the freshness of those fields
and streams, and can look forwards to renew
in age the Elysium of youth — in the happiest
sense, the second childhood, which has the
love most free from fear, the obedience most
removed from restraint !

The law of habit is that general habits
are formed by particular acts. I have seen
a mighty river, on whose bo8om a whole navy
might repose, at its well-head on the moors.
You might then easily step across the infant
stream. So that irresistible force of habit
which, when ingrained, gains an indomiteble
power, is at the commencement a force easily
capable of being measured and guided. The

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS. 43

habit is created by the repetition of innu-
merable Uttle acts. The object and the main
anxiety of life must be to watch and direct
aright this great motive force of life. It is
said in the words of Infinite Truth that he
who despises small things shall perish by
little and little. We are told that line must
be upon line, precept upon precept, here a
little, there a little. So too we are told that
he who is faithful in that which is greatest
is also faithfiil in that which is least.

As we stand in some vast manufactory in
the north, we perhaps wonder, amid the whir-
ring of wheels and the clang of machinery,
at the ease and adroitness with which even
young children can perform their allotted
part. They nimbly move with the wheels,
and deftly handle the threads. It is easy to
notice the readiness and unconsciousness with
which they get through their work. Now
this is in accordance with the second nature
of habit. This is in exact accordance with
the laws of habit. We acquire a habit, and
even forget how we acquired it. The more
perfectly we have acquired a habit, the more

44 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

unconsciously we obey it. And it is easy to
see in the nature of things why this should
be the case. If we had to deliberate on
each action, the day would not suffice for its
duties. So it is that habit supplies prompt-
ness and celerity. We could not inform
each detail of conduct with its philosophy,
reason out each act as it occurs. Never-
theless, where the habit is fixed on solid
ground, we ought to be able to analyse the
act, to refer the act to the habit, and the
habit to the law. As Dean Howson says,
' There is a blessedness for those who have
leamt the unconscious habit of joyous obe-
dience; who serve God without effi)rt and
without reluctance ; who rise, as the sun
rises, to travel the appointed journey, and
who sleep as those who have been guided all
day long in the way of peace.'

If we endeavoured to carry out the motto
approfondissez^ get to the bottom of the sub-
ject, the consideration of habits would lead
us into a curious vein of inquiry. Nearly
all the philosophers have had their discussions
on * habits.' They define, habit as a facility

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS. 45

in doing a thing and an inclination to do it.
Habits may be formed not only by acts, but
by refraining from acts. Indolence is a habit
formed by neglecting to do what ought to
be done. Voluntary acts become involuntary,
cases of volitional acts pass into automatic.
Aristotle points out that there is positive pain
in resisting a formed habit. The moralists
discuss habits objectively^ - as generic and
specific ; and subjectively^ as active and
passive. With a little puzzling out, the
reader will find out easily the meaning of the
classification. Then they are very anxious to
guard against the mischievous delusion that
the power of evil habit is giving way when
they are not doing anything which, in accord-
ance with the law of habit, would strengthen it.
Probably there is only a pause of exhaustion
or repletion, or the removal of the means
of gratifying them, or the exchange of one
bad habit for a cognate one. They have also
discussed whether habit is limited to living
beings. Is not the acclimatisation of plants a
resemblance of habit? Do we not see the
same thing in the docility of animals, which,

46 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

%_

according to modem teaching, are removed
from us only by so light and variable a line.
The connection between habit and instinct,
and the connection between habit and asso^
ciation, are very interesting and important
questions. Another very important question
is, how far we are influenced by the habits
of our forefathers, or may influence the habits
of our descendants. It is a very important
consideration how far by our own habits we
may be afiecting other moral and physical life.
This subject is called Atavism. There are, for
instance, various orders of disease which in fifty
per cent, of the cases are of an inherited cha-
racter. And what is Atavism ? perhaps you
ask. Briefly it may be answered that Atavism
is a tendency on the part of ofispring to revert
to some more or less remote ancestral type.
The subject belongs to that great general sub-
ject of inheritance on which Mr. Darwin has
written so much, and on which other writers
in following him have had so much to say.
In his work on ' Animals and Plants under
Domestication' there are an immense number
of instances of reversion. Mr. Darwin takes

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS. 47.

his instances from pansies and roses, from
silkworms, from hybrids, from pigs and
pigeons, from men and dogs. Let us look
at the nobler human subject. Mr. Darwin
speaks of the strong likeness through the
line of the Austrian emperors, and quotes
Niebuhr's remarks on the old Roman fami-
lies. There are some curious medical facts
relating to the subject. Thus, in cases of
hereditary illness, children will faU ill about
the same age as their fathers did; Mr, Paget,
in nine cases out of ten, says it will be a
little earlier. These are very unpleasant
fiicts in relation to Atavism, It is all very
well that one should recall the features of an
illustrious ancestor. When Lord Shaftesr
bury stood lately at an exhibition below the
portrait of his ancestor the likeness was most
remarkable; he might have stepped down
from the canvas. There used to be a man
about London who was supposed to be a lineal
descendant of James the Second, and who cer-
tainly looked much more like a cavalier of the
seventeenth century than belonging to these
modem days. Moreover, Mr. Galton in his

48 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

well-known book has shown us how clever-
ness is inherited, and that it is the tendency
of genius to reappeari This is the agreeable
side of Atavism. We have mentioned the
other side indicated by sagacious medical
theory, that the physician should look closely
to the child at the period when any grave
heritable disease attacked the parent. Thus
inexplicable neuralgic affections have attacked
parents and children — although we may fairly
hope that in these days neuralgia is becoming
strictly amenable to medical science. Blind-
ness is sadly hereditary; in one case thirty-
seven members of a race. Another &mily
suffered from ferocious headaches which
always ceased at a certain age.

A great many important practical ques-
tions turn on this subject of Atavism. For
instance, there is the important practical
question, which cousins seem in such a
hurry to answer in the affirmative, whether
cousins ought to marry. Another very im-
portant question is, whether consumptives
ought to marry. Dr. Charles J. B. Williams
says that he has so ' advised many a consump-

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS. 49

tive, and in numerous instances the results
Imve been happy.' He also very truly says—
and the saying illustrates the proverbial sel-»
fishness of love — ^that the objection that chil-
dren may inherit the consumptive tendency
is an objection more valid with physicians
and friends than with the consumptives
whose affections are engaged. In reference
to inherited disease, very strange is the fact
that we may see one member of a family
surviving in good health to a good old age,
while all the other members of the family
fall victims to consumption or some other
form of inherited disease; a fact which in-
dicates, among other things, how chaotic and
problematical is the real knowledge of chest
diseases.

Mr. Herbert Spencer has an ingenious ar-
gument on the subject of Atavism. He
discusses the subject of our appreciation of
scenery, which he is not content to refer
simply to the tastes or associations of an
individual man himself. He goes beyond
this to ' certain deeper, but now vague, com-
binations of states, that were organised in

VOL. I. E

50 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

the race during barbarous times, when its
pleasurable activities were among the moun-
t^iins, woods, and waters. Out of these
excitations, some of them actual, but most
of them nascent, is composed the emotion
which a fine landscape produces in us.' If
I understand Mr. Spencer's theory, to which
Professor Tyndall gives his adhesion, we
have here a new phase of the doctrine of
Atavism. Just as Mr. Darwin seized from
Mr. Woolner that little protuberance of the
ear which he imagines identifies us with our
simian ancestry, so Mr. Spencer thinks that
he detects in our love of scenery involving
adventures the traces of our barbaric descent.
In this way the race in its progress absorbs
and contains in itself the characteristics of
the dififerent generations.

But there is another aspect of Atavism,
necessarily untouched by physiologists, on
which I should desire to say a few words.
There is the curious subject of the recurrence
of moral characteristics, where the mental
and moral characteristics of men dormant
for generations singularly wake up in their

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS. 51

descendants. There are some fine lines in
George Eliot's ' Spanish Gipsy ' which bring
out the subject, and poetry is here as true as
physiology.

I read a record deeper than the skin.
What ! Shall the trick of nostril and of lips
Descend through generations, and the soul
That moves within our frame like God in worlds-
Convulsing, urging, melting, withering —
Imprint no record, leave no documents
Of her great history ? Shall men bequeath
The fancies of their palates to their sons,
And shall the shudder of restraining awe,
The slow- wept tears of contrite memory,
Faith's prayerful labour, and the food divine
Of &sts ecstatic — shall these pass away.
Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly ?
Shall the mere curl of eyelashes remain.
And God-enshrining symbols leave no trace
Of tremors reverent ? That maiden's blood
Is as unchristian as the leopard's.

Just as you may transmit peculiarities of
hair, eye, and lip you may also transmit a
sceptical, or meditative, or irritable tendency.
Not only the trick of nostril and lip, but the
meditative or devotional vein is transmitted
to posterity. There is many a parent wha
grieves over his own errors reproduced ; but
a grand&ther often takes more notice of a

E 2

52 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

child's ways even than his fether, and may,
perhaps, according to the principle of Ata-
vism, often see his own ways reproduced.
And now a further principle comes into play,
a moral law of a very peculiar character.

We often notice how there are certain
faults which we call * family failings' that
seem transmitted from generation to genera-
tion. Sometimes fiery passion seems inherent
in a line, sometimes covetousness or untruth ;
again and again there is some ugly phase of
human nature produced of the same tjrpe.
And now look at another set of correlated
instances. Do you ever notice how some
particular kind of tnisfortunes dogs certain
families ? Sometimes it is childlessness ; there
is never more than one son in a family, or
title and estates never come by direct suc-
(jession. Sometimes the children are all
early swept away by death. Sometimes there
is chronic struggle and poverty; sometimes
chronic disease. It seems impossible to con-
nect any special form of moral evil with any
special form of misfortune, in such descent.
What, for instance, has the childlessness of

SOME CONSIDERA TIONS ON HABITS. 53

people got to do with their covetousness ?
Yet if we admit the theory of the moral
government of the universe, it is by no means
inconceivable that in a wonderful way this
kind of sorrow may be penalty and correc-
tive for this kind of moral eviL We may
be powerless to trace the connection, but
still a subtle connection may exist. There
certainly seems a kind of Atavism in the
moral government of the world; the good
and evil of a family manifesting itself to
distant generations, and when the same kind
of evil is exhibited, the same kind of penalty
revives. The subject is obscure and difficult,
but we seem dimly to discern the outlines of
a moral law.

It is not at all uncommon to find men
shielding themselves behind their habits, and
referring these habits to the mode of bring-
ing up in their youth. There is, however,
a kind of fatalism in this argument; it is
the plea of necessity. It is a plea which, in
early years, and to a certain extent, has great
force. But the time comes when reason and
conscience should become more potent in-

54 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

fluences than the suggestions of the instinct
of habit. It may be granted that those whose
careless or unguarded youth has been spent
in the slavery of evil habits start heavily
weighted in the race of life. For such per-
sons there is a doubly-hard self-conquest to
be attained before any other true conquest
is possible.

There are optimist views and pessimist
views of life, both of which are probably
equally remote from the truth. Perhaps a
man starts in life heavily weighted with some
grievance. Through his own carelessness,
or that of some one else, he broke his leg,
and evermore any running that he can make
in a race is that of a lame man. It seems
absurd to take an optimist point of view, and
to say that the best thing possible for the
man was that his leg should be broken. It
is equally absurd to be always groaning as
you shoulder the crutch. Here are the
given circumstances, and you have to make
the best of them. Nature, with her count-
less adaptations, perhaps makes some exqui-
site atonement for that which seemed marred

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS, 55

and wasted. I think we may all venture to be
optimists, not in the sense that everytliing is
for the best — which appears to me to be hardly
religious or rational — but in the sense that we
may make the best of everything. The.
■Christian is told that all things will work
together for his good; but he is not told that
better things would not have worked for a
higher good.

It is sad indeed to watch the moral wreck
that is exhibited by some wretched victim
who is vanquished by the dominant power
of some evil habit. Aristotle has traced the
progress of the man who has no self-control
to the state of the man whom no remedies
can amend.^ At times there seems so
much that is winning and estimable about
some man of whom we are told that he is
the helpless slave of some vice or hideous
passion. The details of such an unfortunate
state of mind at times appear to be not unlike
those of demoniacal possession, and to suggest
the possibihty that there may be still those
possessed like the Gadarenes of old. Thu-

56 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

cydides tells us that at the time of the plague
of Athens other diseases disappeared, or, if
any existed, they ran into the prevalent type
of illness. So the man who has some master
•vice often shows a singular freedom from
other viciousness and moral obliquity, and
exhibits a remarkable grace [and attractive-
ness. He will charm us by his amiability,
and intellectual powers, and then suddenly we
shall see a sudden and awful revelation of
depravity. He is like a lunatic who is able
to simulate sanity ; who on many points will
baffle the acuteness of counsel, and finally will
exhibit some frightful delusion. Often the
helpless victim endeavours to struggle against
the coils of that evil habit, against which all
his better nature unavailingly protests. How
sad and plaintive is the language of a true
genius, the victim of a dominant vice,,
speaking of the Magdalene ! —

She sat and wept^ and with her untressed hair
She wiped the feet she was so blest to touch.

And He wiped off the railing of despair
From her sweet soul, because she loved so much.

I am a sinner, full of doubts and fears,

Make me a humble thing of love and tears.

SOME CONSIDERA TIONS ON HABITS. 57

That is a frightful 'turning-point' in the
life of a man or woman when the evil habit^
after many struggles, asserts its supremacy.
That is an infinitely blessed ' moment ' when
once more there is the rising tide of good
habit. The moral disease of the soul often
requires much of the skilful diagnosis and
careful treatment of a bodily disease. The
only sane way of overpowering and eradi-
cating evil habits is the encouragement of
good habits and a systematic perseverance in
them. There is a divine science in those
things. Cease to do evil; learn to do well.
Here is both the negative and the positive
side of well-doing. It is much to abstain
from the act of sin; that its opportunity
should recur, and that no advantage should
be taken of it; that the temptation should
be encountered and mastered. It is much,
too, that the opposite tendencies should be
encouraged, that the good habits should be
constituted whose nature is to conflict with
and destroy the opposite vices. It is often
good that the sickly soul should be placed
jonder entirely new conditions, where it shall

58 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

be sheltered from baneful influences, and be
brought within salutary influences. There
was a man of high position who attributed
all his prosperity and health to a sentence
of penal servitude which he once under-
went. He was a man of extravagant, in-
temperate habits, who had stabbed some one
in a fit of drunken fury. Imprisonment and
hard labour debarred him from temptation,
and encouraged the formation of regular
iabits. Physical and moral health returned
once more. On his release he came into a
large property, married well, and became an
active magistrate. It is now, we believe, an
accepted observation that it is the long sen-
tences, and not the short sentences, of penal
servitude that really promote the reformation
of offenders against the law.

There is always the danger of a relapse.
There is au inevitable reaction on the cessation
of a system of discipline. It is as when the
unclean spirit has gone out of the house of a
human soul and left it swept and garnished.
But the strengthened, purified soul will be able
to resist. A medical analogy will help us here.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON HABITS. 59

Physicians will tell us that in the gradual ameli-
oration of symptoms the constitutional vigour
will be renewed, and the chronic disease thrown
off. So after being in the school of ceasing
to do evil, and learning to do well, it may
be found that when the temptation recurs,
it is altogether inoperative to tempt.

The diseased soul cannot find a true
remedy in itself. Elsewhere miist be sought
the physician and the balm. There is no
more important ' turning-point ' in life than
when the insidious advance of an evU habit is
noted, and we flee to God for help. Such
seasons involve the deeper issues of the soul,
which are more important than any external
event. The young and ardent may in airy
imagination construct visionary scenes of those
decisive events which shall be the turning-
points of their lives, and accomplish for them
the fulfilment of their day-dreams. Such events
may appear, or, more probably, they may not.
It is in the steady formation of favourable
habits alone that we can form any moral cer-
titude that something analogous may occur.
These will assure that when the opportunity

6p TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

arises it will be grasped and turned to the
best advantage, or that the good habits in their
slow, unfelt persistence have reaped all the
solid good, and more than could be gained by
any merely fortuitous occurrence.

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. $£

CHAPTER III.

CRITICAL * moments' OF LIFE.

There occur from time to time in human life
signal moments, which become the landmarks
of its history. These are indeed the momen-
tous moments of life. They come upon us
unawares. The air is charged with no sense
of oppression and awe. There is no visible
sign to the most observant or to the most
superstitious. The 'moment' itself often comes
in the most ordinary and common-place guise.
It is perhaps only a caU, a letter, aa interview,
a sudden suggestion, a few minutes' talk at a
railwav station, and with a suddenness and
abruptness one section of life is clasped, and an
entirely new page of its ledger opened up.
* Do you remember writing me a letter one
day giving M.'s proposition? ' said a man to
me the other day. ' It was the turning-point

62 TURNIN'G-POrNTS IN LIFE.

of my life. When your proposal came I had
also a proposition to go to Scotland. I made
my election, and it coloured all my life.' In
the interesting biography of Mr. Barham lately
published, it is mentioned that he was going
along St. Paul's Churchyard when he met a
friend with a letter in his hand. The letter
was to invite a clergyman from the country
to come up and stand for a minor canonry at
St. Paul's. It occurred to him that ]\Jr. Bar-
ham would do just as well, and accordingly
the great humourist settled down into a
metropolitan wit and diner-out. I hardly
know whether he was exactly at home in his
vocation as a clergyman, but he and Sidney
Smith together were the cheerful influences of
the Chapter, and probably in a better position
there than in a pastoral charge. Smith alter-
nated his tremendous spirits with deep fits of
depression, and there is hardly any more
melancholy story than of the carelessness which
ultimately destroyed Barham's life. There
wa« a short youig feUow studying in the
reading room of the British Museum. It
hardly seemed that he had any higher chance

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. 6>

in life than to become usher in a commercial
school, and perhaps in course of time win his
way to have a commercial school of his own.
He attracted the attention of a gentlemen who
was reading there, who sent him to Oxford,
and after taking his degree he soon made his
thousand a year. I am sorry to say that to
him, as to many a clever fellow, the success
was ruinous in the issue. I remember hearing
of a man who while hunting about for a pair
of horses encountered an old college friend in
a state of great seediness and dejection. He
was a poor curate who did not care to stay in
England, and wanted some post abroad. He
was told of a trifling chaplaincy in a remote
place on the Continent. It seemed as if he
was cutting himself off from every avenue to
professional advancement at home. But the
English Ambassador, it so happened, came to
this little town, and was so charmed with the
temporary chaplain that he succeeded in get-
ting him high preferment in England.

It is here that the great importance of the
subject of habit indicates itself. The crucial
moment comes. It comes as a matter of chance,

64 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

and it appears to be as a matter of chance
how it shall be treated. But it is not really
so. Habit has established an instinct of the
mind. The soul, when a sudden demand is
made upon it for a decision, instinctively
throws itself back upon its past experience,
and answers the demand in precise accordance
with the habits of its essential life. For many
years the life has been unconsciously shaping
tod training itself towards the solution of
some problem which presents itself at the last.
We should all be anxious to utilize to the
utmost such a moment of fate.

This is eloquently put in a young girl's
marvellous story of ' Jane Ejo-e :' ' The more
solitary, the more friendless, the more unsus-
tained I am, the naore I will respect myself.
I will keep the law given by God, sanctioned
by man. I will hold to the principles received
by me when I was sane, and not mad — as I
am now. Laws and principles are not for the
times when there is no temptation ; they are
for such moments as this, when body and soul
rise against their rigour. Stringent ai'e they ;
inviolate shall they be. If at my individual

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. 65

convenience I might break them, what would
be their worth ? They have a worth, so I have
always believed ; and if I cannot beheve it
now, it is because I am insane — quite insane ;
with my veins running fire, and my heart
beating faster than I can count its throbs.
Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations
are all that I have at this hour to stand by :
there I plant my foot/

But here is the intense importance of the
habit. The present is the only time, and the
golden time. Each action of life ought to be
susceptible of being referred to a principle
and a rationale^ and so when the momentous
moment arrives it comes not on us unawares,
* but at a convenient season.'

Stay, stay the present instant,

Imprint the marks of wisdom on its wings I

let it not elude thy grasp, but like

The good old patriarch upon record

Hold the fleet angel fast imtil he bless thee !

Then it is a distinct moment in life when first
one meets with some friends, whose intercourse
probably colours all subsequent history. The
readers and' writers of novels appear to look

VOL. I. F

66 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

upon love-making as the great event in human
history, but probably the friendships which a
man makes mth men fonn a more enduring
influence. There is a time in the days of
youth when the mind is full of active, fer-
menting thought, and seems to wait for the
impregnating moment that shall fertiUse it.
To the boy fresh from school, whose mind is
full of the active or intellectual pursuits of life,
the moment when he is drawn into intimacy
with some man eminent in that line to which
his special interest is being drawn, is almost
a supreme moment in life. The youth has
had a natural taste for art, and he has been
thrown into intimacy with an artist. He has
had a love of letters, and for the first time
some friend guides his taste, and the riches
of a great library are put at his disposal. He
has had a natural taste for mechanical con-
trivance, and some engineer sees and likes him,
and explains to him the principles of his craft.
Such friendships as develop natural tastes, and
lead into new fields of knowledge, form in
their commencement real crises and turning-
points of life. So Lord Shelburne said of a

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE, 67

visit to the aged Malesherbes, ' I have travelled
much, but I have never been so influenced by
personal contact with any man ; and if ever
I accomplish any good in the course of my
life, I am certain that the recollection of M. de
Malesherbes will animate my soul/ ' I al-
ways remembered,' said Flaxman, ' Romney's
notice of my boyish years and productions
with gratitude ; I shall feel the benefit of
his acquaintance.'

Then, early intellectual moments in life, I
imagine, imprint themselves as strongly upon
the memory as any events of the outer life.
We have spoken of the irrepressible delight
with which the boy 01: girl produces a
poem, or what seems to them as such, and there
is a sense of a new power. But so it is when
the same young hero first discovers that he
can swim, or can draw, or can stand up and
make a speech. Who is there who cannot re-
collect the wild delight with which he first read
the ' Arabian Nights ' or ' Robinson Crusoe,'
or his maturer years in which he first read
the picturesque pages of Macaulay, devoured
the works of Scott or Dickens, or was inocu-

p 2

68 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

lated with the epidemic enthusiasm for Ten-
nyson ! No doubt it has often been the reading
of some particular book which has determined
a man to be an artist, a traveller, or a student
of nature. I remember as a young man there
were three books which the University of Ox-
ford put into our hands as young students,
which were calculated to do us very real ser-
vice. I am afraid that I did not make as much
use as I might have done of them, but doubt-
less they did me a great service, and I shall
always feel gratefiil to the Kind Mother who
directed my attention to them. I can very
well understand how, when Dr. Arnold was
hesitating whethei; he should send his son to
Cambridge or Oxford, ' dear old " Tottle " ^
settled the day. He could not bear that his
son should not have the advantage of the
course of philosophy at Oxford. I was not
very much impressed with the little I read
of Aristotle. In those days we did nothing
much beyond the ' Ethics,' but the first time I
read the ' Republic ' of Plato through, espe-
cially with the advantage, not altogether un-
mixed, of Mr. Jowett's lectures, quite a new

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. 69

-world of thought broke in upon one. The other
two works were those of authors of our own,
who are universally known and quoted — ^the
* Analogy ' of Butler, and the ' Novum Organon'
of 3acon. If the University of Oxford teaches
a man nothing else, it at least teaches him how
to read a book carefully and thoroughly.
Let me also say it delights me to pay this
parting tribute to the memory of a wise and
excellent man — that reading through the first
two volumes of Alford's Greek Testament was
a wonderful help and a good introduction to
' Bibhcal Criticism ' to those of us who took
orders after his work was completed, ' I re-
member,' says an Oxford alter ego^ ' the few
striking events of an ordinary life, seeing a
great fire, being nearly drowned in the Rhine,
nearly lost on hills, catching a fever, thrown
out of a carriage, seeing the Queen, and so on,
but hardly any events have been more vivid
than the reading of the Oxford class books for
" Greats/' '

Many instances might be given of the con-
tact of mind with mind, of the fertile results
that have come to pass when some receptive

70 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

has been brought into contact with some fer-
tilizing mind. Perhaps there was no man who
exercised a more astonishing influence on
young people than Dr. Arnold. Thus we read
in a recent 'Life of Bishop Cotton/ the Metro-
politan of India, how he came to Rugby as an
Assistant Master, and he is described in ' Tom
Brpwn's School Days ' as the ' model young
master/ The biographer says, ' The influ-
ences of this appointment on his after life were
incalculable. First amongst these must be
counted the impression produced upon him by
the character and teaching of his great chief.
It is not too much to say that there was none
of all the direct pupils of Dr. Arnold on whom
so deep and exclusive a mark of their master's
mind was produced as on Cotton. . . In later
years, in many instances, its particular effects
were more, or less rudely effaced either by the
impulses of their own growing thoughts, or
by the disturbing attractions of other men and
other schools of thought.' This by the way
truly indicates what there was of decline in
Arnold's influence. But Cotton came into
contact with him after his mind had been

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIhE. 71

already formed, and yet before he had been
swayed by any other commanding influence.
Mr. Francis William Newman, in his ' Phases
of Faith,' gives a very interesting account of
the various people whom he met and who aided
him in the formation of his opinions. Mr.
Newman went out to Bagdad, apparently with
the intention of converting the heathen, but in
the result the heathen nearer home converted
him. Dr. Arnold did not influence him, and
his influence over Newman's mind declined. He
thus gives an account of the incident which
really seems to have been a turning-point to
him. * When we were at Aleppo, I one day got
into religious discourse with a Mahomedan
carpenter, which left on me a lasting impres-
sion. Among other matters, I was peculiarly
desirous of disabusing him of the current notion
of his people, that our Gospels are spurious nar-
ratives of late dates. I found great difficulty of
expression ; but the man listened to me with
much attention, and I was encouraged to exert
myself. He waited patiently till I had done,
and then spoke to the following effect: — " I
•will tQll you, sir, how the case stands. God has

\

72 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

given to you English a great many good gifts.
You make fine ships, and sharp penknives,
and good cloth and cottons ; and you have rich
nobles and brave soldiers ; and you write and
print many learned books (dictionaries and
grammars) ; all this is of God. But there is
one thing that God has withheld from you
and revealed to us, and that is a knowledge of
the true religion, by which one may be saved."
When he thus ignored my argument (which
was probably quite unintelligible to him), and
dehvered his simple protest, I was silenced, and
at the same time amused. But the more I
thought it over, the more instruction I saw
in the case. His position towards me was
exactly that of a humble Christian towards an
unbelieving philosopher; nay, that of the
early apostles or Jewish prophets towards the
proud, cultivated, worldly-wise, and power-
ful heathen.'

It is very interesting to compare the ex-
perience of such a man as Francis Newman
with that of such a man as his brother John
Henry Newman. We extract a passage fi'om
the famous ' Apology.' We see here a turning-

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. 73

point in individual life, and more than that, in
the religious history of the century.

* Especially, when I was left to myself, the
thought came upon me that deliverance is
wrought, not by the many, but by the few. not
by bodies, but by persons. Now it was, I think,
that I repeated to myself the words which
had ever been dear to me from my school
days, " Exoriare aliquis ! " Now, too, that
Southey's beautiful poem of " Thalaba," for
which I had an immense liking, came forcibly
to my mind, I began to think that I had a
mission. There are sentences gf my letters
to my friends to this effect, if they are not
destroyed. When we took leave of Monsig-
nore Wiseman, he had courteously expressed
a wish that we might make a second visit to
Kome. I said, with great gravity, ^' We have
a work to do in England." I went down at
once to Sicily, and the presentiment grew
stronger. I struck into the middle of the
island, and fell ill of a fever at Leonforte. My
servant thought that I was dying, and begged
for my last directions. I gave them as he
wished, but I said, " I shall not die." I re-

74 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

peated, " I shall not die, for I have not sinned
against light ; I have not sinned against light/'
I have never been able to make out at all what
I meant.

* I got to Castro Giovanni, and was laid up
there for nearly three weeks. Towards the
end of May I set off for Palermo, taking three
days for the journey. Before starting from
my inn in the morning of May 26th or 27th,
I sat down on my bed, and began to sob bit-
terly. My servant, who had acted as my
nurse, asked what ailed me. I could only
answer, " I have a work to do in England/'

' I was aching to get home ; yet for want of
a vessel I was kept at Palermo nearly three
weeks. I began to visit the churches, and
they calmed my impatience, though I did not
attend any services. I knew nothing of the
presence of the Blessed Sacrament there. At
last I got off in an orange boat bound for
Marseilles. We were becalmed a whole week
in the Straits of Bonafacio. Then it was I
wrote the lines " Lead, kindly light," which
have since become well known. I was writ-
ing verses the whole time of my passage. At

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. 75

length I got to Marseilles, and set off for Eng-
land. The fatigue of travelling was too much
for me, and I was laid up for several days at
Lyons. At last I got off again, and did not
stop night or day till I reached England, and
my mother's house. My brother had arrived
from Persia only a few hours before. This
was on Tuesday. The following Sunday,
July 14th, Mr. Keble preached the assize ser-
mon in the University pulpit. It was pub-
lished under the title of '' National Apostacy."
I have ever considered and kept the day as
the start of the religious movement of 1833.'
Of a sudden turning-point in a man's des-
tiny we may find an example in the ' Life of
Bishop Cotton.' His whole course of life
was changed very suddenly. When the news
came to England of the death of Bishop
Wilson, soon after the Mutiny, his great
friend, Dr. Tait, determined if possible to se-
cure the appointment for Dr. Cotton, the
head-master of Marlborough. ' The Bishop of
London, with all the energy of his character,
pressed Cotton's merits on the Government
of that day, but, partly from an apprehension

76 . TURNING-PaiNTS IN LIFE.

»w^b— n^iiiafci— ^i^M— i^i— ^w^— ■*— ^— ^— *M^i**^-^— ^— ■■■■■■■ i ■ i i- - ■ — -

lest his modesty should throw some obstacle
in the way, without consulting Cotton him-
self. Meanwhile, from causes unnecessary
here to mention, the hope of accomplishing
this object had faded away, and the subject
was dropped, until the Bishop was suddenly
informed that if Cotton would take the post
it was still at his disposal. There was not a
moment of time to be lost. A change of
Government had just taken place, and Mr^
Vernon Smith, now Lord Lyveden, who was
then the Secretary of State for India, was
holding the post only till a new Ministry
could be formed. The Bishop telegraphed
the offer to Marlborough. It was like a
thunderbolt to Cotton in the midst of his
peaceful labours. The telegram dropped
from his hands, and he rushed from the
school to his house, and thence hurried to
London. . . It was one of those decisive cases
in which the mere decision is enough to
shake the minds of most. Perhaps in Cot-
ton's case an outside spectator would have
been startled and even disappointed to ob-
serve how slightly he seemed to be agitated.

CRITICAL . ' MOMENTS ' OF LIFE. 77

The calm, disinterested view which on all
occasions he would take of his own character
and position as of a third person, enabled
him in all simplicity to accept the estimate
of others concerning himself, and to acquiesce
in a change in many ways so alien to his
habits and feelings. On the foUdwing day he
saw the Indian Minister, whose brief words
dwelt in his memory as containing in a short
compass the extent of his opportunities and
responsibilities : '' I believe that in appointing
you I have done the best for the interests of
India, the Church of England, and of Chris-
tianity/' These words long dwelt in Cotton's
mind. He kept them before him as what his
episcopate should be, and we may now fairly
say that it was an estimate which his epis
copate did not disappoint.' A friend has just
told me that, taking coffee one day at a coflfee-
house in Ceylon, two men entered the room
and joined him in the meal. They were
dressed as laymen, and proved very pleasant
companions. He happened to mention that
the Metropolitan of India was expected in the
diocese of Colombo, and then one of them

78 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

introduced himself to him as the Bishop of
Calcutta* It was a strange, out-of-the-way
meeting-place. My friend, a missionary — and
Cotton was not always popular with mission-
aries — thought him a wise and good man.

The story of Cotton's remarkable death will
be remembered. The bishop's body was never
recovered after he had lost his footing on the
float and had been precipitated into the river.
Yet I know of an officer who lost a signet ring
in the same stream. He immediately affixed
a pole to mark the spot, employed a diver,
and recovered the ring. One would have
thought a human body would have been
more easily recoverable. It is singular that
on the morning of the day on which he
perished he had been consecrating a ceme-
tery, and had said * that departed souls
suffered no injury if their bodies were left
in a desert place, or on a field of battle, or
in any'other way were unable to receive the
rites of burial.'

I think there are very few people — and the
fact is [sufficiently remarkable — who can look
back upon their lives without seeing that

CRITICAL 'AfOMENTS* OF LIFE. 79

there has been some time or other in which
they have incurred the peril of a sudden,
violent death. There is a curious story told
of a man who came on the field of battle.
The Duke of Wellington remonstrated with
him, and the gentleman replied that his
Grace was in the same peril. * Yes/ said
the Duke, ' but I am doing my duty.' It
was just at this moment that a ball struck
the unfortunate man dead. We seem to be
taught by such instances that there is ' a time
to be born and a time to die,' and that while
change and chance happen to all men, there
are laws in these changes and chances, not
indeed clearly visible — at times indeed ap-
pearing to act with odd caprice — ^but in the
great emergencies of life manifesting an in-
fluence overruled for good.

Many curious instances of individual good
fortune might be given. Some time ago there
was a paragraph in the newspapers, which I
believe was correct, stating that an old lady,
childless and friendless, suddenly made up
her mind to leave a large property to the
children of some chemist or greengrocer at

8o TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

whose shop she had always received great
civility. It is worth noting that civility has
always had luck as an ally. There is the
stoiy told of some gentleman who, on a
battle-field, happening to bow with much
grace to some officer who addressed him, a
cannon ball just went through his hair, and
took off the head of the other one. The
officer, when he saw his marvellous escape,
justly observed that a man never lost by po-
liteness. Another curious story of luck on
a battle-field is, I believe, perfectly authentic.
A ball passed straight through a man's body,
and the man recovered.^ Thus much is not
unparalleled, but there was something more,

^ It might be ihouglit that there is nothing more ca-
pricious than the billet of a bullet, but even this chance
has a calculable element. Mr. Galton (* Hereditary Ge-
nius ') says : — The chance of a man being struck by acci-
dental shots, is in proportion to his sectional area — ^that is,
to his shadow on a neighbouring wall, cast by a distant
light, or to his height multiplied into his natural breadth.
However, it is equally easy, and more convenient, to cal-
culate from the better-known data of his height and weight.
One man differs from another in being more or less tall,
and more or less thick-set. It is tmnecessary to consider
depth (of chest for example) as well as width, for the two
go together. Let A = a man^a height, k' = his weight,

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE, 8i

highly curious and lucky. The man was
consumptive, and had formed tubercles.
The ball carried away the tubercles, and
the man recovered, not only from the wound,
but from the consumption.

I myself knew a man who had been a poor
Cornish miner, and, hke so many of his class.
had been forced to emigrate. He was long
in Peru, but all his attempts to get on
seemed utterly to fail. At last, when he
was about to give up in despair, he suddenly
came upon a vein of the purest silver. He
returned to the west country, where he pur-
chased one of its largest and best estates.
He took me over his magnificent grounds,
and told me what he had been able to do
for good causes dear to his heart. His in-
come had been returned for that year at
sixty thousand pounds. I was told of a
curious gleam of romance in this man's life.
He had been engaged to a poor girl before

h = his average breadlih, taken in any direction we please,
but it must be in the same direction for all. Then his
weight w varies as h 5', and his sectional area varies as A ^,
or as a/ ^ X A &^, or as V ^ t^*
VOL. I. G

K

82 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

he emigrated, and on his return he dressed
himself in his old working clothes and went
to the poor cottage, where he found his old
love unchanged and welcoming him back. It
was a glad surprise next day.

There once lived a man in the West of
England — the story is well known there —
who took a thousand shares in a mine, and
never had to pay more than a pound apiece
for them; and on those shares he lived sump-
tuously, and out of the income of those shares
he bought an estate for a hundred thousand
pounds, and, finally, he sold those shares for
half-a-million of money. There is a man in
Berkshire who has got a park with a walled
frontage of seven miles, and he tells of a
beautiful little operation which made a nice
little addition to his fortune. He was in
Australia when the first discoveries of gold
were made. The miners brought in their
nuggets, and took them to the local banks.
The bankers were a little nervous about the
business, uncertain about the quality of the
gold, and waiting to see its character es-
tablished. This man had a taste for natural

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE, 83

sciences, and knew something about metal-
lurgy. He tried each test, solid and fluid,
satisfied himself of the quality of the gold,
and then, with all the money he had or could
borrow, he bought as much gold as might be,
and showed a profit of a hundred thousand
pounds in the course of a day or two. It is to
be observed here that what we call luck is re-
solvable very often into what is really obser-
vation and knowledge, and a happy tact in
applying them when a sudden opportunity
arises. The late Joseph Hume was a happy
instance of this. He went out to India, and
while he was still a young man he accumu-
lated a considerable fortune. He saw that
hardly any about him knew the native
languages, so he applied himself to the hard
work of mastering them, and turned the know-
ledge to most profitable account. On one
occasion, when all the gunpowder had failed
the British army, he sijcceeded in scraping
together a large amount of the necessary
materials, and manufactured it for our troops.
When he returned to England he canvassed
with 80 much ability and earnestness for a

&2

84 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

seat in the East India Directorate, that he
might carry out his scheme of reform, that,
though he failed to get the vote of a
certain large proprietor of stock, he won his
daughter's heart, and made a prosperous
marriage. Marriage is, after all, the luckiest
bit of luck when it is all it should be. When
Henry Baring, the late Lord Ashburton, tra-
velled in America — ^not merely dilettante tra-
velling, but like Lord Milton in our days,
piercing into untravelled wilds, meeting only
a stray, enthusiastic naturalist, like Audubon
— ^he made his marriage with Miss Bingham,
and so consolidated the American business of
the great house of Baring. In an intema-
tional point of view this was a happy marriage,
for in after years it gave him a peculiar fecility
for concluding the great Ashburton treaty.
When young Thesiger gave up the trade of
midshipman I dare say some kind friends
pronounced him a failure ; but no one would
say that of Lord Chancellor Chelmsford.
There was another man who became a British
peer through circumstances full of luck for the
country, but which he doubtless always con-
sidered of direst unluck to himself. A quiet,

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. 85

happy country gentleman was Mr. Graliam,
with abundant means and healthful tastes, a
handsome estate and handsome wife. There
is a tale of his prowess related about his wife.
They were at Edinburgh, and were going to
a great ball, when, to her mfinite annoyance,
she found that she had left her jewel-case
behind her. The distance was sixty or seventy
miles, and it was not many hours before th^
ball was to come off. Graham took a fleet
horse, and at the top of his speed rode away
homewards in search of the jewel-case. He
did his ride of a hundred and fifty miles in
marvellously short time, and the ornaments
were in time for the ball. When the wife, for
whose comfort and pleasure he had so chival-
rously acted, died, Mr. Graham was incon-
solable. To alleviate his deep-seatedmelancholy
he joined the army as a volimteer. Then
commenced his splendid career as a soldier,
in which he proved himself one of the most
efficient and gallant of Wellington's lieute-
nants, and fought his way to pension and
peerage. Such was the turniag point in the
history of the late Lord Lynedoch.
There are some cases where in a critical con-

86 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

juncture of circumstances there almost seems
a direct intervention. Some instances might
be given from the long and curious list of
tales about enlistment in the army. Thus
we have a curious story about Mr. Wickham,
the father of the eminent diplomatist. He
was determined to be a soldier, but his grand-
father could not endure the idea. He ran
away and enlisted in the service of Piedmont.
He was one day standing sentinel at the gate
^f Alexandria, when two men of rank whom
he had known presented themselves with
their passports. For the sake of the joke
young Wickham could not resist giving them
a military salute. One of them. Sir Charles
Cotton, immediately recognised him, and
stayed the whole day in Alexandria, for the
sole purpose of engaging him to write to friends,
and with great difficulty persuaded the young
man to do so. His grandfather gave way,
and procured him a commission in the Guards,
and the man who might have perished as a
common soldier in foreign service became
an honoured and active magistrate and coun-
try gentleman, and the father of one of the

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE, 87

most useful of our public servants. Still
more remarkable was the case of Coleridge,
who, having enlisted as a common soldier,
wrote some lines in Latin which drew the
attention of his superior officer, who procured
his release. Sometimes the ' intervention '
assumes a character which hardly any one
would shrink from terming strictly pro-
vidential. Thus at the commencement of
Washington's military career, a soldier in the
enemy's army was on the point of picking
him off when he was totally unaware of his
danger. Thrice he raised his finger to the
trigger, and thrice by an uncontrollable im-
pulse he forbore to fire. There was a re-
markable retributive kind of Providence
in the case of Sir John Hawkins, the
famous seaman in the days of great
Elizabeth. He it was who, in an evil day
for the English race, first inaugurated the
slave trade. It is a remarkable fact that Sir
John's own son was taken prisoner by a
Barbary corsair, and he died broken-hearted
through grief.

Similarly in matters relating to the inner

88 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

life. There are certain books which to
certain men have proved a sphitual and mental
crisis. Thus one hears of a man having
his whole course of life altered through
reading Scott's ^ Force of Truth.' In reli-
gious biography we frequently meet instances
in which the perusal of some volume has
been a turning-point in life. In the lives of
quiet thinkers, men who pass apparently
uneventful lives, that are almost barren for
biographical purposes, the leading events of
their history are the sudden thoughts that
strike them ; the books they read which
opened up avenues of intellectual interest,
and conducted them into lines pf separate
investigation. The ' moment ' may have
passed unnoticed by the world, and they may
have a difficulty in fixing it for themselves,
but it n.y be \ criT^f .piritoa. aod in!
tellectual history — the best kind of history
after all.

There are moments too which are those
of supreme import, moments of keen
temptation, unhappy doubt, intense sorrow —
moments when men have gone as in very

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIIE. 89

agony out of themselves to the Eternal
Throne of God, seeking for a teaching, a help,
a consolation that this earth would be power-
less to afford. Then there has been some
solemn moment in which a deep, grave re-
solve has been made, in which the resolu-
tion has been steadily formed to make some
great act of self-denial ; to abandon some evil
habit, to conquer some overmastering tempta-
tion. The recollection of such a moment is
potent to the last; such a moment is a true
landmark in any human history, and has
served to shape and develope the powers of
the soul. In the moral life there frequently
comes some moment which is the very centre
of a life's histoiy. A temptation has graduaUy
been exerting its fascinating influence over
a man's mind, and the temptation is obtaining
an increasing force. The soul has long re-
sisted, but the resistance shows a diminish-
ing strength. The hour comes when the
power of the temptation and the power of the
resistance seem closely balanced. We are
now reminded of the picture of the Devil
playing at chess with a man for his soul.

90 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

Then, by some mighty impulse, the soul
makes election, although how that election
was determined we cannot say. All possible
interests hang perchance upon the balance
of a moment. Perhaps the leap into the
abyss was then made; perhaps by a strong
convulsive eflPbrt the man tore himself from
the side of the precipice, and found himself
safe on the spacious table-lands. This, is that
turning-point of the habits of which I have
spoken. In the one case there was hence-
forth a gradual deterioration — who is there
who knows London well who cannot count
up such mournful instances? — and in the
other case, the man has burst away from the
encircling chains, and has felt that he has
been able to climb out of lonely h^ll.

And not only are there such terrific mo-
ments of conflict, but there are quiet, happy
spots of life on which the mind's eye may
rest evermore with freshness and rehef—
green pastures and waters of comfort, to
use that simple, touching emblem, with
which the King of Israel recalled his boy-
hood's shepherd life. The Caliph in the

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE, 91

Story scored up eleven happy days. I
wonder whether that eleven was in excess
or in deficiency of the average. Such days
of perfect bliss are altogether abnormal, and
after a time we simply cease to expect
them. The purple light of youth, the gay
hues of romance and splendid possibi-
lities die off into the light of common day.
We know what life has to give, and what
it cannot give. We cease to expect from
travel, or variety, or adventure, anything
that in any perceptible degree will mate-
rially move and influence us. To some
men the acquisition of knowledge and
ideas ; to others, their advance in ma-
terial prosperity; to others, the gradual
purifying and strengthening of the inner life,
becomes the great field wherein their powers
and aspirations are to be exercised. But
in the grey light of the long colourless after-
noon it may delight at times to turn anew
to the earlier pages of life, and recall those
passages which gave emotions of delight
and surprise ; those moments which summed
up eras in the past, and proved starting-points

92 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

for the future. It is a blessed provision of
our nature that the mind forgets its sorrow
and remembers its joy- Though the iron
may enter into the soul, yet nature will
heal those wounds, save for the memo-
rial scar; and though the pillars of our
hopes be shattered, yet around those broken
bases there gather the wild flowers and the
clinging moss, which veil deformity with
beauty.

I wonder whether a man might be allowed
to quote himself. Thus it was some ten
years ago that I wrote down some memorial
thought or moments in life, calling them
the ^ Sunday Evening,' referring to those
quiet sacred hours which any man desiring
to be wise would fain secure for himself, and
which, often bring him into musing recol-
lection of the past, and surely also of clear
anticipations for the future.

^ May I not, with a glad mind, thank God
for many happy evenings, which for their
outward charm, and their relation to the in-
ward sacred history of the soul and mind,
are to me as memorable as any most striking

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE, 93

exterior event of life ? That evening, when
through deepening twilight I passed on
through Rydal and Grasmere — ^that glorious
evening on Loch Katrine, when the rich gold
of sunset mingled with the rich gold of au-
tumn leaves, in the walk past Ellen's Isle —
that evening, solitary and eventful, when from
the casement of the ch&teau where I dwelt, I
gazed on the broad Rhine, and the vine-clad
heights — ^that evening when I first sailed the
still waters of Lugano, or that when at mid-
night I looked upon solemn Maggiore, or that
when, having sailed down the Lake of Como,
I came near and first beheld the noble Ca-
thedral of Milan — that evening when, having
wished the Superior of the hospice of the
Simplon farewell, past crag and waterfall and
piny forest I descended the precipitous pass —
that evening when with kindly friends I
floated past Venetian palaces, beneath skies of
rare pale loveliness reflected on the Adriatic
waters ! I remember, and evermore will re-
member all these, and as a miser counts over
jewels and gold in vacant hours, in the
*' sessions of sweet, silent thought '' I surround

94 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

myself with the unagery of these unforgotten
things. But there are memories more precious
still, and these are connected with English
soil, and the English Sunday evening.

* Let me too, then, have my hour of reveries,
and let me now summon to memory two pure
recollections of the Sunday evening. One
shall be of summer in the country, and one of
winter in our great city.

* It is a country district, where the wild
moorland is in some parts crowded by the
dense population which our manufacturing
genius has evoked ; where the scenery once was
beautiful, and where strange gleams of beauty
still interrupt the sordid and commonplace
features of the landscape, by walk, by shaded
brook, by tufted heights, by an expanse of
fair water. The church, around which the
roses in profusion cluster, and before which
stretches the smooth, green, level sward, sanc-
tifies and adorns the landscape. The late
summer sun is slowly westering ; softly through
the oriel windows the rays fall on the kneeling
villagers, and fling a saint-Uke glory on some
dear head. The cadence of a noble voice is

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. 95

heard in silvery tones, " Lighten our darkness,
we beseech Thee, Lord;" and then the
simple hymn, perchance, in which our large,
and as yet unbroken, household circle join.
Such is the memorial imagery of simple
country days, before later years brought a
wider knowledge, and a sadder wisdom. And
now a glance at another Sunday evening in
the new London life. I am in the precincts
of the mighty Abbey. I leave my friends
with whom I had been conversing, in the
venerable close ; and, threading my way
through the quiet cloisters, I pass through a
side door, and suddenly a wondrous scene
reveals itself to me. Jets of foliated gas
emerge from the antique pillars, thousands
throng the vast nave, the crash of massive
music breaks forth, which resounds to the
dim, unlighted recesses of the far east of the
Minster. It is one of the earliest Sunday
evening services in Westminster Abbey, that
new feature in the ever-young life of the
Church of England. You remember it, too,
but perhaps you cannot have such associations
with it as I have. And so it is that on these

96 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

Sundays evenings both retrospect and antici-
pation are busy. We think of our lost
friends, of those who were once the most
familiar forms in our daily life, who have now
passed away, living now in other lands, and
beneath other stars; perchance, ^^ by the long
wash of Australasian seas;" or severed from
us by inconstancy or falsehood, or misfortune,
or even — a kinder separation — ^by the cold
hand that has silenced the lip, and laid the
finger on the eyelid, but has not left us with-
out a hope. As Lord Herbert of Cherbury
says, the brother of that great saint and poet
George Herbert — in lines, the first example
of that peculiar metre which *^ In Memoriam,"
has rendered so familiar:' —

" These eyes again thine eyes shaU see,
And hands again thine hands enfold,
And all chaste pleasures to be told.
Shall with us everlasting be."

* That company of the loved and lost, which
was at first so sparse, a two or three, — how the
numbers increase, how the voices swell ! Like
the sand in the hour glass, they hurry into
the vacant space ; they leave us, our sweet

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. 97

friends ; they no longer are on our muster-roll ;
as silent shadows they steal off into yonder
ghostly camp. That hour is coming to us,
my friends. Like a pilgrim, we every night
pitch our tent a day's march nearer home. We
know it well. For the last time we shall
listen to those sweet vesper chimes, and for
the last time watch the soft splendour of that
setting sun. And then for us in years which
we shall not see, some kindly friend, in me-
lancholy musing some such hour as this, will
have for us, perchance, that sorrowful recollec-
tion which we ourselves extend to those who
have " gone before.''

' Does this musing appear melancholy and
regretful ? Not altogether such, I trust, for,
in very truth, the musings* of Sunday evening
have their lessons of calm, and hope, and con-
solation. They should teach us to look back
upon the past without regret, and forward to
the future without a sigh. If our dead friends
can still think and feel for us, at such an hour
as this their eternal regards may be fixed on
US. If there are ministering spirits who in
angelic mission attend on us, at such an hour

VOL. I. H

98 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

we may listen to their heavenly whisperinga.
That Eternal Spirit that strives with men, and
would fain make their lives and deaths blissful,
is tenderly pleading with the poor, erring
human spirit, that still clings to the broken
Imks of perishable thmgs.

^It is now the Ave hour of the Sunday
evening. Such is the hour to listen to the
voice of God ; read some glorious page in
which the burning hope of better things trans-
lates sorrow into serenity. Such is the hour
of prayer ; pray for your native land and for
those you love, pray for forgiveness and for
strength, pray for resolution to live a calm
and Christian life, pray for those who have
your sorrows without your hopes. And now
to rehearse the last scene of all, by sinking
into silence and forgetfulness. Yet for a
moment pause. Withdraw the curtain, and
view the large night looming in its wintry sky
over this great London. See how the multi-
tudinous stars come out, army upon army of
the great hosts of heaven, and remember how
the music of the herald angels of Bethlehem
is stiU lingering upon our ears. May not our

I

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE, 99
1.

*

last thoughts be of the " many mansions " of
our Father's house, of which eternal truth has
assured us, and promised to seekers in them a
home ? '

Bishop Latimer used to interrupt a discourse
by saying, 'And now Til tell you a fable/
I will conclude this chapter by telling ft stoty
of an Important Ten Minutes, which possesses
the advantage of being quite true.

Piccadilly was at its liveliest and busiest.
The continuous London roar rolled steadily
on. Carriages, horsemen, vehicles of all sorts
hurried past. By Apsley House, at the en-
trance to Hyde Park, the crush of carriages
was especially great. Various glances were
thrown at the historic mansion of * the Duke,'
as all called his Grace of Wellington, as if
there was no other, and never would be any

h2

loo TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

other duke than that Duke. I imagine in that
popular notion people were tolerably right. I
am speaking of the days when the Duke was
still living and at the summit of his popu-
larity. Many, I say, were the glances at those
iron-clad shutters which the Duke found it
necessary to employ at the riotous times of
the Reform Bill, and which he grimly re-
tained as a lasting memento of popular favour.
Among the pedestrians there was one whose
especial business it was that morning to call
upon the Duke of Wellington. He will
enter Apsley House as a well known and
honoured visitant. With very good reason
will he be received as such. For Colonel
Beckwith has long served under the Duke,
and is an old Peninsular officer. He is dis-
abled now — we see that he has lost a leg.
Very proud indeed may he be of that honour-
able loss. The limb was left at Waterloo,
where the soldier had bravely fought for our
English hearts and homes.

The Colonel was shown into the library of
Apsley House, and sat down. The Duke was
very much engaged, but would see him pre-

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE, loi

i \

sently . Could he wait ten minutes ? Colonel
Beckwith resigned himself to the delay, arid
waited for some ten minutes or a quarter of
an hour. On those few minutes depended
the multiplied events of many years. The
Colonel, in after-life, used often to speak of
that brief space of time as the turning crisis
of his existence.

Perhaps Colonel Beckwith had heard of a
certain remarkable saying of Napoleon's, and,
as an old soldier, had probably seen it realized.
' Although a battle may last a whole day,'
Napoleon used to say, ' there were generally
some ten minutes in which the fate of the en-
gagement was practically decided.' How often
this is seen in life ! In the course of a few
minutes some thought is conceived, some deed
committed, which tinges the colour of the
whole remainder of an existence. So it was
to be now.

Before I proceed with the narrative, I must
stay to give one fact respecting the antecedent
history of this honoured soldier. Without
knowing it we should be at a loss to under-
stand the circumstances that ensued.

102 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

Colonel Beckwith was a truly religious
man. He kept close to his religion with
soldierly simplicity and good faith. After
the great field of Waterloo, he had stayed in
an invalided state at Brussels, a maimed and
disabled man. Then it was that he read tKe
Bible. He read it earnestly and diligently.
Ah, how many of us require to be laid upon
a bed of languor, before we will patiently give
heed to those sacred pages ! General Beck-
with — ^for he reached that rank — must have
blessed this time, for it was then that he was
brought to God.

How should Colonel Beckwith spend the
ten minutes during which he was to wait for
the Great Duke?

We have already said that he was in the
library. It was therefore a natural step that
he should walk up to the bookshelves. His
eye carelessly wandered over the titles of the
volumes. He put out his hand and took the
first that offered. It was Gilly's ' Waldenses.'
For ten minutes or more he was absorbed in
the contents. Then a servant entered the
library, and announced that the Duke would

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE, 103

see him in the sitting-room. The illustrious
chief and his distinguished subaltern then en-
gaged in conversation, and shortly afterwards
General Beckwith took his leave.

The remembrance of what he had read
during that ten minutes spent in the
library haunted him. At least he accurately
remembered the title of the volume, and could
procure it at his bookseller's. He did so.
Who was the author? A dignitary of the
Church of England, the Very Rev. Dr. Gilly,
Dean of Durham. He was so greatly excited
that from reading this book he proceeded to
read every other book connected with the sub-
ject. For this purpose he ransacked every
library he knew. Finally, was it not possible
to become acquainted with Dr. Gilly, the
author of that remarkable book which he had
devoured so ardently in the library of Apsley
House ? Certainly it was. There was no one
whom the kind Dean would be better pleased
to see than an old Waterloo soldier who
wished to speak to him on his favourite sub-
ject. They became great allies, and were

I04 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

both alike ever deeply interested in the Wal-
denses.

Another thought now occurred to him.
Why should he not cross the sea and the moun-
tains, and go and see the Waldenses for him-
self ; see for himself that beautiful scenery,
and by this means conceive fully in his mind
his impressions of that strange history? He
was a man without any ties. The great wars
were all over now. Europe was for ever safe
from Napoleon, and the soldier's occupation
was gone. His time and his means were en-
tirely his own. He was unmarried, and we
believe without near relatives.

Accordingly, in the summer of 1827, he made
his first visit. He was rather hampered with
some engagements on this occasion, and made
only a hurried stay of three or four days.
Next year, however, he went again, and stayed
three months ; the year following, six months.
By-and-by he permanently established him-
self at Torre.

• ....••

Closely as General Beckwith was connected
with the Waldenses, he became still more iden-

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. 105

tified with them. He took a wife from among
the daughters of the people. He was then
well stricken in years, and it might have been
questioned how far the Alpine maiden would
suit the aged English gentleman and soldier.
But to use the words of old Isaac Walton,
' the Eternal Lover of mankind made them
happy in each other's mutual aflfection and
compliance.' She was a village maid of humble
origin, but well educated as education was ac-
counted there, and he lived very happily with
her during the remaining eleven years of his
life. In these latter days he had a love for
the sea that equalled his love for the moun-
tains. He was fully aware of the important
sanitary truth, how beneficial is a timely change
of air and residence. The seaside residence
which he selected was Calais. He went there
so regularly and stayed so long, that it was
even thought the coasts of fair France were
estranging him from the valleys of Piedmont.
We know not how far this may have been the
case, but it is certain that in his last illness
his aflFection for his Alpine home was in
all the fullness of its strength. He knew

io6 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

that he was dying, and his hope was
that he might die among the people. In ex-
treme weakness he turned southward, and
crossed the Alps, that he might lay his bones
in beloved Torre.

At Torre then, he gradually declined and died, '
amid the tears and blessings of an affectionate
and grateful population. He left this world,
July 19th, 1862. He lies buried in the church-
yard of Torre, and for generations to come
his tomb will be pointed out to the passing
traveller. Some great Englishmen are lastingly
identified with the Vaudois Protestants.
Oliver Cromwell sent through his Latin sec-
retary, John Milton, that famous despatch
which expostulated on their behalf with the
Duke of Savoy.

King William the Third, in a treaty with
Savoy, inserted terms which greatly amelio-
rated their condition. But even more than
the memory of the great Protector, even
more than the memory of the great Protestant
deliverer, will the memory of General Beck-
with be cherished in these valleys.
Assuredly his is the record of a great, simple.

CRITICAL 'MOMENTS' OF LIFE. 107

beneficent life ! And all this came to pass,
as he often used to say, from the short time
that he spent in looking over a book in the
library of Apsley House, while waiting to see
the Great Duke ! Certainly that was an im-
portant ten minutes !

io8 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

CHAPTER IV,

UNIVERSITY CAREERS.

I ADD a few words especially on the subject of
University careers, inasmuch as the University
is to an immense number of men essentially a
great turning-point in life, and because, when
different schemes for University extension are
developed and bear fruit, the Universities will
become more than ever national institutions,
and centres of intellectual life for the nation
at large. I am hardly sanguine enough to
believe that the time will ever return when,
as in the days of Occam, some thirty thou-
sand students will troop from all parts of the
country to Oxford as the gateway of all
knowledge. It is impossible to doubt that
our Universities are now in a transition state.
This is symbolised by the demolition and re-

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. 109

construction of the collegiate edifices them-
selves during the last decade, by the new
examinations that have been instituted, by
the constitution, in either University, of the
new class of unattached students, by schemes-
for making the Universities schools for special
study on the arts and sciences. If we could
look into the Oxford or the Cambridge of the
future, the eyes of the old University man,
already sorely dazzled by changes outward
and inward even now existing, might be-
hold, not without infinite trepidation, an ex-
pansion and metamorphosis of which his past
experience could hardly suggest any idea.
Any discussion of University life must relate
chiefly to the historic aspect of the subject,
and it may be that, with a proverbial slow-
ness, we may linger long before the transition
is accomplished; but a transition is in store
for us, and we may hope that it will be for
the best.

In speaking of University careers, a great
deal depends on the conception which we
may form of academical success. Differences
of opinion depend mainly on a single point.

no TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

namely, whether a successful College career
is regarded as a means to an end, or as an
end in itself. The notion of a successful
University career usually implies a First-class
•knd a Fellowship ; and, as this involves a
modestly substantial income and a not undis-
tinguished social position, such a career is
looked upon as a good thing, worthy to be
sought for its own sake. With many persons,
on the other hand, a College career, however
brilliant, is only regarded as a step towards
ulterior objects. The real aim is in the di-
rection of the Church, Parliament, or the
Bar, and a successful career at College is
looked upon as a significant omen of the real
success of after-life. There are many dis-
tinguished men now living, whose names are
familiar enough to those who habitually
handle the ^ University Calendar/ who have
amply justified any prognostics that might be
drawn from early eminence. Christ Church
has, pre-eminently, been the foster-parent of
silch men; that ancient foundation having
given to the world a long line of illustrious
statesmen, who have entered the House of

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. iir

Commons with a brilliant prestige for scholar-
ship and ability. High University honours
comprise, however, so many advantages of a
lucrative kind, that they excite a keen com-
petition for them* among those with whom
they are a natural object of desire. One
result is that men enter the University at a
somewhat later age than was formerly the
case; they bring up a larger stock of know-
ledge than they once used to do, and the
standard of the honour-examination is pro-
portionately raised. It was once possible for
the same Cambridge man to obtain the
highest place, both in mathematics and
classics; but, we think, it was the late Baron
Alderson, who was one of the very few re-
markable men thus distinguished, who used
to say that the system of examination is now
so far extended that it is impossible for any
human being to repeat this particular kind
of success. Men at present run for the great
University prizes under a regular training
system, as complete and as scientific as any
other system of prize competition. There is
now established a regular migration from the

112 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

Scottish to the English Universities. Men
who have actually taken a Master of Arts de-
gree at Edinburgh or Glasgow take the po
sition of undergraduates who have only just
discarded their jackets. Those who know
anything of Balliol College; Oxford, or of St.
Peter's College, Cambridge, are aware of the
great extent to which this kind of thing is
carried. Some hardship seems involved, by
this system, on younger competitors ; but then
older young men pay a penalty in being pro-
portionately late starters in the great business
of life. However, they often consider that
they have satisfactorily performed that busi-
ness if they have obtained that academical
success which will guarantee them a modest
permanent competence.

The competition for educational honours
and advantages, which has ordinarily been
supposed, with justice, to commence at the
University, in accordance with modern no-
tions of competition, has been pushed back
to a still earlier age. The advantages are so
questionable that it is to be hoped that the
system will not receive any further exten-

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. 113

sion. Great pecuniary advantages are now
attainable by mere children at our great pub-
lic schools. A very juvenile youngster may
save his father many hundred pounds by
gaining a place on the foundation of Eton or
Winchester. While this is the case, we
cannot but fear that forcing establishments
will gain in parental estimation, and many a
yoimg head and heart will be weighed down
by a burden of too early thought and care.
We question, also, if there is much real
wisdom in playing a long game instead of a
short game. The prematurely clever child
who is extraordinarily successful at school,
will probably be only an ordinary man, with
no special success at College. In the same
way, the extraordinarily clever man at Col-
lege in many instances will subsequently
shade off into a very insignificant kind of
being for the rest of his life. Among the
crowds of young men in the fast- fleeting gene-
rations of the University, there are many
who, by their force of ability, seconded by
only moderate application, achieve the very
highest degree of College success, and repeat

VOL. I. I

114 TURNING-POINTS IN UFE,

that success, on a still broader scale, in the
world. But, beyond these instances, it ap-
pears perfectly possible to crowd into a few
years the intellectual labours of many years,
and to impoverish and exhaust the mental
soil by a system of unfairly high farming.
Men are constantly met with who sweep the
Universities of all the prizes which it is in
the power of those great corporations to be-
stow, and who find that their subsequent
career can bear no kind of comparison with
that brilliant early success. They have lost
the fresh spring of youthful elasticity, the
early ardour of intellectual exertion. The
mind that has long run in a scholastic groove
acquires a kind of mental inmiobility, and
will not easily adapt itself to the untried
career of an active professional life. Even
zealous attempts to achieve something of the
kind often prove real failures, and the Col-
lege don who has tried to renew College
success in politics or at the Bar, frequently
falls back once more on the common-room
or the combination-room, and takes his share
in College tuition and the emoluments of

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. lis

■ ■ ■■ ■ ■ I I ■ ■ » ■

t

College offices. But the University career
which, after all, is confined within the limits
of the University, is not, perhaps, such an
enviable kind of success that it should be
constantly held up to the admiration and
imitation of aU those who are starting on
the race of life.

Of course, here as elsewhere, we have to
arbitrate between dififerent orders of men,
and different kinds of successes. It is a
great success when a man has won his way
to the headship of his College, with a clear
prospective eye to Bishopric or Deanery. It
is no less a success when the poor scholar,
after wading through difficult waters, has ob-
tained a College Fellowship, and with grate-
ful, contented mind, waits for his College
Kving. His horizon may be narrow and
bounded, but it is, at least, satisfactorily
filled. Still, the College career, which is
limited and bounded by College objects, is
often fraught with melancholy considera-
tions. A merely mercantile element is often
introduced, which cannot be wholly deprived
of a despicable character. We can hardjy

i2

ii6 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

sympathize with young men who are always
eagerly calculating the value of Scholarships
and Fellowships, and subordinate every study
to the question whether it will pay ? Things
are often bad enough at Oxford, but .at Cam-
bridge an essentially ignoble system is pur-
sued to a most deleterious extent. It is
often the fault of parents, who tell their
sons that they must look to the University
as the main source of present and future
subsistence. We have heard the case of a
father who made his two sons handsome al-
lowances, with the understanding that, after
they took their degrees, they should entirely
maintain themselves. We feel sure that
nearly all our readers can recall similar in-
stances. In this particular case, one of the
sons went mad ; the other, with broken
health, won a Fellowship, and, naturally, was
on bad terms with his father ever afterwards.
The training system at Cambridge is carried
to as high a degree of perfection as any
system of trainer and jockey can be carried.
The Johnian stables are particularly cele-
brated Every particular of diet, rest, and

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. 117

exercise is sedulously attended to. The reading
man will look with the utmost abhorrence upon
the feeding man, simply because the feeding
will interfere with the reading. He will also
look with the utmost contempt upon the
man who dabbles in literature, or indulges
in oratorical flights at the Union. He has
no notion of indulging in any kind of intel-
lectual pursuit which may. in the least degree,
divert his brain from the lucrative objects
on which it is fixed. He tramples down
remorselessly any flowers of imagination or
poetry which may appear in the fresh dawn
of intellectual life. The success aimed at
is, at last, achieved; we, of course, pass over
the very many cases in which success has
been aU but achieved, and grievous disap-
pointment has been the result. The vic-
torious student, in due time, subsides into a
College don, who, in his own kind of way, is
the most spoilt and pampered of men. But it
is a condition of things in which an advance
is not easily made, and where the first flush
wears off into a dull kind of day. The
undergraduate may admire the awful state

ii8 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

of the don, but the don must often envy
the elasticitj'^ and freshness of the undergra-
duate. Year by year the resident don finds
the Ust of his friends narrowing within an
ever narrowing circle. He may enjoy travel
and society, but there is the corroding recol-
lection that he is linked to his College
position, and if that is abandoned, he will
have to begin life over again. The men
whose injudicious oratory and literature he
despised, in the meantime are, perhaps, ob-
taining name and position in public life. Very
often the don takes a College living, when
it is no secret that he has but scanty sym-
pathy with the sacred work to which he is
devoting himself.

It is a common thing that, when such a
man has attained all that the University can
give him, he is seized with an exaggerated
and morbid desire to get married. It must
be owned that there is much in his sur-
roundings to encourage this excessive ten-
dency towards connubiality. All material
wants are amply satisfied. The Fellows live
and rule like petty kings. Every day the

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. 119

high table is sumptuously spread for them,
without any effort on their part ; and costly
refections, from buttery and kitchen, are
ready at any moment. The Fellow lives
in comparative luxury and idleness; he is
surroimded with pictures, and poetry, and
art; he is often sensitive, susceptible, and
imaginative, to the highest degree. We
have very rarely known a Fellow of a Col-
lege who was not more or less anxious to
get married. Generally, also, these Fellows
are in the predicament of waiting for dead
men's shoes, eagerly expecting the lapse of
the College living which will enable them to
marry. At the present time, the wonderful
era has arrived when Fellows of College are
allowed to marry. This innovation was
looked upon by the old school as being of the
most alarming kind ; and, certainly, there is
something revolutionary in the spectacle of the
venerated College grass-plat being converted
into a croquet ground by the wives of the
Fellows and their feminine belongings. Still,
hitherto, such Fellowships have almost en-
tirely, or entirely, been held by those who

I20 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

are Professors, or whose services have been
found to be absolutely necessary in carrying
on the work of College tuition ; and it is
not at all probable that such a permission
will be generally accorded to Fellows. One
effect of such regulations would be that there
would be fewer vacancies in Fellowships, and
the chances of a successful University career
would be materiaUy abridged. From this
enforced celibacy, or other causes. Fellows of
Colleges are often restless, disappointed men ;
and, truly, the grand University success often
turns out to be not much better than a failure
and a mistake.

StiU, after aUowing for all these drawbacks,
there is a worse kind of University career.
There are University careers which fatally
progress backwards. A University man can
exemplify, to any extent, the art of sinking.
For many natures the University is a fiery
crucible, which searches out destructively
worthlessness and vice. It is a trial for a
young man to find himself suddenly in im-
limited credit at the wine merchant's and
confectioner's, and with fall power to gratify

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. 121

any baneful thought of self-indulgence with
which he is familiar. The defences which
surround him are, ordinarily, very slight.
The College tutor, who is sometimes depicted
as watching over his morals and endeavour-
ing to exercise on his behalf a legitimate
influence for good, is a being who is not
ordinarily to be discovered in real life. The
undergraduate is generally left to the bro-
therly agency of the proctor and his bulldogs.
If a man is viciously disposed, the descent
to Avernus is as easy as possible for him.
A little social or home influence would be a
good thing for him, but general society is
limited at Oxford and Cambridge, and only a
small minority of men make their way to
it. As it is, the man whose career is of a
downward tendency speedily familiarizes him-
self with the best provincial imitations of
metropolitan vice. This kind of career need
not be dwelt upon, for it has been often
described by that numerous tribe, the writers
of University stories, and, unhappUy, is only
too familiar in ordinary experience. We have
already said something on this sad subject.

122 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

There are very few families who, in the rami-
fications of relationship and connections, can-
not count up a few black sheep. The Oxford
credit system has much to answer for, but
it has still some good points. It sometimes
supplies a poor scholar with absolute neces-
saries, for which he was unable to pay at the
time, and without which he could scarcely
have passed through College. It is also to
be said, to the ultimate credit both of gra-
duate honesty and the sleuth-hound vigilance
of tradesmen, that, comparatively speaking,
only few bad debts are made at Oxford and
Cambridge. There is a whole army of
lawyers, agents, and collectors, a column
whose insidious advances are screened from
observation till the moment of attack. We
question, however, if mere indebtedness is
the general cause of the social tragedy of a
downward College career. That must gene-
rally be an enormous profligacy and folly at
College when, subsequently, a crooked career
can by no means be made straight, nor
recover itself through honest exertion and
the help of friends. That must be an almost

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. 123

unmixed process of deterioration which, as
the goal of a career, leaves a University man,
as is sometimes the case, in the position of a
billiard-marker or driver of a Hansom cab.

It might be imagined that men who have
really achieved a career at the University,
and won its substantial honours, would be
in the best possible position for winning
further distinction. They have gained the
vantage-ground from which they may best
advance, and are furnished with the instru-
ments with which they may best compete.
They have attained so much that they are
full of hope, and there is so much to be
attained that they should be ftill of effort.
An assured, moderate provision, with a really
good chance of obtaining still better things,
has been defined as the happiest position in
itself, and furnishing the best incentive for
exertion. Theoretically, this may be the
case, but, practically, it is not found to work
so. We do not, in any degree, desire to
speak disparagingly of Fellowships. It must,
also, be specially remembered that the system
of flinging the Oriel Fellowships open to the

124 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

world proved the inauguration of better days
for Oxford, and was of the greatest ' moment '
to the University. Still, the competition is
so keen, the strain so heavy and protracted,
that men too often sacrifice the present for
the future, and forget that a University
career is not the only, nor yet the best,
chance in life. Any University career, also,
however apparently successful, is only maimed
and incomplete that does not include a fair
share of the social advantages of the Uni-
versity. It is the glory of Oxford and Cam-
bridge that they not only make scholars, but
that they make gentlemen and make men.
Every man should seek to avail himself of
the intellectual culture of the University;
and there are now so many avenues to dis-
tinction that he must, indeed, be a dullard
who despairs of making any appearance in
any class-list. But it is something also to
' catch the blossom of the flying terms ; '
something to make the friends and build
up the character which are to stand a man
in good stead in his after life. We do not
stay to dwell much on this aspect of matters,

UNIVERSITY CAREERS, 125

but he who has done thus much, and, while
studying, can afford to look with equanimity
on material success, whether it comes or
goes, has really hit the golden mean, and
pursued the kind of career which, if not the
most distinguished, is, at least, the happiest
and most salutary.

There is no subject more frequently de-
bated than the comparative merits of the
two Universities, and none where the chance
of unanimity is so doubtful or hopeless. The
Oxford or Cambridge man who is susceptible
of being argued into the conviction that the
sister University is superior to his own alma
mater is as rare as the knight of romance,
who, while championing the peerless beauty
of his love, might avow that he was prepared
to give an enlightened consideration to the
possibly superior charms of some other com-
petitor for the title of Queen of Beauty. It
is right to argue and contend, but there is
disloyalty or treason in the very thought that
the argument can have more than one con-
clusion. It generally ends with the dogmatic
statement that the arguer is positive that he

126 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

— i^ I ■ BT I -* - . ■ - - -

i8 in the right, and an offer to back either
the light blue or the dark blue, as the case
may be, to any conceivable extent, for the nojxt
boat race. There are a few persons, not many
— the late Mr. Maurice furnished us with a re-
markable example — who have studied at both
Universities, and may be supposed to possess
better materials for forming a judgment, and
a certain degree of impartiality. But even
with these the tide of personal associations,
from the influence of which the most philoso-
phical are rarely able to extricate themselves,
sets decidedly in a particular direction. And,
indeed, as soon as we have gone at all tho-
roughly into the discussion, we perceive that
other reasons, besides an affectionate spirit
of partisanship, render a decision exceedingly
difficult. For ourselves, we confess to our
inability to strike a clear balance ; but though
we cannot hope to settle the general question,
there are many points on which it is quite
easy to arbitrate, that may satisfy a man, not,
indeed, as to which is the best University,
considered on the absolute merits, but which
is the best for him. It is to be regretted that

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. 127

a considerable number of men go up to the
University without much careful consideration
of this preliminary question. The matter
ought to be settled on more definite grounds
than that your father or uncle was there
before you, or that your favourite school-
fellow has gone to such a College. It is not
unusual to meet with an Oxford man whose
friends tell him that he ought to have gone
to Cambridge, nor yet with the Cambridge
man who will admit that, from all he has
since learned, he believes that Oxford would
have been the preferable University for him.
In selecting a University, as in the more
important matter of choosing a profession,
there should be a due measure of inquiry and
deliberation.

In very many cases, indeed, the incipient
undergraduate follows a probably safe tradi-
tion. There is a legal and historical connec-
tion between some great schools and some
great Colleges, and there is also an undefined,
but, at the same time, very strong, cennection*
between Eton and Christ Church, which has
become illustrious through the many great

128 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

statesmen educated on the two foundations.
But if a man does not feel — to employ the
language of the bidding prayer — ' in private
duty bound ' to resort to a particular College,
he is then open to considerations on the
general question. These considerations chiefly
have respect to the nature of his training and
the character of his mind. If, for instance,
he is mathematically inclined, and desires that
his mathematical powers should bring him
reputation and profit, it is clear that Cam-
bridge is the place for him, and Oxford is
not. There are mathematical class-lists at
Oxford in which, no doubt, men of remark-
able attainments have been placed. But
mathematical honours at Oxford have not
the same ascertained and precise value as at
Cambridge. A man may be a first class in
mathematics at Oxford, and be as good a
mathematician as a senior wrangler, and yet
he would gain hardly anything of the credit
and advantage which the senior wrangler
achieves. There is no diflSculty in speaking
on the subject of mathematical honours, but
when we go further we become conscious of

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. 129

considerable difficulties. This has been such
a revolutionary era at the universities, that
if a man has left Oxford only a few years
he finds it difficult to speak with certainty
of the comparative value of its academic
distinctions. We confess we feel great sym-
pathy with the elders who maintain as un-
challengeable the value of the old Oxford
first, before it was broken up mto the first
and second public examinations. The result
has been the deterioration of exact scholarship
at Oxford, but, at the same time, the lending
an impulse to the higher and more difficult
subjects, which demand a close acquaintance
with the ancient historians and philosophers,
and the cognate literature. The first result
of this was that most public schoolmen chiefly
confined their attention to the moderations
examination. It is now, however, unceas-
ingly felt that the second public examination
answers most, upon the whole, to the old first
class, and has a greater substantive value;
and that men who devote themselves ex-
clusively to languages are hardly sufficiently
rewarded by the intermediate honours of

VOL. L K

I30 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

■ ■-•■■

moderations. It is also to be noted, that at
Oxford a man may attain the highest classical
honours, either in moderations or in the final
examination, without writing a single Une
either of Greek or Latin verse. We suppose
that it would be impossible for a Cambridge
man to obtain even a low second class without
a considerable mastery of this accomplish-
tnent. The old saying used to be, that Cam-
bridge excelled in mathematics, and Oxford
in classics. It may still be claimed that
Oxford classmen have the thorough and
accurate knowledge of the books which they
bring up, which, though it may at times be
reached at Cambridge, has probably never
been surpassed. But we believe that there
can be scarcely any doubt but the palm of
verbal scholarship in England now rather
rests with the Cambridge classical tripos than
with any Oxford class-list. If these facts are
so, thp general result seems to be, that if a
•man is born with an instinct for writing
Greek iambics or Latin elegiacs, or has
developed remarkable taste in the direction
of the ' Cratylus,' he will find the best field

UNIVERSITY CAREERS, 131

for classics in the examination for the tripos.
But then, again, it is claimed on behalf of
Oxford, that she advances towards a point
which is far beyond the contemplation of
the Cambridge system. Having satisfied
herself that the candidates possess a thorough
and critical knowledge of the languages, she
proceeds to give chief attention to the subject-
matter of the books, and to mental science.
It may almost be said that Oxford has here
taken the place of Cambridge. The original
Cambridge wrangling^ which has given its
name to the mathematical examination, has
altogether disappeared from Cambridge, but
is reproduced very exactly at Oxford. Men
may no longer discuss, and reason, and dis-
pute at Cambridge, unless, indeed, for a
degree of divinity; but there is a very
remarkable tincture of all this in the Oxford
final examination. The ancient historians
bring up the whole subject of history, the
ancient philosophers the subjects of ethical
and metaphysical science. Nor is this
knowledge of a wordy and barren kind. It
is true that the Oxford student has studied

K 2

132 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

for himself the * Organon ' of Aristotle, but he
has also the 'Novum Organon ' at his fingers'
end, and is as well read in Comte and Mill
as the most zealous reader of the Westminster.
Thus, whne insisting upon a high order of
scholarship for her superior classes, the Ox-
ford system especially encourages thought,
research, originality, fosters the historical
and philosophical* spirit, and exercises the
highest mental powers, rather than makes
any extraordinary demand upon the memory
and upon mere acuteness. In this way the
old Cambridge wrangling element is a con-
stant force at Oxford, not absent from the
schools, and always pervading society. Ox-
ford is the scene of incessant discussion, the
place of ventilation for all new ideas. The
old proverb, much quoted lately, is true
enough, that any subject ardently debated
at Oxford will be discussed all over the
kingdom in the course of a few months. It
is noticeable, as symptomatic of this, that
the volume of * Reform Essays ' is mainly by
Oxford men, with only a slight admixture
or^ Cambridge men, and, very possibly, a

I

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. 133

larger and better volume by other men
holding other views might be easily put
forth. Cambridge has, doubtless, many cul-
tivated men who take a vivid interest in
intellectual discussion ; but this is quite
apart from the University system; while at
Oxford it is in perfect accordance with it.
The establishment of the School of Law
and Modern History, an institution peculiar
to Oxford, has also done good service in
fostering a spirit of historical, inquiry, and
bringing Oxford into accordance with the
exigencies of modem education. It is notice-
able that Christ Church, beyond any other
College, has been honourably distinguished
in the historical class-lists. Perhaps we
should not be wrong in saying that Cam-
bridge will best supply us with schoolmasters
and Oxford with statesmen. For syste-
matical labour, critical accuracy, sheer work,
and more remunerative honours, we believe
that an obvious supremacy rests with Cam-
bridge. But for a wider and deeper training,
for the real education and development of the
higher faculties, for the more genuine tincture

134 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

of all that is implied by the expression Liter ce
Humaniores^ there is reason for believing that
the palm belongs to the elder University.

In the friendly comparison between Ox-
ford and Cambridge a number of smaller
matters arise, most pf which would be
chiefly worth noticing for the sake of the
comparison, although their aggregate value
would be not inconsiderable. Thus the
Oxford freshmen must at once occupy rooms
in College, and only at a late period they go
into lodgings. On the other hand, the Cam-
bridge freshman goes into lodgings, and
subsequently obtains College rooms. The
Cambridge man puts the plain name, but the
Oxford man is in this, and other respects,
a little more stately. The Cambridge don is
generally exceedingly donnish ; the Oxford
don is exceedingly frank and familiar to
the younger men with whom he is brought
in contact. At Cambridge there is an odious
expression coastantly on the lips of reading
men, which least becomes young men and
votaries of knowledge, whether each course
of reading will pay. The expression is well

UNIVERSITY CAREERS. 135

known at Oxford, but by no means prevails
to the same extent. We like the Oxford
plan of grouping the names of men in the
same class alphabetically better than the
graduated Cambridge system, as more gener-
ous in itself and lessenino: the unavoidable
drawbacks that attend emulation and com-
petition. Mr. Kingsley has, with some ran-
cour, insisted that Cambridge men have a
chivalry of their own towards women, in
which Oxford men are painfully deficient. It
would be interesting to ascertain on what
actual facts Mr. Kingsley bases his conclu-
sion; we have not ourselves found that cir-
cumstances point in this direction. One fact
should be noted, which is very much in
favour of the University of Cambridge. At
Cambridge every other man you meet is a
reading man, at Oxford barely one man in
four deserves that title. This state of things
is greatly to be regretted, because the Uni-
versity curriculum at Oxford, apart from
honours, does not give much work for any
man of average intelligence, and there are
so many avenues of distinction that most

136 ^ TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

men should do something in the schools.
Coming to the practical matter of expendi-
tm*e, the expense of tutors is about a third
more at Oxford than at Cambridge, and on
a rough calculation the Oxford expenses are
perhaps a third more than the Cambridge
expenses. There are separate items in which
Oxford is the less expensive of the two ; thus
the rooms are perhaps better, with the rent
lower; but matters, on the whole, are some-
what on a more expensive scale. A man
very often goes to Cambridge to make money,
when he goes to Oxford to spend money.
The debate will certainly be extended into
a comparisgn of the scenic beauty which
belongs to the respective localities. There
is something absolutely unapproachable in
the extreme beauty of the ' backs ' of Colleges
when the Cam steals between frequent arches,
and groves, and lawns, beneath the shadows
of venerable edifices. Neither is there any
Oxford chapel which is the equal of King's
College Chapel. Nevertheless, the view of
Oxford, with its multiplicity of stately build-
ings, amid waters and gardens, ftdly realizes

i

UNIVERSITY CAREERS, 137

Wordsworth's epithet of * overpowering.' The
city is altogether on a wider and grander
scale, and the girdle of surrounding coun-
try possesses a greater degree of in-
terest. If from this we proceed to examine
the muster-rolls of illustrious names, the two
Universities will poll man for man with
much rapidity; but the great names of Bacon
and Newton, Milton and Jeremy Taylor,
invest Cambridge with peculiarly majestic
associations.

It is impossible that any comparison can
give us an undoubted result, because the
terms have no common denominator. A
man may easily decide which University is
the best for him, but he will find it impos-
sible to decide which University is best in
itself. If England only possessed one, her
educational system would show great draw-
backs; but, in the diversities of the two,
each supplements the other, and aflFords the
nutriment that is best suited for particular
orders of mind and variety of circumstance.
One of the most thoughtful and accurate of
modem observers, M. Taine, in his Histoire

138 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

de la Litterature anglaise^ has words respect-
ing Oxford which apply equally to Cambridge
— the truth of which we trust we shall never
forfeit. — that it affords ' traces of the practical
good sense which has accomplished revolu-
tions without committing ravages ; which,
while improving everything, has destroyed
nothing; which has preserved its trees as its
constitution, pruning out the old branches
without felling the trunk, and now, alone
among the nations, enjoys not only the
present, but the past.'

But now there threaten to come upon Oxford
and Cambridge a mighty battalion of men who
have hitherto been seen only in casual detach-
ments. This is the army of poor scholars. We
rejoice to believe that their advent has now
really been heralded. When a system of
national education has been thoroughly orga-
nized, we may hope that the district schools will
draught off their best scholars, and the endowed
schools will, as a matter of course, send their
best scholars to the Universities. We hope
there will be a golden academical age, in which
insufficiency of means will never prevent a

^

UNIVERSITY CAREERS, 139

iDright, good youth from going to College.
The tendency of poor men at present is to go
to Cambridge. At Cambridge the Colleges
are very rich, while the University itself is
poor ; while the University of Oxford is very
rich, while the Colleges are not so rich as those
of Cambridge. If Mr. Rogers's calculations
are correct, the University of Oxford will before
long be enormously wealthy, and vast funds
may be utilized for the purposes of education.
At Cambridge a considerable number of men
receive through College emoluments a large
measure of help in their course, and indeed
often obtain what may be called an academi-
cal subsistence. An immense sum is yearly
given away, bestowed with the most scrupu-
lous fairness. Indeed any man by very shin-
ing ability and attainments may make good
his footing at either University through the
open scholarships. But beyond these there
are many men of great powers of mind who
nevertheless could not hope to be successful
in a College competition, through not having
enjoyed the thorough training which public
schools or skilful labour have given to their

I4D TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

antagonists. Many of the best men at Oxford
have obtained very poor degrees. And beyond
these there is the great want felt in the Church
of young men to take holy orders, for whom
scholarship and ability are not so requisite as
devotedness of character and special adapt-
ability for their work. It is here that such an
institution as Keble College especially finds its
place, in meeting an acknowledged need, and
filling a vacant niche in the University system.
The system of unattached students also meets
this need, and in a somewhat wider way. For
it meets the wants not only of young men who
purpose to take orders, but of all those who in
any way desire to train and equip themselves
for intellectual life. It may be said that such
students lose the advantage of associating with
other young men of the University. The loss
is certainly not entirely on their side. It
would be well for the indolent and luxurious
section of our Universities to be brought into
close contact with a plainer living, a greater
industry, and a more robust understanding
than their own. The loss of Oxford society
might be a sensible loss, but it might be more

I

UNIVERSITY CAREERS, 141'

than compensated by habits of frugality, self-
denial, and foresight, and the acquisition of
sterling qualities which might adorn a larger
society hereafter.

We therefore look forward to an immense
development of our University system. In
the administration of vast funds it will be
hoped that the founders' intentions of encourag-
ing probity, industry, and religion will re-
ceive distinct attention, instead of competi-
tion being strictly limited to a place in the
examination. We may trust that the Univer-
sities will duly exhibit and duly foster the
best young intellectual life of the country. The
immense appliances of professoriates, libraries,
and museums might be utilised for special
ends. There can be no reason why there
should not be great medical schools at Oxford
and Cambridge, as much as at the sister Univer-
sities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Perhaps it is
not too much to hope that men taking orders
should proceed on the Pauline principle of
learning a trade, and should at the medical
school qualify themselves to act as physicians
for the body as well as physicians for the soul.

143 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

We are sure that no man has ever yet gone to
the University, or at least has truly used it,
without feeling that to go there was indeed a
moment, an era, a turning-point in his life, and
desiring the extension of such blessings to the
largest possible number of his countrymen,
unless he indeed belong to those against whom
the reproach was divinely given, that they
had the key of knowledge, that they entered
not in themselves, and that those who were
;entering in they hindered.

That is a real moment in life when first at
Cambridge a man has gazed on the stately line
of Colleges nearer him, or has paced the Broad
Walk of Oxford to the marge of the ' lilied
Cherwell,' and the matchless tower of Mag-
dalen, He who has worshipped in the gorgeous
fanes, or studied in the antique libraries of
either University, or has first listened or
studied under the great leaders of modem
thought and scholarship in their lecture rooms,
or has joined in the actual intellectual stir and
strife of the place, or has formed here a first
high tone of tastes and companionship, or has
realised the ennobling memories and associa-

UNIVERSITY CAREERS, 143

tions which surround him, will not fail to look
back on his sojourn as days among the most
momentous of all days, and thinking of the
University will breathe a prayer as for the
Zion of one's youth, that peace may be within
her walls, and prosperity within her palaces.

144 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

CHAPTER V.

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.

The question of the choice of a profession is
intensely important, and the choice is a veri-
table turning-point. It ought carefully to be
kept in view for years in advance. Life is
very like a battle or a game of chess, and there
ought to be some plan of the campaign. These
are especially days in which a man must make
up his mind to be something. Men will go to
the army or to the Bar if only that they may
be able to give the world some account of
themselves. Those few men who do not enter,
a profession belong to a class which has the
leisure and independence conferred by the
possession of means and position, a class which
has great duties imposed on it, and is so a
profession in itself. A wise parent will watch

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 145

his child carefully to see what his bias or ten-
dency may be. Dr. Johnson has defined genius
as strong natural talent accidentally directed
in a particular direction. To say the least,
this definition is not exhaustive. Great natural
ability will doubtless enable a man to excel
in almost any direction, but genius more or-
dinarily supposes a combination of abilities in
a special direction. I believe a great deal is
done in a child's education if you can discover
a bias, and give shape and direction to it. Of
course the preferences of youth are often
imaginary, and are often subjected to revi-
sion. Still it is a great thing to get a lad to feel
a distinct preference for any pursuit, to map out,
even in outline, anything like a chart of the fu-
ture. It is pre-eminently the misfortune of the
present day that so many young men are de-
void of enthusiasm and have no object in life.
Let, however, a few words be said here
which may assuage some anxious thoughts. I
do not think that it really matters whether a
young fellow has shining abilities or not. Of
course there are some branches of life for which
a man should have strong abilities and a strong

VOL. I. L

i

146 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

bias if he would indulge with fairness any high
expectations of success. Such is authorship as a
profession, or the artist's calling. The most
money-getting departments of human life are
those in which shining ability is not so much
required as probity and common sense. In most
departments of life we have nothing more to
expect than the manfiil performance of duty
and its competent discharge. If a boy is not
clever this is a hint from nature to the parents
not to assign him a path of life where superla-
tive excellence is required with a view to suc-
cess, but to find him an avocation amid the

Girdles of tlie middle mountain, happj realms of fruit and

flower ;
Distant from ignoble weakness, distant from the Height of

power.

At the same time it is exceedingly diflScult
for parents to decide rightly on the question
of the capacity of their children. Much misery
is caused when a father thinks his son a fool
and does not hesitate to tell him so. Again,
if a son is found not to be doing well in any
particular walk of life, that is simply a sign
that there is some other walk in life in which

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 147

he will probably do exceedingly well. There
is the story of a father who found that his
son was a great failure as a midshipman. He
immediately concluded he would do very well
as a lawyer, and as a lawyer he rose to the
top of his profession.

Let us now rapidly review a man's chances
in a profession. Take first of all the Church, a
profession which lies outside other professions^
which is sometimes entered from the highest
motives alone, sometimes from very low mo-
tives, and sometimes from mixed motives. A
few words may here be added to what we have
already said on the subject. There are those
(the Sunt qui phrase which we so often have
to use) who enter the Church because there is
some valuable old ancestral living in stor^.
The modern form of this abuse is that a worthy
parent invests his savings for a son in a Chan-
cellor's living, which on the whole yields a
very fair return as an investment, to which
the young man succeeds in due course after
the process of waiting for a dead man's slip-
pers. Then there are many young men who
are easily persuaded or persuade themselves

l2

i

148 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

to enter the Church is a fitting conclusion to a
collegiate career. To a man who has taken
his degree the Church is a profession easier of
access than any other, and unlike any other
yields immediately a modest income and a
good social status.

The existence of a sordid element is a re-
proach and weakness of the Church. It is to
be hoped that something in time may be
done to remedy such a state of affairs; the
remedy must chiefly be sought in the increased
sense of responsibility among patrons and
young men, and perhaps in some enactment that
only curates of seven years' standing should be
appointed to livings of a certain amount of
value and population. Only a feeling of simple
regard and reverence can exist for those who,
urged by the loftiest motives irrespective of
earthly considerations, devote themselves to
their heavenly Master's work. And, taking
human nature as it is, we will not think
harshly of any who adopt this line of life, if
only amid their mixed motives we recognise
a humble and hearty desire to do good in the
cause and service of Christ. Still it is of the

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 149

utmost importance that the worldly aspect of
the Church should be put clearly and honestly
before those who from their inexperience are
no judges of the position of life and the
worldly chances of the minister of religion.
Of those chances, unless in the case of a family
living, or if commanding influence, very little
can be said. If a man has a fervent desire for
the ministry, let any father be very careful
before he dares to interpose obstacles. But
it is the father's duty clearly to put before his
son that secular view of the matter which the
son from his inexperience might be incompe-
tent to understand.

He will tell him, therefore, that his average
pay as a curate will be a hundred a year, or
one pound eighteen and fivepence a week. He
will also explain to him that his length of ser-
vice in the Churqh will for many years be of
no use, and will afterwards operate as a dis-
qualification. He will tell him that any prefer-
ment might just as well come in his first year
or his fifteenth, or that it may not come at all.
He will explain that the more earnestly and
singly a man applies to his work the less likely

ISO TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

is he to make friends, to move about in the
world, to form a literary or scholastic connec-
tion. It is quite true that eloquent and clever
men may possibly make their way to the front
and obtain recognition and reward. But it is a
lottery even with them, and the average hard-
working curate has barely a chance. His
bishop will probably be willing to do some-
thing for him, but the patronage of a bishop
is very limited compared to the number of
claimants. The endowments, provided at a
time when the country was poor and the
population thin, are utterly inadequate to a
time when the country is populous and enor-
mously wealthy. It might therefore be
thought that the obligations devolved by the
Bible upon each generation of Christians to-
wards each generation of ministers would
be recognised, and that voluntary efforts
would make up for the inadequate endow-
ments of poor incumbents and the non-existent
endowments of poorer curates. It would
have to be explained, however, that though
this may be the case in some instances, there
is not enough liberality and Christian obedi-

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 151

ence in the laity of the English Church to
create any regular system of the kind, and
that the scheme of a Sustentation Fund is un-
known to the English Church. Moreover,
the curate, as bred in gentle ways and un-
versed in the affairs of the world, will espe-
cially have to guard against the temptation to
marriage and the meshes of debt.

One remedy for this state of things would
be that the public patronage of the country
now vested in the Premier and the Lord
Chancellor should not be left to their indi-
vidual caprices, but be administered according
to intelligible principles. Another and larger
remedy would be that the area of work in
which the clergy may occupy themselves
should be indefinitely enlarged. There ap-
pears to be no valid objection why the clergy
should not practise as doctors or surgeons.
It is to be hoped that some corporate action
will be taken in the matter, that some clerical
school of medicine will be established. I also
see no reason why those curates of the Estab-
lishment who may not be fit for intellectual
wQrk, or may not be able to find a market for

152 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

it, should not enter into some kind of business.
The apostle St. Paul was a tent-maker. I
believe there is still a great deal . of business
done in tent-making, and should we be in-
volved in war by-and-by, to purge us from
our sins, there wjll doubtless be a great deal
more. There should be some clerical tent-
making company formed. It is better for
clergymen to be employed in any sort of way
than to cause scandal by running in debt.

I do not see that the Dissenting clergy, \vith
all their boasts of the voluntary system, are
really any better. At least we hear very great
complaints, not ill-founded, of narrow income,
and it has been the business of a whole class
of able writers to acquaint us with the short-
comings of the Dissenting ministerial position.
The contrast seems to fail in the very point
where it might seem most telling. It is true
that an able man in full work who might be
receiving four or five hundred a year among the
Dissenters might only be getting a quarter of
that in the Establishment. But the Dissenting
Boanerges when he becomes old has probably
only a very limited retirement allowance, while

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 153

the Anglican who has worked hard on a scanty
remuneration most of his days, may in the
evening of life find these conditions reversed ;
a good living and a very moderate population.
Let us now look at other businesses and
professions. In nearly all of them the words of
the poet are true — * All the gates are thronged
with suitors, all the markets overflow.' Take
the Bar. A man of real ability may have very
long to wait, and the waiting process is a very
costly one. It can hardly be done without a
modest independent income by anyone who
would obey the great legal injunction, 'to
bear the port and carriage of a gentleman.'
Persevere, read hard, attend the courts, stick
close when not in attendance on them to your
chambers ; don't even shrink fi-om familiarising
yourself with the business of an attorney's
office — so an ' old stager ' would say to a be-
ginner, and you will at least deserve success,
and in all probability you will attain it. Still
I am afraid that to deserve success and to
attain it are hardly synonymous terms. In
all professions there is a vast mass of educated
mediocrity that can do its work very respect-

154 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

ably, but in every department positive ex-
cellence and pre-eminence is required, and
this is exceedingly rSre. Law is a luxury
of civilisation, and people who have a taste
for luxuries like the most fashionable and the
best.

We confess to a tender feeling — one of
peculiar sympathy and appreciation — for
briefless barristers. So far as we can see,
they are quite as clever, and a great deal
more amiable and amusing, than barristers
with endless briefs. The general notion is,
that our briefless friend is a man of genius
and culture, waiting for the chance which
laggard fortune is so slow in giving him. If
he only had the chance, it would be the
Archimedes' lever which would enable him
to move the legal world, and grasp the seals.
It rather militates against this idea, that
many briefless barristers are such of set pur-
pose, and would be infinitely dismayed if
briefs, and the chance of legal greatness, were
thrust upon them. They have gone to the
Bar, as the most gentlemanly of professions,
and as giving them a kind of status which it

ON THE i: HO ICE OF A PROFESSION. 155

is worth while acquiring. In England we
have a prejudice in favour of a man's having
a definite profession; and unless his name
is a guarantee for wealth or territory, we
credit the idle man with being more or less
of a vagabond. The status of a barrister is
an ' undeniable ' one, neither is it particularly-
expensive, especially if the sham is acknow-
ledged from the first, and there is no pretence
of reading in a pleader's room. Again, many
men become barristers who do not care to
practise, but desire to qualify themselves for
dropping into something good. Briefless
barristers help to swell the class of waiters
upon Providence — those who open their
mouths, shut their eyes, and see what may
be sent them. There are always a number
of good things going, for which a barrister
. is often the only legally-qualified candidate
— magistracies, and so on — ^not only at home,
but, to an extensive degree, in the colonies
as well. We have known men, appointed to
high judicial office in the colonies, whose legal
library hardly extended beyond the ' Comic
Blackstone/ It may be interesting to mention,

156 TURNING-POINTS IN ^IFE.

that they proved admirable judges, their
decisions being always characterised by sound
equity and strong common sense. Indeed,
our pleasant and gentlemanly friends, the
briefless barristers, are a most deserving class,
and we hardly know that good things could
be better bestowed elsewhere. Many briefless
barristers have no care or sympathy for the
work of the Bar, and many regard their
membership as a stepstone to something more
congenial. They would not mind being made
judges at once, but they dislike the drudgery
of the long initiation as working counsel. It
is impossible not to appreciate their high-
minded regret, that, in this country, judicial
appointments are not bestowed irrespectively
of these merely professional considerations.

Still, briefless barristers mainly consist of
those who would like briefs well enough, if
they could only get them. There are those
who have never had a chance, and those who
have had their chance and lost it. In the
present day it is the most difficult thing in
the world for a barrister to get a fair chance.
A man is supposed to be doing all that he

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 157

can if he assidously attends the criminal
courts, and waits his turn, which is supposed
to come round in due course, of getting a
brief for a prosecution. It is, indeed, in the
criminal courts that most barristers make
their first start, if, indeed, they succeed in
being placed. But it is very hard to get
up a criminal business ; and, after all, it is
rather a dirty kind of business. You have,
besides, to know people whom you would
rather cut, and be civil where you would
rather snub. We have met extremely in-
telligent men, who have argued, with much
plausibility,' that criminal business is the
most important business at the Bar; that it
is better, fer se^ to plead for life and liberty
than merely for property. But it is prac-
tically found that there is a frightful same-
ness in criminal business, that greed and
passion have always the same kind of de-
basing story to tell, and that you can hardly
get beyond the range of a certain monotonous
vulgarity of crime. Moreover, a man's mind
frequently revolts against the work to which
it is put. A counsel, for instance, clearly

158 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

sees that his garrotting client deserves to be
hanged or flogged ; and it can be very little
satisfection to his mind that he has got him
off his hanging or his flogging. The brief-
lessness of some barristers is, probably, due
to their scruples, or their disgust. A man
of refined culture and a fastidious tone of mind
finds himself utterly unable to brow-beat
witnesses, or dl'ag himself down to the level
of a British jury. Sometimes the briefless-
ness is due to a less creditable cause. He
has to own to himself that he is really not
up to his work. He may be able keenly
to detect a brother counsel's mistakes in the
handling of a witness, or in the points which
he puts to a jury. But when he is himself
called upon to address a court, he finds that
he has to use armour which he has not
proved. He finds that he has not got the
art of public speaking, and the oration which
seemed so neat and satisfactory when he
composed it in his chamber, is lame and
impotent when he has to bring it out. He
then bitterly regrets that he never joined
the * Union ' at his Universitv, and that he

ml I

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 159

■ ■ ■ ^ ' —

always looked with contempt on the httle
contemporary clubs for mutual discussion.
For the want of a mere knack, which might
have been acquired with ease and pleasure
in younger days, many an able man subsides
into a chamber counsel who might have made
for himself a great public reputation. It is
not encouraging to a young barrister, in his
first essay, if a learned judge, after listening
for a few minutes, opens the evening paper,
and composes himself to the latest intelli-
gence. Our judges are, of course, beyond
the slightest whisper of partiality. Still, it
is a great thing to be known to the presiding
judge personally or by reputation, and it
greatly affects the reputation in which a
counsel is held by solicitors, whether he is
heard by the court with marked deference
and attention, or is hardly listened to at all.

A few years ago there was such a rapid series
of elevations in the law courts that it has
been popularly said in the profession that
business to the extent of thirty thousand or
forty thousand a year has been set free in
the courts, to be disposed of among men who,

i6o TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

save for those elevations, would not have had
it. It is also popularly said that at present
there is a great dearth of commanding talent
on some of the circuits, and there was never
a better opening for a first-rate man than
at the present time. At the first blush all
this sounds very well for our briefless friend,
but, on examination, it is mere mirage. A
man of first-rate powers will certainly succeed,
but the man whose abilities are merely good
has no such pleasing certainty. And the
man of first-i'ate powers has to prove that
he possesses such. No one will give him
credit for it, and no one will help him to
preve it. He has, perhaps, many years to
wait for his' opening ; then the business will
come in at a rush. He takes the tide, and
goes on to fortune; the fat ears will make
amends for the lean ears. To such a man
the opening is everything, but to such a man
the opening may very possibly never come.
There are tales on record — Lord Campbell
has several such in his ' Lives of the Chan-
cellors' — which give us a romance of the forum.
The leader is absent, and the junior counsel

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, i6i

gloriously wins the cause. A man rises to
address the jury quite unknown, and leaves
the court immortalisfed^ A good-natured
attorney generously marks some young man
of promise, and gives him an important brief.
We may observe that the last kind of instance
is becoming almost an impossibility.- A soli-
citor, in a .case which is at all important,
knows that it is perilous work to entrust a
brief to an unknown genius. •; With charac-
teristic caution he has to rely upon talent
that is proved, rather than on 'talent which
has to assert itself. He has also interests
of his own to serve, and will not concern
himself with the interests of one who is an
outsider to his circle. In cases involving
property, he is obliged to avail himself of the
highest talent which he can co'mmand, for his
clients will insist on this, and it will be to
their advantage, and ultimately to his own,
that this should be the case. Otherwise, a
solicitor will naturally give his business to
his own friends and connections.

This brings us to another prevailing cause
of brieflessness. To a considerable extent

VOL. I. M

i62 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

legal business is becoming a monopoly in the
hands of a class. Formerly a great social
distinction existed between barristers and
solicitors, but absolutely no such distinction
now exists. It was thought in the highest
degree indecorous for a solicitor to make
advance? to a barrister; it was as bad as a
modest maiden making advances to a bachelor.
The fledgeling barristers sat in modest awe^
palpitating for a proposal. To vary th(?
image, the legal Houris wondei^d to whom
the Sultan of a solicitor would throw the
handkerchief. Theoretically, at least, and to
a great extent practically, this high etiquette
is maintained. In the meantime, however,
the friends of barristers bring heavy pressure
to bear upon solicitors in the matter of the
disposal of their briefs. In the meantime,
also, solicitors have reduced their patronage
to a special system of their own, A legal
firm, with a lucrative business, sends the son
or relative of some leading member to the
Bar, and is able, in the legitimate course of
business, even though his abilities are me-
diocre, to put a good professional income in

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 163

I ■ ■ > .■'■■■ ■ — — — i^ • — ■ ■ ■' ' — • ■ .'r * —

his way. One of the most approved method*
for a barrister to get into practice is, to marrv
into the family of a solicitor. This kind
of arrangement is now fully recognised. The
la^vyer may not be able to give his son-in-lat\?^
a sum of money, but he can promise him busi^
ness to the extent of £500 a year; that is, hfc
pays him in kind — receives him on what are
called terms of reciprocity. It is not at all
a bad way for getting on at the Bar to marry
a solicitor's daughter.

But let us see how all this works foy
our briefless friend. He cannot marry the
daughter of the only influential solicitor he
knows, even although he is to be paid /or i%
He has no legal connection. He has simply
entered a most honourable and ancient pro-
fession, relymg on his character, culture, and
ability. At first he is greatly impressed with
the owl-like wisdom of the wig and gown.
There is a pleasing excitement and variety in
going circuit, in joining a brilliant mess, in
gathering up the wit and stories of the court.
He probably sees something of local society,
and hopes that he will some day distinguish

M 2

i64 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

himself in the eyes that rain down sweet
influence. He, perhaps, owns to himself, after
a time, that there is a depressing monotony
in that average fifty-pound note which going
circuit costs him. Once it was thought a
great thing to attend sessions by way of
making business, but sessions are not now
for barristers what they once were. Once it
Ti[as held that a barrister might get business
by affecting to be busy, by having a blue bag
filled with papers, and many books and docu-
ments to consult; but this is now esteemed a
baseless legend. Perhaps he becometh cyni-
cal. He thinks that Buzfuz (Serjeant) talked
* utter bosh 'in opening Mrs. BardeU's case;
that Jones, Q.C., did not do half as well as
he could have done in cross-examining that
tough witness; and even that Starling (C.J.)
got rather muddled in the issue which he left
to the jury. Perhaps he thinks that its
' dogged that does it,' and elects a West-
minster court to which he will regularly
attend. He beguiles much time by taking
portraits, profile and full face, of such men
as Buzfuz (Serjeant), Jones, Q.C., and Star-

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 165

ling (C.J.). Finally, he perhaps betakes
himself to literature, or to some other down-
ward path that leads to professional perdition.
In Mr. Burgon's interesting hfe of Tytler, the
historian, we find that, being the son of a
well-known judge, he had a considerable
practice at the Scotch criminal Bar, but when
the writers found that he was becoming
known as an author, his practice quite for-
sook him. The late Mr. Justice Talfourd
was a successful barrister and successful
author, and — save the mark — a poet. Such
a phenomenon is abnormal enough, and recalls ^
the black swan, or rather the aloe, that blos-
soms but once in a hundred years.

We confess that we think our old fi'iends
Mr. Briefless and Mr. Dunup have been rather
hardly dealt by. Every man ought to have a
fair chance, and we cannot see that they have
had theirs. But we will forget the case of indi-
viduals in the larger consideration which brief-
lessness opens up. Two considerations occur
to us which may be very concisely stated.
If the Bar degenerates into a class-profession
which hardly gives independent men a chance,

1 66 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

then there is a danger that independent men
will not go to the Bar, and that it will seri-
ously fall off in efficiency and its general
standard. Secondly, solicitors should con-
sider that every man is a debtor to his pro-
lession, and should not only seek their own
ends, but do what they can to promote the
efficiency of the legal profession — an end
which they will promote if they give un-
known men a chance. To the briefless them-
selves there are certainly not wanting topics
of consolation. They see a great deal of life
and character. They have abundant space
of time for meditation. They have the fairest
opportunity for exercising that finest of vir-
tues, patience. They have generally some
means of their own — health, hope, fine tastes,
energy, and culture. In the season of fruition
they will perhaps desiderate the period of
hope, in the season of oppressive business the
period of leisure. Leisure is, after all, the
main boon and prize of life, and those who
can use it well, though they may be briefless,
will not, in the long run and in the best sense,
be unsuccessful.

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 167

The success may come at last, but before
the success may come, there are some preli-
minary questions to be settled. The question
of the morality of advocacy is one which, to
a young man at that decisive turning-point
of life which consists in choosing a pro-
fession, is often ftiU of embarrassment. I
have known of instances in which men who
might have had good chances at the Bar
have held aloof from moral considerations.
It was bad enough that on the legal cab-
stand they should be at the beck and call
of each hirer. It was bad enough that the
energies of an immortal soul should be frit-
tered away on such questions as whether a
railway company should be liable for the
lost goods of a passenger who had not duly
registered them, or whether Jem Stubbs's
destroying his wife's head by knocking it
too much about with a poker was murder
or manslaughter. It may be ©bserved that,
in the latter case, the verdict will probably,
be manslaughter, and the judge, in all pro-
bability, will pass a lenient sentence. Our
judges appear to have a truly British respect

i68 TURNING-POINTS FN LIFE,

for property, as compared with the person,
with life and limb. Mr. TroUope is, of
course, the great advocate against advocacy.
It certainly seems intolerable that, when a
man is plainly on the facts guilty of an atro-
cious murder, and the barrister leans to the
belief that, on the whole, he would rather
hang such a scoundrel than leave him un-
hanged, that the same barrister should be
obliged to expend all his ability and inge-
nuity in getting him off. Practically a bar-
rister has no choice ; he must take any case
that is offered to him or he will lose business,
although I believe that once or twice bar-
risters have refused briefs in favour of crimi-
nals whom they abhorred. It is thus that St.
Augustine writes of the matter: — 'And I
resolved in thy sight, not tumultuously to
tear, but gently to withdraw, the service of.
my tongue from the marts of lip-labour; that
the young, no students in thy law, nor in
thy peace, but in lying dotages, and lip skir-
mishes, should no longer buy at my mouth
arms for their madness. And (very season-
ably) it now wanted very few days unto the
vacation of the Vintage, and I resolved to

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 169

endure them, then in a regular way to take
my leave, and, having been purchased by
Thee, no more return for sale.' There was
a higher tone in the Roman forum than
there is in our own. Cicero would refuse
to defend a man of whose innocence he
was not convinced. The answer to such
reasoning is that the barrister is one com-
ponent pai't of a complex machinery, the
object of which is to elicit the truth. He
does not feel called upon, as Cicero felt, to
avow his belief in the innocence of his client.
Indeed such a course would be deemed to be
in the worst taste. He is testing the worth
of other statements ; he is making his own
statements ; he is suggesting the theory that
may probably be the right one. He is an
active agent in bringing about a right deci-
sion, and in promoting the cause of justice.
The general reasoning in favour of modern
advocacy, of which this is a specimen, can
hardly be asserted to be other than as a
whole irrefragable. Still I can imagine,
despite any amount of such special pleading,
that a high-minded barrister will feel some

170 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

qualms when he knows, for instance, that he
has been the means of crushing and oppress-
ing a poor widow. Still, some of the best
practice of the Bar consists in chamber prac-
tice, in equity, and in the common law cases,
in which astuteness and learning may be care-
fully exercised. The Bar is the avenue to
the Bench, and no one has a purer fame or
does his country better service than the wise
and upright judge.

Probably, of the entire income made by
the practice of the law, only about ten per
cent, goes to the barristers. On the other
hand, all the distinctions of the profession
belong to them. Of the solicitors, there is
of course a class of whom everyone thinks
with deserved contempt and dislike. Pro-
bably this pettifogging class is both a small
and a diminishing one. It has been my
happiness to know lawyers who have been
an ornament to their order, and raise one's
opinion of human nature. I have known
lawyers who have made a point of never
allowing a case to go into court if it can
possibly be helped, who never undertake a

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 171

case of the substantial justice of which they
are not convinced, and who really make no
charge at all for a great deal of their cor-
respondence and advice. It is satisfactory
to know that such men have often immense
practice, and make correspondingly large
incomes. It is delightful to see that there is
a real moral progress in the profession, and
thus a plain, straightforward, simple way of
doing business. Few men see more of the
range and variety of human life than so-
licitors, and it is happy for them if they can
pass through their perilous ordeal with a
sound heart and an untainted mind.

There is no profession for which a man can
have a heartier liking than for the medical
profession. For while it may be said in the
rough that the law feeds and battens upon the
vices and passions of himaanity, the medical
profession pursues a godlike, beneficent mission
in administering to our diseases and unhap-
piness. We may now and then hear of a medi-
cal man who evidently makes lucre his chief
object, and acts severely towards the poor, but
as a rule the medical man constantly relin-

172 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

quishes his just and hardly-earned gains, and
in many a household is an angel of help and
consolation. It is a matter of regret that
medicine is not a profession in which a man
has a clear field and no favour. The man who
wishes to be a consulting physician must wait
long and spend much money, and drive about
in a carriage to enable him to keep one. It is
to be hoped that medical education and medi-
cal degrees will be put upon a better footing
than has for some time been the case. It is
lamentable to think of the young men who by
a process of cram can pass their examinations
and forthwith obtain a licence to kill, slay,
and destroy. At the same time it is satisfac-
tory to know that the profession abounds with
able and deserving men, and that they con-
trive to do well in the long run. They do not
make fortimes, but they get good incomes.
Even the poorest man can struggle to the
i'ront. He walks the hospital to some pur-
pose, becomes house surgeon ; perhaps he is
only an apothecary, but collects a connection
and sinks the shop ; perhaps he is assistant to a
practitioner, obtains some public appointment,

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 173

and gets into general practice. Perhaps there
are as really good men in the provinces or in the
East-end of London as among the famous or
titled physicians of the West-end. Of all the pro-
fessions that a man can practise, setting aside
the ministerial — which may be considered
the most important, but iii which we can rarely
trace visible results — there is none more glo-
rious or elevating than the medical profession.
The scholastic profession alone could enter
very closely into the comparison. This is a
great and noble profession, which will pro-
bably receive a far larger development than
it has hitherto attained. We are now only
commencing a broad national education. The
time will come when with the common schools,
and the public schools, and the colleges
education will be extended and cheapened at
the Universities and throughout the country.
By-and-bye we shall have a vast army of a
hundred thousand schoolmasters for our State
schools. At present our national schools are ex--
ceedingly good ; our public schools exceedingly
good ; but the intermediate schools have been
good, bad, and indijOferent, without any means

174 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

of testing their real eflSciency . Much improve-
ni£nt has been effected, but we may look for-
ward to an organised, scientific system of edu^
cation which may carry on our land at an
accelerated progress to the van of the nations.

Every kind of education, scientific, techni-
cal, linguistic, as well as the old lines, will be
•more and more, developed, as it is understood'
that we must add the German Geisi to our
British stock. To teach fitly is as rare a gifjt
a^ any endowment of eloquence or art. The
scholastic profession will rise everywhere in
social esteem and importance. Even now the
average head-master of a great public school
is at least as important as an average bishop.
The responsibility of forming the character
and foreshadowing the history of those com-
ipitted to one*8 care is exceedingly great, and
the honour should be correspondingly great.

The scholastic profession is now a regular
business, of which the clergy have the largest
part. The class lists at the Universities, es-
pecially perhaps at Cambridge, furnish the
criterion by which the public mainly judge of
the capacity of masters. Such a criterion,

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 175
#-*- • •

however, simply shows the capacity of a man
for imbibing knowledge, and is not in itself a
proof of his capacity to impart it. A good
degree enables a man at once to obtain a
lucrative mastership, and, as he gains ex-
perience, he goes on to the greater prizes af
the profession, A good degree has thus a
large monetary value. A senior wrangler or
•a senior classic ought to make his place on thg.
list worth some ten thousand pounds to hinj,
and a place only a little below his would have
a not much inferior value. A good school-
master will show that he is fit not only to
instruct, but to educate, to develope the cha-
racter as well as the intellect of boys, treadirig
in the steps of an Arnold or a Bradley.

We come now to the Government appoint-
ments that are obtained by competitive ex-
aminations. The first example of these was
the Indian Civil Service, and this service still
offers the chief prizes in this direction. There
is nowhere in the Empire a nobler career
open to a man,* a career where the possibilities
are so splendid as in India. To a man of

176 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

good character and temperate habits, living in
India is cheap and not unwholesome. The
examination for the Civil Service is exceedingly-
broad and fair, one of great compass and variety.
A man may make almost any intellectual pur-
suit, almost any scrap of knowledge available
for this examination. If he has not had the ad-
vantage of a University education and good
honours in classics and mathematics, still if he
thoroughly understands the language, litera-
ture, and history of his country, and other
intellectual pursuits, his chance is good.

In 1870 a wide revolution was effected in

I.

every department of the Civil Service of the
Crown. The nomination system was alpaost
entirely swept away, and the system of com-
petitive examinations was substituted. The
Order of Council issued at Balmoral threw
open the whole vast civil patronage of Eng-
land, and added a very sensible proviso that
every appointment should be probationary
for six months, and liable to be cancelled
through any unfitness of the person appointed.
This order will probably lend a vast impetus to
the educational progress of the country, and is

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 177

indeed the proper appendix to our recent legis-
lation on education. Perhaps an exaggerated
value has been popularly assigned to Govern-
ment appointments, and when they are open
instead of close there may not be such a
lively appreciation of them. The service of
the Government is hardly so profitable as the
service of the people. At the commence-
ment and the end of a career a man perhaps
obtains a distinct advantage, but a man in the
full flush of energy and work has hardly suf-
ficiently free expansion for his powers, and
has lost the chances which active life affords
him.

In any review of the professions, the army
and navy should be considered, and the
dangers and exigencies of the country will
doubtless give an increased importance to the
two arms of the service. No commissions are
purchasable in the artillery, and it is to be
hoped that this example will everywhere be
followed. It is a regrettable circiunstance that
neither in the army nor in the navy can a
man very easily subsist upon his pay. The
position of the poor officer is in much analo-

VOL. I. N

178 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

gous to that of the poor curate. He may see
a younger man promoted over his head when
all the merit is on his own side. It may be
reasonably expected that before long every
effort will be made to render the two arms
more popular throughout the country, and to
give them the substantial rewards they merit.
The worth of the new arrangements has yet
to be tested.

It would be interesting to make a survey
of the various pursuits of trade and commerce,
and it may be observed generally that of
those which deal with the luxuries of society,
the work of the artist- and architect and
author, while in some cases they give gain
and name, in many others they afford only a
scanty and precarious subsistence. The busi-
nesses that deal with the actual wants of so-
ciety, the eating and drinking and clothing,
the home, and travel, while they often
yield enormous profits are also more equable
and permanent in their returns. There is
sometimes a great deal of foolish pride gener-
ated in a comparison of professions and
trades, which fosters the conventionality, the

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 179

exclusiveness, the feelings of caste and class.
There is much in this that is ignoble, that is
narrow and narrowing ; something too that is
inhuman and un-Christian. As Christians we
have all innumerable points of contact and
sympathy ; the points in which men differ
are as nothing to the points in which they
agree. It makes very little difference what
parts in life we are called upon to play, but
it makes all the difference whether we act
them well, simply, and nobly. To use an old
similitude, it is not asked in any dramatic
performance who played the king, or who the
hero or the peasant; the only question is
whether the character is played well or not.
The noblest kind of fame is open to the
lowliest ; to quote the solemn music of Ly-
cidas —

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glittering foil

Set off to the world ; nor in broad mmour lies,
But lives and grows aloft in those pure eyes

And perfect witness of all-judging Jove.
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.

Of course there is a very large class of

n2

;8o TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

»

people who have no call to enter a profession.
To use a current expression, a man says that
* he has had a* father before him/ The ex-
istence of such a class is a great element in
the strength and ornament of a State. There
is a great deal of work to be done in a
country for which only in a very limited way
there is any distinct class of workmen. For
instance, in statesmanship, that is of necessity
a very limited class that can afford to follow
politics as a profession. Our statesmen must
Be mainly recruited from a class who are
quite . independent of its possible rewards.
Again, take literature. We have a large
qlass of literary men who find literature as
regular, though hardly as gainful a calling
as any other. In journalism it is absolutely
necessary that there should be such a class.
It forms now a distinct profession, to which
the best men give their best energies. If
the case were otherwise, our newspapers
would not lead the entire newspaper press
of the world. But literature, pure and
simple, ought not to be considered a pro-
fession, and it must be a matter of regret

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. i8i

-that it is often so spoken of. Every man who
has original ideas of his own, or a valuable
•experience of his own, is free of the company
of authors, and can make his entry into their
ranks. It is for the good of national lite-
rature that men should enter the ranks of
literature who are not obliged to earn bread
for the day that is passing over them,
and who have the leisure and means that
will enable them to think out thoroughly
their ideas ; and if necessary, observe the Ho-
ratian rule of keeping their compositions
for years, and can calmly endure the neg-^
lect of the public in the faith that time will
give them the recognition they deserve. So
Bacon dedicated his works to Prince Pos*
terity, and Swift inscribed one of his bookd
to the generation after the next. The exist-^
ence of an independent and cultured class,
who, liberated from the ordinary incentives to
exertion, are able to devote themselves to
the investigation of any kind of truth, is an
immense gain to a nation and a nation's
literature. Similarly in regard to works of
philanthropy. Christian men, beyond the

1 82 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

ordinary consecration of all their work to
God, generally strive in some direct way to
serve, in some special work such as the
visitation of the poor or the instruction of
the ignorant. Still the great work of phi-
lanthropy, in its complex organisation, might
languish if it were left to the surplus energies
of hard-working men. Here again, the im-
mense importance of a leisurely and educated
class is seen. Such a class ought to stand in
the van of society. In politics it should
3tand in advance of professed politicians
as emancipated from temptations, liberated
from the swaying power of many conflicting
interests. In society it should be a great
motive power, in mitigating the eff^ect of
mere vulgar wealth, in giving a due pre-emi-
nence to mind and character.

A very fine example of this class may be
found in the late Edward Denison, who made
great sacrifices, and devoted himself solely
to the improvement and elevation of the
working-classes. There are living men who
might be similarly mentioned, but we must
remember that it is not lawful to sacrifice to

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 183

heroes before sunset. Yet such men as Mr.
Peabody and Lord Shaftesbury may be
named as among the most conspicuous in-
stances. The Memoir of Mr. Denison was at
first privately printed, like those of Lords
Kingsdown, Broughton, and Chichester, but
has since been published. Writing before the
publication, we fell back on a paper in the
' Saturday Review,' to help us with our
illustration of the philanthropic life. It is
written in the best style of that variously-
hued periodical : —

' Born at Salisbury in 1840, he was son
of the then Bishop of that diocese, and
nephew of the Speaker of the House of Com-
mons. Educated at Eton and Christ Church,
he was prevented from achieving equal Uni-
versity distinctions to those of his father and
three uncles by ill-health resulting from over-
training for the 4)oat-races of his schooldays.
This ill-health clave to him more or less
throughout the rest of his career, as may be
surmised fi:om the fact that he wrote many
of his letters from Madeira, Italy, the South
of France, Bournemouth, and other places

,i84 . TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

.visited in quest of stronger lungs and con-
stitution. But everywhere the bent of his
mind was towards a study of the condition
and habits of the poor, and from 1862 to
1870, when he died, the work of his life
seems to have been theoretical and experi-
mental devotion to the amelioration, on sound
principles, of the classes which come within
the range of the Poor-laws. With this end
in view he went to Stepney to cope per-
sonally with the great East End distress,
taking up his quarters for the best part of a
year at Philpot Street, Mile End Road, and
building and endowing a school there for
the teaching of ragged children, while he
himself lectured to working-class adults* He
offered himself in 1868 for the borough of
Newark, and, having been elected after a
contest in which he distinguished himself by
the candour and independence of his hustings
speeches, sat as its member for a brief year,
and drew the attention of thoughtful minds
within and without the House by an able
maiden speech on Mr. Corrance's motion
relative to Pauperism (May 10, 1869). But

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 185

the labours of the session precipitated his
removal from a field of usefulness in which
he made social questions his speciality. He
had to leave England once more in quest of
health, and after a visit to Guernsey, and the
relinquishment of a projected visit to the
United States, each planned with an eye to
the absorbing purpose of his life, he finally
repaired to Melbourne in a sailing ship,
where, as the voyage had injured his health
instead of improving it, he died (January 26^
1870) within a fortnight after landing.

' A mere summary, however, cannot do
justice to such a man's life and acts, much
less to the animating principle of them, and
to the carefully ripened and well-stored mind
which avoided the visionary and grasped the
practical in all that it attempted. The letters
themselves must be studied for an insight
into that mind and the work it did. Though
here and there a fear is expressed lest it
might be thought so, there was nothing
narrow or timid, certainly nothing indicative
of worship of expediency, in the character of
Edward Denison's mind. Well-trained and

1 86 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

taught, it shrank from violent changes and
hasty choices. He held aloof, with instinc-
tive caution, from divers schemes and asso-
ciations as to which he was not satisfied about
the wisdom of the promoters. " I am ready,' ^
he writes, in one place, " to dig in the vine-
yard, but I don't feel bound to imitate every
vagary of my fellow-labourers." And one
can understand why such a man, when so-
licited to join the Church Union, declined on
the ground that " he already belonged to the
best possible Union — ^that Body which is the
blessed Company of all faithful people."
Whether in religion, or politics, or social
science, he looked wistfully for the practical
element, and where he suspected a lack of
this he hung aloof, and risked the charge of
lukewarmness rather than go blindfold with
a clique putting undue trust in legislation for
moral improvement, or commit himself to the
dogmas of extreme partisans. Yet there was
nothiQg halting in his rule of life. " Real
life," he writes, "is not dinner parties or
small talk, nor even croquet and dancing."
Literature and study were with him means

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. iSj

to an end ; they were the cultivation of his
gifts with a view to enhancing his capacity to
benefit his fellow-creatures. And so, in the
course of elementary Bible teaching which he
gave single-handed to a roomfiil of dock-
labourers at the East End, and in which he
used illustrations from human nature, natural
religion, and secular history, we cannot doubt
that his reading reproduced itself with good
effect. "If John Baptist had stood up in
a half-empty synagogue, and had said, I wish
the publicans and harlots would come here,
because then I would teach them to repent, how
many would he have been likely to baptise?
And if Christ had limited His teaching in the
same way, what chance would there have
been, think you, of founding Christianity ? ''
But, having made the proffer, he did not
fret about its acceptance or non-acceptance.
" No man may deliver his brother, he can
but throw him a plank." Meanwhile his per-
sonal self-abnegation stands out undesignedly
on the face of his letters. If he dilates, in
January, on the delights of skating, it leads
him to remark that he would give up the

i88 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

pleasures of frost a thousand times rather
than enjoy them "poisoned by the misery
of so many of our brethren." " I have come
to this," he writes in the September of 1867,
" that a walk along Piccadilly is a most ex-
hilarating treat. I don't enjoy it above once
in ten days, but therefore with double zest."

^ So minded, Edward Denison could not but
fcarry out heartily that which his hand found
to do. Convinced that the bad condition of
the population at the East End was due
chiefly to " the total absence of residents of
a better class, and to the dead level of la-
bour," convinced, too, that "the mere pre-
sence of a gentleman known to be on the
alert to keep local authorities up to their
work is inestimable," he took up his quarters
in a district the precise locality of which one
of his letters describes with a humorous
topographical accuracy, and which was simply
the antipodes of fashionable or even business
London. There he set himself to wrestle
with pauperism by setting his face against
bread and meat and money doles, and by
combining with others to deal radically with

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION, 189

a few cases of aggravated distress; whilst he
coped with irreligion and indifference by
throwing himself into the work of a lay
evangelist, and becoming the animating spirit
of a working men's club of the better sort,
and an active, hopeful teacher of boys and
adults as occasion required. Clearly con-
vinced from the first that indiscriminate
charity is mischievous, and that giving
money only undoes the work of the new
Poor-law, he read, and thought, and tra-
velled, whenever he did travel, with an eye
to make assurance doubly sure.

' In an early letter he justifies lamentation
over those who die with their part unfinished,
and the first portion of their career broken
off, as it were, with a ragged edge. A
curious anticipation of his own cutting short !
We may deem that, in the eye of Providence,
the hour was not ripe; or such intensity of
purpose, with so holy an end in view, would
surely have been allowed to achieve, in a
lengthened term of usefulness, the solution
of the great problem of these latter days.
That the end is not yet must be the secret
of so sharp and premature a removal.'

190 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

It must be allowed that the choice of a
profession is one of the most important turn-
ing-points in life. If a man determines not
to enter a profession, such a determination
is probably a more decisive turning-point than
any other. The best practical advice perhaps
is that the bias and tendency of a boy should
be understood, and the object in life early
defined, to which he can work up. Nothing
is more to be deprecated than the aimless,
desultory way in which so many young men
are unfortunately brought up; and nothing
gives the character so much strength and
energy as a definite object. That is a time
of very great perplexity to young men when
their path in life is obscure, and they doubt
whither they shall turn. The way is often
indicated to them by their self-knowledge,
their knowledge of their own ability or in-
ability, and by the openings which Providence
seems to indicate to them. Well for them if
they can realise the words of the sacred poet
in choosing their path in life — ^words which
they will, perhaps, often repeat while making
their toilsome march through the careful years.

ON THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION. 191

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom

Lead Thou me on.
The night is dark, and I am far from home ;

Lead Thou me on.
Guide Thou my steps ; I do not ask to see
The distant scene ; one step enough for me.

I was not always thus, nor prayed that Thou

Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to see and choose my path, but now

Lead Thou me on. *

I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will ; remember not past years.

So long Thy love has spared me, sure it will

Still le^d me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till

The night be gone.
And with the morn those angel faces smile
That I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

192 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

CHAPTER VI.

TAKING HOLY ORDERS.

When some men speak of ' taking a living/
Mrs. Glasse's suggestion about cooking a hare
— ^that we should first catch it — may probably
occur to the clerical reader. How to catch
the living is, indeed,, the anxious problem of
the curate-mind. That mind is fully con-
vinced that promotion does not come either
from the east or from the west. The common
notion of preferment is that of Sydney Smith,
that it is all a lottery ; where you may draw a
prize, or, much more probably, a blank. But
ecclesiastical preferment is not, as a matter of
fact, a mere system of haphazard. Things
work very much here as elsewhere — in a
groove. It is not an uncommon thing to meet
with a man who has refused a dozen or half-a-
dozen livings. It is not an uncommon thing.

TAKING HOLY ORDERS. 193

either, to meet with a curate^who has never
known the pleasant excitement of such a pro-
position. That depends whether you are on
the groove or off the groove, whether you are
really on the line or have been shunted to some
siding. However, when the living is really
obtained, and the much- deserving ecclesiastic
is admitted into the comfortable circle of those
who obtain the temporalities of the Church,
he becomes a person of enlarged social impor-
tance, and as such is liable to be subjected to
a microscopical investigation by the philoso-
phical sociologist, whose kind has been so
largely developed of recent date.

A few preliminary words may, however, be
said on the subject of getting a living. Livings^
are generally disposed of on so regular a sys-
tem that only an inconsiderable proportion
come under the definition of blanks or prizes.
The family- living goes to some member of the
family. The College-living goes to some Fel-
low of the College. The Chapter-living goes
to some member of the Chapter or his nominee.
It may so happen that the younger son may
rebel against the ecclesiastical arrangement j or

VOL. I. o

194 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE. '■

that the Fellowe are all so cozy and comfortable
that they do not care to move ; or that the
living in question may be beneath the serious
attention of cathedral dignitaries, and thus
even the benefices may wander — ^heaven-
directed— to some poor parson. It is to be
said, to the great credit of the bishops, that
their patronage is generally administered on
fair and intelligible principles. Some may
favour the High Church, some the Low
Church, and of one or two it is said that, with
rigid impartiality, they bestow their patronage
alternately. But it is commonly asserted in
clerical circles that the man who has no in-
terest in the Church does best to settle himself
down quietly to some curacy for a great num-
ber of years, at the end of which his bishop
may probably do something for him, or, at all
events, if the bishop does not, nobody else
will. The curate who clings doggedly to his
curacy for a great number of years is a great
pet with bishops, but we are not at all certain
that it might not have been better for the
curate, and better for his people, that they
should have had more change. Wesley's two-

TAKING HOLY ORDERS. 195

year system, now enlarged to three years,
though an exaggeration, is an important and
useful regulation. When the living comes
the success is often a source of congratula-
tion and enjoyment. The curate reads with
raptures a letter from his bishop, offering him
the living of Marsh-cum-Bogland, with every
expression of personal confidence and esteem.
But when it is discovered that Marsh-cum-
Bogland is worth sixty-five pounds a year,
and has no house, the ardour of gratitude
insensibly cools. It is, nevertheless, very
remarkable how even very small livings are
eagerly sought for by dozens who have some
modest patrimony of their own. We observed
that when a patron of a small living lately
advertised for an incumbent, he had hundreds
of answers. When a Chancellor's living be-
comes vacant, there are generally hundreds of
applications, and his secretary of presentations
must always be involved in voluminous cor*
respondence. Some Chancellors delight in
the exercise of patronage, while others consi-
der it the greatest of bores. But we imagine
that the experience of most Keepers of the

o2

196 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

Great Seal would show that they are not
allowed to exercise it unmolested. Lord
Eldon, we know, was greatly importuned by
Queen Charlotte in the disposition of his pat-
ronage, and such royal influence is by no
means out of date at the present time. Of
course, political considerations frequently de-
termine Church patronage ; and^ in the absence
of any definite principles of promotion by
desert, this system acts nearly as well as any
other could. The Minister himself — Lord
Palmerston was a case in point — is sometimes
90 hampered by party considerations, that he
is unable to attend to his personal predilec-
tions. If a lord-lieutenant or a county member
reports that it is absolutely necessary for his
party in a certain part of the country that some
vacancy should be filled up in a particular
manner, the Minister has to give way. We
remember the case of a distinguished Oxford
divine, who brought a Whig Chancellor a very
vehement demand from the lord-lieutenant of
a county that he should be preferred to a
vacant benefice. The Chancellor came in his
robes of office from the bench to his private

TAKING HOLY ORDERS, 197

room to see the applicant. He swore like a
cabman when he read the letter, and gave the
trembling clergyman the living with curses
which an Ernulphus might env3\

We know a man with a very important posi-
tion quite unable to trace how the unknown
path of preferment opened up to him. One
of our ablest bishops on the bench- came to his
position by mere accident. An important
position, which generally led to a mitre,
became vacant. It was offered to an aged
clergyman, who said he was too old to accept
it, but advised the Premier to go to an obscure
church in the neighbourhood, where he might
hear a really able man. This clergyman
subsequently obtained the great preferment,
which led afterwards, in due course, to a
bishopric. We have known of instances in
which the patron after service has stepped
into the vestry and offered preferment to the
officiating clergyman. We trust that the
mention of this circumstance will inspire pat-
rons and preachers with a noble emulation.
These anecdotes, however, are by no means of
a uniformly pleasing type. A very worthy

198 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

J— M_- J *■ ■ ■ - ■ - - -I -

clergyman of my acquaintance, in bad health
and with scanty means, received a conmiunica-
tion one day from a Prime Minister to the
effect that a very valuable living in the balmy
Devonshire climate had been bestowed upon
him. He was full of happiness ; the . prefer-
ment which he had been led to expect was
come at last, and for him meant health, ease,
and competence. A few weeks afterwards he
received another letter from tJie Premier say-
ing it was all a mistake, and that this living
was bestowed elsewhere. It is hardly too
much to say that the shock of the disappoint-
ment caused his death.

We will suppose that a patron has chosen
his man. The proper thing for the patron to
do is to have the deeds drawn up by his own
solicitor, send an invitation to his clerical
friend, and crown the evening by a pleasant
surprise. This kind of ecclesiastical etiquette
is highly appreciated in clerical circles. The
expenses of induction to Church preferment
are very great, and not unfrequently absorb
the first year's income. It was mentioned the
other day at a public meeting in Cambridge,

TAKING HOLY ORDERS. 199

that the Bishop of Worcester, in appointing
two clergymen to livings, sent each of them a
fifty-pound note towards the expenses. Then
the clergyman informs the bishop's secretary
of his nomination, with a view to institu-
tion. In some dioceses, the clergyman is
called upon to submit to an examination.
This is a word of horror to the bucolic parson,
whose mind has been greatly running into
turnips. It is, indeed, rather severe to re-
quire a gray-haired man, who has long ceased
to fret himself about the Articles, to submit
to an examination by a young man who is
comparatively fresh from the cram of a Uni-
versity. The examination, however, is now
becoming a great rarity, and ought to be prized
accordingly by the examinee. On an ap-
pointed day, the promoted clergjonan has to
attend at the bishop's palace to receive institu-
tion.* The palace may be near at hand, or
he may have to traverse a considerable sec-

♦ The Bishop of Lichfield, or one of hia coadjutors, in-
ducts the new incumbent into his parish chuich in the
presence of the congregation— an example deserving general
imitation.

200 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

^' ■ ■ I I ■ ■■ » ■ ■ ■ ■■■II mm a^^^M^^— ^W^^

tion of the map of England before he gets
there. Hospitality is an episcopal virtue, and
the travelling ecclesiastic may confidently
rely on a substantial lunch. Still, there are
variations in hospitality. Some bishops are
charming hosts, and an early lunch with such
a one is a thing to be remembered. One or
two of them do not 'show' at the lunch,
and, to some minds, thus fail in the chief
requisite of a genuine hospitality. Then a
variety of oaths is taken. Inter alia^ the
incumbent swears that he will do his ' utmost
endeavour to disclose and make known to Her
Majesty, her heirs, and successors, all treasons
and traitorous conspiracies that may be formed
against her or them.' When these objurga-
tions are complete, a mystic ceremony is
transacted. A parchment is produced, with
a huge seal attached ; the clergyman kneels
on a stool, holding the seal in his hand, while
the bishop reads aloud the legal document
which gives institution. The business of the
day is over, with the important exception- of
the payment of fees in the muniment room.
Two other ceremonies are requisite before

TAKING HOLY ORDERS. 20t

things are complete. The incumbent when
inducted into the living, is left alone in the
church to toll the bell and has to read aloud
the Articles in the church, and declare his
unfeigned consent to them. The incoming
. incumbent receives the income of the benefice
from the very day of the decease, or cession,
of his predecessor; excepting the statutable
stipend of the curate, or the clergyman who
has officiated at the instance of the church-
warden, during the interregnum. He has,
probably, also to receive a sum of nioney,
either large or small, from the estate gf his
predecessor, on the score of dilapidations.

The social position to be occupied by a man
who has just taken a living is important and
peculiar. He is coming to a place where, in
all human probability, he will spend the re-
mainder of his days, where his sayings and
doings will be carefully scrutinized, and where
his earliest proceedings will go forth to make
or mar the happiness and usefulness of his
career. He will have to secure the good
opinion of the gentry, who will come up
from places far and wide to call upon him ; of

202 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

the poor cottagers, who will eagerly expect
his visits and his help ; and of the watch-
ful, jealous tradesmen, who will gossip about
his expenditure, and be critical about his ser-
mons. To this last class a slight is worse
than heresy, and impecuniosity is a deadly
sin. Still, a great deal of generous allowance
and consideration will be shown him, which
he will do well to conciliate and preserve.
Such a man has a life long work to do for
God, and he has need of the qualities which
will wear well. In a large town a popular
preacher may fill a church; but in the country,
preaching is altogether subordinate to prac-
tice. Whatever else he may be, he must be
just, truthful, courteous, and modest. A
weU-managed parish will be dependent on a
well-ordered household. When a man has
once thoroughly conciliated the esteem of his
parishioners, it is wonderful what he may ven-
ture to say and do among them; hardly a
censorious voice will be heard, so long as it
is felt that he is thoroughly in earnest, and
omits no duty. It is by such clergymen,
thoroughly in earnest, and shirking no duty.

TAKING HOLY ORDERS. 205

that the great work of education, charity^
religion, and civilization, is mainly carried on
throughout the country. They ordinarily live
remote, obscure, and noiseless lives, without
the power or the will to attract any large
measure of public attention to themselves;
but none the less they do a great work, by
gentle teaching and eloquent example, re-
claiming many a moral wilderness, so that it
' blossoms as the rose/

We add a clerical letter, written or supposed
to be written, by a clergyman long in orders
to a young man at College, who is deliberating
whether he shall enter the Church.

' My dear Friend, — I thank you for your
kind and affectionate letter. I see, that in
your case the time has arrived, as to all of us^
of taking some great resolve and acting upon
it. You ask me, as a faithful counsellor, to
give you my advice about taking holy orders,
to decide as I would decide myself, were I in
your place. I would not shrink from under-
taking much troublesome responsibility in
order to serve you, but there are some things
which it is impossible for one man to depute

204 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

to another. I cannot even advise you. I can
only lay before you certain facts which may
assist you in coming to a conclusion — that is to
say, you may have, honestly enough, my own
experience, and I hope it may be of use to
you.

'At the same time, do not let this experience
of mine weigh with you too far. It may seem
to you sombre, perhaps unduly sombre, and
that a per contra remains to be stated. This
I am very far from denying. I am one of
those whom the world calls disappointed men ;
but at the same time I do not see how I could
have been able to avoid those disappointments.
I am a shunted man. A hapless parliamentary
train is shunted on to a side cutting that the
express, fast and splendid, may dash forward.
I was a passenger in the parliamentary. I was
shunted to the side cutting. The likeness
would be more accurate if you could suppose
the parliamentary was permanently brought
to a stand, that train after train, casting upon
it a pitying glance, hurried forwards tri-
umphantly to a prosperous journey's end. If
I had entered the army I might have had a

, TAKING HOLY ORDERS. 205

chance of being immortalized by Mr. King-
lake. If I had joined the bar, I might have
done as well as those of my contemporaries
who have succeeded remarkably well. If I
had pushed my way in politics and literature,
I might have attained to some amount of in-
come and some amount of distinction. But
I took orders. I came down to the north of
England, among a large and ignorant popu-
lation. I am afraid I was not best suited to
them. I could only handle a delicate pen-
knife, whereas they required a second White-
field, who could wield a theological battle-axe.
Still, what work there was to be done, I
honestly tried to do. I am afraid that my
preaching, then and still, was, to a high degree,
inoperative. My physique is poor and my
voice thin. I am a slave to my manuscript,
and in writing my manuscript I am a slave to
my education. I have not that practical
ability which would enable me to become every-
thing that I ought to my lowly congregation.
I constantly find myself adopting lines of
thought and falling into modes of expression
unsuited to my people. I consider this an

2o6 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

error of a very grave kind ; and, please God,
I will yet work myself free from it. Still I
have done or striven to do all that I could, and
much that was originally against the grain. I
attend my schools regularly; I visit my sick
assiduously. Mine is not a model parish,
and I have no showy, magnificent results ; but
when I go among the sick, the poverty-stricken,
and the aged, I find, with a secret joy which I
would not exchange for a mitre, that my in-
structions and consolations have not been
ineffectual,

'The population of my first parish was
about sixteen thousand souls. The press of
work was enormous, and it was work which
an earnest man might multiply indefinitely
even to a destroying extent. First of all the
lighter accomplishments of life fled, my music
and my love of sketching scenery. Secondly,
my correspondence with lettered and in-
fluential friends ceased, friends by whose
means I might have hoped to have gained
some elevation in the world. Thirdly, I was
obliged to terminate my historical and general
studies; I strove hard to retain them, giving

TAKING HOLY ORDERS. 207

up the scanty hours which after severe labour
would fittingly have been devoted to relaxa-
tion. I finally sacrificed even these, confining
myself strictly to the literature of my pro-
fession. I think I was mistaken in this, and
of late years I have endeavoured to retrace
my steps. All phases of that active thought
which characterizes our modern days ought to
be familiar to that servant of God who desires
fully to do his Master's work in his generation.
For some time I let this go, for the less im-
portant of important things must at times be
sacrificed. Consider, my friend, that my tired
thin hand had to write every word of the two
sermons which I prepared weekly for my peo-
ple. You may well believe that in such a
population a large amount of active visitation
was required; however, there were schools and
other parish machinery to be diligently worked.
I wondered at the days in which I found time
hang heavy on my hands, and at those who
repeat such language. Were the days thirty
hours long, and our faculties could cope with
such an extension, it would be little enough
for the work which the hand can find to do.

2oB TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

After serving as an obscure and hard-working
curate for a number of years, the largest and
poorest part of the parish was marked off as
a separate district under Sir Robert Peel's Act.
The bishop himself offered me the appoint-
ment, which I at once accepted. In a worldly-
point of view I perhaps scarcely did well to do
so. Service was at first celebrated in a licen-
sed school-room, and it was with infinite diffi-
culty that a church was finally built. Since
then a parsonage-house has been erected. If
my narrative is not an encouraging one, mul-
titudes of my brethren would furnish you
with one still less so. Multitudes do not
attain even the scanty preferment which I
have obtained, for I assure you that my net
income is a hundred and sixty pounds a
year.

' Perhaps with the hopes natural to a young
man just about to enter a great profession, you
indulge yourself in a very different picture.
Some West-End church rises perchance before
your view, with much architectural beauty,
with an eminently pleasing ritual, and thronged
with cultured, intelligent, and approving listen-

TAKING HOLY ORDERS. 209

ers. Perhaps you will wed a pretty, clever,
and well-dowered wife ; perhaps some lordly
pewholder will give you a living. We have
all heard of such cases. It may probably be
yours. Still more probably it may not. If
such a lot would really be the best for you, I
wish it for you with all my soul. But such a
position is perhaps not the most useful in the
Church, nor yet the most useful to a man's
own self. I am clear that no man has a right
to enter the ministry reckoning on such. You
must consider that you are launching on a
wide sea, and sailing under sealed orders.
Those orders, which are to settle vour desti-
nation, are at the time of sailing quite un-
known to you. You must enter your pro-
fession ready to do your work wherever your
work is found for you.

'Now, my dear friend, are you prepared
for all this ? Chiefly, in the language of our
Prayer Book, do you trust that you are moved
by the Holy Spirit to undertake this ministry ?
I do not mean by this to ask you whether you
think you have any afflatus or special mission
or supernatural call. This grave question is

VOL. I. P

2IO TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

not to be settled by any mere emotionalism.
If you have prepared yourself for hard work
and possible sacrifice; if you feel that your
education and past life may most fittingly be
subordinated to this purpose ; if the hand of
Providence and the course of events guide
you to this path; if you deliberately think
that in this way your life may be most happily
and beneficially spent ; if you have made this
a matter of earnest prayer to God, and con-
fided it in humble faith to Him; if, in pro-
portion as you incline to the affirmative, you
find your mind calm, settled, and resolved, and
so far as you decline, restless and dissatisfied ;
then in my judgment, the judgment of a weak,
erring man howbeit, your path to the ministry
seems clear, and I pray God to guide you into
it, and to bless you in it.

^I could add much more in the way of
setting before you the drawbacks and discom-
forts which attend a curate's life. But not
willingly would I disparage that blessed and
sacred service in which I am engaged. Rather
let me remind myself that there are some
fevourable points which I ought lastly to set

TAKING HOLY ORDERS. 21 r

before you. Remember that your ministerial
work tends immediately and directly to your
own good. The sermons you address to
others you preach first of all to your own
self. The warnings and consolations you ad-
dress to others are, chief of all, warnings and
consolations to yourself. You may pretty
well choose your own times and occasions for
working, and are in some measure released
from the ordinary shackles that bind ordinary
men. Your studies are those which iu the
highest degree benefit and interest the in-
tellect and the spirit. Neither should I omit
to mention the positive worldly advantages
which accrue to you ; you have an income as-
sured to you, small indeed, but not smaller
than is gained by the conamencing barrister
and physician. You have a status in society
which, if not valued by the Mammon-hunters,
is yet recognized and honoured by the better
portion of the community. If the income is
narrow, it is quite possible and quite allowable
that you should add to it by pupils or litera-
ture. If a Paul worked with his hands to

p2

212 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE^

give himself a subsistence, assuredly you may
resort to similar avocations in order that you
may provide things honest, and be able to give
to him that needeth. But in the hands of an
earnest man literature and education cease to
be secular.

*Adieu, my friend, and in the best sense of
the word it is indeed d Dim. I do indeed
commend you to Him. May He guide and
direct you ! I have v/ritten you a long letter,
I find. The ' Saturday Review ' says that
people no longer send letters ; they only send
messages. I am at least an exceptional in-
stance. But I should infinitely prefer to talk
matters over with you. Cannot you come
down this spring? Even in this manufactur-
ing part of the world spring looks beautiful.
Stray violets and primroses are found in hag-
gard localities where you would hardly look
for them. Streams veiled by the factory
smoke, and where the poisoned fishes die, grow
limpid as you trace them to their source, and
you get those glimpses of pastoral beauties
which delighted the tourists before money-
making drove them away. You will be de-

i

TAKING HOLY ORDERS, 213

lighted with my curate, for the Additional
Curates Aid Society gives me one. He is
fresh from his Greek, and also full of zeal for
his work.

' Ever affectionately yours,

' G. E. L.'

314 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

CHAPTER VII.

MAKKIAGE.

I DO not see why I should not include mar-
riage among the turning-points of life, as
indeed it is one of the most important of all.
I am afraid, perhaps, that I am encroaching
upon the domains of the novelists, who have
appropriated this literary region very much to
themselves. Perhaps young people, too, would
hardly care to listen to any matter-of-fact
discussion on concerns where they arrogate to
themselves the right of doing pretty well as
they please. But the subject naturally belongs
ta my programme, and I proceed to discuss it.
I really think, too, that it is a matter that
eminently requires discussion. It is lament-
able to see how many boys and girls become
engaged and marry without any serious
thought ; how silly people will only treat the

MARRIAGE. 215

subject with smiles and giggles, and how
fathers and mothers avoid giving counsel and
advice to their children on such matters.

It was the well-known remark of some cele-
brated man that, if marriages were simply-
ordered and adjusted by judicial authority,
they would prove just as happy as they are
now. I read the other day, in 'A Clergyman's
Diary of the Seventeenth Century,' reprinted by
an archaeological society, a very sensible letter
from the rector of a parish, who makes a due
oflfer of his niece in marriage to the son of a
neighbouring clergyman, and doubts not but
the young girl will prove obedient to his wishes.
Something, perhaps, is to be said in favour of
such a scheme. There are certainly some
people in the world who cannot be trusted
to make marriages for themselves, and for
them it is perhaps quite as well that such
things should be settled for them.

As an example of this plan, which Dr.
Johnson recommended, we take good Bishop
Hall's experience when he was settled ' in the
sweet and civil county of Suffolk ' : —

' The uncouth solitariness of my life, and

216 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

the extreme incommodity of my single house-
keeping, drew my thoughts after two years to
condescend to the necessity of the married
state, which God no less strangely provided
for me ; for walking from the church on
Monday in the Whitsun week with a grave
and reverend minister, Mr. Grandidge, I saw
a comely and modest gentlewoman standing at
the door of that house where we were invited
to a wedding dinner, and enquiring of that
worthy friend whether he knew her, "Yes,"
quoth he, " I know her well, and have bespoken
her for your wife." When I further demanded
an account of that answer, he told me she was
the daughter of a gentleman whom he much
respected, Mr. George Winniflfe, of Breten-
ham ; that, out of an opinion had of the fitness
of that match for me, he had already treated
with her father of it, whom he found very
apt to entertain it, advising me not to neglect
the opportunity, and not concealing the just
praises of the modesty, piety, and good dis-
position and other virtues that were lodged
in that seemly presence. I listened to the
motion as sent from God ; and at last, upon

MARRIAGE. 217

due prosecution, happily prevailed, enjoying
the company of that helpmeet for the space of
forty-nine years.'

Schlegel, in his 'Philosophy of Life,' has
some fertile thoughts on the subject: —

' Lastly^ we will now consider that other
instinct in our nature, which, even as the
strongest, most requires moral regulation and
treatment. By all noble natures among civi-
lized nations in their best and purest times,
this instinct has, by means of various moral
relations, been spontaneously associated with a
higher element. And indeed, taken simply as
inclination, it possesses some degree of affinity
therewith. Such a strong inclination and
hearty love, elevated to the bonds of fidelity,
receives thereby a solemn consecration, and
is even by the Divine dispensation regarded as
a sanctuary. And it is in truth the moral
sanctuary of earthly existence, on which God's
first and earliest blessing still rests. It is,
moreover, the foundation on which is built the
happiness and the moral welfare of races and
nations. This soul-connecting link of love,
which constitutes the family union, is the

2i8 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

source from wliich emanate the strong and
beautiful ties of a mother's love, of filial duty,
and of fraternal affection between brethren and
kindred, which together make up the invisible
soul, and, as it were, the inner vital fluid of the
nerves of human society. And here, too, the
great family problem of education must be taken
into account, and by education I mean the
whole moral training of the rising generation.
* For however numerous and excellent may
be the institutions founded by the State or
conducted by private mdividuals, f6r special
branches and objects, or for particular classes
and ages, still, on the whole, education must
be regarded as pre-emiBently the business
and duty of the family. For it is in the
family that education commences, and there
also it terminates and concludes at the moment
when the young man mature of mind and
years, and the grown-up maiden, leave the
paternal roof to found a new family of their
own. In seasons of danger, and of wide-
spread and stalking corruption, men are wont
to feel — but often, alas ! too late — how entirely
the whole frame both of human and political

MARRIAGE. 219

society rests on this foundation of the family
union. Not merely by the phenomena of our
own times, but by the examples of the most
civilized nations of antiquity may this truth
be historically proved, and numerous passages
can be adduced from their great historians in
confirmation of it. In all times, and in all
places, a moral revolution vdthin the domestic
circle has preceded the public outbreaks of
general anarchy which have thrown whole
nations into confusion, and undermined the
best-ordered and wisely-constituted States.
When all the principal joists of a building have
started, and all its stays and fastenings, from
the roof to the foundation, have become loose,
then will the first storm of accident easily
demolish the whole structure, or the first
spark set the dry and rotten edifice in flames/
The world in general looks simply to the
question of the prudence or improvidence
of marriage, and whether the young people
can afibrd to marry. Some time ago there
was a very hot discussion on the three hun-
dred a-year question, and lately a London
firm has given notice to its employes that

220 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

any clerk marrying on a less salary than
a hundred and fifty a year thereby loses his
situation. It may be questioned whether such a
rule is not arbitrary and unjust, possibly
illegal. Our law rightly condemns anything
that acts in restraint of marriage. We may
see in France the full effect of subordinating
marriage and offspring to mere considerations
of convenience. The population is a stationary
population. It either increases very slightly
or slightly falls back. The moral life of the
nation has been seriously affected by its theory
of marriage. When the T^pir of 1870 broke
out, France and Germany were almost exactly
balanced in population. After the lapse of a
certain number of years, according to ordinary
calculations, the population of Germany will
be double that of France. It is not the
policy of any State to restrict marriage, nor
yet of any society to tacitly prohibit it. But
young men who marry without adequate
means should have the probable facts of future
life put very strongly before them. To
such a one his nearest friend would have a
right to say, ' If you declare that you really

MARRIAGE. 22?

wish to get married on the broad ground that
you are a man, and that your rights as a
man underlie the rights of society, and that
you have succeeded in bringing about that
view of the case in the mind of another, I will
not dispute your right to do so. But you
cannot play fast and loose with society. You
cannot say that you will not think of society
when you marry without an adequate in-
come, and yet, when you marry, fall into
all kinds of difficulties, because your in-
come is insufficient. If you are prepared to
live very plainly, to forego luxuries, to do
without servants, to work hard and unremit-
tingly, to abandon the interchange of social
civilities, to emigrate, if need be, to the back-
woods of Canada, to face manfully every un-
known chance of hard life which an impecu-
nious marriage may bring with it, then I
think that you have a fair right to marry, but
remember what is written in the bond.' I
am bound to say that when people have taken
this clear, sensible view of the subject, and
have acted accordingly, although they may
have very hard lives at first, yet, in the long

222 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

run, they make up for an unfavourable start,
and do just as well, or perhaps a little better,
than others.

But the material view of marriage is alto-
gether inferior to the moral view. Where
the unhappiness of married life is in one in-
stance due to limited means, in a dozen in
stances it is due to otJier causes. English
people in general exaggerate the money diffi-
culty, and- underrate the moral difficulty. The
great consideration which a man has to face
is not whether his choice will bring poverty,
but whether it has been a right choice at all.
Happiness in married life is not very much
aflfected by outward circumstances. Charles
Dickens, in his ' David Copperfield,' dwells on
the fact that ' there is no incompatibihty like
that of mind and purpose.' This is a subject
on which the New Testament speaks very
plainly. ' How can two walk together unless
they are agreed?' St. P^ul asks how the
wife can have any security that she will save
her husband, or how the husband can have
any security that he will save his wife. As
the passage stands in our English version,

MARRIAGE. 223

Cor. vii. 16, it is probably a mis-translation,
the real paraphrase being, ' Do not insist on
a reluctant union; for thou knowest not
whether there is such a prospect of convert-
ing thy heathen partner as to make such a
union desirable.' The Church has generally
taken the passage in the received sense:
* and it is perhaps not too much to say,' says
Dean Stanley, ' that this passage thus inter-
preted had a direct influence on the mar-
riage of Clotilda with Clovis and Bertha with
Ethelbert, and consequently on the subsequent
conversion of the two great kingdoms of Eng-
land and France to the Christian faith. Hence
although this particular interpretation is erro-
neous, and may well give way to that which
turns it into a solemn warning against the
gambUng spirit which intrudes itself even
into the most solemn matters, yet the prin-
ciple on which the old interpretation is
founded is sufficiently expressed in the four-
teenth verse, which distinctly lays down the
rule that domestic union can reconcile the
greatest dijfferences of religious belief.'

An immense amount of unhappiness is found

224 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

in married life. No religious person can have
any true basis of happiness unless the partner
is religious. There may be the deepest happi-
ness between married people whose lives beat
harmoniously to the impulse of the same great
principles. I believe also that there may be
a great amount of happiness between people
who are not, as are called believers, when
their minds and tastes are in harmony, and
they belong to the same order of life. Unequal
marriages are almost uniformly unhappy. For
a religious person to be yoked with one who is
decidedly irreligious can only be provocative
of the keenest misery.

It is misery for which there is not the
slightest palliation, especially for the woman.
When we hear of trouble and unhappiness in
married life, the usual thing said is that there
are faults on both sides. Both being human,
that can be well believed. But in looking
closely at the history of such cases, we can
generally see that the fault lies originally or
principally in one direction or another. Self-
will, self-indulgence, the despising of know-
ledge, and reproof, often make up the unamiable

MARRIAGE. 225

and unchristian character that is incompatible
with happiness.

I remember very well a poor man coming
to me one day to give me a recital of his sor-
rows, and to ask my advice. It was a sad
business. He had been married many years,
and his married life was that of chronic misery.
He was in a very bad state of health, and I
have no doubt but mental misery had conduced
to it. His wife had been an evU angel to him.
She had neglected him in his illness, she had
encouraged her children in bad ways, she had
poisoned their minds against him, had run up
bills, had got drunk, had ruined his good
name and his business, had committed every
iniquity except that last injury which would
give him a legal title to redress. He came to
ask me whether he was not justified in sepa-
rating from her, and taking lodgings apart by
himself. It was not a question that I liked
to have put to me, and I hardly knew how to
answer or refrain from answering. If the
woman would only leave him instead of his
leaving the woman the matter would be easy.
St. Paul says that a brother or sister is not in

VOL. I. Q

226 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

bondage in such cases, and John Wesley has
given us a famous precedent, non dimisi^ non
revocabo. At last I thought I saw my way.
If his health really required, say for the sake
of quiet and good nursing, that he should
leave his wife, I thought that he would be
justified in so doing. But I told him that he
must be very carefiil not to leave his wife
simply through any want of good temper or
forbearance on his part, and that he should
examine himself very carefully whether his
own conduct might not give her very just
grounds of offence. From all that I had
been able to learn of the history of the case,
the rights of this question lay entirely on the
side of the husband. I comforted the poor
man as well as I might, and he went back to
his home. He never left his bad wife, how-
ever. He was too ill to bear any removal.
He languished day by day ; his evil angel
remaining in the poor house they had, and few
could have divined that life-to-death antago-
nism between them. He died of consumption. •
Death was the only physician for his disease ;
according to the old Greek proverb, jxoVo^

i

MARRIAGE, 227

Tarpo^ flavaros-. That ' happy issue out of all
their afflictions/ of which the Church prayer
speaks, as a rule, simply means death.

It is this — the irrevocable nature of the
marriage tie, the consciousness that nothing
but death, which it were almost murder to
wish for, or sin that is worse than death, can
dissolve that tie — ^which, far more than any
pecuniary considerations, should make men
pause long and considerately before they
marry. The whole shape and colour of
life are determined by this transaction. They
surround a man with a network of circum-
stances which subjugates him, unless in the
case of a lofty ideal or a determined cha-
racter. Jeremy Taylor's famous apologue
will be remembered : ' The stags in the Greek
epigram, whose knees were clogged with
frozen snow upon the mountains, came down
to the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thstw
their joints with the waters of the stream;
but there the frost overtook them, and bound
them fast in ice, till the young herdsmen took
them in their strange snare. It is the unhappy
chance of many men, finding many incon-

q2

228 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

veniences on the mountains of single life, they
descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh
their troubles ; and there they enter into fet-
ters, and are bound to sorrow by the cords of
a man's or a woman's peevishness.' Surely a
smile must have passed over the lips of some
of his hearers as they listened to this quaint
imagery. A still more ungallant simile
may be found. There was a saintly bishop
who in one of his sermons likened matrimony to
a man putting his hand into a bag of serpents,
in the hope that he might draw out an eel. That
W9,s certainly a very unpleasing similitude.
It is most probable that the ladies might be
able to put matters in a juster and more im-
partial light. There are several historical
characters who are supposed to have their
matrimonial wrongs strongly established.
Such was Job with his wife, and Socrates with
his Xanthippe, and Richard Hooker rocking
the cradle, and John Wesley having his
whiskers pulled. Leaving the ancient prece-
dents alone, I am of opinion that Mrs. Richard
Hooker and Mrs. John Wesley might still
have a strong case of their own to put. But

MARRIAGE. .229

whichever side we adopt in such quarrels, the
fact of the intense unhappiness of the inter-
necine quarrel of a lifetime cannot be ex-
aggerated. Hooker might still write his books,
or Wesley preach his sermons, but for most
men the usefulness as well as the happiness of
life might be irretrievably marred.

Isaak Walton, after his quaint fashion,
finds a consolation for his ' good Richard ' in
the thought that ' affliction is a divine diet.'
That may be so, but still the carnal mind will
feel that it is not a diet to which it takes
naturally. Such diet becomes still more un-
palatable when it is considered that it comes
not in any ordinary course of God's provi-
dence, but simply in consequence of stupidity
or self-will. It is quite true that even such
untoward events may be graciously over-
ruled to work out good ; much good that is
plainly visible, much good that may be dimly
surmised or hoped for. Still, though much
good may be attained, it is possible and likely
that a still higher good may be lost ; and it
is a sad and sorrowful thing when a man or
woman is forced to confess that the best good

!230 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

of earth has been recklessly thrown away,
and that the only hopes of happiness must be
placed beyond the grave.

Neither, on the simply prudential grounds,
is the pecuniary question the one that is
really fundamental. The question of health
and constitution is deeply important. A little
conversation with the officers of an insm'ance
company would be highly beneficial to many
people who are rushing into matrimony with-
out a thought of consequences. It is im-
portant to know that there is no constitutional
taint; and even when such a taint has been
very slight, right-minded persons have
thought it best to abstain from marriage.
No man has a right to bring children into
the world condemned to a life of disease and
a premature death. Moreover, the question
of family and connections are, I will not say
overpowering considerations to determine the
character of a marriage, but still matters of a
deep importance. A just-minded man will
be careful of the interests of his children yet
unborn. For the same reason a man ought
to be very careful what kind of mother he is

k

MARRIAGE. 331

about to give his children. The nature of their
family connection will be of the highest im-
portance to the children of a marriage. Is
she one likely to pray for them, to instruct
them, to give them generous and liberal ideas,
to give them the training that shall be ele-
vated, graceful, and religious, to make them
regard their parents with intensest love and
gratitude? Then the family history of an
individual is worthy of the deepest attention.
It is a common saying, involving a very large
amount of truth, that it takes three genera-
tions to make a gentleman. The people who
know how to make money, and the people
who know how to spend money, are very
dijfferent kind of people. A turbid stream
may run refined in time, but we do not care
for it much during the clearing process. It
is remarkable how both bodily and mental
peculiarities are transmitted. You may look
at this matter either in a philosophical point
of view or in a practical point of view. Mr,
Darwin will instruct you in the first, and
George Eliot in the second; but, in fact, each
style flows into the other. One or two

TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

/r%

curious points may be said to have occi
in relation to marriage, or rather to
man^age. It belongs to that subject ol
relations between the sexes on which
difficult to touch, but which one hardly
wisely in leaving untouched. As a
whenever we see some very sensational
in the newspapers, involving some atro{
cruelty or murder, we may be quite sure
immorality lies at the root of the ma
There is a family relationsliip among al'
vices, and it would really appear that en
and lust are especially connected. Again
again, in those hideous criminal reports
reflect the ugly side of our boasted mo
civilisation, we see how sensuality has p
the way for the abyss of crime. It is
at all uncommon that the victim of
passion becomes slain by another, and
awful amount of infanticide in this cou
shows how unhallowed feelings easily
themselves to the most cruel and unnai
crimes. It is infinitely better that a
should marry, even if he has to face '.
labour and many deprivations, rather

MARRIAGE. 233

add to the sum of misery that saddens and
pollutes modern life. A very remarkable
instance is that of Rush the murderer, in the
notorious Jermyn case. The murderer was
convicted chiefly on the testimony of a woman
named Emily Sandford, who had consented
to live with him under the most solemn pro-
mise of marriage. In passing sentence
upon the murderer, Lord Cranworth, then
Baron Rolfe, reminded the wretched man
that the policy of the law closed a wife's lips
against her husband, and that if he had kept
his solemn promise he would probably not
have been convicted, in default of her tes-
timony. We are sorry, even for a moment,
to couple the illustrious name of Gothe with
the obscure English murderer. But even
Gothe may supply us with a moral. The bi-
ographers of Gothe generally follow his career
by tracking him from one love affair to another.
In these matters he appears to have been a
little heartless, or what modern society would
consider rascally. ' She is perfect,' he says
of his Katchen, ' and her only fault is that
she loves me.' As Mr. G. H. Lewes says,

234 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

' He teased her with trifles and idle suspicions ;
was jealous without cause, convinced without
reason; plagued her with fantastic quarrels,
till at last her endurance was exhausted, and
her love was washed away in tears.' Mr.
Lewes eloquently pleads for his great
favourite. He ingeniously says : ' Genius
has an orbit of its own. Its orbit is not
necessarily eccentric, although it must often
appear so, because its sweep is wide. Some-
times it disregards domestic duties and minor
morals in obeying the law of its own move-
ment. Hence genius and morality are not
always synonymous.' The special pleading of
the philosopher is certainly amusing. Gothe
missed infinitely much, and perhaps marred
the perfection of his genius by his unmanliness.
The ties which he refused to form in man-
hood with the high-souled Frederika, in ad-
vanced life he formed with an ignorant and
intemperate person. We are told of the ' turn-
ing-point ' of marriage in Gothe's case. One
morning he was accosted in the park of Wei-
mar by a young, bright-eyed girl, who, with
many reverences, presented a petition to him.

^

MARRIAGE. 235

He fell in love with her, but with character-
istic selfishness he dreaded marriage. He
took her to his house, he himself regarding
this as a kind of morganatic marriage, but the
world at large as a scandalous liaison. Many
years afterwards, when he was not far . from
sixty, he formally married her. He lived
with her twenty- eight years, and he keenly re-
gretted her loss. He would have been hap-"
pier and better if he had married her at once ;
happier still if he had been true to Christine.
Most men of the world are acquainted with
various instances in which selfish men have
placed weak, loving women in a position un-
utterably false and debasing for many years,
and have tardily found it best to enter into the
union which years before it would have been
for their interest and happiness to have
completed. It is doubtless in the issue infi-
nitely worse for those who have never made
any reparation. Those who in any degree have
watched the course of human life know the
infinite tragedy and unhappiness attributable
to the immoral neglect of marriage.

The pretty story of * John Halifax, Gentle-

236 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

man/ gives us an account how a young lady
honoured with her love the honest young tan-
ner. He knew nothing of his family, but
through an old inscription in a book he be-
lieved he was a gentleman by birth, and, what
was much more important, he always showed
himself a gentleman in the details and all
the aims of his life. A very similar story
is told of Hugh Miller, the stonemason of
Cromarty. In his ' Schools and Schoolmasters/
he describes how he first met Lydia Frazer,
his future wife. She ' came hurriedly tripping
down the garden walk, very pretty, her com-
plexion rather that of a fair child than a
grown woman.' The Mackenzies considered
themselves superior to the Millers, and the
mother required that the intimacy should be
broken off. The mother removed the inter-
dict, but marriage was to be considered out
of the question. The matter ended, as might
be expected, and forms one of the prettiest
stories of modem biography.

The love passages in the life of Dr. Hamil-
ton are very interesting. I remember meet-
ing him at Dartmoor one summer a year or

MARRIAGE. 237

two before he died. I had attended the ser-
vice held in the prison, where the worthy
chaplain preached on the text, ' Take no
thought for the morrow,' to some five hun-
dred gentlemen in yellow who wished nothing
better than that they should be allowed to
take thought. Near to me in the gallery was
a man with a grave, sweet, serious face, who
attracted my attention, and this was Dr.
Hamilton. I was presently introduced to
him, and we had some lunch together, and I
foimd him a charming companion. Looking
at his ' Life ' the other day, I found some ex-
cellent love letters. It ought to be said that
he was the settled minister of a Presbyterian
congregation before he wrote such letters, and
his * Annie ' must have been a very sensible girl
to have accepted such preaching love letters.
It seems that he was engaged to his affianced
when she was very young, and with the under-
standing that the marriage was not to take
place for a considerable time. Dr. Hamilton
writes to his fiancee : —

' I am glad you are so fond of work and that
you have a taste for music. The only other

238 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

thing about which I am anxious is your in-
formation. The world is fiiU of accomplished
and ignorant women, who can dance, arid draw,
and embroider, but whose company is far more
irksome than the solitary confinement of Pen-
tonville prison. If you have, what you can
so easily get, a well-fumished mind (by add-
ing diligently to the knowledge you have
already attained), you will possess what few
of your lady sisters have. Two hours of solid
reading daily, in which I would gladly be a
sharer on the days I- am at Willenhall,
would be a goodly acquisition in the course of
a year. . . .' Yesterday I went back to
the same library, and borrowed the last
volume, and in reading it was surprised and
happy to find that the name of the lady to
whom he owed nearly ' all the real happiness
of his life * was Annie. She was a remarkable
person, and theirs was a more remarkable
love. It is likely that we too who have to
wait some time for our completed happiness
on earth may again have to wait a little while
— the one in the absence of the other — for our
completed happiness in heaven. To take an-

MARRIAGE. .23.9

other instance, when Lady Romilly died, poor
Sir Samuel had no comforter to go to. His
heart broke, and in the frenzy of his grief he
destroyed himself.

So in Mr. EUiott's ' Life ' of Lord Haddo,
afterwards fifth Earl of Aberdeen, we have the
speech which he made on the occasion of his
daughter's marriage : — ' Probably there are
many fathers present who know what a
parent's feelings are in parting with a beloved
daughter ; and that, joyful as the occasion is,
it is not without saddening, or at least soften-
ing influences. The religious strain in which
Lord Kintore spoke, and the kind manner in
which you received his remarks, emboldens
me to ask for your prayers at the approach-
ing marriage celebration ; — ^that the young
couple about to be united may not only be
fellow-helpers in the journey of life, but may
mrutually promote each other's eternal salva-
tion. I have the happiness to know that my
future son-in-law is not ashamed to confess
his desire to live for something better than
the world can bestow, and that my daughter
and her intended husband do not hesitate to

240 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

avow on this their wedding day their inten-
tion of devoting themselves, and all they have,
to the service of the Lord Jesus. Thus is
theirs the certainty that when their earthly
union shall be terminated by death, they will
be able (whichever be the survivor) to look
forward to a reunion in Christ's heavenly
kingdom for all eternity.'

It is a beautiful and instructive love-story
which we read in the ' Memoirs' of Henry Venn
Elliott, of Brighton. He asked of her father
for ' a jewel, which, though unworthy in him-
self, he would wear most delicately, and trea-
sure as his life.' Mr. EUiott's own letters tell
the story, and there is hardly any prettier
story in any book of fiction than that gradu-
ally revealed by these religious letters.

* I have made my proposals to Julia Mar-
shall, and am accepted by the parents, if Julia
consents. She will see me, and then decide.
It was a bold step I took. But my mind was
so agitated, since hope sprang up, that I have
never had a day's quiet, or a night's usual
rest since. I believe I am following my
Lord's gracious guiding. If ever I committed

MARRIAGE. 241

my way to Him, it was in this instance. He
only knows how it will end. It has altogether
been a wonderful story.*

* Kejoice with me,' he says. ' Julia has ac-
cepted me. A few hours after I wrote my de-
jected letter to my beloved mother, I had a
walk of two hours with my Julia, and instead of
keeping me in long suspense and probation,
she generously plighted her precious heart in
exchange for mine. How joyful was I ! and
my heart at this moment overflows with thank-
fulness to God, who has led me by the right
way to the right person.'

' Deeply as I have loved Julia, and highly
as I valued her, I find every day fresh and
fresh reason to bless God, who has provided for
me such a treasure. And her sentiments are so
just, so holy, so pure, so gentle; all her beha-
viour is so modest and winning; her heart so
confiding and affectionate ; her manner so de-
licate and lady-like ; her mind so richly fur-
nished, and so finely constituted in its original
powers, that I find in her nothing to be
changed, and everjrthing to be loved. She is,
I do assure you, an exquisite creature ; ad-

VOL. I. R

242 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

vanced from the rudiments in which she ap-
peared at Brighton to a mature perfection,
not only of Christian character, but also of
manners and influence, which prove her to
be most richly qualified to adorn the station
which is to be hers, and to superintend all
the female departments of my church. I am,
I confess, in danger of making an idol of her,
but I pray day by day that my love and per^
petual complacency in her, in all she says, in
all she does, in all she appears, may be sub-
mitted and consecrated to the Lord. He gave
me this most precious gift, and I strive to
carry it to Him, and to beseech Him that I
may really possess it as His gift, as a bond of
deeper gratitude and love to the Giver, and as
a rich talent to be used in His service. Already
we have begun some religious work, and
every morning we read the Scriptures together.
" Bless the Lord, my soul, and let all that
is within me bless His Holy name." '

To these extracts I will venture to add one
from Bishop Dupanloup's wise little book La
Femme stvdieuse : — ' C'est d'avance et d^s les
premiers jours de leur mariage, que de jeunes

MARRIAGE. -243

epoux doivent mediter de concert un plan
de vie, plan large et serieux, embrassant
Tensemble: les devoirs mutuels, la carrifere,
la position du chef de famille dans son pays,
les enfants, leur avenir; les relations sociales;
la vie priv^e; T&ge mAr; enfin la vieillesse
et la mort ; Texistence, en un mot, dans ses
grandes phases. Et c'est avec ces grandes
lignes que tous leurs actes, tout d^abord et
des le commencement, doivent ^tre mis en
accord. De cette fegon seulement une femme
pourra assurer la bont^ et Tunit^ de sa vie, et
^viter les tristes disaccords qui se font dans
une existence abandonn^e k I'aventure, entre
la jeune femme et la femme en cheveux
blancs. Tandis qu'au contraire, si la vie est
bien ordonn^e, il pent y avoir un accord
merveilleux entre les ^Iges difESrents que Dieu
fait passer sur sa t^te, et qu'elle doit suc-
cessivement traverser, repandant le charme
et le bien autour d'elle.'

b2

344 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

CHAPTER VIII.

TRAVBL.

Travel brings its special ' moments/ It
is much when one who has lived for years
in a narrow circle first leaves the limits
of early life and passes to a different sphere
and to wider interests. What a moment is
that of first foreign travel ! What a moment
to many first to behold the sea ! though, like
GeMvy one may have murmured —

Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all ?

But first to leave the old shores of Albion,
and to sail across the waters to new scenes,
which almost seem to present as it were the
life of another planet ; first to see the low-
lying shore of Holland with the windmills
and the boundless pastures, or 'the palms
and temples of the South!' Most people who

k

TRA VEL. 245

visit Jerusalem, first see it with the feelings
which Tasso so eloquently ascribes to the
army of the first Crusaders. Very often
a keen intellectual expansion is afibrded by
foreign travel. After Lord Macaulay had
hved in Indiii — we believe he had meditated
returning there again at the last — there was a
greater richness and expansiveness in his style.
After Burke had thoroughly worked through
and elaborated Indian subjects, his gorgeous
rhetoric flowered to the uttermost. It may
indeed be said that some knowledge and
familiarity with Oriental subjects is abso-
lutely necessary for any completeness of
mental vision. Otherwise only one hemi-
sphere of life and thought is visible to us.

This is the broadest aspect. But the sub-
ject of travel may be brought within very
narrow Umits, expandmg or diminishmg with
each man's experience. ^

There is no doubt that home and foreign
travel, and, indeed, change of any kind, is
one of the most beneficial agencies that can
be brought to bear on our moral and physical
wellbeing. Sir Henry Holland, in one of his

±4> TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

medical essays, very strongly advocates change
of scene and air in the case of a supposed
patient. If he cannot travel he had better go
from one room to another, and if he cannot
leave his room the furniture of the room had
better be changed. When all medical art
has failed, the simple rational proceeding of a
little travel has wrought wonders. The world
is diseased and out of joint, and in one sense
we are all valetudinarians. Perhaps no man
is very long free from distempered fancies
and worrying thoughts, and, to use Baconian
language roughly, his private den is soon
invaded by unpleasing idols. A man ordi-
narily finds that he is able to cast away much
worry and fret by an easy walk into the clear
sunshine and liberal air. Travel is an ex-
tension of this. Before the welcome train has
borne you across country to the next sta-
tion, the cares and^anxieties which seemed so
oppressive shrink to their petty local and
provincial measure. The eye is pleased by
shifting changes, the mind animated by the
variety of objects, and, without minutely
analysing the cause, in most cases a good

TRA VEL. 247

result is easily perceivable* It is to be care-
fully observed that a due measure and pro-
portion should be maintained in reference to
rest and travel. There is many a medicine
an over-dose of which produces the very
effects which it was intended to obviate.
One who is always travelling loses the capa-
city of the enjoyment of travel. The ever- vary-
ing apartment which receives him night after
night becomes as monotonous as the familiar
four walls and a ceiling of which he had been
tired, and each fresh landscape is beheld
with the satiety of one who is growing very
weary with his inspection of a gallery of
pictures. The most welcome change is that
of rest and permanence, and the most brilliant
flash of travel that which lands us at home
again.

Human unity is made up of pairs of con*
tradictions. Mankind, according to a phrase
which Coleridge borrowed from the German,
are made up of Aristotelians and Platonists,
and, according to Mr. Gladstone, of dog-lovers
and dog-haters. These contradictions may be
multiplied to any extent, and the travelling

248 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.
I

and the non-travelling will hold as good as
any other. There are many who, according
to the saying, never feel at home except when
they are abroad. Their eye is not satisfied
with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. They
are almost Cain-like; they wander like the
Wandering Jew. They have tasted of travel,
and the taste has left an insatiable lust of
locomotion. They have

Become a name
For always roaming with an hungry heart ....
Yet all experience an arch where thro'
Gleams that untravelled world.

Now, you will find many persons who
have a very horror of travelling. For them
a distant horizon has no charm or meaning.
The instinct of adhesiveness is strong upon
them. Only for the briefest flight can they
exalt their minds beyond petty and local
interests. It is chiefly those who make it '
their business to know something of the ways
and thoughts of the extreme poor who see
this phase of incurious and inert life. I have
very repeatedly met this; notably, I re-
member, on the south coast of Cornwall,

h

TRA VEL. 249

where again and again the nearest market
town was the extreme limit on the west,
and all the east was gloriously tenninated at
Plymouth. There were the flammantia mcenia
mundi. All beyond was void or limbo. Now,
while remembering that the instinct of travel
should work within due limitations, and that
there are worse forms of absenteeism than
the common notion of it presents, to those who
believe that the cultivation of our intellectual
powers is only second in importance to moral
obligations, this travel itself becomes little
else than a moral obligation binding on the
non-travelling part of the community.

And if this seems hard on the non-travel-
lers, I am sure that this duty, like every
other, is quite possible of fulfilment. Any
home-staying person may easily make ex-
periment of this. Let any such person make
his home the centre of a circle, no radius of
which shall extend beyond the manageable
limits of a day's expedition. I am sure that
he will soon be able to draw up a list of in-
teresting localities, for hardly a square mile
of our crowded historic England is free fi'om

2SO TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE. '-

IIB |_M| ■IIIBI_.J_ . !■ I -l'

such. Nothing is more commonly observed —
and each such instance implies a real re-
proach — than that strangers will often come
many miles to view what an inhabitant has
never made any effort to examine. Many a
man who now leads a mere vegetable life
might find a constant source of interest and
change in trying to make his survey of an
interesting neighbourhood accurate and ex-
haustive. If we employ this little talent
aright, a larger talent will, doubtless, be con-
fided to us. This brings us to the compara-
tive question of home or continental travel*
Now, home travel is almost the instinct of
duty and patriotism. Some amoimt of home
travel is absolutely necessary in order to
enable us to comprehend this England of
ours aright. We are not yet arrived at that
utterly stereotyped condition of society to
which certain cosmopolitans think that we
are come. Still there are many angular, or
rather very triangular, differences between
Lancashire, Kent, and Cornwall. The people
of the Orkney Isles and the people of the SciUy
Isles are, I believe, very much like each other,

TRAVEL. 251

but many shades of difference lie between the
two extremes. There are very many country
people who consider that London is situated
in partibus^ and that going into the shires is
like going beyond seas.. There is a more
thorough change of scene in foreign travel,
and more things worth seeing abroad than
at home. Yet it seems obviously designed
that an Englishman should, for the main
part, reside in England. Those lessons of
catholicity and toleration which are certaialy
among the best religious lessons which we
may derive from foreign travel, may assur-
edly also be learned in the narrowest circuit
we have indicated. If a distinguished Frenck
scholar has ventured to write his Journey
round his Eoom^ an Englishman may also
derive great profit from any journey round
his parish ; if he is at pains to compre*
hend and appreciate other classes other
than his own class, other forms of worship
other than his own form. Still the wider
the circle of travel the more ample will be
the range of observation and induction. It
is the privilege of a Howard to make all

2S2 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

travel strictly subservient to Christian phi-
lanthropy. We cannot all be Howards, albeit
Christian philanthropy* is never beyond the
reach of any traveller ; yet we may smooth
our angles, remove our prejudices, make our-
selves wiser and more charitable by using
candid eyes, and thus promote peace and
goodwill. Travel will constantly enable us
to observe the real defects of our own system
of things, and to detect the improvements
which can be easily engrafted. As this world
is the appointed theatre for man's energies
and capabilities of improvement, every posi-
tive and material good has a divine sanction
and a heavenly meaning. If we were seek-
ing to deal with the subject in a formal
and exhaustive way, we might trace many
instances in which travel has been the ap-
pointed agency for mitigating the sorrows and
multiplying the blessings of humanity.

There is a curious proverb relating to travel,
the meaning of which ought to be cleared up,
to the effect that at Rome we ought to do as
the Romans do. The words are adopted in a
restricted sense by persons of pronounced

TRA VEL, 253

* Anglican ' views, who, when in Roman Ca-
tholic countries, make a point of attending the
Roman Catholic service. Abroad the doors
of churches and cathedrals always stand open,
which in our land fear for the security of books
and plate will not permit, and in a moment we
may escape from the glare of the streets and
the concourse of the crowd into the dim, cool,
quiet aisle, and, should we see much that we
disapprove, may yet breathe our prayer that
those feeling after God may find Him, who is
not far from any one of us, and for ourselves
that we may be sound in faith and somid in
the rule of life. The proverb has, moreover,
another sense and a very mischievous one.
One both of the blessings and the banes of
travel is that it sets us free from ordinary re-
straints. A certain pressure and constraint is
upon every man in his usual home. Inasmuch
as this conventionality is always encompassing
us, and thereby the fluent lines of character
threaten to harden into a rigid immobility, it
is well that such restraint should at times be
removed, if only that we may ascertain whether
ours is a service which is perfect freedom.

1254 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

But many of the mass plead the proverb as an
excuse for a licence and irregularity which
public opinion would not permit them in their
own country. There are special reasons at the
present time, beyond those which always re-
main strong and abiding reasons, why an
English traveller at Rome, or whatever Rome
stands for, should be an Englishman and not
a Roman. It is well indeed that the English-
man should lose his insularity and angularity;
but he should always be keenly alive to his
character of patriot and Christian. There is
a great deal of foreign suspicion and dislike
towards the English, which, to a great degree,
they have earned by their own bad manners
and evil communications. A Prussian entirely
declines to believe that at the present time the
Briton is ' the lord of human kind;' he thinks,
indeed, that he is just as good as the Briton;
indeed that, barring the conceit and the insuf-
ferable over-estimate of material wealth, he is,
with his needle gun, several degrees better.
We have a national character which of late
years has been fast going down in the estima-
tion of foreign nations, but which every Eng-

TRA VEL, 255

lishman will use his endeavours to maintain at
its just standard. The present condition of
religion on the Continent must also deepen
our impressions relative to the religious aspect
of travel. There is everywhere a shivering,
such as the prophet saw in vision, of the breath
of life animating the dry bones. The southern
nations at last appear to be working their way
out in the direction of a religious reformation.
Three centuries ago the boon was offered
them, and not without great sorrow and
struggle it was rejected, and now once more,
as if in sibylline leaves, the offer is renewed.
May this indeed, even here, prove * leaves for
the healing of the nations ! ' As enlightened
and religious Englishmen may still continue to
think that they, with others, are repositariqs
and guardians of the highest truths, so it must
devolve upon them by all wise and kindly
means to hand onwards to distant countries
and centuries the torch of truth kindled from
afar, but kept alive at their own altars. They
will best do this not indeed by proselytising,
not by seeking to impress their own local and
temporary accidents of position on others, not

2S6 . TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

by seeking an exact reproduction of their own
ecclesiastical system on the part of foreign
Churches, but by the manifestation of sym-
pathy, goodness, and toleration, by well-consi*
dered material assistance, by exemplifying a
true catholicity and a real communion, and by
setting an example of practical stainlessness
and beneficence. In this way our travels may
aid the wonderful order of events in the pre-
sent age, and the reflex influence must inevit-
ably be full of use and happiness to ourselves
and our own land.

For instance, the Church of England work
now going on at Seville is of a very curious and
interesting kind. It appears to indicate that
the grave Spaniards who are leaving their own
Church nevertheless give a distinct preference
to the episcopal and liturgical system of the
Church of England, compared with that severer
Presbyterian type more generally adopted by
Keformed Churches on the Continent. The
English consular chaplain at Seville lately
gave, at one of those drawing-room meetings
which are common during the London sea-
son, an account of the full introduction of

TRAVEL, 257

the machinery of a well- worked English parish
into that magnificent historic city. There are
day schools, Sunday schools, mission-houses,
Bible classes ; and a large church, seating many
hundreds and quite full, has been rented for
performing our service in the Spanish lan-
guage. The chaplain really appears to
have shown some of that statesmanlike skill
and ability which in mission work has been
almost monopolised by Romanist ecclesiastics.
As much as possible he keeps the foreign Eng-
lish element out of sight from the sensitive
Spaniards, and employs Spanish agents in his
Church work. It may be said, indeed, that
Presbyterianism is entirely unsuited to the
genius of Italy and Spain. The tendency of
the anti-Papal movement in these countries is
towards mere negation; the bare repellant
Puritan system does not suit the Southern na-
ture. The Church of England offers many
points of sjmoLpathy and contact in her regene-
rated services to the historical forms of reli-
gion in the South of Europe, and Seville is
giving proof of the idea often expressed, that a
spontaneous Reformation in the South would
VOL. I. s

258 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

most probably result in a system closely akin
to the Anglican system.

Let us next narrow the subject into more
special considerations. In a religious sense
the primary view of travelling is that we are
enabled thereby to read God's handwriting in
nature. That volume of nature, indeed, lies
everywhere outspread before us. But travel-
ling enables us to turn over so many more
leaves of that volume. There is almost some-
thing awful in the familiarity which many pure-
hearted and able men have attained with na-
ture, whereby they are able at sight to read off
her splendid page, and to come nigher to the
secret of the Almighty, by deciphering that
revelation of Himself which He has given in
the world that He has created — a revelation
invisible, inaudible, to those who see with eyes
that see not, and hear with ears that hear not.
Our thought evermore should be with that
* Almighty Artist, who paints every spring new
landscapes on the earth and every evening
new ones in the sky, whose sculptures are the
melting clouds and the everlasting hills, and
whose harp of countless strings includes each

I

TRA VEL, 259

note from the harebell's tinkle to the organic
roll of ocean's thunder.' These words are from
a Presbyterian clergyman, and I would paral-
lel with them that most famous and beautiful
sentence from John Henry Newman — * Every
breath of air, and ray of light and heat, every
beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts
of their garments, the waving of the robes
of those whose faces see God in heaven.'
The religious delight of scenery is a gift re-
served for the pure in heart. To them all
nature is like Memnon's harp, which met by
the rising sun was recognised by all to give
forth musical sounds, but to the initiated alone
did the sounds resolve themselves into an in-
telligible hymn : —

I see a hand you cannot see,
I hear a voice you cannot hear.

The intellectual enjoyment of travel depends
very much upon our sense of beauty and our
susceptibility of being influenced by the laws
of association. The sense of the beauty of
scenery requires cultivation, and may be inde-
finitely heightened and improved. With this

b2

26o TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

sense the most ordinary aspect of nature has
become vested with a poetical beauty denied
to the grandest scenery. No one has done for
the Himalayas what Mr. Tennyson has done
for the fenny country of Lincolnshire. In this
way, too, a very quiet and subdued landscape
will give some men a sense of beauty and en-
joyment denied to rich vulgarians, who * do '
all the choicest scenes of Europe in their own
carriages.

One meets with astonishing instances of
utter insensibility on the part of travelling
people on their travels. I have seen Oxford
men smoking in the cabin of a steamer as
they passed the finest scenery on the Rhine,
and men fast asleep in the cabin as they
passed the finest scenery on the Dart. The
mention of the Rhine and the Dart recalls
a curious anecdote which a distinguished
friend once told me, which may well suggest
questions both on self-deception and on the
philosophy of travel. It is well known that
in the west country the Dart is called the
English Rhine, My friend met a Prussian
gentleman on board the Dart steamer. The

IRA VEL. 26r

Prussian told him that he had heard the Dart
called the English Rhine, and that he was now
viewing the Dart in order to judge of the truth
of the comparison. My friend happened to
remark that of course he knew the Rhine very
well. 'Not in the least,' was the reply; 'he
haji only passed it once on the railway at Co-
logne.' But being a German, and knowing all
about the character of the people, their history
and literature, he could evolve the idea of the
Rhine out of his own consciousness. Given
the history and the literature, the idea of
the local sceneiy could always be evolved
out of one's own internal being. 'For in-
stance,' said the metaphysical German, ' I have
never been to Switzerland, yet I am perfectly
acquainted with Swiss scenery.' I am afraid
his judgment would not be worth much on the
mooted point respecting the Dart. One envies
the facility with which an immense amount of
travelling can be done without the inconvenient
drawback of travelling expenses. It is a bold
idea to supersede locomotion by the internal
consciousness.

But though history and literature will not

262- TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

enable us thus to evolve scenery with perfect
accuracy, it is quite impossible to enjoy
scenery without literature and history. For
the historian himself travelling is the abso-
lutely necessary complement to study. What
military historian can describe a battle without
examining the field? Does not Mr. Froude
pass a good deal of time at Simancas, and of
course also inspects the localities which he de-
scribes ? Did not Macaulay stay patiently in
Devonshire to understand Sedgmoor, in Lon-
donderry to comprehend its siege, in Scotland
if only to give that famous description of
Glencoe? Mr. Freeman diligently works
up his battle-fields. And, without being a
historian, an intelligent traveller will con-
stantly be clearing up points of history to his
own satisfaction, and will probably be able to
contribute crumbs of valuable information to
the elucidation of great subjects. There are
many quarters where every trifle of accurate
information is thankfully received. Great
writers would not be able to produce great
books, or great orators to make great speeches,
without a measure of the assistance and co-

TRA VEL. 263

operation of humbler men in supplying ma-
terials. A large part of the religious influ-
ence of travel must mainly consist in the fact
that travel is an instrument of knowledge. I
know that the tree of knowledge, even as it
proved in Eden, is sometimes as a tree of death,
and its fruit as ashes to the taste. She is not
the first, nor yet the second. Love, faith,
duty, all transcend even the mighty claims
that belong to her. But to grow in know-
ledge is a religious obligation ; the wise man
well said Hhat the soul be without know-
ledge is not good.' Ignorance is one of the
ugliest forms of sin. I wonder that so many
practical Christians can sleep quietly in their
beds when they know that they are so ab-
sorbed in business that year glides after year
without any perceptible addition to the stock
of their knowledge and ideas. A wise man
when he travels will utterly fail to look upon
travel as a mere pleasurable change. He will
regard it as a precious and comparatively rare
means of intellectual culture. He will con-
fess to himself that, after all, his seeing is
but the seeing * through a glass darkly,' but

264 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

lie is not without the presentiment that it will
be good for him to be learning till the last
day of his life, and that in some mysterious
way the larger sum of his knowledge here is
connected with richer fruitage of knowledge
hereafter.

Knowledge, then, will make travel of more
enjoyment, and travel will make knowledge of
closer accuracy and higher use. We bring to
an object much more than the object brings to
us. Knowledge holds the key of all the as-
sociations. To the men who know Hhe
burial-places of memory yield up their dead/
This also gives what I would almost call a
rarer and safer element of delight than the
balm of the air or the beauty of the scene.
For the mind tinges every object with the hue
of its own mood. The man who is sorrowful
or remorseful, despondent or despairing, will
only momentarily be lulled by the symphonies
and choric voices of nature. Rather her
great glory will be withering and crushing,
and the beauty of the summer sunset will be
simply heart-breaking. I fully sympathise

TRA VEL. 265

with that frank pure glee of a poet whom I
cannot unlearn to love and admire:

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny :
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace ;

You cannot shut the windows of the sky.

Through which Aurora shows her blooming face»

But the time comes when nature only gives
us hard, scientific facts, unrelieved by much
of free grace; and as for poor Aurora, she is
among the dim, discrowned deities of a dis-
carded mythology. But the intellectual plea-
sures of travel are free fi:om this kind of in-
certitude. When once the intellectual pleasure
is aroused, when once the mental exertion is
made, by the very fact the previous feelings
are effectually displaced. When the mountain
and. lake shed poetic inspu'ation it is because
the peculiar genius of the mountain and lake
is comprehended. What is the river of Pales-
tine, or the river of Egypt, or the river of
Germany, apart from that ' inspiration ' which
belongs to each? It is a pure intellectual
pleasure to see some chantry or monument in
an old cathedral, where memory supplies
comment and inspiration; to visit rocks and

:966 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

woods- associated with immortal pages of lite-
rature and the memories of great men; to
examine the cities and plains where the great
historical battles and sieges of European
history have occurred; to know thoroughly
the royal palaces and baronial castles with
which history's stateliest page is occupied, to-
gether with the humble village, or the meaji
abode, rural or urban, where some art or
science had its rise, or which cradled the
childhood of a nation's most illustrious son.
Properly to understand the Low Countries
requires a special preparation. The wealth of
association m Italy, classical, mediaeval, and
modern, is so great, that the best informed
travellers will despair of overtaking it in its
entirety; but every approximate step towards
real knowledge will indefinitely help us to-
wards deriving an intellectual, and there-
fore religious, good from travel. A Christian
man will also have a special pleasure in visit-
ing places associated with religious history.
In his case the association, and that alone,
prompts the feeling which prompts the visit.
A chance passenger near Salisbury sees

TRA VEL. 267

nothing at a little adjacent village in that
curiously small church just opposite the
rectory, encrusted with moss and ivy, and the
little churchyard overgrown with weeds, es-
pecially since, close at hand, there is the new
and stately church, which can so worthily
supply the wants of the vicinity. But George
Herbert used to preach in that little church
of Bemerton — ^preached the sermons which
the public orator of Cambridge would preach
so eloquently, and offered those very prayers,
before and after service, which honest Izaak
Walton has preserved for us, and this other
church is a memorial to him, and without this
little church might not have been. There is
a smaller church yet, which is saying much —
it must be the smallest, or nearly the smallest
in England — at Bonchurch, in the Isle of
Wight; and * within the sounding of the
wave ' there is a graveyard monument where
a raised cross at times flings a shadow on the
tomb; But we recognise it as the grave of
William Adams, the sweet-natured scholar
who wrote the ' Shadow of the Cross,' and
was the most accomplished master of modern

268 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

allegory. That cliiircli of Hursley in Hamp-
shire, with its spire so conspicuous for miles,
over upland and down, would arrest the at-
tention of any beholder by its completeness
and richness of restoration ; but for those who
knew and loved the author of the ' Christian
Year,' in that and other books, it will have a
depth and tenderness of association in con-
nection with their own holiest experiences,
which the material beauty of the fabric by
itself would be powerless to evoke. In every
great scene of the world's history there is
something to stir the breath and quicken the
heart ; we feel, to use Dr. Johnson's famous
language, when visiting lona, that it is im-
possible to pass unmoved; there is something
which elevates our piety and patriotism; we
iare advanced in the dignity of thinking beings.
Indeed, when we visit the scenes associated
with a good man's orbed and completed
course, we are surely quickened with a sense
of our own un worthiness and insufficiency;
we may derive from his memory some recol-
lections that may lessen sorrow, and may
quicken effort, and may exalt faith; we are

TRA VEL. 269

thankful for those who have departed this
life in his faith and fear, and cherish the
trembling hope that we, too, may be found
* in the blessed company of all faithful people/
Madame de Stael used to say that travelling
was one of the saddest pleasures of life. I
think there is a great deal of truth in this
phrase. Every traveller at times answers
Goldsmith's description : * Remote, unfriended,
melancholy, slow.' There was no one in his
age who travelled more, or whose travels have
been more famous, than St. Paul. Yet in a great
degree it must have been a sorrowful matter,
apart from his special difficulties as an apostle,
and from those * perils,' most of which have
been eliminated from modem life. He was a
most affectionate-hearted man, and in various
ways he must have been constantly wounded
in his affection. He formed no tie which he
was not speedily compelled to sever. He
would come to a city and make strangers
friends, and then soon he would leave his
friends and sojourn among strangers. Now,
something of this kind must happen to one
who travels. He must at times linger in spots

270 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

where his feeling is that it is good to be here,
and that here he would fain set up his taber-
nacle. Almost unexpectedly he has alighted
on that very comer of the world which in all
its belongings and surroundings seems to suit
him best. He meets the most charming
people he has ever known ; he finds himself
taking a growing interest in the history and
politics of the district, and irresistibly drawn
towards the landowner or the cure ; that
rounded bay, with the castle on the cliff, and
the orchard in the hollow, and the ' lighthouse
far away at sea, exactly suit his sense of pro-
portion and beauty. He would soon be a
botanist in those woods, and a zoologist among
those rocks at low water. There are some
men who find it impossible to leave, without
some touch of sorrow, any place where they
have resided for some little time, and whose
moral tentacles adhere most strongly to any
surface that may be presented to them. Even
the most indifferent men find on some rare
occasion that they have found that very spot
of earth which, to the best of their own self-
knowledge, would suit them best. But a ne-

TRA VEL. 271

cessity is on them, and they must be moving
on. They are due at some other place. They
have formed a definite arrangement, from
which there seems no fair way of escape.
They can hardly hope that any change will
improve their lot for the better ; they would
willingly compromise for things as they are ;
they will be glad even if they can henceforth
obtain an enduring approximation to that
sense of contentment and calm and peace of
mind, which for these happy days have wrapt
them as with a mantle and guarded them as
with a shield. But their destiny is upon
them, and they are unable to extricate them-
selves.

Perhaps such persons require a grave lesson
to be taught them. Their disposition is such
that they would most willingly linger among

the fading bowers of earth, oblivious that
those bowers must fade, and so forgetful of
those only happy isles, those only amaranthine
gardens, where an immortal soul may find an
enduring home. Therefore it is that they find
no sure rest for the sole of their feet, and some
marring element is allowed to be mixed up

272 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

witli what otherwise would be a rounded and
happy life. Our tendrils cling so easily and
naturally to earth, that we need to be often re-
minded that we are but strangers and pilgrims
here, and amid all travelling to realise that
great travel of all, in which we seek an abiding
city* As a man moves from land to land, and
observes ' cities of men, nations, and govern-
ments,' he may, perhaps, better learn to realise
that he is but a traveller between two eterni-
ties.

And it may even be, that whatever is most
exalted and good in travel may be continued
to us in a future state of existence. I re-
member hearing of some good man who had
never seen the Alps, but said that he intended
to take them on his way up to heaven. Those
who, chained down to home by the invisible
links of a thousand duties, have never been
able to see God's handicraft of the mountains
and His wonders of the deep, may yet behold
a loftier Chimborazo, a more sublime Andes,
and contemplate the unspeakable beauty of
the hyaline of heaven. As upon a serene
night the stars come out, army upon army,

TEA VEL. 27

and the very dust of stars, beyond the ken of
distant vision, seems, as the sand upon the
sea-shore, innumerable, we begin to compre-
hend the boundless possibilities of knowledge
for those who are thought worthy to attain to
the First Resurrection. Then one can almost
despise the littleness of this poor, slight
planet, and almost welcome death, that throws
open the gates of infinite space. In the
fathomless riches of eternity it will seem but
as the occupation of one of the deep un-
clouded days of heaven to take leave of
friends, for some five hundred years, to make
the tour of Jupiter's satellites, or examine
into the condition of the whilom earth. Bat
I come to a point where speculation is lost in
awe and mysteries, and where human analo-
gies may cease to shadow forth, even ever so
dimly, the heavenly realities. Here, then, I
pause.

VOL. 1.

274 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

CHAPTER IX.

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

I SUPPOSE we are all believers in the boundless
power of steady, persevering work. ' Never
despair,' wrote Edmund Burke to his friend,
* the high-souled and generous ' Wickham ;
' but if you do, work in despair.' As Matthew
Arnold says —

And tasks in hours of insight willed,
In hours of gloom can be fulfilled.

si sic omnia ! Why should not Matthew
Arnold give us noble poetry, instead of attacking
worthy Dissenters, and assaulting the very
foundations even of natural religion? And,
as the Laureate says —

But well I know
That unto him that works and feels he works
This same New Year is ever at the door.

And to make one more quotation — 'Even in

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 275

the meanest sorts of labour, tlie whole soul
of a man is composed into a kind of real
harmony the instant he sets himself to work.'
I am not one of those who would recom-
mend to any young man the deliberate choice
of literature as a profession. In fact I greatly
object to the idea of literature as a profession.
Journalism may, and accordmg to modern
exigencies must be, a profession, but litera-
ture ought to lie open to all ranks and orders
of society. There are many patent reasons
why we can give very few encouraging words
to those who would adopt letters as a distinct
path in life. It is, as Bacon said, a good
staff, but a sorry crutch. It is a good thing
to help a man, but a bad thing whereon to
rest. It is not the most remunerative, and
'per se it is not the most useful of avocations.
Then there is a very common and a very
fatal confusion of thought between the desire
and the ability to pursue a literary career. Then
the competition is enormous. Most editors
of magazines will say that they could fill their
periodicals years in advance with very fair,
printable matter that is sent in to them. Then

T 2

376 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

m

there is a good deal of social disadvantage
about literature, and though bookish people
will think well of a litterateur, to be one
is hardly a recommendation to . society at
large.

Still there is another side of the case which
has to be stated, and which is more fraught
with encouragement. There is an enormous
amount of ' copy ' to be produced every morn-
ing, every week, every month, every quarter,
every year, and there must be an army of
writers to produce it. There is no reason
why a man of fair culture and intelligence
should not find some sort of service in that
army. In the first ranks of literature stand
the great geniuses of the world, who are on
an intellectual platform infinitely exalted
above their fellows. But there is also an im-
mense literary field which may be occupied
by the rank and file. A man of culture,
observation, inteUigence, with a power of
clear thought and fluent expression, ought to
be able to find something to do. Poeta nasci-
tur^ orator jit^ is a sajdng which may be adopted
into the statement that while the genius

LITERA TURE, SCIENCE^ AND ART, 277

must be bom, a man may make himself a
fairly good writer. If he has leisure and in-
dependence, if he has patience and industry, if
he can afford to bide his time, let him perse-
vere, and the chances are that his perseverance
will be rewarded by results. And though
one would be very sorry to induce any man
deliberately to embrace this as a profession,
yet to clergymen of insufficient income, to
briefless barristers, to all who amid the rise
of prices are condemned to fixed incomes, it
is very allowable to try and do something
in letters, and creditable workmanship will
find its way at last.

Success may be lat^ in coming, but some-
times when it comes it makes amends for
much previous failure. Sometimes decided
genius has to wait as long as cultivated medi-
ocrity. It is good, perhaps, that it should
have to wait, for those who have obtained
instantaneous recognition have not always
found it for their good. Byron awoke one
morning and found himself famous, but the
fame helped to spoil him and slay him.
Burns had his triumphant winter in Edin-

278 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

burgh, but tbat ' triumphant winter ' was a
great misfortune. As a rule, too, the fashion-
able favourite is soon discrowned. He can-
not do better for the world than die early
if he has pleased the world when young.
Many instances might be given where
men have published again and again, with
very limited success or no success at all,
but feeling that they have had something to
say, they have gone on saying it, and ulti-
mately they have succeeded. Perhaps the
delay was good for them. To others the
delay has been fatal, the frost has killed.
Humanly speaking, Keats might have lived if
he had had the success of Tennyson, but the
Quarterly killed him, as it afterwards tried to
kill Tennyson, and the Edinburgh to kill
Wordsworth.

'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.

But now the Quarterly has recanted, and
Jeffrey is dragged in triumph at the chariot
wheel of Wordsworth.

And yet how slow has the progress of some
of our greatest men been ! How exceedingly

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 279

slow and grudging was the recognition
accorded to Wordsworth ! Some of our most
popular works of fiction have been refused by
publisher after publisher. Charlotte Bronte
. with difficulty made her way. Thackeray had
' Vanity Fair ' returned upon his hands.
Sometimes what appears to be a lucky chance
will intervene. Johnson's life might furnish
one continued allegory of perseverance against
difficulties.

Similarly take Art. What a moment is
that when the boy or girl sits down and
makes some first intellectual effort! The
child has read poetry, enjoyed and appreciated
it, nevertheless with the thought that it is
something foreign, and altogether far off from
its own sphere. He sits down ; some thought is
stirring in the heart, some impulse twittering
in the brain ; some melodious lines flow forth ;
he discovers that he too has the gift of musical
expression. Or he has watched nature long,
and with a suddenness of surprise, perhaps
when stretched on the ground watching the
colours of the foliage, or the lignes larges of
the landscape, finds that he has the faculty of

28o TURNING-POINTS IN UI'E.

drawing from nature, and of reproducing those
colours. What a pretty story is that which
y asari tells of Michael Angelo ! ' how it chanced
that when Domenico was painting the great
Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, he one day
went out, and Michael Angelo then set him-
self to draw the scaflfolding, with some trestles,
the various utensils of the art, and some of
those young men who were then working
there. Domenico, having returned, and seen
the drawing of Michael Angelo, exclaimed,
" This boy knows more than I do," standing in
amaze at the originality and novelty of manner
which the judgment imparted to him by
Heaven had enabled a mere child to exhibit.'
West said that a kiss from his mother made
him a painter. Something very similar is told
of Maclise, the great painter, whose recent
loss we deplore.

In the autumn of 1825, Sir Walter Scott
made a hasty tour of Ireland, accompanied by
Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart and Miss Edgeworth.
Amongst other places he stayed a short time
at Cork, and, whilst there, he visited the
establishment of Mr. Bolster, an eminent

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 281

bookseller. The presence of the illustrious
author attracted crowds of literary persons
there. Maclise, then a mere boy, conceived
the idea of making a sketch of Sir Walter,
and, having placed himself unobserved in a
part of the shop which afforded him an
admirable opportunity, he made, in a few
minutes, three outline sketches, each in a
different position. He brought them home,
and, having selected one which he considered
the best, worked at it the whole night, and
next morning brought to Bolster a highly-
finished pen-and-ink drawing handled with all
the elaborate minuteness of a line engraving.
Bolster placed it in a conspicuous part of his
shop, and Sir Walter with his friends having
again called during the day, it attracted his
attention when he entered. He was struck
with the exquisite finish and fidelity of the
drawing, and at once enquired the name of the
artist who had executed it. Maclise, who was
standing in a remote part of the .shop, was
brought forward and introduced to Sir Walter.
The great author took him kindly by the hand,
and expressed his astonishment that a mere

282 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE, 1

boy could have achieved such a work, and

*

predicted that he would yet distinguish him-
self. Sir Walter then asked for a pen, and
wrote with his own hand ' Walter Scott ' at
the foot of the sketch. This little sketch of
Sir Walter Scott created such a sensation
amongst art critics and the public that Maclise,
not without great reluctance and diffidence on
his part, was induced by his friends to open an
atelier in Patrick Street.

It is related of Barry, that when a mere
boy he performed a journey from Cork to
Dublin on foot, with his first picture (the
Conversion of the Pagans by St. Patrick).
It was placed in a remote corner of one of the
Exhibition rooms, where it was unlikely that
any eye would rest upon it. It did not, how-
ever, escape the observation of the great
Edmund Burke. He enquired of the secretary
the name of the painter. 'I don't know/
said that gentleman, * but it was brought here
by that little boy,' pointing to Barry, who was
modestly standing near his work. 'Where
did you get this picture, my boy? ' said Burke ;
' who painted it ? ' ' It is mine ! ' said the boy ;

LITERA TURK, SCIENCE, AND ART. 283

^I painted it.' 'Oh, tliat is impossible!'
said Burke, glancing at tlie poorly-clad youth.
It is needless to add how well Hurke befriended
him, and lifted him into fame.

This discovery of power takes place in the
intellectual development of each life. I re-
member hearing a person who had a very
remarkable voice describe how first the con-
sciousness of the 'gift' arose. Her mother had
taken her to hear some celebrated singer, and
the young girl, when she returned home,
imagined that her voice reached as high a
note as the celebrated singer's. It was even so,
and a course of training soon developed the
glorious gift.

We will now proceed to consider some
turning-points in the history of Science and •
scientific men. Our first example, Blaise
Pascal, belongs to the provinces both of Litera-
ture and Science.

The name of Blaise Pascal is one of the
purest and loftiest of the great names of *
France, or, we should rather say, of the
human race. He lived during the time of
the revolution in England, in which time

284 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

a corrupt religion and a polluted Court
were paving tlie way for a far more terri-
ble revolution in France. He was bom at
Clermont, in Auvergne. From his earliest
years the child Blaise exhibited a pre-
cocity which was extraordinary, and even
unnatural in one so young, and which his
father had the good sense to check and dis-
courage. He would never permit him to be
overtasked, and always set him lessons which
the child would perceive at once were within
the limits of his capacity. He would not
allow him to begin Latin till he was twelve
years old, but nevertheless his father would
talk to him about the principles of language,
which the marvellous boy easily compre-
hended, and was fully acquainted with the
nature of grammar before he began to learn a
language. When he was only twelve years
old, an incident happened which fully showed
the bent of his mind. He noticed, as nearly
every other child does, that glass when
struck gave forth a long vibrating sound, but
that when once the hand was laid upon the
glass the sound ceased. The little philosopher

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART 285

• ~-~— — — ■

was determined to find out the reason of this,
and puzzled over it and tried a number of
experiments, and at last produced ahnost a
regular little treatise upon the subject. His
father was fond of making scientific experi-
ments, which the boy used to watch with
the utmost delight, and was never satisfied
unless he understood the reason of everything.
Nevertheless, the wise parent thought that at
his tender years the exact sciences might
prove too severe a study for him, and said
that he should learn I^atin first and mathe-
matics afterwards. Blaise was very curious
about this forbidden pursuit. At least he
might ask his father what mathematics were.
Something was said about geometry. ' Geo-
metry,' curtly answered his father, 'is the
science which teaches the method of making
exact figures, and of finding out the propor-
tions they bear to each other.' And having
given this definition, he told him not to think
or talk any more about it. Innate genius,
however, will always find its way. If he
must do his Latin in school hours, he cer-
tainly may amuse himself as he likes in his

286 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

play hours. In his acute little brain the
child puzzled over what his father had said.
He sat down in a large room, all alone, with
a piece of charcoal, and tried to draw exact
circles and triangles, and to find out in what
relations they could stand to each other. So
carefully were scientific books kept out of his
sight, that he "was not acquainted with any
technical terms. The circle he called a round^
and the straight line he called a bar. Things
went on thus for some time; the child was
mastering, or rather discovering for himself
those mathematical elements which all other
boys learn from books with an infinite deal
of trouble. One day his father entered the
room where his son was so engaged, and so
intent upon his investigations that he was not
aware of his father's presence. His father
asked him what he was doing. The son
answered that he was trying to make out
such and such a thing, mentioning the mathe-
matical truth enunciated in the thirty-second
proposition of the first book of EucHd. ' And
what made you think of that ? ' said his father.
* My having found out this,' was the answer;

LITERA TURK, SCIENCE^ AND ART, 287

and then he mentioned an earlier truth in
Euclid. And so the boy Blaise went gra-
dually backward, till he came to the definitions
and axioms out of which all geometry is ela-
borated. The happy father was transported
with joy at this proof of his son's genius, but
without saying a word left the house that he
might consult with a friend what had best
be done. It was agreed that no irksome
restraint should be placed upon his mathe-
matical studies, and a Euclid was given to
him that he might amuse himself with it in
his play hours.

As might have been expected, his progress
in science was truly marvellous. When he
was only sixteen years old he produced a
Tractate on Conic Sections, which Descartes,
the greatest philosopher of his age, read with
admiration, and cojald scarcely believe that it
had been written by one so young. At nine-
teen he invented the celebrated arithmetical
machine; and at six-and-twenty he had com-
pleted those brilliant experiments on the
weight of the atmosphere, which will always
associate his name with Torricelli and Boyle

288 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

These experiments and his mathematical
works made him be regarded as one of the
greatest philosophers of the age.

Several very interesting moments in the
life of Pascal may be mentioned in connection
with his intellectual and spiritual history.
One day, when he was visiting his sister
Jacqueline, a sermon bell was heard to toll.
His sister went into the church, and her
brother also stole into it by another door. It
so happened that the subject of the preacher^s
discourse was the commencement of the Chris-
tian life. He showed how well-disposed
persons, by merely entangling themselves in
worldly ties, put obstacles in the way of their
salvation, and so run as to miss the prize of
their heavenly calling. Pascal thought this
teaching exactly met his own case, and took
it to himself as a warning sent by God. He
had also had another and a more terrible
warning, in a narrow escape from a frightful
death. One day he was going in a carriage
with four horses to Neuilly. Several of his
friends were with him ; it was a holiday, and
there was to be a gay promenade upon the

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 289

bridge. The bridge was very lofty, and a
portion of it was unprotected by any parapet.
At this part of the bridge the two leaders
became restive, took the bit in their teeth,
and, dashing aside, plunged over the bridge
into the Seine. Providentially, the traces
snapped, and the carriage was left firm, stand-
ing upon the very edge. The feeble form of
Pascal was ill adapted to stand such a shock*
He immediately fainted, and it was some time
before he revived. The event itself made a
deep and lasting impression upon his mind.
In one respect this was curiously manifested
He would be haunted with the idea that
danger was frequently threatening him on the
left side — the side nearest to the danger on
this occasion — that there lay a deep chasm in
this direction. Pascal seems to allude to this
in a passage where he is speaking of the
imagination, and the vanity of man in his
subjection to it. He says : ' The greatest phi-
losopher in the world on a plank wider than
the pathway which he takes up in his ordinary
walk, if there should be a precipice beneath,
although his reason convinces him of his
VOL. I. u

290 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

safety, will be entirely overcome by his ima-
gination. Many could not even endure the
thought of walking across such a plank without
blanching and agitation.'

Oiice Pascal had a remarkable conversation
with a number of his friends on the plan of a
certain work which he intended to write. He
gave the name of his undertaking, opened his
plans, and explained the order and connection
which he intended to pursue. Those who
heard this conversation, and who were some
of the most competent judges in Europe, said
they never heard a more beautiful address, or
one more powerful, affecting, and convincing.
Pascal was two or three hours in explaining
his design, and the listeners formed the most
exalted idea of what such a work would be.
Afterwards several of them put together a
sketch of this conversation, and one of them
published a short account. He intended that
this work should be a great apology for re-
vealed rehgion. It was to set forth the fun-
damental principles of religion, to prove the
existence of God, and show the evidences of
Christianity. To accomphsh this work he

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 291

asked ten years of health and leisure. Such
a work was nevei' produced, but after his
death a variety of papers were found which
showed that he had been working with a view
to it. These detached fragments of a vast
design have come down to us under the title
of the ' Thoughts (Pensees) of Pascal.' It
seems that the great writer did not even use
a commonplace book, but when, after deep
meditation, some startling thought occurred
to him, he would jot it down on any chance
piece of paper, the back of an old letter or
any other scrap. These he would tie up in
bundles, or string them together on a file,
perhaps waiting for the season of good health,
which never came. ' It is a wonder that the
" Pensees of Pascal " have come down to us
at all. Never, surely, was so precious a
freight committed to so crazy a bark.'

Curious points of ^ moments ' in scientific
history constantly recur. There is an odd story
connected with the discovery of the stocking
frame to which Manchester owes so much. It
is said that one Master William Lee, a parson
of the sixteenth century, being enamoured of

Tr2

292 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

a lady, found to his mortification that she
gave much more attention to her knitting
than to his conversation. In revenge for
which he determined to produce an instru-
ment which should do away with the neces*
sity of working by hand. In this he succeeded,
but became so absorbed in his invention that
he is supposed to have quite forgotten the lady.
The invention was important enough, but the
inventor's end was sad. Queen Elizabeth
would only give him a patent for silk stock-
ings, so he carried his invention abroad, where
he died of a broken heart. Sir William
Thomson, in his recent address at Edinburgh,
discussed a wonderful epoch in the life of Sir
Isaac Newton. Newton had satisfied himself
that a force following the same law of varia-
tion with the inverse square of the distance
urges the moon towards the earth. He found
reason, however, to doubt his conclusions. He
compared the magnitude of the force on the
moon with the theoretic force of gravitation
on a heavy body of equal mass at the earth's
surface, and he saw a great discrepancy, which
induced him to keep back his discovery for

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 293

many years. He heard one day a paper upon
geodesic measurements read by Picard before
the Royal Society, which pooited out to his
mind a serious error in the preconceived esti-
mate of the earth's radius. This induced him
to think that his conclusions had been pro-
bably, after all, correct. We are told that on
going home to resume his calculations he felt
so agitated that he handed over to a friend
the work of arithmetical calculation. The
result was the verification of the law in the
instance of the moon's orbit. Some of Sir
William Thomson's own discoveries in elec-
trical science, such as of the galvanometer, are
probably all scientific epochs, although it may
be too early to determine the exact value of
them. There is something very interesting
in looking at the last days of eminent men of
science, how they look forward to perfecting
the science of earth in the science of Heaven.
In Smeaton of the Eddystone's last illness, a
very bright moon shone full into his sick
room. Fixing his eyes upon it, he said^
' How often have I looked up to it with in-
quiry and wonder, and thought of the period

294 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

when I shall have the vast and privileged
views of a hereafter, and all will be com-
prehension and pleasure !'

There are some ' moments ' of especial inte-
rest in the career of Sir Charles Bell. The
greatest of these was unquestionably the pro-
mulgation of his discoveries in the nervous
system. These, with the discoveries of Dr,
Marshall Hall in the same direction, have
been the greatest achievements of our age in
this branch of medical investigation. It is
claimed by his editor, on the great authority
of Miiller the physiologist, that his discoveries
are as important as that of the circulation of
the blood. His wife tells us how he placed
sheets of paper one over the other to show
how the nerves increased in complexity, by
every superadded function, until, from the
first necessary or original act, they came to
the grand object of man's perfection in voice
and expression. An account of his discoveries
in the nervous system is now contained in the
later editions of his Bridge water Treatise.
The writing of this Treatise, * On the Hand,'
was another epoch in Bell's career. The re-

UTERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 295

•

suit was that his mind was thoroughly satU'
rated with the argument for design. It over-
flowed in his conversations, his letters, his
addresses to the British Association. Once
he said that he should like to show men of
science how God Almighty made ropes and
arches and other things which they attempted
to do. In ^ The Hand ' he concludes : * Rea-
sons accumulate at every step for a higher
estimate of the living soul, and give us
assurance that its condition is the final object
and end of all this machinery and of their
successive revolutions.' We doubt not but
Sir Charles Bell would have added that there
were at least two other epochs in his Hfe of
tremendous importance to himself — ^the time
when he got married and the time when he
commenced fly-fishmg. The wife was the
sister of his brother's wife, and it is touching
to see how intensely he lived in the affections
of the family group around him. We would
willingly have some more of his letters to his
wife both before and after marriage. ' I see
a God in everything, my love,' he writes to
his fiande ; ' it is the habit of my mind. Do

296 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

you think I could have been employed as I
have been without contemplating the Arclii-
tect? There I am an enthusiast.' He took
to fly-fishing because he felt his intense need
of the country; and when he was in the
country he felt the need of some object to
occupy his mind . Thus he gleefully writes :
* I have got an order for Lord Cowper's water
at Panshanger, which is a sweet valley with a
pretty running water. The trout are as large
as young salmon, and give me great sport.
These English parks are, as you well know,
the great ornaments of England. They afford
solitude and picturesque beauties. We make
our temporary home in some adjoining village
inn. These inns have every comfort in a
small way. Without these little expeditions
I am quite certain that J could not live in
London.' Sir Charles had found out at least
one simple secret of happiness. We can veiy
well understand how, when he had written
anything particularly good in his book ' On
the Hand,' it was after a day's quiet fishing.
' That varying darkness of the brown rushing
waters, the pools, the rocks, the fantastic

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 297

trees — go round the world you shall not see
these unless you have a fishing-rod in your
hand.' It is curious in looking through the
biographies of Bell, that by M, Am^d^e
Pichot, and the autobiography supplied by
his own letters, to see how at these quiet
resting places he made one step after another
in his intellectual advance.

Let us look at a companion picture, at
the life of Goodsir the anatomist, abridging
our account from that magnificent work of
Dr. Lonsdale's, the ' Life and Remains of Good-
sir.' We especially look at his later days.

* To avoid visitors he went to bed at 8.30
P.M., and rose before 5 a.m.; in this way he
got five hours' work done before Edinburgh
had breakfasted. He lived in rigid simplicity
and did nearly everything for himself ; the
sofa of the day became his bed of the night,
80 that he slept amidst his papers and special
preparations, and could dress or turn to work
at any time without the fear of intruding
domestics.

* He was in the habit of receiving letters
fi'om every man of note in anatomy and the

298 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

natural sciences in Europe. He was viewed
in an amiable light by all of them, and not a
few showed him cordial friendship, if not the
most confidential intimacy. Considering his
reluctance to the epistolary form of writing —
for he was a much worse example than Tal-
leyrand in the way of putting off his replies
from day to day and month to month — ^his
correspondence is strikingly curious as coming
from aU sorts and conditions of men — e. g.
Canongate artisans, country surgeons, English
and Irish naturalists, and Scotch noblemen.

* One writes of him, " His public teachings
proved the worth of his religious principles ;
notwithstanding my previous knowledge of
him, it needed the involuntary utterances of
a death-bed to show me all the simplicity of
mind and godly sincerity of heart with which
those principles had been fostered. As he
had been an interpreter of God's works, he
had been also a diligent student of His re-
vealed Word, and a truly humble Christian."

' When the pleasure of meeting his class
was denied him, he often spoke of his pupils;
and, as he had conscientiously laboured to

fe

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 299

advance their studies, persuaded himself that
some of them would live to interpret his oral
teachings and extend the knowledge of his
philosophical views to another generation.
The anticipation that his finished labours
would stand the test of time, and that his
outlined work would be filled up and coloured
by those he had taught and indoctrinated so
well, were like pleasant breathings, if not
anaesthetic repose, to the Goodsir couch, and
could not fail to lend a halo to the hopes of a
reputation beyond the grave.

' As evidences of his philosophic, religious^
and speculative leanings to the very last, he
had placed on a table beside his bed a large
folio copy of Sir Isaac Newton's works, in
five volumes, the Bible, and a work on
Crystallography, with a tray of models to
illustrate the intended publication of his
views of organic form on a triangular basis
— ^that magnum O'pus of his latter-day ideal
life.

' The youthfiil companions — John Goodsir

and Edward Forbes — ^who had sat on the

ame benches as students, and had frater^

300 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

nised so well in natural history research,
and struggled up the arduous steep of science
to professional eminence and European fame,
came to breathe their last under the same
roof. And as if the ties of life and love were
to find a fitting response in death, the remains
of John Goodsir are interred next to the
grave of Edward Forbes, in the Dean Ceme-
tery of Edinburgh. A granite obelisk marks
the grave. The Rev. J. T. Goodsir has had
the spiral curved line engraved on one side
of the obelisk, to exemplify the feeling per-
vading the professor's mind on the subject of
organic growth — the spiral being symbolic of
the law of the vital force^ developed in Goodsir's
lectures.

' A writer in the " Pall Mall Gazette '* says —
" Since the days of John Hunter, no greater
master of anatomical science, no keener in-
vestigator of phenomena, no more compre-
hensive grasper of generalisations, no clearer
or more efiective expositor, ever dedicated
himself to the great subject of anatomy,
hitman and comparative, than John Goodsir.
. . . The only regret will be that he has left

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 301

so few records of his discoveries and con-
clusions ; that in the keenness of his pursuit
after scientific truth, he left himself so little
time to gather up and embody in a lasting
form his numerous incidental felicities of
investigation and doctrine. But enough, and
more than enough, will always remain to
prove the brightness of his intelligence, the
justness of his reasoning, and the philosophic
comprehensiveness of his generalisations. . ,
No subject, however remotely connected with
his favourite one, but was perfectly known to
him. When in 1854 he suddenly undertook
the task of lecturing on natural history for
his deceased friend Edward Forbes, he was
found a master, at every point, in the science
which was only accessory to his own.

' It is indeed impossible to estimate aright
the loss which scientific knowledge and aca-
demic education sustain through such a death
as his. Let us hope that the generous con-
tagion of his teaching and the lustre of his
example will arouse in some worthy disciple
the masculine enthusiasm, the noble candour,
and the chivalrous self-devotion which are

302 TURNING-POINTS IN UhE.

buried in the too early grave of John Good-

• 11
sir.

' His anatomical lectures constituted a great
fact in his history both as a man and a teacher.
No one in Britain seems to have taken so
wide a field for survey, or marshalled so
many facts for anatomical tabulation and
synthesis. Goodsir's place on the historical
tablet should be measured not only by his
published writings, but by his museum crea-
tion and work, and his professional teachings
of thousands of men, and through them the
germinating ideas he has scattered broadcast
over the world of medicine. He not only
taught in his own way, but inspired others
by his teachings. He not only gave the
anatomical data or the facts, but illuminated
these facts by various hghts and interpreta-
tions, as if revealing fresh facets on the crystal,
and therefrom educing a fresh polarisation.

'There was no moderation in Goodsir's
working, and not even the relaxation which
change of pursuit favours to a certain extent.
It was daily, dogged, downright labour; he
used his body as if it were a machine, and his

LITERA TURK, SCIENCE, AND ART. 303

brain as if nervous matter could be supplied
as readily as English coal to a furnace. He
exhibited in his own person what is aptly-
designated the wear and tear of life, with
every nerve in full tension as if for concert
pitch. Scores of friends advised him, per-
sonally and by letter, .to spare his energies;
but Goodsir, prepared to " shun delights and
live laborious days," took no heed of the
morrow of life; now and onwards and for
ever reflected his belief. He seemed buoyed
up with a passionate fervour that would brook
no delay and no temporising with its aim and
purpose. Incessant work, continued for a
series of years, led to the usual result — im-
paired health, functional disturbance, and
pathological change. To escape from the
dissecting-rooms to the quiet of country life,
and " to babble of green fields " is the great
desideratum of every anatomist, and no men
enjoy their holidays more thoroughly; but
Goodsir scarcely ever reaUsed what relaxation
was. When he spent a summer abroad, it
was not by the banks of Lago Maggiore, or
sipping the waters of Brunnen, but in the

304 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

museums of Berlin and Vienna, On his re-
turn from a Continental trip, when asked by
a friend how he enjoyed his autumnal holi-
days, Goodsir, with great truth and simple-
mindedness, replied — " Oh ! very much indeed^,
I spent six hours a- day in the museums with
Miiller, Hyrtl, or Kolliker." Change and
travel soon palled on the Goodsir fancy ;
there was nothing so tempting to him as
the investigation of organisms; nothing so
captivating as the paths of discovery ia
natural history.'

As an example of the life of a man of
science, we will take one who is not, indeed,
of the very highest order in science, but one
eminently known in his day, and whose life
was fruitful in results — Professor Henslow.

Endowed with great practical ability and
earnestness of purpose, when placed amid
ordinary duties, he achieved an extraordinary
degree of success. As a public teacher in
his University he succeeded in rendering
popular an unattractive pursuit, and as a
clergyman amid an ignorant and debased
population he was enabled to inform his

LITERA TURK, SCIENCE, AND ART, 305

people with a measure of intellectual and
religious light. At Cambridge Mr, Hens-
low took a fair place among the Wranglers,
and during his undergraduate course was
noted for his devotion to natural science
which led, a year after his inception, to
his being elected Professor of Mineralogy,
He so distinguished himself by his lucid and
vivid style as to become one of the very best
lecturers of the day. As a naturalist he
visited the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Man,
Anglesea, and other places, and thoroughly
explored Cambridgeshire ; and his biographer
relates with enthusiasm that he was so for-
tunate as to discover some fresh- water bivalve
shells which had previously been ignorantly
confounded with the young of the common
Cyclas cornea^ one of which has immortalised
his name by receiving the title of Hmslow-
iana. Three years later he was made Pro-
fessor of Botany. Here the practical bent of
his mind soon uBefolly manifested itself. A
worthless Botanical Garden was extended
and brought to a state of the highest effi-
ciency, and a neglected Museum became a

VOL. I. X

3o6 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

very perfect and valuable collection. His
lecture-room soon began to fill in a very
gratifying manner. In the summer-time he
and his pupils would fill a coach-and-four and
make an incursion upon some obscure village
in the Fens, where their boxes and imple-
ments excited great astonishment in the
bucolic mind. About his thirtieth year he
married and was ordained. Once a week he
threw open his house to undergraduate friends
and others ; — a step peculiarly beneficial, as a
little general society is a great desideratum
for young men in a University town. His
character at this time is thus very favourably
sketched by his distinguished pupil Mr.
Darwin : — * Nothing could be more simple,
cordial, and unpretending than the encourage-
mient which he afibrded to all young natu-*
ralists. I soon became intimate with him^
for he had a remarkable power of making the
young feel completely at ease with him ;
though we were all awe-struck at the amount
of his knowledge. Before I saw him, I heard
one yoimg man sum up his attainments by
simply sajdng that he knew everything.

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, 307

When I reflect how immediately we felt at
perfect ease with a man older and in every
way so immensely our superior, I think it
was as much owing to the transparent sin-
cerity of his character as to his kindness of
heart ; and, perhaps, even still more to a
highly remarkable absence in him of all self-
consciousness.'

Probably as a reward of his political ser-
vices, he was promoted by the Crown to the
valuable living of Hitcham, in Suffolk, worth
upwards of 1,000Z. a year. The parish was a
large one, and he came to the wise conclusion
that he had better give up the University and
attend to it exclusively. His new sphere was
indeed one which would give ample play to his
perseverance, courage, and healthy energies.
For his parish was a moral waste. The villagers
were sunk almost to the lowest depths of
moral and physical debasement. The parish
church was empty, and the parish rates
enormous. The people were wanting in the
most common decencies and the most ele-
mentary knowledge — idle, immoral, criminal,
to the last degree. To improve this wretched

z2

3o8 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

♦

state of things was the new rector's earnest
endeavour, in which he received very scanty
help, for the farmers, only one remove above
their labourers, opposed him with ignorant
and unreasoning stolidity. His first effort was
to arouse their dormant intellectual fiiculties/
He determined to conciliate them by amuse-
ments. He got up a cricket-club and gave
them an exhibition of fireworks. He wrote
and published a set of * Letters to the Farmers
of Suffolk,' in which his scientific knowledge
proved of much practical use. He earnestly
espoused the allotment system, or establish-
ment of a Spade Tenantry. And in his own
parish he carried out the system in spite of a
most formidable opposition on the part of the
farmers, his principal parishioners. He intro-
duced the study of botany into the village
school, and any child might be promoted into
the botanical class who could spell such por-
tentous words as 'Dicotyledons, Angiosper-
mous, Thalamifloral.' This teaching of botany
as an educational measure was taken up by
the Committee of Council on Education, and
botany has since been taught in other schools,

LITERA TURE, SCIENCE^ AND ART. 309

and an inspector of schools reports very
favourably of the Hitcham plan. Another
means by which Professor Henslow sought to
arouse the dormant intelligence of his people
was by a Recreation Fund, and annual visits
to remarkable places, and among those was a
visit to the Great Exhibition of 1851, and
another to Cambridge, which was planned aijd
managed with especial solicitude. He spoke of
a special occasion for prayer shortly previous to
his getting the Crown living of Hitcham. It
had been under consideration whether he
should not be appointed to the See of Norwich,
the bishopric of which was then vacant, instead
of to any lower preferment in the Church. On
heai-ing this, of which he had certain informa-
tion from a friend, he retired into his chamber,
and fervently on his knees prayed for some
time that he might never be called to any such
high office, for the duties of which he felt him-
self quite unfit, and that he might not be
tempted to accept it if offered to him. When
he found afterwards that he was to have the
living of Hitcham and not the bishopric, he

3IO TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

thanked God for the issue, and regarded it as
an answer to his prayers,

Mr. Henslow's reputation as a lecturer stood
so high that he was requested by the late la-
mented Prince Consort to lecture before the
junior branches of the Royal Family at Buck-
ingham Palace, and we are told that * the same
simple language and engaging demeanour that
had proved irresistible in the village won over
his royal audience to fixed attention and eager
desire for instruction.' He attended the
meeting of the British Association at Oxford
in 1860, where he was Chairman of the Natural
History Section, and was very useful as
moderator in the exciting " debates that took
place respecting Dr. Darwin's book. ' Though
I have always expressed the greatest respect
for my friend's opinions,' he wrote on one
occasion, ' I have told himself that I cannot
assent to his speculations without seeing
stronger proofs than he has yet produced/
He would object to all scientific schemes that
would not allow for the interposition of the
Almighty. In his last days he was very much
interested about the subject of the Celtic Drift.

LITERATURE, SCIENCE^ AND ART. 311

In the autumn of 1860 lie went to France to
examine the celebrated gravel-pits at Amiens
and Abbeville, and wrote several letters in the
'Athenaeum/ arguing against the supposed
great antiquity of these remains. He became,
however, very unsettled in his opinions on this
point, and at the time of his last illness was
preparing to lay his conclusions before the
Cambridge Philosophical Society, and it is
believed that he had convinced himself of a
date not so far back as some geologists suppose,
but long antecedent to that usually attributed
to man's existence on the earth.

The account of his death is very remiark"
able : — 'No soonei* was he told on Good
Friday that he could not live than he evinced
from that moment an utter indifference to his
fete. He immediately rose superior to all
further desire for life, all fear of death, and
all shrinking from what he had to go through
before death would release him. In the face
of inevitably increasing sufferings, he set him-
self to watch the successive symptoms of ap-
proaching dissolution, all of which he desired
should be conmiunicated to him by his medical

312 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

attendants, with whom he discussed them as a
philosopher, and without the most, distant
references to himself as being the subject of

them During his whole illness

he was a model of patience and resignation to
the Divine will. He prayed that not a mur-
mur might escape his lips. He expressed the
most sincere gratitude to the Almighty for
His mercies to himself, and placed his entire
trust in the Saviour, with absolute renunciation
of all personal merit. He observed, " What a
blessed thing it is to be a Christian, and a
blessed thing for a Christian to die ! " He said
he had not before his eyes, to his utter as-
tonishment, that fear of death which he
thought he should have. He placed his soul
in the hands of a righteous Creator.'

With this might be paralleled the language
of William Hunter, the celebrated anatomist,
in his last moments to his friend Dr. Combe,
'KI had strength enough to hold a pen, I would
write how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die/

There are few lives that are more interesting
and better repay the reading than Bruners.
There was indeed a kind of ill luck about his

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 313

undertakings. The atmospheric railway was
a great failure. The broad gauge has suc-
cumbed in the battle of the gauges. The
' Great Britain ' was stranded, and ruined the
company. The ' Great Eastern ' had a difficulty
in being launched, and a succession of mis-
fortunes. But these &ilures were magni-
ficent failures — ^great in themselves and pro-
phetic of better things to come. The ' Great
Eastern ' is associated with the cable between
Great Britain and America, and the cable
between France and America. The 'Great
Britain ' is now one of the fastest vessels on the
Australian line. The day for atmospheric
railways is yet to come. Brunei's failures are
in things the tendency of which is to come
right at last.

Brunei illustrates the doctrine of Atavism,
the doctrine of Mr. Galton in reference to
hereditary genius. The work by which he
is chiefly known is the Thames Tunnel, and
that famous shield by which the works were
advanced beneath the river's bed. In that
work young Isambard bore a conspicuous
part; his father said that his 'vigilance and

314 TURNING-POINTS IN UFE.

constant attendance were of great service/ Of
the last ten days young Brunei passed seven
in the tunnel, allowing himself only 3f hours
of sleep. One day he sat down with nine
friends to a dinner under the Thames. At
this time he was only twenty-one, and his
father was intensely pleased by the ability and
presence of mind which he displayed. At
this time, however, the works were discon-
tmued for seven years, owing to irruptions of
the river. Sir Isambard, who survived to his
eighty-first year, was permitted to witness the
extraordinary success of his son. In the same
way the great Stephenson witnessed the won-
derful ability and success of his son, Robert
Stephenson, the engineer.

Those who wish to understand the magni-
ficent genius of Brunei should take a journey
towards the Land's End. There is no railway
line that possesses greater scenic magnificence
than that through South Devon and Cornwall.
We will take no notice of those dismantled
edifices which recall the sad fortunes of the
atmospheric railway. Observe how magni-
ficently the railway sweeps the coast line,

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 315

piercing through the projecting headlands in
a series of tunnels. It comes between the
sea and the pretty little town of Dawlish^
gracefully supported on an Egyptian bridge*
There is a story of a misanthropic gentleman
near Dawlisb who took a house on the very
edge of the sea in order that he might be saved
from all conmierce with human kind, but
Brunei came with Ms remorseless raUway and
drove him to despair and death. I believe
the ornamentation of the line was Brunei's-
It was what he especially delighted in, and he
made his own home marvellously beautiful.
Even the colour of the railway carriages was
a point to which he sedulously attended. A
few miles from Teignmouth, on the road be-
tween Teignmouth and Torquay, is the lovely
combe of Watcombe, so familiar to all tourists
of the neighbourhood, where Brunei had pur-
chased an estate, and had designed there to
erect a mansion, and there to spend the even-
ing of his days. The line soon skirts the edge
of Bartmoor. Few who have passed it can
ever forget the lovely viaduct at Ivybridge.
The slender line of masonry seems to span

3i6 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

aerial space, in the vista delicate and thin,
while the Erne through its wooded gorge flows
down from the moorland, through the railway
arches to the sea. As soon as we leave Ply-
mouth we have again the stupendous marvel of
the Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash. Many
years before its erection Brunei had investigated
the spot, and thought that the estuary of the
Tamar was much too broad for any such un-
dertaking. But time had expanded the daring
inventiveness of his genius, and had enabled
him to accomplish his ambitious designs. The
chief part of this great work is the centre
pier, which is out of sight to the public, but
the main feature of interest to professional
men. Here they found a rock which admitted
of masonry being laid under a cylinder pro-
vided with pneumatic apparatus, although
the work was hindered by the necessity of
having to cut through a bed of oysters and
staunching a fountain that burst from the sub-
marine rock. The centre pier of this famous
bridge marks the highest point of Bruners
achievements, though, perhaps, not of his. con-
ceptions. It was opened by the Prince Con-

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 317

sort, but he was himself absent from the
scene through ill-health. He was permitted
to make subsequently his first and last visit
to his completed work. The Cornish line
from the great bridge westward afibrds con-
tinual examples of Brunei's favourite tim-
ber viaducts and bridges. Through a long
succession of valleys the railway seems to
bound from height to height on these ap-
parently frail structures which the great
architect constructed so securely, and yet with
comparatively little expense. Cornwall is
famous for its picturesque scenery, but the
railway which traverses the peninsula and
makes it so accessible is one of the most
remarkable features of the scene.

It is remarkable that BruneFs great fame
primarily arose from want of success. One of
his first efibrts was to enter into the competi-
tion of designs for the Clifton Suspension
Bridge. Telford, the first engineer of the day,
was called in as judge, and decided against
him and all the other candidates ; he thought
that Brunei's span was longer than could be
employed with safety. Telford was asked to

3i8 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

send in a plan of his own, but his ultimate
plan embraced lofty towers, for which there
was not sufficient money. Eventually Brunei
was made architect. On one occasion he
nearly lost his Efe. He was crossing the river
in a basket slung from an iron bar, and the
basket stuck fast ; he was obliged to perform
the dangerous feat of climbing from the basket
to the bar before he could be released. In a
few years the funds were all exhausted, and
it was necessary that the works should be left
incomplete. A spell of ill-luck seemed to
hang about the bridge. Though Brunei took
the deepest interest in it he never saw it com*
pleted. Not till after his death was the bridge
finished, partly as a monument to his memory
and partly as wiping away a slur on the
engineering ability of the country. But the
fact is that this unsuccessful bridge had proved
the architect of the great engineer's fortune.
The competition for the Clifton bridge gave
him his first start. His son says, ^all his
subsequent success was traced by him to this
victory, which he fought hard for and gained
only by persevering struggles.' His reputa-

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART 319

tion made him the first engineer of the Great
Western Railway, often working for twenty
hours a day. One of his assistants indeed
calls this period ' the turning-point of his life/
' His vigour both of body and mind were in
their perfection. His powers were continually
called forth by the obstacles he had to over-
come ; and the result of his examinations in
the committee rooms placed him in the very
first rank of his profession for talents and
knowledge.' The following was a very re-
markable ' moment ' in his career, which led
to an inmiense extension of ocean steam navi-
gation. There was one night a business
meeting at Radley's Hotel of the directors of
the Great Western Railway. Some one spoke
of the enormous length, as it then appeared,
of the railway from London to Bristol. Brunei
exclaimed, ' Why not make it longer, and have
a steamboat to go from Bristol to New York,
and call it the " Great Western T ' The re-
mark was received as an excellent joke, but
at night Mr. Brunei talked it over with one of
the directors. This led to the 'Great Western,'
and then to the ' Great Britain ' and ' Great

320 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

Eastern/ It was a daring achievement to
build a vast ship of iron and to fit her with a
screw propeller. Brunei was the main instru-
ment of introducing the screw propeller into
the mercantile navy, and of securing its adop-
tion in our fleets.

Personally Brunei was a very interesting
and remarkable character. The odd incident
of his swallowing the half-sovereign, which
put his life in danger, created a feeling of
warm personal interest in him. His sweet
temper and sound judgment secured him many
attached friends. His industry was prodigious,
and he had a remarkable faculty of going
without sleep for many hours. But, like so
many men whom we have had to speak of, he
seems to have materially damaged his health
by his strenuous unresting employments.
Humanly speaking, his life might have been
lengthened many years save for his intense
appetite for work. The difficulties attending
the launch , of the * Great Eastern ' perhaps
injured his health more than anything else.
He had intended to go round with the ship to

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 321

Weymouth, but the day before be was seized
with paralysis.

On looking back on the careers of men dis-
tinguished in Art, Literature, and Science,
there are a few considerations to be added. We
see at once that it is not by any special event
or turning-point in life, but by the whole
tenour and work of life, that the value of such
men's lives must be estimated. It was the
saying of the old Greek tragedian to call no
one happy before the day of his death. The
saying doubtless involves a fallacy, as the
difference of one day to all the days of
one's life cannot be of overwhelming impor-
tance; one happy day added to disastrous
days, or one disastrous day added to happy
days cannot materially vary the general com-
plexion of human existence. At the same
time no day is so far a decisive turning-point
in life that it can altogether influence ex-
istence as a whole. The day jdelds its
happy chance, or it may altogether refuse to
yield it, or may even render it disastrously.
But it is the tendency of a well-ordered, care-
ful life to reduce the domain of chance to a

VOL. I. Y

322 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE.

minimum. Let the scientific man diligently
pass his life according to the Baconian ideal,
' in industrious observations, grounded conclu-
sions, and profitable inventions and discoveries,'
and we may be quite sure that it is simply a
matter of time when such a man makes his
mark. The lessons taught by our survey are
the simple lessons of thoughtfulness, activity,
and perseverance. Any moment of success in
life, however brilliant, passes away and leaves
life to its ordinary current. The course of
the stream is left unaffected by the occasional
eddy. The poet says —

Use gave me fame,
And fame again increasing gave me use.

After all, use is the great thing, far trans-
cending the fame. The keenest delights, after
all, such men would tell us, are in the exercise
of one's faculties and powers, the feeling that
their lives are well laid out to the highest
purposes. The delight of the artist in his
work is something more than its praises or its
prizes. It is in the power of every one of us to
have the keenest pleasure of high endeavours.

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. 323

Those who cannot command success may at
least deserve it* Let no man think that his
eflForts are such that some brilliant day will
come which will crown them in the sight of men.
Let no man think that any happy chance will
do for him what he is quite unable to do for
himself. The solid happiness will be in the
sense of use, and in the highest sense the
great wages will be

* The glory of going on and not to die.'

There are a few wise words of Schlegel's
with which we may not unfitly close this
chapter. Schlegel says: 'In experimental
science, the order between faith and know-
ledge is exactly the same. In actual life,
every great enterprise begins with and takes
its first step in faith. In faith Columbus,
compass in hand, and firmly relying on
its revelations, traversed, in his fraU bark,
the wide waters of an unknown ocean. In
this faith he discovered a new wofld, and
thereby opened a new era in the history of
science and of man. For all his inquiries, all
his thirst and search after information, all his

324 TURNING-POINTS IN LIFE,

thinking, guessing, and supposing, did not as
yet amount to a complete knowledge — ^by such
means he could not succeed in working out a
full conviction, either for himself or for others.
It was the given fact, the unquestionable
proof of actual experience, that first exalted
his bold conception into true and perfect
certainty. In a greater or less degree, this is
the course by which all the great discoveries
in science have been made; passing, by a
slow but still advancing process of thought,
fi^om facts up to knowledge. And the same
character of faith is stamped on every great
and decisive act, every important event in the
history of individuals and of nations.' We
thus see that it is faith which makes and
determines so many of the great turning-
points in life.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

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