Self Help

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

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

There are many other illustrious names which might be cited to
prove the truth of the common saying that "it is never too late to
learn." Even at advanced years men can do much, if they will
determine on making a beginning. Sir Henry Spelman did not begin
the study of science until he was between fifty and sixty years of
age. Franklin was fifty before he fully entered upon the study of
Natural Philosophy. Dryden and Scott were not known as authors
until each was in his fortieth year. Boccaccio was thirty-five
when he commenced his literary career, and Alfieri was forty-six
when he began the study of Greek. Dr. Arnold learnt German at an
advanced age, for the purpose of reading Niebuhr in the original;
and in like manner James Watt, when about forty, while working at
his trade of an instrument maker in Glasgow, learnt French, German,
and Italian, to enable himself to peruse the valuable works on
mechanical philosophy which existed in those languages. Thomas
Scott was fifty-six before he began to learn Hebrew. Robert Hall
was once found lying upon the floor, racked by pain, learning
Italian in his old age, to enable him to judge of the parallel
drawn by Macaulay between Milton and Dante. Handel was forty-eight
before he published any of his great works. Indeed hundreds of
instances might be given of men who struck out an entirely new
path, and successfully entered on new studies, at a comparatively
advanced time of life. None but the frivolous or the indolent will
say, "I am too old to learn." {31}

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

An interesting chapter might be written on the subject of
illustrious dunces--dull boys, but brilliant men. We have room,
however, for only a few instances. Pietro di Cortona, the painter,
was thought so stupid that he was nicknamed "Ass's Head" when a
boy; and Tomaso Guidi was generally known as "Heavy Tom" (Massaccio
Tomasaccio), though by diligence he afterwards raised himself to
the highest eminence. Newton, when at school, stood at the bottom
of the lowest form but one. The boy above Newton having kicked
him, the dunce showed his pluck by challenging him to a fight, and
beat him. Then he set to work with a will, and determined also to
vanquish his antagonist as a scholar, which he did, rising to the
top of his class. Many of our greatest divines have been anything
but precocious. Isaac Barrow, when a boy at the Charterhouse
School, was notorious chiefly for his strong temper, pugnacious
habits, and proverbial idleness as a scholar; and he caused such
grief to his parents that his father used to say that, if it
pleased God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might
be Isaac, the least promising of them all. Adam Clarke, when a
boy, was proclaimed by his father to be "a grievous dunce;" though
he could roll large stones about. Dean Swift was "plucked" at
Dublin University, and only obtained his recommendation to Oxford
"speciali gratia." The well-known Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Cook {32}
were boys together at the parish school of St. Andrew's; and they
were found so stupid and mischievous, that the master, irritated
beyond measure, dismissed them both as incorrigible dunces.

The brilliant Sheridan showed so little capacity as a boy, that he
was presented to a tutor by his mother with the complimentary
accompaniment that he was an incorrigible dunce. Walter Scott was
all but a dunce when a boy, always much readier for a "bicker,"
than apt at his lessons. At the Edinburgh University, Professor
Dalzell pronounced upon him the sentence that "Dunce he was, and
dunce he would remain." Chatterton was returned on his mother's
hands as "a fool, of whom nothing could be made." Burns was a dull
boy, good only at athletic exercises. Goldsmith spoke of himself,
as a plant that flowered late. Alfieri left college no wiser than
he entered it, and did not begin the studies by which he
distinguished himself, until he had run half over Europe. Robert
Clive was a dunce, if not a reprobate, when a youth; but always
full of energy, even in badness. His family, glad to get rid of
him, shipped him off to Madras; and he lived to lay the foundations
of the British power in India. Napoleon and Wellington were both
dull boys, not distinguishing themselves in any way at school. {33}
Of the former the Duchess d'Abrantes says, "he had good health, but
was in other respects like other boys."

Ulysses Grant, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States, was
called "Useless Grant" by his mother--he was so dull and unhandy
when a boy; and Stonewall Jackson, Lee's greatest lieutenant, was,
in his youth, chiefly noted for his slowness. While a pupil at
West Point Military Academy he was, however, equally remarkable for
his indefatigable application and perseverance. When a task was
set him, he never left it until he had mastered it; nor did he ever
feign to possess knowledge which he had not entirely acquired.
"Again and again," wrote one who knew him, "when called upon to
answer questions in the recitation of the day, he would reply, 'I
have not yet looked at it; I have been engaged in mastering the
recitation of yesterday or the day before.' The result was that he
graduated seventeenth in a class of seventy. There was probably in
the whole class not a boy to whom Jackson at the outset was not
inferior in knowledge and attainments; but at the end of the race
he had only sixteen before him, and had outstripped no fewer than
fifty-three. It used to be said of him by his contemporaries, that
if the course had been for ten years instead of four, Jackson would
have graduated at the head of his class." {34}

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XII--EXAMPLE--MODELS

"Ever their phantoms rise before us,
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood;
By bed and table they lord it o'er us,
With looks of beauty and words of good."--John Sterling.

"Children may be strangled, but Deeds never; they have an
indestructible life, both in and out of our consciousness."--George
Eliot.

"There is no action of man in this life, which is not the beginning
of so long a chain of consequences, as that no human providence is
high enough to give us a prospect to the end."--Thomas of
Malmesbury.

Example is one of the most potent of instructors, though it teaches
without a tongue. It is the practical school of mankind, working
by action, which is always more forcible than words. Precept may
point to us the way, but it is silent continuous example, conveyed
to us by habits, and living with us in fact, that carries us along.
Good advice has its weight: but without the accompaniment of a
good example it is of comparatively small influence; and it will be
found that the common saying of "Do as I say, not as I do," is
usually reversed in the actual experience of life.

All persons are more or less apt to learn through the eye rather
than the ear; and, whatever is seen in fact, makes a far deeper
impression than anything that is merely read or heard. This is
especially the case in early youth, when the eye is the chief inlet
of knowledge. Whatever children see they unconsciously imitate.
They insensibly come to resemble those who are about them--as
insects take the colour of the leaves they feed on. Hence the vast
importance of domestic training. For whatever may be the
efficiency of schools, the examples set in our Homes must always be
of vastly greater influence in forming the characters of our future
men and women. The Home is the crystal of society--the nucleus of
national character; and from that source, be it pure or tainted,
issue the habits, principles and maxims, which govern public as
well as private life. The nation comes from the nursery. Public
opinion itself is for the most part the outgrowth of the home; and
the best philanthropy comes from the fireside. "To love the little
platoon we belong to in society," says Burke, "is the germ of all
public affections." From this little central spot, the human
sympathies may extend in an ever widening circle, until the world
is embraced; for, though true philanthropy, like charity, begins at
home, assuredly it does not end there.

Example in conduct, therefore, even in apparently trivial matters,
is of no light moment, inasmuch as it is constantly becoming
inwoven with the lives of others, and contributing to form their
natures for better or for worse. The characters of parents are
thus constantly repeated in their children; and the acts of
affection, discipline, industry, and self-control, which they daily
exemplify, live and act when all else which may have been learned
through the ear has long been forgotten. Hence a wise man was
accustomed to speak of his children as his "future state." Even
the mute action and unconscious look of a parent may give a stamp
to the character which is never effaced; and who can tell how much
evil act has been stayed by the thought of some good parent, whose
memory their children may not sully by the commission of an
unworthy deed, or the indulgence of an impure thought? The veriest
trifles thus become of importance in influencing the characters of
men. "A kiss from my mother," said West, "made me a painter." It
is on the direction of such seeming trifles when children that the
future happiness and success of men mainly depend. Fowell Buxton,
when occupying an eminent and influential station in life, wrote to
his mother, "I constantly feel, especially in action and exertion
for others, the effects of principles early implanted by you in my
mind." Buxton was also accustomed to remember with gratitude the
obligations which he owed to an illiterate man, a gamekeeper, named
Abraham Plastow, with whom he played, and rode, and sported--a man
who could neither read nor write, but was full of natural good
sense and mother-wit. "What made him particularly valuable," says
Buxton, "were his principles of integrity and honour. He never
said or did a thing in the absence of my mother of which she would
have disapproved. He always held up the highest standard of
integrity, and filled our youthful minds with sentiments as pure
and as generous as could be found in the writings of Seneca or
Cicero. Such was my first instructor, and, I must add, my best."

Lord Langdale, looking back upon the admirable example set him by
his mother, declared, "If the whole world were put into one scale,
and my mother into the other, the world would kick the beam." Mrs.
Schimmel Penninck, in her old age, was accustomed to call to mind
the personal influence exercised by her mother upon the society
amidst which she moved. When she entered a room it had the effect
of immediately raising the tone of the conversation, and as if
purifying the moral atmosphere--all seeming to breathe more freely,
and stand more erectly. "In her presence," says the daughter, "I
became for the time transformed into another person." So much does
she moral health depend upon the moral atmosphere that is breathed,
and so great is the influence daily exercised by parents over their
children by living a life before their eyes, that perhaps the best
system of parental instruction might be summed up in these two
words: "Improve thyself."

There is something solemn and awful in the thought that there is
not an act done or a word uttered by a human being but carries with
it a train of consequences, the end of which we may never trace.
Not one but, to a certain extent, gives a colour to our life, and
insensibly influences the lives of those about us. The good deed
or word will live, even though we may not see it fructify, but so
will the bad; and no person is so insignificant as to be sure that
his example will not do good on the one hand, or evil on the other.
The spirits of men do not die: they still live and walk abroad
among us. It was a fine and a true thought uttered by Mr. Disraeli
in the House of Commons on the death of Richard Cobden, that "he
was one of those men who, though not present, were still members of
that House, who were independent of dissolutions, of the caprices
of constituencies, and even of the course of time."

There is, indeed, an essence of immortality in the life of man,
even in this world. No individual in the universe stands alone; he
is a component part of a system of mutual dependencies; and by his
several acts he either increases or diminishes the sum of human
good now and for ever. As the present is rooted in the past, and
the lives and examples of our forefathers still to a great extent
influence us, so are we by our daily acts contributing to form the
condition and character of the future. Man is a fruit formed and
ripened by the culture of all the foregoing centuries; and the
living generation continues the magnetic current of action and
example destined to bind the remotest past with the most distant
future. No man's acts die utterly; and though his body may resolve
into dust and air, his good or his bad deeds will still be bringing
forth fruit after their kind, and influencing future generations
for all time to come. It is in this momentous and solemn fact that
the great peril and responsibility of human existence lies.

Mr. Babbage has so powerfully expressed this idea in a noble
passage in one of his writings that we here venture to quote his
words: "Every atom," he says, "impressed with good or ill, retains
at once the motions which philosophers and sages have imparted to
it, mixed and combined in ten thousand ways with all that is
worthless and base; the air itself is one vast library, on whose
pages are written FOR EVER all that man has ever said or whispered.
There, in their immutable but unerring characters, mixed with the
earliest as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand for ever
recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled; perpetuating, in
the united movements of each particle, the testimony of man's
changeful will. But, if the air we breathe is the never-failing
historian of the sentiments we have uttered, earth, air, and ocean,
are, in like manner, the eternal witnesses of the acts we have
done; the same principle of the equality of action and reaction
applies to them. No motion impressed by natural causes, or by
human agency, is ever obliterated. . . . If the Almighty stamped on
the brow of the first murderer the indelible and visible mark of
his guilt, He has also established laws by which every succeeding
criminal is not less irrevocably chained to the testimony of his
crime; for every atom of his mortal frame, through whatever changes
its severed particles may migrate, will still retain adhering to
it, through every combination, some movement derived from that very
muscular effort by which the crime itself was perpetrated."

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