86 Enduringness of Good Example. [CHAP. III. they continue to live and speak to all the generations that succeed them. It was very impressively observed by Mr. Disraeli, in the House of Commons, shortly after the death of Mr. Cobden :

"There is this consolation remaining to us, when we remember our unequalled and irreparable losses, that those great men are not altogether lost to us-that their words will often be quoted in this House-that their examples will often be referred to and appealed to, and that even their expressions will form part of our discussions and debates. There are now, I may say, some members of Parliament who, though they may not be present, are still members of this Housewho are independent of dissolutions, of the caprices of constituencies, and even of the course of time. I think that Mr. Cobden was one of those men.”

It is the great lesson of biography to teach what man can be and can do at his best. It may thus give each man renewed strength and confidence. The humblest, in sight of even the greatest, may admire, and hope, and take courage. These great brothers of ours in blood and lineage, who live a universal life, still speak to us from their graves, and beckon us on in the paths which they have trod. Their example is still with us, to guide, to influence, and to direct us. For nobility of character is a perpetual bequest, living from age to age, and constantly tending to reproduce its like.

"The sage," say the Chinese, "is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering determined." Thus the acted life of a good man continues to be a gospel of freedom and emancipation to all who succeed him:

"To live in hearts we leave behind,

Is not to die."

CHAP. III.] Consolation of a Well-spent Life. 87

The golden words that good men have uttered, the examples they have set, live through all time: they pass into the thoughts and hearts of their successors, help them on the road of life, and often console them in the hour of death. "And the most miserable or most painful of deaths," said Henry Marten, the Commonwealth man, who died in prison, "is as nothing compared with the memory of a well-spent life; and great alone is he who has earned the glorious privilege of bequeathing such a lesson and example to his successors!"

LIBRAR

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA.

888

Work.

[CHAP. IV.

CHAPTER IV.

WORK.

"Arise therefore, and be doing, and the Lord be with thee."-1 Chronicles xxii. 16. "Work as if thou hadst to live for aye;

Worship as if thou wert to die to-day."-Tuscan Proverb.

"C'est par le travail qu'on regne."-Louis XIV. "Blest work! if ever thou wert curse of God,

What must His blessing be!"-J. B. Selkirk.

"Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best.”—Sydney Smith.

WORK is one of the best educators of practical character. It evokes and disciplines obedience, self-control, attention, application, and perseverance; giving a man deftness and skill in his special calling, and aptitude and dexterity in dealing with the affairs of ordinary life.

Work is the law of our being-the living principle that carries men and nations onward. The greater number of men have to work with their hands, as a matter of necessity, in order to live; but all must work in one way or another, if they would enjoy life as it ought to be enjoyed.

Labour may be a burden and a chastisement, but it is also an honour and a glory. Without it, nothing can be accomplished. All that is great in man comes through work; and civilisation is its product. Were labour abolished, the race of Adam were at once stricken by moral death.

It is idleness that is the curse of man-not labour. Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and

CHAR. IV.]

Pliny on Rural Labour.

89

consumes them as rust does iron. When Alexander conquered the Persians, and had an opportunity of observing their manners, he remarked that they did not seem conscious that there could be anything more servile than a life of pleasure, or more princely than a life of toil.

When the Emperor Severus lay on his deathbed at York, whither he had been borne on a litter from the foot of the Grampians, his final watchword to his soldiers was, "Laboremus" (we must work); and nothing but constant toil maintained the power and extended the authority of the Roman generals.

In describing the earlier social condition of Italy, when the ordinary occupations of rural life were considered compatible with the highest civic dignity, Pliny speaks of the triumphant generals and their men returning contentedly to the plough. "In those days the lands were tilled by the hands even of generals, the soil exulting beneath a ploughshare crowned with laurels, and guided by a husbandman graced with triumphs": [Ipsorum tunc manibus imperatorum colebantur agri: ut fas est credere, gaudente terrâ vomere laureato et triumphali aratore.]1 It was only after slaves became

1

In the third chapter of his Natural History, Pliny relates in what high honour agriculture was held in the earlier days of Rome; how the divisions of land were measured by the quantity which could be ploughed by a yoke of oxen in a certain time (jugerum, in one day; actus, at one spell); how the greatest recompence to a general or valiant citizen was a jugerum; how the earliest surnames were derived from agriculture (Pilumnus, from pilum, the pestle for pounding corn; Piso, from piso, to grind corn; Fabius, from

faba, a bean; Lentulus, from lens, a lentil; Cicero, from cicer, a chickpea; Babulcus, from bos, &c.); how the highest compliment was to call a man a good agriculturist, or a good husbandman (Locuples, rich, loci plenus, Pecunia, from pecus, &c.); how the pasturing of cattle secretly by night upon unripe crops was a capital offence, punishable by hanging; how the rural tribes held the foremost rank, while those of the city had discredit thrown upon them as being an indolent race; and how “ Gloriam denique ipsam, a farris

90

The Curse of Idleness.

[CHAP. IV. extensively employed in all departments of industry that labour came to be regarded as dishonourable and servile. And so soon as indolence and luxury became the characteristics of the ruling classes of Rome, the downfall of the empire, sooner or later, was inevitable.

There is, perhaps, no tendency of our nature that has to be more carefully guarded against than indolence. When Mr. Gurney asked an intelligent foreigner who had travelled over the greater part of the world, whether he had observed any one quality which, more than another, could be regarded as a universal characteristic of our species, his answer was, in broken English, "Me tink dat all men love lazy." It is characteristic of the savage as of the despot. It is natural to men to endeavour to enjoy the products of labour without its toils. Indeed, so universal is this desire, that James Mill has argued that it was to prevent its indulgence at the expense of society at large, that the expedient of Government was originally invented.1

Indolence is equally degrading to individuals as to nations. Sloth never made its mark in the world, and never will. Sloth never climbed a hill, nor overcame a difficulty that it could avoid. Indolence always failed in life, and always will. It is in the nature of things that it should not succeed in anything. It is a burden, an incumbrance, and a nuisance—always useless, complaining, melancholy, and miserable.

Burton, in his quaint and curious book-the only one, Johnson says, that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise-describes the causes of Melancholy as hingeing mainly on Idleness. "Idleness," he says, "is the bane of body and mind, the

honore, adoream' appellabant;" | valour, being derived from Ador, or Adorea, or Glory, the reward of spelt, a kind of grain.

Essay on Government,' in Encyclopædia Britannica.'