RISING IN THE WORLD.

HAPPENING one day to ask a clergyman if he had got certain officers appointed for his church, he replied, "I am in no hurry. I could get plenty of wordy men if I liked, but it is worthy men that I want, and I am quite sure that if I wait patiently I will get them in due time. The persons suitable for my purpose may not offer themselves, nay, they may try to conceal themselves, but they will be found out at last."

There is much practical wisdom in this, and we are not sure if the principle here laid down be not at the bottom of many a rising and many a falling in the world. Young men of precocious talent force themselves forward by virtue of some property which gives promise of future eminence; they obtain the envied position, but instead of being able to get farther forward, they are found incapable of keeping the vantage ground already gained, and in due time sink and disappear from the surface of society. Like blossoms in early spring, they have been developed too soon, and the first blast of biting frost withers them into decay. It were a wholesome truth for all aspirants to know, that as surely as bodies will float on the water, provided they are specifically lighter than the water itself, with equal certainty will men rise in the world, if they have the necessary ability and worth. In nature, one quality only is requisite in order to ascend to the surface, namely, buoyancy as compared with the surrounding medium; but in the world there are two,-one referring to the intellect, the other to the conduct. No excess of the one will compound for the absence of the other. A man may be ever so profound in a particular department of knowledge, but unless his ability is accompanied with good moral aim and practice, he never will command the respect and esteem of his fellow-men. Every step by which his intellect should advance him is retarded by the evil influence of improprieties in conduct, and, like a bird whose wings have been clipped, he will continue flapping and beating the air without being able to rise. And it is reasonable that it should be so, for in all other things in life a similar duality of object is required. The two great natural wants of man are food and clothing; but what should we think of a philanthropist who would give the poor bread, but no clothing; or clothes, but no bread. Both are indis

pensable, and the world will just as soon think of dispensing with either of these requisites as it will think of doing honour to talent apart from behaviour.

We hear a great deal about the hard fate of poets and others of erratic genius, but if narrowly looked into, it will be found that their follies have kept them back. It will not do to plead the eccentricities of genius, for many of them are assumed; and supposing they were not, like every other hindrance to progress, they should unmercifully be lopped off. When a ship is in full sail, and with a light wind, water is sometimes squirted on the sails in order to fill up the interstices and catch more wind, and not only that, but the smallest rope is not allowed to hang over the sides, lest, perchance, it should in any way impede velocity. If genius means anything, it should mean knowledge of man-that is, knowledge of self and knowledge of others-and if the man of genius finds that he is not meeting with the success which he thinks he merits, he will be perfectly able to find out the cause if he resolutely inquires into it. Is he quite free from dissipation or other vices? is he proud, conceited, and impatient of counsel, whether friendly or otherwise? is he frugal? is he industrious? does his genius lead to some practical useful purpose? If all these queries can be satisfactorily answered, let him just have patience, and infallibly his reward will come in due time; but if any one of them cannot be satisfactorily disposed of, then we dare not promise him the recompense. Vice, pride, extravagance, idleness, or crotchets are sufficient, singly or in slight combination to retard any man. We say, retard, for mind will always make some progress; but with such drawbacks it will be the progress of a man walking up a hill, whose sides are covered with snow, he will lose an inch at every step, and stopping to take breath at each other minute, he will get discouraged, stand still, or retrace his steps altogether. The tendency of mind is to rise, and it is the same with a stick underneath the water; but if it gets entangled with sea-weed it may struggle until bleached into nothing, but most certainly it will not rise. The tendency of many substances is to cure stomach complaints; but if dyspeptics will eat and drink those things that disorder their stomachs, they have themselves to blame if they never are cured. The tendency of

gold is to circulate and pass amongst all classes; but if you mix your gold with dross, if you adulterate your coinage, as the Turks do, with brass and copper, no nation will take it off your hands, and that for the simple reason, that they desiderate gold at all times, but cannot be troubled with alloy.

And this leads us to remark, that no man can be more willing to render good service to his fellows than his fellows are to receive it. The world is ever on the outlook for able and effective men, and those who really belong to this class need not be afraid that their claims will be overlooked. No phrase has been more abused than the one so often quoted, that the "world was not worthy" of certain persons. That some have been greatly in advance of their times, and that to an extent that excluded general sympathy, we freely admit; but such are the few, not the many; and to the latter alone do we address ourselves. The many may rely upon it, that the something which keeps them down, is within themselves, and instead of wasting time in abusing their contemporaries as a blinded generation, they would be far better employed in examining into their own character, in order that they may discover the gangrene spot which blights all their prospects of advancement.

A very common form of ambition is anxiety to get into town councils, public boards, committeeships of insurance offices, railways, and other situations of public trust. Mr Alfred Dapper may have often tried to get into such positions, and may as often have failed. He has seen others, whose talents, wealth, and influence are not greater, perhaps less than his own, obtain such appointments, and he cannot for the life of him understand how this should be. He ascribes it to enemies, back-door influence, deterioration of public taste, and to all causes but the true one. It never enters into his mind that the community is anxious for good government; that there never was a bank, insurance, gas, railway, or cemetery company under the sun which was not desirous of having good directors; and although they occasionally may make mistakes in their selections, yet are they most willing to retrieve their error at the earliest possible opportunity, and therefore their overlooking of him cannot arise from any wilful desire to exclude ability. Again, therefore, we say, he should look to himself. It may be that there already is a sufficient supply of talent in the given department of labour; and when supply exceeds demand, he must content himself to stand on the footing of commercial commodities in the same position, and "bide his time." Perhaps he is too young, and, if so, he ought to know that clever men rise in spite of, and not because of, youth. But most likely of all, he has some drawback of a more serious kind, and, till he discovers it, the whole matter will to him, although to nobody else, remain an impenetrable mystery. If people would spend one half of the time in analysing themselves that they do in anatomising others, they would make rapid strides in self-improvement. No poet ever breathed a more important prayer than Burns, when he said

"Would that some power the gift wad gie us,
To see oursels as others see us."

Our remarks have chiefly been directed to those who, having abilities, lack conduct for public notoriety-the same principles, however, are equally applicable to those who have conduct but want ability. Both are indispensably necessary, and if both are conjoined, no fear need be entertained as to the result.

THE AUTHORS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

No. I.-LORD Jeffrey.

[IN commencing a series of extracts under the above title, as announced last week, we think it necessary to mention that we make our selections not entirely with the view of quoting what might be regarded as the most striking passages in the writings of the parties quoted, but, along with that, we wish to select what may be useful and improving to our readers. We have only further to say that, in giving the extracts, no studied order as to merit or otherwise will be observed.]

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND SELF-EDUCATION.

haps, of all philosophers. He never loses sight of common "This self-taught American is the most rational, persense in any of his speculations; and when his philosophy does not consist entirely in its fair and vigorous application, it is always regulated and controlled by it in its application and result. No individual, perhaps, ever possessed a juster understanding, or was so seldom obstructed in the use of it by indolence, enthusiasm, or authority.

"Dr Franklin received no regular education, and he spent the greater part of his life in a society where there ordinary mind, these circumstances would have produced was no relish and no encouragement for literature. On an their usual effects, of repressing all sorts of intellectual ambition or activity, and perpetuating a generation of incurious mechanics; but to an understanding like Franklin's, we cannot help considering them as peculiarly propitious, and imagine that we can trace back to them distinctly almost all the peculiarities of his intellectual character.

"Regular education, we think, is unfavourable to vigour Like civilisation, it or originality of understanding. makes society more intelligent and agreeable; but it levels the distinctions of nature. It strengthens and assists the feeble, but it deprives the strong of his triumph, and casts down the hopes of the aspiring. It accomplishes this, not only by training up the mind in an habitual veneration for authorities, but, by leading us to bestow a disproportionate degree of attention upon studies that are only valuable as keys or instruments for the understanding, they come at last to be regarded as ultimate objects of pursuit, and the means of education are absurdly mistaken for its end. How many powerful understandings have been lost in the dialectics of Aristotle! And of how much good philosophy are we daily defrauded by for useful learning! The mind of a man who has escaped the preposterous error of taking a knowledge of prosody this training will at least have fair play. Whatever other errors he may fall into, he will be safe at least from these infatuations; and if he thinks proper, after he grows up, to study Greek, it will probably be for some better purpose than to become critically acquainted with its dialects. His prejudices will be those of a man and not of a schoolboy, and his speculations and conclusions will be independent of the maxims of tutors and the oracles of literary patrons.

"The consequences of living in a refined and literary

community are nearly of the same kind with those of a regular education. There are so many critics to be satisfied,- -so many qualifications to be established,-so many rivals to encounter, and so much derision to be hazarded, that a young man is apt to be deterred from so perilous an enterprise, and led to seek for distinction in some safer line of exertion. He is discouraged by the fame and the perfection of certain models and favourites, who are always in the mouths of his judges, and "under them his genius is rebuked," and his originality repressed, by extravagance and affectation. In such a state of till he sinks into a paltry copyist, or aims at distinction society he feels that mediocrity has no chance of distinc tion; and what beginner can expect to rise at once into excellence? He imagines that mere good sense will attract no attention, and that the manner is of much

more importance than the matter in a candidate for public admiration. In his attention to the manner the matter is apt to be neglected; and, in his solicitude to please those who require elegance of diction, brilliancy of wit, or harmony of periods, he is in some danger of forgetting that strength of reasoning and accuracy of observation by which he first proposed to recommend himself. His attention, when extended to so many collateral objects, is no longer vigorous or collected; the stream, divided into so many channels, ceases to flow either deep or strong; he becomes an unsuccessful pretender to fine writing, or is satisfied with the frivolous praise of elegance or vivacity.

"We are disposed to ascribe so much power to these obstructions to intellectual originality, that we cannot help fancying, that if Franklin had been bred in a college, he would have contented himself with expounding the metres of Pindar, and mixing argument with his port in the common room; and that if Boston had abounded with men of letters, he would never have ventured to come forth from his printing-house, or been driven back to it at any rate by the sneers of the critics, after the first publication of his Essays in the Busy Body.

"This will probably be thought exaggerated; but it cannot be denied, we think, that the contrary circumstances in his history had a powerful effect in determining the character of his understanding, and in producing those peculiar habits of reasoning and investigation by which his writings are distinguished. He was encouraged to publish, because there was scarcely any one around him whom he could not easily excel. He wrote with great brevity, because he had not leisure for more voluminous compositions, and because he knew that the readers to whom he addressed himself were, for the most part, as busy as himself. For the same reason, he studied great perspicuity and simplicity of statement. His countrymen had then no relish for fine writing, and could not easily be made, to understand a deduction depending on a long or elaborate process of reasoning. He was forced, therefore, to concentrate what he had to say; and since he had no chance of being admired for the beauty of his composition, it was natural for him to aim at making an impression by the force and the clearness of his state

ments.

"His conclusions were often rash and inaccurate from the same circumstances which rendered his productions concise. Philosophy and speculation did not form the business of his life, nor did he dedicate himself to any particular study, with a view to exhaust and complete the investigation of it in all its parts, and under all its relations. He engaged in every interesting inquiry that suggested itself to him, rather as the necessary exercise of a powerful and active mind, than as a task which he had bound himself to perform. He cast a quick and penetrating glance over the facts and the data that were presented to him, and drew his conclusions with a rapi dity and precision that have not often been equalled. But he did not generally stop to examine the completeness of the data upon which he proceeded, nor to consider the ultimate effect or application of the principles to which he had been conducted. In all questions, therefore, where the facts upon which he was to determine, and the materials from which his judgment was to be formed were either few in number, or of such a nature as not to be overlooked, his reasonings are, for the most part, perfectly just and conclusive, and his decisions unexceptionably sound; but where the elements of the calculation were more numerous and widely scattered, it appears to us that he has often been precipitate, and that he has either been misled by a partial apprehension of the conditions of the problem, or has discovered only a portion of the truth which lay before him. In all physical inquiries, -in almost all questions of particular and immediate policy, and in much of what relates to the practical wisdom and happiness of private life, his views will be found to be admirable, and the reasoning by which they are supported most masterly and convincing. But upon subjects of general politics, of abstract morality, and political economy, his notions appear to be more unsatisfactory and incomplete. He seems to have wanted

leisure, and perhaps inclination also, to spread out before him the whole vast premises of those extensive sciences, and scarcely to have had patience to hunt for his conclusions through so wide and intricate a region as that upon which they invited him to enter. He has been satisfied, therefore, on many occasions with reasoning from a very limited view of the facts, and often from a particular instance, and he has done all that sagacity and sound sense could do with such materials; but it cannot excite wonder if he has sometimes overlooked an essential part of the argument, and often advanced a particular truth into the place of a general principle. He seldom reasoned upon those subjects at all, we believe, without having some practical application of them immediately in view; and as he began the investigation rather to determine a particular case than to establish a general maxim, so he probably desisted as soon as he had relieved himself of the present difficulty.

"There are not many among the thoroughbred scholars and philosophers of Europe who can lay claim to distinction in more than one or two departments of science or literature. The uneducated tradesman of America has left writings that call for our respectful attention in natural philosophy, in politics, in political economy, and in general literature and morality.

"Of his labours in the department of Physics, we do not propose to say much. They were almost all suggested by views of utility in the beginning, and were, without exception, applied, we believe, to promote such views in the end. His letters upon Electricity have been more extensively circulated than any of his other writings of this kind, and are entitled to more praise and popularity than they seem ever to have met with in this country. Nothing can be more admirable than the luminous and graphical precision with which the experiments are narrated, the ingenuity with which they are projected, and the sagacity with which the conclusion is inferred, limited, and confirmed.

"The most remarkable thing, however, in these, and indeed in the whole of his physical speculations, is the unparalleled simplicity and facility with which the reader is conducted from one stage of the inquiry to another. The author never appears for a moment to labour or to be at a loss. The most ingenious and profound explanations are suggested, as if they were the most natural and obvious way of accounting for the phenomena; and the author seems to value himself so little on his most important discoveries that it is necessary to compare him with others before we can form a just notion of his merits. As he seems to be conscious of no exertion, he feels no partiality for any part of his speculations, and never seeks to raise the reader's idea of their importance by any arts of declamation or eloquence. Indeed, the habitual precision of his conceptions, and his invariable practice of referring to specific facts and observations, secured him, in a great measure, both from those extravagant conjectures in which so many naturalists have indulged, and from the zeal and enthusiasm, which seems so naturally to be engendered in their defence. He was by no means averse to give scope to his imagination in suggesting a variety of explanations of obscure and unmanageable phenomena; but he never allowed himself to confound these vague and conjectural theories with the solid results of experience and observation. In his Meteorological papers, and in his Observations upon Heat and Light, there is a great deal of such bold and original suggestions; but he evidently sets but little value upon them, and has no sooner disburdened his mind of the impressions from which they proceeded than he seems to dismiss them entirely from his consideration, and turns to the legitimate philosophy of experiment with unabated diligence and humility. As an instance of this disposition, we may quote part of a letter to the Abbé Soulaive, upon a new Theory of the Earth, which he proposes and dismisses, without concern or anxiety, in the course of a few sentences; though, if the idea had fallen upon the brain of a European philosopher, it might have germinated into a volume of eloquence, hike Buffon's, or an infinite array of paragraphs and observations, like those of Parkinson and Dr Hutton."