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CELEBRATED FRIENDSHIPS.

and your successful following of it, will depend, in a greater degree than you imagine, on the impulse you receive from your friends an impulse sufficiently powerful at times to counteract the wise lessons and sacred example of the home. Choose worthy friends, and your life will be worthy. Let your exemplars be such that to follow them will be an honour. Or, as George Herbert says, "Keep good company, and you shall be of the number." And George Herbert's mother spoke similar words of wisdom: "As our bodies take in nourishment suitable to the meat on which we feed, so do our souls as insensibly take in virtue or vice by the example or conversation of good or bad company." Charles James Fox was unfortunate in his home training, but its defects were largely remedied through his friendship with Edmund Burke. He declared publicly that if he were to put all the political information which he had learned from books, all which he had gained from science, and all which any knowledge of the world and its affairs had taught him, into one scale, and the improvement which he had derived from Burke's instruction and conversation were placed in the other, he should be at a loss to decide to which to give the preference. What would Cicero have been without Atticus, or Xenophon without Socrates? Or, to borrow an illustration from English history, was not Cromwell the better for his friendship with Hampden? Did not Canning acknowledge the value of his intimacy with William Pitt?

A remarkable instance of the extent to which a man's life may be shaped and moulded by the teaching or conduct of a friend is furnished by the biography of Paley, the moralist and theologian. When a student at Christ's College, Cambridge, he was equally well known for his clumsiness and his cleverness, and his fellow-students made him at once their favourite and their butt. Possessed of a strong, clear intellect, he wasted his time on unprofitable pleasures and pursuits, so that at the end of two years his progress was very trivial. One morning a friend came to his bedside before the idler had risen, and addressed him in grave and earnest tones: "Paley," he said, "I have not been able to sleep for thinking about you. I have been thinking what a fool you are! I have the means of dissipation, and can afford to be idle; you are poor, and cannot afford it. I could do nothing, probably, even were I to try; you are capable of doing anything. I have

THE INSPIRATION OF EXAMPLE.

49 lain awake all night thinking about your folly, and I have now come solemnly to warn you. Indeed, if you persist in your indolence, and go on in this way, I must renounce your society altogether." This emphatic warning had such an effect upon Paley that he abandoned his idle courses, resolved upon a new plan of life, and carried it out with diligence and energy. His after career of success, well deserved, was due to a friend's candour.

The inspiration of example is felt by all generous natures, and one of the greatest services rendered to humanity by our poets and artists, patriots and heroes, is the suggestion they give by their lives to all that is best and loftiest in young minds. A Dante passes on "Apollo's wand" to a Milton; a Racine kindles his genius by a live coal borrowed from the altar of a Corneille. What would Titian have been without Ariosto? The young Correggio gains hope and strength from the study of the work of a famous master, and exultantly exclaims, "I too am a painter!" Pope sits at the feet of Dryden, and feels that the breath of poetry has blown upon him. Raffaelle reverently receives from Michael Angelo the living torch of art. Haydon touches Sir Joshua Reynolds, and seems to draw a virtue from the contact. Allan Cunningham is encouraged to perse vere by seeing Sir Walter Scott as he passes along the streets of Edinburgh. Haydn obtained admission as a valet into the household of the musician Porpora, and learned to write "The Creation." The friendship of Faraday proved "energy and inspiration" to Professor Tyndall. Who does not remember how the spirit of Nelson communicated itself to his captains? "Example," writes Dr. Smiles, "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 a 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."

It has been remarked by Emerson, the American essayist, that "the pictures which fill the imagination in reading the actions of Pericles, Xenophon, Columbus, Bayard, Sidney,

D

50

VALUE OF A GREAT AND GOOD life.

Hampden, teach us how needlessly mean our life is, that we, by the depth of our living, should deck it with more than regal or national splendour, and act upon principles that should interest man and nature in the length of our days." In other words, if our aims in life are to be high, we must choose high examples, and carefully select our friends, in order to ensure that they shall subject us to no degrading or unhealthy influences. The example of a good and great man is like the lighthouse; it not only warns, but directs; not only indicates the rock, but guides into port. No sermon can be so eloquent as an heroic life. It teaches us how poor and commonplace would be our own if it were never elevated by worthy deeds, never illuminated by generous thoughts. Ö reader! take care that your friends be able to raise you up, not pull you down. Take care that they are able to strengthen you in good purposes, and encourage you to lofty deeds. "It is astonishing," says the late Dr. Mozley, "how much good goodness makes. Nothing that is good is alone, nor anything bad; it makes others good or others bad, and these others, and so on; like a stone thrown into a pond, which makes circles that make wider ones, and these others, till the last reaches the shore." A bad friend will make you yourself no helpful friend to others. The electric spark of character shoots all along the chain from link to link.

Tennyson, in his "In Memoriam," has sketched with equal truth and beauty the extent of the power for good, of the elevating and brightening inspiration, of a worthy friend. Apostrophising the lamented Arthur Henry Hallam, he says:

The causes which operate upon us in determining our aims in life are of all kinds. Sometimes it is accident that touches the hidden spring, and throws wide the gate through which the adventurer passes into the enchanted land of fortune. A trivial incident may evoke the natural instinct, and set our feet in the path which we are best adapted to pursue. Thucydides in his boyhood hears Herodotus read his history, and is at once awakened to a consciousness of his powers, and of their appropriate field of labour. Fanny Burney comes upon one of the novels of the day, and is incited to the composition of her "Evelina." Hall, the Arctic voyager, was inspired by his perusal of the narratives of the earlier explorers. But most of us can wait for no such inspiration, nor do we need any such inspiration. Our vocations in life are humbler and less exciting. Well if our calling be honest, and if in that calling we do our best; if it be adapted to the measure of our powers, and not in opposition to our natural bias, we shall have no occasion to repine. To do that which before us lies in our own sphere of work, and to do it with all our might and energy, that is our great and solemn duty. Whatever our aims in life, let them be honest in themselves and honestly pursued.

It is not difficult to discover the "path in life" which we can follow with the greatest success. The "natural instinct" reveals itself in many ways, and the tastes of the boy foreshadow the occupations of the man. Ferguson's clock carved out of wood and supplied with the rudest mechanism; the boy Davy's laboratory in his garret at Penzance; Faraday's tiny electric machine, made with a common bottle; Claude Lorraine's pictures in flour and charcoal on the walls of the baker's shops; Canova's modelling of small images in clay; Chantrey's carving of his schoolmaster's head in a bit of pine wood, all were indications, clear and strong, of the future

52

A PRECEPT AND AN EXAMPle.

man. Not only was the sympathy present, but the talent; not only the inclination, but the will. And so when Charlotte Brönte in her childhood invented romances and constructed plots, the signs of the future novelist's great genius might easily have been detected by an observant eye. All honour to the Scotch dominie whose sagacity recognised the fact that David Wilkie "was much fonder of drawing than of reading, and could paint much better than he could write ! " Is it not a good thing for the world that it possesses "The Rent Day" and "The Village Fiddlers"? Yet these it might never have had had a wrong direction been given in his early years to Wilkie's talents. It is often, perhaps generally, the fault of others that the round man is thrust into the square hole, and in this uncongenial position compelled to fret through the weary years. What a burden for the individual, what a misfortune for society, when lives are thus pitifully wasted! We have been reminded by an American essayist that if Mendelssohn's father had discouraged instead of wisely fostering that rare musical genius which, when its possessor was only eight years old, detected in a concerto of Bach's six of those "dread offences against the grammar of music," consecutive fifths, we should never have had that perfect tone-picture of Shakespeare's exquisite fancy, the "Midsummer Night's Dream!" No; nor the grand music of the "Elijah,” nor the noble and various strains of the "Lieder ohne Worte," nor the delicate interpretation of the Greek dramatist's "Antigone." How much poorer would the world have been had Mendelssohn's intellectual powers been misdirected into a wrong channel!

It is related of the American President, John Adams, that when he was a boy, his father, a shoemaker, essayed to teach him the craft honoured of St. Crispin. One day some "uppers" were placed in his hands, with instructions to cut them out by a pattern, with a triangular hole in it (the hole having been utilised for suspending the pattern to a nail) which was given to him. The boy worked assiduously at the unwelcome task; but behold, when he had completed it, it was found that he had imitated the pattern with irritating exactness, hole and all. His father sagely concluded that the boy would never be other than a bad shoemaker; history shows, however, that he made a prudent and successful statesman. It is true that parents