Page images
PDF
EPUB

you be any the worse? Will you not have the satisfaction of feeling that you have done your best? that you have not been idle? that the talent committed to your trust, be it great or small, has been faithfully employed, so that at the "Master's coming," it may be rendered up with usury? We have said, "it has been done again and again." I hold in my hand a list of some of the noblest families in the land; and I ask, with respect to them, what is their origin? The same as yours and mine. Few of them can trace back their descent to the time of William of Normandy; fewer still to that of our Saxon forefathers; and not one to the original stock that first colonised our shores. Their origin is nothing; their rise but of yesterday: and you may write your names in the peerage by the same ministers as they wrote theirs a faithful, conscientious, energetic discharge of duty. "Seest thou," says Solomon, "a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.' (PROVERBS xxii. 29.) Let me give you a few illustrations of this great truth. The earldom of Cornwallis was founded by a merchant of London; that of Essex by a draper; that of Craven by a tailor. The present Earl of Warwick springs from a woolstapler; and the proud Dukes of Northumberland from an apothecary. The founders of the noble houses of Dartmouth, Radnor, Ducie, Pomfret, Dormer, Coventry, Romney, Dudley, and many others, were nothing more than successful business men; whilst Nelson, Wellington, Hardinge, Clive, Havelock (names never to be forgotten by Englishmen !) nobly earned their honours upon the ocean or the battle-field, and so transinitted to their descendants a noble name.

[ocr errors]

To go somewhat more into detail—there are few places that present more numerous, more interesting, or more signal instances of successful men, than Lancashire itself. I would style them the lancashire Worthies! The names of some of them are "household words." First, perhaps in the list, come the Peels of South Lancashire. There are few nobler names! There are few to whom (humanly speaking) Lancashire owes more. Halfway between Blackburn and Accrington, on the left hand side of the road coming from the latter town, a small building still marks the site of Peel Fold, the ancestral home of the Peels, and the spot where the father of the

late Sir Robert Peel was born. In his time, the cotton trade was in its infancy. Passing through the wild though pleasant valleys of Lancashire, no tall chimneys met the gaze, telling of busy looms and active fingers, and a teeming and rapidly increasing population. Cotton, instead of being spun into thread in these great factories, which to strangers are one of the most striking features of Lancashire scenery, furnished employment to women at their own cottages, and to small farmers who filled up with spinning the leisure hours of themselves and their families. It was so with the Peels. To the first Sir Robert we owe the invention of the first machine for the carding of wool; but so extremely unpopular was the product of his inventive genius, that one night an infuriated mob from Blackburn broke into his premises and destroyed the hateful instrument, whilst eventually the inventor was driven out of the country. It was at Peel Fold that his son, the first of the Peels really known to fame, was born. Young Peel was brought up in the true Lancashire fashion, having to "addle his meat before he ate it." Part of his daily task was to carry the milk from his father's farm to the customers at Blackburn. We cannot stay to present you with the upward steps his career. We can only give you results. Who could have thought that by the mere force of his own character and industry (crowned by the Divine blessing), the Black

years

of

burn milk-boy would in a few have become a peer of the realm, marry several of his children into the noblest families of the land, and leave behind him at his death, besides other property, upwards of £900,000 ?

The next that I shall mention was really one of yourselves-Sir Richard Arkwright, bart., born at Preston. Sir Richard actually commenced the battle of life in a cellar, at Bolton, setting up for himself as a barber. Even in this humble occupation, to such an extent did he push business, humorously inviting the public to "come to the subterraneous barber, and have a clean shave for a half-penny," that the other barbers in the town were compelled to lower their prices. Sometime after, he became a travelling dealer in hair, then in great request for the making of wigs. Next we find him doing a flourishing trade in a popular hair-dye, and he appears to have carried it on with all his might: no idleness-no sloth-no wasting of time with Arkwright. If he were not engaged in mowing the stubble of his cus

tomers' chins, or in manufacturing his dye, or in roaming the country in search of hair, he was bringing out his inventive genius by fruitless attempts to discover the undiscoverable secret of perpetual motion. Unsuccessful in this, he was, however, successful in the discovery of something else probably of much greater use the "water frame," which subsequently led to the erection of the first cotton mill. In the course of his travels, Arkwright met with a man named Highs, a watchmaker. Highs had assisted a third party in some unsuccessful attempts to construct a machine to do away with spinning by hand. To Arkwright he appears to have rehearsed the tale of their disappointed hopes. The tale itself and the hints it supplied, were quite enough for his fertile mind. Laying aside his trade, in the midst of poverty, with all the enthusiasm of genius, Arkwright set manfully and intelligently to work. Success crowned his labours; the machine was made, and was coon set up and exhibited in a room at Preston. The Preston operatives, however, were not any more advanced than those of Blackburn. Warned by the disapprobation of the populace, Arkwright retreated with his invention to Nottingham, where, with the assistance of the old and well-known firm of Need and Strutt, the first cotton mill was soon after erected. The foundation of Arkwright's fortune was now laid. 18 years after his flight from Preston he was chosen high-sheriff of Derbyshire, and shortly after in his official capacity, presenting an address to the king, received the honour of knighthood.-In speaking of the worthies of the county, we must not omit to mention the name of another Bolton man, Samuel Crompton, not indeed as the builder of a fortune-in this respect he was unsuccessful, dying poor-but as a fine illustration of patient, persevering toil rewarded with success. The son of a small farmer near the town, occupying the leisure time of himself and his family in spinning, and after five long years of hope deferred, the well-known mule jenny emerged from his hands, the creation of his inventive genius, by means of which a single grain of cotton may be spun into a thread upwards of 960 yards in length. The case of Samuel Crompton supplies also proof, to which we shall have to call your attention presently, that something more than genius, commonly so-called, is required in order to achieve permanent success, or to make one's way in life. I cannot

omit to mention here the gratification it gives me to find that the men of Bolton have shown their appreciation of Crompton by erecting a monument to his memory.

We pass on now to notice a few other instances of selfelevated men—not, however, so closely connected with ourselves. In the foremost rank of these, I think, we must place James Brindley, the originator of many of the canals that serve as highways for so large a portion of the traffic of the country, and the founder of the canal system. The Bridgewater Canal, constructed in spite of obstacles apparently insurmountable, is a fine illustration both of his indomitable perseverance and of his skill. Born near Macclesfield, cursed with a dissipated father, brought up as a farm labourer, unable at the age of 17 either to read or write, the career of the Macclesfield ploughboy furnishes inestimable evidence of what, with God's blessing, an earnest, energetic, determined man may do. Brindley's splendid success says to every young man, contending with difficulties "Never despair; labour, crowned with the Divine blessing, shall conquer all."

Not less worthy of note is the name of George Stephenson. What Brindley was to the canal system, that George Stephenson was to the almost countless miles of railway intersecting in every direction our own and other lands. Commencing life as an illiterate coal-pit engine-boy at a wage of 2d. per day; rising by the force of his unaided genius, industry, and perseverance, to the proud position of the father of the railway system, without originally the slightest conception of any such result; his history teaches us all the important lesson, that the faithful discharge of present duty, and a conscientious use of present means, is the ladder that Providence places at our feet, and by which we may rise to distinction.

A man of a different class of mind to those already mentioned, but (for his industry, perseverence, his diligent discharge of duty and its ultimate reward) not unworthy to be classed with the Peels, and the Arkwrights, and the Cromptons, and the Brindleys, and the Stephensons, as a linguist and a scholar, is the celebrated Rev. Dr. S. Lee, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew and Arabic in the time-honoured University of Cambridge; D.D. of the University of Halle; Prebendary of Bristol; Rector of Barley, Herts; and member of learned societies both at home and abroad

almost without number. Standing with all his honours thick about him, like a tree in the middle of summer, one is almost tempted to think him the favourite of fortune. What shall we say to the fact that at the age of 22 this same Samuel Lee was only a journeyman carpenter or joiner, and above all, out of work in consequence of the destruction of his tools by fire, and his inability to raise the cash to purchase more? All honour, I say, to such men as Samuel Lee, who, by patient toil and diligent use of the faculties and means with which their Maker has endowed them, have risen from obscurity and poverty to comparative affluence-have blessed society-carved for themselves a niche in the temple of fame-and, above all, have consecrated themselves and their powers to the service of their God!

As a poet, we might name the highly-gifted but unfortunate butcher-boy of Nottingham, Henry Kirke White, who, when Learning stood ready to strew her noblest trophies at his feet, dropped into an early grave-must we not say, the victim of his own rashness and untempered impetuosity? Well for him that in life's last hour he was enabled so beautifully to sing

"When marshalled on the mighty plain,

The glittering host bestud the sky,

One star alone of all the train

Can fix the sinner's wandering eye!

Hark! hark !-to God the chorus breaks

From every host, from every gem;

But one alone the Saviour speaks,

It is the Star of Bethlehem!"

As a painter, we might mention Benjamin West, whose first colours consisted of a little red and yellow ochre ; his first brush, of a number of hairs from the cat's tail-no doubt an unwilling contribution to the advancement of the fine arts; and his first picture a rude likeness of a sister's child as it lay fast asleep in the cradle. West reached the top of his profession, becoming finally painter to the king, and president of the Royal Academy.

As a sculptor, we could hardly pass over Francis Chantrey, the child of a poor man at Sheffield, and (like Peel) in his youth a milk-boy. Chantrey, in the end, by persevering and conscientious industry, became one of the first

« PreviousContinue »