44 HERBERT MINTON. CHAP. II. stage at which Wedgwood left it, carrying the manufacture on to new triumphs, and greatly extending this branch of industry. Mr. Minton was not so much a highly educated man, nor an economist, nor inventor, as characterized by the inexhaustible activity and ceaseless energy which he brought to bear upon the creation of a colossal business, employing some 1500 skilled artizans. He possessed a clear head, a strong body, rare powers of observation, and great endurance; he was, besides, possessed by that pride and love of his calling without which so much perseverance and devotion to it could scarcely have been looked for. Withal he was kindly and genial, commanding hosts of friends and co-operators; his rivals themselves regarding him with admiration, and looking up to him as the prince of his order. Like Wedgwood, he employed first-rate artists-painters in enamel, sculptors, designers of flowers and figures-and sparing neither pains nor expense in securing the best workmen, whether English or foreign. The talents of the men employed by him were carefully discriminated and duly recognised, and merit felt stimulated by the hope of promotion and reward. The result soon was that articles of taste, which had formerly been of altogether exceptional production, became objects of ordinary supply and demand; and articles of great artistic beauty, the designs of which were supplied by the best artists, were placed within reach of persons of moderate means. The quality of the articles manufactured at his works became so proverbial, that one day when Pickford's carrier rudely delivered a package from his cart at the hall-door of an exhibition of ceramic manufactures, and the officer in waiting expostulated with the man on his incautious handling of the package, his ready answer was:-"Oh, never fear, Sir; it's Minton's, it won't break." It is not a little remarkable that Mr. Minton, by his unaided energy and enterprise, and at his own risk, was enabled successfully to compete with the Sèvres manufac CHAP. II. HERBERT MINTON. 45 tures of France, which are produced by the co-operation of a large number of talented men, and the assistance of almost unlimited state funds. In many of the articles exhibited at Paris in 1851, Mr. Minton's even excelled those of similar character produced at the Imperial manufactory. In hard porcelain also, he outvied the best specimens of Meissen and Berlin ware; in Parian, he was only approached by Copeland; whilst in the manufacture of encaustic tiles he stood without a rival. In perfecting these several branches Mr. Minton had many difficulties to encounter and failures to surmount, but with true English energy and determination to succeed, he surmounted them all, and at length left even the best of the ancient tiles far behind. Like Wedgwood, he elevated the public taste, introduced beautiful objects of art into the homes of the people, and by founding new branches of industry, mainly by his energy and ability, he nobly earned the claim to be regarded as a great national benefactor. Men such as these are fairly entitled to rank among the heroes of England. Their patient self-reliance amidst trials and difficulties, their courage and perseverance in the pursuit of noble aims and purposes, are no less heroic of their kind than the bravery and devotion of the soldier and the sailor, whose duty and whose pride it is heroically to defend what these valiant leaders of industry have as heroically achieved. "Allez en avant, et la foi vous viendra!"-D'Alembert. THE greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means, and the exercise of ordinary qualities. The common life of every day, with its cares, necessities, and duties, affords ample opportunity for acquiring experience of the best kind; and its most beaten paths provide the true worker with ample scope for effort and room for self-improvement. The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful. Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is invariably on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators. Success treads on the heels of every right effort; and though it is possible to over-estimate success to the extent of almost deifying it, as is sometimes done, still, in any worthy pursuit, it is meritorious. Nor are the quali ties necessary to ensure success at all extraordinary. They may, for the most part, be summed up in these twocommon sense and perseverance. Genius may not be necessary, though even genius of the highest sort does not СНАР. ІІІ. GENIUS DEFINED. 47 despise the exercise of these common qualities. The very greatest men have been among the least believers in the power of genius, and as worldly wise and persevering as successful men of the commoner sort. Some have even defined genius to be only common sense intensified. A distinguished teacher and president of a college spoke of it as the power of making efforts. John Foster held it to be the power of lighting one's own fire. Buffon said of genius-It is patience. Newton's was unquestionably a mind of the very highest order, and yet, when asked by what means he had worked out his extraordinary discoveries, he modestly answered, "By always thinking unto them." At another time he thus expressed his method of study: "I keep the subject continually before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly by little and little into a full and clear light." It was in Newton's case, as it is in every other, only by diligent application and perseverance that his great reputation was achieved. Even his recreation consisted merely in a variety in his industry-leaving one subject only to take up another. To Dr. Bentley he said: "If I have done the public any service, it is due to nothing but industry and patient thought." So Kepler, another great philosopher, speaking of his studies and his progress, said: "As in Virgil, Fama mobilitate viget, vires acquirit eundo,' so it was with me, that the diligent thought on these things was the occasion of still further thinking; until at last I brooded with the whole energy of my mind upon the subject." Voltaire held that it is only a very slight line of separation that divides the man of genius from the man of ordinary mould; and, if this be so, that stolid Englishman might not have been so very far wrong after all, who, on Canova's death, inquired of his brother whether it was "his intention to carry on the business!" Beccaria was even of opinion that all men might be poets and orators, and Reynolds that they might be painters. Locke, Helve 48 BIDDER, THE ENGINEER. CHAP. III. tius, and Diderot believed that all men have an equal aptitude for genius; and that what some are able to effect under the influence of the fundamental laws which regulate the march of intellect, must also be within the reach of others who, in the same circumstances, apply themselves to like pursuits. But while admitting to the fullest extent the wonderful achievements of labour, and also recognising the fact that men of the most distinguished genius have invariably been found the most indefatigable workers, it must nevertheless be sufficiently obvious that, without the original endowment of heart and brain, no amount of labour, however well applied, would have made a Shakespeare, a Newton, a Beethoven, or a Michael Angelo. 66 We have, however, a recent reassertor of the power of perseverance in a distinguished living engineer, Mr. S. P. Bidder, so well known in his youth as the wonderful Calculating Boy. In a charmingly modest account which he lately gave of himself before the Institute of Civil Engineers, Mr. Bidder insisted that his wonderful power of mental calculation, a power exhibited by so few that we must account it as abnormal, can be acquired by any one who will devote time, attention, and perseverance to the subject. I have endeavoured," he said, "to examine my own mind, to compare it with that of others, and to discover if such be the case; but I can detect no particular turn of mind, beyond a predilection for figures, which many possess almost in an equal degree with myself. I do not mean to assert that all minds are alike constituted to succeed in mental computations; but I do say that, so far as I can judge, there may be as large a number of successful mental calculators as there are who attain eminence in any other branch of learning." Mr. Bidder urged that the proficiency at which he eventually arrived was mainly the result of assiduous application. His father was a working mason, and his elder brother, who pursued the same calling, first taught the little boy to count 100. He counted the numbers over and over in tens. The numerals became as it |