116 Joseph Hume - in Parliament.

CHAP. IV.

Company's service. None worked harder, or lived more temperately, than he did; and, securing the confidence of his superiors, who found him a capable man in the performance of his duty, they gradually promoted him to higher offices. In 1803 he was with the division of the army under General Powell, in the Mahratta war; and the interpreter having died, Hume, who had meanwhile studied and mastered the native languages, was appointed in his stead. He was next made chief of the medical staff. But as if this were not enough to occupy his full working power, he undertook in addition the offices of paymaster and postmaster, and filled them satisfactorily. He also contracted to supply the commissariat, which he did with advantage to the army and profit to himself. After about ten years' unremitting labour, he returned to England with a competency; and one of his first acts was to make provision for the poorer members of his family.

But Joseph Hume was not a man to enjoy the fruits of his industry in idleness. Work and occupation had become necessary for his comfort and happiness. To make himself fully acquainted with the actual state of his own country, and the condition of the people, he visited every town in the kingdom which then enjoyed any degree of manufacturing celebrity. He afterwards travelled abroad for the purpose of obtaining a knowledge of foreign states. Returned to England, he entered Parliament in 1812, and continued a member of that assembly, with a short interruption, for a period of about thirty-four years. His first recorded speech was on the subject of public education, and throughout his long and honourable career he took an active and earnest interest in that and all other questions calculated to elevate and improve the condition of the people-criminal reform, savings-banks, free trade, economy and retrenchment, extended representation, and such like measures, all of which he indefatigably promoted. Whatever subject he undertook,

CHAP. IV. Joseph Hume- his perseverance. 117

He

he worked at with all his might. He was not a good
speaker, but what he said was believed to proceed from the
lips of an honest, single-minded, accurate man. If ridicule,
as Shaftesbury says, be the test of truth, Joseph Hume stood
the test well. No man was more laughed at, but there he
stood perpetually, and literally, "at his post." He was
usually beaten on a division, but the influence which he
exercised was nevertheless felt, and many important financial
improvements were effected by him even with the vote
directly against him. The amount of hard work which he
contrived to get through was something extraordinary.
rose at six, wrote letters and arranged his papers for parlia-
ment; then, after breakfast, he received persons on business,
sometimes as many as twenty in a morning. The House
rarely assembled without him, and though the debate might
be prolonged to two or three o'clock in the morning, his
name was seldom found absent from the division. In short,
to perform the work which he did, extending over so long a
period, in the face of so many Administrations, week after
week, year after year,-to be outvoted, beaten, laughed at,
standing on many occasions almost alone,—to persevere in
the face of every discouragement, preserving his temper
unruffled, never relaxing in his energy or his hope, and
living to see the greater number of his measures adopted
with acclamation, must be regarded as one of the most
remarkable illustrations of the power of human perseverance
that biography can exhibit.

VERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA.

CHAPTER V.

HELPS AND OPPORTUNITIES

SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS.

"Neither the naked hand, nor the understanding, left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps, of which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand."-Bacon.

"Opportunity has hair in front, behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock you may hold her, but, if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again." -From the Latin.

CCIDENT does very little towards the production of any great result in life. Though sometimes what is called "a happy hit" may

be made by a bold venture, the common highway of steady industry and application is the only safe road to travel. It is said of the landscape painter Wilson, that when he had nearly finished a picture in a tame, correct manner, he would step back from it, his pencil fixed at the end of a long stick, and after gazing earnestly on the work, he would suddenly walk up and by a few bold touches give a brilliant finish to the painting. But it will not do for every one who would produce an effect, to throw his brush at the canvas in the hope of producing a picture. The capability of putting in these last vital touches is acquired only by the labour of a life; and the probability is, that the artist who has not carefully trained himself beforehand, in attempting to produce a brilliant effect at a dash, will only produce a blotch.

Sedulous attention and painstaking industry always mark the true worker. The greatest men are not those who

CHAP. V.

66

Discoveries rot accidental.

119

despise the day of small things," but those who improve them the most carefully. Michael Angelo was one day explaining to a visitor at his studio, what he had been doing at a statue since his previous visit. "I have retouched this part-polished that-softened this featurebrought out that muscle-given some expression to this lip, and more energy to that limb." "But these are trifles," remarked the visitor. "It may be so," replied the sculptor, "but recollect that trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle." So it was said of Nicholas Poussin, the painter, that the rule of his conduct was, that "whatever was worth doing at all was worth doing well;" and when asked, late in life, by his friend Vigneul de Marville, by what means he had gained so high a reputation among the painters of Italy, Poussin emphatically answered, "Because I have neglected nothing."

Although there are discoveries which are said to have been made by accident, if carefully inquired into, it will be found that there has really been very little that was accidental about them. For the most part, these so-called accidents have only been opportunities, carefully improved by genius. The fall of the apple at Newton's feet has often been quoted in proof of the accidental character of some discoveries. But Newton's whole mind had already been devoted for years to the laborious and patient investigation of the subject of gravitation; and the circumstance of the apple falling before his eyes was suddenly apprehended only as genius could apprehend it, and served to flash upon him the brilliant discovery then opening to his sight. In like manner, the brilliantly-coloured soap-bubbles blown from a common tobacco pipe-though "trifles light as air' in most eyes-suggested to Dr. Young his beautiful theory of "interferences," and led to his discovery relating to the diffraction of light. Although great men are popularly supposed only to deal with great things, men such as Newton

I 20

Intelligent observation-Galileo. CHAP. V.

and Young were ready to detect the significance of the most familiar and simple facts; their greatness consisting mainly in their wise interpretation of them.

66

"He

The difference between men consists, in a great measure, in the intelligence of their observation. The Russian proverb says of the non-observant man, goes through the forest and sees no firewood." "The wise man's eyes are in his head," says Solomon, "but the fool walketh in darkness." “Sir," said Johnson, on one occasion, to a fine gentleman just returned from Italy, some men will learn more in the Hampstead stage than others in the tour of Europe." It is the mind that sees as well as the eye. Where unthinking gazers observe nothing, men of intelligent vision penetrate into the very fibre of the phenomena presented to them, attentively noting differences, making comparisons, and recognizing their underlying idea. Many before Galileo had seen a suspended weight swing before their eyes with a measured beat; but he was the first to detect the value of the fact. One of the vergers in the cathedral at Pisa, after replenishing with oil a lamp which hung from the roof, left it swinging to and fro; and Galileo, then a youth of only eighteen, noting it attentively, conceived the idea of applying it to the measurement of time. Fifty years of study and labour, however, elapsed, before he completed the invention of his Pendulum,—the importance of which, in the measurement of time and in astronomical calculations, can scarcely be overrated. In like manner, Galileo, having casually heard that one Lippershey, a Dutch spectacle-maker, had presented to Count Maurice of Nassau an instrument by means of which distant objects appeared nearer to the beholder, addressed himself to the cause of such a phenomenon, which led to the invention of the telescope, and proved the beginning of the modern science of astronomy. Discoveries such as these could never have been made by a negligent observer, or by a mere passive listener.