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generosity. Finally, at his death, in 1802, he actually left behind him no less a sum than two thousand pounds.

There is in all this, as Mr. Wordsworth remarks, something so extraordinary as to make some explanatory details necessary. "And to begin," he says, "with his industry; eight hours in each day, during five days in the week, and half of Saturday, except when the labours of husbandry were urgent, he was occupied in teaching. His seat was within the rails of the altar; the communion-table was his desk; and, like Shenstone's schoolmistress, the master employed himself at the spinning-wheel, while the children were repeating their lessons by his side. Every evening, after school-hours, if not more profitably engaged, he continued the same kind of labour, exchanging, for the benefit of exercise, the small wheel, at which he had sat, for the large one on which wool is spun, the spinner stepping to and fro. Thus was the wheel constantly in readiness to prevent the waste of a moment's time. Nor was his industry with the pen, when occasion called for it, less eager. Entrusted with extensive management of public and private affairs, he acted in his rustic neighbourhood as scrivener, writing out petitions, deeds of conveyance, wills, covenants, &c., with pecuniary gain to himself, and to the great benefit of his employers. These labours, at all times considerable, at one period of the year, viz., between Christmas and Candlemas, when money transactions are settled in this part of the country, were often so intense, that he passed great part of the night, and sometimes whole nights, at his desk. His garden, also, was tilled by his own hand; he had a right of pasturage upon the mountains for a few sheep and a couple of cows, which required his attendance; with this pastoral occupation he joined the labours of husbandry upon a small scale, renting two or three acres in addition to his own less than one acre of glebe; and the humblest drudgery which the cultivation of these fields required was performed by himself. He also assisted his neighbours in haymaking and shearing their flocks, and in the performance of this latter service he was eminently dexterous. They in their turn, complimented him with the present of a haycock, or a fleece; less as a recompense for this particular service than as a general acknowledgment. The Sabbath was in a strict sense kept holy; the Sunday evenings being devoted to reading the Scripture and family prayer. The principal festivals appointed by the Church were also duly observed; but through every other day in the week, through every week in the year, he was incessantly occupied in works of hand or mind; not allowing a moment for recreation, except upon a Saturday afternoon, when he indulged himself with a newspaper, or sometimes with a magazine. The frugality and temperance established in his house were as admirable as the industry. Nothing to which the name of luxury could be given was there known; in the latter part of his life, indeed, when tea had been brought into almost general

use, it was provided for visitors, and for such of his own family as returned occasionally to his roof, and had been accustomed to this refreshment elsewhere; but neither he nor his wife ever partook of it. The raiment worn by his family was comely and decent, but as simple as their diet; the homespun materials were made up into apparel by their own hands. At the time of the decease of this thrifty pair, their cottage contained a large store of webs of woollen and linen cloth, woven from thread of their own spinning. And it is remarkable that the pew in the chapel in which the family used to sit remained a few years ago neatly lined with woollen cloth, spun by the pastor's own hand. It is the only pew in the chapel so distinguished; and I know of no other instance of his conformity to the delicate accommodations of modern times. The fuel of the house, like that of their neighbours, consisted of peat, procured from the mosses by their own labour. The lights by which, in the winter evenings, their work was performed were of their own manufacture, such as still continue to be used in these cottages; they are made of the pith of rushes dipped in fat. White candles, as tallow candles are here called, were reserved to honour the Christmas festivals, and were perhaps produced upon no other occasions. Once a month, during the proper season, a sheep was drawn from their small mountain flock, and killed for the use of the family; and a cow, towards the close of the year, was salted and dried for winter provision; the hide was tanned to furnish them with shoes. By these various resources this venerable clergyman reared a numerous family; not only preserving them, as he affectingly says, "from wanting the necessaries of life," but affording them an "unstinted education, and the means of raising themselves in society."

All this, if not a lesson in the pursuit of knowledge, is at least a striking example of what assiduity and perseverance will do in any pursuit, as well as highly instructive with regard to one of the most important subjects that can engage the attention of literary or scientific students, the art, namely, of husbanding time and employing it to the best advantage. But with all his industry of another description, Mr. Walker did not find it impossible to nourish and exercise also his mental powers. "It might have been concluded," his biographer proceeds, "that no one could thus, as it were, have converted his body into a machine of industry for the humblest uses, and kept his thoughts so frequently bent upon secular concerns, without grievous injury to the more precious parts of his nature. How could the powers of intellect thrive, or its graces be displayed, in the midst of circumstances apparently so unfavourable, and when to the direct cultivation of the mind so small a portion of time was allotted? But, in this extraordinary man, things in their nature adverse were reconciled; his conversation was remarkable, not only for being chaste and pure, but for the degree in

which it was fervent and eloquent; his written style was correct, simple, and animated. Nor did his affections suffer more than his intellect; he was tenderly alive to all the duties of his pastoral office; the poor and needy he never 'sent empty away;' the stranger was fed and refreshed in passing that unfrequented vale; the sick were visited; and the feelings of humanity found further exercise among the distresses and embarrassments in the worldly estate of his neighbours, with which his talents for business made him acquainted; and the disinterestedness, impartiality, and uprightness which he maintained in the management of all affairs confided to him were virtues seldom separated in his own conscience from religious obligations. Nor could such conduct fail to remind those who witnessed it of a spirit nobler than law or custom; they felt convictions which, but for such intercourse, could not have been afforded, that, as in the practice of their pastor there was no guile, so in his faith there was nothing hollow; and we are warranted in believing that, upon these occasions, selfishness, obstinacy, and discord, would often give way before the breathings of his goodwill and saintly integrity. It may be presumed, also, while his humble congregation were listening to the moral precepts which he delivered from the pulpit, and to the Christian exhortations, that they should love their neighbour as themselves, and do as they would be done unto, that peculiar efficacy was given to the preacher's labours by recollections in the minds of his congregation, that they were called upon to do no more than his own actions were daily setting before their eyes."

What may be deemed out of character, we may merely add, in some of the occupations in which this excellent clergyman was wont to employ himself, ought to be judged of with a reference both to the times in which he was born and grew up, and to the simple and sequestered population among whom it was his lot to pass his life. "Had he lived," says

Mr. Wordsworth justly, “at a later period, the principle of duty would have produced application as unremitting: the same energy of character would have been displayed, though in many instances with widely different effects."

PURSUIT

CHAPTER XL.

OF KNOWLEDGE BY TRAVELLERS:- LITHGOW; WALKING STEWART; ATHENIAN STUART; LEDYARD; BELZONI. CONCLUSION.

We have already adverted to the practice which prevailed among the earlier Greek philosophers of seeking knowledge by travelling into foreign parts, and have mentioned Solon, Pythagoras, Democritus, and others, as

having resorted to this method of storing their minds with information and enlarging their capacities of thought. Homer himself was traditionally reported to have acquired his various knowledge of mankind and of nature, by having actually perambulated the different lands of which he sung. Plato did not open his Academy till he had visited both Italy and Egypt, and come back to his native Athens fraught with all the learning both of the East and the West. 'Herodotus, the Father of History, spent the greater part of his life in travelling over Egypt, Libya, Assyria, Scythia, Thrace, Macedonia, and the different states and isles of Greece, by way of preparation for his great work, which is filled with descriptions of what its author had seen with his own eyes in these journeyings, and with accounts of transactions and events, the circumstances of which he had collected in the places where they happened. In those days foreign travel offered to a liberal curiosity almost its only opportunity of learning much, either of other countries, or even of some of the most interesting and important branches of scientific knowledge. Now all learning is recorded in books, and books are in the hands of everybody. Whatever new light breaks forth in one country spreads itself in this way over every other, almost as instantaneously as the light of the risen sun over the hemisphere. Books even bring other countries themselves, as it were, home to us, and enable us to make ourselves to a certain extent familiar with them and their inhabitants without crossing our thresholds. But in the days of Plato and Herodotus, this fireside travelling, as it has been quaintly called, was, like many of our other modern luxuries, comparatively unknown. The books that existed were few, and to the generality of people almost as if they did not exist at all. Nor had more than a very small portion even of the philosophic knowledge of which mankind were already in possession been as yet collected into these convenient depositories. It mostly floated still upon the breath of men's lips, and was to be sought for in distant countries where the living sages dwelt. Thither, therefore, the student repaired as to his university. Nor was the necessity which was thus imposed upon him, of becoming a traveller at the same time that he became a student, without some peculiar advantages, unfavourable as such a condition of things was upon the whole to the rapid and general diffusion of knowledge. It might be a question whether the fabric of philosophy, which arose in Greece between the age of Pythagoras and that of Plato, may not have been indebted for something of its imposing mould and lineaments of finer beauty, to the more extended and varied views of the world and of mankind, which were acquired by its founders and constructors in their extensive wanderings. The abundant supply we now have of the reflected light of books, and its commodiousness for ordinary purposes, have well nigh turned away the eyes of ordinary students from the use and the desire of any other, and abolished altogether from the

customary methods of education, both that direct communication of mind with mind, and that intercourse with things themselves instead of the mere words by which they are dimly shadowed forth, whereby the great thinkers of earliest antiquity were chiefly nurtured. May not the effect be somewhat analogous to what would be produced on the bodily organ of vision by withdrawing it altogether from the natural light of day, and confining it to artificial light?

Books, immense as their value really is, are overrated when it is supposed that they may be made to teach us everything. Many of the items which constitute the mass of human knowledge have not yet found their way into books, but remain still loose and ungathered among the habits and daily transactions of society, or of some particular portion of it, from intercourse with which they are much more easily and perfectly learned than they could be from books, were they actually to be there recorded. But much of what meets us in our direct intercourse with the world, and supplies us with the richest sources of reflection and speculation, does not admit of being transferred to books at all. Indeed what should any one of us know of that country, or portion of society, with which we happen to be most familiar, if all our knowledge of it consisted merely either of what has been, or of what could be, set down about it in books? What mere description, even the most minute and faithful, ever placed before any man an exact representation even of a scene in the world of inanimate nature? The copy, it is true, simply by virtue of its being a copy, may have charms which the reality wants ; but that is not the question. The one is something entirely different from the other, and produces a different impression upon the mind. Much more must this be the case when the subject of the description is something that, from the more various, complicated, and shifting nature of its relations and lineaments, and from much of its character not showing itself to the eye at all, still less admits of being thrown into the shape of a picture. The moral condition, indeed, of a country and its inhabitants is constituted by so multifarious a concourse of circumstances, that their number and diversity alone would preclude them from being adequately represented in their working and effect by any description. To be felt and understood in their real power and combined agency, they must be seen and experienced. A general judgment with regard to the matter may undoubtedly be formed from the reports of others; and from such reports also, filled up and coloured by the mind of the reader or hearer, a sufficiently vivid picture of something having a certain resemblance to the original may be drawn; but the real features of that original are nevertheless sure to be in a thousand respects misconceived. Hence with regard to certain subjects, and these neither the least interesting nor the least important to be known, travelling becomes a means of acquiring knowledge, for which in fact there is no substitute.

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