CHAPTER VI.

THE MEN OF IRON.

EXTRAORDINARY mental energy usually accompanies extraordinary bodily energy, and this is still more remarkable if accompanied by human collision and association. To conquer so stubborn a thing as iron is itself a poem an epic poem. To take that strong and most unlikely thing from its long home in the earth, in the deep mines and dark caverns, to kindle the roaring fire, and to compel its stubbornness thus to yield until the most dull becomes fine in texture, and bright and shining in its polish-until the most blunt and edgeless becomes sharp and capable : here is a conquest-and to follow this conquest through all the several chapters of its history, what civilizations seem to be connected with this metal,the simplest and the most complex things, the most vast, and the most insignificant. Had the world possessed neither coal nor iron, we can no more conceive its civilization possible, than we can conceive life without air. Iron enters into every comfort, luxury, and convenience of life, and the men who work in iron appear to have a portion of the soul of the iron. should expect them to be men to find their way

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through difficulties,-not lightly yielding to despair, -not disposed to believe in the impossible. The blacksmith, in every stage of civilization, has been regarded as a man of power; it seems to have been thought that he could do with men as he did with his forge, and shape them to his will. He certainly was an important character in the first ages of society, and since then, the workers in iron have exercised no inconsiderable share of power over the minds of men and the destinies of events.

The LEARNED BLACKSMITH has a world-wide fame ; there are few places where good ELIHU BURRITT is not known and talked of;-few places where his sparks have not shed some illustrations: he, beyond any man living almost, has earned the blessing of the peace-makers, for he has brought his immense scholar's life, his vast and wonderful attainments not to promote the love of ancient warlike glory, but to spread far and wide the beautiful blessings of peace. But how did he attain to this place of power? Through difficulties,-difficulties which look to us insurmountable and unapproachable. He comes from a lowly stock, his father was a shoemaker: his mother and father both appear before us in the memoir of Elihu as most christian people: the home of his childhood had ten children in it, his brothers and sisters; but beyond any other house in the neighbourhood, it was the place of shelter for the poor and the distressed, and as it stood near the church, it afforded a place of rest for the poor men and women in the coldest weather, between the intervals of service. Amongst the earliest recollections of Burritt's childhood is the arranging all the chairs and stools in the house in a semicircle around the fire, and the benevolent expression of countenance with which his father used to conduct to the best seat, in this social circle, an old

idiotic pauper, known by the name of " Aunt Sarah." Not that she stood in that relationship to the family, but if any one in the neighbourhood met with a misfortune, lost a limb, or became halt, or blind, or dumb, he became to this good family an uncle; or, if a female, an aunt.

Many a time, when returning weary from market, at ten miles distance, the good shoemaker would walk two or three miles out of his way to leave a few oysters, oranges, or some such acceptable present, to some sick person or poor sufferer, who stood in need of these things. The wife of this good man was worthy of her. In the emphatic words of Elihu, her youngest son, "she was the best friend her children had on this side of Jesus Christ. She exhibited all the father's benevolence, with an unruffled placidity of manner, truly beautiful." This was the school, and these were the teachers of Elihu Burritt. But early in life he lost his father; and we have it on record that he was wont to sit by his father's bedside watching him while sick and dying, for half the night, after performing a hard day's toil in the forests or the fields.At sixteen years of age-apparently not much before -he began his mighty quest after knowledge. He could not, however, obtain books sufficiently rapid; indeed there were but few to obtain at all. There was a chapel library, but the books being very few, and only changed once in four months; here, however, he obtained a few historical books, and read them with avidity.

Soon after the age of sixteen, he apprenticed himself to a blacksmith, and took up his residence with his brother Elijah, who, in consequence of his Anti-Slavery notions, fled from Georgia to his native town, and here opened a school. By Elijah's advice, however, when his term of apprenticeship had expired,

and he was one-and-twenty, he laid aside his hammer, and became a student with his brother for one halfyear. In doing this he had no higher aim in view than that of being able to manage a surveyor's compass, and perhaps of reading Virgil in Latin. He could earn a dollar and a half a-day at his trade, and consequently might consider that every day he spent in school cost him that sum of money. This reflection made him doubly industrious. After this halfyear's study, in the spring he found himself well versed in mathematics; he had gone through Virgil in Latin, and had read several French works; he was therefore well satisfied with himself, and returned again to the forge, determined to make up for lost time. To accomplish this thoroughly, he engaged to do the work of two men, and thus received double wages. Severe as this labour was, and requiring fourteen hours of each day, he still found time to read a little of Virgil, or a few pages of French, morning or evening.

He at this time also first began to look into Spanish; which, to his delight, he found he could read without much difficulty. During this summer, he conceived the idea of making himself acquainted with Greek. He procured, therefore, a Greek grammar; a little book, which would just lie in the crown of his straw hat, and which he thus carried with him to his work, which was the casting of brass cow bells in a couple of furnaces, which he had to watch with no small attention. Whilst standing over these, waiting for the fusing of the metal, he would take out his little grammar, and commit part of a Greek verb to memory. Thus he worked on with head and hands, until autumn. But, autumn brought self-dissatisfaction; for he beheld immense continents of Knowledge lying before him, untracked and undiscovered; so he

left his furnaces, determined to appropriate his earnings to the pursuit of knowledge. During the winter, he went to New Haven, and took lodging at an inn; and here, as Mary Howitt says, from whose memoir of him we have principally extracted these particulars, here his intellectual labour during the winter, appears to have been miraculous. The following was his course of daily study :

"As soon as the man who attended to the fires had made one in the sitting-room, which was at about half-past four in the morning, I arose, and studied German till breakfast, which was served at half-past seven. When the boarders were gone to their places of business, I sat down to Homer's Iliad, without a note or a comment to assist me, and with a Greek and Latin lexicon. A few minutes before the people came in to their dinners I put away all my Greek and Latin, and began reading Italian, which was less calculated to attract the notice of the noisy men who at that hour thronged the room. After dinner I took a short walk, and then again sat down to Homer's Iliad, with a determination to master it, without a master. The proudest moment of my life was when I first possessed myself of the full meaning of the first fifteen lines of that noble work. I took a triumphal walk in celebration of that exploit. In the evening I read in the Spanish language until bedtime. I followed this course for two or three months, at the end of which time I read about the whole of the Iliad in Greek, and made considerable progress in French, Italian, German and Spanish."

When the winter was over, he returned again to New Britain, girded on his leathern apron, and again resolved to "make up lost time." The fame of his learning, however, had travelled before him, and he was requested to undertake the management of a