fact to his mind. The prefect then rather peremptorily desired him to produce the machine by which this result had been effected. M. Jacquard asked three weeks for its completion; at the end of which time he brought his invention to the prefect, and directing him to strike some part of the machine with his foot, a knot was added to the net. The ingenious contrivance was sent to Paris, and an order was thence despatched for the arrest of the inventor. Under Napoleon's arbitrary government even the desire for the diffusion of improvements was evinced in a most unconciliatory manner; and while inventions in the useful arts were sufficiently prized, no respect was paid to those persons by whom they were originated. Accordingly, M. Jacquard found himself under the keeping of a gens-d'arme, by whom he was to be conducted to Paris in all haste, so that he was not permitted even to go home to provide himself with the requisites for his sudden journey. When arrived in Paris he was required to produce his machine at the Conservatory of Arts, and submit it to the examination of inspectors. After this ordeal he was introduced to Bonaparte and to Carnot, the latter of whom said to him, with a look of incre dulity, "Are you the man who pretends to this impossibility-who professes to tie a knot in a stretched string?" In answer to this inquiry the machine was produced, and its operation exhibited and explained. Thus strangely was M. Jacquard's first mechanical experiment brought into notice and patronized. He was afterwards required to examine a loom on which from twenty to thirty thousand francs had been expended, and which was employed in the production of articles for the use of Bonaparte. M. Jacquard offered to effect the same object by a simple machine, instead of the complicated one by which the work

was sought to be performed, and improving on a model of Vaucanson, produced the mechanism which bears his name. A pension of a thousand crowns was granted to him by the government as a reward for his discoveries, and he returned to Lyons, his native town. So violent, however, was the opposition made to the introduction of his loom, and so great was the enmity he excited in consequence of his invention, that three times he with the greatest difficulty escaped with his life. The Conseil des Prud' hommes, who are appointed to watch over the interests of the Lyonese trade, broke up his machine in the public place; "the iron (to use his own expression) was sold for iron-the wood for wood, and he, its inventor, was delivered over to universal ignominy." The ignorance and prejudice which caused the silkweavers of Lyons to destroy a means of assistance to their labours, capable of being made a source of great benefit to themselves, was not dispelled till the French began to feel the effects of foreign competition. in their silk manufacture. They then were forced to adopt the Jacquard loom, which led to such great improvement in their silk-weaving, and this machine. is now extensively employed through the whole of the silk-manufacturing districts of France as well as of England.

Biographic records are full of similar instances illustrating the self-sustaining power within original minds. Copyists do all for the expectation of payment. Genius finds within itself its own reward-thinks itself remunerated in the reception of so many benefits from the labours of others and lays out its own efforts cheerfully, knowing that generations to come must reap the benefit of the present method of working. In every sense how beautiful is the language of Jesus to his disciples, "I sent you to teach that

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whereon ye bestowed no labour. Ye have laboured and other men have entered into your labours." Thus is the Divine principle traceable through the whole economy of society and the structure of the globe.

To what an eminent degree did Brindley, the deviser of Inland Navigation, promote the trade of England! Poor as he was, and lowly in birth and connections, to him we owe our long line of canals; to him we are indebted for facilities for the conveyance of merchandise of the very last importance, before the construction of our railway lines, and which railways have not yet superseded, or made unnecessary. Sir Humphrey Davy, whose discoveries in chemistry have surrounded his name with so extraordinary a degree of brilliancy, and from whose writings we quoted in the preceding pages, was a self-educated man. His father was a wood carver at Penzance, in Cornwall: and although the great chemist received some rudimental knowledge when young, no advantages were held out to him; no aids lay in his way for the attainment of that wonderful eminence he eventually secured. Genius, in fact, in one instance or the other, has conquered every obstacle. Sanderson lectured on the Science of Optics, and illustrated eloquently the laws of light to the students of Cambridge, although almost blind from his birth; Herschel the poor Austrian drummer, became the greatest astronomical discoverer of his age-constructed the most wonderful telescope ever lifted to the skies-descried the constellations and fires on the very outskirts of the universe, and a new world hanging on the most distant frontier of our own solar system. Genius has battled with the most necessary deficiencies. Rugendas, the painter, learned to paint when it was found that his right hand was too weak to engrave; and, when entirely losing the use of his right hand, he learned to paint with his

left, and covered the pannelings of some of the most celebrated Galleries of Europe with his Sea Pieces. The time, the space would fail utterly, to merely present a catalogue of those who have ascended to places of eminence from the most lowly situations.

But let no reader confuse in his mind splendid living with real eminence and dignity.-Beyond all doubt there are many living and dead who never attained any notoriety or dignity of position, who were most worthy; let us never confuse the position of a man with his worth in general. It is not at all difficult for little minds to attain splendid posts; and as things go in the world, the most splendid posts are conferred upon those who are capable of all the tricks, and suppleness and fawning, necessary to their attainment. The tasks which great minds scorn,-the insolence which they will for a moment tolerate or bear, these the fortune-hunter gladly submits to. The people, too, elevate their favourites, and such favourites can seldom be persons of exalted sentiment, or really munificent generosity. It is easy for a little man to become great; he has but to stoop to the world's ways, and learn the world's lessons; he has but to flatter the world, and the world will flatter him. Egotism, vanity, importunity and show, these are the elements of success, but they are also wind, and if they are sown, they will bye-and-bye yield the whirlwind for a harvest. The eminence resulting from the clever trickster at last leaves not a wreck behind; the bubble bursts and all is over. In the long run, quiet, unobtrusive merit has the best of it; the durable is with it, the perishable with the other. "There is nothing better than that a man shall both hope and quietly wait;" let him yield his intellectual and moral nature to their own beloved pursuits ever within the sphere of duty, dismissing from his mind

the bubbles-notoriety and fame-building, as a wise master builder, his moral being on a sure foundation, content to be known among the angels in eternity, if unknown among men in time.

The evanescence of the works and names, even of exalted genius, has been frequently a favourite topic for mourning homilies, and for rhetorical display; and certainly, if to perform some obviously and perceptibly durable work, a work with which the name of its author should ever after be associated, be an object, it is but seldom attained. Genius, which obtains for itself a temporary homage, a passing renown, how long does that fame last? Who has read the various observations and prelections of those most famous scholars, Bishop Huet, Occam, and Aquinas, or Nicholas Peiresk, who in his life was regarded as swaying by his opinion the whole commonwealth of letters, so unbounded was his learning, at whose grave a crowd of cardinals gathered to lament the loss of literature, and to assist in his funeral oration; or Salmasius that prodigy of learning, whom Queen Christina of Sweden received with so much reverence, waiting upon him in his sickness, preparing his caudle with her own hands, and making and mending his fire herself! why, we should never have heard his name mentioned, but that, in the learned lists, he was overthrown by Milton, we remember him not on account of his exaltation but his fall. And the Poets Du Bartas, Donne, Cowley; no writers were ever more popular, more read than these; but they are all now in the past tense; and the fame of very few persons is superior to theirs. If merely to obtain glory were the province and task of genius, or superior endowment, it fails to measure much more than a pall to cover its bier to the tomb, and sometimes not even that. The children of Labour share, too, in the