misconstrued. We may affirm, however, that it is doubtful whether he could have gone on through his triumphant career, of merely preparatory success, without it; and it is certain that the gigantic labors of his public life would have been utterly sical stamina with which he began them— they did, in fact, destroy him at last by apoplexy, but not till he had achieved the life-work of twenty ordinary public men, and conquered all things in his way but death itself, the conqueror of all. made him so, and he has made all boys so and "let God be true and every man a liar," on this as on all subjects, say we to all grave-faced good men who think that nature mistakes in her very instincts who seem not to be capable of understanding how intimate is the connec-impracticable had it not been for the phytion between happiness and virtue, especially in childhood-how happily playing and praying may go together through that stage of our sad enough pilgrimage-and who, worse than all, by associating criminality with amusement, lead the young mind, which cannot forego its instincts, to hold itself suspicious if not guilty, and at last to prefer its supposed guilt to unnatural and intolerable restraints. A great blunder is this! It has filled childhood, in many an instance, with wretchedness and self-degradation; it has blasted many a young noble heart with prejudice against piety-prejudice the more fatal for having been so early received. Buxton would not study in his boyhood, as his family wished-they despaired of him-his excellent mother looked forward to his manhood with increasing solicitude. But when at last he "took to study" with a staunch brain, strenuous nerves, and the brawny muscles of a young athlete, how did he succeed? "He entered Dublin University," says Binney. "When he first began to study with a private tutor, preparatory to this, he found himself behind most of his associates; but by resolute application and determined perseverance he soon overcame that disadvantage. At college his course was a perpetual triumph. He triumphed over difficulties, he triumphed over others, he triumphed over himself. He took everything every year that it was possible for him to take. There was not a prize, a medal, a certificate, an honor, that he did not obtain." Such was his success that when he graduated, the university, which had a representation in parliament, asked him to be its candidate, with the assurance of success. But he knew himself, and chose to bide his better time. The physical education (for such we must call it) which he acquired in spite of the common opinions on the subject, was, we insist, one of the most advantageous | conditions of his subsequent success. We hardly dare utter our fullest conviction on the importance of this fact, lest we be Again. We attribute, in no small degree, to his physical vigor and energetic temperament, that indomitable force of character which was, perhaps, the principal trait of the man, and the chief element in his success. We are happy to have so good an authority as Mr. Binney for this opinion:-"Sir Fowell Buxton," he says, "inherited from his parents the great and incalculable blessing of a sound, healthy, physical structure—a robust, muscular frame-and with that, (my philosophical and religious creed alike teach,) many important elements of character-as to temperament, disposition, moral instincts, tastes, tendencies; aspirations ready to be awakened; capacities and powers having within them a native impulsive force toward the good and the better rather than the bad. The truth embodied in these remarks is a truth, the doubts and dogmas of certain good men, notwithstanding." The ancients were wiser than we on this point. We borrow from them the phrase, Mens sana in corpore sano, but with scarcely any practical appreciation of it. Gymnastics took the lead in their systems of education. The philosophers discoursed out of doors, and resorted personally to the gymnasium to teach and to learn. Socrates taught in the market-places and on the banks of the Ilissus; Plato in the gardens of Academus; Aristotle, walking in the suburban groves of the Lyceum. Aristotle's system derived its name (Peripatetic) from these philosophic walks. Plato, with all his idealism, knew the importance of taking good care of the body look at the antique bust of him; take down from the library shelf the second volume of Bohn's edition of his works, and observe in the frontispiece his Jove-like physique. You will understand from it what his biogra phy means when it tells us that he "was taught gymnastics by Ariston, an Argive wrestler." The almost saintly old sage was himself famous as a wrestler. Think of such a reputation attaching to any of our modern sages, the venerable presidents and professors of our colleges! Turn over this same second volume of his works, and read his views on education. It contains the immortal "Republic," in which he classifies the education suited to a state under two heads, one of which is gymnastics. Women as well as men would he have thus physically trained. And how much of the vigor and splendor of the classic intellect may we not attribute to these better ideas of the mens sana in corpore sano? Moral force and also purely intellectual energy may doubtless bear a man successfully along through the hardest struggles of life in spite of physical enervation; but how much better is the energy of life maintained, when the moral or mental lever moves on a firm physical fulcrum! The Reformation would probably have failed at Wittenberg, had it depended upon the enfeebled Melancthon. The mighty temperament of Luther had an essential connection with it. Beneath his great brain was a great heart; but beneath that heart was his great Dutch stomachfact which no philosopher can forget in estimating the man and his mission. Erasmus was his cotemporary, and saw the errors of Popery with a keener insight than Luther himself; he had also more learning, and a more trenchant sword than Melancthon. He could have shaken the intellectual world in a war with Rome; but he wandered about Europe, nursing his weak stomach, fainting if his dinner was delayed, and taking to his bed with sick headache at the mere smell of the -a Friday fish-diet. He saw his duty, but acknowledged that he was not in a mood for inartyrdom. He lacked moral force; that was doubtless his chief lack; but he lacked nerve also. Moral energy may, we repeat, triumph gloriously, even amid all physical disabilities, but in a dilapidated body the soul fights like a hero in an overthrown fortress, the ruins of which expose him to the fire of the foe, while they also obstruct the movement of his own guns. If too late to repair them, let him fire away as best he can, and triumph in dying; but if not too late, let him rear again his walls, even if he has to suspend his fire for a time. He will gain in the result. Buxton was a fine example of the mens sana in corpore sano. He was full of buoyancy and resolution. With the clew of any business, public or private, once in his hand, he could pursue it through all its windings and details, never exhausted, never discomposed, never discouraged. The drawback, on the moral purpose, which most men, of even good vigor, suffer from physical exhaustion, was seldom or never known to him till late in life. "His soul," says Binney, "was large and powerful, like his body. Having made up his mind that a thing was possible and ought to be attempted, he put forth his hand, and never withdrew it, and never flagged. Convinced that he was right, he stood his ground with unflinching and manly courage, and was willing to suffer in his private friendships or public popularity. The basis of all this consisted partly in the original conformation of his body and mind, and partly in the impressions made upon him by his mother-the habits she encouraged, the principles she implanted in him." In a letter to one of his sons, he reveals the secret of his own success; he writes: Then it was "You are now at that period of life, in which you must make a turn to the right or the left. You must now give proofs of principle, determination, and strength of mind, or you and character of a desultory, ineffective young must sink into idleness, and acquire the habits man; and if once you fall to that point, you will find it no easy matter to rise again. I am sure that a young man may be very much what he pleases. In my own case it was so. I left school, where I had learned little or nothing, about the age of fourteen. I spent the next year at home learning to hunt and shoot. that the prospect of going to college opened upon me, and such thoughts as I have expressed in this letter occurred to my mind. I made my resolutions, and I acted up to them: I gave up all desultory reading-I never looked into a novel or a newspaper-I gave up shooting. During the five years I was in Ireland, I had the liberty of going when I pleased to a capital shooting-place. I never went but twice. In short, I considered every hour as precious, and I made everything bend to my determination not to be behind any of my companions,—and then I speedily passed from one species of charac ter to another. I had been a boy fond of pleasure and idleness, reading only books of unprofitable entertainment. I became speedily a youth of steady habits of application, and of irresistible resolution. I soon gained the ground I had lost, and I found those things which were difficult, and almost impossible to my idleness, easy out neglecting any duties at Spitalfields, he studied hard to fit himself for St. Stephen's. He read extensively in English literature; he enough to my industry; and much of my happiness and ALL MY PROSPERITY IN LIFE have resulted from the change I made at your age. If you seriously resolve to be energetic and indus-digested Blackstone, and got some considerable trious, depend upon it you will for your whole life have reason to rejoice that you were wise enough to form and to act upon that determination." inkling of law; he went through Montesquieu, and meditated on its general principles as a science; he studied political economy and kindred subjects; and thus, by the diligent imlabored to acquire so much, and such varied, provement of the intervals of business,' he though related, knowledge, that if ever called to go into Parliament, he might not have to refuse from conscious unfitness, have his qualifications to seek at the moment,-or all his life have to cram and read for subjects as they rose." There is a motto, quoted from him, on the title-page of his Memoirs, which expresses the whole history of the man : "The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men, between insignificant, is ENERGY-INVINCIBLE DETERMINATION-a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory. That quality will do anything that can legged creature a MAN without it.” We could go on quoting almost indefinitely illustrations of the gigantic energy and heroic bravery of his character; but sufficient examples will occur when we come to consider him as a philanthropist; meanwhile we cannot omit one instance which is full of significance-a stronger proof of bravery, we will venture to say, there never was exhibited on a battle-field. We give it from his own letters to his wife : He declined, as we have stated, an opportunity of entering Parliament when he graduated. His earlier financial expectations had failed through the loss of family property in Ireland, and Parliament afforded no salary. He was determined to secure the means of living, and of living usefully. He married into the well-known Gurney family, when only about twentyone years of age. In a year after he was without employment, but had a wife and child to sustain. He would have been glad the feeble and the powerful, the great and the of a clerk's place with only five hundred dollars a year. He met with the Hanburys, his uncles, and entered their noted brewery-be done in this world;—and no talents, no virwe wish he had done better-but brewing cumstances, no opportunities, will make a twoand drinking were both thought well of then by British Christians, and are still sufficiently thought so. His application to business was now as energetic as it had been before to study. He enriched himself and his uncles. He was active in charities and public usefulness. He was unwearied in self-improvement by study. He had acquired the art of concentrating his whole soul upon the task in hand. "I could brew," he says, one hour;-do mathematics the next;-and shoot the next; and each with my whole soul." "When in business," says Binney, "business, very properly, was in him. For the hour or the day that it required his attention, he 'gave himself wholly to it.' Every bit of him, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot-brain and hands-skill and strength -when he had to work, did work: and sometimes he was at it from early morning till late at night. But this was not frequent, or the necessity for it became less and less. At the same time, then, that he was thus often occupied during the day, he was finding opportunity, morning or evening, for devotion to books. It was not possible that one who had actually been asked to represent a learned University in Parliament,-asked, as no empty compliment but in serious earnestness,-by men, as he acknowledged to himself, of thought and education, honor and principle,-his companions and competitors, who had known him and observed him for years,'-it was not possible but that he should be alive to the thought of the possibility, at least, of the House of Commons being his destination. He was willing, therefore, to avail himself of all the advantages he had previously enjoyed, and to put himself through a designed and elaborate preparation for public life. With 66 "SPITALFIELDS, July 15, 1816. "As you must hear the story of our dog Prince, I may as well tell it you. On Thursday morning, when I got on my horse at S. Hoare's, David told me that there was something the matter with Prince-that he had killed the cat, and almost killed the new dog, and had bit at him and Elizabeth. I ordered him to be tied up and taken care of, and then rode off to town. When I got into Hampstead, I saw Prince covered with mud, and running furiously, and biting at everything. I saw him bite at least a dozen dogs, two boys, and a man. "Of course I was exceedingly alarmed, being persuaded he was mad. I tried every effort to stop him or kill him, or to drive him into some outhouse, but in vain. At last he sprang up at a boy, and seized him by the breast; happily I was near him, and knocked him off with my whip. He then set off toward London, and I rode by his side, waiting for some opportunity of stopping him. I continually spoke to him, but he paid no regard to coaxing or scolding. You may suppose I was seriously alarmed, dreading the immense mischief he might do, having seen him do so much in the few preceding minutes. I was terrified at the idea of his getting into Camden Town and London; and at length considering that if ever there was an occasion that justified a risk of life, this was it, I determined to catch him myself. Happily he ran up to Prior's gate, and I threw myself from my horse upon him, and caught him by the neck: he bit at me and struggled, but without effect, and I succeeded in securing him, without his biting me. He died yesterday, raving mad. "Was there ever a more merciful escape? Think of the children being gone! I feel it most seriously, but I cannot now write more fully. I have not been at all nervous about it, though certainly rather low, occasioned partly by this, and partly by some other things. "I do not feel much fit for our Bible-meeting on Wednesday-but I must exert myself. "P.S. Write me word whether Fowell has any wound on his fingers; and if he has one made by the dog, let it be cut out immediately: mind, these are my positive orders." "What a terrible business it was! You must not scold me for the risk I ran; what I did I did from a conviction that it was my duty, and I never can think that an over-cautious care of self in circumstances where your risk may preserve others, is so great a virtue as you seem to think it. I do believe that if I had shrunk from the danger, and others had suffered in consequence, I should have felt more pain than I should have done had I received a bite." There, young men of generous hearts, The last sentence is fit to be a text for is heroism for you, of the truest style. the pulpit on a week-day, if not on a Sunday. What was Napoleon on the bridge of Lodi, or Murat dashing with his columns on the bayonets of the enemy, compared He afterward mentioned some particu- with this heroic man in the desperate lars which he had omitted in this hurried letter. "When I seized the dog," he said, " his strug gles were so desperate that it seemed at first almost impossible to hold him, till I lifted him up in the air, when he was more easily managed, and I contrived to ring the bell. I was afraid that the foam, which was pouring from his mouth in his furious efforts to bite me, might get into some scratch, and do me injury; so with great difficulty I held him with one hand, while I put the other into my pocket and forced on my glove; then I did the same with my other hand, and at last the gardener opened the door, saying, 'What do you want?' 'I've brought you a mad dog,' replied I; and telling him to get a strong chain, I walked into the yard, carrying the dog by his neck. I was determined not to kill him, as I thought if he should prove not to be mad, it would be such a satisfaction to the three persons whom he had bitten. I made the gardener (who was in a terrible fright) secure the collar round his neck and fix the other end of the chain to a tree, and then walking to its furthest range, with all my force, which was nearly exhausted by his frantic struggles, I flung him away from me, and sprang back. He made a desperate bound after me; but finding himself foiled, he uttered the most fearful yell I ever heard. All that day he did nothing but rush to and fro, champing the foam which gushed from his jaws; we threw him meat, and he snatched at it with a fury, but instantly dropped it again. "The next day when I went to see him, I thought the chain seemed worn, so I pinned him to the ground between the prongs of a pitchfork, and then fixed a much larger chain round his neck; when I pulled off the fork, he sprang up and made a dash at me, which snapped the old chain in two! He died in forty-eight hours from the time he went mad." Mr. Buxton writes to his wife a day or two later : "I shot all the dogs, and drowned all the cats. The man and boys who were bit, are doing pretty well. Their wounds were immediately attended to, cut, and burnt out. chase on the highway to London, and in the seizure and last struggle with the maddened brute?—a struggle against odds, not merely of death, but death with madness itself, and madness the most frightful known in the history of human suffering! Buxton would have declined the challenge to a duel, and been called a coward by the bravoes of the pistol; but what duelist would accept of terms which should expose him to such odds? What chivalry would keep the field, if the enemy were a corps of mad dogs? Some Chris We must refer to a third trait of this truly great man, before we close this part of our sketch-his delicate, we were about to say his feminine sensibility. one has said, that there is always somewhat of fine sensibility, the tenderness of woman, about great natures. tianity is full of the fact-Christ himself was an impersonation of it. Christianity has transformed not only art and social life, but heroism itself. It would abolish the heroism of war, and will inevitably do so yet; but in postponing its abolition till the due time, it received it from old Rome, only on condition that it should be ameliorated by the gentleness of chivalry-a gentleness borrowed from and ever graciously recognizing woman. "The age of chivalry has gone," said Burke; and he said the truth. Christian warfare has, however, adopted the humanities of the modern "laws of nations," and seems now by its augmented means of destruction, its increased horrors, to be rapidly preparing the way for its self-abolition. How different is the ideal of the old Greek or Roman heroic character from that of Christianity! Meekness-the very temper of all Christian virtues-was but Those of our readers who have read multiplied of late years. Buxton's Me- "He had become acquainted with John Gurney, the eldest son of John Gurney, Esq., of Earlham Hall, near Norwich. He was invited self in a new world. Mr. Gurney had eleven thither, on a visit, and went. He found himchildren, all of them, at this time, at home. There were three elder daughters; John, Buxton's friend; then a group of four girls, about boys. The father had for several years been a Buxton's own age; and lastly, three younger widower. He was by profession a Friend,-but not very strict. His worldly position and long widowhood, his going into society and his home and the fashionable, on the one side, and with hospitalities, his connection with the literary the straitest sect of our religion,' on the otherhad, altogether, a striking effect on the family circle. The members of it were all persons of superior minds-especially the women. One of the elder daughters was already under the influence both of religion and Quakerism; the others were somewhat gay in their habits; all were intellectual. Music, dancing, and drawing, were among their accomplishments; but they were zealously devoted to the higher forms of self culture, and were strenuous in their endeavors |