when men are born to wealth and high position, with every advantage that leisure and early culture can give. Indeed, the doctrine that excellence in any pursuit is to be achieved by laborious application only, holds as true in the case of the man of wealth as in that of Drew 2 and Gifford, whose only school was a cobbler's stall, or Hugh Miller, whose only college was a stone quarry. The men who have risen to eminence, whether in early life poor or rich, have mounted by the ladder of persistent labour and painstaking endeavour. "There is no royal road to learning," and certainly none to honourable distinction in any walk in life. Whatever excellence a man attains must chiefly be the result of his own hearty endeavours.

Neither is it wonderful that many of the most distinguished men have risen from a humble station. Men who are "born," as we say, "with a silver spoon in the mouth," have not such a strong stimulus to exertion as those whose fortune depends wholly on themselves. As "Necessity is the mother of Invention," so Poverty may be the father of Fortune; for it causes a man to rely upon his own exertions, under God's blessing, and rouses him, if his heart be in the right place, to a manful struggle for success in the field of labour which lies before him.

"Men," says Bacon, "seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength of the former, they believe greater things than they should, of the latter, much less. Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink of his own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn and labour truly to get his living, and carefully to expend the good things committed to his trust." The manly independence here described is within the reach of the poorest that is gifted with the power and

opportunity of honest labour, and with the will to spend wisely and save carefully. It is only the comparatively few who have the natural abilities to rise to eminence, but it is within the power of many, perhaps most, in our land, to rise above the carking cares of poverty, and to be in a position to give to him that needeth.

To gain this happy position in life is an honourable ambition, and for men born in humble circumstances to achieve this object, is certainly "to rise in the world." But there is generally too much value and importance attached to the acquisition of wealth. In the minds of most people "men who have risen are such as have made a fortune; whereas, many have made a fortune without rising, and many have risen without growing rich.

"Men who have risen" are eminently those who have gained distinction by their extraordinary services to their fellow-men, either by their illustrious deeds, or by their discoveries and inventions, or by the fruitful exercise of some rare talent in the field of religion, science, or art. It requires but a slight acquaintance with the biography of our great men to know that some of the best and wisest have left the world with their services unrewarded and unrecognised. And it needs only a very limited knowledge of those who have amassed princely fortunes to be aware that men may grow rich in money and remain poor in mind, mean and ignoble in spirit.

5

1 Indomitable, not able to be mastered. (Lat. in, not; dominus, master.)

2 Drew, author of an "Essay on the Immortality of the Soul," and other religious works.

3 Gifford, the learned editor of the "Quarterly Review" (1809-24). Hugh Miller, a famous geologist.

5 Unrewarded. Thus Galileo, who made many important discoveries in astronomy and proved that the earth revolves round the sun, and not vice versa, was thrown into prison, and kept there until he publicly "recanted," or declared that what he had taught was false,

HOTSPUR AND HIS PRISONERS.

[In the early part of the reign of Henry. IV., Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland, beat the Scots at Homildon Hill, in Northumberland, and took many prisoners, which he refused to surrender to Henry unless he would permit Sir Edmund Mortimer, whose sister he had married, to be ransomed from Owen Glendower. Glendower was a Welsh nobleman who for some years set Henry at defiance. He was undoubtedly a brave warrior, and in the opinion of many he was "a great magician" in league with Satan. In the course of his fighting with Henry's troops he chanced to take Sir Edmund Mortimer prisoner. The king's refusal to ransom him from Glendower led to the quarrel here depicted.]

SCENE. London: the Palace.

Enter THE KING, NORTHUMBERLAND, Hotspur, Sir Walter BLUNT, and others.

North. Those prisoners in your highness' name demanded, Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon' took,

Were, as he says, not with such strength denied

As is deliver'd to your majesty:

Either envy, therefore, or misprision 2
Is guilty of this fault, and not my son.
Hot. My liege, I did deny no prisoners.
But, I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dress'd,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new reap'd,
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home;
He was perfumed like a milliner;

And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box,3 which ever and anon

He gave his nose, and took't away again;

Who,' therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff: and still he smiled and talk'd;
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by
He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

5

With many holiday and lady terms

He question'd me; among the rest, demanded
My prisoners, in your majesty's behalf.

I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,
Out of my grief and my impatience

To be so pestered with a popinjay,"

Answered neglectingly I know not what,

He should, or he should not; for he made me mad,
To see him shine so brisk,' and smell so sweet,

And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman

Of guns and drums and wounds-God save the mark!And telling me the sovereign'st thing on earth

Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;

And that it was great pity, so it was,

9

That villainous saltpetre should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly; and but for these vile guns
He would himself have been a soldier.
This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,
I answer'd indirectly, as I said;
And, I beseech you, let not this report
Come current for an accusation

Betwixt my love and your high majesty.

Blunt. The circumstance consider'd, good my lord. Whatever Harry Percy then had said

To such a person, and in such a place,
At such a time, with all the rest re-told,
May reasonably die, and never rise
To do him wrong, or any way impeach
What then he said, so he unsay it now.

K. Hen. Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners,

But with proviso and exception

That we, at our own charge, shall ransom straight

His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer;

Who, on my soul, hath wilfully betray'd
The lives of those that he did lead to fight
Against the great magician," Owen Glendower;

Whose daughter," as we hear, the Earl of March
Hath lately married. Shall our coffers, then,
Be emptied to redeem a traitor 12 home?

13

Shall we buy treason? and indent with fears,
When they have lost and forfeited themselves?
No, on the barren mountains let him starve;
For I shall never hold that man my friend
Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost
To ransom home revolted Mortimer.

Hot. Revolted Mortimer!

He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,

But by the chance of war. To prove that true
Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,
Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took,
When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank,

In single opposition, hand to hand,

He did confound" the best part of an hour

In changing hardiment 15 with great Glendower:

Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink,
Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood;

Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,
Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank
Blood-stained with these valiant combatants.
Never did base and rotten policy

Colour her working with such deadly wounds;
Nor never could the noble Mortimer
Receive so many, and all willingly:

Then let him not be slander'd with revolt.

K. Hen. Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him;

He never did encounter with Glendower :

I tell thee,

He durst as well have met the devil alone
As Owen Glendower for an enemy.

Art thou not ashamed? But, sirrah,16 henceforth
Let me not hear you speak of Mortimer:
Send me your prisoners with the speediest means,
Or you shall hear in such a kind from me