CHAP. I. SIR E. BULWER LYTTON. 19 Lords. Sydney Smith once recommended him to confine himself to only the transaction of so much business as three strong men could get through. But such was Brougham's love of work-long become a habit that no amount of application seems to have been too great for him; and such was his love of excellence, that it has been said of him that if his station in life had been only that of a shoe-black, he would never have rested satisfied until he had become the best shoe-black in England. Another hard-working man of the same class is Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. Few writers have done more, or achieved higher distinction in various walks-as a novelist, poet, dramatist, historian, essayist, orator, and politician. He has worked his way step by step, disdainful of ease, and animated throughout only by the ardent desire to excel. On the score of mere industry, there are few living English writers who have written so much, and none that have produced so much of high quality. The industry of Bulwer is entitled to all the greater praise that it has been entirely self-imposed. To hunt, and shoot, and live at ease, to frequent operas, and clubs, and Almack's, enjoying the variety of London sight-seeing, morning calls, and parliamentary small-talk during the "season," and then off to the country mansion, with its well-stocked preserves, and its thousand delightful out-door pleasures,to travel abroad, to Paris, Vienna, or Rome,—all this is excessively attractive to a lover of pleasure and a man of fortune, and by no means calculated to make a man buckle to steady, continuous labour of any kind. Yet these pleasures, all within his reach, Bulwer must, as compared with men born to similar estate, have denied himself in assuming the position and pursuing the career of a literary man. Like Byron, his first effort was poetical ('Weeds and Wild Flowers'), and a failure. His second was a novel (‘Falkland'), and it proved a failure too. A man of weaker stuff would have dropped authorship; but Bulwer had pluck and perseverance; so he worked on, determined to succeed. 20 MR. DISRAELI. CHAP. I. He was incessantly industrious, read prodigiously, and from failure went courageously onwards to success. 'Pelham’ followed 'Falkland' within a year, and the remainder of Bulwer's literary life, now extending over a period of thirty years, has been a succession of triumphs. Mr. Disraeli affords a similar instance of the power of industry and application in working out an eminent public career. His first achievements were, like Bulwer's, in literature; and he reached success only through a succession of failures. His Wondrous Tale of Alroy' and 'Revolutionary Epic' were laughed at, and regarded as indications of literary lunacy. But he worked on in other directions, and his Coningsby,' Sybil,' and 'Tancred,' proved the sterling stuff of which he was made. As an orator too, his first appearance in the House of Commons was a failure. It was spoken of as "more screaming than an Adelphi farce." Though composed in a grand and ambitious strain, every sentence was hailed with "loud laughter." 'Hamlet' played as a comedy were nothing to it. But he concluded with a sentence which embodied a prophecy. Writhing under the laughter with which his studied eloquence had been received, he exclaimed, "I have begun several times many things, and have succeeded in them at last. I shall sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me." The time did come; and how Disraeli succeeded in at length commanding the rapt attention of the first assembly of gentlemen in the world, affords a striking illustration of what energy and determination will do; for Disraeli earned his position by dint of patient industry. He did not, as many young men do, having once failed, retire dejected, to mope and whine in a corner, but pluckily set himself to work. He carefully unlearnt his faults, studied the character of his audience, practised sedulously the art of speech, and industriously filled his mind with the elements of parliamentary knowledge. He worked patiently for success; and it came, but slowly then the House laughed with him, instead of at him. The recol : CHAP. I. THE ENGLISH IN INDIA. 21 lection of his early failure was effaced, and by general consent he was at length admitted to be one of the most finished and effective of parliamentary speakers. Illustrious as are the instances of strong individuality which we have thus rapidly cited, the number might be largely increased even from the list of living men. One of our most distinguished writers has, it is true, lamented the decay of that strength of individual character which has been the glory of the English nation; yet, if we mistake not, no age in our history so little justifies such a lament as the present. Never did sudden calamity more severely test the individual pluck, endurance, and energy of a people, than did the recent outbreak of the rebellion in India; but it only served to bring out the unflinching self-reliance and dormant heroism of the English race. In that terrible trial all proved almost equally great-women, civilians, and soldiers-from the general down through all grades to the private and bugleman. The men were not picked-they belonged to the same every-day people whom we daily meet at home-in the streets, in workshops, in the fields, at clubs; yet when sudden disaster fell upon them, each and all displayed a wealth of personal resources and energy, and became as it were individually heroic. Indeed in no age of England have the finest qualities of men been so brilliantly displayed; and there are perhaps no names in our history which will outshine those of the modern heroes of India. Montalembert avows that they "do honour to the human race.' Citing the great names of Havelock, Nicholson, Peel, Wilson, and Neill-to which might be added that of Outram, "the Bayard of India”he goes on to say, "it is not only such names, great beyond comparison, it is the bearing in every respect of this handful of Englishmen, surprised in the midst of peace and prosperity by the most frightful and most unforeseen of catastrophes. Not one of them shrank or trembled-all, military and civilians, young and old, generals and soldiers, resisted, fought, and perished with a coolness and intrepi 22 HEROES OF PEACE. CHAP. I. dity which never faltered. It is in this circumstance that shines out the immense value of public education, which invites the Englishman from his youth to make use of his strength and his liberty, to associate, resist, fear nothing, be astonished at nothing, and to save himself, by his own sole exertions, from every sore strait in life.” Equally brilliant instances of individual force of character are also to be found in more peaceful and scientific walks. Is there not Livingstone, with a heroism greater than that of Xavier, penetrating the wilds of South Africa on his mission of Christian civilization; Layard, labouring for years to disinter the remains of the buried city of "Babylon; Rawlinson, the decipherer of their cuneiform inscriptions; Brooke, establishing a nucleus of European enterprise and colonization amongst the piratical tribes of the Indian Ocean; Franklin, Maclure, Collinson, and others, cleaving their way through storms, and ice, and darkness, to solve the problem of the north-west passage ;;-enterprises which, for individual daring, self-denial, energy, and heroism, are unsurpassed by those of any age or country. CHAP. II. ENGLISH INDUSTRY. 23 CHAPTER II. LEADERS OF INDUSTRY-INVENTORS AND PRODUCERS. "Rich are the diligent, who can command Time, nature's stock! and could his hour-glass fall, And, by incessant labour, gather all."-D'Avenant. ONE of the most strongly marked features of the English people is their indomitable spirit of industry, standing out prominent and distinct in all their past history, and as strikingly characteristic of them now as at any former period. It is this spirit, displayed by the commons of England, which has laid the foundations and built up the industrial greatness of the empire, at home and in the colonies. This vigorous growth of the nation has been mainly the result of the free industrial energy of individuals; and it has been contingent upon the number of hands and minds from time to time actively employed within it, whether as cultivators of the soil, producers of articles of utility, contrivers of tools and machines, writers of books, or creators of works of art. And while this spirit of active industry has been the vital principle of the nation, it has also been its saving and remedial one, counteracting from time to time the effects of errors in our laws and imperfections in our constitution. The career of industry which the nation has pursued, has also proved its best education. As steady application to work is the healthiest training for every individual, so is it the best discipline of a state. Honourable industry always travels the same road with enjoyment and duty; and pro |