The Dawn of Genius. (With Illustration.) BY THE REV. WILLIAM BARKER, M.A., VICAR OF HOLY TRINITY, FOREST OF DEAN. you have been about all this time? You have been shutting and opening, and opening and shutting, the lid of the tea-kettle over and over again; you have put the saucer in the steam from the spout; and then you have held the silver tea-spoon in it; and then you have done nothing but pore over them, and bring together the drops formed by condensation on the surface of the china or the clear spoon. Are you not ashamed of spending your time in that way?" T may not require a genius to draw a cat upon a slate, as the boy in the picture appears to be doing. But a boy that tries to draw is more likely to find out whether he has any genius for drawing than the boy who never puts pencil to slate or paper. A man never yet became an artist, however clever he might be in his attempts at sketching, if he failed to work hard with his pencil and brush. Still, when there is genius in anybody, it will almost be sure to show itself in early life. All our great men were fond of experimenting in their youth in those things which took their fancy. Every celebrated chemist has, when a lad, broken many a bottle, and had many a narrow escape, and frightened his mother nearly to death many a time by his explosions. None of these disasters stopped him. He rather enjoyed them. His mother was proud of him, and would predict great things of him. She saw in these pursuits the dawn of genius. A friend of Mr. Watt one day came upon young James Watt, stretched upon the ground, tracing with chalk all sorts of cross lines. "Why do you suffer this child thus to trifle away his time?" exclaimed the visitor. "Send him to school." The father answered, "You will do well to delay your judgment; before condemning him be good enough to find out his occupation." On examining the cross lines," it was discovered that this child of six was solving a problem in geometry. 66 The visitor no longer judged him harshly. He was accomplishing at that early age what thousands of men at fifty, who call themselves educated, could not accomplish. To the same lad, James Watt, his aunt, Mrs. Muirhead, once said :: "James, I never saw any boy more given to trifling than you are. Can't you take a book and employ yourself usefully. There have you been sitting a whole hour without 66 If he had Watt's reply is not recorded. replied, he probably would have said:Aunt, don't bother me, please. I'm not wasting my time; I have got a notion in my head about this steam; and perhaps, some day, you will see greater things done by steam than just the lifting up of the lid of the tea-kettle." By taking away that tea-kettle from young Watt, and forcing him to read his books, we might have been deprived at this day of the steam engine, and never known what it was to travel at the rate of sixty miles an hour! But great results have often very simple beginnings. A burnt stick and a barn door served David Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas; and he afterwards rose to be one of our finest painters. Another famous painter, Benjamin West, made his first brushes, when a lad, out of the tail of the family cat. Gifford worked his first problem in mathematics, when a cobbler's apprentice, upon small scraps of leather, which he beat smooth for the purpose. His master thought only of the shoes, and, no doubt, scolded Gifford for wasting his time and his leather. If Gifford had "stuck to his last" he would never have become a celebrated mathematician, and the editor of the Quarterly Review. They say of poets, that they must be born such. And no doubt it is so, not only with poets, but also with painters, musicians, orators, and the like. But, with whatever gifts we are born, they are of small use without cultivation. The most gifted men have ever been the most studious and laborious. "genius is patience." John Foster held genius to be the power of lighting one's own fire. Sir Isaac Newton, when asked by what means he had worked out his extraordinary discoveries, modestly answered, "By always thinking unto them." A great point to be aimed at, is to get the working quality well trained. Talent will help and direct a lad in his work, but work, with small talent, will achieve more success than genius itself which is never brought out. Sir Robert Peel, when a boy at Drayton Manor, was made to stand upon the table to practise extempore speaking, and repeat the Sunday sermon. The result was, that he became renowned as one of the finest orators in the British Parliament. Gainsborough went sketching, when a school-boy, in the woods, while the other boys went to cricket. At twelve he was a confirmed artist. Edward Bird, when a child only three or four years old, would mount a chair, and draw figures on the walls, which he called French and English soldiers. A box of colours was purchased for him, and his father, wishing to turn his love of art to account, put him apprentice to a maker of tea-trays. Out of this trade he gradually raised himself, by study and labour, to the rank of a Royal Academician. Not long since, we lost by death, at an advanced age, one of our greatest machinists, Sir William Fairbairn. Let me give a story of him in connection with his early life. When he lived at Moy, where his father, Andrew Fairbairn, was a farmer, one of his duties at home was to nurse his younger brother Peter, then a delicate child under two years old. To relieve himself of the labour of carrying Peter about, he hit upon the device of constructing a small wagon in which to wheel him. This was his first machine; but by no means his last. This tiny wagon became the index of a mechanical skill which was unsuspected before, and which led to great results. His only tools were a knife, a gimlet, and an old saw. A blockhead would have disdained the implements, and produced nothing. In using them the dawn of Fairbairn's genius appeared. Out of a piece of thin board, and by the help of a few nails, he soon made the body of the contemplated vehicle. When he came to the wheels, his difficulties increased. But by cutting sections from the stem of a small alder tree, he obtained the material properly shaped; and then, with a red-hot poker, he bored the holes in the centre to receive the axle. The body was mounted on the four wheels, the axles introduced, and the wagon was complete, and became a sort of perambulator (before the days of perambulators) for the daily drives of the future Mayor of Leeds, Sir Peter Fairbairn, who had the honour during his mayoralty, of entertaining her Majesty the Queen. His brother, William, the carriage builder, never looked with greater pride on his most finished cotton-spinning frame, constructed in after years, than he did on this, his first stroke of genius, the baby-wagon of his nursing days. The Young Folks' Page. III. THE LOST HALF-CROWN. ORK was over for the week at the factory, and two of the lads were on their way home from their As they went along they talked about a large sum of money a gentleman in the next town had lost out of his pocket. labours. "I should like to be the finder," said one of the boys. set me up in the world for life; I would then soon give up the factory." Just at this moment they were overtaken by old Andrew Jones, who worked with them at the factory. He soon found out what they were talking about, and their wishes in the matter. "I once found some money-only a small |