COMPARED WITH FRANKLIN.

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indeed offered him by the gentleman into whose hands the books fell; but he, with a graceful liberality, declined to receive it. The fortune of the library was certainly better than that of one of Bowditch's "Practical Navigators," whose mournful destiny is thus related in the American Quarterly Review of Holden's narration of his adventures in the South Seas.

It happened that among the few articles saved from the ship (the whale-ship Mentor, of New Bedford) was a copy of Bowditch's "Navigator"; an article of as little use as we can conceive any one thing to have been at that place. But the ingenuity of the females, who also have their passion for ornaments, tore out the leaves of the book, and making them into little rolls of the size of one's finger, wore them in their ears, instead of the tufts of grass which they usually employed to give additional attractions. to their native charms.

Among the many names of those who, having attained, deserve eminence from a noble and brave struggle with the difficulties of an early position, we can present to the young no example more worthy of study, as well as of respect, and no name more elevating than that of NATHANAEL BOWDITCH. He has been compared with Franklin. His name is perhaps the greatest scientific name, since Franklin, America can boast; but he commands a more general and unhesitating respect even than that eminent and enterprising man. It is true, both fought their way up from places of great obscurity; both were in every sense the architects of their own fortunes; both laid the foundation of future eminence in the lessons of prudence, temperance, and virtue; both followed science with ardour and intensity, and both laboured for the advancement of the community in which they lived. Here the comparison ceases. Franklin was a politician; Bowditch was not. But he had a soul much more wide and liberal and universal in its tastes than Franklin. His acquaintance with languages was considerable, especially with Latin, Spanish,

and French. Although so accomplished a mathematician, he had an eye and a heart for the beauties of poetry, and could relish the pages of Shakespeare or Milton, scarcely less than those of Newton's "Principia," or Laplace. He did not confine his attention, as Franklin did, merely to the prudent side of life; his powers of mind, too, were of a much higher order. He was a genius; he felt the irrepressible fires and compulsions of the law within-he had the eye within the eye; and he appears to have had a more tender and domestic heart than Franklin. We would not detract from the fame of the illustrious Printer, but the character of the sailor, the ship-chandler's lad, interests us more: his prudence was not less, his purpose and his performance were much higher.

Mr. Young says:—

Dr. Bowditch was a remarkably domestic man. His affections clustered around his own fireside, and found their most delightful exercise in his "family of love," as he called it in almost his last moments. His attachment to home, and to its calm and simple pleasures was, indeed, one of the most beautiful traits in his chaacter, and one which his children and friends will look back upon with the greatest satisfaction. As Sir Thomas More says of himself, "he devoted the little time which he could spare from his avocations abroad to his family, and spent it in little innocent and endearing conversations with his wife and children; which, though some might think them trifling amusements, he placed among the necessary duties and business of life; it being incumbent on every one to make himself as agreeable as possible to those whom nature has made, or he himself has singled out for, his companions in life. His time was divided between his office and his house; and that must have been a strong attraction, indeed, that could draw him into company. When at home his time was spent in his library, which he loved to have considered as the family parlour. By very early rising, in winter two hours before the light, "long ere the sound of any bell awoke men to labour or to devotion," and "in summer," like Milton, "as oft with the bird that first rises, or not much tardier," he was enabled to accomplish much before others were stirring. "To these morning studies," he used to say, "I am

indebted for all my mathematics." After taking his evening walk he was again always to be found in the library, pursuing the same attractive studies, but ready and glad, at the entrance of any visitor, to throw aside his book, unbend his mind, and indulge in all the gaieties of his light-hearted conversation.

There was nothing that he seemed to enjoy more than this free interchange of thought on all subjects of common interest. At such times the mathematician, the astronomer, the man of science disappeared, and he presented himself as the frank, easy, familiar friend. One could hardly believe that this agreeable, fascinating companion, who talked so affably and pleasantly on all the topics of the day, and joined so heartily in the quiet mirth and the loud laugh, could really be the great mathematician who had expounded the mechanism of the heavens, and taken his place with Newton, and Leibnitz, and Laplace, among the great proficients in exact science. To hear him talk, you would never have suspected that he knew anything about science, or cared anything about it. In this respect he resembled his great Scottish contemporary, who has delighted the whole world by his writings. You might have visited him in that library from one year's end to another, and yet, if you or some other visitor did not introduce the subject, I venture to say that not one word on mathematics would cross his lips. He had no pedantry of any kind. Never did I meet with a scientific or literary man so entirely devoid of all cant and pretension. In conversation he had the simplicity and playfulness and unaffected manners of a child. His own remarks "seemed rather to escape from his mind than to be produced by it." He laughed heartily, and rubbed his hands, and jumped up, when an observation was made that greatly pleased him, because it was natural for him so to do, and he had never been schooled into the conventional proprieties of artificial life, nor been accustomed to conceal or stifle any of the innocent impulses of his nature.

All these are fine traits of character; they mark a noble man. A venerable lady, after her first interview with him, said, "I like the man, for he is a live man." And very natural, simple, and transparent his character seems to have been. He was a very regular and temperate man; and until he was thirty-five never tasted intoxicating

liquor. Although his life is a very noble and exhilarating one; and when any youth is disposed to listen to the teachings of idleness, or despair, or cowardice, or timeserving, let him think of that lad, with his slate behind the counter, actively pursuing his favourite branch of knowledge; let him think of that youth in those long voyages, through the calm or boisterous wave, through the piercing cold or burning heat, following still his study and his duty, renouncing the folly of mere amusement, carrying his sea-mates along with him in the career of knowledge, and yet not unwilling to unbend and indulge in some innocent mirth in the vacant hour. See the man of thought entering the more solemn temple of the World's great sages, as, at once, disputant and exponent, reading the Oracle and the Law of Nature, calmly waiting entirely and fully to comprehend, and then as quietly waiting until the opportunity came to publish, his elaborate and painful theses to the world; and then, is he in the rear in all these places and attitudes? No! When at once it is taken into account the quality of the light he poured on the world, and the painful and eager labour with which he accumulated it, and focalized it, and the thousands of difficulties that every day beset his earlier path, it will be admitted that few, if any, in the ranks of those who from workers have become learners, and from learners, teachers, have been. more deserving of homage and imitation than he.

CHAPTER XIV.

CEDMON THE PLOUGHMAN.

N the story of the Peerage of Poverty certainly some mention ought to be made of those old monastic labourers who, in dark ages, sub

jected the hard and barren earth in many parts of England and Europe to their dominion. In many monasteries the ensign adopted by the monks was the Cross and Plough, and the motto Cruce et Aratro, the "Cross and the Plough." Montalembert, in his most entertaining history of the "Monks of the West," recites many a singular legend, more or less mythical, of the industry of the earlier and simpler orders of ecclesiastics; and the stories of industry constitute the best and sweetest poetry of conventual and monkish life; thus, that of the Abbot Theodulph of St. Thierry, near Rheims, who, with his two oxen, guided the plough for twenty-two years before he was elected Abbot of his community, and then the inhabitants of the nearest village took his plough and hung it up in their church as a relic! "It seems to me," says Montalembert, "if that monk's plough still existed I feel that I should kiss it as willingly as the sword of Charlemagne or the pen of Bossuet." No doubt the genius of Christianity called into existence the genius of Industry; in many ages and places labour has united with faith to overcome the world; there is something even very grand in the myths and fables of the contests of monastic ploughmen with the wolves, lions, bears, and other beasts in the wild