wreaths, or a British army, or even a cook, this seems to be supposed in the frequent
Washington never kept any one waiting. lamentations of Americans, that "the as-
At three, dinner was served: a late guest pect of Congress in those old times was
had only to make apologies to himself; and very different from what we now witness.
after four or five glasses of Madeira, the There was an air of decorum, of composure,
host retired to write letters in his library, of reflection, of gentlemanly and polished
rejoining his family at tea, whence, after dignity, which has fled, or lingers only with
much talk and reading aloud of newspapers, here and there a relic of the olden time."
at nine he went off to bed. His great de- We can hardly think so. A careful consid-
light after his retirement was in improving eration of the characters of really great men
his Mount Vernon estate, where he was his like Patrick Henry and Jefferson, the leaders
own architect and surveyor. His corre- of the old Congress, and the Randolphs and
spondence with men like Sir John Sinclair Peytons who predominated in the Virginian
and Arthur Young was minute and exten- Assembly, scarcely bears out an inference
sive; and the most acceptable presents to that Washington's pre-eminence was merely
the ex-President from American statesmen in degree. These men certainly could emu-
or foreign sovereigns were animals of a good late, though not, perhaps, surpass him, in
breed, or specimens of useful plants and the good taste of their equipages, and the
trees. Nor, while attending to the decora- splendor of their entertainments; but we find
tion of his mansion and grounds, laying out just the same sort of exaggeration, verging
deer-parks (which, by the by, supplied the close upon the ludicrous, in their deport-
neighborhood with venison, while the own-ment and oratory, as in that of their mod-
er's love of his game denied the Mount Ver-ern successors. It has been said of Wash-
non table a single haunch), and paving col-ington, that he was always the same; that
Danades with foreign marbles, was he care-
less of his servants' comfort. He took care
that he got from them a fair day's work, but
he felt that property had its reciprocal du-
ties. Within certain limits he even consid-
ered them free to do, if they chose, what
he himself most strongly disapproved, as a
copy, in his handwriting, of a contract be-
tween a drunken gardener and himself
quaintly demonstrates. It was
agreed, that Philip Barter, for the consider-
ations therein mentioned, was not at any
time to suffer himself to be "disguised with
liquor, except on times thereinafter men-
tioned:" that is to say, that the said George
Washington was, among other things, to
pay him "four dollars at Christmas, with
which he may be drunk four days and four
nights; two dollars at Easter to effect the
same purpose; two dollars at Whitsuntide to
be drunk for two days."

even in his social hours his friends felt for
him a certain veneration and awe. This was
not the result of a perpetual stiffness and in-
flexibility of mien (which certainly does not
tend to win respect); for he could walk a
minuet in the days of his glory with com-
plaisance, and in his youth with rapture;
and amidst the cares of state find time to
chide a schoolboy for idling, and admonish
therein smilingly a coquette. It flowed rather from
what is justly described as "the strongest,
most ever-present sense of propriety that
ever human being possessed, impressing the
observer with a conviction that he was ex-
actly and fully equal to what he had to do."
It was just this admirable power of propor-
tioning, not merely the action, but even the
thought and the feeling to the occasion,
which distinguishes him from his otherwise
great contemporaries. "He was the only
man," said Lord Erskine of him, "whose
character he could not contemplate without
awe and wonder." We believe that the
judgment of posterity will not vary from
this, and that if any man could have, he
had a right, when dying, to exclaim, as he
did, "I am dying, but am not afraid to die!"

It is not unusual to intimate that Washington's character was not so portentous a phenomenon in the America of his day as it seems now; that Virginia, at all events, could have furnished many examples of a like English gentlemanly simplicity; and

From Fraser's Magazine. CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM MORE

MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE.

attained to absolute perfection, have for the most part been things comparatively frivolous; accomplishments which certainly were not worth the labor and the time which it must have cost to master them. Thus, M. Blondin has probably made as much of himself as can be made of mortal, in the respect of walking on a rope stretched at a great height from the ground. Hazlitt makes mention of a man who had cultivated to the very highest degree the art of playing at rackets; and who accordingly played at rackets in

It is recorded in history that at a certain public dinner in America a Methodist preacher was called on to give a toast. It may be supposed that the evening was so far advanced, that every person present had been toasted already, and also all the friends of every one present. It thus happened that the Methodist preacher was in considerable perplexity as to the question, what being, or class of beings, should form the subject comparably better than any one else ever of his toast. But the good man was a person of large sympathies; and some happy link of association recalled to his mind certain words with which he had a professional familiarity, and which set forth a subject of a most comprehensive character. Arising the power of turning somersets, of picking from his seat, the Methodist preacher said that, without troubling the assembled company with any preliminary observations, he begged to propose the health of ALL PEOPLE

THAT ON EARTH DO DWELL.

Not unnaturally, I have thought of that Methodist preacher and his toast as I begin to write this essay. For though its subject was suggested to me by various little things of very small concern to mankind in general, though of great interest to one or two individual beings, I now discern that the subject of this essay is in truth as comprehensive as the subject of that toast. I have something to say Concerning People of whom More might have been made: I see now that the class which I have named includes every human being. More might have been made, in some respect, possibly in many respects, of All people that on earth do dwell. Physically, intellectually, morally, spiritually, more might have been made of all. Wise and diligent training on the part of others; self-denial, industry, tact, decision, promptitude, on the part of the man himself; might have made something far better than he now is of every man that breathes. No one is made the most of. There have been human beings who have been made the most of as regards some one thing; who have had some single power developed to the utmost; but no one is made the most of, all round; no one is even made the most of as regards the two or three most important things of all. And indeed it is curious to observe that the things in which human beings seem to have 780

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE.

did. A wealthy gentleman, lately deceased, by putting his whole mind to the pursuit, esteemed himself to have reached entire perfection in the matter of killing otters. Various individuals have probably developed

pockets, of playing on the piano, jew's-harp, banjo, and penny trumpet, of mental calculation in arithmetic, of insinuating evil about their neighbors without directly asserting any thing,—to a measure as great as is possible to man. Long practice and great concentration of mind upon these things, have sufficed to produce what might seem to tremble on the verge of perfection: what unquestionably leaves the attainments of ordinary people at an inconceivable distance behind. But I do not call it making the most of a man, to develop, even to perfection, the power of turning somersets and playing at rackets. I call it making the most of a man, when you make the best of his best powers and qualities; when you take those things about him which are the worthiest and most admirable, and cultivate these up to their highest attainable degree. And it is in this sense that the statement is to be understood, that no one is made the most of. Even in the best, we see no more than the rudiments of good qualities which might have been developed into a great deal more; and in very many human beings, proper management might have brought out qualities essentially different from those which these beings now possess. It is not merely that they are rough diamonds, which might have been polished into blazing ones; not merely that they are thoroughbred colts drawing coal-carts, which with fair training would have been new Eclipses: it is that they are vinegar which might have been wine, poison which might have been food,

wild-cats which might have been harmless points upon a railway. By moving a lever, lambs, soured miserable wretches who might have been happy and useful, almost devils who might have been but a little lower than the angels. Oh, the unutterable sadness that is in the thought of what might have been!

the rails upon which the train is advancing are, at a certain place, broadened or narrowed by about the eighth of an inch. That little movement decides whether the train shall go north or south. Twenty carriages have come so far together; but here is a junction station, and the train is to be divided. The first ten carriages deviate from the main line by a fraction of an inch at first; but in a few minutes the two portions of the train are flying on, miles apart. You cannot see the one from the other, save by distant puffs of white steam through the clumps of trees. Perhaps already a high hill has intervened, and each train is on its solitary way-one to end its course, after some hours, amid the roar and smoke and bare ugliness of some huge manufacturing town; and the other to côme through green fields to the quaint, quiet, dreamy-looking little city, whose place is marked, across the plain, by the noble spire of the gray cathedral rising into the summer blue. We come to such

Not always, indeed. Sometimes, as we look back, it is with deep thankfulness that we see the point at which we were (we cannot say how) inclined to take the right turning, when we were all but resolved to take that which we can now see would have landed us in wreck and ruin. And it is fit that we should correct any morbid tendency to brood upon the fancy of how much better we might have been, by remembering also how much worse we might have been. Sometimes the present state of matters, good or bad, is the result of long training; of influences that were at work through many years; and that produced their effect so gradually that we never remarked the steps of the process, till some day we waken up to a sense of the fact, and find ourselves perhaps a great deal bet-points in our journey through life: railwayter, probably a great deal worse, than we points, as it were, which decide not merely had been vaguely imagining. But the case our lot in life, but even what kind of folk is not unfrequently otherwise. Sometimes we shall be, morally and intellectually. A one testing time decided whether we should hair's-breadth may make the deviation at go to the left or to the right. There are in first. Two situations are offered you at the moral world things analogous to the sud- once: you think there is hardly any thing to den accident which makes a man blind or choose between them. It does not matter lame for life in an instant there is wrought which you accept; and perhaps some slight a permanent deterioration. Perhaps a few and fanciful consideration is allowed to turn minutes before man or woman took the step the scale. But now you look back, and you which can never be retraced, which must can see that there was the turning-point in banish them forever from all they hold dear, your life; it was because you went there to and compel them to seek in some new coun- the right, and not to the left, that you are try far away a place where to hide their now a great English prelate and not a humshame and misery, they had just as little ble Scotch professor. Was there not a time thought of taking that miserable step as you, in a certain great man's life, at which the my reader, have of taking one like it. And lines of rail diverged, and at which the quesperhaps there are human beings in this world, tion was settled, should he be a minister of held in the highest esteem, and with not a the Scotch Kirk, or should he be Lord High speck on their snow-white reputation, who Chancellor of Great Britain? I can imagknow within themselves that they have barely ine a stage in the history of a lad in a countescaped the gulf; that the moment has been ing-house, at which the little angle of rail in which all their future lot was trembling in may be pushed in or pushed back that shall the balance; and that a grain's weight more send the train to one of two places five hunin the scale of evil, and by this time they dred miles asunder; it may depend upon might have been reckoned among the most whether he shall take or not take that halfdegraded and abandoned of the race. But crown, whether, thirty years after, he shall probably the first deviation, either to right be taking the chair, a rubicund baronet, at or left, is in most cases a very small one. a missionary society meeting, and receive the You know, my friend, what is meant by the commendations of philanthropic peers and

:

earnest bishops; or be laboring in chains at stool, was positively nothing in its capacity Norfolk Island, a brutalized, cursing, hard- of coming to different ends and developments, ened, scourge-scarred, despairing wretch, when we compare it with each human being without a hope for this life or the other. born into this world. Man is not so much Oh, how much may turn upon a little thing! a thing already, as he is the germ of someBecause the railway train in which you were thing. He is (so to speak) material formed coming to a certain place was stopped by a to the hand of circumstances. He is essensnow-storm, the whole character of your life tially a germ, either of good or evil. And may have been changed. Because some one he is not like the seed of a plant, in whose was in the drawing-room when you went to development the tether allows no wider see Miss Smith on a certain day, resolved to range than that between the more or less put to her a certain question, you missed the successful manifestation of its inherent nattide, you lost your chance, you went away ure. Give a young tree fair play: good to Australia and never saw her more. It soil and abundant air; tend it carefully, in fell upon a day that a ship coming from short, and you will have a noble tree. Treat Melbourne, was weathering a rocky point the young tree unfairly give it a bad soil, on an iron-bound coast, and was driven deprive it of needful air and light, and it close upon that perilous shore. They tried will grow up a stunted and poor tree. But to put her about; it was the last chance. in the case of the human being, there is It was a momeut of awful risk and decision. more than this difference in degree. There If the wind catches the sails, now shivering may be a difference in kind. The human as the ship comes up, on the right side, then being may grow up to be, as it were, a fair all on board are safe. If the wind catches and healthful fruit-tree, or to be a poisonous the sails on the other side, then all on board one. There is something positively awful must perish. And so it all depends upon about the potentialities that are in human which surface of certain square yards of can- nature. The Archbishop of Canterbury vas the uncertain breeze shall strike, whether might have grown up under influences which John Smith, who is coming home from the would have made him a bloodthirsty pirate diggings with twenty thousand pounds, shall or a sneaking pickpocket. The pirate or the go down and never be heard of again by his pickpocket, taken at the right time, and poor mother and sisters away in Scotland; trained in the right way, might have been or whether he shall get safely back, a rich made a pious exemplary man. You rememman, to gladden their hearts, and buy a ber that good divine, two hundred years pretty little place, and improve the house since, who, standing in the market-place of on it into the pleasantest picture; and pur- a certain town, and seeing a poor wretch led chase, and ride, and drive various horses; by him to the gallows, said, "There goes and be seen on market-days sauntering in myself, but for the grace of God." Of course, the High Street of the county town; and get it is needful that human laws should hold married, and run about the lawn before his all men as equally responsible. The pundoor, chasing his little children; and be-ishment of such an offence is such an infliccome a decent elder of the Church; and live quietly and happily for many years. Yes: from what precise point of the compass the next flaw of wind should come, would decide the question between the long homely life in Scotland, and a nameless burial deep in a foreign sea.

tion, no matter who committed the offence. At least the mitigating circumstances which human laws can take into account must be all of a very plain and intelligible character. It would not do to recognize any thing like a graduated scale of responsibility. A very bad training in youth would be in a certain It seems to me to be one of the main char- limited sense regarded as lessening the guilt acteristics of human beings, not that they of any wrong thing done; and you may reactually are much, but that they are some- member accordingly how that magnanimous thing of which much may be made. There monarch, Charles II., urged to the Scotch are untold potentialities in human nature, lords, in extenuation of the wrong things he The tree cut down, concerning which its had done, that his father had given him a heathen owner debated whether he should very bad education. But though human make it into a god or into a three-legged laws and judges may vainly and clumsily

endeavor to fix each wrongdoer's place in be said here, that I firmly believe that hapthe scale of responsibility; and though they piness is one of the best of disciplines. As must, in a rough way, do what is rough jus- a general rule, if people were happier, they tice in five cases out of six; still we may would be better. When you see a poor cabwell believe that in the view of the Supreme man on a winter day, soaked with rain, and Judge the responsibilities of men are most fevered with gin, violently thrashing the delicately graduated to their opportunities. wretched horse he is driving, and perhaps There is One who will appreciate with en- howling at it, you may be sure that it is just tire accuracy the amount of guilt that is in because the poor cabman is so miserable that each wrong deed of each wrongdoer, and he is doing all that. It is a sudden glimpse, mercifully allow for such as never had a perhaps, of his bare home and hungry chilchance of being any thing but wrongdoers. dren, and of the dreary future which lies And it will not matter whether it was from before himself and them, that was the true original constitution or from unhappy train- cause of those two or three furious lashes ing that these poor creatures never had that you saw him deal upon the unhappy screw's chance. I was lately quite astonished to ribs. Whenever I read any article in a relearn that some sincere but stupid American view, which is manifestly malignant, and indivines have fallen foul of the eloquent au- tended not to improve an author but to give thor of Elsie Venner, and accused him of him pain, I cannot help immediately wonderfearful heresy, because he declared his con- ing what may have been the matter with fident belief that "God would never make a the man who wrote the malignant article. man with a crooked spine and then punish Something must have been making him very him for not standing upright." Why, that unhappy, I think. I do not allude to playstatement of the Autocrat appears to me at ful attacks upon a man, made in pure least as certain as that two and two make thoughtlessness and buoyancy of spirit; but four. It may indeed contain some recondite to attacks which indicate a settled, deliberand malignant reference which the stupid American divines know, and which I do not: it may be a mystic Shibboleth indicating far more than it asserts; as at one time in Scotland it was esteemed as proof that a clergyman preached unsound doctrine if he made use of the Lord's Prayer. But, understanding it simply as meaning that the Judge of all the earth will do right, it appears to me an axiom beyond all question. And I take it as putting in a compact form the spirit of what I have been arguing for; to wit, that though human law must of necessity hold all rational beings as alike responsible, yet in the eye of God the difference may be imThe graceful vase that stands in the drawing-room under a glass shade, and never goes to the well, has no great right to despise the rough pitcher that goes often and is broken at last. It is fearful to think what malleable material we are in the hands of circumstances. And a certain Authority, considerably wiser and incomparably more charitable than the American divines already mentioned, has recognized the fact when he taught us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation!" We shall think, in a little while, of certain influences which may make or mar the human being; but it may

mense.

ate, calculating rancor. Never be angry with the man who makes such an attack; you ought to be sorry for him. It is out of great misery that malignity for the most part proceeds. To give the ordinary mortal a fair chance, let him be reasonably successful and happy. Do not worry a man into nervous irritability, and he will be amiable. Do not dip a man in water, and he will not be wet.

Of course, my friend, I know who is to you the most interesting of all beings; and whose history is the most interesting of all histories. You are to yourself the centre of this world, and of all the interests of this world. And this is quite right. There is no selfishness about all this, except that selfishness which forms an essential element in personality; that selfishness which must go with the fact of one's having a self. You cannot help looking at all things as they appear from your own point of view; and things press themselves upon your attention and your feeling as they affect yourself. And apart from any thing like egotism, or like vain self-conceit, it is probable that you may know that a great deal depends upon your exertion and your life. There are those at home who would fare but poorly if you