of intellectual creation that lives like a tiny | it for her own culture in uninterrupted soli

star.

tude. By an exact system, and the exercise If wealth had only pleasure to offer as a of the rarest firmness, she contrived to steal temptation from intellectual labor, its influ- half an hour here and an hour there-enough, ence would be easier to resist. Men of the no doubt, when employed as she employed English race are often grandly strong in resist them, to maintain her character as a very disance to every form of voluptuousness; the race tinguished lady, yet still far from sufficient is fond of comfort and convenience, but it does for the satisfactory pursuit of any great art not sacrifice its energy to enervating self-in- or science. If it be difficult for the rich man dulgence. There is, however, another order to enter into the kingdom of heaven, it is also of temptations in great wealth, to which Eng- difficult for him to secure that freedom from lishmen not only yield, but yield with a satis-interruption which is necessary to fit him for fied conscience, even with a sense of obedience his entrance into the Intellectual Kingdom. to duty. Wealth carries pleasure in her left hand, but in her right she bears honor and power. The rich man feels that he can do so much by the mere exercise of his command over the labor of others, and so little by any unaided labor of his own, that he is always strongly tempted to become, not only physically but intellectually, a director of work rather that a workman. Even his modesty, when he is modest, tends to foster his reliance on others rather than himself. All that he tries to do is done so much better by those who make it their profession, that he is always tempted to fall back upon his paying power as his most satisfactory and effective force.

There are cases in which this temptation is gloriously overcome, where men of great wealth compel every one to acknowledge that their money is nothing more than a help to their higher life, like the charger that bore Wellington at Waterloo, serving him indeed usefully, but not detracting from the honor which is his due. But in these cases the life is usually active or administrative rather than intellectual. The rich man does not generally feel tempted to enter upon careers in which his command over labor is not an evident advantage, and this because men naturally seek those fields in which all their superiorities tell. Even the well known instance of Lord Rosse can scarcely be considered an exception to this rule, for although he was eminent in a science which has been followed by poor men with great distinction, his wealth was of use in the construction of his colossal telescope, which gave him a clear advantage over merely professional contemporaries.

He can scarcely allow himself to be absorbed in any great study, when he reflects on all the powerful means of social influence which he is suffering to lie idle. He is sure to possess by inheritance, or to have acquired in obedience to custom, a complicated and expensive machinery for the pleasures and purposes of society. There is game to be shot; there are hunters to be exercised; great houses to be filled with guests. So much is expected of the rich man, both in business and in pleasure, that his time is not his own, and he could not quit his station if he would. And yet the Intellectual Life, in its fruitful perfection, requires, I do not say the complete abandonment of the world, but it assuredly requires free and frequent spaces of labor in tranquil solitude, "retreats" like those commanded by the Church of Rome, but with more of study and less of contemplation.

It would be useless to ask you to abdicate your power, and retreat into some hermitage with a library and a laboratory, without a thought of returning to your pleasant hall in Yorkshire and your house in Mayfair. You will not sell all and follow the Light, but there is a life which you may powerfully encourage, yet only partially share. Notwithstanding the increased facilities for earning a living which this age offers to the intellectual, the time that they are often compelled to give to the satisfaction of common material necessities is so much time withdrawn from the work which they alone can do. It is a lamentable waste of the highest and rarest kind of energy to compel minds that are capable of original investigation, of discovery, to occupy themselves in that mere vulgarization of knowledge, in popular lecturing and literature, which could be done just as efficiently by minds of a common order. It is an error of the present age to believe that the time for what is called patronage is altogether passed away.

Besides this natural desire to pursue careers in which their money may lessen the number of competitors, the rich are often diverted from purely intellectual pursuits by the social duties of their station, duties which it is impossible to avoid and difficult to keep within limits. The Duchess of Orleans (mother of Let me mention two instances to the conthe present Count of Paris) arranged her time trary: one in which kindly help would have with the greatest care so as to reserve a little of saved fifteen years of a noble life; another

LETTER II.

in which that kindly help did actually permit a man of exceptional endowment and equally exceptional industry to pursue investigations for which no other human be- Danger of carelessness-Inconveniences of poverty unfavor

TO A GENIUS CARELESS IN MONEY MATTERS.

able to the Intellectual Life-Necessity advances men in industrial occupations, but disturbs and interrupts the higher intellectual life-Instances in science, literature, and art-Careers aided by wealth-Mr. Ruskin-De Saussure-Work spoiled by poverty in the doing-The central passion of men of ability is to do their work well-The want of money the most common hindrance to excellence of work-De Sénancour-Bossuet-Sainte-Beuve-Shelley

-Wordsworth-Scott-Kepler-Tycho Brahe-SchillerGoethe-Case of an eminent English philosopher, and of a French writer of school-primers-Loss of time in making experiments on public taste-Surtout ne pas trop écrireAuguste Comte-The reaction of the intellectual against money-making-Money the protector of the intellectual

life.

I HAVE been anxious for you lately, and venture to write to you about the reasons for this anxiety.

kinds which is by far the most dangerous of all tempers to the pecuniary well-being of a man. Sydney Smith declared that no fortune could stand that temper long, and that we are on the high road to ruin the moment we think ourselves rich enough to be careless.

ing was so well qualified, and which were entirely incompatible with the earning of the daily bread. Dr. Carpenter has lately told us that, finding it impossible to unite the work of a general practitioner with the scientific researches upon which his heart was set, he gave up nine-tenths of his time for twenty years to popular lecturing and writing, in order that he might exist and devote the other tenth to science. "Just as he was breaking down from the excessive strain upon mind and body which this life involved, an appointment was offered to Dr. Carpenter which gave him competence and sufficient leisure for the investigations which he has conducted to such important issues." Suppose that during those You are neither extravagant nor self-indultwenty years of struggle he had broken down gent, yet it seems to me that your entire ablike many another only a little less robust-sorption in the higher intellectual pursuits what then? A mind lost to his country and has produced in you, as it frequently does, a the world. And would it not have been hap- carelessness about material interests of all pier for him and for us if some of those men (of whom there are more in England than in any other land), who are so wealthy that their gold is positively a burden and an encumbrance, like too many coats in summer, had helped Dr. Carpenter at least a few years earlier, in some form that a man of high feeling might honorably accept? The other example that I shall mention is that of Franz Woepke, the mathematician and orientalist. A modest pension, supplied by an Italian prince who was interested in the history of mathematics, gave Woepke that peace which is incompatible with poverty, and enabled him to live grandly in his narrow lodging the noble intellectual life. Was not this rightly and well done, and probably a much more effectual employment of the power of gold than if that Italian prince had added some rare manuscripts to his own library without having time or knowledge to decipher them? I cannot but think that the rich may serve the cause of culture best by a judicious exercise of patronage—unless, indeed, they have within themselves the sense of that irresistible vocation which made Humboldt use his fortune as the servant of his high ambition. The Humboldts never are too rich; they possess their gold and are not possessed by it, and they are exempt from the duty of aiding others because they themselves have a use for all their powers.

Let me observe, to begin with, that although the pursuit of wealth is not favorable to the intellectual life, the inconveniences of poverty are even less favorable to it. We are sometimes lectured on the great benefits of necessity as a stimulant to exertion, and it is implied that comfortable people would go much farther on the road to distinction if they were made uncomfortable by having to think perpetually about money. Those who say this confound together the industry of the industrial and professional classes, and the labors of the more purely intellectual. It is clear that when the labor a man does is of such a nature that he will be paid for it in strict proportion to the time and effort he bestows, the need of money will be a direct stimulus to the best exertion he may be capable of. In all simple industrial occupations the need of money does drive a man forwards, and is often, when he feels it in early life, the very origin and foundation of his fortune. There exists, in such occupations, a perfect harmony between the present necessity and the ultimate purpose of the life. Wealth is the object of industry, and the first steps towards the possession of it are steps on the chosen path. The future captain of industry, who will employ thousands of workpeople and accumulate millions of money, is going straight

to his splendid future when he gets up at five will usually suffice to record the outcome of in the morning to work in another person's a month's research. factory.

Necessity, instead of advancing your studTo learn to be a builder of steam-ves-ies, stops them. Whenever her harsh voice sels, it is necessary, even when you begin speaks it becomes your duty to shut your with capital, to pass through the manual books, put aside your instruments, and do trades, and you will only learn them the bet- something that will fetch a price in the marter if the wages are necessary to your exist- ket. The man of science has to abandon the ence. Poverty in these cases only makes an pursuit of a discovery to go and deliver a intelligent man ground himself all the better popular lecture a hundred miles off, for in that stern practical training which is the which he gets five pounds and his railway basis of his future career. Well, therefore, fare. The student of ancient literature has may those who have reached distinguished to read some feeble novel, and give three days success in fields of practical activity extol the of a valuable life to write an anonymous review teachings of adversity. If it is a necessary which will bring him two pounds ten. The part of your education that you should ham- artist has to leave his serious picture to manmer rivets inside a steam-boiler, it is as well ufacture "pot-boilers," which will teach him that your early habits should not be over- nothing, but only spoil his hands and vitiate dainty. So it is observed that horny hands, in the colonies, get gold into them sooner than white ones.

Even in the liberal professions young men get on all the better for not being too comfortably off. If you have a comfortable private income to begin with, the meagre early rewards of professional life will seem too paltry to be worth hard striving, and so you will very likely miss the more ample rewards of maturity, since the common road to success is nothing but a gradual increase. And you miss education at the same time, for practice is the best of professional educators, and many successful lawyers and artists have had scarcely any other training. The daily habit of affairs trains men for the active business of the world, and if the purpose of their lives is merely to do what they are doing or to command others to do the same things, the more closely circumstances tie them down to their work, the better.

the public taste. The poet suspends his poem (which is promised to a publisher for Christmas, and will be spoiled in consequence by hurry at the last) in order to write newspaper articles on subjects of which he has little knowledge and in which he takes no interest. And yet these are instances of those comparatively happy and fortunate needy who are only compelled to suspend their intellectual life, and who can cheer themselves in their enforced labor with the hope of shortly renewing it. What of those others who are pushed out of their path forever by the buffets of unkindly fortune? Many a fine intellect has been driven into the deep quagmire, and has struggled in it vainly till death came, which but for that grim necessity might have scaled the immortal mountains.

This metaphor of the mountains has led me, by a natural association of ideas, to think of a writer who has added to our enjoyment of their beauty, and I think of him the more But in the higher intellectual pursuits the readily that his career will serve as an illusnecessity for immediate earning has an en-tration-far better than any imaginary catirely different result. It comes, not as an reer--of the very subject which just now oceducator, but as an interruption or suspension cupies my mind. Mr. Ruskin is not only one of education. All intellectual lives, however of the best instances, but he is positively the much they may differ in the variety of their very best instance except the two Humpurposes, have at least this purpose in com- boldts, of an intellectual career which has mon, that they are mainly devoted to self- been greatly aided by material prosperity, education of one kind or another. An intel- and which would not have been possible withlectual man who is forty years old is as much out it. This does not in the least detract at school as an Etonia. of fourteen, and if from the merit of the author of "Modern you set him to earn more money than that Painters," for it needed a rare force of resoluwhich comes to him without especial care tion, or a powerful instinct of genius, to lead about it, you interrupt his schooling, exactly the life of a severe student under every tempas selfish parents used to do when they sent tation to indolence. Still it is true that Mr. their young children to the factory and pre- Ruskin's career would have been impossible vented them from learning to read. The idea for a poor man, however gifted. A poor of the intellectual life is an existence passed man would not have had access to Mr. Rusalmost entirely in study, yet preserving the kin's materials, and one of his chief superiorresults of its investigations. A day's writing ities has always been an abundant wealth of

material. And if we go so far as to suppose to do their work well." Yes, this is the centhat the poor man might have found other tral passion cf all men of true ability, to do materials perhaps equivalent to these, we their work well; their happiness lies in that, know that he could not have turned them to and not in the amount of their profits, or that noble use. The poor critic would be im- even in their reputation. But then, on the mediately absorbed in the ocean of anony- other hand, they suffer indescribable mental mous periodical literature; he could not find misery when circumstances compel them to time for the incubation of great works. do their work less well than they know that, "Modern Painters," the result of seventeen under more favorable circumstances, they years of study, is not simply a work of gen- would be capable of doing it. The want of ius but of genius seconded by wealth. Close money is, in the higher intellectual pursuits, to it on my shelves stand four volumes which the most common hindrance to thoroughness are the monument of another intellectual life and excellence of work. De Sénancour, who, devoted to the investigation of nature. De in consequence of a strange concatenation of Saussure, whom Mr. Ruskin reverences as misfortunes, was all his life struggling in one of his ablest teachers, and whom all sincere students of nature regard as a model observer, pursued for many laborious years a kind of life which was not, and could not be, self-supporting in the pecuniary sense. Many other patient laborers, who have not the celebrity of these, work steadily in the same way, and are enabled to do so by the possession of independent fortune. I know one such who gives a whole summer to the examination of three or four acres of mountain-ground, the tangible result being comprised in a few memoranda, which, considered as literary material, might (in the hands of a skilled professional writer) just possibly be worth five pounds.

Not only do narrow pecuniary means often render high intellectual enterprises absolutely impossible, but they do what is frequently even more trying to the health and character, they permit you to undertake work that would be worthy of you if you might only have time and materials for the execution of it, and then spoil it in the doing. An intellectual laborer will bear anything except You may take away the very table he is writing upon, if you let him have a deal board for his books and papers; you may take away all his fine editions, if you leave him common copies that are legible; you may remove his very candlestick, if you leave him a bottle-neck to stick his candle in, and he will go on working cheerfully still. But the moment you do anything to spoil the quality of the work itself, you make him irritable and miserable. "You think," says Sir Arthur Helps, "to gain a good man to manage your affairs because he happens to have a small share in your undertaking. It is a great error. You want him to do something well which you are going to tell him to do. If he has been wisely chosen, and is an able man, his pecuniary interest in the matter will be mere dust in the balance, when compared with the desire which belongs to all such men

shallows, suffered not from the privations themselves, but from the vague feeling that they stunted his intellectual growth; and any experienced student of human nature must be aware that De Sénancour was right. With larger means he would have seen more of the world, and known it better, and written of it with riper wisdom. He said that the man "who only saw in poverty the direct effect of the money-privation, and only compared, for instance, an eight-penny dinner to one that cost ten shillings, would have no cenception of the true nature of misfortune, for not to spend money is the least of the evils of poverty." Bossuet said that he "had no attachment to riches, and still if he had only what is barely necessary, if he felt himself narrowed, he would lose more than half his talents." Sainte-Beuve said, "Only think a little what a difference there is in the starting point and in the employment of the faculties between a Duc de Luynes and a Sénancour." How many of the most distinguished authors have been dependent upon private means, not simply for physical sustenance, but for the opportunities which they afforded of gaining that experience of life which was absolutely essential to the full growth of their mental faculties. Shelley's writings brought him no profit whatever, and without a private income he could not have produced them, for he had not a hundred buyers. Yet his whole time was employed in study or in travel, which for him was study of another kind, or else in the actual labor of composition. Wordsworth tried become a London journalist and failed. A young man called Raisley Calvert died and left him 9007.; this saved the poet in Wordsworth, as it kept him till the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads," and afterwards other pieces of good luck happened to him, so that he could think and compose at leisure. Scott would not venture to devote himself to literature until he had first secured a comfortable income outside of it.

Poor Kepler struggled with constant anxie- little primer, beginning with the alphabet, adties, and told fortunes by astrology for a vancing to a, b, ab; b, a, ba; and even going livelihood, saying that astrology as the so far in history as to affirm that Adam was daughter of astronomy ought to keep her mother; but fancy a man of science wasting precious time over horoscopes! "I supplicate you," he writes to Mostlin, "if there is a situation vacant at Tubingen, do what you can to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine and other necessaries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to live on beans." He had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served any one who would pay him. His only tranquil time for study was when he lived in Styria, on his wife's income, a tranquillity that did not last for long, and never returned. How different is this from the princely ease of Tycho Brahe, who labored for science alone, with all the help that the ingenuity of his age could furnish! There is the same contrast, in a later generation, between Schiller and Goethe. Poor Schiller "wasting so much of his precious life in literary hack-work, translating French books for a miserable pittance;" Goethe, fortunate in his pecuniary independence as in all the other great circumstances of his life, and this at a time when the pay of authors was so miserable that they could hardly exist by the pen. Schiller got a shilling a page for his translations. Merck

the publisher offered three pounds sterling for a drama of Goethe. "If Europe praised me," Goethe said, “what has Europe done for me? Nothing. Even my works have been an expense to me."

The pecuniary rewards which men receive for their labor are so absurdly (yet inevitably) disproportionate to the intellectual power that is needed for the task, and also to the toil involved, that no one can safely rely upon the higher intellectual pursuits as a protection from money-anxieties. I will give you two instances of this disproportion, real instances, of men who are known to me personally. One of them is an eminent Englishman of most remarkable intellectual force, who for many years past has occupied his leisure in the composition of works that are valued by the thinking public to a degree which it would be difficult to exaggerate. But this thinking public is not numerous, and so in the year 1986 this eminent philosopher, "unable to continue losing money in endeavoring to enlighten his contemporaries, was compelled to announce the termination of his series." On the other hand, a Frenchman, also known to me personally, one day conceived the fortunate idea that a new primer might possibly be a saleable commodity. So he composed a

the first man and Abraham the father of the faithful. He had the wisdom to keep the copyright of this little publication, which employed (in the easiest of all imaginable literary labor) the evenings of a single week. It has brought him in, ever since, a regular income of 1207. a year, which, so far from showing any signs of diminution, is positively improving. This success encouraged the same intelligent gentleman to compose more literature of the same order, and he is now the enviable owner of several other such copyrights, all of them very valuable; in fact as good properties as house-leases in London. Here is an author who, from the pecuniary point of view, was incomparably more successful than Milton, or Shelley, or Goethe. If every intellectual man could shield his higher life by writing primers for children which should be as good as houseleases, if the proverb Qui peut le plus peut le moins were a true proverb, which it is not, then of course all men of culture would be perfectly safe, since they all certainly know the contents of a primer. But you may be able to write the most learned philosophical treatise and still not be able to earn your daily bread.

Consider, too, the lamentable loss of time which people of high culture incur in making experiments on public taste, when money becomes one of their main objects. Whilst they are writing stories for children, or elementary educational books which people of far inferior attainment could probably do much better, their own self-improvement comes to a standstill. If it could only be ascertained without delay what sort of work would bring in the money they require, then there would be some chance of apportioning time so as to make reserves for self-improvement; but when they have to write a score of volumes merely to ascertain the humor of the public, there is little chance of leisure. The life of the professional author who has no reputation is much less favorable to high culture than the life of a tradesman in moderately easy circumstances who can reserve an hour or two every day for some beloved intellectual pursuit.

Sainte-Beuve tells us that during certain years of his life he had endeavored, and had been able, so to arrange his existence that it should have both sweetness and dignity, writing from time to time what was agreeable, reading what was both agreeable and serious, cultivating friendships, throwing much of his mind into the intimate relations of every day, giving more to his friends than to the public,