Self Help | Page 5

the very first rank as a philosopher, excelling even his master,
Sir Humphry Davy, in the art of lucidly expounding the most difficult
and abstruse points in natural science.
Among those who have given the greatest impulse to the sublime
science of astronomy, we find Copernicus, the son of a Polish baker;
Kepler, the son of a German public-house keeper, and himself the
"garcon de cabaret;" d'Alembert, a foundling picked up one winter's
night on the steps of the church of St. Jean le Rond at Paris, and
brought up by the wife of a glazier; and Newton and Laplace, the one
the son of a small freeholder near Grantham, the other the son of a poor
peasant of Beaumont-en-Auge, near Honfleur. Notwithstanding their
comparatively adverse circumstances in early life, these distinguished
men achieved a solid and enduring reputation by the exercise of their
genius, which all the wealth in the world could not have purchased. The
very possession of wealth might indeed have proved an obstacle greater
even than the humble means to which they were born. The father of
Lagrange, the astronomer and mathematician, held the office of
Treasurer of War at Turin; but having ruined himself by speculations,
his family were reduced to comparative poverty. To this circumstance
Lagrange was in after life accustomed partly to attribute his own fame
and happiness. "Had I been rich," said he, "I should probably not have
become a mathematician."
The sons of clergymen and ministers of religion generally, have
particularly distinguished themselves in our country's history. Amongst
them we find the names of Drake and Nelson, celebrated in naval
heroism; of Wollaston, Young, Playfair, and Bell, in science; of Wren,
Reynolds, Wilson, and Wilkie, in art; of Thurlow and Campbell, in law;
and of Addison, Thomson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, and Tennyson, in
literature. Lord Hardinge, Colonel Edwardes, and Major Hodson, so
honourably known in Indian warfare, were also the sons of clergymen.
Indeed, the empire of England in India was won and held chiefly by

men of the middle class--such as Clive, Warren Hastings, and their
successors--men for the most part bred in factories and trained to habits
of business.
Among the sons of attorneys we find Edmund Burke, Smeaton the
engineer, Scott and Wordsworth, and Lords Somers, Hardwick, and
Dunning. Sir William Blackstone was the posthumous son of a silk-
mercer. Lord Gifford's father was a grocer at Dover; Lord Denman's a
physician; judge Talfourd's a country brewer; and Lord Chief Baron
Pollock's a celebrated saddler at Charing Cross. Layard, the discoverer
of the monuments of Nineveh, was an articled clerk in a London
solicitor's office; and Sir William Armstrong, the inventor of hydraulic
machinery and of the Armstrong ordnance, was also trained to the law
and practised for some time as an attorney. Milton was the son of a
London scrivener, and Pope and Southey were the sons of linendrapers.
Professor Wilson was the son of a Paisley manufacturer, and Lord
Macaulay of an African merchant. Keats was a druggist, and Sir
Humphry Davy a country apothecary's apprentice. Speaking of himself,
Davy once said, "What I am I have made myself: I say this without
vanity, and in pure simplicity of heart." Richard Owen, the Newton of
Natural History, began life as a midshipman, and did not enter upon the
line of scientific research in which he has since become so
distinguished, until comparatively late in life. He laid the foundations
of his great knowledge while occupied in cataloguing the magnificent
museum accumulated by the industry of John Hunter, a work which
occupied him at the College of Surgeons during a period of about ten
years.
Foreign not less than English biography abounds in illustrations of men
who have glorified the lot of poverty by their labours and their genius.
In Art we find Claude, the son of a pastrycook; Geefs, of a baker;
Leopold Robert, of a watchmaker; and Haydn, of a wheelwright; whilst
Daguerre was a scene-painter at the Opera. The father of Gregory VII.
was a carpenter; of Sextus V., a shepherd; and of Adrian VI., a poor
bargeman. When a boy, Adrian, unable to pay for a light by which to
study, was accustomed to prepare his lessons by the light of the lamps
in the streets and the church porches, exhibiting a degree of patience

and industry which were the certain forerunners of his future distinction.
Of like humble origin were Hauy, the mineralogist, who was the son of
a weaver of Saint-Just; Hautefeuille, the mechanician, of a baker at
Orleans; Joseph Fourier, the mathematician, of a tailor at Auxerre;
Durand, the architect, of a Paris shoemaker; and Gesner, the naturalist,
of a skinner or worker in hides, at Zurich. This last began his career
under all the disadvantages attendant on poverty, sickness, and
domestic calamity;