issue so repulsive a task as that! You may answer that a stone-breaker on the roadside surpasses my line-engraver both in patience and in humility; but whereas the sensitiveness of the stone-breaker has been deadened by his mode of life, the sensitiveness of the engraver has been continually fostered and increased. An ugly picture was torture to his cultivated eye, and he had to bear the torture all day long, like the pain of an irritating disease.

dation of his sky will not come right; instead | and I found him seated at work before a of being a sound gradation like that of the thing which had nothing to do with fine art heavenly blue, it is all in spots and patches. -a medley of ugly portraits of temperance Then he goes to some clever artist who seems celebrities on a platform. "Ah!" he said to to get the right thing with enviable ease. "Is me sadly, "you see the dark side of our promy paper good? have my colors been prop- fession; fancy sitting down to a desk all day erly ground?" The materials are sound long for two years together with that thing enough, but the artist confesses one of the to occupy your thoughts! How much mordiscouraging little secrets of his craft. "The al fibre was needed to carry to a successful fact is," he says, "those spots that you complain of happen to all of us, and very troublesome they are, especially in dark tints; the only way is to remove them as patiently as we can, and it sometimes takes several days. If one or two of thein remain in spite of us, we turn them into birds." In etching, the most famous practitioners get into messes with the treacherous chemistry of their acids, and need an invincible patience. Even Méryon was always very anxious when the time came for confiding his work to what he called Still even the line-engraver has secret the traitresse liqueur; and whenever I give a sources of entertainment to relieve the morcommission to an etcher, I am always expect- tal tedium of his task-work. The picture ing some such despatch as the following: may be hideous, but the engraver has hidden “Plate utterly ruined in the biting. Very consolations in the exercise of his wonderful sorry. Will begin another immediately." art. He can at least entertain himself with We know what a dreadful series of mishaps attended our fresco-painters at Westminster, and now even the promising water-glass process, in which Maclise trusted, shows the bloom of premature decay. The safest and best known of modern processes, simple oilpainting has its own dangers also. The colors sink and alter; they lose their relative values; they lose their pearly purity, their glowing transparence-they turn to buff and black. The fine arts bristle all over with technical difficulties, and are, I will not say the best school of patience in the world, for many other pursuits are also very good schools of patience; but I will say, without much fear of contradiction from anybody acquainted with the subject, that the fine arts offer drudgery enough, and disappointment enough, to be a training both in patience and in humility.

feats of interpretative skill, with the gentle treacheries of improving here and there upon the hatefulness of the intolerable original. He may congratulate himself in the evening, that one more frightful hat or coat has been got rid of; that the tiresome task has been reduced by a space measurable in eights of an inch. The heaviest work which shows progress is not without one element of cheerfulness.

There is a great deal of intellectual labor, undergone simply for discipline, which shows no present result that is appreciable, and which therefore requires, in addition to patience and humility, one of the noblest of the moral virtues, faith. Of all the toils in which men engage, none are nobler in their origin or their aim than those by which they endeavor to become more wise. Pray observe that whenever the desire for greater wisdom In the labor of the line-engraver both these is earnest enough to sustain men in these qualities are developed to the pitch of perfect high endeavors, there must be both humility heroism. He sits down to a great surface of and faith-the humility which acknowledges steel or copper, and day by day, week after present insufficiency, the faith that relies week, month after month, ploughs slowly his upon the mysterious laws which govern our marvellous lines. Sometimes the picture be- intellectual being. Be sure that there has fore him is an agreeable companion; he is in been great moral strength in all who have sympathy with the painter; he enjoys every come to intellectual greatness. During some touch that he has to translate. But some- brief moments of insight the mist has rolled times, on the contrary, he hates the picture, away, and they have beheld, like a celestial and engraves it as a professional duty. I city, the home of their highest aspirations; happened to call upon a distinguished English but the cloud has gathered round them again, engraver a man of the greatest taste and and still in the gloom they have gone steadily knowledge, a refined and cultivated critic-forwards, stumbling often, yet maintaining

their unconquerable resolution. It is to this masters is a substitute for that inward dissublime persistence of the intellectual in other cipline which we all so greatly need, and ages that the world owes the treasures which which is absolutely indispensable to culture. they won; it is by a like persistence that we Whether a boy happens to be a dunce at may hope to hand them down, augmented, school or a youth of brilliant promise, his to the future. Their intellectual purposes did future intellectual career will depend very not weaken their moral nature, but exercised much on his moral force. The distinguished and exalted it. All that was best and high-men who derived so little benefit from early est in the imperfect moral nature of Giordano discipline have invariably subjected themBruno had its source in that noble passion for selves to a discipline of another kind which Philosophy, which made him declare that for prepared them for the labor of their manher sake it was easy to endure labor and pain hood. It may be a pure assumption to say and exile, since he had found "in brevi labore this, but the assumption is confirmed by diuturnam requiem, in levi dolore immensum every instance that is known to me. Many gaudium, in angusto exilio patriam amplis-eminent men have undergone the discipline simam."

LETTER II.

of business, many like Franklin have been self-disciplined, but I have never heard of a person who had risen to intellectual eminence without voluntary submission to an intellectual discipline of some kind.

There are, no doubt, great pleasures atTO AN UNDISCIPLINED WRITER. tached to the intellectual life, and quite pe Early indocility of great workers-External discipline only culiar to it; but these pleasures are the supa substitute for inward discipline-Necessity for inward discipline—Origin of the idea of discipline-Authors pecul- port of discipline and not its negation. They iarly liable to overlook its uses-Good examples-Sir Ar- give us the cheerfulness necessary for our thur Helps--Sainte-Beuve-The central authority in the work, but they do not excuse us from the mind-Locke's opinion-Even the creative faculty may work. They are like the cup of coffee served be commanded-Charles Baudelaire-Discipline in common trades and professions--Lawyers and surgeons-Hal- to a soldier on duty, not like the opium which ler-Mental refusals not to be altogether disregarded-- incapacitates for everything but dreaming. The idea of discipline the moral basis of the intellectual life-Alexander Humboldt.

I have been led into these observations by a perusal of the new book which you sent me. It has many qualities which in a young writer are full of promise. It is earnest, and lively, and exuberant, but at the same time it is un

SIR ARTHUR HELPS, in that wise book of his "Thoughts upon Government, says that "much of the best and greatest work in the world has been done by those who were any-disciplined. thing but docile in their youth." He believes Now I believe it may be affirmed, that althat "this bold statement applies not only to though there has been much literature in the greatest men in Science, Literature, and former ages which was both vigorous and unArt, but also to the greatest men in official disciplined, still when an age presents, as ours life, in diplomacy, and in the general busi- does, living examples of perfect intellectual ness of the world.' discipline, whoever falls below them in this respect contents himself with the very kind of inferiority which of all inferiorities is the easiest to avoid. You cannot, by an effort of the will, hope to rival the brilliance of a genius, but you may quite reasonably expect to obtain as complete a control over your own faculties and your own work as any other

Many of us who were remarkable for our indocility in boyhood, and remarkable for nothing else, have found much consolation in this passage. It is most agreeable to be told, by a writer very eminent both for wisdom and for culture, that our untowardness was a hopeful sign. Another popular modern writer has also encouraged us by giving a long highly-cultivated person. list of dunces who have become illustrious.

The origin of discipline is the desire to do Yet, however flattering it may be to find not merely our best with the degree of power ourselves in such excellent company, at least and knowledge which at the time we do actso far as the earlier half of life may be con-ually happen to possess, but with that which cerned, we cannot quite forget the very nuwe might possess if we submitted to the necmerous instances of distinguished persons essary training. The powers given to us by who began by submitting to the discipline of school and college, and gained honors and reputation there, before encountering the competition of the world.

The external discipline applied by school

Nature are little more than a power to be come, and this becoming is always conditional on some sort of exercise-what sort we have to discover for ourselves.

No class of persons are so liable to overlook

the uses of discipline as authors are. Any-sex), you have a chaos of complete confusion; body can write a book, though few can write when the authority without being absent is that which deserves the name of literature. not strong enough to regulate the lively acThere are great technical differences between tivity of the intellectual forces, you have too literature and book-making, but few can much energy in one direction, too little in anclearly explain these differences, or detect, in other, a brigade where a regiment could have their own case, the absence of the necessary done the work, and light artillery where you qualities. In painting, the most perfect finish want guns of the heaviest calibre. is recognized at a glance, but the mind only To establish this central authority it is only can perceive it in the book. It was an odd necessary, in any vigorous and sound mind, notion of the authorities to exhibit literature to exercise it. Without such a central power in the international exhibitions; but if they there is neither liberty of action nor security could have made people see the difference be- of possession. "The mind," says Locke, tween sound and unsound workmanship in "should always be free and ready to turn itthe literary craft, they would have rendered self to the variety of objects that occur, and a great service to the higher intellectual dis- allow them as much consideration as shall, cipline. Sir Arthur Helps might have served for that time, be thought fit. To be engrossed as an example to English writers, because he so by one subject as not to be prevailed on to has certain qualities in which we are griev- leave it for another that we judge fitter for ously deficient. He can say a thing in the our contemplation, is to make it of no use to words that are most fit and necessary, and us. Did this state of mind always remain so, then leave it. Sainte-Beuve would have been every one would, without scruple, give it the another admirable example of self-discipline, name of perfect madness; and whilst it does especially to Frenchmen, who would do well last, at whatever intervals it returns, such a to imitate him in his horror of the à peu près. rotation of thoughts about the same object no He never began to write about anything until more carries us forward toward the attainhe had cleared the ground well before him.ment of knowledge, than getting upon a millHe never spoke about any character or doc-horse whilst he jogs on his circular track, trine that he had not bottomed (to use Locke's would carry a man on a journey." word) as far as he was able. He had an ex- Writers of imaginative literature have traordinary aptitude for collecting exactly found in practice that even the creative facthe sort of material that he needed, for ar- ulty might be commanded. Charles Bauderanging and classifying material, for perceiv- laire, who had the poetical organization with ing its mutual relations. Very few French-all its worst inconveniencies, said neverthemen have had Sainte-Beuve's intense repug- less that “ inspiration is decidedly the sister nance to insufficiency of information and in- of daily labor. These two contraries do not accuracy of language. Few indeed are the exclude each other more than all the other French journalists of whom it might be said, | contraries which constitute nature. Inspiraas it may be truly said of Sainte-Beuve, that tion obeys like hunger, like digestion, like he never wrote even an article for a newspaper without having subjected his mind to a special training for that particular article. The preparations for one of his Lundis were the serious occupation of several laborious days; and before beginning the actual composition, his mind had been disciplined into a state of the most complete readiness, like the fingers of a musician who has been practising a piece before he executes it.

sleep. There is, no doubt, in the mind a sort of celestial mechanism, of which we need not be ashamed, but we ought to make the best use of it. If we will only live in a resolute contemplation of next day's work, the daily labor will serve inspiration." In cases where discipline is felt to be very difficult, it is generally at the same time felt to be very desirable. George Sand complains that although "to overcome the indiscipline of her brain, The object of intellectual discipline is the she had imposed upon herself a regular way establishment of a strong central authority of living, and a daily labor, still twenty times in the mind by which all its powers are regu-out of thirty she catches herself reading or lated and directed as the military forces of a dreaming, or writing something entirely nation are directed by the strategist who arranges the operations of a war. The presence of this strong central authority is made manifest in the unity and proportion of the results; when this authority is absent (it is frequently entirely absent from the minds of undisciplined persons, especially of the female

apart from the work in hand." She adds that without this frequent intellectual flânerie, she would have acquired information which has been her perpetual but unrealized desire.

It is the triumph of discipline to overcome both small and great repugnances. We bring ourselves, by its help, to face petty details

that are wearisome, and heavy tasks that are In the attempt to subject ourselves to the almost appaling. Nothing shows the power inward law, we may encounter a class of menof discipline more than the application of the tal refusals which indicate no congenital inmind in the common trades and professions capacity, but prove that the mind has been into subjects which have hardly any interest in capacitated by its acquired habits and its orthemselves. Lawyers are especially admir- dinary occupations. I think that it is particable for this. They acquire the faculty of ularly important to pay attention to this resolutely applying their minds to the dryest class of mental refusals, and to give them the documents, with tenacity enough to end in fullest consideration. Suppose the case of a the perfect mastery of their contents; a feat man who has a fine natural capacity for paintwhich is utterly beyond the capacity of any ing, but whose time has been taken up by undisciplined intellect, however gifted by some profession which has formed in him menNature. In the case of lawyers there are fre- tal habits entirely different from the mental quent intellectual repugnances to be over- habits of an artist. The inborn capacity for come; but surgeons and cther men of science art might whisper to this man, "What if you have to vanquish a class of repugnances even were to abandon your profession and turn less within the power of the will-the instinc-painter?" But to this suggestion of the intive physical repugnances. These are often born capacity the acquired unfitness would, so strong as to seem apparently insurmount- in a man of sense, most probably reply, "No; able, but they yield to persevering discipline. Although Haller surpassed his contemporaries in anatomy, and published several important anatomical works, he was troubled at the outset with a horror of dissection beyond what is usual with the inexperienced, and it was only by firm self-discipline that he became an anatomist at all.

painting is an art bristling all over with the most alarming technical difficulties, which I am too lazy to overcome; let younger men attack them if they like." Here is a mental refusal of a kind which the severest self-disciplinarian ought to listen to. This is Nature's way of keeping us to our specialities; she protects us by means of what superficial moralists condemn as one of the minor vices-the disinclination to trouble ourselves without necessity, when the work involves the acquisition of new habits.

There is, however, one reserve to be made about discipline, which is this: We ought not to disregard altogether the mind's preferences and refusals, because in most cases they are the indication of our natural powers. They The moral basis of the intellectual life apare not so always; many have felt attracted pears to be the idea of discipline; but the disto pursuits for which they had no capacity cipline is of a very peculiar kind, and varies (this happens continually in literature and with every individual. People of original the fine arts), whilst others have greatly dis-power have to discover the original discipline tinguished themselves in careers which were that they need. They pass their lives in not of their own choosing, and for which they thoughtfully altering this private rule of confelt no vocation in their youth. Still there exists a certain relation between preference and capacity, which may often safely be relied upon when there are not extrinsic circumstances to attract men or repel them. Discipline becomes an evil, and a very serious evil, causing immense losses of special talents to the community, when it overrides the personal preferences entirely. We are less in danger of this evil, however, from the discipline which we impose upon ourselves than from that which is imposed upon us by the opinion of the society in which we live. The intellectual life has this remarkable peculiarity as to discipline, that whilst very severe discipline is indispensable to it, that which it really needs is the obedience to an inward law, an obedience which is not only compatible with revolt against other people's notions of what the intellectual man ought to think and do, but which often directly leads to such revolt as its own inevitable result.

duct as their needs alter, as the legislature of a progressive State makes unceasing alterations in its laws. When we look back upon the years that are gone, this is our bitterest regret, that whilst the precious time, the irrecoverable, was passing by so rapidly, we were intellectually too undisciplined to make the best personal use of all the opportunit.es that it brought. Those men may be truly esteemed happy and fortunate who can say to themselves in the evening of their days—“I had so prepared myself for every successive enterprise, that when the time came for it to be carried into execution my training ensured success."

I had thought of some examples, and there are several great men who have left us noble examples of self-discipline; but, in the range and completeness of that discipline, in the foresight to discern what would be wanted, in the humility to perceive that it was wanting, in the resolution that it should not be wanting

when the time came that such knowledge or possess nine-tenths of the qualifications that faculty should be called for, one colossal fig- are necessary to the highest intellectual life— ure so far excels all others that I cannot write they have brilliant gifts of nature; they are down their names with that of Alexander well-educated; they take a delight in the exHumboldt. The world sees the intellectual ercise of noble faculties, and yet instead of greatness of such a man, but does not see the employing their time and talents to help the substantial moral basis on which the towering intellectual advancement of mankind, they structure rose. When I think of his noble do all in their power to retard it. They have dissatisfaction with what he knew; his cease- many most respectable virtues, but one is less eagerness to know more, and know it bet-wanting. They have industry, perseverance, ter; of the rare combination of teachableness discipline, but they have not disinterestedthat despised no help (for he accepted without ness.

LETTER III.

jealousy the aid of everybody who could as- I do not mean disinterestedness in its ordisist him), with self-reliance that kept him al-nary sense as the absence of selfish care about ways calm and observant in the midst of per- money. The Church of Rome has thousands sonal danger, I know not which is the more of devoted servants who are content to labor magnificent spectacle, the splendor of the in- in her cause for stipends so miserable that it tellectual light, or the beauty and solidity of is clear they have no selfish aim; whilst they the moral constitution that sustained it. abandon all those possibilities of fortune which exist for every active and enterprising layman. But their thinking can never be disinterested so long as their ruling motive is devotion to the interests of their Church. Some of them are personally known to me, and we have discussed together many of the greatest questions which agitate the continental nations at the present time. They have plenty of intellectual acumen; but The most essential virtue is disinterestedness-The other vir- whenever the discussion touches, however retues possessed by the opponents of intellectual liberty-motely, the ecclesiastical interests that are The Ultramontane party-Difficulty of thinking disinter- dear to them, they cease to be observersestedly even about the affairs of another nation-English It is this newspapers do not write disinterestedly about foreign af- they become passionate advocates. fairs-Difficulty of disinterestedness in recent history-habit of advocacy which debars them from Poets and their readers feel it--Fine subjects for poetry all elevated speculation about the future of in recent events not yet available-Even history of past the human race, and which so often induces

TO A FRIEND WHO SUGGESTED THE SPECULATION "WHICH OF THE MORAL VIRTUES WAS MOST ESSENTIAL TO THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE."

times rarely disinterested---Advantages of the study of the dead languages in this respect--Physicians do not trust their own judgment about their personal health-The

them to take a side with incapable and retrograde governments, too willingly overlooking their deficiencies in the expectation of services to the cause. Their predecessors have impeded, as far as they were able, the early growth of science-not for intellectual reasons, but because they instinctively felt that there was something in the scientific spirit not favorable to those interests which they placed far above the knowledge of mere matter.

virtue consists in endeavoring to be disinterested. I THINK there cannot be a doubt that the most essential virtue is disinterestedness. Let me tell you, after this decided answer, what are the considerations which have led me to it. I began by taking the other important virtues one by one-industry, perseverance, courage, discipline, humility, and the rest; and then asked myself whether any class of persons possessed and cultivated I have selected the Ultramontane party in these virtues who were nevertheless opposed the Church of Rome as the most prominent to intellectual liberty. The answer came im- example of a party eminent for many intelmediately, that there have in every age been lectual virtues, and yet opposed to the intelmen deservedly respected for these virtues lectual life from its own want of disinterestedwho did all in their power to repress the free ness. But the same defect exists, to some de action of the intellect. What is called the gree, in every partisan-exists in you and Ultramontane party in the present day in- me so far as we are partisans. Let us supcludes great numbers of talented adherents pose, for example, that we desired to find out who are most industrious, most persevering, the truth about a question much agitated in a who willingly submit to the severest discip-neighboring country at the present time-the line-who are learned, self-denying, and question whether it would be better for that humble enough to accept the most obscure country to attempt the restoration of its anand ill-requited duties. Some of these men cient Monarchy or to try to consolidate a Re