is always their reward. In other pursuits, the most unremitting endeavours often fail to secure the object sought; that object, being generally some worldly advantage, is equally within the grasp of other competitors, some one of whom may snatch it away before it can be reached by him who best deserves it. But in the pursuit of knowledge it matters not how many be the competitors. No one stands in the way of another, or can deprive him of any part of his chance, we should rather say of his certainty, of success; on the contrary, they are all fellowworkers, and may materially help each other forward. The wealth which each seeks to acquire has, as it were, the property of multiplying itself to meet the wants of all. But it is not merely as a direction for the student that we ought to account the lesson valuable which teaches how much every man has it in his power to do for himself, if he will but set resolutely about the doing of it; it is still more valuable as a moral lesson. Indeed, if knowledge were not itself one of the supports of morality, it would not be worthy of the commendations which have universally been bestowed upon it; nor would its diffusion deserve the warm encouragement it has uniformly received from an enlightened philanthropy. But though it is not true that the man who has accomplished himself in science or literature is always a more virtuous character than he who is without any intellectual culture, there can be no doubt of the generally humanizing and elevating tendency of a devotion to such pursuits. And, more especially, must the best effects be experienced from this dedication of his faculties by him whom it compels to learn and practise, to an extraordinary extent, the duties of steadiness, diligence, husbanding of time, concentration of attention, and every other quality which depends upon the exercise of selfcommand or self-denial. In learning these virtues he learns what is more precious than any knowledge, and will go farther to render him a useful and even influential member of society than if he were to make himself master of all the learning that ever was stored up in libraries. He removed to Edinburgh in the year 1758, and all he had to depend on while attending college was one guinea a quarter, which he earned in the capa THUS far had Professor Craik carried his first series of very important and practical examples of the Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties. In adding a few more names, it is impos-city of tutor. The details of his sible, in the brief space at our command, to include all those which might be expected to appear in a collection like the present, that may either have been omitted in the previous section or have been supplied by more recent times. Thus we have only selected a very few of the more prominent and notable names supplied by recent times, by way of supplement. The first example we shall notice is that of ALEXANDER ADAM, the eminent grammarian and writer on Roman antiquities, who was born at Coats of Burgie, in the parish of Rafford, Morayshire, in 1741. His father was a small farmer, and young Adam had to assist in such farm work as keeping cattle. He attended the parish school, and aimed at one of the learned professions. system of life at this period are thus given by his biographer, Mr. Henderson: 'He lodged in a small room at Restalrig, in the north-eastern suburbs; and for this accommodation he paid fourpence a week. All his meals, except dinner, uniformly consisted of oatmeal made into porridge, together with smallbeer, of which he only allowed himself half a bottle at a time. When he wished to dine, he purchased a penny loaf at the nearest baker's shop; and, if the day was fair, he would despatch his meal in a walk to the Meadows or Hope Park, which is adjoining to the southern part of the city; but if the weather was foul, he had recourse to some long and lonely stair, which he would climb, eating his dinner at every step. By this means all expense for cookery was avoided; and he wasted neither coal nor candles, for when he was chill he used to run till his blood began to glow, and his evening studies were always prosecuted under the roof of some one or other of his companions.' Before his twenty-first year he was engaged as a teacher in George Watson's Hospital, Edinburgh, and was afterwards successful in gaining the post of head teacher in this establishment. Here he remained for three years. In addition to his daily duties, he now studied the classics most assiduously, reading carefully and in a critical manner the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Cicero, and Livy. He began to collect around him also such books as were required in the prosecution of these studies. Adam, it is said, was still at this time silently preparing himself for the ministry; but another door being opened to him as assistant and probable successor to the rector of the High School, through the influence of Mr. Kincaid, then Lord Provost, Adam secured the appointment. Adam found the whole of the responsibility devolving upon him in 1771. Mr. Matheson, the retired rector, however, drew the whole of the salary given by the town (about £30), in addition to £20 withdrawn from the school fees, which left the newly appointed master with a bare enough subsistence to begin with. The time when Adam assumed this respectable office,' writes Mr. Robert Chambers, was very fortunate. Every department of knowledge in Scotland was at this period adorned by higher names than had ever before graced it; and hence the office of master in the principal elementary school of the country presented to a man of superior qualifications a fair opportunity of distinguishing himself. This opportunity was not lost upon Mr. Adam. He devoted himself with singular assiduity to his laborious duties; and, under his auspices, the school gradually increased in numbers and reputation. Soon after his appointment, he began to compose a series of works adapted to facilitate the study of the Latin language. His Rudiments of Latin and English Grammar were published in 1772, and, though composed in a style which appeared to the generality of teachers as a dreadful schism and heresy, met with the approbation of a discerning few, whose praise was sufficient to overbalance the censure of the multitude. 'The next work of Dr. Adam is entitled A Summary of Geography and History; but the date of the first edition is not mentioned by his biographer. In 1791 he published his excellent compendium of Roman Antiquities. For the copyright of this work he received £600. His Classical Biography made its appearance in 1800, and half of the above sum was given for the copyright. Dr. Adam's last, and perhaps his most laborious, work was his Latin Dictionary, published in 1805. the marks of habitual temperance. He must have been generally attractive in his early days; and in his old age, his manners and conversation enhanced the value and interest of every qualification. When he addressed his scholars, when he commended excellence, or when he was seated at his own fireside with a friend on whom he could rely, it was delightful to be near him; and no man could leave his company without declaring that he loved Dr. Adam.' John Brown, M.D., Edinburgh, in his reminiscences of his father, the late John Brown, D.D., gives the following remarkable example of talent and learning which had come under the notice of this divine in 'Of Dr. Adam it may be said that he would have proved, if any proof had been wanting, the possibility of rising to distinction in this country from any grade of life, and through whatsoever intervening difficulties. In 1758 and 1759 he was a student, living at the inconceivably humble rate of four guineas a year; in ten years thereafter he had qualified himself for, and attained, a situation which in Scotland is an object of ambition to men of considerable literary rank. The principal features of his character were unshaken indepen-his congregation at Biggar:dence and integrity, ardour in the cause of public liberty, the utmost purity of manners and singleness of heart, and a most indefatigable power of application to the severest studies. His external appearance was that of a scholar who dressed neatly for his own sake, but who had never incommoded himself with fashion in the cut of his coat, or in the regulation of his gait. Upon the street he often appeared in a studious attitude, and in winter always walked with his hands crossed and thrust into his sleeves. His features were regular and manly, and he was above the middle size. In his well-formed proportions, and in his firm, regular pace, there appeared 'He often said, with deep feeling, that one thing put him always on his mettle, the knowledge that "yonder in that corner under the gallery sat, Sabbath after Sabbath, a man who knew his Greek Testament better than I did." This was his brother-in-law, and one of his elders, married to his sister Violet, a merchant and portioner in Biggar, a remarkable man, of whom it is difficult to say to strangers what is true without being accused of exaggeration. A shopkeeper in that remote little town, he not only intermeddled fearlessly with all knowledge, but mastered more than many practised and university men do in their own lives. Mathematics, astronomy, called selenology, or the doctrine of the moon, and the higher geometry and physics; Hebrew, Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin, to the veriest rigours of prosody and metre ; Spanish and Italian, German, French, and any odd language that came in his way,all these he knew more or less thoroughly, and acquired them in the most leisurely, easy, cool sort of way, as if he grazed and browsed perpetually in the field of letters, rather than made formal meals, or gathered for any ulterior purpose, his fruits, his roots, and his nuts-he especially liked mental nuts-much less bought them from any one. and especially what may be ing weaver, who had the night before leistered a prime kipper at Rachan Mill by the flare of a tarry wisp, or brought home his surreptitious grey hen, or maukin, from the wilds of Dunsyre or the dreary Lang Whang. This singular man came to the manse every Friday evening for many years; and he and my father discussed everything and everybody, - beginning with tough, strong head work-a bout at wrestling, be it Cæsar's Bridge, the Epistles of Phalaris, the import of pév and dé, the Catholic question, or the great roots of Christian faith; ending with the latest joke in the town or the West Raw, the last effusion by Affleck, tailor and poet, the last blunder of Æsop the apothecary, and the last repartee of the village fool, with the week's Edinburgh and Glasgow news by their respective carriers; the whole little life, sad and humorous-who had been born, and who was dying or dead, married or about to be-for the past eight days.' 'With all this, his knowledge of human and especially of Biggar human nature, the ins and outs of its little secret ongoings, the entire gossip of the place, was like a woman's; moreover, every personage great or small, heroic or comic, in Homer whose poems he made it a matter of conscience to read once every four yearsPlautus, Suetonius, Plutarch, Tacitus, and Lucian, down through Boccaccio and Don Quixote, which he knew by heart and from the living-He had now acquired so much Spanish, to Joseph Andrews, of Greek as encouraged him to the Spectator, Goldsmith and hope that he might at length be Swift, Miss Austen, Miss Edge- prepared to reap the richest of worth, and Miss Ferrier, Galt, all rewards which classical learnand Sir Walter, he was as ing could confer on him, the familiar with as with David capacity of reading in the orig Crockat the nailer, or the parish inal tongue the blessed New minister, the town drummer, Testament of our Lord and the mole-catcher, or the poach- Saviour. Full of this hope, he In the memoir of Dr. John Brown of Haddington, the celebrated scholar and commentator, the following anecdote is related: |