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PERSONAL DUTIES.

[Part IV.

of his native city, Konigsberg. Heyne, the celebrated classicalscholar and editor, in the Memoirs of his own life, says, —•“ Want was the earliest companion of my childhood. I well re-member the painful impressions made on my mind by witnessingthe distress of my mother, when without food for her children.”The father of Sir Humphrey Davy pursued the employmentof a carver, at Penzance, in Cornwall, and from this humbleorigin, the son became the most renowned and successful chem-ist of the present century. Vauquelin, the celebrated Frenchchemist, was apprenticed to an apothecary, and acquired theLatin language by tearing the leaves from an old dictionary,and always having some of them in his hand, when traversing thestreets with medicines, and executing other commissions in hismaster’s service. These examples are fitted to give an impulseto the energies of those who are most industrious and most enter-prising. When we look into the lives of such men, the cause oftheir success is no longer a secret to us ; we cease to be sur-prised at the distinctions which they won. When we observethe series of struggles, which they endured amidst poverty, ob-scurity, and neglect, their disciplined passions, their love ofknowledge, their firmness of purpose, and their unconquerablezeal and perseverance, we perceive, that their success has follow-ed in the train of their exertions by the ordinary law of cause andeffect.

But it is not necessary to resort to foreign sources to illustratethe importance of cultivating the faculties of the mind, and therewards which wait on such cultivation. The history of no na-tion on earth more abounds with instructive examples of this kindthan our own. The circumstances under which the celebratedRoger Sherman rose to eminence and distinguished usefulness,have been noticed in another connexion.* David Rittenhousewas entirely self-taught in mechanics. When he took up thebusiness of a mathematical instrument and clock maker, he mademany implements of his trade with his own hands. From theage of nineteen to twenty-five, he applied himself unremittinglyto his trade and his studies, devoting the day to the former, and

See above, p. 228.