W. A. MOZART.
Two years later, the proud father took Wolfgang and his sister on a concert tour to Vienna. So well did the boy play, that the Empress Maria Theresa held him in her arms, and kissed him heartily. Oneday as he was walking between two of her daughters, he slipped on the polished floor and fell. Marie Antoinette, afterward Empress of France, raised him up, whereupon he said, "You are very kind; I will marry you." The father was alarmed at this seeming audacity; but the lovely Princess playfully kissed him.
The next year he was taken to Paris, and here two sets of sonatas, the works of a boy of seven, were brought out, dedicated to Marie Antoinette. The children sat at the royal table, poems were written about them, and everywhere they excited wonder and admiration; yet so excessively modest was young Mozart, that he cried when praised too much. In London, Bach took the boy between his knees, and alternately they played his own great works and those of Handel at sight. Royalty gave them "gold snuffboxes enough to set up a shop," wrote home the father; "but in money I am poor." Wolfgang was now taken ill of inflammatory fever; but he could not give up his music. A board was laid across the bed, and on this he wrote out his thoughts in the notes. Finally, with ardor dampened at their lack of pecuniary success, Leopold Mozart took his dear ones back to quiet Salzburg.
Here the cold archbishop, discrediting the reports of the boy's genius, shut him up alone for a week to compose an oratorio, the text furnished by himself. Mozart, only ten years old, stood the test brilliantly. The next year a second tour was takento Vienna, to be present at the marriage of the Archduchess Maria Josepha. The bride died from smallpox shortly after their arrival: and poor Wolfgang took the disease, and was blind for nine days. When he recovered, the musicians, moved by envy and jealousy, would not be outdone by a boy of twelve, who was equally at home in German or Italian opera, and determined to hiss off the stage whatever he might compose. Sad at heart, and disappointed, again the Mozarts went back to the old home.
Two years later, after much self-sacrifice, the father took his boy to Italy for study. The first day in Passion Week they went to the Sistine Chapel to hear the famous "Miserere" of Allegri, which was considered so sacred, that the musicians were forbidden to take home any part of it, or copy it out of the chapel, on pain of excommunication. Wolfgang, as soon as he reached his lodgings, wrote it out from memory; which remarkable feat for a boy of fourteen astonished all Rome. So wonderfully did he play, that the audience at Naples declared there was witchcraft in the ring which he wore on his left hand, and he was obliged to remove it. At Milan, when he was nearly fifteen, he composed the opera "Mithridate," conducting it himself, which was given twenty nights in succession to enthusiastic audiences. After this came requests for operas from Maria Theresa, Munich, and elsewhere. He was busy every moment. Overworked,he was often ill; but the need for money to meet heavy expenses made constant work a necessity. All this time he wrote beautiful letters to his mother and sister. "Kiss mamma's hand for me a thousand billion times," is the language of his loving heart. He could scarcely be said to have had any childhood; but he kept his tenderness and affection to the last of his life.
After their return to Salzburg, finding the new archbishop even less cordial than the old—the former had allowed Wolfgang the munificent salary of five dollars and a fourth yearly!—it was deemed wise to try to find a new field for employment. The father, now sixty years of age, must earn a pittance for the family by giving music-lessons, while the mother accompanied the son to Paris. The separation was a hard one for the devoted father, who could not say good-by to his idolized son, and poor Nannerl wept the whole day long. Mozart, now twenty-one, and famous, well repaid this affection by his pure character. He wrote: "I have God always before me. Whatever is according to his will is also according to mine; therefore I cannot fail to be happy and contented."
Stopping for a time at Mannheim, he attempted to gain the position of tutor to the elector's children, but was disappointed. Here he fell in love with Aloysia Weber, a pretty girl of fifteen, whose father, a prompter at the National Theatre, earned only two hundred dollars yearly for the support ofhis wife and six children. The girl had a fine voice; and Mozart, blinded by love, asked no higher joy than to write operas in which she might be the star. The good old father, who had spent all his life in helping his son to win fame, was nearly heart-broken when he learned of this foolish affection, and wrote him tenderly but firmly: "Off with you to Paris; get the great folks on your side;aut Cæsar, aut nihil. From Paris, the name and fame of a man of great talent goes through the whole world."
The young man, carrying out his childish motto, "God first, and then papa," reluctantly started for Paris. Here he did not meet with great success, for scores of applicants waited for every position. His loving mother soon died, perhaps from over economy in her cold, dark lodgings; and the young musician took his lonely way back to Salzburg, begging his father's consent to his stopping at Mannheim to see the Webers. Finding that Aloysia had gone upon the stage at Munich, he hastened to see her. She had been offered a good salary. Meantime Mozart had won no new laurels at Paris. He was small in stature, and poor; and the girl who wept at his departure a few months previously professed now scarcely to have seen his face before. The young lover, cut to the heart, yet proud, seated himself at the piano, and played,
"I leave the girl gladly who cares not for me,"
"I leave the girl gladly who cares not for me,"
and then hastened away to Salzburg. Aloysia married a comedian, and lived a most unhappy life, gaining some fame from singing the music which Mozart wrote for her.
He remained at home for a year and a half, till called to Munich to write the opera "Idomeneo," and later to Vienna. Here, unfortunately, he met the Webers again, and, their father having died, he boarded in their house, and gave lessons to Constance, a younger sister of Aloysia. She was a plain, good-hearted girl, without much energy, but with a great appreciation of her gifted teacher. The result came naturally; he fell in love with the penniless girl, and, despite the distress of his aged father at his choice, married her when he was twenty-six and she eighteen.
Henceforward there was no hope of any thing save the direst poverty. To marry without love is a grave mistake; to marry simply for love is sometimes a mistake equally grave. He could of course do nothing now for his aged father or sister. Unsteady employment, a rapidly-increasing family, and a wife ill most of the time, made the struggle for existence ten times harder than before his marriage. Once when he had prepared to visit his father for the first time after the wedding, and had waited months for the necessary funds, he was arrested for a debt of fifteen dollars, just as he was stepping into the carriage.
The Emperor Joseph said to him one day, "Whydid you not marry a rich wife?" With dignity Mozart at once replied, "Sire, I trust that my genius will always enable me to support the woman I love"; but unfortunately it did not. He wrote after his marriage: "The moment we were made one, my wife as well as myself began to weep, which touched every one, even the priest, and they all cried when they witnessed how our hearts were moved." How little they dreamed that they should weep more seriously when hunger stared their six children in the face!
From the time of his marriage till his death, nine years, says Rev. Mr. Haweis, "his life can be compared to nothing but a torch burning out rapidly in the wind." It was a period of incessant, astonishing labor. He dedicated six quartets to his dear friend Joseph Haydn, who said, "Mozart is the greatest composer who has ever lived"; wrote "Figaro" when he was twenty-nine, which had the greatest popularity, "Don Giovanni" at thirty-one, and the "Flauto Magico" gratis, for the benefit of the theatre director, who was in want. The two latter creations were hailed with delight. Goethe wrote to Schiller later of "Don Giovanni," "That piece stands entirely alone; and Mozart's death has rendered all hope of any thing like it idle."
Whenever he appeared at the theatre, he was called upon the stage from all parts of the house; yet all this time he could not earn enough to live. He received only a hundred dollars from his "DonGiovanni," and less for the others. He gave lessons every hour he could spare, concerts in the open air, borrowed from his friends, scrimped himself, to send money to his sick wife at Baden, pawned his silver plate to make one more unsuccessful journey to win the aid of indifferent princes, and fainted often at his tasks after midnight. Still he wrote to "the best and dearest wife of my heart," "If I only had a letter from you, all would be right," and promised her to work harder than ever to earn money.
When Constance was at home with him, if he left her in the morning before she awakened, he would leave a note for her with the words, "Good-morning, my darling wife. I shall be at home at — o'clock precisely." Once when she had been ill for eight months, and Mozart was composing beside her as she slept, suddenly a noisy messenger entered. Alarmed lest his wife should be disturbed, he rose hastily, when the penknife in his hand fell, and buried itself in his foot. Without a word escaping his lips, he left the room, a surgeon was called, and, though lame for some time, the wife was not told of the accident.
His compositions found few purchasers, for the people generally could not comprehend them. Publishers' shops were closed to him, unless he would write in the popular style. "Then I can make no more by my pen," he said bitterly, "and I had better starve and go to destruction at once." So poor had his family become, that, with no fuel in thehouse, he and his wife were found by a friend, waltzing to keep warm.
About this time a sepulchral-looking man called to ask that a "Requiem" be written on the death of the wife of an Austrian nobleman, who was to be considered the author, and thus his intense grief be shown, though manifested through a lie. Mozart consulted with his wife, as was his custom, and, as she indorsed it, he accepted the commission for fifty dollars. Overworked, harassed by debts which he could not pay, hurt at the jealousies and intrigues of several musicians, disappointed at the reception of his new opera at Prague, his hopeful nature forsook him, and he told Constance that the "Requiem" would be written for himself.
In the midst of this wretchedness their sixth child was born. The poor wife forgot her own sorrows, and prevailed upon him to give up work for a time; but the active brain could not rest, and he wrote as he lay on his sick-bed. On the day before he died, Dec. 4, 1791, at two o'clock, he persisted in having a portion of the "Requiem" sung by the friends who stood about his bed, and, joining with them in the alto, burst into tears, saying, "Did I not say that I was writing the 'Requiem' for myself?" Soon after he said, "Constance, oh that I could only hear my 'Flauto Magico!'" and a friend playing it, he was cheered.
A messenger now arrived to tell him that he was appointed organist at St. Stephen's Cathedral, aposition for which he had longed for years; but it came too late. Death was unwelcome to him. "Now must I go," he said, "just as I should be able to live in peace; I must leave my family, my poor children, at the very instant in which I should have been able to provide for their welfare." Cold applications were ordered by the physicians for his burning head; he became delirious for two hours, and died at midnight, only thirty-five years old. Constance was utterly prostrated, and threw herself upon his bed, hoping to die also.
Mozart's body was laid beside his piano, and then, in a pouring rain, buried in a "common grave," in the plainest manner possible, with nobody present except the keepers of the cemetery. Weeks after, when the wife visited the spot, she found a new grave-digger, who could not tell where her beloved husband was buried, and to this day the author of fourteen Italian operas, seventeen symphonies, and dozens of cantatas and serenades, about eight hundred compositions in all, sleeps in an unknown grave. The Emperor Leopold aided her in a concert to raise fifteen hundred dollars to pay her husband's debts, and provide a little for herself. Eighteen years afterward she married the Danish councillor, Baron von Missen, who educated her two sons, four other children having died. Salzburg waited a half-century before she erected a bronze statue to her world-renowned genius, in the Square of St. Michael; and, seventy years after his death, Viennabuilt him a monument in the Cemetery of St. Mark. History scarcely furnishes a more pathetic life. He filled the world with music, yet died in want and sorrow.
SAMUEL JOHNSON.
In a quaint old house in Lichfield, England, now used as a draper's shop, Samuel Johnson, son of a poor bookseller and bookbinder, was born. Here, as in Westminster Abbey, a statue is erected to his memory. Near by is the schoolhouse where Addison and Garrick studied.
When Samuel was two and a half years old, diseased with scrofula, his good mother, with ten dollars sewed in her skirt so that nobody could steal it, took him to London that, with two hundred others, he might be touched by Queen Anne, and thus, as superstitious people believed, be healed. On this journey she bought him a silver cup and spoon. The latter he kept till his dying-day, and parted with the cup only in the dire poverty of later years.
The touch of the Queen did no good, for he became blind in one eye; with the other he could not see a friend half a yard off, and his face was sadly disfigured. Being prevented thus from sharing the sports of other boys, much time was spent in reading. He was first taught at a little school kept by Widow Oliver, who years after, when hewas starting for Oxford, brought him a present of gingerbread, telling him he was the best scholar she ever had. After a time he studied Latin under a master who "whipped it into him." The foolish teacher would ask the boy the Latin word for candlestick, or some unexpected thing, and then whip him, saying, "This I do to save you from the gallows!"
Naturally indolent, Samuel had to struggle against this tendency. He had, however, the greatest ambition to excel, and to this he attributed his later success. He was also inquisitive, and had a wonderful memory. When he wore short dresses, his mother gave him the Prayer-Book one day, and, pointing to the Collect, said, "You must get this by heart." She went up stairs, but no sooner had she reached the second floor than she heard him following. He could repeat it perfectly, having looked it over but twice. He left school at sixteen, spending two years at home in helping his parents, and studying earnestly. One day, his father, being ill, asked him to go to a neighboring town and take his place in selling books at a stall on market-day. He was proud, and did not go. Fifty years afterward, in his greatness, then an old man, he went to this stall, and, with uncovered head, remained for an hour in the rain where his father had formerly stood, exposed to the sneers of the bystanders and the inclemency of the weather. It showed the repentance of a noble soul for disobedience to a parent.
At nineteen, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, where he acted as servant. He used to go daily to his friend Taylor, and get lectures second-hand, till his feet, showing through his worn-out shoes, were perceived by the students, and he ceased going. A rich young man secretly put a pair of new shoes at his door, which he indignantly threw out of the window. He was willing to work and earn, but would not receive charity. At the end of three years he became so poor that he was obliged to leave college, his father dying soon after.
After various experiences, he sought the position of usher at a school, but was refused because it was thought that the boys would make fun of his ugliness. He finally obtained such a place, was treated with great harshness, and left in a few months. Strange to say, the poor, lonely scholar, only twenty-six, now fell in love with a widow forty-eight years old. After obtaining his mother's consent, he married her, and the union proved a most happy one. With the little money his wife possessed, he started a school, and advertised for pupils; but only three came, and the school soon closed. In despair he determined to try London, and see if an author could there earn his bread. In that great city he lived for some time on nine cents a day. One publisher to whom he applied suggested to him that the wisest course would be to become a porter and carry trunks.
A poem written at this time, entitled "London,"for which he received fifty dollars, one line of which was in capital letters,
"SLOW RISES WORTH BY POVERTY DEPRESSED,"
"SLOW RISES WORTH BY POVERTY DEPRESSED,"
attracted attention; and Pope, who was then at the height of his fame, asked Dublin University to give to the able scholar the degree of M.A., that he might thus be able to take the principalship of a school, and earn three hundred dollars a year; but this was refused. Out of such struggles come heroic souls.
When he was forty, he published the "Vanity of Human Wishes," receiving seventy-five dollars, asserted by many to be the most impressive thing of its kind in the language. The lines,
"There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail,"
"There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail,"
show his struggles. A drama soon after, played by the great actor, David Garrick, brought him nearly a thousand dollars; but the play itself was a failure. When asked by his friends how he felt about his ill success, he replied, "Like the monument," meaning that he continued firm and unmoved, like a column of granite. Fame was coming at last, after he had struggled in London for thirteen years—and what bitterness they had brought!
For two years he worked almost constantly on a paper called the "Rambler." When his wife said that, well as she had thought of him before, she had never considered him equal to this, he wasmore pleased than with any praise he ever received. She died three days after the last copy was published, and Johnson was utterly prostrated. He buried himself in hard work in his garret, a most inconvenient room; but he said, "In that room I never saw Mrs. Johnson." Her wedding-ring was placed in a little box, and tenderly kept till his death.
Three years afterward, his great work, his Dictionary, appeared, for which he received eight thousand dollars; but, as he had been obliged to employ six assistants for seven years, he was still poor, but now famous. The Universities of Oxford and Dublin, when he no longer needed their assistance, hastened to bestow their degrees upon him. Even George III. invited him to the royal palace,—a strange contrast to a few years before, when Samuel Johnson was under arrest for a debt of thirty dollars! When asked by Reynolds how he had obtained his accuracy and flow of language in conversation, he replied, "By trying to do my best on every occasion and in every company." About this time his aged mother died, and in the evenings of one week, to defray her funeral expenses, he wrote "Rasselas," and received five hundred dollars for it. He wrote in his last letter to her, "You have been the best mother, and I believe the best woman, in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have omitted to dowell." His last great work was "The Lives of the Poets."
He received now a pension of fifteen hundred dollars a year, for his valuable services to literature, but never used more than four hundred dollars for himself. He took care of a blind woman of whom he said, "She was a friend to my poor wife, and was in the house when she died, she has remained in it ever since," of a mother and daughter dependent upon an old family physician, and of two men whom nobody else would care for. Once when he found a poor woman on the street late at night, he took her home, and kept her till she was restored to health. His pockets were always filled with pennies for street Arabs; and, if he found poor children asleep on a threshold, he would slip money into their hands that, when they awakened, they might buy a breakfast. When a servant was dying who had been in the family for forty-three years, he prayed with her and kissed her, the tears falling down his cheeks. He wrote in his diary, "We kissed and parted—I humbly hope to meet again, and part no more." He held, rightly, that Christianity levels all distinctions of rank.
He was very tender to animals. Once, when in Wales, a gardener brought into the house a hare which had been caught in the potatoes, and was told to give it to the cook. Dr. Johnson asked to have it placed in his arms; then, taking it to thewindow, he let it go, shouting to it to run as fast as possible. He would buy oysters for his cat, Hodge, that the servants, from seeing his fondness for it, might be led to treat it kindly.
He died at the age of seventy-five, such men as Burke and Reynolds standing by his bedside. Of the latter, he begged that he would "read his Bible, and never paint on Sundays." His last words were to a young lady who had asked his blessing: "God bless you, my dear!" He was buried with appropriate honors in Westminster Abbey, and monuments are erected to him in St. Paul's Cathedral, and at Lichfield. The poor boy, nearly blind, became "the brightest ornament of the eighteenth century."
On a low slab in a quiet spot, just north of the Church of Knight Templars, in London, are the simple words, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith." The author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" needs no grander monument; for he lives in the hearts of the people.
Oliver Goldsmith was born in Pallas, Ireland, in 1728, the son of a poor minister, who, by means of tilling some fields and assisting in a parish outside his own, earned two hundred dollars a year for his wife and seven children! When about six years old, Oliver nearly died of smallpox, and his pitted face made him an object of jest among the boys. At eight he showed great fondness for books, and began to write verses. His mother pleaded for a college education for him, but there seemed little prospect of it. One day, when a few were dancing at his uncle's house, the little boy sprang upon the floor and began to dance. The fiddler, to make fun of his short figure and homely face, exclaimed, "Æsop!" The boy, stung to the quick, replied:—
"Heralds, proclaim aloud! all saying,'See Æsop dancing and his monkey playing;'"
"Heralds, proclaim aloud! all saying,'See Æsop dancing and his monkey playing;'"
when, of course, the fiddler became much chagrined.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
All his school life Oliver was painfully diffident, but a good scholar. His father finally earned a better salary, and the way seemed open for college, when, lo! his sister, who had the opportunity of marrying a rich man, was obliged—so thought the public opinion of the day—to have a marriage portion of $2,000, and poor Oliver's educational hopes were blasted. He must now enter Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar (servant), wear a coarse black gown without sleeves, a red cap,—the badge of servitude,—sweep the courts, carry dishes, and be treated with contempt, which nearly crushed his sensitive nature.
A year and a half later his father died, and his scanty means ceased from that source. To keep from starving he wrote ballads, selling them to street musicians at $1.25 apiece, and stole out at night to hear them sung. Often he shared this pittance with some one more wretched than himself. One cold night he gave his blankets to a person with five children, and crawled into the ticking of his bed for warmth. When a kind friend, who often brought him food, came in the morning, he was obliged to break in the door, as Goldsmith could not extricate himself from his bed.
Obtaining a small scholarship, he gave a little party in his room in honor of the event. A savagetutor appeared in the midst of the festivities, and knocked him down. So incensed was Goldsmith that he ran away from college, and with twenty-five cents in his pocket started for Cork. For three days he lived on eight cents a day, and, by degrees, parted with nearly all his clothes for food.
Though wholly unfitted for the ministry, Goldsmith was urged by his relatives to enter the church, because he would then have a living. Too young to be accepted, he remained at home for two years, assisting his brother Henry in the village school; and then offering himself as a candidate, was refused, it was said, because he appeared before the right reverend in scarlet trousers! After being tutor for a year, his uncle gave him $250, that he might go to Dublin and study law. On arriving, he met an old friend, lost all his money in playing cards with him, and, ashamed and penniless, returned and begged the forgiveness of his relative.
A little more money was given him, and with this he studied medicine in Edinburgh for over a year, earning later some money by teaching. Afterward he travelled in Italy and France, begging his way by singing or playing on his flute at the doors of the peasants, returning to England at twenty-eight years of age without a cent in his pocket. Living among the beggars in Axe Lane, he asked to spread plasters, or pound in the mortars of the apothecaries, till, finally, a chemist hired him out of pity. Through the aid of a fellow-student, he finally opened a doctor's office, but few came to a stranger, and these usually so poor as to be unable to pay.
Attending one day upon a workman, he held his hat close to his breast, so as to cover a big patch in his second-hand clothes, while he felt the patient's pulse. Half guessing the young doctor's poverty, the sick man told him about his master, the author of the famous old novel, "Clarissa Harlowe," and how he had befriended writers. Goldsmith at once applied for work, and became press corrector in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street.
Later he was employed as a reviewer on a magazine. Being obliged to submit all his reviews to an illiterate bookseller and his wife, the engagement soon came to an end. He lived now in a garret, was dunned even for his milk-bill, wrote a book for a college friend, under whose name it was published, and began a work of his own, "Polite Learning in Europe," writing to a wealthy relative for aid to publish, which letter was never answered, though it was greatly regretted after Goldsmith became famous.
With no hope in London, he was promised a position in the East Indies. Life began to look bright, though his Fleet Street garret, with one chair, was surrounded by swarms of children and dirt. The promise was not kept, and he applied for the position of hospital mate. His clothes being too poor for him to be seen on the streets, he pledged the money to be received for four articles, bought a new suit, went up to the court of examiners, andwas rejected! Had any of these positions been obtained, the world, doubtless, would never have known the genius of Oliver Goldsmith.
He went back to his garret to write, pawned his clothes to pay the landlady, who was herself to be turned out of the wretched lodgings, sold his "Life of Voltaire" for twenty dollars, and published his "Polite Learning in Europe," anonymously. The critics attacked it, and Goldsmith's day of fame had dawned at last. "The Citizen of the World," a good-natured satire on society, next appeared, and was a success. Dr. Johnson became his friend, and made him a member of his club with Reynolds, Burke, and other noted men. The "Traveller" was next published, with an immense sale. Goldsmith now moved into the buildings which bear his name, near Temple Church, and, for once, had flowers and green grass to look out upon.
He was still poor, doubtless spending what money he received with little wisdom. His landlady arrested him for room-rent, upon hearing which, Dr. Johnson came at once to see him, gave him money, took from his desk the manuscript of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and sold it to a publisher for three hundred dollars. This was the fruit of much labor, and the world received it cordially. Some of his essays were now reprinted sixteen times. What a change from the Fleet Street garret!
The "Deserted Village" was published five years later, Goldsmith having spent two whole years inreviewing it after it was written, so careful was he that every word should be the best that could be chosen. This was translated at once into German by Goethe, who was also a great admirer of the "Vicar of Wakefield." He also wrote an English History, a Roman, a Grecian, several dramas, of which "She Stoops to Conquer" was the most popular, and eight volumes of the "History of the Earth and Animated Nature," for which he received five hundred dollars a volume, leaving this unfinished.
Still in debt, overworked, laboring sometimes far into the morning hours, not leaving his desk for weeks together, even for exercise, Goldsmith died at forty-five, broken with the struggle of life, but with undying fame. When he was buried, one April day, 1774, Brick Court and the stairs of the building were filled with the poor and the forsaken whom he had befriended. His monument is in the Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey, the greatest honor England could offer. True, she let him nearly starve, but she crowned him at the last. He conquered the world by hard work, kindness, and a gentleness as beautiful as his genius was great.
In the heart of busy London, over a stable, lived James and Margaret Faraday, with their four little children. The father was a blacksmith, in feeble health, unable to work for a whole day at a time, a kind, good man to his household; the mother, like himself, was uneducated, but neat and industrious, and devoted to her family. The children learned the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic at school, and then, of course, were obliged to earn their living.
Michael, the third child, born 1791, became, at thirteen years of age, an errand-boy in a bookseller's shop. His first duty was to carry newspapers in the morning to customers, who read them for an hour or two for a trifle, a penny probably, and then gave them to the newsboy to be re-loaned. Often on Sunday morning the patrons would say, "You must call again," forgetting that the next place might be a mile away, and that the young boy was quite as desirous as they, to go to church with his parents. Years after this, when he had become famous the world over, he said, "I alwaysfeel a tenderness for those boys, because I once carried newspapers myself."
MICHAEL FARADAY.
The following year, 1805, he was apprenticed to a bookseller for seven years, to learn the trade of binding and selling books. Here was hard work before him till he was twenty-one; not a cheerful prospect for one who loved play as well as other boys. Whenever he had a spare moment, he was looking inside the books he was binding. Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations in Chemistry" delighted him; and when he was given the "Encyclopedia Britannica" to bind, the article on Electricity seemed a treasure-house of wonders. He soon made an electrical machine,—not an expensive one,—simply a glass vial, and other apparatus of a similar kind; and afterwards with a real cylinder. These cost only a few pence a week, but they gave a vast amount of pleasure to the blacksmith's son.
One day he saw in a shop-window a notice that a Mr. Tatum was to give at his own house some lectures on Natural Philosophy. The charge for each was twenty-five cents. No bookseller's apprentice would have such an amount of money to spend weekly as that. However, his brother Robert, three years older, himself a blacksmith, with some pride, perhaps, that Michael was interested in such weighty matters, furnished the money, and a lodger at the home of the bookseller taught him drawing, so that he might be able, in taking notes, to illustrate the experiments. He attended the lectures,wrote them out carefully in a clear hand, bound them in four volumes, and dedicated them to his employer.
A customer at the shop had become interested in a boy who cared so much for science, and took him to hear four lectures given by Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution. This was an unexpected pleasure. He was beginning to sigh for something beyond book-binding. "Oh, if I could only help in some scientific work, no matter how humble!" he thought to himself. He says in his journal, "In my ignorance of the world, and simplicity of my mind, I wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society." No answer was ever returned to the request for a situation. Could the president have realized that some day ten thousand people would know the name of Michael Faraday where one knew the name of Sir Joseph Banks, probably he would have answered the boy's letter. Blessings on the great man or woman who takes time, however briefly, to answer every letter received! Such a man was Garfield, and such is Whittier. A civil question demands a civil answer, whether the person addressed be king or peasant.
About the time his apprenticeship ended, in 1812, he summoned courage to write directly to the great Sir Humphry Davy, sending the full notes he had made at that gentleman's lectures. Sir Humphry, possibly remembering that he, too, had been a poor boy, the son of a widowed milliner, wrote a politenote, saying, that "Science was a harsh mistress, and, in a pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarding those who devoted themselves to her service;" that he was going out of town, but would see if he could some time aid him.
Meantime Michael was making crude galvanic experiments. He bought some malleable zinc, cut out seven plates, each the size of a half-penny, covered these with the copper half-pennies, placing between them six pieces of paper soaked in a solution of muriate of soda, and with this simple battery, decomposed sulphate of magnesia. So pleased was he that he wrote a letter to one of his boy friends, telling of the experiment, and adding, "Time is all I require. Oh, that I could purchase at a cheap rate some of our modern gent's spare hours, nay, days! I think it would be a good bargain, both for them and for me." The youth had learned the first secret of success,—not to waste time; not to throw it away on useless persons or useless subjects.
He had learned another secret, that of choosing right companions. To this same young friend, Abbott, he wrote, "A companion cannot be a good one, unless he is morally so. I have met a good companion in the lowest path of life, and I have found such as I despised in a rank far superior to mine.... I keep regular hours, and enter not intentionally into pleasures productive of evil." London's highest circles possessed no purer spirit than this young mechanic.
Faraday now began work at his trade of book-binding for a Frenchman in London, who, having no children, promised him the business, if he would remain with him always; but the employer's temper was so hasty that the position became almost unbearable. The young man was growing depressed in spirits, when one night, just as he was preparing for bed, a loud knock on the door startled him. On looking out of the window, he espied a grand carriage, with a footman in livery, who left a note. This was a request from Sir Humphry Davy to see him in the morning. Was there, then, the possibility of a place in the Royal Institution? Between conflicting hopes and fears, he went to sleep, and in the morning hastened to see the great chemist. The result was an engagement at six dollars a week, with two rooms at the top of the house! He was to clean the instruments, move them to and from the lecture-room, and in all ways to make himself useful. Now he could say good-by to book-binding; and, though six dollars a week was not a munificent sum, yet he could actually handle beautiful instruments,—not copper half-pence and bits of zinc,—and could listen to stimulating lectures.
And now work began in earnest. He joined the City Philosophical Society, an association of thirty or forty persons in moderate circumstances, who met each Wednesday evening, one of their number giving a lecture. Then a half dozen friends cametogether once a week to read, criticise, and correct each other in pronunciation and conversation. How eagerly would such a young man have attended college! There was no opportunity to hear polished talk in elegant drawing-rooms, no chance to improve manners in so-called "best society." He did what is in the power of everybody,—he educated himself. Did he not need recreation after the hard day's work? Every person has to make his choice. Amusements do not make scholars: pleasure and knowledge do not go hand in hand. Faraday chose the topmost story of the Royal Institution, and books for companions, and immortal fame was the result.
The experiments with Davy soon became absorbing, and often dangerous. Now they extracted sugar from beet-root; now they treated chloride of nitrogen, wearing masks of glass upon their faces, which, notwithstanding, were sometimes badly cut by the explosions. Seven months after this, Sir Humphry decided to travel upon the Continent, and asked Faraday to be his amanuensis. This was a rare opportunity for the young assistant. For a year and a half they visited France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, climbing Vesuvius, enjoying art-galleries, and meeting the learned and famous of the age. The journey had its disagreeable side; for Faraday was made more or less a servant by Davy and his sometimes inconsiderate wife; but it had great and lasting advantages for one who had never been but twelve miles from London.
His heart turned longingly back to the poor ones he had left behind. He wrote to his mother, "The first and last thing in my mind is England, home, and friends. When sick, when cold, when tired, the thoughts of those at home are a warm and refreshing balm to my heart.... These are the first and greatest sweetness in the life of man.... I am almost contented except with my ignorance, which becomes more visible to me every day." And again, "I have several times been more than half decided to return hastily home: I am only restrained by the wish of improvement." To his sister he wrote, "Give my love with a kiss to mother, the first thing you do on reading this letter, and tell her how much I think of her." To Abbott he wrote something intended for his eyes only, but headed, "I do not wish that my mother should remain ignorant of it. Ihave no secrets from her." His heart bounded with joy at the prospect of meeting them again, and "enjoying the pleasure of their conversation, from which he had been excluded." No absorption in science could make him outgrow his parents and his humble home.
On his return to England his salary was increased to $500 yearly, and he was promoted to Laboratory Assistant. He was now twenty-four. He had noted carefully Davy's researches in iodine and chlorine, had seen him develop his safety-lamp, which has proved an untold blessing to miners, had made many experiments from his own thinking;and now he too was to give his first course of six lectures before his friends in the City Philosophical Society, on Chemical Affinity, and kindred topics. He wrote them out with great care; for whatever he did was well done. This year he published his first paper in the "Quarterly Journal of Science" on caustic lime. Encouraged by the approving words of Sir Humphry, the following year he wrote six papers for the "Quarterly," giving his experiments with gases and minerals, and gave another course of lectures before the Philosophical Society. To improve himself in delivering these, he attended lectures on oratory, taking copious notes.
Seven years had now gone by in his apprenticeship to Science. He had published thirty-seven papers in the "Quarterly," had a book ready for the press, on the alloys of steel, and had read a paper before the Royal Society itself, on two new compounds of chlorine and carbon, and a new compound of iodine, carbon, and hydrogen. But the young and now brilliant student had other weighty matters in hand. Five years before this, he had written in his diary:
"What is't that comes in false, deceitful guise,Making dull fools of those that 'fore were wise?'Tis love.What's that the wise man always strives to shun,Though still it ever o'er the world has run?'Tis love."
"What is't that comes in false, deceitful guise,Making dull fools of those that 'fore were wise?'Tis love.What's that the wise man always strives to shun,Though still it ever o'er the world has run?'Tis love."
But now, whether he tried to shun it or no, he became thoroughly in love with Sarah Barnard, anintelligent and sweet-tempered girl, the daughter of a silversmith. Distracted by fears lest he might not win her, he wrote her. "In whatever way I can best minister to your happiness, either by assiduity or by absence, it shall be done. Do not injure me by withdrawing your friendship, or punish me for aiming to be more than a friend by making me less."
The girl showed this to her father, who replied that love made philosophers say very foolish things. She hesitated about accepting him, and went away to the seaside to consider it; but the ardent lover followed, determined to learn the worst if need be. They walked on the cliffs overhanging the ocean, and Faraday wrote in his journal as the day drew near its close, "My thoughts saddened and fell, from the fear I should never enjoy such happiness again. I could not master my feelings, or prevent them from sinking, and I actually at last shamed myself by moist eyes." He blamed himself because he did not know "the best means to secure the heart he wished to gain." He knew how to fathom the depths of chemical combinations, but he could not fathom the depths of Sarah Barnard's heart.
At last the hour of her decision came; and both were made supremely happy by it. A week later he wrote her, "Every moment offers me fresh proof of the power you have over me. I could not at one time have thought it possible that I, that any man, could have been under the dominion of feelings soundivided and so intense: now I think that no other man can have felt or feel as I do." A year later they were married very quietly, he desiring their wedding day to be "just like any other day." Twenty-eight years later he wrote among the important dates and discoveries of his life, "June 12, 1821, he married,—an event which, more than any other, contributed to his earthly happiness and healthful state of mind. The union has nowise changed, except in the depth and strength of its character."
For forty-seven years "his dear Sarah" made life a joy to him. He rarely left home; but if so, as at the great gathering of British Scientists at Birmingham, he wrote back, "After all, there is no pleasure like the tranquil pleasure of home; and here, even here, the moment I leave the table, I wish I were with youIN QUIET. Oh, what happiness is ours! My runs into the world in this way only serve to make me esteem that happiness the more."
And now came twenty years in science that made Faraday the wonder and ornament of his age. Elected an F.R.S., he began at once twelve lectures in Chemical Manipulation before the London Institution, six on Chemical Philosophy before the Royal Society, published six papers on electromagnetism, and began a course of juvenile lectures which continued for nineteen years. This was one of the beautiful things of Faraday's life,—a great man living in a whirl of work, yet taking time tomake science plain to the young. When asked at what age he would teach science, he replied that he had never found a child too young to understand him. For twenty years he lectured at the Royal Academy at Woolwich, became scientific adviser to the government with regard to lighthouses and buoys, not for gain, but for the public good, drew all London to his eloquent lectures with his brilliant experiments, Prince Albert attending with his sons; and published one hundred and fifty-eight scientific essays and thirty series of "Experimental Researches in Electricity," which latter, says Dr. Gladstone, "form one of the most marvellous monuments of intellectual work; one of the rarest treasure-houses of newly-discovered knowledge, with which the world has ever been enriched."
He not only gathered into his vast brain what other men had learned of science, but he tested every step to prove the facts, and became, says Professor Tyndall, "the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen." He loved science as he loved his family and his God, and played with Nature as with a petted child. When he lectured, "there was a gleaming in his eyes which no painter could copy, and which no poet could describe. His audience took fire with him, and every face was flushed."
In his earlier discoveries in compressing gases into liquids, he obtained from one thousand cubic feet of coal gas one gallon of fluid from which hedistilled benzine. In 1845 the chemist Hofman found this same substance in coal-tar, from which come our beautiful aniline dyes.
After eighteen years of studying the wonderful results of Galvani's discovery at the University of Bologna, that the legs of a dead frog contract under the electric current; and of Volta, in 1799, with his voltaic pile of copper, zinc, and leather, in salt-water; and of Christian Oersted at the University of Copenhagen; and Ampère and Arago, that electricity will produce magnets, Faraday made the great discovery of magneto-electricity,—that magnets will produce electricity. At once magneto-electric machines were made for generating electricity for the electric light, electro-plating, etc. This discovery, says Professor Tyndall, "is the greatest experimental result ever attained by an investigator, the Mont Blanc of Faraday's achievements."
Soon after he made another great discovery, that of electric induction, or that one electric current will induce another current in an adjoining wire. Others had suspected this, but had sought in vain to prove it. The Bell telephone, which Sir William Thompson calls "the wonder of wonders," depends upon this principle. Here no battery is required; for the vibration of a thin iron plate is made to generate the currents. After this, Faraday proved that the various kinds of electricity are identical; and that the electricity of the Voltaic pile is produced by chemical action, and not by contact ofmetals, as Volta had supposed. The world meantime had showered honors upon the great scientist. Great Britain had made him her idol. The Cambridge Philosophical Society, the Institution of Civil Engineers, of British Architects, of Philosophy and of Medicine, and the leading associations of Scotland had made him an honorary member. Paris had elected him corresponding member of all her great societies. St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, Palermo, Modena, Lisbon, Heidelberg, Frankfort, and our own Boston and Philadelphia had sent tokens of admiration. Eminent men from all the world came to see him.
How proud his mother must have felt at this wonderful success! She was not able to enter into her son's pursuits from lack of early education; but she talked much about him, calling him ever, "my Michael"; and would do nothing whatever without his advice. He supported her in her declining years; and she seemed perfectly happy. His father had died in his boyhood; but Faraday ever honored his occupation. He used to say, "I love a smith-shop, and anything relating to smithing. My father was a blacksmith."
He was now forty-nine. The overtaxed brain refused to work longer. Memory was losing her grasp, and but for the sweet and careful presence of Sarah Faraday, the life-work would doubtless have been finished at this time. She took him to Switzerland, where he walked beside the lakes andover the mountains with "my companion, dear wife, and partner in all things." For four years he made scarcely any experiments in original research, and then the tired brain seemed to regain its wonted power, and go on to other discoveries.
An Italian philosopher, Morichini, was the first to announce the magnetizing power of the solar rays. Mrs. Somerville covered one-half of a sewing-needle with paper, and exposed the other half to the violet rays. In two hours the exposed end had acquired magnetism. Faraday, by long and difficult experiments, showed the converse of this: he magnetized a ray of light,—an experiment "high, beautiful, and alone," says Mr. Tyndall. He also showed the magnetic condition of all matter.
He was always at work. He entered the laboratory in the morning, and often worked till eleven at night, hardly stopping for his meals. He seldom went into society, for time was too precious. If he needed a change, he read aloud Shakspeare, Byron, or Macaulay to his wife in the evening, or corresponded with Herschel, Humboldt, and other great men. In the midst of exhausting labors he often preached on the Sabbath, believing more earnestly in the word of God the more he studied science.
When he was sixty-four the great brain began to show signs of decline. Belgium, Munich, Vienna, Madrid, Rome, Naples, Turin, Rotterdam, Upsala, Lombardy, and Moscow had sent him medals, or made him a member of their famous societies.Napoleon III. made him commander of the Legion of Honor, a rare title; and the French exhibition awarded him the grand medal of honor. The Queen asked him to dine with her at Windsor Castle, and, at the request of Prince Albert her husband, she presented him with a lovely home at Hampton Court.
At seventy-one he wrote to Mrs. Faraday from Glasgow, "My head is full, and my heart also; but my recollection rapidly fails. You will have to resume your old function of being a pillow to my mind, and a rest,—a happy-making wife." Still he continued to make able reports to the government on lighthouses, electric machines, steam-engines, and the like.
And then for two years the memory grew weaker, the body feebler, and he was, as he told a friend, "just waiting." He died in his chair in his study, August 25th, 1867, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Westminster Abbey would have opened her doors to him, but he requested to be buried "in the simplest earthly place, with a gravestone of the most ordinary kind." On a plain marble slab in the midst of clustering ivy are his name and the dates of his birth and death. One feels a strange tenderness of heart as he stands beside this sacred spot where rests one, who, though elected to seventy societies, and offered nearly one hundred titles and tokens of honor, said he "would remain plain Michael Faraday to the last."
Wonderful man! great in mind, noble in heart, and gentle in manner, having brought a strong nature under the most complete discipline. His energy, his devotion to a single object, his untiring work, and his beautiful character carried the blacksmith's son to the highest success.
A little way from London, England, at Denmark Hill, looking toward the Crystal Palace, is a mansion which is fit for royalty. The grounds, covering from thirty to forty acres, are beautifully terraced, dotted here and there with lakelets, fountains, and artificial caverns, while the great clumps of red rhododendron, yellow laburnum, pink hawthorne, and white laurel make an exquisitely colored picture. The home itself is spacious and inviting, with its elegant conservatory and rare works of art. The owner of this house, Sir Henry Bessemer, is cordial and gracious; and from his genial face and manner, no one would imagine that his life had been one long struggle with obstacles.
Born in Charlton, a little county town in Hertfordshire, Jan. 19, 1813, he received the rudiments of an education like other boys in the neighborhood. His father, Anthony Bessemer, an inventor, seeing that his son was inclined to mechanics, bought him, in London, a five-inch foot-lathe, and a book which described the art of turning. Day after day, in the quiet of his country home, he studied and practised turning, and modelling in clay.