ments, they rested not until they had fought their way to the instruction for which they longed. Their example also shows that many of those impediments, which, in ordinary cases, altogether prevent the pursuit of knowledge, are impediments only to the indolent or unaspiring, who make, in truth, their poverty or their low station bear the blame which ought properly to be laid upon their own irresolution or indifference. It was not wealth or ease which these noble enthusiasts sought; it was the bondage and degradation of ignorance alone from which they panted to emancipate themselves. All they wanted was an opportunity of acquiring that knowledge, which might lift them to a higher station in society, but would certainly elevate their moral and intellectual being, and bring them an inexhaustible multitude of gratifications, such as no wealth, no station, no worldly circumstances whatever, could confer. Some of them, as we have remarked, even continued to work at their original employments long after they had obtained that superior education which might have entitled them to aspire to a higher place; and we shall have to quote numerous other instances, in the sequel, of persons who, although possessed of the highest mental cultivation, have not permitted that circumstance to withdraw them even from occupations that are generally supposed to be very uncongenial to literary tastes and habits.

Looking generally upon these examples, we may safely affirm that no man was ever induced to engage with any degree of eagerness in the pursuit of knowledge by the mere hope of thereby bettering his worldly circumstances. That may have sometimes been temptation enough to allure an individual to procure for himself a few lessons in arithmetic, or navigation, or any of those kindred branches of education the utility of which is equally obvious; but it demands a much stronger and more deepseated excitement to sustain the mind in that long and earnest pursuit of knowledge, which alone can ever lead to intellectual acquirements of any lofty order. Such a pursuit will never be entered upon, or at least very far proceeded in, by any one, except him who loves know

ledge entirely or chiefly for her own sake. It is to such a person only that we hold up the examples of Heyne, and Winckelman, and the other illustrious conquerors of fortune whom we have named, as guides and encouragements. To none besides are they fitted to be either the one or the other. With regard to the great mass of the population, any counsel or exhortation which would attempt to raise them above the rank in which they have been born and reared must, from the nature of things, be totally inoperative. But it is right that the individual who, although poor, and unknown, and uneducated, longs for education as his chief earthly good, and feels within himself the strength and resolution to undergo all things for the sake of obtaining it, should be shown, by the example of those who, under the same impulse, have surmounted difficulties as formidable as his own, that no difficulties, however grcat, are any reason for despair.

VOL. I.

D

CHAPTER IV.

Artists rising from the lower to the higher branches. B. Cellini; Q. Matsys; Ibbetson; Kent; Towne; Kirby; Schiavoni; Hogarth; Sharp; Thew; Caslon.-Late Learners. Cromwell; Sir W. Jones; Cato Censor; Alfred; Moliere; Valerianus; Vondel; Pitot; Paucton; Ogilby.

THERE is one mode in which ingenious and aspiring workmen have sometimes raised themselves above the trade they were bred up to; of which we may give a few examples, as it does not imply any violent abandonment of their original occupation, but on the contrary arises in some degree naturally out of pursuits into which it has led them. We allude to cases of the mere working mechanic elevating himself into an artist, in a department kindred to that of his first exertions; and cases of the artist himself making his way from a lower to a higher department of his art. Thus, in Italy especially, it has not been uncommon for working goldsmiths, or those of them at least who have been employed in copying designs in the metal, to carry the study of their profession so far as to attain proficiency in the art of design itself; and some individuals, thus educated, have become eminent painters or sculptors. BENVENUTO CELLINI is one instance, who, while serving an apprenticeship to a goldsmith, acquired a knowledge not only of chasing, but also of drawing, engraving, and statuary, and afterwards became one of the greatest sculptors of his age; and several others might be mentioned.-Workers in gold and silver, however, are not the only sort of smiths who have in this way attained to a proficiency in the fine arts. The old Dutch painter, QUINTIN MATSYS, was originally a blacksmith and farrier, on which account he is often called, the Blacksmith of Antwerp, the town where he pursued this humble vocation. Having, when a young man, been at

tacked by a disorder which left him too much debilitated to return to the heavier work of his trade, which was his only means of support for himself and a widowed mother, he was forced to turn his attention to the fabrication of such light and ornamental articles as it was then fashionable to construct of wrought iron; and he obtained considerable reputation, in particular, by an inclosure and covering of this description, which he made for a well in the neighbourhood of the great church at Antwerp. He began, however, at length, to find even such work as this too laborious; and was in great difficulties as to what he should do, when the thought occurred to him, or rather to one of his friends, that as he had shown considerable talent for the art of design, in many of the ornamental articles he had been in the habit of making, it might be worth his while to try what he could accomplish in a simple style of drawing; for example, in painting a few of those small pictures of saints which were wont to be distributed by the religious orders of the city to the people, on occasion of certain of their solemn processions. The idea was adopted, and Matsys succeeded in his new attempt to the admiration of everybody. From that time painting became his profession, and he devoted himself to it with so much zeal and success, as not only to acquire a great deal of reputation in his own day, but to leave several works which are still held in considerable estimation. Among them is one at Windsor, "The Misers," which has been often engraved; and certainly deserves all the popularity that has so long been attached to it. It consists of two figures eagerly employed in counting money. The extreme satisfaction in the countenances of each of these persons is most happily expressed; and this expression indicates a more genial feeling than belongs to the character of the "Miser." The probability is, that the picture represents two bankers, or usurers, of the painter's city; who derive that satisfaction from a contemplation of their riches-their gold, their bills, and their bonds--which the possession of wealth is supposed to communicate in every situation. The accessaries of the picture-the candlestick, the rolls

of paper, the parrot-are delineated with a fidelity rarely excelled. At any rate the work has excellence enough to be considered the chef-d'œuvre of the artist, and such as might fairly have won him the hand of his mistresswho is said to have accepted the "painter," after having rejected the "blacksmith."

The late JULIUS CAESAR IBBETSON was originally a ship-painter; but by the cultivation of his talents became so eminent a painter of landscapes, that Mr. West used to compare him to the Dutch Berghem, one of the greatest artists his country has produced in that department. WILLIAM KENT, another English artist, who practised both history and portrait painting, in the earlier part of the last century, but is better known for his architectural designs, and the graceful and picturesque style of ornamental gardening, which he was the first to introduce among us, had acquired the rudiments of his art while serving his apprenticeship to a coachpainter. FRANCIS TOWNE, a landscape painter of great taste and unrivalled industry, who acquired a handsome fortune in the exercise of that art, but principally as a

teacher of drawing, commenced his career under similar auspices. JOHN JOSHUA KIRBY, who, about the middle of the last century, distinguished himself by a series of drawings of the monumental and other antiquities of the