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 402 not flourish under absolutism which cants about democratic privilege; and thus it is usually to the military career that the scantily-fed and over-taxed peasants and artisans look, when ambitious of personal and social success. In Russia, where the aristocracy are a yet weaker element, the case is different only because the labouring class has hitherto consisted of serfs, and we therefore see the Eastern methods of favouritism existing along with the other. Serfs, foreigners, even scapegraces from other countries achieve greatness in Russia by mechanical genius, and especially by engineering ability. The movement of Russian society crushes the spirit and breaks the heart, where it does not corrupt the conscience of the order of citizens who should naturally do the highest work of society: but there is a career open to adventurous ability, provided it be low enough in origin to provoke no jealousy till it can take good care of itself.

The great Religious Period, again, when Catholicism was the religion of Christendom, was favourable to able adventurers. Its thoroughly democratic organisation was the means by which the lower classes were raised into freedom, and a career was offered to all ability. The priesthood was the highest office and dignity; and the priesthood was accessible to all alike; and, when this opportunity had once been opened to the humblest classes, they had gained a social advantage which could never be taken from them. The organic period of Christendom, then, was an age of privilege for adventurous ability. However true it may be that the present is an age, and America a country, for lowborn genius to rejoice in, it may be a question whether there is any kind of age or country, on the bright side of civilisation, in which men of natural force could not make their own way very much to their own wish.

There can hardly be a stronger contrast than between the social conditions of Germany and America. (I refer to the Northern States here, because there is no free working-class in the Southern States.) In Germany and in America peasants and labourers have their ambitions, and succeed in gratifying them; but in a widely different way. The only notion that the German boy-genius has is of becoming learned: the farthings and pence are saved to get access to books and lectures, or perhaps art-study; and the self-made heroes of Germany are mostly authors, (workers in some speciality of learning,) or artists. In America, the learning is regarded only as a means of rising. The boy in the loghouse or the workshop saves, like the German, to put himself to school, and then to the nearest or cheapest college; and he may even turn schoolmaster for a time; but it is only in order to become a lawyer, or, in other words, to get into the road to office and political life. Once there, he can shape his course according to his ability, and make himself a great engineer, or banker, or member of Congress, or dignitary in his own State, or mill-owner, or ironmaster, or ambassador to Europe, or half-a-dozen other things. Where there is so near an approach to democratic equality (for the real thing is not attained, nor can be while slavery exists on the soil) the pressure upon every individual is light, prior to his becoming distinguished, and the requisites to success are of a slighter character. Motherwit obtains its deserts more certainly than elsewhere; and less effort and cultivation are necessary to success. We find, accordingly, that as many as not of distinguished Americans have taken their fathers’ horses to drink, as Daniel Webster did, or blown the forge fire, or done the drudgery of the printing-office, like Garrison, or split rails, like President Lincoln, or made shoes, or fished cod, or driven the plough, or served before the mast. The commonest drawback to their greatness and their usefulness, when they have succeeded, is their want of real cultivation. A slight smattering of book-knowledge is enough to enable them to “teach school,” or set up a lawyer’s office; and such knowledge, having answered its end, entirely satisfies the possessor. While in Germany a successful genius sits happy in his study, shut in with his poverty, and aware that his name is spoken with consideration where his special branch of learning is understood, the American genius is receiving homage as a millionaire, or returning thanks to a torchlit multitude from a balcony, or receiving honours from Europe on account of some beneficent invention, while unable to appreciate any mode of life but that which he inhabits, and as awkward in the use of intellectual tools as adults first trying to learn a foreign language, or President Lincoln in penning his last Message.

In our country, amidst all the advantages of our age, there is certainly more to be got over, in rising in life, than in America. The superiority of knowledge among the instructed (though there are more uninstructed than in America), the fixedness of men of all classes in the station and employment to which they were born, and the acquiescence of society in the ordinary march of social affairs, all unite to render the pressure very strong on any humble person who would rise into a position of distinction. Yet the age is favourable, for it is an age of scientific development, and of a fast-spreading application of science to the arts of life; and this last work can be better done by handicraftmen than others, if they are provided with the science. Accordingly, we have seen so many men of humble birth and training rise to fame and fortune within two generations that we almost expect to hear of every inventor or improver of our roads, our ships, our cannon, or our agriculture and manufactures, that he was the son of a labourer of one sort or another. The field of their inventions is commonly mechanics, and their science is usually mathematics, followed by physics or chemistry and geology. In the last century the Arkwrights and Wedgwoods and Brindleys and Telfords were types of our self-made men, as the Stephensons, Paxtons, and Whitworths are of the present century. There used to be a larger proportion of artists and poets in the order than there are likely to be again; for, as knowledge and taste have advanced, the need of cultivation is more generally perceived, if not by the aspirant, by the public. Verses wonderful for a milkwoman no longer excite an interest; and the poetry of ploughboys is prized, if at all, for its keen and clear reflection of nature,