Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/76

66 If this is not a very decisive result to reach, there is another less recognized method of educational development which occurs so frequently that I am disposed to attach very decided significance to it. I refer to residence in a foreign country during early life. The eminent persons under consideration have indeed spent a very large portion of their whole lives abroad, whether from inclination, duty or necessity (persecution or exile), and it might be interesting to note the average period of life spent by a British man of genius in his own country. I have not attempted to do this, but I have invariably noted the eases in which a lengthened stay abroad has occurred during the formative years of childhood or youth. I have seldom knowingly included any period of less than a year; in a few cases I have included lengthened stays abroad which were made about the age of thirty, but in these cases those periods of foreign residence exerted an unquestionable formative influence. I have excluded soldiers and sailors altogether, for in their case absence from England at a very early age has been an almost invariable and inevitable incident of their lives, and has not always been of a kind conducive to intellectual development. Nor have I included the very numerous cases in which transference from one part of the British Islands to another has sufficed to exert a stimulating influence of the greatest importance. With these exceptions, we find that as many as 322 of the eminent persons on our list (or about 40 per cent.) during early life, and in all but a few cases before the age of thirty, have spent abroad periods which range from about a year, and in very many cases have extended over seven years, up to extreme cases, like that of Caxton, who went to Bruges in early life and stayed there for thirty years; or Buchanan, who went to France at the age of fourteen and was abroad for nearly forty years. It is natural that France should be the country most frequently mentioned as the place of residence, but France is closely followed by other countries, and a familiarity with many lands, including even very remote and scarcely accessible countries, is often indicated. It may further be noted that this tendency to an association between high intellectual ability and early familiarity with foreign lands is by no means a comparatively recent tendency. It exists from the first; the earliest personage on our list, St. Patrick, was kidnapped in Scotland at the age of sixteen, and conveyed over to Ireland; it seems, indeed, that in the nineteenth century the tendency became less marked, in face of the average modern Englishman's hasty and unprofitable method of traveling. In any case, however, it is evident that there has been a very marked tendency among these men of preeminent ability to familiarize themselves in the most serious spirit with every aspect of nature and life. It is equally marked among the men of every group, among poets and statesmen, artists and divines. It is not least marked in the case of men of