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CHAPTER III.

INHERENT SOURCES OF HIS SUCCESS.

an

INHERENT Sources of success in life.-Poverty, the chief impulse of activity in material and intellectual attainments.— Melancholy history associated with literary life.-Allegory of Consuelo.-Harris's poverty.-His earliest avocation incentive to his activity.—Conception of education and learning among the illiterate Natives.-Merivale's conclusion from Roman history.-Faults in the character of Young India.-How removed?-Hasty notions of his conduct.-Two great classes of Young India how distanced ?-A representative of the worst class.--His career and life allegorically described. --His dejection in after-life.--His want of perfect self-reliance.-Harris prominently apart from his educated countrymen in the possession of confidence of opinion.-Cogency of feeling required to impel all internal decisions into action.Courage required to withstand the attacks of ridicule and contempt from others.-Disraeli's bold stroke of courage on his first appearance in Parliament.-Baboo Harrischander possessed all the bolder virtues of success.-An incident in his School-life to illustrate his noble disdain of all wrong and insult.

THE brief and rapid review that we have taken, in the last chapter, meagre and imperfect as it is, of what Harris did, brings us to our second question-What was he, who did all this, with regard to the INHERENT circumstances of his life? Here he is a rude, beggar-boy, of

INHERENT RESOURCES.

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imperious habit, without the working of any higher emotion than is the wont of an ordinary youth in his infantine years; who had, save perhaps a little of unusual intelligence, and memory, nothing pre-eminent in him as a boy; who stopped in his school only to pick up such a smattering as enabled him to scribble and speak a little gibberish-like many a youngster from the last forms of our colleges and schools; who at the early age of thirteen relinquished his school and his tasks, to beg for an appointment of eight or ten rupees-the salary of a common sepoy,-in different parts of the city, and found himself rejected and repelled with scorn and a sneer, and at length mendicantly consented to be a common ten-rupee clerk at an auctioneer's;-this boy passes, in after-life, not only into a man occupying a post of dignity and emolument as yet denied to all his countrymen; not only into a gentleman of rank, wealth, and influence; not only into a journalist, edifying his readers with his learning, information, and eloquence; but also into a patriot, sternly fighting the battle of humanity and freedom against a powerful and cynical Government--into a man of wisdom and sagacity, opening the sealed book of the politics of his country, cutting,

criticising, caricaturing State measures, and suggesting problems which would take to task the highest powers of a versed politician-into a public character, ever-successful, ever-honoured, leaving to his nation the legacy of an Association, that, with its present influence, represents the popular element in Government, and promises, if rightly and constitutionally sustained, the regular Third Estate, in time to come, with its full splendour, majesty, and awe, in this ever-neglected, ever-oppressed land of the East! How all this came about, and what led the man inherently to an achievement of this consummation, is the inquiry for present investigation.

What led the man to his achievements?Why, in the first place, it was his poverty! Poverty has been the great world-maker; the greatest ends have been achieved by poverty; for the o vious reason that "Necessity is the mother of invention!" When one is poor, he must scheme for the stomach; there is no wealth furnishing sustenance, and no friends to lend a helping hand. He must think alone, contrive alone, and work alone; and independence of position, and success, naturally result to him. The earth itself, without poverty, would have

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remained but a wilderness; for all the magnificent, the wonderful, the elegant, or the luxurious enterprises of the world have been initiated by poverty. But for poverty, the earth would not have been dug, nor wildernesses penetrated, nor forests felled, nor colonies established, nor flax, cotton, and silk wove or spun, nor all the necessaries and elegances of an easy and slothful life ever produced. In the realms of literature, poverty has so immutably been at work, as the source of all success, that, with the exception of Rogers and Byron, so far as our memory leads us to believe, there is no name to which a history of absolute want is not attached: with many has been associated even a melancholy fate. It is only now, when times are changed, that Bulwer has gained a fortune by his writings, and Thackeray and Dickens live in palaces erected by the profits of their own But less than two hundred years ago, pens. Lovelace and Butler died of want; Otway choked himself with a piece of bread which he was greedily devouring to appease his hunger; Savage wrote his poetry on scraps of paper picked out of the gutter, and expired in a jail without a farthing for his interment; Dryden was forced to die in harness; and even in more

recent days that inspired boy, of whom Coleridge sung, as

"Sublime of hope and confident of fame,"

after having been many days without food, poisoned himself, to put an end to his miserable days; and it is barely twelve years ago that the promising Thom of Inverary played the beggar's flute in the public street, and died behind a hedge, succumbing under the cold of falling snows! But apart from this melancholy and misery, it will not pass unnoticed that poverty, which seems to the superficialist so unwholesome, puts all our energies into action; and wherever we look, whatever department of human labour we search in, we invariably find that it is only the poverty-stricken who have achieved success and renown. There is a just and adequate picture drawn of poverty in the "Consuelo" of George Sand, translated by Mrs. Child; it is well worthy the serious consideration of every individual, and we give it here:-

"Paths sanded with gold, verdant heaths, ravines loved by the wild-goats, great mountains crowned with stars, wandering torrents, impenetrable forests, let the good goddess pass through-the Goddess of Poverty!