rare coins, and among the amateurs who frequented his shop, was the Landgrave William, afterwards Elector of Hesse.

on.

When Napoleon overran Europe, William of Hesse was driven from his States, and left all the money he could gather together in the hands of Anselm, his hof-agent. It amounted to £250,000. How to take care of this money and make it grow in his hands, was Anselm's greatest object. Money in those days was very dear; it returned twelve or even twenty per cent on good security. The war went Russia was invaded by Napoleon. His army was all but lost in the snow. The battle of Leipsic was fought, and Napoleon and his army were hurled across the Rhine. The Landgrave of Hesse then returned to his States. A few days after, the eldest son of Meyer Anselm presented himself at court, and handed over to the Landgrave the three millions of florins which his father had taken care of. The Landgrave was almost beside himself with joy. He looked upon the restored money as a windfall. In his exultation, he knighted the young Rothschild at once. "Such honesty," his highness exclaimed, "had never been known in the world." At the Congress of Vienna, where he went shortly after, he could talk of nothing else than the honesty of the Rothschilds. Anselm had a large family. They followed his example, and thus the Rothschilds became the largest money-lenders in the world.*

Of the late Lord Macaulay it may be said that he was a thoroughly incorruptible man. Among the men with whom he was brought up-Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, and Zachary Macaulay-he could hardly fail to become a patriotic and disinterested man. When he was only earn

The story is told at length by Frederick Martin in his Stories of Banks and Bankers.

CHAP. IV.

Lord Macaulay.

91

ing two hundred a year by his pen, the Rev. Sydney Smith, not given to overpraise, said of him, "I believe that Macaulay is incorruptible. You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth, titles, before him in vain. He has an honest genuine love of his country, and the world could not bribe him to neglect her interests." *

"I think,"

Macaulay so arranged his affairs that their management was to him a pastime, instead of being a source of annoyance and anxiety. His economical maxims were the simplest; to treat official and literary gains as capital, and to pay all debts within the twenty-four hours. he said, that prompt payment is a moral duty; knowing, as I do, how painful it is to be deferred." "There is nothing," he said, "truer than Poor Richard's saw: 'We are taxed twice as heavily by our pride, as by the State.'" He early accustomed himself to a strict appropriation of his income, as the only sure ground on which to build a reputation for public and private integrity, and to maintain a dignified independence.

And yet he possessed but a slight competence. To Lord Lansdowne, who offered him a seat in the Council of India, he wrote as follows:-"Every day that I live, I become less and less desirous of great wealth. But every day makes me more sensible of the importance of a competence. Without a competence, it is not very easy for a public man to be honest; it is almost impossible for him to be thought so. I am so situated that I can subsist only in two ways: by being in office, and by my pen. . . The thought of becoming a bookseller's hack; of writing to

* Sydney Smith once said that he was never afraid to open his letter bag. He was uprightly conscientious. He had robbed nobody. If he had lost money, as he did by the Pennsylvanian repudiation, the crime did not lie at his door, but at that of his creditors.

relieve, not the fulness of the mind, but the emptiness of the pocket; of spurring a jaded fancy to reluctant exertion; of filling sheets with trash, merely that the sheets may be filled; of bearing from publishers and editors what Dryden bore from Thomson, and what, to my knowledge, Mackintosh bore from Lardner, is horrible to me. Yet thus it must be if I should quit office. Yet to hold office merely for the sake of emolument would be more horrible still.'

The result was that Macaulay obtained and filled an honourable office in India, and returned with a sufficient competence to be enabled to write his famous History of England.

honour. It is the energy which rises to all the emergencies of life. It is the perfect will, which no terrors can shake. It will enable one to die, if need be, in the performance of duty.

Does

Who has a word to say in praise of cowardice? not the universal conscience condemn it? The coward is mean and unmanly. He has not the courage to stand by his opinions. He is ready to become a slave. "Half of our virtue," says Homer, "is torn away when a man becomes a slave ;" and "the other half," added Dr. Arnold, 'goes when he becomes a slave broken loose."

Yet it requires courage to deal with the coward. A

foolish young man, who quarrelled with Sir Philip Sydney, and tried to provoke him to fight, went so far as to spit in his face. "Young man," said Sir Philip, "if I could as easily wipe your blood from my conscience as I can wipe this insult from my face, I would this moment take your life." This was noble courage. It is a lesson for every

one; how to bear and how to forbear.

The courageous man is an example to the intrepid. His influence is magnetic. He creates an epidemic of nobleness. Men follow him, even to the death. It is not the men who succeed that are always worthy of estimation. The men who fail for a time, continue to exercise a potent influence on their race. The leader of the forlorn hope may fall in the breach, but his body furnishes the bridge over which the victors enter the citadel.

The martyr may perish at the stake, but the truth for which he dies may gather new lustre from his sacrifice. The patriot may lay his head upon the block, and hasten the triumph of the cause for which he suffers. The memory of a great life does not perish with the life itself, but lives in other minds. The ardent and enthusiastic may seem to throw their lives away; but the enduring men continue the fight, and enter in and take possession of the ground on which their predecessors sleep. Thus the triumph of a just cause may come late, but when it does come, it is due to the men who have failed as well as to the men who have eventually succeeded.

All the great work of the world has been accomplished by courage. Every blessing that we enjoy-personal security, individual liberty, and constitutional freedomhas been obtained through long apprenticeships of evil. The right of existing as a nation has only been accomplished through ages of wars and horrors. It required