father's casual earnings as a laborer. They have come down in the world, by whose fault we know not, or whether by unavoidable misfortune. But the next generation seemed bent upon going a great deal lower. The boy being perhaps of a lively, adventurous disposition, and having no attractions at home, became ringleader of a little gang who are described as a great annoyance to the shopkeepers of the neighborhood. They would hang about the doors watching their opportunity, or making it by the disturbance they created, and then they would run off with anything they could lay their hands on. Thus the lad was in a fair way to become a burglar. He is now, thank God! in a fair way to become an honest sailor. Here is a fourth case, in which the parents, despairing of the boy's future, were willing to pay five shillings a week to any school that would take him; and did so for six months while he remained in an industrial school. But not being sent there by order of a magistrate, he was removed for some reason or other, and for a year was worse than ever. He sought the companionship of thieves, ran away from home for days together, and would then be pulled out of some dust-bin or cellar-area by the police. He is now here by order of a magistrate, and he will not find it easy to evade the custody of the School Board.

Enough--we have no space to describe other cases; and, indeed, they are all very much alike. These boys were the pregnant germs of crime and disorder for a coming generation. They have been removed from the evil influences that surrounded them; and it is found that good is not wholly blighted within them. They can be obedient, obliging, kind one to another, faithful to little trusts. And it is not too much to expect that as good influences have been substituted for ill, the better nature will be strengthened by a few years' discipline, so that it will bear the stress of life. From the heart we pray God grant it. For the parting cheer of those boys rings in our ears still; and it has a tone of confidence and hope.

HENRY C. EWART, in Sunday Magazine.

ON BEING KNOCKED DOWN AND PICKED UP AGAIN.

A CONSOLATORY ESSAY.

A GREAT deal of human life consists in the simple operations, mentioned in our title, of being knocked down and picked up again. This is a process constantly going on, both in a physical and a metaphorical sense. Life is full of ups and downs. Properly speaking, we cannot have the one without the other, as we cannot have up-hill without downhill. Naturally, we prefer the "up to the "down," and would probably prefer knocking down other people to the converse operation of being knocked down ourselves. The gentleman who committed suicide, on the high ground that he objected to the absurd and constantly recurring practice of dressing and undressing, ought to have more of those serious ups and downs of life, which have sometimes been enough, with a better show of reason, though not with the reality of it, to drive better people to self-destruction. If one were using a Butlerian mode of argument, it would be proper to say that this uncertainty is so certain, that want of uniformity so uniform, that they are part of the very plan and structure of human life. To be always "up" would be something monstrous and abnormal. When Amasis of Egypt found that the island despot Polycrates was always successful, that when he cast his priceless ring into the sea it was brought back in the fish captured by the fisherman, he renounced all friendship with him. He knew that it foreboded no luck at the last. And he ingeniously argued that if he made a friend of Polycrates he would certainly have to endure considerable mental anguish through the misfortunes which would happen to his friend. He used rather a pretty expression, indicating that life was a kind of tracery, a blending and interlacing of shadow and sunshine. Of course this way of looking at human life might be treated on the method either of weeping or laughing philosophers. Most sensible men are content to take together the rough and smooth, the bitter and sweet. They know that these things make the man and the athlete. Beaumarchais beautifully says in his "Memoirs : " "The variety of pains and pleasures, of fears and hopes, is the freshening breeze that fills the sails of the vessel and sends it gaily on its track," I heard a man say once, that he had had great trials, and with the blessing of heaven he hoped to have some more of them. It was a bold expression, perhaps an overbold, but still he saw into the kernel of this mystery and problem of reverse and misfortune. Sometimes the knockdowns are so continuous and so stunning, that they tax all our philosophy to understand them, or even be patient about them.

Let us first look at the plain, prosaic, practical, and somewhat pugilis

tic force of the expression. The earliest education of an ancient race consisted in shooting, riding, and speaking the truth. I am afraid that the last item is very much falling out of the modern fashionable curri culum. We may take the intermediate department as an illustration. We must all have our tumbles. Every man learns to ride through a process of tumble continually repeated. Who ever learned to ride except through continual falls, or to fence except through continual buffetings! The other day, I was reading Mr. Smiles's "Life of George Moore." It is a little too much of the Gospel according to Hard Cash. Mr. Moore had neither chick nor child, and he invested a large portion of his wealth in philanthropic and religious munificence, which yielded him immense social returns. Bishops and judges flocked around the drygoods proprietor, who seemed made of money, who bled gold at every pore. I do not say that he was not a good and sincere man, but the worship of the golden calf was comically mixed up with the whole of it. But how this man George Moore worked in order to accumulate money He had for a partner a man called Copestake. He led the wretched Copestake an awful life. Copestake worked away in a little room over a trunk-shop. For many years together he never took a day's holiday. He went through awful anxiety in providing funds for the enterprising Moore. Mr. Moore worked quite as hard. He spent the week in very sharp practice, and on the Lord's Day he balanced his accounts. "I never took a day," he says, "for the first thirteen years during which I had to travel." All this work, in the long run, did not fail to act injuriously upon his health. Lawrence, the great surgeon, gave him some sensible advice: "You had better go down to Brighton, and ride over the downs there; but you must take care not to break your neck in hunting." And now Mr. Moore had to learn the acrobatic art of tumbling. He had to combine the two objects of learning to ride, and of not breaking his neck. In a sort of way, he was constantly being knocked down and picked up again. Dr. Smiles records the Gilpin-like adventures of his monetary hero. "He had some difficulty in sticking on. He mounted again, and pushed on nothing daunted. Wherever a jump was to be taken, he would try it. Over he went. Another tumble! no matter. After a desperate run he got seven tumbles." Mr. Moore thus sums up his experience: "Whatever other people may say about riding to hounds, I always contend that no man ever rides bold unless he has had a few good tumbles." This had been identically his experience as the Napoleon of commercial travellers. Lector benevole, we must learn to tumble gracefully. Half the art of the bicyclist is to learn how to tumble. We must become used to being knocked down, and even appreciate it-like the eels, which are said to have a partiality for the process of being skinned—and learn to come up smiling, after a sponge, for the next round.

How often we find a man saying, "I was fairly knocked down. I bore a good deal as I best could, but the last straw breaks the camel's back.

The fatal letter came. The fatal telegram came. It told the

bitterest truth. It confirmed the worst fears. I was knocked down." We have heard of persons who have had the very worst tidings. They have died upon the spot. The feeble heart has given way. The overwrought brain has given way. The blow was so sharp and sudden, that none other was ever required by the Fates. The victim was slaughtered where he stood. "If thou faint in the day of adversity thy strength is but small," and, alas, the strength has been small indeed.

Thus it may be in many cases. But it is not so in the case of those who, in the struggle for existence, are destined to survive, and who "rise refulgent" from the stroke. With stricken hearts and wandering wits they contrive to pull themselves together. Look at military history. The whole story of success in war consists in the capacity of men being knocked down and picking themselves up afterwards. This is the moral of that famous seventh book of Thucydides, which Dr. Arnold loved so much, which showed how the invaded became the invaders, and the Athenians were overcome on their own element. This is the way by which the Romans obtained the supremacy of the world. Englishmen have never known when they have been beaten. Prussia became the steel tip of the German lance through a series of knockdowns. Read Carlyle or even Macaulay's short essay, to see how Frederick the Great lost battle after battle, campaign after campaign, before he consolidated his glory and his kingdom. See again how, when Prussia was brought to the lowest point of humiliation in the Napoleonic wars, at that very point the star of the nation began to rise. There is a proverb to the effect that Providence is always on the side of the big battalions. This is not always the case, as witness the fields of Marathon and Mongarten and Morat. It is quite conceivable that there have been times in a nation's history when a defeat has been more valuable than any victory, when the knockdown has been essential to any getting up worthy of the name, when the disaster has laid deep and firm the foundations of future victory. I am one of those Englishmen who are never tired of reading about the battle of Waterloo. I can hardly tell how books have been written from the stately simplicity of the Wellington despatches to the misleading legends of M. Thiers and M. Victor Hugo. What has impressed me most, has been the awful reticence of the Duke of Wellington, the way in which he held back the impassive masses that seemed doomed for massacre, whether forming square or deploying into line, in both a moral and a military sense submitting to be knocked over until the hour comes to be "up and at them." We see this law pervading all history. When Troy fell, according to the Virgilian legend, its banished citizens reared a mightier city on the Tiber. When monarchy was threatened in Portugal it revived in Brazil. Great Britain, compassed by inexorable limits at home, revives beyond the seas in the Greater Britain which girdles the globe wherever the English tongue is spoken. Pitt thought the star of England was lost in the fierce light of the sun of Austerlitz, and had rolled up the map of Europe in despair; but only a short time before he had met

at the house of a common friend with a young officer, that Arthur Wellesley of whom we have just spoken, destined to pluck the eye out of the French eagle which had soared and screeched above so many a red battle plain. How often has the country "been in danger," " "brought to the brink of ruin," "going to the dogs." And what has been said of the country has been said pretty well of every family that goes to make up the country. But somehow men keep on.

The getting up again is the rule through all our modern life. We turn the shattered line, fill up the breach, if necessary march to the ramparts over the bodies of our slain comrades. If there is an explosion in a pit we clear away the debris, human and mineral, and the excavation is renewed. If an opera-house is burned down we build up another. If a railway scheme collapses, if there is really anything to go upon it surely revives again. When old St. Paul's was burnt down it is said that a single column survived, on which was engraven the word Resurgam." Which thing was an allegory; we do, in fact, rehearse our Resurrection whenever with fortitude and unconquerable purpose we look forward to it. Read such stories of heroism as we find in modern exploration, in Governor Eyre's walk across the Continent of Australia, for instance. Look again at the wonderful narratives of exploration in Africa, from the north, from the south, from the east, from the west. We Englishmen played the first part, but a very good second has been scored by Germany. English people, however, are hardly acquainted with the work of Nachtigal and Schweinfurth, Rolfs and Kraph. The great merit of Stanley is that he never knew himself conquered; as often as he was knocked down he picked himself up again. Those fights, day and night, with some thirty tribes of savages, and worse fights with some thirty raging whirlpools of waters, are fine examples of indomitable pluck. But in the whole history of human activity, in every department in life, wherever there is true vitality, the knockdown is rather disciplinary and restorative than any absolute defeat. How often in youthful days we heard the story of the defeated Scottish king who watched the spider that failed half a dozen times before it achieved its object, and so took heart of grace and proved a conqueror at last. That is the most celebrated spider in all entomology. In commercial history, which abounds with so many materials of adventure and romance, we see the case of good and honourable men who have been plainly forced by the fates to give in, who have had to endure the loss of property, and that still more precious and valuable commodity, credit; and ye many of these men have singularly retrieved their shattered fortune and built up great houses on a firm and durable basis. Look again at the history of inventions. Every great invention has only been perfected by repeated disappointment and through long processes of experiment. Calmness and patience are now the main characteristics of the scientific and philosophic temper. It expects disappointments, and it gets them, and knows that they are instruments of advance and means of verification. The record of all success is simply the record of failures.