Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 29, Vol. I, July 19, 1884

No. 29.—Vol. I.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1884.
When eminent men die, we are accustomed to say that the world has lost something; that their country or party is poorer; that none are left to fill their place, and other such expressions. But very seldom do we hear it said that the world gains when great men die; yet we have no hesitation in saying that the world often gains more by the death of leading men than it would do by their living indefinitely, or even much beyond ‘the allotted span.’ Again, it is not our custom to look forward to the day of our own death as a gain either to ourselves or the world. We somehow think that no one could exactly fill our shoes or act the part we have done; but as a matter of fact, our shoes may be better filled and our part better acted by the generation which follows. This fact ought to humble us a bit; and perhaps we need humbling, for there is just the trace of a tendency among moderns to underrate the men who have immediately preceded them, or who may be going off the far end of the stage as we take our places at the near.
Noble lives have often been spent to little purpose so far as their contemporaries were concerned. The fact is, ‘No man is a hero to his valet,’ nor is any man ‘a prophet in his own country;’ and as ‘distance lends enchantment to the view,’ it is only when the world’s best men have been hid from sight in the greedy grave, that their influence has been felt in all its power. We are apt to hold even the oldest and best of our contemporaries in light esteem; but we reverence the ancients. Nay, many of earth’s noblest sons have been bitterly blamed, and held up to scorn and derision in their lifetime; and not till death stepped in and took them away, did the world discover its mistake.
A poor shoemaker rises while others sleep, and searches among the wayside weeds of his native lanes, his only inspiration being his thirst for knowledge, and the joy of adding a few plants to the known flora of his native land. His neighbours deride him, are doubtful of his sanity, and think his life a sad warning to the peasant lads around who may show signs of leaving the beaten path of the monotonous life their fathers trod. Unmindful of scorn, in defiance of fate, he goes forward in the thorny path he has chosen for himself, gaining knowledge that is quite new, making discoveries that were reserved for such as he, and at last becomes possessed of an herbarium famous for containing specimens to be found in no other. All the while he is unheard of, or heard of unfavourably; but when he grows old, and, tottering on the brink of the grave, hands over his precious scraps to the nearest university, he becomes famous. A coterie of appreciative men in far-away London collect something to relieve his pressing necessities, and—the matter ends. But he dies, and then the world gains—not the blood and toil stained herbarium, but the stimulating example of a hero’s life, which, though it repelled the youth of his own time and district, becomes a burning and a shining light to lighten the path and fire the noble ambition of every youth who reads the story of the heroic struggles which bore him above the swamping waves of prejudice, of poverty, and of scorn.