As befitted the audience, it is manual or mechanical labour that Mr Warren in his essay chiefly concerns himself with. But so eminent an author cannot be insensible to the still nobler labour of the Mind, or to the grand and touching lives of so many of its votaries. Manual labour may appear harder than some kinds of intellectual pursuits, but it cannot be carried to the same excess. It is less fatal, because less alluring. The labour of the hands does not kill like the labour of the head. It is not the lower classes alone that work. Mr Warren well says:—
“The working-classes! Are those not worthy of the name, and in its very highest sense, few in number, comparatively, though they be, who by their prodigious powers of thought make those discoveries in science which have given tenfold efficacy and value to labour, turned it suddenly into a thousand new channels, and conferred on all classes of society new conveniences and enjoyments? Are we to overlook those great intellects which have devoted themselves to statesmanship, to jurisprudence, to morals, to the science of medicine—securing and advancing the best interests of mankind, and relieving them from physical anguish and misery; the noble genius devoted to literature, refining, expanding, and elevating the minds of all capable of it, and whose immortal works are glittering like stars of the first magnitude in the hemisphere of thought and imagination? No, my friends; let us not be so unjust, ungrateful, or unthinking; let us rather be thankful to God for giving us men of such powers, and opportunity and inclination to use them, not for their own reputation’s sake alone, but for our advantage; and let us not enhance the claims of manual, by forgetting or depreciating intellectual labour. I could at this moment give you a dozen instances within my personal knowledge, of men whom God has given very little physical strength, but great mental endowments, and who cheerfully undergo an amount of exhausting labour of which you have no idea, in conducting public affairs, political and legal, and prosecuting scientific researches, immortalising the age in which they live.”
Genius in all ages commands the spontaneous homage of mankind. And it is only just that it should be so. “Tell me,” said an acute observer of human affairs, “what a few leading minds are thinking in their closets, and I will tell you what their countrymen will be thinking in the next generation.” It is the great minds of a country that most deeply influence its fortunes,—it is the great minds of the world that mould the progress of our race. These men may live a life of toil and sacrifices in the cause to which their high powers are devoted, and may die ere the precious seed sown by them has begun to germinate. But they do not lose their reward. The fruit comes at last. Their words enlighten the world, hastening its progress to a happy goal; while their example of high powers and glorious self-devotion reaps a rich recompense by inspiriting others through future ages to follow in their steps. As saith Longfellow,—
“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of time:
Footprints that perchance another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwreck’d brother,