He has articled clerks too. They must work twelve hours a day also. He did it. True, Uncle John; but you had your salary for it; while they, on the contrary, pay you for the privilege of working for you.
There is an old adage that a slave makes the worst tyrant. Uncle John exemplifies it. Because he suffered poverty and privation, he thinks that every youth should endure the same. Because nature had given him the constitution of a horse, he thinks that every one should have a similar one.
Such men as Uncle John are striking examples of certain qualities; and of those particular qualities which conduce to success in life. Their highest praise (perhaps there is no higher praise in the world) is their unflinching integrity. But we can not bring ourselves to think them—on the whole—models for imitation. After all, there is selfishness at the bottom of their first motives, and this quality grows with their growth, and strengthens with their strength, till, in their old age, they are impatient at all the enjoyments of youth. The hardships of their younger days are not only to be pitied for the pain they must have inflicted at the time, but because they have closed up all the avenues through which the gentler, nobler, and more generous sympathies of our nature find their way into the heart. Their want of education has not been of the mind alone, but of the affections; and as it is ten thousand times more difficult to learn a language or a science in old age than in youth, so it is infinitely more difficult (if it be not impossible) to teach the science of the affections, and the language of the heart, to the old man whose youth has known nothing of either. Affliction and adversity teach oft-times sympathy and benevolence; but to do so they must have followed on happier times, and not have been a birth-portion. You may praise and respect "Uncle Johns," but you can not love them—neither can they love you.
DARLING DOREL.
Dorothea Sibylla, Duchess of Brieg, was born at Cöln, on the River Spree, in Prussia, on the 19th of October, 1590. She was the daughter of Elizabeth of Anhalt, and of John George, Margrave and Elector of Brandenburg, of the old princely Ascanian race. At the death of her husband in 1598, the widowed margravine retired to Crossen to superintend her daughter's education. In due time, suitors were not wanting for the hand of young Dorothea Sibylla: among others, the King of Denmark; but he sued in vain. Dorothea, at length, fixed her affection on John Christian, Duke of Liegnitz and Brieg, who enjoyed a great reputation for virtue, ability, and integrity. To him, after a short courtship. Dorothea was married on the 12th of December, 1610, at Crossen; and reached Brieg—the small capital of her future dominions—on the first of January in the following year.
Such is the dry sum of a charming Court biography, which first appeared in a periodical published in 1829, in Silesia, and which has been twice republished in a separate form—once (in 1838) at Brieg, under the title of "Passages from the Life of Dorothea Sibylla, Duchess of Liegnitz and Brieg." It purports to consist of extracts from the journal of a certain tanner and furrier of Brieg, named Valentinus Gierth, an occasional guest at the ducal castle, and ardent admirer of the duchess. As a simple, and—if internal evidence be worth any thing—truthful picture of German-Court life during the early part of the seventeenth century, it is not to be gainsayed; although suspicions of its authenticity have been cast upon it, similar to those which damaged the charms of the "Diary of Lady Willoughby," by eventually proving it to be a fiction.
Dorothea is described as a pattern of goodness, common sense, virtue, and piety. In domestic management, she was pre-eminent. For her own immediate attendants, she appointed fourteen maids of honor; and the first families of the land looked upon it as an inestimable privilege to place their daughters at the ducal court; which was a high school of all noble virtues and accomplishments, "whereof the duchess herself was the chief teacher and most perfect model."
Nothing could be more primitive than the duchess's intercourse with the townspeople. Occasionally she walked in the streets of Brieg accompanied by her maids of honor, and chatted with such of the townspeople as were sitting on the benches outside their doors. The little children looked forward with the greatest delight to these town walks of the duchess; for the ladies-in-waiting invariably carried about with them in their pockets all sorts of sweetmeats, which the duchess distributed among the little claimants. For this reason, the little children stood peeping round the corners of the streets, when it got wind that the duchess was about to walk out; more especially when it was surmised that the duke would not be with her. So soon, therefore, as Dorothea Sibylla left the castle gate, the little urchins would run through the town, like wildfire, crying out, "The darling Dorel is coming!—the darling Dorel is coming!"
The manner in which this endearing designation first came to her ears is related with affecting simplicity. "It happened," says Master Gierth, with true German particularity, "on the 10th of September (old style) in the year of our Lord, 1613;" that being the Feast of St. Sibylla—one of the duchess's name-saints—and also the second birth-day of her son George. There was a great feast at the castle; to which the towns-folks and the children of the High and Guild Schools were invited.