the history of Tamerlane, an
incident which, to me, has always had the force of an apothegm.

"In early life, and when reduced to the utmost distress, defeated in
battle, and without a follower, he one day threw himself into the ruins
of a Tartar caravansera, where he resolved to give up all further
effort, and die. As he lay on the ground, sunk in despair, his eye was
caught by the attempts of an ant to drag a grain of corn up to its nest
in the wall. The load was too great for it, and the ant and the grain
fell to the ground together. The trial was renewed, and both fell again.
It was renewed ninety and nine times, and on the hundredth it succeeded,
and the grain was carried into the nest. The thought instantly struck
the prostrate chieftain, 'Shall an insect struggle ninety and nine times
until it succeeds, while I, a man, and the descendant of heroes, give up
all hope after a single battle?' He sprang from the ground, and found a
troop of his followers outside, who had been looking for him through the
wilderness. Scimitar in hand, he threw himself on his pursuers, swelled
his troop into an army, his army into myriads, and finished by being the
terror of Europe, the conqueror of Asia, and the wonder of the world."
The letter finished with general enquiries into the things of the day,
and all good wishes for my career.

It is astonishing what an effect is sometimes produced by advice, given
at the exact moment when we want it. This letter was the "word in
season" of which the "wisest of men" speaks; and I felt all its
influence in my rescue from despondency. Its simplicity reached my heart
more than the most laboured language, and its manliness seemed a direct
summons to whatever was manly in my nature. I determined thenceforth, to
try fortune to the utmost, to task my powers to the last, to regard
difficulties as only the exercise that was intended to give me strength,
and to render every success only a step to success higher still. That
letter had pushed me another stage towards manhood.

With the Horse Guards' papers in my hand, and the letter of my old
friend placed in a kind of boyish romance, in my bosom, I went to meet
Mordecai and his daughter. The Jew shook his bushy brows over the
rescript which seemed to put a perpetual extinguisher on my military
hopes. But Mariamne was the gayest of the gay, on what she termed my
"fortunate ill-fortune." She had now completely recovered; said she
remembered nothing of