id Allan, popularly known as the "Scottish Hogarth," owed his
fame and success in life to an accident. When a boy, having burnt his
foot, he amused the monotony of his leisure hours by drawing on the
floor with a piece of chalk--a mode of passing his time which soon
obtained an extraordinary fascination for him. On returning to school,
he drew a caricature of his schoolmaster punishing a pupil, which
caused him to be summarily expelled. But, despite this punishment, his
success as an artist was decided, the caricature being considered so
clever that he was sent to Glasgow to study art, where he was
apprenticed in 1755 to Robert Foulis, a famous painter, who with his
brother Andrew had secretly established an academy of arts in that
city. Their kindness to him he was afterwards able to return when
their fortunes were reversed.

If Sir Walter Scott had not sprained his foot in running round the
room when a child, the world would probably have had none of those
works which have made his name immortal. When his son intimated a
desire to enter the army, Sir Walter Scott wrote to Southey, "I have
no title to combat a choice which would have been my own, had not my
lameness prevented." In the same way, the effects of a fall when about
a year old rendered Talleyrand lame for life, and being, on this
account, unfit for a military career, he was obliged to renounce his
birthright in favour of his second brother. But what seemed an
obstacle to his future success was the very reverse, for, turning his
attention to politics and books, he eventually became one of the
leading diplomatists of his day. Again, Josiah Wedgwood was seized in
his boyhood with an attack of smallpox, which was followed by a
disease in the right knee, some years afterwards necessitating the
amputation of the affected limb. But, as Mr. Gladstone, in his address
on Wedgwood's life and work delivered at Burslem, Oct. 26th, 1863,
remarked, the disease from which he suffered was, no doubt, the cause
of his subsequent greatness, for "it prevented him from growing up to
be the active, vigorous English workman, but it put upon him
considering whether, as he could not be that, he might not be
something else, and something greater. It drove him to meditate upon
the laws and secrets of his art."

Flamsteed was an astronomer by accident. Being removed from school on
account of his health, it appears that a cold caught in the summer of
1660 while bathing, which produced