Their success may have been gained in the
face of as great difficulties, and after as great struggles; and where
they have won their battle, it is at least a peaceful one, and there is
no blood on their hands.

The idea has been entertained by some, that business habits are
incompatible with genius. In the Life of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, [1316]
it is observed of a Mr. Bicknell--a respectable but ordinary man, of
whom little is known but that he married Sabrina Sidney, the ELEVE of
Thomas Day, author of 'Sandford and Merton'--that "he had some of
the too usual faults of a man of genius: he detested the drudgery of
business." But there cannot be a greater mistake. The greatest geniuses
have, without exception, been the greatest workers, even to the extent
of drudgery. They have not only worked harder than ordinary men, but
brought to their work higher faculties and a more ardent spirit. Nothing
great and durable was ever improvised. It is only by noble patience and
noble labour that the masterpieces of genius have been achieved.

Power belongs only to the workers; the idlers are always powerless. It
is the laborious and painstaking men who are the rulers of the world.
There has not been a statesman of eminence but was a man of industry.
"It is by toil," said even Louis XIV., "that kings govern." When
Clarendon described Hampden, he spoke of him as "of an industry and
vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and
of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle and sharp, and of a
personal courage equal to his best parts." While in the midst of his
laborious though self-imposed duties, Hampden, on one occasion, wrote
to his mother: "My lyfe is nothing but toyle, and hath been for many
yeares, nowe to the Commonwealth, nowe to the Kinge.... Not so much
tyme left as to doe my dutye to my deare parents, nor to sende to them."
Indeed, all the statesmen of the Commonwealth were great toilers;
and Clarendon himself, whether in office or out of it, was a man of
indefatigable application and industry.

The same energetic vitality, as displayed in the power of working, has
distinguished all the eminent men in our own as well as in past
times. During the Anti-Corn Law movement, Cobden, writing to a friend,
described himself as "working like a horse, with not a moment to spare."
Lord Brougham was a remarkable instance of the indefatigably active and
laborious man; and it might be said of Lord Palmerston, th