Editor’s Table: Notes

386 IMPROVEMENT ERA, If there is one truth that the Gods have made more emphatic than another, it is this: "There is no excellence without labor;" and if wealth is possessed, so that every want may be supplied by merely making it kno\ATi, the chief incentive to earnest work is removed, and with that removed the exertions of men who work, not out of necessity but merely from the pleasure they derive from it, will not be sufficient to develop the character, and call out the whole strength of the man. Had it not been for the business misfortunes of Sir Walter Scott, we can hardly think that he would have left us those sublime pictures of moral grandeur and chivalric honor that we find in his noble works. Had not Washington Irving met with his business disasters he never would have enriched American literature with his thoughts, or elevated it above the scorn of English writers. So in nearly all the walks of life. On examination it will be seen that the wants of men are the secret forces that drive mankind to those exertions which develop the nobility of their manhood. And as the wealthy can supply their wants from their wealth without either mental or physical struggle, they pass through life without that development which the exertions named above bring. | Being free from the necessity of labor to supply their wants, they sink without reluctance into Pleasure's lap and draw their life from her voluptuous breast; "And then, those joys which plenty leads, With tip-toe step vice silently succeeds." With wealth has come new temptations, and improved opportunities for gratifying every whim and passion, and men with their fallen natures become easy victims of opportunity. Speaking of the sexual purity of classes. Gibbon, the historian, says of the wealthy classes who have leisure to cultivate the graces of politeness: "The refinements of life corrupt while they polish the intercourse of the sexes. The gross appetite of love becomes most dangerous when it is elevated, or rather disguised by sentimental passion. The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty and inflames the senses through the imagination."

We believe this to be true, and perhaps this very elegance coupled with unbounded opportunity of gratification is the reason that the aristocratic circles of the old world, and the wealthy classes of the new, are the most corrupt. We do not make these remarks for the purpose of saying unkind things about those who are wealthy; nor for the purpose of making invidious distinctions between classes; nor to deny virtue to all who are wealthy. But we make them for the purpose of saying a word of encouragement to the young men who may be deprived of those seeming advantages which the possession of wealth would apparently give. To them we would say: Be not dismayed—let not your spirits be cast down. The possession of wealth might not contribute either to your moral or intellectual advancement. Your very struggle against the disadvantages of lowly estate and iron fortune may be the means ordained by a kind Providence for your development of character. The possession of wealth and the temptations which accompany it might destroy you. And if it did not destroy, the very great probability is that the opportunity it would afford you for gratifying the natural human desire for ease and enjoyment would lead you into the pursuit of pleasure merely, and away from a life of earnest effort in some direction useful to your fellow-men and soul-uplifting to yourself. Complain not, but with patience run the race. A kind Providence who has in his keeping his children's welfare, may be trusted to have ordained all things. for their ultimate good. NOTES. Great occasions do not make heroes of cowards; they simply unveil them. Silently and imperceptibly we grow strong, or we grow weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become. One of the worst effects of the habit of comparing ourselves with those whom we imagine to be happier because of superior advantages is