perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement."
When experience of life had disciplined his temper, he learnt to
exercise greater self-control; but, at the same time, the qualities
which distinguished him as a child were afterwards useful in enabling
him to defy the criticism of his enemies. Nothing was more marked
than Wordsworth's self-respect and self-determination, as well as his
self-consciousness of power, at all periods of his history.

Henry Martyn, the missionary, was another instance of a man in whom
strength of temper was only so much pent-up, unripe energy. As a boy he
was impatient, petulant, and perverse; but by constant wrestling against
his tendency to wrongheadedness, he gradually gained the requisite
strength, so as to entirely overcome it, and to acquire what he so
greatly coveted--the gift of patience.

A man may be feeble in organization, but, blessed with a happy
temperament, his soul may be great, active, noble, and sovereign.
Professor Tyndall has given us a fine picture of the character
of Faraday, and of his self-denying labours in the cause of
science--exhibiting him as a man of strong, original, and even fiery
nature, and yet of extreme tenderness and sensibility. "Underneath his
sweetness and gentleness," he says, "was the heat of a volcano. He was a
man of excitable and fiery nature; but, through high self-discipline,
he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life,
instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion."

There was one fine feature in Faraday's character which is worthy of
notice--one closely akin to self-control: it was his self-denial.
By devoting himself to analytical chemistry, he might have speedily
realised a large fortune; but he nobly resisted the temptation, and
preferred to follow the path of pure science. "Taking the duration of
his life into account," says Mr. Tyndall, "this son of a blacksmith and
apprentice to a bookbinder had to decide between a fortune of L.150,000
on the one side, and his undowered science on the other. He chose the
latter, and died a poor man. But his was the glory of holding aloft
among the nations the scientific name of England for a period of forty
years." [157]

Take a like instance of the self-denial of a Frenchman. The historian
Anquetil was one of the small number of literary men in France who
refused to bow to the Napoleonic yoke. He sank into great poverty,
living on bread-and-milk, and limiting h