influence, without doubt, which saved him from utter absorption
in his world of rare, noble, and elevated, but ever-increasingly
unattainable ideas. But for it, the serene sea of abstract thought might
have held him becalmed for life; and in the absence of all utterance of
definite knowledge of his conclusions, the world might have been left to
an ignorant and mysterious wonder about the unprofitable scholar."]

[Footnote 211: 'Calcutta Review,' article on 'Romance and Reality of Indian Life.']

[Footnote 212: Joseph Lancaster was only twenty years of age when [21in 1798: he
opened his first school in a spare room in his father's house, which was
soon filled with the destitute children of the neighbourhood. The room
was shortly found too small for the numbers seeking admission, and one
place after another was hired, until at length Lancaster had a special
building erected, capable of accommodating a thousand pupils; outside of
which was placed the following notice:--"All that will, may send their
children here, and have them educated freely; and those that do not
wish to have education for nothing, may pay for it if they please." Thus
Joseph Lancaster was the precursor of our present system of National
Education.]

[Footnote 213: A great musician once said of a promising but passionless
cantatrice--"She sings well, but she wants something, and in that
something everything. If I were single, I would court her; I would marry
her; I would maltreat her; I would break her heart; and in six months
she would be the greatest singer in Europe!"--BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.]

[Footnote 214: Prescot's 'Essays,' art. Cervantes.]

[Footnote 215: A cavalier, named Ruy de Camera, having called upon Camoens to
furnish a poetical version of the seven penitential psalms, the poet,
raising his head from his miserable pallet, and pointing to his faithful
slave, exclaimed: "Alas! when I was a poet, I was young, and happy, and
blest with the love of ladies; but now, I am a forlorn deserted wretch!
See--there stands my poor Antonio, vainly supplicating FOURPENCE to
purchase a little coals. I have not them to give him!" The cavalier,
Sousa quaintly relates, in his 'Life of Camoens,' closed his heart
and his purse, and quitted the room. Such were the grandees of
Portugal!--Lord Strangford's REMARKS ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF
CAMOENS, 1824.]

[Footnote 216: See chapter v. p. 125.]

[Footnote 217: A Quaker called on Bunyan one day with "a messa