he began to
feel a more tender interest in the common concerns of his
fellow-creatures. He now found, from his own experience, that Mr Barlow
had not deceived him in the various representations he had made of the
utility of the lower classes, and consequently of the humanity which is
due to them when they discharge their duty. Nor did that gentleman
abandon his little friend in this important trial; he visited him
frequently, pointed out everything that was curious or interesting about
the farm, and encouraged him to persevere by his praises.

"You are now," said Mr Barlow, one day, "beginning to practise those
virtues which have rendered the great men of other times so justly
famous. It is not by sloth, nor finery, nor the mean indulgence of our
appetites, that greatness of character, or even reputation, is to be
acquired. He that would excel others in virtue or knowledge, must first
excel them in temperance and application. You cannot imagine that men,
fit to command an army, or to give laws to a state, were ever formed by
an idle and effeminate education. When the Roman people, oppressed by
their enemies, were looking out for a leader able to defend them, and
change the fortune of the war, where did they seek for this
extraordinary man? It was neither at banquets, nor in splendid palaces,
nor amid the gay, the elegant, or the dissipated; they turned their
steps towards a poor and solitary cottage, such as the meanest of your
late companions would consider with contempt; there they found
_Cincinnatus_ (whose virtues and abilities were allowed to excel all the
rest of his citizens) turning up the soil with a pair of oxen, and
holding the plough himself. This great man had been inured to arms and
the management of public affairs even from his infancy; he had
repeatedly led the Roman legions to victory, yet, in the hour of peace,
or when his country did not require his services, he deemed no
employment more honourable than to labour for his own subsistence.

"What would all your late friends have said, to see the greatest men in
England, and the bravest officers of the army, crowding round the house
of one of those obscure farmers you have been accustomed to despise, and
entreating him in the most respectful language to leave his fields and
accept of the highest dignity in the government or army? Yet this was
actually the state of things at Rome; and it was characters like these,
with all the train of severe and rugged