le on a canal tow-path in his boyhood,
and George Peabody, owing to the poverty of his family, was an
errand boy in a grocery store at the age of eleven.

Great men of science, literature, and art--apostles of great thoughts
and lords of the great heart--have belonged to no exclusive class or
rank in life. They have come alike, from colleges, workshops, and
farm-houses--from the huts of poor men and the mansions of the rich.
Some of God's greatest apostles have come from "the ranks." The
poorest have sometimes taken the highest places, nor have
difficulties apparently the most insuperable proved obstacles in
their way. Those very difficulties, in many instances, would even
seem to have been their best helpers, by evoking their powers of
labor and endurance, and stimulating into life faculties which might
otherwise have lain dormant. The instances of obstacles thus
surmounted, and of triumphs thus achieved, are indeed so numerous as
almost to justify the proverb that "with will one can do anything."

If we took to England, the mother country, a land where the
advantages are not nearly so great as in this and the difficulties
greater, we shall find noble spirits rising to usefulness and
eminence in the face of difficulties equally great.

Shoemakers have given us Sir Cloudesley Shovel the great admiral,
Sturgeon the electrician, Samuel Drew the essayist, Gifford the
editor of the _Quarterly Review_, Bloomfield the poet, and William
Carey the missionary; whilst Morrison, another laborious missionary,
was a maker of shoe-lasts. Within the last few years, a profound
naturalist has been discovered in the person of a shoemaker at
Banff, named Thomas Edwards, who, while maintaining himself by his
trade, has devoted his leisure to the study of natural science in
all its brandies, his researches in connection with the smaller
crustaceae having been rewarded by the discovery of a new species,
to which the name of "Praniza Edwardsii" has been given by
naturalists.

Nor have tailors been undistinguished. John Stow, the historian,
worked at the trade during some part of his life. Jackson, the
painter, made clothes until he reached manhood. The brave Sir John
Hawkswood, who so greatly distinguished himself at Poictiers, and
was knighted by Edward III for his valor, was in early life
apprenticed to a London tailor. Admiral Hobson, who broke the boom
at Vigo in 1702, belonged to the same calling. He was working as
tailor's apprent