he prospered in his business,
and realized sufficient to enable him to retire upon a competency to
his native town of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Chaucer was in early life a soldier, and afterward an effective
Commissioner of Customs, and Inspector of Woods and Crown Lands.
Spenser was secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, was afterward
Sheriff of Cork, and is said to have been shrewd and attentive in
matters of business. Milton, originally a schoolmaster, was elevated
to the post of Secretary to the Council of State during the
Commonwealth; and the extant Order-book of the Council, as well as
many of Milton's letters which are preserved, give abundant evidence
of his activity and usefulness in that office. Sir Isaac Newton
proved himself an efficient Master of the Mint, the new coinage of
1694 having been carried on under his immediate personal
superintendence. Cowper prided himself upon his business punctuality,
though he confessed that he "never knew a poet, except himself, that
was punctual in anything." But against this we may set the lives of
Wordsworth and Scott--the former a distributor of stamps, the latter
a clerk to the Court of Session--both of whom, though great poets,
were eminently punctual and practical men of business. David Ricardo,
amidst the occupations of his daily business as a London stock-
jobber, in conducting which he acquired an ample fortune, was able to
concentrate his mind upon his favorite subject--on principles of
political economy; for he united in himself the sagacious commercial
man and the profound philosopher. Baily, the eminent astronomer, was
another stock-broker; and Allen, the chemist, was a silk
manufacturer.

We have abundant illustrations, in our own day, of the fact, that the
highest intellectual power is not incompatible with the active and
efficient performance of routine duties. Grote, the great historian
of Greece, was a London banker. And it is said that when John Stuart
Mill, one of the greatest modern thinkers, retired from the
Examiner's office of an important company, he carried with him the
admiration and esteem of his fellow-officers, not on account of his
high views of philosophy, but because of the high standard of
efficiency which he had established in his office, and the thoroughly
satisfactory manner in which he had conducted the business of his
department.

The path of success in business is usually the path of common sense.
Patient labor and application a