The maxim that
"Labour conquers all things" holds especially true in the case of
the conquest of knowledge. The road into learning is alike free to
all who will give the labour and the study requisite to gather it;
nor are there any difficulties so great that the student of
resolute purpose may not surmount and overcome them. It was one of
the characteristic expressions of Chatterton, that God had sent his
creatures into the world with arms long enough to reach anything if
they chose to be at the trouble. In study, as in business, energy
is the great thing. There must be the "fervet opus": we must not
only strike the iron while it is hot, but strike it till it is made
hot. It is astonishing how much may be accomplished in self-
culture by the energetic and the persevering, who are careful to
avail themselves of opportunities, and use up the fragments of
spare time which the idle permit to run to waste. Thus Ferguson
learnt astronomy from the heavens, while wrapt in a sheep-skin on
the highland hills. Thus Stone learnt mathematics while working as
a journeyman gardener; thus Drew studied the highest philosophy in
the intervals of cobbling shoes; and thus Miller taught himself
geology while working as a day labourer in a quarry.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, as we have already observed, was so earnest a
believer in the force of industry that he held that all men might
achieve excellence if they would but exercise the power of
assiduous and patient working.
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