his best parts." While in the midst of his laborious though self-
imposed duties, Hampden, on one occasion, wrote to his mother: "My
lyfe is nothing but toyle, and hath been for many yeares, nowe to
the Commonwealth, nowe to the Kinge.... Not so much tyme left as
to doe my dutye to my deare parents, nor to sende to them."
Indeed, all the statesmen of the Commonwealth were great toilers;
and Clarendon himself, whether in office or out of it, was a man
of indefatigable application and industry.

The same energetic vitality, as displayed in the power of working,
has distinguished all the eminent men in our own as well as in
past times. During the Anti-Corn Law movement, Cobden, writing to
a friend, described himself as "working like a horse, with not a
moment to spare." Lord Brougham was a remarkable instance of the
indefatigably active and laborious man; and it might be said of
Lord Palmerston, that he worked harder for success in his extreme
old age than he had ever done in the prime of his manhood--
preserving his working faculty, his good-humour and BONHOMMIE,
unimpaired to the end. (17) He himself was accustomed to say, that
being in office, and consequently full of work, was good for his
health. It rescued him from ENNUI. Helvetius even held, that it
is man's sense of ENNUI that is the chief cause of his superiority
over the brute,--that it is the necessity which he feels for
escaping from its intolerable suffering that forces him to
employ himself actively, and is hence the great stimulus
to human progress.

Indeed, this living principle of constant work, of abundant
occupation, of practical contact with men in the affairs of life,
has in all times been the best ripener of the energetic vitality