Nothing sharpens a man’s wits like poverty.  Hence many of the greatest men have originally been poor men.  Poverty often purifies and braces a man’s morals.  To spirited people, difficult tasks are usually the most delightful ones.  If we may rely upon the testimony of history, men are brave, truthful, and magnanimous, not in proportion to their wealth, but in proportion to their smallness of means.  And the best are often the poorest,—­always supposing that they have sufficient to meet their temporal wants.  A divine has said that God has created poverty, but He has not created misery.  And there is certainly a great difference between the two.  While honest poverty is honourable, misery is humiliating; inasmuch as the latter is for the most part the result of misconduct, and often of idleness and drunkenness.  Poverty is no disgrace to him who can put up with it; but he who finds the beggar’s staff once get warm in his hand, never does any good, but a great amount of evil.

The poor are often the happiest of people—­far more so than the rich; but though they may be envied, no one will be found willing to take their place.  Moore has told the story of the over-fed, over-satisfied eastern despot, who sent a messenger to travel through the world, in order to find out the happiest man.  When discovered, the messenger was immediately to seize him, take his shirt off his back, and bring it to the Caliph.  The messenger found the happiest man in an Irishman,—­happy, dancing, and flourishing his shillelagh.  But when the ambassador proceeded to seize him, and undress him, he found that the Irishman had got no shirt to his back!

The portion of Agur is unquestionably the best:  “Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me.”  The unequal distribution of the disposition to be happy, is of far greater importance than the unequal distribution of wealth.  The disposition to be content and satisfied, said David Hume, is at least equal to an income of a thousand a year.  Montaigne has observed that Fortune confers but little.  Human good or ill does not depend upon it.  It is but the seed of good, which the soul, infinitely stronger than wealth, changes and applies as it pleases, and is thus the only cause of a happy or unhappy disposition.

England is celebrated for its charities.  M. Guizot declares that there is nothing in this land that so fills the mind of the stranger with amazement at our resources, and admiration at our use of them, as the noble free-gift monuments raised on every side for the relief of multiform suffering.  The home philanthropist, who looks a little deeper than the foreign visitor, may be disposed to take another view of the effects of money-giving.  That charity produces unmixed good, is very much questioned.  Charity, like man, is sometimes blind, and frequently misguided.  Unless money is wisely distributed, it will frequently do more harm than good.  If charity could help or elevate the poor, London would now be the happiest city in the world; for about three millions of money are spent on charity, and about one in every three of the London population are relieved by charitable institutions.