Year: 1877

The following is from the address of
Lord Derby to the young men of the Liver
pool college:


" First let me congratulate the winners
of the prizes. They will not often again
enjoy a success, unless their lives are very
different from those of most men, as to
which they can feel so sure that it has been
fairly earned, and which will come to them
accompanied by so few drawbacks. The
victories of mature life, in whatever sphere
of action, are for the most part gained with
effort, disputed while their novelty remains,
and admitted only when, with their
novelty, whatever enjoyment they could
bring, has for the most part passed of. 1t
is not so with those whose success we
recognize to-day. They may we'll feel glad,
and perhaps a little proud, of what they
have done. But let them recollect as a
caution, and let the losers also recollect by
way of announcement, that an early sue
cess, although it gives n lad good start,
gives him little else that the race of life is
race which tests endurance more than
speed; that some of the most hopeless
failures in mature years have been of the
dashing, brilliant, clever young fellows who
seemed at school and college to carry every
thing before them; and that the slow,
plodding lad who seems to have nothing in
his favor except a dogged determination to
20 on, often comes out better than either
he himself, or any of his friends expected.
There occur to me the cases of two men,
one within my own personal recollection,
the other belonging to the preceding
generation, who rose in due course to fill
some of the highest offices in the State, and
filled them not unworthily; who were at
college, as | have been informed, almost
the habitual objects of good.natured ridicule
among their acquaintances for what was
considered to be their exceptional slowness
of comprehension; and, on the other
hand, really should not like to inquire
for, though an interesting piece of social
statistics, it would be very painful one
how many high wranglers at Cambridge,
and first.class men at Oxford, how many
winners, in their day, of prizes and scholar
ships, have seen their boats go down when
they have pushed out into the rough open
sea of the world, and are now painfully
struggling for bare subsistence, perhaps at
possibly keeping sheep in Australia and
doing odd jobs for an employer who very
likely can neither read nor write


"Now, the moral l wish you to draw is
this: do not any of you be disheartened
because you think yourselves slow oil
stupid, even though you may really al
present appear to have good ground fol
the belief, and do not, on the other hand
any of you be confident of the future merely
because you know or believe yourselves tC
have what is called cleverness. If l were
to tell you that in my belief, that particular
quality of intellectual quickness and sharp
ness is by no means the first qualification
for successful career, many people would
consider, in these days of competitive ex
aminatons, that was wilfully indulging il
paradox. But l believe it is the truth
Talent is the edge of the knife which
makes it penetrate easily, but whether i
penetrates deeply or not depends quite a


much on the force applied to it as on tn
sharpness of the blade. What man reall,
takes keen interest in, he is seldom to-
dull TO understand and to do well and
conversely, when a man does not care t.
put the best of his brains into thing, n


amount of mere cleverness will enable hin


to do it well if it is thing of any real diff
Guilty, or unless it is one which he ha


trained himself to do easily by much pre-


vious practice, in which latter case he


really reaping, in present ease, the fruit c


past exertion living, so to speak, upon tn


capital which he accumulated by early il
, dustry."