Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/398

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Walks in the Black Country

manding presence; it is a great individuality that absorbs and covers the whole city. What a life was that, from the first baby battles of the little cripple with the rough goblins of misfortune that barred his pathway, to his glorious bringing up into that haven of triumph to which, after the tempests and storms of the wild sea of troubles he had braved, Lord Chesterfield sent out his cock-boat of insolent patronage to escort him? Who can estimate the worth to struggling genius of the sturdy wrestles of this bookseller's son with grim and glowering adversities? He left something more than "footprints on the sands of time." He left footholdings and footposts for the men wrestling with the surges of misfortune, and many a half-drowned struggler has reached the sunny shore of fame and fortune by taking hold of the skirts of his great example. Some one would do a good service to all coming generations by simply giving to them the consecutive chain of his experiences, just as they were linked to his life, and by doing it in a series of pictures or illustrations graven in stone, after the manner of his monument in the Lichfield market-place. There was his childhood's wrestle for learning, borne to school on the back of some generous and stronger school-mate. That is a picture in the stone touching to see. Then his Oxford struggle would make another. When,