Obscure Origin.

“The parents of SEBASTIAN CASTALIO, the elegant Latin translator of the Bible, were poor peasants, who lived among the mountains in Dauphiny.

“The Abbe HAUTEFEUILLE, who distinguished himself in the seventeenth century, by his inventions in clock and watch making, was the son of a baker.

“PARINI, the modern satiric poet of Italy, was the son of a peasant, who died when he was in his boyhood, and left him to be the only support of his widowed mother; while, to add to his difficulties, he was attacked in his nineteenth year by a paralysis, which rendered him a cripple for life.

“The parents of Dr. JOHN PRIDEAUX, who afterwards rose to be Bishop of Worcester, were in such poor circumstances, that they were with difficulty able to keep him at school till he had learned to read and write; and he obtained the rest of his education by walking on foot to Oxford, and getting employed in the first instance as assistant in the kitchen of Exeter College, in which society he remained till he gradually made his way to a fellowship.

“The father of INIGO JONES, the great architect, who built the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, and many other well known edifices, was a cloth-worker; and he himself was also destined originally for a mechanical employment.

“Sir EDMUND SAUNDERS, Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench in the reign of Charles II., was originally an errand boy at the Inns of Court, and gradually acquired the elements of his knowledge of the law by being employed to copy precedents.

“LINNAEUS, the founder of the science of Botany, although the son of the clergyman of a small village in Sweden, was for some time apprenticed to a shoemaker; and was only rescued from his humble employment by accidentally meeting one day a physician named Rothman, who, having entered into conversation with him, was so much struck with his intelligence, that he sent him to the university.

“The father of MICHAEL LOMONOSOFF, one of the most celebrated Russian poets of the last century, and who eventually attained the highest literary dignities in his own country, was only a simple fisherman.  Young Lomonosoff had great difficulty in acquiring as much education as enabled him to read and write; and it was only by running away from his father’s house, and taking refuge in a monastery at Moscow, that he found means to obtain an acquaintance with the higher branches of literature.

“The famous BEN JONSON worked for some time as a bricklayer or mason; ’and let not them blush,’ says Fuller, speaking of this circumstance in his ‘English Worthies,’ with his usual amusing, but often expressive quaintness, ’let not them blush that have, but those that have not, a lawful calling.  He helped in the building of the new structure of Lincoln’s Inn, when, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket.’

“PETER RAMUS, one of the most celebrated writers and intrepid thinkers of the sixteenth century, was employed in his childhood as a shepherd, and obtained his education by serving as a lacquey in the College of Navarre.