#oh#i aug  tuadlugo
A
LE CT U RE
BY
W. P. ATKINSON.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.
B 0 ST 0 N:
CROSBY, NICHOLS, LEE, & CO.
1 8 6 0.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
W. P. ATKINSON,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
GEO. C. IRAND & AVERY, PRINTERS, 3 COIL'HILL, BOSTOiN.




NOTE.
AT the request of the Treasurer of a Massachusetts manufacturing compan?, I some time ago selected and purchased a collection
of books for the use of the hands employed in his mills, and last
winter was invited by them to give one of a course of lectures
before a society for mutual improvement which they had formed in
connection with their library. The following lecture was prepared
in answer to this invitation, and the audience have since requested
me to publish it. As I thought that the advice it contains might be
useful to others besides those for whom it was originally intended, I
have here printed it, with some additions and a few notes to adapt
it to the larger audience to which it now addresses itself.
Lest any reader should feel surprised at the character of many
of the books I have occasion to mention, as being above the level of
the readers for whom the library was intended, I ought perhaps to
say that nearly all the persons employed in these mills are Americans, chiefly from the country towns of New England, and have,
therefore, almost without exception, received the elements of a good
English education in New England common schools. In preparing
the lecture for the press, I have however added some passages
implying a somewhat more extended course of reading than the
library affords.
I need hardly ask my readers to bear in mind that I have not
attempted to lay down anything like a system of education, but
only to give such hints as would be useful to persons who had but
little time to devote to mental improvement. If I had been addressing students, who, with full command of their time, were attempting
a complete course of educational training, my advice would in
many particulars of course have been different.
W. P. A.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., June 3, 1860.








BOOKS AND READING.
THE reading community —and here in New England the
term  includes the whole native-born community —might be
divided, in respect to their treatment of books, into three great
classes: first, people who, though knowing how to read, neglect
books; next, people who, knowing how to read, but knowing
nothing else, abuse books; and last, people who, knowing how
to read, but knowing other things as well, use books. I shall
have most to say of the last class; but first, a word of the two
others, in their order.
In the first place, then, there is a class of people who dislike,
I might almost say, are afraid of books. They think there is
necessarily something hard, and dull, and dry about learning by
this method, though they may be ready enough at learning in
any other. I think that this dislike of books - and I believe
it is very common - arises oftener than from any other source,
from the associations of weariness and wretchedness which are
connected in so many minds with their early school recollections.
A humorous friend of mine says he would like to put a sign
over a good many schoolhouse doors, - " Institution where children are disgusted with Learning;" and has he not some reason?  What recollections of weariness and ennui, of dirty dogseared grammars, of hard school benches, of hours that seemed
interminable, of sour teachers, perhaps of rods and ferules, are
associated in the minds of many with the idea of a book! And
how little they got from it all! they think. - What good have
books ever done them? they ask. How glad they were to
I *




6
escape from the dull school-room into the actual world. There
they began to learn.  A11 they know, they say, they have
learned since they left the place specially devoted to learning,
and by methods not at all recognized there; namely, by obser~vation, by actual practice, by doing and seeing done what there
they only read about. So they say, " Life for me! -I don't
believe in your dull poring over books. They only muddle a
man's lrain, and make him useless and good-for-nothing." And
they certainly do have that effect on many men, and it is reason
enough for a good deal of prejudice against books, which is very
mistaken prejudice nevertheless.
Connected with these notions respecting books, there is in
many minds a feeling of modesty and self-distrust. They have
no head for them, many say -The world of learning is so wide,
the multitude of books so great, what is the use of their entering
a wilderness in which they would surely be lost? Even if they
had abundance of time, they have no talent; and if they had the
talent, where is the use of trying to turn to any serious account
the little fragments of time which are all that their daily labor
leaves them? There is, as I have said, a notion that bookknowledge is something different from other kinds of knowledge,
requiring peculiar talents for mastering it, and that the possession
of a very fair amount of ability for ordinary affairs does not
necessarily imply success in application to study. I shall have
occasion to examine this opinion presently.
Now there certainly is something discouraging, even to the
most persevering reader, in the thought of the vast number of
books, and the vast variety of studies that spread themselves
before him. In the Imperial Library at Paris, which is the
largest in the world, there are 800,000 separate volumes.* To. The number is often estimated as high as a million, but according to
the most reliable authorities, no library in the world at present contains that
number of separate volumes, though, at the present rate of increase, the
British Museum is likely soon to exceed it. See Edwards on Libraries, for
a great mass of curious and valuable information on this subject.




form some idea of this number, we will suppose them to average
nine inches in height, and to be set end to end in a single row;
they would then extend a distance of 113 miles. Supposing
them to average 200 medium-sized pages, and I calculate that
they contain 148,760 acres of printed paper!  The Library of
the British Museum, which contains only 600,000 separate volumes, is said to haveforty miles of book-shelves.
Now, when we consider that the largest library in the world
does not probably contain more than one fourth of the separate
works that have been published* in the four centuries since the
invention of printing, the most persevering student may well be
pardoned a slight feeling of discouragement at the thought of
the amount to be learned, and the shortness of the time he has
to learn it in. Mr. De Quincey calculates that if a student were
to spend his life from the age of twenty to eighty in reading
alone, he might compass the mere reading of some twenty thousand volumes, but that, making the proper deduction for books
to be studied as well as read, and books to be read many times
over, five to eight thousand is the largest number which a student in that long life can hope to master. What a world of
learning then must inevitably remain unread! But several
considerations immediately suggest themselves. We have been
counting pages and volumes. Suppose we were to count ideas,
if that were possible,- would the result be the same? Newton
is said to have declared that if the earth could be compressed
into a perfectly solid mass, it could be put into a nutshell. Without going quite so far in respect to books, yet if we consider
how many volumes would probably contain the distinct and separate truths worth preserving, which could be gathered out of
the great mass of printed matter contained in a great library,
we shall find that the bulk of our possessions will shrink in a
marvellous manner.  For, not to speak of the vast number of
volumes in which the same ideas are repeated for the ten thou* Edwards on Libraries.




8
sandth time with little or no variation, if we consider how many
are written without any ideas at all, like "novels of fashionable life," for instance, how many contain nothing but falsehoods, like defences of human slavery, in how many what was
well said by one writer is only badly repeated by another; — in
short, if we consider all the deductions that are to be made
from the whole amount of printed matter in order to get at the
fraction which contains the valuable part, we may begin to feel
a little encouraged. To imagine that every book that is printed
is worth reading, would be a monstrous supposition indeed. The
presumption in many departments of literature is strongly the
other way. What a sad time of it would a reader have who
undertook to read all the sermons that are published!- or all
the novels, or all the books of travel. You see advertised a work
purporting to give an account, from actual observation, of some
interesting region of the earth you would like to know about,
but cannot visit. You buy the book, and find a veracious account of the state of the roads, and the weather; of how the
fleas bit the traveller at various places; how on several occasions
he had very tough meat for dinner, and other information equally
important.  Not a single fact to add to our knowledge has the
goose brought home; not a single thing has he actually seen in
all his journey. He might as well have stayed in his bed for all
the good we shall get of his travels. Yet these sham books —
and how many there are of them in all departments of literature - are printed and bound, entered into catalogues, and take
up as much room on the book-shelves, or rather a great deal
more, than the real books beside them.
Then again consider the effect time has to destroy the value
of much literature.  If a man study a treatise on a great many
scientific subjects written half a century ago, so great has been
the progress in most of the departments of science that he is
likely to learn as many errors as truths: the case is the same
with much historical writing, superseded by more accurate in



9
vestigations and the discovery of new sources of information.
Who cares now for all the hair-splittings and unintelligible controversies, once thought by the learned world of such vital importance, of the scholastic philosophy of the middle ages? and
is not a vast deal of what even now passes for theological learning rapidly following in the footsteps of its predecessor, to darkness and utter oblivion?  Doubtless, obsolete and superseded
books continue to have a certain amount of historic value, - for
to the historian, the errors of mankind are almost as important as
its truths, and it is well, therefore, that great libraries should preserve them, and that a certain number of students should take
an interest in reading them: but a small number will suffice.
I am speaking here, not of antiquarian knowledge, but of knowledge available and useful to the mass of intelligent men. I suppose no day passes but adds some volume to that vast multitude
of dead books which no mortal eye will ever peruse again.
Slowly a great old library becomes a catacomb of buried minds.
Did you ever notice a little shrub which grows from a centre
outwards, in a circle upon the ground, and as the.circle enlarges
its circumference, the central part dies and crumbles away, so
that a constantly expanding ring of living plant remains? This
is no bad type of the progress of learning; and if, as is not
impossible, the living part nourishes itself on the dead remains
it leaves behind in its increasing growth, the image is still more
perfect.  The foremost truths of one age become the errors of
the next, which sucks the life all out of them, leaving behind
only a dead carcass to perish apd decay, and.destined to be
served in like manner by the progress of the ages which are to
follow. For no human thought is perfect, but finite error is
ever mingled with the infinite and immortal truth.  Thus it
happens that round the central mass of dead lumber which encumbers every science in the shape of obsolete and superseded
books, there is, as it were, a narrow ring of living books which
contain that science in its most advanced state; and these are
the books we should seek and study.




10
Enough has been said to show that the bulk of real literature
bears no proportion to the mass of printed paper that contains it.
Yet, making all deductions, how vast it is! How multitudinotts
are the subjects of human thought! -in every direction what
fields of knowledge spread out before us, farther than the eye
can reach! How shall we make even thebsmallest part our own?
This question I shall try to answer when I come to speak of the
use of books; but first a few words upon their abuse.
- I said just now that there was in many people's minds almost
a superstitious feeling about book-learning, as though it were
something different from other kinds of knowledge; as though
the study of books were a kind of black art, and he who had
come at what he knows by that road had a sort of merit different
from him who knew perhaps as much, but had arrived at it by
other methods; and I said I thought that this feeling sometimes
discouraged people from having anything whatever to do with
reading, except for mere amusement.  I think that this feeling
about books is far from uncommon.
Now did you never see a slater walking on a roof?  He walks
there at that giddy height, and on that sloping surface, where a
single misstep would cause his instant destruction, with as much
unconcern as we walk on the pavement below. What makes
the difference? He was not born with an innate faculty for
walking on roofs which we do not possess. The difference arises
merely or chiefly from habit. We are not used to walking on
roofs, and he is; if we were as used to it as he, we could do it
as well. When I enter one of your mills at a time when it is in
full operation, the bustle of the unaccustomed scene so confuses
me that I really find it a little difficult to think.  I suppose you
are hardly conscious of the noise, and can think and talk as well
there as in the profoundest silence. The machinery you are
managing with such ease, with all its revolving wheels and complicated motions, is a mystery which it seems to me I could never
master.  I suppose it seems simple enough to you who are
accustomed to it.




Now, to a certain extent there is just such a delusion about
books, in the minds of those who are unaccustomed to the use of
them. The man who devotes himself to the study of books is a
great and a wise man to many, by virtue of that fact alone, as
though he possessed some faculty of which they are destitute.
The question is not asked: Could not they do just as well if
they tried, or does the book-learned man really do anything well?
can he make any use of his books and his learning? has he any
brains?
Now, the truth is, there are no stupider men in the world than
a good many book-learned scholars, and a learned dunce is of all
creatures perhaps the most ridiculous, and from all time has been
a chief mark for the shafts of satire. Montaigne well called a
pedant an ass loaded with a pannier of books, for many a man's
learning is quite as little a part of him. A witty German writer
I have lately been reading,* says that a wig is the very appropriate symbol of a mere learned man.  "It adorns his head,"
he says, " with a rich mass of other men's hair; just as mere
erudition consists in equipping a man with a great quantity of
other men's thoughts, - in the absence of his own; but thoughts
which never fit him naturally as do those which spring from the
native soil of a man's own mind, and are not, like them, useful
in all cases and suited to all ends; firm rooted, too, so that,
when used up, their places are supplied from the same source."
" In fact," he goes on to say, " the most complete book-learning
bears the same relation to genius and original thought that a
dried herbarium bears to the ever fresh and new-created, ever
young and ever changing world of living nature."
Now this truth is constantly forgotten.  There is an almost
superstitious reverence for mere learning, which is mischievous
wherever it appears.  It leads to a sad amount of worthless
study in our schools, for instance.  Who has not seen pale-faced
boys, and worse still, pale-faced girls, undergoing the process of
*Arthur Schopenhauer.




being crammed with grammars, Latin and Greek, French and
German, with algebra and trigonometry, with metaphysics and
mythology, and whatever other study there may be that has the
least possible connection with their ordinary sympathies and
mental life?  What good will it all do them?  It will do many
of them  a great deal of harm; for it will not be digested.  It
will never come to form an integral part of their minds, as all
true knowledge must; and yet they will very possibly barter
health, perhaps life, for it. A shrewd friend of mine, somewhat
advanced in years, once said to me: "' I wonder why it is, that
with all the immense improvements in the machinery of education, the great schoolhouses, the new apparatus, the long list of
studies, there do not seem, at least to me, to be such thorough
scholars and sensible men turned out as used to come from the
old shabby country schoolhouses we used to have when I was
a boy." My friend is perhaps one of those praisers of bygone
times the Roman poet speaks of, but if there is any ground for
his criticism, I think I can give him the reason in one word,
and that is, cramming. In his day the boys and girls had few
advantages, perhaps, and learned little of all they do now; but
what they learned, they learned thoroughly and well. It was
simple fare, but they digested it, and it did them good.
Cramming and pedantry; the parrot repetition of other men's
ideas; putting words in the place of realities, lazy reading
in the place of active thought, - these are the abuse of books.
Let us turn now to the consideration of their use.
And while we condemn pedantry we must carefully distinguish between pedants and men of real learning, and not fall
into that vulgar error which ranks all scholars by profession
among idle drones.  Though pedants spend their time in reading many books without becoming really learned, yet no scholar
can become really learned without reading many books. It is
doubtless flattering to our laziness to observe how many spend
their time in vain; but it will not do for that to deny the neces



13
sity of all hard study, or to refuse the respect which is their
due to those true scholars, masters of their learning, whose
minds can absorb and assimilate any amount of erudition without their native power and originality being one jot diminished.
And while we are considering the danger of overfeeding the
mind, we must remember, too, the opposite danger of starving it.
I would not have you believe that I suppose that even the
strongest mind can be sufficient unto itself, and always live on
its own resources, though a doctrine of that kind has lately been
somewhat fashionable. The bears, they say, go into their dens
in cold countries, and manage to exist through the winter by sucking their own paws; but it is a very torpid state of existence,
and they come out exceedingly lean and hungry in the spring.
So it will be with us if we try to exist on our own mental resources alone, and give our minds no wholesome food to nourish
them withal; and though I am very far from saying that books
furnish the only food, yet no one will deny that they are one
great and valuable store to draw from.
But I do not suppose I need go into any labored argument
to prove their importance when rightly used. The use you
make of your library is sufficient evidence that you know how
to value it. I shall therefore confine myself to some remarks
upon the best way of making the most of it.
Now on this question of the best way to read, there immediately arise a good many doubts, — some of them not altogether
easy to settle. Notwithstanding all I have said of the worthlessness of a large percentage of printed books, what a world of
valuable ones remains behind, more than the longest life can
compass the reading of, even if it be devoted to that single purpose. How vast the circle of knowledge in this great and beautiful universe; how innumerable the subjects of study, each one
of them inexhaustible, because each one the product of Infinite
Wisdom! The ablest man, even if he means to give his life to
2




14
study, must choose some subject, or some class of subjects, to
which to devote his powers; what then shall be done when
the question merely is, how to spend'a few leisure hours? It
is clear that we cannot learn everything, and had better therefore not aim in that direction. Let me read you a few sensible
words of that merry philosopher, who is as wise as he is witty,
the Rev. Sidney Smith: -
"There is another piece of foppery," he says, "which is to
be cautiously guarded against, — the foppery of universality;
of knowing all sciences, and excelling in all arts, - chemistry,
mathematics, dancing, algebra, history, reasoning, riding, fencing, Low Dutch, natural philosophy, and enough Spanish to talk
about Lope de Vega. In short, the modern precept of education very often is, Take the Admirable Crichton for your model,
- be ignorant of nothing! Now my advice, on the contrary,"
he says, " is to have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of
everything."*
Still, there is something to be said on the other side. What
would become of us Yankees if we were to adopt such a rule?
Ignorant of a great number of things!-who ever saw such a
Yankee as that? Is not he bound to know a little of everything? Can there possibly be any harm in that knowing a little
of everything, which is the Yankee's inborn privilege and greatest glory?
I know the bad odor in which a smatterer is held, especially
by that respectable class of people who pride themselves on going to the bottom of subjects, - (a good many of them never
come up again,) - and there is an ugly proverb about a Jack-atall-trades, which has a great deal of truth in it. Still, I have a
good word to say for miscellaneous knowledge, and it shall not
be my word, but that of a far weightier authority, the excellent
* Lectures on Moral Philosophy,'p. 99. The advice is good, but not
original. It may be found in the Pursuits of Literature.




15
Dr. Arnold. "Depend upon it," he says, "that a mixed
knowledge is not a superficial one; as far as it goes, the views
that it gives are true; but he who reads deeply in one class
of writers only, gets views which are almost sure to be perverted, and which are not only narrow but false. Adjust your
proposed amount of reading to your time and inclination, - this
is perfectly free to every man; but whether the amount be
large or small, let it be varied in its kind, and widely varied.
If I have a confident opinion on any point connected with the
improvement of the human mind," he says, "it is this."* There
is an excellent passage too in Archbishop Whately's note on
Lord Bacon's Essay on Reading about what is, and what is not
really superficial reading, which I recommend, as I do the bookt
that contains it, to any hard heads among you that like good
solid thinking.
No, - we need not be afraid of knowing a little about a great
many things, of having a great deal of rhiscellaneous information,
provided it be clear and good as far as it goes, and provided we
are inepossession of one other precious piece of knowledge, - the
knowledge, namely, that we don't know any more. It is the
people who are ignorant of this last fact, and parade their peck
of knowledge as if it were a bushel or a ton, who are the true
smatterers. Or again, a smattering is that sort of knowledge
described by Dickens as being the effect of the teachings of Dr.
Blimber's school on poor little Paul Dombey, who, at the end of
his instructions, did not exactly know whether twenty Romuluses
made a Remus, or hie, hlc, hoc were Troy weight, or a verb
always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three times four were
Taurus a bull, or whether it were not all otherwise.
Or it is that kind of knowledge which came out of Brown's
brain when he was mesmerized and told to tell all he knew.
W Stanley's Life of Arnold, p. 357.
t Bacon's Essays, with Annotations, by Archbishop Whately.




16
"Brown, a gentleman of the city, who had received' a good classical and commercial education,' is placed in communication with
Miss Fathomall, a clairvoyante, who, by placing her hand on his
bald head, is enabled to translate to the company all that passes
there,- Brown in the mean time being enjoined diligently to think
over all he knows. Here is the stock of Brown's information as
thus ascertained.
" Greek: there's a dual number and a tense called aorist, and
one verb in the grammar is TVrTJ); there's ~Eschylus, and there's
Herodotus, and there's a war called Peloponnesian and Xerxes.
Latin: I know some, - let me see, -' bis dat qui cito dat,''ingenuas
didicisse,' &c., and there's'post hoc non propter hoc,' and there's' sic
vos non vobis,' which goes on melliki - something, but it isn't usual
to quote the rest, so it don't matter my not knowing it. I know a
whole line, by-the-by,' 0 fortunati nimium si sua bona norint.'
Come, that would fetch something in the House of Commons. I
think it's from Ovid. There's the Augustan age and Coriolanus.
Brutus goes with liberty, and Tarquin's ravishing strides - a verb
agrees with its nominative case. English history: there's Arthur,
- round-table, - Alfred burnt oat-cakes, - Henry VIII. had a
number of wives, was the son of Queen Elizabeth, who wore a stiff
frill and didn't marry. George III. had two prime ministers, Horace Walpole and Mr. Pitt. The Duke of Wellington and Napoleon and Waterloo, also Trafalgar and Rule Britannia,- oh, and
there's Aristotle shone in a number of things, -generally safe to
mention. Plato, and friendly attachment, - mem., avoid mentioning Plato, there's something about a republic on which I don't feel
safe when it's occasionally mentioned. Botany: sap, the blood of
trees, - the leaves of flowers are called petals, - also parts called
pistils, which I could make a pun upon if I knew what they were, -
cosines in algebra, the same which would make play with cousins, -
plus and minus, more and less — there's a word rationale, don't
know whether French or Latin, but extremely good to use, - foreign politics I don't make much of, not understanding history of
foreign countries. Germans I know, dreamy-, - Klopstock, - know
his name and think he was a drummer. Goethe was great. And
I think there's an Emperor Barbarossa, but mem., be cautious, for
I'm not sure whether that's not the name of an animal. Understand animals, having been twice to the Zoological Gardens. Have




17
read Shakspeare, - not Milton, but it's safe to praise him, - fine, a
good epithet to apply to him. Know a good glass of claret. Lots
of anecdotes, - I'll tell you one. Once at a bar dinner there was
an Irish barrister, who chanced never to have tasted olives,-"
Miss Fathomall removes her hand; bar-dinner stories hurt her.*
In fact, thoroughness and superficiality have more to do with
the mastery than with the amount of our knowledge. He is a
knowing man who is master of what he knows, be it ever so
little; and the learnedest man in the world is a superficial man if
his learning masters him. Who, indeed, is learned? Socrates
said, you know, that he did know more than other people because he knew how little he knew, and the profoundest of modern thinkers said that he seemed to himself in his studies only
as a little child who runs hither and thither on the shore of some
vast ocean, and picks up here a shell and there a pebble.
Let our reading be ever so varied, we cannot acquire even a
slight knowledge of all the innumerable subjects of human investigation. Out of the vast number we must choose a little portion, and must all of us be ignorant of infinitely more than we can
know. What considerations shall guide us in selecting even
what we will know a little about? I think there are a few general rules which will be of great service in directing us, and I am
the more ready to enter on this part of my subject as it will lead
me to speak of your library and of some of the considerations
which guided me in selecting the books that compose it.
I believe, then, in the first place, in reading for amusement,
provided it is distinctly understood that it is reading for amusement, and not study; for I do not believe in turning study into
amusement, any more than I believe in turning teaching into
play. When I study, I want to learn; but when I read for
amusement, I want to be amused, and do not therefore take up
W From a Defence of Ignorance, by the author of How to make Home
Unhealthy. [Henry Morley, author of The Life of Palissy the Potter.
2*




18
Mill's Logic, or Jonathan Edwards's Treatise on the Will, but
a good novel, if I can find one, or a merry story, or a pleasant
poem. It is all very well for people who have plenty of spare
time, and who never knew what it was to work in their lives,
to talk about working people spending all their leisure hours in
instructive study; but let them do a day's hard work once, and
see if at the end of it they feel exactly like sitting down to master some difficult subject requiring close attention, and hard and
continuous thought; and no study is of much avail without these.
It is a physiological absurdity. The limbs cannot be tired without tiring the whole system. The mind does not exist apart,
independent of the body, as you would suppose from hearing
some people talk about it; whatever fatigues the body, fatigues,
to a greater or less extent, the brain also. Many manual operations, though seeming very simple, are really a great tax upon
the mental powers.  "The brain," says a sensible writer in the
London Examiner, "may be as much worked by a very common
kind of labor as by the most intellectual. It seems to be exhausted in proportion to the concentrated attention that is bestowed upon the pursuit. An anxious study while working with
foul thread to prevent faults in a weft of calico, or to keep an
accurate balance in a tradesman's complicated books will bring
on exactly the same fatigue of brain as the study of mathematics
or metaphysics." How idle to suppose, then, that persons of
ordinary ability, who have already done one days work by daylight, can sit down and do another in the hours when body and
mind should be at rest.  The truth is, that just as most manual
labor, to be good for anything, requires brains, so study, to be
good for anything, requires bone and muscle; yet how often is
this overlooked, and students considered idlers by those who call
themselves the only working people! I have nothing to say for
those dawdling dilettanti who sometimes pass for literary men,
but I do say that systematic study requires physical as well as
mental power,. and a great deal of it. "How can you endure,"




19
said I once to the hardest literary laborer I ever knew, - I mean
my friend and minister, the Rev. Theodore Parker, -  " how can
you endure this enormous amount of study and writing?"  "I
can endure it," said he, " because I laid up so many rods of stone
wall when I was a farmer's boy in Lexington." But even his
great strength has given way, I trust only for a season.*
I do not think it reasonable, then, to expect of the majority of
hard-working people a great amount of intellectual exertion in
their leisure hours, because their strength has already been expended in other ways. A moderate amount of real mental labor,
they can and ought to perform; for without it they will be in
danger of degenerating into dull drudges,-their minds running
to waste, while their bodies grow stronger.  But I do think -
and here I differ from many good, but over-strict people -that
light reading for amusement merely, is not only harmless, but
eminently useful. It is a refreshment to the mind which will
render it healthier and happier, to get, I do not care how interested — the more interested the better -in a really good novel.
It is better than medicine to have a good hearty laugh over
something really entertaining. Those long-visaged persons who
preach that this world is nothing but a scene of woe, and who
think that nothing can be good unless it is very solemn, may be
sincere, but for one I must be permitted to consider them sadly
mistaken.  It'is a philosophical error, a physAological mistake,
an economical blunder, a miscalculation in every mood and
tense of the verb miscalculate, not to seek out innocent sources
of amusement, - not to be as cheerful, ay, as merry as we innocently can; and it is only the innocent who are really cheerful
and merry. There will be enough of unavoidable suffering in
this our pilgrimage to make us sufficiently sober.  I have noth~ That hope has, alas! proved vain; but I allow the passage to remain, if
only that I may here pay my little tribute of affection and respect to the
memory of one who, when the bitterness of party spirit and sectarian ani-.mosity shall have passed away, will surely take his place as one of America's truly great men.




20
ing to say in behalf of immoral or vicious sources of recreation.
Vicious amusements are a far worse miscalculation than no
amusements at all; but all amusements are not vicious because
they are amusements, as some would-be good people seem to
think.
I therefore put into your library a pretty large collection of
good novels, and I am not sorry to see that you have been very
diligent in the perusal of them. I gave you Scott and Cooper,
Dickens and Thackeray, Kingsley and Reade, Miss Edgeworth,
and Jane Austen, and Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell and Miss
Muloch, not to mention others of lesser note. And what a
store of innocent pleasure do these names call up!  Here
is another world into which we can step aside to enjoy ourselves after our daily work in the real world is done.  How
are our imaginations stimulated, often our best feelings called
out, by these marvellous creations of genius! And when
we have had our recreation in this shadowy realm, we return
refreshed again to our real world of sober duty. No doubt you
may abuse this, as you may abuse any other good gift. If novelreading takes you off from duty, leads to discontent with daily
life, turns your head with romantic notions that can never be
realized, - and novel-reading may do all this, - or, if instead of
an occasional amusement, you make novel-reading the only
occupation of yogr minds, - why, then you are abusing novelreading, and showing yourself to be a deplorably weak and
silly person. But life with its ten thousand dangers may mislead us: should we for that go into monasteries and convents? I
have but little respect for that puny and valetudinarian virtue that
only keeps itself alive by avoiding every breath of danger. I
would not indeed keep bad company in novels, any more than in
life. I left out Bulwer from my list, —perhaps you may think I
was too scrupulous, -but the very atmosphere of his early novels
is corrupt, and I despise his sham philosophy and pretended
profundity which looks so deep, and turns out to be nothing but
a cloud of words. He is a vicious charlatan, whose company I




21
should avoid as I would that of any plausible scoundrel in real
life. I do not deny, and God forbid that I should wish to palliate, the dangers of bad novel-reading; and I would have a
right-minded young person, and especially a right-minded young
woman, who, in a world full of snares, has perhaps to walk
alone and guard herself as best she may, against many perils
both from without and from within, - I would have her scrupulous in her choice of books, as she is scrupulous in her choice
of company. If there is anything we ought to keep with care
in this world, it is our common sense, our habit of right-mindedness, that simplicity of character on which depends our power
of discriminating right from wrong, and good from evil; and few
things, certainly, will corrupt that sooner than the habitual reading of morbid, false, and vicious novels. A silly novel is the
silliest of all books; a bad novel, one of the worst.
When I speak, then, of reading for amusement, I mean
wholesome, not unwholesome reading. And I would set my
standard high; I would throw aside merely silly books, though
they may be ever so easy reading. There is no telling how
much good you may do yourself by discrimination, how much
harm by carelessness, even in light reading. Silly sentimentality and second-hand romance, what trash they are! Laura
Matilda and her magnificent lover, the Count, and that darling
sentimental correspondence, and the wedding at St. Bride's,how sweet it was! and that gentlemanly and romantic pirate,
and that high-souled and high-spirited highwayman, - how
delightful! and what double-distilled nonsense! Depend upon
it, you will spoil your appetite if you read trash. What sort
of a digestion would you have if you were to feed on slops and
sugar candy?
So much in regard to reading for amusement. But no one
wants to do that all the time. The habit of reading once fixed,
we at some time or other begin to look for something more satisfying than story-books; we want to think; and now, amid the




22
multitude of graver books, what rules shall guide us in our
choice? I am going to lay down two or three, which I think
you will find useful.
And first, let me say a word of a class of books which make
an excellent transition from novels to more solid reading.  I
refer to Lectures, Reviews, and Essays. These are excellent
reading for short fragments of time. They often give, in a brief
space, a connected view of a whole subject. If by able writers,
they contain much thought, and suggest more than they contain,
and they may be had of all kinds and upon every variety of
topic. You may choose the solid worldly wisdom of my Lord
Chancellor Bacon; the practical, homespun common-sense of
our own Franklin; Macaulay, compressing with rapid glance
and brilliant pen a whole history into a review article; Charles
Lamb, quaint and humorous; Irving's graceful sketches; Emerson, that original genius who has dared to be true to the beautiful inspirations of his own mind, and finds for his reward that
all minds are yielding homage to him,- who will do you that
best and highest of services, inspire you to active, earnest and
independent thought; Carlyle, grim and cynical, himself loving liberty with all his soul, yet from most superfluous fear
of its abuse, the advocate of tyranny over others, whimsically
wrong-headed, but deeply, terribly earnest, - a man whose profound hatred of falsehood has the wholesome effect of a bitter
tonic, and we rise from reading him, strengthened for greater
effort to be ourselves more manly and more earnest; Hazlitt,
De Quincey, genial Leigh Hunt, and the refined and thoughtful
author of Friends in Council; Sidney Smith, witty and wise,
and hearty "Christopher North," with his flowing stream of
prose poetry.
I do not deny that books of this class require a certain amount
of previous cultivation, or else a native good taste to relish them
at the first reading. Some will say that they are above them,
that they cannot appreciate them. But if you find them above




23
you at first, I would not be satisfied with having them continue so. I would cultivate my taste for good reading till I
could appreciate them, and then, depend upon it, the vulgar
excitement of flash novels and " sensation " books will seem
cheap in comparison with the calmer and purer pleasure to be
derived from writers of true'excellence. To form your taste
will doubtless require effort, - what good thing in this world
does not, -but every one can make such effort, and will be
repaid a thousandfold. Reading authors of elevated tone, and
pure taste, and poetic imagination, and delicate wit, is like keeping the company of persons of high culture and refined manners. Our own manners become refined, our own characters
elevated by it. Take two boys or two girls of equal abilities,
and put one of them in the company of rude, coarse, brutal,
clownish, and ignorant people, and place the other with persons
of cultivated minds and gentle manners, and at the end of a few
years what a difference! - merely from their intercourse with
the people who surround them. Now in books we may choose
the character of our company more easily than in our intercourse
with the living world, and with the like benefit or injury.
But now I will suppose that there are some among you who
are not satisfied with novel-reading, nor yet with miscellaneous
essays - which whet a sharp appetite for knowledge rather than
satisfy it — and are anxious to improve their minds as far as
their opportunities allow by the gathering of knowledge in some
more systematic manner; what andvice shall I give them? Such
inquirers are generally directed to some formidable course of
study which some learned man has marked out, embracing a
choice selection of works on all subjects in the Encyclopedia,
beginning with Algebra and ending with Zoology. I shall not
give any such advice; for, in the first place, I never yet saw
any such course of study that began to be practicable for a person of only moderate abilities, and with only a moderate amount
of leisure; or, indeed, for any person whatever. These writers




24
of courses of study for other people are'-much more ready to
show the extent of their own learning than to give useful advice
to those who have not so much. I am under the impression
that I put a little book of that kind, called Pycroft's Course
of Reading, into your library, for it contains some really sensible advice in the Introduction — but I should think that at
the least estimate it would take a man from fifty to one
hundred years of steady reading to master all the books mentioned there - and there is very little discrimination shown in
the selection.
Mr. Pycroft tells a story of a good young lady who began an
extended course of historical reading, intending to come down
by easy stages from the creation to modern times, but her mischievous brother kept putting back her book-mark, so that the
unconscious reader conld not possibly get herself out of Rollin's
Ancient History, and for aught I know is still engaged with the
Medes and Persians in that delectable performance.  It is a
type of the mode of reading usual in such courses, - spiritless,
lifeless, without interest; one might as well be asleep.
I do not, then, recommend any mechanical and ambitious
course of reading; but yet I do not consider it a matter of small
consequence which, among all the valuable subjects of study, a
reader shall select; on the contrary, it may depend altogether
upon his choice, whether he shall succeed in acquiring a true
taste for mental occupation, or whether he shall be baffled in all
his efforts. And I think there is probably a greater number of
persons than would generally be supposed, who have attempted
at some time in their lives to improve their minds by study, but
who have been discouraged, and perhaps given up in despair,
with the conclusion that they had no mind to improve, when
all the while it was because they began in some wrong way.
W7ho has not seen idle and discontented boys, who hated school
and made up their minds to remain dunces all their lives, simply
because, through the folly of their parents or teachers, they had




25
been put upon studies which were wholly unsuited to their tastes
and capacities.
Now it is obviously impossible for one person to give minute
directions to another, at least without a very intimate knowledge
of the other's mind. Among all the persons in this room, there
are no two with minds and characters exactly alike, just as you
never can find two leaves on a tree exactly alike. Each one of
us has some peculiarity of mental constitution, and there is probably in each of us some faculty, or group of faculties, a little
superior in strength to the rest, which gives to each his individual
and peculiar cast of character, determines his tastes, and rules his
habits. One person will have great power of observation of
external objects, which will make him a good naturalist; another
never sees things in detail, or as they are, but a lively imagination throws its coloring over all things, and he lives in an ideal
world of his own creating, - this is the poetic mind; another
will like nothing so well as, amidst a great multitude of confused
particulars, to trace out some general law which governs them, and
by its means bring order out of chaos, - and this is the philosophic; others will have a fondness for some particular class of
ideas, as for the relations of numbers, or the power of words.
Now it is obvious that if, for instance, the mathematical mind
undertakes to study poetry, which it has but feeble capacity to
appreciate, or if the mind that is fond of great generalizations
and wide-embracing laws is tied down to the minute observation
of particulars for which it has no natural eye, or if the possessor of the lively imagination is by some perverse chance
chained to a dry study which affords no opportunity for the exercise of this his strongest faculty, nothing can result but disappointment. My first general rule for study, therefore, - though
I shall presently have to qualify it a little, - is to study that
subject, or class of subjects, for which you have the strongest
natural taste, which interests you most, and from which your
mind reaps the greatest harvest of pleasure and satisfaction. I
3




26
do not believe in mental effort being painful, or going too much
against the grain, though it seems as if it were the theory of
many people that studies are valuable just in proportion to their
dryness and disgustfulness. People lose much time in study,
as in everything else, by starting on false scents and entering on
courses for which they are ill adapted and in which they cannot
therefore be successful.  " Whatever you are from nature," says
Sidney Smith, "keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. If Providence only intended you to write posies for rings
or mottoes for twelfth-cakes, keep to posies and mottoes; a good
motto for a twelfth-cake is more respectable than a villanous
epic poem in twelve books. Be what Nature intended you to
be, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten
thousand times worse than nothing,"  -  which last is rather
strongly stated.  And to  the  same effict that thoughtful
writer, Henry Taylor, says: "Occasions will arise, no doubt,
not unfrequently in the manifold contingencies which life, however ordered, must present, in which specific and extemporaneous
self-government will be called for; but no man will make the
most of his better nature who does not so place himself in life,
and so manage his mind, as to give fair play to all his natural
dispositions which are not evil, and to make his acts of virtue,
whenever possible, enjoyments and not restraints." t
The advice is good, but harder to follow in life than in reading, though it is easy enough to abuse it there; for all studies
are not equally difficult, and lazy people will immediately
begin to think that they have a strong native talent for some
very agreeable and easy pursuit that does not require much
thinking. How many sentimental young ladies, for instance,
begin to fancy they are born poetesses - Mrs. Brownings, or at
least Mrs. Hemanses-  because they find they can acquire the
knack of stringing rhymes together -  "bleeding hearts" and
* Lectures, p. 265.            t Notes from Books, p. 51.




27
"Cupid's darts," love's young dreams" and "purling streams,'
- you know the "original poetry " that appears in young ladies' albums and the corners of newspapers.  It is easy for lazy
people to make mistakes, but I am speaking of those who will
deal honestly with themselves, and have an earnest purpose;
and to them I think it is good advice to say, -If you can discover
in yourself any leading taste or prominent faculty, or if in trying
several lines of study any one offers special attractions to your
mind, pursue that, not indeed to the exclusion of all others, but
so that it becomes your leading object.
Do not misunderstand my remark about young ladies' albums.
Any real depreciation of the character of woman would come with
a very ill grace from me when addressing an audience containing
so many young women who are in a position than which none is
more honorable, — that of earning an independent living by their
own honest labor. There is much about the " woman's rights"
agitation that I do not greatly admire, but I despise the vulgar
cant about woman's inferiority.  The two sexes are distinct in
mental character, but there are in woman's mind as great capacities as in man's. Masculine fops will find only feminine butterflies in the world; but what man of sense cannot find women
of steady will and earnest purpose, of large capacity and elevated
aims, possessed of that self-respect which strives to put life to
some good use, and to improve the faculties which God has
bestowed on them for their own and others' benefit. And I
believe - and I say it in no spirit of flattery - that the number of such women is nowhere greater than among the daughters of New England.
Let me atone, then, for what I said about the albums,
while at the same time I relieve the tediousness of my dull
prose, by repeating what I think is the noblest poetical compliment ever paid to a woman.  It is contained in the lines which
the rough, but manly old English poet, Ben Johnson, Shakspeare's contemporary, addressed to the Countess of Bedford:



28
"This morning, timely rapt with holy fire,
I sought to form unto my zealous muse,
What kind of creature I could most desire
To honor, serve, and love, as poets use.
I meant to make her fair, and free, and wise,
Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great;
I meant the day-star should not brighter rise,
Nor lend like influence from his lucent seat.
I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,
Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride;
I meant each softest virtue there should meet,
Fit in that softer bosom to reside.
Only a learned and a manly soul
I purposed her, that should, with even powers,
The rock, the spindle, and the shears control,
Of Destiny, and spin her own free hours.
Such, when I meant to feign, and wished to see,
My muse bade Bedford write, and that was she!"
And since I have fallen upon poetry, let me say a word in its
favor. I have been recommending the choice of such books and
studies as are in accordance with our natural tastes, and I shall
presently say something in favor of selecting such as are connected with our ordinary occupations and habitual trains of
thought; but sometimes it is well to exercise our minds on
something that is quite foreign to all our habits, something
that will take us quite above and away from the everyday
world in which we live, giving us a new set of emotions,
and causing our minds to move in unaccustomed tracks;
and next to that cultivation of religious habits of thought, of
which I do not speak here, I know of nothing better for this
purpose than the cultivation of a taste for true poetry.
I know in what suspicion multitudes of respectable gentlemen hold the art of Poetry. It may be well enough for young
women; and young men, they suppose, must take a fit of it, as
they take the measles, once, - the younger the better, - but it
is quite unworthy of the notice of mature and sensible people,




29
who know the world as they do. Realities for them; they
want none of your fanciful dreams. They have, to be sure, an
imperfect recollection of having once been in love, as it is called.
They think they do remember raving about a certain pretty
face, and at that time they did feel an interest in your rhymed
nonsense,-  pale Cynthia's orb, and beauty bright, and lovely
night, and stars and flowers, and such unproductive property, -
but they feel considerably ashamed of that passage in their history, and had much rather nothing would be said about it.
They hope they have grown wiser.
I do n't think they have.  I do not at all agree with such an
estimate of poetry, but consider it a high and beautiful art, like
painting, and sculpture, and music, and architecture, which it
will do good to the oldest and wisest, equally with the youngest
and most romantic, to appreciate and love..We all need, in this
prosaic life we lead, to cultivate our love of the beautiful; and
among the various arts that have beauty for their object, poetry
has this advantage, that it is the one most accessible to the greatest number.  Few of us have many opportunities of seeing fine
paintings, or hearing really fine music, and the artistic taste
which lies undeveloped in a great many who hardly suspect its
existence, will perhaps never be much cultivated in those directions; but the culture of the imagination by the study of poetry
is possible to all, and whoever will take the pains to elevate his
taste and inform his sense of beauty by means of it, will be sure
to reap a rich reward of pleasure and advantage.*
I say take pains, and I say study.  We must learn not to
consider Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper a great poet, or Mr.
" Festus " Bailey, or any of the other ephemeral favorites of the
day, whose gay volumes sell by thousands, and are on all tavern
and parlor tables. The immediate popularity of a poet is generally in inverse ratio to his real merit and his permanent fame;
k See some interesting remarks in favor of Poetry, as compared with her
sister arts, in Cousin's little treatise, " Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien."
3*




30
and the power to appreciate what is really highest and best, will
not come of itself, but, like everything else worth having, will
cost us labor. The mental attitude of a true student is at once
self-respectful and self-distrustful. While guarding with care his
own entire independence, and refusing to bow to popular idols
or yield his judgment to the dictation of self-appointed guides,
he will yet give heedful attention to every glimpse of a mental
life above his own. If there is anything contemptible, it is that
flippant self-conceit which believes in nothing greater in literature or art than what its own small and half-trained abilities are
capable of appreciating, and which, instead of reverently looking
up to what is above it, takes a vulgar and perverse satisfaction
in ridiculing and depreciating what is too great for it to comprehend. You have heard, perhaps, of that hopeful youth who
was in the habit of expressing the opinion that Shakspeare was
a greatly overrated poet.  I am not sure that till we learn better, we do not all mentally pass just such foolish judgments; we
are sure, at any rate, that we do not see this or that great
author's excellence, and do think some little author very fine.
But there is a high region beyond the reach of puny criticism,
where, by the catholic consent of the judges of all ages, the kings
of literature sit enthroned; and if we are not prepared to ratify
that judgment, we may be sure that it is not from want of merit
in the authors, but from want of sense in ourselves.
Let me return to my rules.  My first was: Among subjects
of equal value, choose that one which is most agreeable to your
natural taste, and which appears to furnish the most congenial
food to your mind. Not all minds can study all subjects.
What is one man's meat is another man's poison, says the
proverb. My next rule is: Of two subjects of equal interest,
prefer the nearer to the more remote, if you have not time for
both. Thus, other things being equal, I would sooner engage
in the study of the history of my own, than of a foreign country;
and among foreign countries, I would soonest choose that which




31
is most closely connected with our own, if, indeed, we can call
our mother country a foreign one. If I had to choose, I would
sooner try to get interested in the history of the nineteenth century, than of the ninth; of the eighteenth, than of the eighth;
and the very best point to start from in a course of historical
reading, is, not the Deluge, or the Creation, but the contents of
the morning newspaper of the day on which you begin. The
advantage of studying subjects not too remote from us in space
or time, is this, — that we have a multitude of associations with
them which help us to realize what we read, and add immensely
to the vividness of our conceptions, and thus to the value of our
knowledge. Thus, in history, the life we read of is not so very
different from our own life, the people not so very different from
ourselves, but that we can, to a great degree, enter into their
thoughts and feelings, and make them live again in our imaginations. Compare, for instance, the story of Concord fight
with the'story of the battle of Thermopylm. What infinite
trouble it costs us to enter into the life of those old Greeks so
that they shall be anything more to us than so many empty
names! But we have seen Concord and Lexington; the ball
still sticks in the old church where the British fired it; the old
grenadier cap hangs in the State House; perhaps we have our
grandfather's sword hanging up at home, - and when we read
of Concord fight we read to some purpose, and feel that we are
reading of flesh and blood men. But what, as a general thing,
are Nebuchadnezzar, or Artaxerxes, Themistocles, and Romulus
to us, save so many uncouth names? We read a dry and
meagre account of their doings, but we do not enter into their
lives, or really master the conception what manner of beings
they were. Without more study than we are in a position to
give, they remain far off, outside of all our sympathies, like
creatures of another planet.
I think that the common sense of this rule, to begin with the
near and familiar, and not with the remote and foreign, is pretty




32
obvious; yet how constantly we see it disregarded. The ambitious student must begin with something fine and uncommon - not the English he speaks every day, but Latin, French,
or German; not New York and Massachusetts, bat Athens and
Constantinople; near things seem so homely, and far off things
so grand. But it is all a delusion. America is as good as
Greece and Rome, the nineteenth century is better than the
ninth, and it is far more for our interest to understand it thoroughly.
How many mistaken notions there are as to what constitutes
a good education. In the minds of many it seems to be represented by a certain small amount of knowledge of the Latin
and Greek tongues, and any dull pedant who has this will be
set above the shrewdest, ablest, and most useful man who has
but his mother-tongue to express his thoughts in. We drive all
boys who are destined for what is called a liberal education,
which, from the utter distaste the lads feel for the only work set
them to do, is too apt to mean spending four years making
"rows" in a college, - we drive them  all, no matter whether
they have taste and talent for such studies or not, through the
Latin and Greek grammars, as though their very salvation depended on prepositions and perfect participles. But what a narrow notion is this of education! — as if there were but one method
of education in the world, and this the spending six or eight
of the best years of life in acquiring the grammar and some
small part of the literature of two ancient languages, - for this
is what a classical education in most cases amounts to.  Education does not consist in cramming a boy's brain against the stomach of his sense with dead words.  What will it avail him to
know a dozen languages, if he has not anything to say in any of
them?
" Many a lad returns from school,
A Hebrew, Greek, or Latin fool




33
In arts and knowledge still a block,
Though deeply skilled in hic, hcec, hoc."*
I do not speak in that spirit of bigoted hostility to classical
studies which spoils its own case by a vain attempt to prove
classical studies altogether worthless.  Far, very far from  it.
The mastery of the languages and literatures of antiquity, and
especially of Greece, is one of the highest of intellectual pleasures, and one of the most liberalizing of intellectual pursuits.
If a young man has the ambition to make himself a scholar,
can spare the needful time, and has the courage and perseverance to pursue that arduous labor to the end, let him be sure
that a knowledge of the languages of Greece and Rome must
form a part of his outfit; and if he studies them at all, let him
study them thoroughly, and with the broad views and in the
liberal spirit of modern philology.   But it is quite another
thing to say that this is the one only introduction to all education whatever.  It is time to recognize the fact that there are
many educations, all equally "liberal; " that education is not a
fixed, but a variable factor, varying with the nature of the product required; that the educations of the merchant, the manufaWturer, the man of science, the artisan, the farmer, must needs
* "Heavy they tread the up-hill way,
O'er craggy rocks and floundering clay,
Till, weary with their road, they stop
Just at the mountain's lofty top;Still poring o'er the barren ground,
View not the beauteous prospect round,
Which, hid beneath the summit, lies
Concealed from low and vulgar eyes,
And which alone can amply pay
The toil and drudgery of the way."
The lines were written a hundred years ago, but how many of the socalled classically educated men reach that summit now-a-days?




34
be different from, and yet may all be as complete and as "liberal " as the education of the man devoted to literature, though
the former had better never read a Greek play and had better
be profoundly ignorant of the classic metres.*
The Classics have too long usurped a mischievous monopoly
by virtue of claims now outlawed, and which in the present
state of knowledge they can no longer make good, and too many
fine minds are sacrificed to that superstitious reverence for what,
instead of being all education,. is only one limited  mode of
education.  To spend four years in preparation for, and the
better part of four years more in the perfunctory performance
of, college tasks, for which a young man has no taste and no
ability, simply because these tasks are the only thing that go by
the name of a " liberal education," is, of all introductions to
life, perhaps the most unfortunate; unfortunate, both for the
X Indeed, the question is beginning to be asked in some quarters, whether
the study of Natural Philosophy, of Chemistry, and of Natural History, in
all its branches, those studies which develop the perceptive powers most
completely, begun early and continued as the main pursuit through the years
devoted to preparatory training,-the study of language not being, meantime,
neglected, but becoming the subordinate instead of the primary or exclusive element in education, - whether such a course is not likely to develop
more suitable habits of mind, is not likely to prove a better mental gymnastic, even for the future physician, than the minute study of ancient parts
of speech or ancient poets. The question certainly deserves examination.
In spite of all that is said respecting the disciplinary value of the study of
the Classics, the efficacy of ancient philology as a preparation for modern
physic is not, perhaps, placed entirely beyond doubt. Many liberally educated physicians certainly do not owe their excellence to the possession of
any considerable amount of ancient learning. Perhaps they would be better even than they are if they had spent the time they wasted on it, in
studies more closely connected with their future calling, and more congenial to the native bent of their own minds.
Was it an accident that the best classical scholar lately belonging to the
Suffolk bar was the man who pronounced the Declaration of Independence,
"a tissue of glittering generalities; "-or was it that, by education as
well as by nature, he was a mere sophist and wordmonger, incapable of
appreciating a principle, or of distinguishing right from wrong?




35
worthless pretence of training it gives, and for the valuable
reality it deprives him of. And what is the practical result?
To say that in the case of vast numbers of young men whom
fashion subjects to it, it turns out to be any education at all,
would be to contradict the plainest teachings of experience.
And when it comes to choosing between the active, sensible,
practical man, who missed his " education," but whom life, and
observation, and his mother wit, and his own efforts in the purshit of knowledge have disciplined into a useful and valuable
member of society, and the man who has merely gone to college
and had his head crammed with a cartload of dead words, or
with that mere book-knowledge which fits him for the closet, but
not for life; —the practical good sense of society has in a good
many signal instances decided which of these it thought more
valuable.
It is no paradox to say that I am  here defending classical
studies, — for who is a truer friend to them than he who strives
to protect them from abuse? We cannot dispense with classical
learning, but we want real classical learning; we want fewer
classical students, and'we want better classical scholars.  For
classical studies are of that nature, that, unless pursued with
thoroughness, they are naught. A smattering of Greek and Latin,
- what a wretched thing it is -  worthless in itself, and from
the time and labor it cost, depriving its possessor of acquisitions
that would have been really valuable to him. He who thinks
that by a little study he can arrive at the spirit of ancient literature, shows only his profound ignorance of the whole subject.
Let us, then, not despise classical learning, but let us be as far
from believing that in this great universe the only access to
mental development is through the narrow road of the study
of dead languages.*: I have spoken decidedly upon a much debated subject, though' I am
aware that to do it justice I require much more space than I can here com



36
But let me return from this digression. I began with giving
this as an instance of the manner in which we often sacrifice a
near possession, that would be valuable, in the attempt to reach a
remote one which is never attained. And when the question is
not of a complete education, but merely of making the best use
of fragments of leisure time, how often we overlook the most
valuable resources, simply because they are at our very doors!
You vainly regret, perhaps, the want of schools and colleges and
learned teachers, but in this age of cheap printing, what valuable teachers you may have almost for the asking! You may
have a very good schoolmaster come to you, even through the
Post Office, in the shape of a good newspaper, the excellent New
York Tribune, for instance. He will give you lessons on a
great variety of subjects.  He will teach history, -  not indeed
very often the history of Nebuchadnezzar or Artaxerxes, who
have been dead several years, and do not now much concern
you; but the history of this living, breathing, acting Now in
which you live, and which it does much concern you to know
aright; and do you not suppose that the history of to-day is as
good history, and as great, and every way as important, as the
history of five hundred or five thousand years ago? Five hundred years ago was only now once, and to-day will be five hundred years ago by and by. He will teach you farming and gardening; not indeed the way the old Romans ploughed, which
mand. I do not speak without considerable experience as a teacher, and I
am not unacquainted with the many controversies on the subject, from the
quarrels of the Humanists and Realists in Germany, in the last century,
down to the discussions that have already taken place in our own day,
when the wider spread of a taste for scientific research, and the increasing
practical importance of scientific studies, are likely to reopen the discussion
on broader grounds, and under auspices more favorable to an impartial
judgment. I can only say further, here, that as regards the real benefit
derived from the classical education of this country, by a very large number
of its recipients, old Montaigne's pithy saying perhaps embraces the whole
philosophy of the matter: " C'est un bel et un grand agencement, sans
doafte, que le Grec et le Latin, mais on l'achete trop cher."




317
was a very:clumsy way, and would not take a gold medal now;
but the best way to plough with the latest and best tool of this
tool-inventing age. He will give you lessons in political economy; and whether the lessons are right or wrong, they at least
set you thinking about the economical arrangements that are best
suited to the wants of to-day. He discusses with you the great
social and political questions that we here and now have to deal
with; and whether you agree with him or not, he at least sets
you thinking of topics upon which it is every man's duty to have
an opinion. Indeed, there is scarcely any subject on which a good
newspaper will not at some time or other set a man thinking to
good purpose. I say a good newspaper; I have nothing to say
for those venal sheets that make themselves the panders to all
popular vices and the defenders of all popular wrongs, - such
papers as now defend slavery, and will defend poisoning and
murder, if those crimes ever become popular enough to pay.
A good newspaper is an excellent starting-point for a great
deal of further study. How many questions it raises in your
mind which you do not know how to answer; questions of fact,
and you go hunting in books to find the fact; questions of principle, that set you pondering whether this side or the other is in
the right. A point of law comes up, and you find you do not
know about the law, and immediately a book about law becomes
interesting, which before would have been dull because you had
no immediate motive for reading it. You cannot get on with
the politics of the newspaper without knowing more about the
form of government under which you live, and you seek for some
treatise that will explain it, and feel a desire to read the history
of its formation. How many people in this Commonwealth were
set thinking on such subjects by our late Constitutional Convention.  Merely as an educational instrument it was worth the
money it cost. The study of your own government will naturally make you curious to know wherein it differs from that o
other nations, England, for instance, and you seek for some book
4




38
that will explain the working of her institutions, and perhaps
your curiosity will take you as far back as Greece and Rome,
to see wherein those old republics differed from that you live
under; and then you will be likely to study Greece and Rome
to some purpose, because you have a peg, as it were, in your
brain to hang such knowledge on. How many questions in
chemistry, in mechanics, in all the natural and physical sciences,
do the reports of proceedings of farmer's clubs, of scientific
meetings, or the accounts of new discoveries or new patents immediately raise! How much greater interest we feel in Central
Africa when we read in the newspaper a letter from Dr. Livingstone there!
And so I might carry out the principle into infinite detail.
Get a purchase for your new knowledge wherever you can, by
joining what you learn to what you already know, and, depend
upon it, you will not have to complain of a want of interest in
knowing.
It was from considerations like these that I provided your
library with a good store of books of reference, -dictionaries,
gazetteers, cyclopoedias, atlases of different kinds, and with at
least one good treatise upon each of the departments of science
about which you would be most likely to seek information. I
provided these latter, not in the expectation that many of you
would make a formal study of them, but in the hope that you
would get into the way of consulting them. It is an invaluable
habit of mind, that of seeking answers to questions as they occur.
Some passing event, something that happens in the course of
one's own experience, may thus make a foundation for an interesting investigation, which will sometimes lead to unlooked-for
results; results that may have a bearing on a man's whole
future life; and at any rate, the habit of inquiry keeps the mind
awake, and it is surprising how one thing leads to another, and
how fast one's stores of knowledge accumulate when there is a
living interest felt in the subjects we are seeking to know.




39
There is one application of the principle of preferring the near
to the remote, of always having the subject of your study connected in some way with your previous knowledge, which I wish
to dwell on for a moment longer.  It is that application of it
that would lead us to prefer the study of our mother tongue to
that of any foreign language. It is surprising to see how the
study of English is neglected even by those who call themselves
educated people.  You shall see schoolboys and girls studying
one or two ancient, and perhaps one or two modern languages,
who cannot write a respectable letter in their own, and know little or nothing of the great writers who have used it. Which
will be most valuable to a woman, -a smattering of Latin, and
French enough to read a French novel; or an intelligent acquaintance with the treasures contained in English literature,
and a thorough mastery of the tongue she will teach her children?  I know that an elementary knowledge of Latin is important to a student of English, (and so indeed is an elementary
knowledge, at least, of Anglo-Saxon,) but this is not the purpose for which Latin is usually studied; for in many of our
fashionable schools for girls, as well as boys, it has heretofore
been the custom to study it, to the practical exclusion, I might
almost say, of everything else. And what is the advantage of
the smattering of modern languages which is all that, perhaps in
six cases out of ten, children ever acquire?  It does not teach
them to think, and they make no intelligent use of it afterwards.
A modern language, thoroughlv acquired, is a valuable possession; not to all people, but to many, and worth the labor it costs
to those who have time to devote to it, and a use to put it to;
but to those who have a limited amount of time, and limited
opportunities for learning, I would say, Do not go out of your
way to acquire, with infinite trouble, some foreign tongue, when
the chances are that you will never master it thoroughly enough
to enjoy the reading of its literature; - for it is an easy thing to
acquire a smattering, a difficult one to acquire a mastery of a
foreign tongue; —and when there lies right round you, in the
0     0                           0




tongue your mother taught you, a literature second to none in
the world in richness or beauty, and which you will not be able
to exhaust if you read it for the remainder of your natural lives.
And now I do not mean, by studying English, merely those
dreary parsing lessons which we most of us remember as the
plague of our school-days. Parsing is certainly an indispensable exercise in its proper place, though whether the immature
minds of young school children are the proper place for all the
metaphysical abstractions of grammatical science may well be a
question. And though no one will receive the full disciplinary
benefit from the study of a language, or master thoroughly even
his own, without going through with much dry grammatical
labor, yet if you are not in a position to undertake this, much
may be done by the careful reading of good authors, by cultivating a habit of speaking, and practising in some way the writing of good English, and by studying the simplest and not the
most complicated manual you can find. Language was made
before grammar, though one would think the reverse were the
case, by the way pedants sometimes write about it.
I hope I shall not be accused of needlessly and illiberally
narrowing the field of learning.  My objection to the study of
many languages is, that they are not learned, not that their
study is not a liberalizing pursuit and an excellent discipline
where they are. I think, however, that it is a study whose value
is often overrated, and that we are too apt to overload the minds
of children with words at an age when their perceptive powers
are most active, and they would be better engaged in more objective studies.  When the mind is more mature I would discourage no one from attempting to acquire other tongues, if he
is sure he has the needful perseverance, and if he is also sure
that in acquiring them he will not neglect his own.
Another application of the principle of preferring near things
to remote is this, — that we may very often do ourselves and
others great good, and make ourselves both wiser and more useful by studying the practical results of science, when we have




41
no time to study thoroughly their theoretical principles.  You
may have no opportunity to master the whole science of chemistry, or the whole science of physics, but you can master their
simplest principles as illustrated by the common every-day phenomena going on round you, and the simple every-day proceses
which perhaps you have yourself to perform.  For, though we
are apt to forget it, even baking, brewing, cooking, washing, cooking, washing, all
our simplest every-day employments, involve principles that are
governed by great laws as truly as the courses of the planets,
and can all be better performed with a knowledge of those laws
than without it.. You cannot study anatomy and physiology
scientifically, but you can get a knowledge from plain and practical books of the great laws of health, sufficient perhaps to wnake
all the difference to you between' leading a life of misery fmtn
constant illness, or one of happiness from constant health.  HIalf
the ill health of the community, ill health which no drugs will
ever cure, but only aggravate, might be prevented by a general
knowledge of a few simple rules respecting diet, fresh air, bathing, rest, and exercise; and the amount of ignorance and neglect of these laws, even among persons who call themselves well
educated, and have perhaps been taught a great deal of Greek
and Latin, is perfectly incredible.*
Accordingly, I put into your library a number of books on
the practical application of science to the wants and emergencies
of every-day life.  There are Wyman and Reid on Ventilation,
and Johnston's excellent Chemistry of Common Life; there are
Chambers's Information for the People, and Lardner's.Museum
of Science; there are the invaluable little books of Dr. Andrew
Combe; t.- Dr. George and his phrenology, I do not think
* "It was certainly impossible, ten years ago, to notice without consternation," says Dr. Acland of Oxford, " how hundreds of the clergy and gentry were constantly passing through this place without any knowledge
whatever of physiological laws or hygienic principles." Is the case very
different in our own colleges?
tPrinciples of Physiology applied to the Preservation of Health. l'hysiology of Digestion. On the Care of Infancy.
4*




42
much of, though his Constitution of Man is an excellent development of a wiser.man's idea; -but Dr. Andrew  Combe's
books are full of sound sense, and wise and simple counsel,
enough, I believe, to save many a reader from a life of ill health.
There are two or three sensible books by eminent physicians,*
against quackery and'dosing, — which destroy, I believe, more
lives in this countiy than disease does,-and there are some
interesting and not difficult books on the application of the
mechanical sciences to the arts of life.  Half a loaf is better
than no bread,- a knowledge of the results of science is good
when we cannot have science and  results bpth; and the old
Greek poet's paradox, that the half is more than the whole, may
prove true; for a good knowledge of results is often more useful
than an imperfect knowledge of theories.
I pass to another useful rule, and that is, to get your knowledge, whenever possible, at first hand.  There is a class of
second-hand books quite different from those of the book-stalls,books brand-new, fresh from the hands of the printer, but secondhand, because containing nothing but second-hand knowledge.
Such are all those dreary compends, and compilations, and abridgments, which so many mistake for short cuts to knowledge, and
learning-made-easy, but which oftener prove to be learning-madedismal, and bear about the same relation to the reality they
attempt to delineate that a skeleton bears to a living body.
I might illustrate what I mean, if you will permit me to draw
my illustration from my own occupation, by the example. of
most of the schoolbooks that are given children to learn.  They
are usually heaps of the dry bones of knowledge, with no form
or comeliness, no life or animation.  The history of the world,
for instance, is compressed into a duodecimo volume: what can
- Dr. Jacob Bigelow's Rational Medicine. Sir John Forbes's Nature in
Disease. Dr. James Jackson's Letters to a Young Physician. Hufeland's
Art of Prolonging Life, edited by Erasmus Wilson. I need hardly say that
I have since added Miss Florence Nightingale's admirable Notes on Nursing.




43
it be but the driest enumeration of names and dates? The boy's
schoolbook says, Cmesar landed in Britain, and has no room to
say any more about it.  What does the boy care whether Caesar
landed in Britain or did not land in Britain; it is all one to
him. By whipping him, you may make, him commit the fact,
for the time being, to his memory; to say learn it by heart,
would be a most unwarrantable perversion of a beautiful phrase,
for he will not care for it, and he will soon make haste to forget
what he feels no interest in remembering.  But read to him the
great general's own narrative of his landing; show him, on the
one side, the Roman galleys filled with Roman soldiers, and
make him understand what a Roman soldier, and a Roman
galley, and the Roman empire were; on the other, make him
see, in his mind's eye, the half-naked Britons, savage dwellers
in the forests, where now stand London, and Oxford, and Manchester, and all the wealth and civilization of the great English
nation; -give him such books and such instruction as will
rouse his imagination to realize all the vast changes that have
taken place between those times and his own, and an intelligent
boy will not have to be forced to learn his lessons, and will not
be likely to forget them.
Or take a different example.  Try to'cram a child with what
is called a compendium of natural philosophy, which is usually
a small volume containing a statement of all the great and
complicated laws which govern this vast universe, made in the
briefest way and in the most technical language; a book which
it tasks the powers of a well-educated man to read intelligently.
What can the poor child do with it?  He reads all the hard
words about matter, gravitation, ponderables, and imponderables,
resolution of forces, and the rest, till he wishes that some force
of gravity, or any other, would carry off the whole matter, and
you with it. Show that same boy a steelyard, and explain why
it is a lever; show him how the pump in the yard works; what
is the reason of the draught in the fireplace; why the hair on the




44
cat's back rises in cold weather when you stroke it, and what
connection there is between the cat's back and the thunder-cloud
and the electric telegraph, -and I will engage that the boy
shall not lack interest in your teachings. Such is the difference
between first-hand and second-hand learning. In the one case
he learns the thing itself first, and then the words which describe it; in the other, only the hard words which too often hidel
the fact instead of illustrating it.
The most permanent impression that I received from  the
geographical manual of my school-days was that most countries
in the world are "level or moderately uneven."  (I remember
also " Kidderminster for.carpets.")  Compare this information
with the result in your mind of reading good books of travel,
like Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist, or the Narrative of the
Japan Expedition, or Bayard Taylor's books, not to mention
many others in your library.
If one reads ancient history, I think it is a very good plan to
read the ancient historians themselves, in good translations.  A
translation, to be sure, though ever so good, cannot have the
force of the original, but it will have a great deal more force
than most modern compilations from it, especially if it is accompanied with good explanatory notes.  How  pleasant, for instance, is the gossip of old Herodotus, who travelled about fiom
country to country, in order actually to see and hear what he
relates.  No modern writer has excelled Thucydides's own
description of the plague at Athens.  You have the most vivid
idea of that famous military exploit, the retreat of the Ten
Thousand Greeks, when you read it in the simple and modest
narrative of the general who commanded.  Plutarch's Lives are
better than Sir. Smith's or 3Mr. Brown's narrative compiled
from Plutarch.  Or compare some dull mass of words in a compendium of universal history about Babylon, and Nineveh, and
Tiglath-Pileser, with the sight of the picture-history from the
very walls of Nineveh, as you have it in Layard's books.




45
Who has the best idea of ancient Egypt, - he who reads a list
of Egyptian kings, or he who sails up the Nile with Warburton and Miss Martineau, and studies the pictures in Sir
Gardner Wilkinson?  Or, to come to more modern times, compare the idea you have of the Pilgrim Fathers, after reading a
meagre narrative of the facts of their voyage and landing, with the
vivid impression of the reality it gives you to read the very words
of the journal kept by one of them, as it is printed in Young's
Chronicles of the Pilgrims.
Get, therefore, as near as possible to the sources of knowledge, and beware of compilers who give you a twice-cooked dish
that has no savor; and when you cannot get your knowledge
absolutely at first hand, then seek it in the able writer who got
his knowledge so, not in the dull blockhead who got all his at
third hand from him. In short, don't read dull books or the
writings of stupid men, though their name be legion. Choose
writers who have force in them, and power, and originality.
You may consult dull books for facts and dates,* but don't go
to sleep trying to read them.
And this brings me to another rule, and that is, much reading, but not mcnay books, which is nothing more than, a translation of a very old maxim.  "As the end of study," says Sir
-William Hamilton, " is not merely to compass the knowledge of
facts, but in and from that knowledge to lay up materials for
thinking, so it is not the quantity read, but the degree of reading, which affords a profitable exercise to the student.  Thus, it
is far more improving to read a (good) book ten times, than to
read ten (good) books once, and'non multa sed multum,'little, perhaps, but accurate, - has from ancient times obtained
The true use of compilations, universal histories, for instance, is to
refresh the memory, and recall and fix the knowledge obtained from better
and more extended sources, and to bring into one connected whole those
parcels of knowledge which have been acquired separately and at different
times. Knowledge, like food, to be easily digested, must not be taken in
too concentrated a form.




46
the authority of an axiom in education from all who had any
title to express an opinion on the sulbject."
" And as they are not the healthiest who eat the most but who
digest the best, so [the function of study] is tonic, not depletory; not to surfeit, but to stimulate curiosity; not to pour in a
maximum  of information, but through its information, (be it
much or little,) to draw forth a maximum of thought.  He,
therefore, who reads to remember, does well; to understand,
does better; but to judge, does best."*
This passage involves the true principle of study as distinct
firom  mere reading for amusement.  It is a mistake to suppose
that the greatest readers are alwhays or often the greatest thinkers.  It is a mistake to think it a sign of promise when children
are forever poring over books.  It is much oftener a sign of
weak health and deficient animal vigor.  The proud mother
thinks her boy will be a great man because he is so fond of his
book.  It rarely proves so.   Bonaparte -I mean the first
Bonaparte - was certainly a man of extraordinary ability, whatever we may think of his moral character. The official report
of him as a schoolboy was simply " very healthy; " and many
great scholars, as well as great practical men, were thought great
dunces at school, though my experience has not led me to
reckon that an infallible sign of future eminence.  It is active
thought we ought to cultivate, for it is only that which makes a
man good for anything; and that may easily be buried under
a load of books.  We ought not to read more books than our
minds can digest, any more than we ought to eat more dinner
than our stomachs can, and we ought to do everything that will
strengthen and invigorate, and avoid everything that will weaken
our mental as well as our physical digestion. Sir William Hamilton speaks in another place of " the prevailing pestilence of
slovenly, desultory, effeminate reading; " and Bishop Butler,t
Discussions in Philosophy and Literature, p. 698. I have slightly altered the language, though not the spirit, of the passage.
f Preface to Sermons.




47
one of the ablest of English thinkers, long ago said, "One can
scarce forbear saying that no part of time is spent with less
thought than great part of that which is spent in reading."
"Reading," says Locke,* " furnishes the mind only with the
materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours.
We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram
ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them
over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment."
And here I wish to make an important distinction. I have
said a good word for miscellaneous reading, but we must be
careful lest our miscellaneous degenerate into desultory reading;
a danger to which the great number of magazines and other miscellanies that are published peculiarly exposes us. It is ruinous
to good habits of thinking to be continually flying from one subject to another, if we dwell nowhere long enough upon any to
acquire any real knowledge about it. The mind of a reader
who pursues this course is filled with a mass of odds and ends,
all useless because all imperfect.  If a subject is started in his
hearing, he generally has a vague idea that he has read something about it, but he cannot recall what it is with sufficient distinctness to make his recollection useful.  Each new topic drives
the last from his memory, or mixes itself up with it in inextricable confusion.  Far better is it to choose certain leading subjects
of interest, numerous enough to produce variety, and varied
enough to prevent fatigue, and to adhere as closely as possible
to them till you have really acquired a respectable amount
of information about them.  By pursuing such a course you
will find that as you go farther your interest in your chosen subjects will increase in geometrical ratio. Your new knowledge
all has a bearing upon what you have learned before; each part
sustains the other, and instead of a loose heap of unmanageable
f On the Conduct of the Understanding,




48
materials, you find yourself at last in possession of a well-constructed edifice.*
Thus, by bending all his forces for the time being upon a few
points, a reader may make for himself numerous little circles of
knowledge where every new book read will add fresh interest
and throw fresh light upon those that have gone before. Let
us suppose, for instance, that a student is interested in the history of English literature.  How much better it is to confine
himself for the time being to a particular period, than to pass
from one age to another just as whim, or the books that fall in his
way, may lead him, without dwelling long enough in any to make
himself at home there! Let me give as an example of such a
circle of reading, one which is none the less pleasant because it
is familiar, and which I choose for that very reason.
The reign of King George the Third was certainly not the
most brilliant period in English literature, nor, I think, can any
of its writers or thinkers, unless it may be Burke, be considered
first-rate men; but it was on many accounts a very interesting
period, and its literature abounds, to a greater extent than almost
any other, in sources of minute and curious information.  For
this reason, and because it does not lie at a very great distance
from our own, it is pre-eminently one in which we can make
ourselves at home.  It has a special interest too, for us, because
it was the period of our own revolutionary war. Suppose now
that, instead of attempting to master at once the whole literary
history of England, we confine ourselves to this period till we
have exhausted all that we can find to read about it.  First, we
shall need an outline of the political events of the times as a
$ "Ever since I have been with him he has constantly endeavored to
guard me against all distractions, and to concentrate me to a single department..... If I wished to read a book which he thought would not advance me in my present pursuits, he always advised me to let it alone, saying that it was of no practical use to me.'I myself,' said he to me one
day,'have spent too much time on things which did not belong to my
proper department.' "- Eckermann's Conversation.s with Goethe, I. 237.




49
framework to our picture; this we may get from Lord Mahon's
History, from several articles in Macaulay's Miscellanies, and
from the right chapters selected from Mr. Bancroft: (for I would
not give in to that superstition of some good people, who think
if they read a book at all they must always read every word in
it; you may make a good dinner of mutton without eating the
whole sheep.) Then in literary history you have stout old Dr.
Johnson, in his shabby garret, king of literature; and with
Bozzy, his obsequious attendant, you can walk the streets of
London with him, dine at the tavern, go home to tea with him,
and Bozzy will stir him up for you and make him roar. He is
bigoted, superstitious, narrow-minded, but brave, honest, earnest,
a solid, strong-minded Englishman, whom no thinking reader of
that inimitable biography will fail to gather wisdom from, or
fail, with all his faults, to learn to love. Then read Carlyle's
fine paper on him  in his Miscellanies, and his lecture on his
Heroes in History, and compare with these Macaulay's two papers, and the paper in Lord Brougham's Men of Letters.  I
cannot tell how much of Di Johnson's writings you will be
tempted to read.  His " bow wow style" has happily gone out
of fashion, and his Rambler and Idler make rather heavy reading
now, though there is good thought in them  for all that.  His
best book is his Lives of the English Poets. Not that the stout
old doctor was a good poet, or a good critic of poetry; he was
as far as could well be from that, and his Lives contains astounding specimens of critical obtuseness and injustice.  But as biographies, full of strong sense and shrewd observation, they are
excellent.
Hard by Boswell stands John Forster's charming biography
of Goldsmith, a book that has all, and more than all the interest
of a novel, and which, by its minute details, will serve to make
you still more at home in the period. The short biography by
Mr. Irving will not perhaps add anything to your knowledge of
facts, but, like everything from that pen, is worth reading for the
charm of its inimitable style. Mr. Forster is perhaps, like most
5




50
biographers, a little too much of a worshipper of his hero.
Macaulay * is not carried away by any undue admiration, while
he does full justice to his genius.  Compare with these the sixth
lecture in Thackeray's Humorists, and the notices of him in
Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt.
No one will read Goldsmith's biography without turning to
the four delightful volumes of his miscellanies, written in a style
that has never been surpassed for sweet and graceful simplicity.
Then comes Fanny Burney, the young lady who wrote anonymous novels which people sat up all night to read, at a time when
novel-writing was not such a common accomplishment among
young ladies as it is now. We have better novels now, but hers
are worth reading still, for the picture they furnish of the times.
And so, for the same reason, is her Journal, though too full of
the petty details of her dreary court life with stupid old George's
dull queen.  The earlier part, before she put herself into that
foolish slavery, gives us the pleasantest glimpses of the life of
the times.  Read, too, Macaulay's pleasant article about her.
Then we have that witty reprobate, Sheridan, and his brilliant
comedies; Horace Walpole, with his vast stores of gossip; that
really excellent, but rather precise old lady, Mrs. Hannah More;
Reynolds, the genial painter, and lively Mrs. Thrale. Among
historians, we have Hume and Gibbon. Among poets, Gray,
the fastidious scholar; the sad tragedy of Chatterton's short life;
and, a little later, the melancholy but ever interesting story of
poor Cowper, so delightfully told by Southey.
In all this we are confining ourselves to literary history;
but thoroughly to master the period, many other topics would
have to be investigated. Thus the politics of the day would
involve the history of Chatham, Pitt, and Fox, and, above all,
the study of the life and writings of England's great political
philosopher, Edmund Burke. Then began that noble movement for the removal forever from English soil of what to our
shame is still the curse and disgrace of our own,-the worst relic
of barbarism, human slavery; and you must read the lives
I Biographies reprinted from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.




51
of those noble-hearted philanthropists, Wilberforce and Clarkson.
There, too, was the rise of Methodism, and the career of Wesley; and there is the story of the rise of Britain's empire in the
East, so graphically told in Macaulay's account of Clive and
Warren Hastings.  These are the most obvious topics; but the
careful reader will not be satisfied without gaining information
about many others equally important, but which are not apt to
receive so much attention from the ordinary historian, such as
the condition of the poor, the history of science, the progress of
the mechanic arts, the state of education, and the statistics of
commerce.
Now who does not see that before one has read a tithe of all
these books, he will have made himself at home in this particular
period, will feel as if he personally knew the actors and the times,
and will take a lively. interest in anything he meets about them
forever after? Suppose the same amount of reading had been
spread at random over half a dozen distinct periods, - how comparatively vague would have been the conception of any one of
them! It is all the difference between a few acres well tilled,
and a great straggling farm where nothing is produced because
nothing is properly attended to.
I return to the subject from which I have digressed, - how
best to strengthen our digestion for mental food.  You say, perhaps, you cannot get up an interest in systematic, nor even in
miscellaneous reading; it may be all very fine, but anything but
the newspaper puts you to sleep.
I acknowledge the difficulty.  A taste for study is not born
with us, and will not come of itself by merely wishing for it. " In
spite of all that has been said about the sweets of study," says
Sidney Smith, if I may quote that merry philosopher once more,
" it is a sort of luxury, like the taste for olives and coffee,-  not
natural, very hard to be acquired, and very easily lost.
"I am sure," he says, " that a man ought to read as he would
grasp a nettle: do it lightly, and you get molested; grasp it with
all yol,: strength, and you feel none of its asperities.  There is




52
nothing so horrible as languid study, when you sit looking at
the clock and wishing that the time were over, or that somebody
would call and put you out of your misery. The only way to
read with any efficacy is to read so heartily that dinner comes
two hours before you expect it." 
This is very true; but the question still arises how to attain
to that happy state where you care so much for your book and
so little for your dinner, which latter, however, is by no means
to be neglected.  That happy state will not be attained without
some, perhaps many efforts, respecting which no man can give
precise rules to another.  In addition to all I have said, of
choosing your books well, of joining your study to something
you already know, of consulting your natural tastes, of reading
a few books thoroughly, I shall only add that very much depends
upon healthiness of mind, and that upon healthiness of body.
A weak and sickly body, and especially a bad digestion, will
create bad blood, an ill-nourished brain, and a feeble and morbid mind, incapable of steady application or healthy thought.
What is this insanity prevailing at this moment under the name
of spiritualism, but an evidence of wide-spread, morbid ill health
in the community; sickly bodies and diseased nerves acting on
the brain, and poisoning the very sources of thought, and at the
same time producing those abnormal and ill-understood phenomena of the nervous system which constitute the only fact at the
bottom of the whole monstrous delusion?
By all means, then, preserve your mental vigor by preserving
your bodily health.  Spend half your leisure time, if it is ever
so little, in active exercise in the open air, if you want to make
any good use of the other half in reading. This duty is peculiarly incumbent upon those whose occupation keeps them much
in close or heated rooms.  And here let me recommend the
study of some branch of natural history as an admirable resource
for persons of confined or sedentary occupations.  It will furnish
a motive for exercise, and for spending time in the open air, that
* Lectures on Moral Philosophy, p. 255.




53
would otherwise be spent in the house, and it will make you
acquainted with a greater and more wonderful book than any
of man's making, — the book of God's great and beautiful
creation. Study botany till you know every plant that grows
in your town; study the geological formation of the neighborhood, and make a collection of its minerals; — the number
of land and fresh-water shells you can find will be greater
than you would at first imagine; and you may find, if you
will seek it, an inexhaustible fund of enjoyment in watching the habits of birds and insects. The study of natural history is often pursued very successfully by persons whose daily
labor is of a very different kind. A shoemaker I know, a man
who has always stuck to his trade, and is at this moment keeping shop in his native village, is probably the best botanist in
the State in which he lives. I well remember a little excursion
I made with him a few years ago. A friend had requested me
to procure for him the bulbs of that shy little plant the Claytonia, known perhaps to some of you as the Spring Beauty; so I
went to my friend to know where it was to be found. Oh yes,
he knew, but it was far from there, and if I would take a team
early, before business began in the street, he would show me.
So before sunrise I was ready, and we drove out among those
beautiful northern hills where the trees were just then bursting
into leaf, and the early spring birds just beginning to sing,
and comng to a farm-house, we hitched our horse, and straight
my friend steered for a dark, wild hollow, shaded with thick
trees, where, sure enough, we found our shy little beauty, its
delicate petals just opened to the still, keen air.  The plant is
not a rare one, but I doubt if any other person in that large
town could have directed me to its dwelling. And all the way
through the woods my guide was giving me a lesson. For he
could not pass a dried-up lichen on a fence rail, or a bit of moss
cn the bark of a tree, but he had his lens out of his pocket to
examine it; and I found the reason was, that just then, in connection with a Boston naturalist with whom he corresponded,
5*~




54
he was engaged in studying that humblest of all the families of
the vegetable creation, which we tread under foot, thinking, perhaps, they can furnish no instruction, and wishing for some
great palm of the tropics to excite our wonder.  But whoever
examines a moss under the microscope, and studies its curious
and beautiful structure, will find there is no need of going to the
tropics for objects of interest.
My friend will take from one drawer a pair of boots to sell you,
and if they were made in his own shop he will warrant them;
and from the next he will take some expensive illustrated work
on natural history, or an herbarium of his own making. He
is more than fifty years old; but when I saw him last he was
studying German, in order to read the names in a German treatise on insects.
The very perfect collection of Massachusetts marine shells
now or lately deposited in the cabinet of the Boston State House,
was the work of another young shoemaker, residing in the little
sea-shore village of Swampscott, near Lynn.  After workinghours, he and a companion in the same shop, instead of shutting
themselves up in the house, or idling their time away in a bar-.room, would go on excursions over those magnificent Lynn
beaches, or round the rocks of Nahant or Marblehead, " shelling," as they called it; or, taking a boat, would pull out and
dredge in deep water, till of all the shells known to naturalists
as existing on our coast they had collected perfect specimens;
the water-worn shells, usually found on the beach, are worthless
to the naturalist. The day after a heavy gale was the season
of their greatest harvest.  Then the sea was forced to disgorge
her rarest treasures, and one of them told me that after the storm
which destroyed the Minot's Ledge Lighthouse, -a storm which
some of you may remember as of unparalleled fury, — he found
upon the beach six shells of a species of such rarity as to be
known to naturalists only by a few imperfect specimens.  Four
of these he sold for the Museum of Natural History in Paris;
the other pair remain in his collection.
But I do not think that the naturalists have a monopoly of




55
nature.  I am no naturalist, for I was unfortunately brought up
on the strictest intellectual diet of pronouns and participles; but
much ill health has made me a wanderer in the open air till I
have learned to take an intense delight in nature, and I am sure
that any one who will cultivate his tastes in that direction, and
who is happy enough to be a dweller in the country, can find
inexhaustible pleasure in the great book of the universe, though
he may be unfortunate enough to be unable to read its pages
with a scientific eye. The charms of the landscape,- we need
not travel to Italy for variety, for there is no spot so poor but
offers new beauty every morning and every evening. The
shifting scenery of the clouds, the rosy dawn, and the long
shadows of evening, the luxuriance of summer, and the clear
cold outlines of our winter snow, the infinite variety of graceful
forms among the trees, the beauty of wild shrubs and bushes,
and even of the humblest weeds by the road-side, — these need no
learning, only an eye to see, and a heart to feel their loveliness.
And I think we should be very thankful for that treasure we
possess in our literature, its treasure of descriptive poetry.
Read Spenser and Thomson and Cowper, and above all, Wordsworth and our own Bryant,- but study nature first, or you will
never understand the poet.
And let me say a word to the unscientific in favor of the
humble but delightful recreation of gardening; whether you
choose it for your homelier ambition to raise the largest potatoes
and the earliest peas and the most gigantic cabbages, or whether
nature's beautiful children, the flowers, attract you, there is
much virtue -believe me, for I speak from experience- in a
diligent handling of spade and hoe and rake and shovel, in a
hearty interest in that most primitive as it is cheerfullest and
best of manual labors. Melancholy flies before it; not only will
your limbs be stronger, but I daie to say that your religion will
be truer, and your philosophy healthier, if you become, like the
primeval Adam, a gardener.
But let me again urge you to connect with this the study




56
of Natural History. I have just given you examples that have
come under my own observation of its successful pursuit by
men who had but little time to devote to it, and but few advantages of education.  It may, perhaps, be said that such men are
exceptions, - that they have some natural gift which is wanting
to the mass of ordinary men. I do not believe it.  The talent
which will make a great naturalist is undoubtedly rare; but the
power of becoming interested in the study to such a degree as
to make it an instructive recreation for our leisure hours, an improving mental discipline, and an incitement to exercise in the
open air, - to such a degree as will give any one a new interest in the region in which he lives, and a healthy and unfailing mental resource,- this, I think, is within the reach of
almost any one. New discoveries we cannot expect to make;
but common objects are not less wonderful for being common,
and the study of what is common will be a key to the study of
what is rare. The growth of a dandelion, the structure of a
grasshopper, the transformations of a cankerworm are just as
wonderful as the rarest plant or the strangest animal.
No, - I-do not think that the different use to which people
put their leisure hours depends upon difference in the amount
of talent they possess.  The difference is rather a moral than an
intellectual one. It is that love of pure and simple pleasure,
which exists in a well-governed and well-balanced mind that
determines it to useful and rational recreation; it is the free determination of an upright character to live for objects worth living for, to avoid all that will degrade it, and to cultivate its
higher and not its lower nature. I think that men and women
are in nothing so much distinguished from each other as in their
mode of spending their leisure.  Very low and very selfish
characters are capable of undergoing a certain amount of labor,
and will perform it as well perhaps as better people, under the
pressure of the necessities of daily life. But take that pressure
off, and watch them when the daily work is done, if you want
to know their real characters.  Then laziness appears, and sen



57
sual appetites; and the low-minded man indulges his baser
nature under the plea of needful recreation. And then, too,
native purity of taste appears, and elevation of character shows
itself by choosing that even for recreation which will exalt while
it refreshes.  There is no surer mark of a vulgar mind than a
thirst for strong and coarse excitement; no surer sign of mental
progress than contentment with simple pleasures, and the power
of deriving enjoyment from cheap and common sources. Now,
this is a power we can all cultivate, for it is much within our
reach. God endows very few minds in a generation with extraordinary abilities, and we who are not born geniuses cannot
make ourselves such if we try never so hard. But what we can
do is to turn to best account those abilities we have, by freely
determining to put them to their best uses, by resolutely avoiding whatever will degrade them, by contentedly seeking the
means, however humble, that may be within our reach for their
improvement.  And though I have said enough to show that I
am no solemn ascetic, but quite ready to recognize the usefulness
of good honest amusement for amusement's sake, in its proper
place and time; yet, as a permanent and tranquil and enduring
source of pleasure, one which, though unobtrusive, is ever ready
at hand, though unexciting, is inexhaustible, and though it may
cost some effort, will never occasion regret, let me recommend
the cultivation of a taste for books.  Toil will be sweetened,
daily labor, however humble, will be better borne, when we feel
that we are doing something to elevate our tastes and refine our
characters.  Increase of knowledge, enlargement of mental
power, refinement of taste, -  why, they are a re-creation.  We
become different beings fiom what we were when our minds
were uncultivated and rude.  And is not this worth an effort?
But I should set this self-improvement as the motive for my
exertions.  It is quite too common to urge the worldly benefits
that will accrue from self-education as the chief stimulus to effort.
See, people say, this poor boy who became a millionnaire, that
one who rose to be president or governor, - go you and be president or governor likewise.  But there is surely a fallacy some



58
where in the argument; for if this is the infallible way to the
governor's chair, suppose some day all should take the advice;
where, in such case, would be the people left to govern? And
the truth is, that there is a fallacy in this kind of counsel, and
it consists in this, - that it leaves quite out of the calculation,
while recounting the examples of eminent and successful men,
the fact that in addition to these qualities of.diligence, courage,
perseverance, and the like, which all can imitate, God had endowed them with extraordinary natural powers which we do not
possess; and it by no means follows that though we should imitate them in all their diligence and perseverance, (and let us by
all means do that,) we could possibly attain to the same distinction; or, if we did, it would only be by some lucky accident or
some shrewd selfishness, lifting us into a position nature never
meant us to fill, - a misfortune surely to be avoided, not sought.
The improvement of our mental powers will certainly have a
strong tendency to improve our worldly condition, for it will
make us more useful and valuable members of society; if we
have any eminent talent it will develop it; but it willnot infallibly lift us into distinction; it will not infallibly give us wealth;
and for one remarkable man whose story the books recount, there
are a thousand whose efforts were equally meritorious, of whom
the world will never hear. I do not believe that the pursuit of
knowledge under difficulties is so rare in this world that the
examples of it are all collected in the book which goes by that
name.
I certainly desire to say nothing to discourage an honorable
ambition. I am sure that no road to distinction is more certain
than that through a good education; but I do not think that the
restless desire to "rise in the world" is a happy temper of
mind; and I believe that when that is the only motive for study,
the study will be of little worth, and the sweets of learning will
be wholly lost. It is not ambitious men in search of worldly distinction who have been the true promoters of science and learning, but humble, modest, and contented men who found in science
and learning their own great reward; and no one need expect




to realize the true pleasures of study who does not pursue it for
its own sake. Let us have practical usefulness in view in all
our labors. If worldly advantage follows, let it be thankfully
received; let that due regard be had to it which is every man's
duty; if distinction follows, let it be borne wisely and modestly.
If a man should even chance to be chosen a member of Congress
in consequence of his attainments, I suppose he must accept it as
he would any other afflictive dispensation of Providence, and do
his duty there. But he is probably the happiest man, who,
content with an obscure, but useful and honorable station, gives
the leisure which that leaves him to the pursuit of study, without thought of selfish reward, and devotes the opportunities
which improving circumstances give him, not to rendering himself a more famous, but to making himself a wiser, a better, and
a more usefuil man. That shoemaker naturalist I spoke of, has
always lived in the house and sleeps in the room in which he
was born. He has acquired a moderate competence by the honest occupation of making and selling shoes. But the study of
natural history has been a delight to him all his life, and I cannot help thinking that he has been a far happier man than if he
had been governor or president.
I would say, then, study not that you may come nearer to
being governor, but that you may come nearer to being a man.
And let no one despise small opportunities. We sometimes
hear people say, - Oh, if I only had my time to myself, I would
do such great things! Such people would probable do nothing.
"Let no man," says a sensible Englishman,* " let no man willing to study despond because he can only command a portion,
it may be, of his evenings, whilst others are masters of the whole
day.  It is bad arithmetic in these matters to compute that four
times as much can be learned in four hours as in one.  It would
be just as reasonable to argue that because a good dinner daily
gives a man health and strength, therefore four such dinners
every day would make a man four times as strong and healthy."
* Lord Stanley, Address at the Opening of the Oldham Lyceum.




60
Nor do I think that occupation in manual labor is any disadvantage.  There is a passage iii Hugh Miller's Autobiography,
pointing out the advantages in this respect of a life of manual
labor, and Hugh Miller was, as long as he continued a laboring
man, himself a striking illustration of his doctrine.
I should be sorry to close this lecture and leave you with the
feeling that one omission in it arose from intentional neglect or
want of appreciation.  You will perhaps have observed that I
have nowher6 spoken of religious reading. I should have felt
perfectly free to do so if I had thought best, and you, I doubt
not, would have heard me candidly. But I preferred to omit
the subject altogether, because I felt I had not space in which
to do it justice.  Let me only say here, that in all the advice I
have ventured to give, I imply that belief in an Infinite Being,
and that feeling of responsibility to him for all our actions,
without which I do not believe in the success of any efforts at
self-improvement.  With your various theological beliefs I have
nothing to do; I might differ from you, you from one another,
and some of us would be nearer, some of us farther off from that
Absolute Truth, respecting which there is no infallible authority
in this finite world that can take upon itself to dogmatize. But
in this cardinal doctrine of all religions, which depends not upon
man's intellect so much as upon that religious sense of dependence with which his Creator has endowed him, though it may be
stifled and may be denied, I suppose that we are all probably
in agreement.  It must be the foundation of all efforts at a
manly life, for without it man is not man, but only a higher
kind of animal. Let me say, then, that whenever I appeal to
other motives, I imply this as underlying them all, - a religious
sense of responsibility to God for the right conduct of our lives,
without which I do not believe that any efforts we may make
will be of much value.