66

occupied with the subject in hand, that the mind takes notice of nothing without itself." Need I say here, that you can never command the atten tion, if you are in the habit of yielding to your appetites and passions? No man," says one who knew, "whose appetites are his masters, can perform the duties of his nature with strictness and regularity. He that would be superior to external influence, must first become superior to his own passions." Why does the boy, who has a large sum upon his slate, scowl, and rub out, and begin again, and grow discouraged? Because he has not yet learned to command his attention. He was going on well, when some new thought flashed into his mind, or some new object caught his eye, and he lost the train of calculation. Why has that Latin or Greek word so puzzled you to remember, that you have had to look it out in your dictionary some ten or dozen times? And why do you now look at it as at a stranger, whose name you ought to know, but which you cannot recall? Because you have not yet acquired fully the power of fixing your attention. That word would have been remembered long since, if it had not passed as a shadow before your mind when you looked at it.

The difficulty of confining the attention is probably the secret of the plan of Demosthenes, who shut himself up in his celebrated dark cave for study; and this will account for the fact, that a person who is unexpectedly deprived of the use of his eyes, will not unfrequently make advances in thought, and show a strength of mind unknown before. I have frequently seen boys take their books on a summer's day, and flee from their room to the garden or the grove, and then back again, full of uneasiness, and in vain hoping that

changing the place would give them some new power over the roving attention, and that indescribable restlessness, so inseparable from the early efforts to subdue the mind. It is all in vain. You cannot flee from yourself; and the best way is to sit directly down in your room, and there command your attention to fix itself upon the hard, dry lesson, and master it; and, when you have thus brought this rover to obey you once, he will be more ready to obey the next time.

Patience is a virtue kindred to attention; and without it the mind cannot be said to be disciplined. Patient labour and investigation are not only essential to success in study, but are an unfailing guarantee to success. The young man is. in danger of feeling that he will strike out something new. His spirits are buoyant and his hopes sanguine. He knows not the mortified feeling of being repeatedly defeated by himself. He will burst upon the world at once, and strike the blows of a giant, while his arm is that of a child. He is not to toil up the hill, and wait for years of self-discipline, close, patient study, and hard labour-not he! but before you know it, he will be on the heights of the highest Alps, with a lofty feeling, looking down upon the creepers below. Hence, multitudes waste life, and absolutely fritter away their existence, in doing nothing, except waiting for a golden opportunity to do something great and magnificent. When they come out, it must be in some great effort. The tree is not to grow slowly and gradually; no, at once the sapling must be loaded with the fruit of the tree of threescore years! Alas! trees planted and watered by such expectations will never be more than dwarfs. Every young man ought to remember, that he who would carry the

66

ox, must every day shoulder the calf. That great man, sir Isaac Newton, who returned to his study, and finding that his little dog had turned over the table, and that the papers on which he had been engaged for years were burned up, yet calmly said, Diamond, you do not know the mischief you have done," showed a soul truly great; and its greatness, in this instance, consisted in his patience. Without a murmur, he sat down to do over the same great labour. He lived to complete it, and it was the admiration of the learned world. Yet how few have the patience thus to sit down and labour, day by day, for years! It is neither a small nor an easy part of education to cultivate this trait of character.

The student should learn to think and act for himself. True originality consists in doing things well, and doing them in your own way. A mind half-educated is generally imitating others. "No man was ever great by imitation." One great reason is, that it is so much easier to copy the defects and the objectionable parts of a great man's character, than to imitate his excellences, that we gain only the former. Not a few waste their lives, and lose all discipline and improvement, by an insensible and unconscious habit of imitating others. Of the multitudes who imitated Johnson, was there one who had anything more than his pompous, inflated lan guage? Of the many who tried to follow in the wake of Byron, is there one who will live in song? Not one. They could copy nothing but his measure and his wickedness; borrowing his vileness without his genius. The lion himself is fast turning to corruption, but no honey will be found in the carcase; and as for his followers, the world has been relieved from their curse by

their decaying before they could taint the moral atmosphere. It is vastly more easy to imitate and borrow, both matter and manner, than to have them of your own. But set it down, that no imitator ever reached anything like emiYou must have a character of your own, and rules by which that character is regulated. Let it be remembered that we cannot copy greatness or goodness by any effort. We must acquire it by our own patience and diligence.

nence.

Another object of study is, to form the judgment, so that the mind can not only investigate, but weigh and balance opinions and theories. Without this, you will never be able to decide what to read or what to throw aside; what author to distrust, or what opinions to receive. Some of the most laborious men, and diligent readers, pass through life without accomplishing anything desirable, for the want of what may be called a well-balanced judgment. The last theory which they hear is the true one, however deficient as to proof from facts; the last book they read is the most wonderful, though it may be worthless; the last acquaintance is the most valuable, because least is known about him. Hence multitudes of objects are pursued, which have no use in practical life; and there is a laborious trifling which unfits the mind for any thing valuable. It leads to a wide field, which is barren and waste. 'I once saw a shepherd," says an Italian author, "who used to divert himself, in his solitudes, with tossing up eggs, and catching them again without breaking them; in which he had arrived to so great a degree of perfection, that he would keep up four at a time for several minutes together, playing in the air, and falling into his hands by turns. I think Í

66

never saw greater severity than in this man's face; for, by his wonderful perseverance and application, he had contracted the seriousness and gravity of a privy-councillor; and I could not but reflect with myself, that the same assiduity and attention, had they been rightly applied, might have made him a greater mathematician than Archimedes." I have known a boy, and similar cases in principle are not rare, spend time enough in learning to read with the book bottom upwards, which he did with great fluency, to have made him acquainted with all the minutia of the Latin grammar. This is not merely time wasted, but it is cultivating a taste for out-of-the-way things and useless acquirements. It is no small part of education and of study, to know what you do, and what you do not, wish to know.

If, by anything I have said, an impression has been made that I do not deem it necessary for a man to be familiar with a wide circle of knowledge, in order to become known, influential, and useful, I trust such an impression will be corrected subsequently. What I wish to say here is, that the great object of the student is, to prepare his mind to use materials which may hereafter be gathered, but not now to gather them.

The great instrument of affecting the world is the mind; and no instrument is so decidedly and continually improved by exercise and use, as the mind. Many seem to feel as if it were not safe to put forth all their powers at one effort. You must reserve your strength for great occasions, just as you would use your horse, moderately and carefully on common occasions, but give him the spur on occasions of great emer