work in your mind. This is the best cure for desultory and self-indulgent literary habits. You feel that you have got something to do— that you are making progress in a definite direction that you are rising to a clearer hight of mental illumination over some pathway that you desire to explore. This is not only pleasant, but it costs you pains, and it is all the more pleasant, certainly all the more improving, that it does cost pains. For this is a condition of all genuine education, that it call forth a deliberate, anxious, and persistent mental action. It may not be a great subject that engages your interest, but it is not necessary that it should be so in order that you may gain great advantages from a studious attention to it; for here, as in many cases, the "chase is better than the game.” The power of mental discernment, the capacity of inductive inference, of sifting confused facts or statements, and penetrating to the life of truth beneath them, are the highest gifts to be got. Definite results of knowledge are comparatively unimportant; for such gifts are, so to speak, the sinews of all knowledge. And when once you have mastered, or done what you can by strenuous energy to master, any one thing, you are prepared to enter on a wide increase of intellectual possessions. To plant your foot on any single spot of knowledge, and make it your own by reading about it by studying it in the light of whatever helps you can command-is to brace your mental vigor, and to secure it a free and powerful play in whatever direction it may be turned. Study, accordingly, should be definite. It is only some aim in view that can give to your intellectual employment the character of study. Reading should neither be desultory nor routine-but select. It is only some principle of selection that can impart continuity and life to your thoughts. What this principle of selection. should be in each case, it is impossible to determine. Every one must be the best judge for himself in such a matter. And if he do not force nature, or give it too much license, he will have little difficulty in finding what lies closest to his interest. To every young man we commend the wise and weighty words of Bacon in his famous Essay on Studies. There is a piquancy and richness of exaggeration in them, here and there, that leave them above any mere imitation, but that serve to impress them all the more vividly upon the mind. "Studies," he says, "serve for delight, for ornament, and ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not cursorily; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; also distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to have that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; morals, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend; Abeunt studia in mores.' Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies; like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises; bowling is good for the stone and. reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So, if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for, in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; if he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove or illustrate another, let him study the lawyer cases; so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt." II. BOOKS-WHAT TO READ. SOME OME books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." If this was true in Lord Bacon's time, how much more so is it in a time like ours, when books have multiplied beyond all precedent in the world's history! It has become, in fact, a task beyond the power of any man to keep up, as it is said, with the rapidly-accumulating productions of literature, in all its branches. To enter a vast library, or even one of comparatively modest dimensions, such as all our large towns may boast, and survey the closely-packed shelves-the octavos rising above quartos, and duodecimos above bothis apt to fill the mind with a sense of oppression at the mere physical impossibility of ever coming in contact with such multiplied sources of knowledge. The old thought, Ars longa, vita brevis, comes home with a sort of sigh to the mind. Many lives would be wasted in the vain attempt. The inspection of a large library cer tainly can not be recommended to inspire lit |