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justly be delighted with the extent of his views, and the artificer with the readiness of his hands; but let the one remember, that, without mechanical performances, refined speculation is an empty dream; and the other, that, without theoretical reasoning, dexterity is little more than a brute instinct. Rambler, vol. 1.

Whatever is done skilfully appears to be done with ease; and art, when it is once matured to habit, vanishes from observation. We are therefore more powerfully excited to emulation by those who have attained the highest degree of excellence, and whom we can therefore with least reason hope to equal. Ibid. vol. 3.

Education.

The knowledge of external nature, and of the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, is not the great, or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong. The next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples, which may be said to imbody truth, and

prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times and all places. We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure. Life of Milton.

Physical knowledge is of such rare emergence, that one man may know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at school, that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians.

Ibid.

But

Many wonders are told of the art of education, and the very early ages at which boys are conversant in the Greek and Latin tongues, under some preceptors. those who tell, or receive, those stories, should consider, that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the best horseman must be limited by the

power of his horse. Every man that has undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension. Life of Milton.

Neither a capital city, nor a town of commerce, is adapted for the purposes of a college: the first exposes the students too much to levity and dissoluteness, the other to gross luxury. In one the desire of knowledge easily gives way to the love of pleasure, and in the other there is danger in yielding to the love of money.

Employment.

Western Islands.

Enployment is the great instrument of intellectual dominion. The mind cannot retire from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn aside from one object, but by passing to another. The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do, or who do nothing. We must be busy about good or evil, and he, to whom the present offers nothing, will often be looking backward on the past. Idler, vol. 2.

Excellence.

There is a vigilance of observation, and accuracy of distinction, which books and precepts cannot confer; and from this almost all original and native excellence proceeds. Preface to Shakspeare.

Equanimity.

Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good; and for the reason we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with too much dejection. The state of the world is continually changing, and none can tell the result of the next vicissitude. Whatever is afloat in the stream of time, may, when it is very near us, be driven away by an accidental blast, which shall happen to cross the general course of the current. The sudden accidents by which the powerful are depressed may fall upon those whose malice we fear; and the greatness by which we expect to be overborne may become another proof of the false flatteries of fortune. Our enemies may become weak, or we grow strong, before our encounter; or we may advance against each other without ever meeting. There are, indeed, natural evils, which we can

flatter ourselves with no hopes of escaping, and with little of delaying; but of the ills which are apprehended from human malignity, or the opposition of rival interests, we may always alleviate the terror, by considering that our persecutors are weak, ignorant, and mortal, like ourselves.

Error.

Rambler, vol. 1.

It is incumbent on every man, who consults his own dignity, to retract his error as soon as he discovers it, without fearing any censure so much as that of his own mind. As justice requires that all injuries should be repaired, it is the duty of him who has seduced others by bad practices, or false notions, to endeavour that such as have adopted his errors should know his retraction, and that those who have learned vice by his example, should, by his exam. ple, be taught amendment.

Ibid

The men who can be charged with fewest failings, either with respect to abilities or virtue, are generally most ready to allow them. Cæsar wrote an account of the errors committed by him in his wars of Gaul; and Hippocrates, whose name is,

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