by the
dreariness and dulness of the education we receive. But even that is
no excuse for sinking into melancholy bankruptcy, and going about the
world full of the earnest capacity for woe, disheartened and
disheartening.

A great teacher has the extraordinary power, not only of evoking the
finest capacities from the finest minds, but of actually giving to
second-rate minds a belief that knowledge is interesting and worth
attention. What we have to do, if we have missed coming under the
influence of a great teacher, is resolutely to put ourselves in touch
with great minds. We shall not burst into flame at once perhaps, and
the process may seem but the rubbing of one dry stick against another;
one cannot prescribe a path, because we must advance upon the slender
line of our own interests; but we can surely find some one writer who
revives us and inspires us; and if we persevere, we find the path
slowly broadening into a road, while the landscape takes shape and
design around us. The one thing fortunately of which there is enough
and to spare in the world is good advice, and if we find ourselves
helpless, we can consult some one who seems to have a view of finer
things, whose delight is fresh and eager, whose handling of life
seems gracious and generous. It is as possible to do this, as to
consult a doctor if we find ourselves out of health; and here we stiff
and solitary Anglo-Saxons are often to blame, because we cannot bring
ourselves to speak freely of these things, to be importunate, to ask
for help; it seems to us at once impertinent and undignified; but it
is this sort of dreary consideration, which is nothing but distorted
vanity, and this still drearier dignity, which withholds from us so
much that is beautiful.

The one thing then that I wish to urge is that we should take up the
pursuit in an entirely practical way; as Emerson said, with a splendid
mixture of common sense and idealism, "hitch our waggon to a star." It
is easy enough to lose ourselves in a vague sentimentalism, and to
believe that only our cramped conditions have hindered us from
developing into something very wonderful. It is easy too to drift into
helpless materialism, and to believe that dulness is the natural lot
of man. But the realm of thought is a very free citizenship, and a
hundred doors will open to us if we only knock at them. Moreover, that
realm is not like an over-populated country; it is infinitely large,
and virgin soil; and w