Davy. This led happily to the young bookbinder making the
acquaintance of the lecturer, and eventually obtaining a position as
assistant in the Royal Institution.

Linnaeus, the great naturalist, had a very narrow escape from missing his
proper vocation. He was sent to a grammar-school, but exhibited no taste
for books; therefore his father decided to apprentice him to a
shoemaker. Fortunately, however, a discriminating physician had observed
the boy's love of natural history, and took him into his own house to
teach him botany and physiology.

Instances of the kind might be multiplied. Milton himself began life as
a schoolmaster, and the father of Turner, one of the greatest landscape
painters who ever lived, did his best to turn his brilliant son into a
barber. The point, however, is obvious enough without the need of
further illustration. A few examples have been adduced of great geniuses
who have contrived, by the accident of circumstances or through sheer
force of character, to escape from an environment which was forced upon
them against their natural inclination. But it is not everybody who is
gifted with such commanding talent and so much obstinacy and
perseverance as to be able to overcome the artificial obstacles placed
in the way of his individual tendencies; and now we have, what happily
did not exist in the day of Herschel, Faraday, Turner, Linnaeus and
others--a compulsory education system to strangle originality and
natural development at the earliest possible stage.

Most people would probably find it far easier to quote instances offhand
of friends who had missed their proper vocation in life than of those
who were placed exactly in the position best suited to their taste and
capacity. The failures in life are so obviously in excess of those who
may be said to have succeeded that specific illustrations of the fact
are hardly necessary.

One has only to exert ordinary powers of observation to perceive that
the world is not at all well ordered in this respect. It has already
been pointed out that the public service and the professions are almost
entirely filled with what must be called mediocrity; and one of the most
potent causes of this unhappy state of affairs is the exquisite
infallibility with which a blind system is constantly forcing square
pegs into round holes.

Every profession and calling teems with examples. There are men,
intended by nature to be artists and musicians, leading a wretche