sence of years so eventful to the younger
man.

The history of Leonard during this interval was almost solely internal,
the struggle of intellect with its own difficulties, the wanderings of
imagination through its own adventurous worlds.

The first aim of Norreys, in preparing the mind of his pupil for its
vocation, had been to establish the equilibrium of its powers, to calm
into harmony the elements rudely shaken by the trials and passions of
the old hard outer life.

The theory of Norreys was briefly this: The education of a superior
human being is but the development of ideas in one for the benefit of
others. To this end, attention should be directed,--1st, To the value
of the ideas collected; 2dly, To their discipline; 3dly, To their
expression. For the first, acquirement is necessary; for the second,
discipline; for the third, art. The first comprehends knowledge purely
intellectual, whether derived from observation, memory, reflection,
books, or men, Aristotle or Fleet Street. The second demands training,
not only intellectual, but moral; the purifying and exaltation of
motives; the formation of habits; in which method is but a part of a
divine and harmonious symmetry, a union of intellect and conscience.
Ideas of value, stored by the first process; marshalled into force, and
placed under guidance, by the second,--it is the result of the third, to
place them before the world in the most attractive or commanding form.
This may be done by actions no less than words; but the adaptation of
means to end, the passage of ideas from the brain of one man into the
lives and souls of all, no less in action than in books, requires study.
Action has its art as well as literature. Here Norreys had but to deal
with the calling of the scholar, the formation of the writer, and so
to guide the perceptions towards those varieties in the sublime and
beautiful, the just combination of which is at once CREATION. Man
himself is but a combination of elements. He who combines in nature,
creates in art. Such, very succinctly and inadequately expressed, was
the system upon which Norreys proceeded to regulate and perfect the
great native powers of his pupil; and though the reader may perhaps say
that no system laid down by another can either form genius or dictate
to its results, yet probably nine-tenths at least of those in whom
we recognize the luminaries of our race have passed, unconsciously
to themselves (for self-education is rare