Similar examples, from real life, should be produced to
young people at proper times; the testimony of men of acknowledged
abilities, of men whom they have admired for genius, will come with
peculiar force in favour of application. Parents, well acquainted with
literature, cannot be at a loss to find opposite illustrations. The
Life of Franklin is an excellent example of persevering industry; the
variations in different editions of Voltaire's dramatic poetry, and in
Pope's works, are worth examining. All Sir Joshua Reynolds's eloquent
academical discourses enforce the doctrine of patience; when he wants
to prove to painters the value of continual energetic attention, he
quotes from Livy the character of Philopoemen, one of the ablest
generals of antiquity. So certain it is, that the same principle
pervades all superior minds: whatever may be their pursuits, attention
is the avowed primary cause of their success. These examples from the
dead, should be well supported by examples from amongst the living. In
common life, occurrences can frequently be pointed out, in which
attention and application are amply rewarded with success.

It will encourage those who are interested in education, to observe,
that two of the most difficult exercises of the mind can, by
practice, be rendered familiar, even by persons whom we do not
consider as possessed of superior talents. Abstraction and
transition--abstraction, the power of withdrawing the attention from
all external objects, and concentrating it upon some particular set of
ideas, we admire as one of the most difficult exercises of the
philosopher. Abstraction was formerly considered as such a difficult
and painful operation, that it required perfect silence and solitude;
many ancient philosophers quarrelled with their senses, and shut
themselves up in caves, to secure their attention from the
distraction caused by external objects. But modern[26] philosophers
have discovered, that neither caves nor lamps are essential to the
full and successful exercise of their mental powers. Persons of
ordinary abilities, tradesmen and shop-keepers, in the midst of the
tumult of a public city, in the noise of rumbling carts and rattling
carriages, amidst the voices of a multitude of people talking upon
various subjects, amidst the provoking interruptions of continual
questions and answers, and in the broad glare of a hot sun, can
command and abstract their attention so far as to calculate yards