r chase a ball or a butterfly, feel the open
air in his face, look at the fields or the sky, follow a winding path,
or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests of
his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spelling-book,
repeat barbarous distichs after his master, sit so many hours pinioned
to a writing-desk, and receive his reward for the loss of time and
pleasure in paltry prize-medals at Christmas and Midsummer. There is
indeed a degree of stupidity which prevents children from learning the
usual lessons, or ever arriving at these puny academic honours. But what
passes for stupidity is much oftener a want of interest, of a sufficient
motive to fix the attention and force a reluctant application to the dry
and unmeaning pursuits of school-learning. The best capacities are as
much above this drudgery as the dullest are beneath it. Our men of the
greatest genius have not been most distinguished for their acquirements
at school or at the university.

Th' enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever.

Gray and Collins were among the instances of this wayward disposition.
Such persons do not think so highly of the advantages, nor can they
submit their imaginations so servilely to the trammels of strict
scholastic discipline. There is a certain kind and degree of intellect
in which words take root, but into which things have not power to
penetrate. A mediocrity of talent, with a certain slenderness of moral
constitution, is the soil that produces the most brilliant specimens of
successful prize-essayists and Greek epigrammatists. It should not be
forgotten that the least respectable character among modern politicians
was the cleverest boy at Eton.

Learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally known to
others, and which we can only derive at second-hand from books or other
artificial sources. The knowledge of that which is before us, or about
us, which appeals to our experience, passions, and pursuits, to the
bosoms and businesses of men, is not learning. Learning is the knowledge
of that which none but the learned know. He is the most learned man who
knows the most of what is farthest removed from common life and actual
observation, that is of the least practical utility, and least liable to
be brought to the test of experience, and that, having been handed down
through the greatest number of intermediate stages, is the most full
of uncertainty, difficulties, and contradictions. It