Corneille did not of politics, could not get his bread. reserve a crown for his old age, and was so miserably poor as to have his stockings mended at the street corner. Beethoven was so ignorant of finance, that he did not know enough to cut the coupon from a bond to raise a little money, instead of selling the entire instrument. He was so unpractical, that, when thirtyseven years old, he sent a friend three hundred florins to buy him linen for some shirts, and a half-dozen pocket-handkerchiefs; and about the same time, when he had a little more money than usual, he paid his tailor three hundred florins in advance. Often he was compelled to write music to meet his daily necessities; and one of the passages of his diary is entitled, "Four. Evil Days," during which he dined on a simple roll of bread and a glass of water. Need we add to all these the case of Adam Smith, who taught the nations economy, but could not manage the economy of his own house? or that of Goldsmith, whose essays teem with the shrewdest and most exquisite sense, but who never knew the value of a dollar; who, though receiving the largest sums for his writings, had always his daily bread to earn; who, when he sought to take orders, attempted to dazzle his bishop by a pair of scarlet breeches; and of whom Johnson said that no man was wiser when he had a pen in his hand, or more foolish when he had not? Now, the gift or faculty which all these men lacked was just that which every young man must possess, if he would be a successful man in business pursuits. But this gift is not so much a single endowment, as it is a happy combination of traits and qualities. The class of men who are sometimes called visionary men, are aptly described by the Boston merchant, who said of a certain man: "Oh, he is one of those fellows who have soarings after the infinite, and divings after the unfathomable, but who never pay cash!" It seems a pity that "deep-thinking and practical talent should require habits of mind almost entirely dissimilar, but so it is many times. A man who sees limitedly and clearly, is both more sure of himself, and is more direct in dealing with circumstances and with others, than a man with a large horizon of thought, whose many-sided capacity embraces an immense extent of objects and objections, just as a horse with blinkers chooses his path more surely, and is less likely to shy. There is no force in mere intellectual ability, standing, to use a phrase of Burke, 'in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction.' It is passion which is the moving, vitalizing power, and a minimum of brains will often achieve more, when fired by a strong will, than a vastly larger portion with no energy to set it in motion. Practical men cut the knots which they cannot untie, and, overleaping all logical preliminaries, come at once to the conclusion. Men of genius, on the other hand, are tempted to waste time in meditating and comparing, when they should act instantaneously, and with power. They are apt, too, to give unbridled license to their imaginations, and, desiring harmonious impossibilities, foresee difficulties so clearly that action is foregone. In short, they theorize too much. Genius, to be useful, must not only have wings to fly, but legs whereon to stand." EDUCATION. "A little learning is a dangerous thing, AMUEL SMILES says: "The education received at school and college is but a beginning, and is mainly valuable in so far as it trains us to the habit of continuous application, after a definite plan and system. Putting ideas into one's head will do the head no good, no more than putting things into a bag, unless it react upon them, make them its own, and turn them to account. 'It is not enough,' said John Locke, 'to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength or nourishment.' That which is put into us by others is always far less ours than that which we acquire by our own diligent and persevering effort. Knowledge obtained by labor becomes a possession-a property entirely our own. A greater vividness and permanency of impression is secured, and facts thus acquired become registered in the mind in a way that mere imparted information can never produce. This kind of self-culture also calls forth power and cultivates strength. The selfsolution of one problem helps the mastery of another; and thus knowledge is carried into faculty. Our own active effort is the essential thing; and no facilities, no books, no teachers, no amount of lessons learned by rote, will enable us to dispense with it. Such a spirit infused into self-culture, gives birth to a living teaching which inspires with purpose the whole man, impressing a distinct stamp upon the mind, and actively promoting the formation of principles and habitudes of conduct." Schiller designated the final education of the human race to consist in action, conduct, self-culture, and self-control; all that tends to discipline a man, and fit him for the proper performance of the duties of life; a kind of education not to be learned from books, or acquired by any amount of mere literary training. Some have even claimed that a man perfects himself by work much more than by reading. SELF-CULTURE. The best teachers recognize the importance of self-culture, and of stimulating the student early to accustom himself to acquire knowledge by the active exertion of his own faculties. They have relied more upon training than upon telling, and sought to make their pupils themselves active parties to the work in which they were engaged, thus making learning something far higher than the mere passive reception of the scraps and details of knowledge. This was the spirit in which the great Dr. Arnold of Rugby worked; he strove to teach his pupils to rely upon themselves, and to develop their own powers, while he merely guided, directed, stimulated, and encouraged them. "I would far rather," he said, "send a boy to Van Diemen's land, where he must work for his bread, than send him to Oxford to live in luxury, without any desire in his mind to avail himself of his advantages!" A great fund of knowledge may be accumulated without any purpose, and, though a source of pleasure to the possessor, it may be of little use to any one else. It proves nothing to say that knowledge is power, for so are fanaticism, despotism, ambition, and a hundred other equally doubtful mental traits and acquisitions. Knowledge of itself, unless wisely directed, might merely make bad men more dangerous, and the society in which it was regarded as the highest good, little better than Pandemonium. Knowledge must be allied to goodness and wisdom, and embodied in upright character, else it is naught. Pestalozzi even held intellectual training by itself to be pernicious, insisting that the roots of all knowledge must strike and feed in the soil of the religious, rightly-governed will. The acquisition of knowledge may, it is true, protect a man against the meaner felonies of life, but not in any degree against its selfish vices, unless fortified by sound principles and habits. Hence do we find in daily life so many instances of men who are well-informed in intellect, but utterly deformed in character; filled with the learning of the schools, yet possessing little practical wisdom, and offering examples rather for warning than imitation. It is possible that at this day we may even exaggerate the importance of literary culture. We are |