tackle a man of any age if there is a chance of a discussion. Recondite disquisitions are not to their purpose; but any popular question, such as a man can talk of from review and newspaper reading, they delight to raise a controversy about. They evince a great dexterity in taking exceptions, and are as quick to find instances against the generalizations of others as to draw imperfect generalizations themselves.

Many years ago the father of a young Englishman who had distinguished himself at the University, and given other indications of uncommon talent, having destined his son for public life, wrote to a friend, an eminent Scotch advocate and politician, for advice how the young man should be trained to make him a successful orator. The answer, which was long preserved in the family, contained these suggestions among others,-" He must seek the conversation of older men, and talk at them without being afraid of them; he must talk a great deal merely for the sake of talking; he must talk too much in company."

The person who related this to me was most struck with the apparent paradox of the last clause-the ludicrous idea of the future orator never talking enough until he had talked too much. I was impressed by a different thought—the exactness with which our collegians anticipate this advice for themselves and carry it out. They talk at older men with

*Should the reader be curious to know the result of this advice, it may be said that the subject of it has only attained moderate success as a public speaker, though in some other paths to distinction he stands among the foremost men of the age.

out being afraid of them; they talk a great deal for mere practice in talking; they talk too much in company.

Now the young man to whom this advice was given had the foundation of a thorough education whereon to build his rhetorical superstructure, varied knowledge to adorn, and a superior intellect to illuminate it. He started on a large capital in every point of view. If therefore he acquired a sometimes inconvenient habit of talking too much in company, there was still a probability that he would say much worth hearing; if his conversational sparrings with older men involved some violation of modesty, they were at any rate not likely to be disfigured by egregious errors. But when a youth acquires this talking facility and propensity without a proper training and knowledge to support it-when most of his authorities are at third or fourth-hand, hearsay, or the last newspaper article, or the confused recollection of what was at first imperfectly read, it follows inevitably that he must make many mistakes which his verbal dexterity will be continually brought into requisition to protect. And from this combination of inaccuracy of detail with facility of expression results one of our great national faults, a tendency to defend rather than prevent mistakes; plausibility in explaining away or glossing over an error rather than caution in guarding against the probability of its occurrence.

This feeling which, like the Spartan's conception of honesty, or the Parisian's of conjugal fidelity, places the evil of error, not in the original commission, but in the subsequent conviction of it, stands directly in the way of individual and

national improvement. Its favorite mode of argument is the ignoratio elenchi, the ignoring of the main point in dispute, and joining issue on some irrelevant accident; of it and its favorite form of this mode is the tu quoque, a digression upon some personal demerit of the opponent.* Thus both literature and politics are debased, and honest criticism or difference of opinion converted into matter of individual quarrel.

After all, the strongest objection to this literary precocity is that it defeats its own object. The ambitious student begins at the wrong end. He acquires manner before matter, and has a style in advance of his thoughts. His untimely blossoms do not fructify. His graces and ornaments of trope and metaphor, like the flowers which a child sticks into the ground to make a garden, grow faded and lose vitality for want of root and nutriment. He repeats his ideas, or those of others. He wrote fluently at eighteen, at twentysix he writes a trifle perhaps more fluently but in no respect better. Some years ago, I heard an Italian say that his country produced many young artists of great promise, but

*As if, for instance, one should say, by way of invalidating any of the conclusions in this book, "The author was at an English University himself, and does not afford us a favorable specimen of a Cambridge graduate, or appear to have profited much by his stay there."

+ Barefaced copying from books and reviews in their Compositions is familiar to our students, as much so as " skinning" their mathematical examples. It is in a manner forced upon them, by being expected to write before they have anything to write about.

none of them ever came to maturity. I thought at the time it was pretty much the same with our College geniuses. The class below me at Yale, out of a hundred members, had thirty poets-that is to say, men who had written and published verses. This is an extreme instance; but the number of "great writers" in my time (eleven years ago) at that College was very large. The number who have since attained any substantial literary distinction I could count on one hand and have some fingers to spare.

The best education has its limits, and very marked ones. No physical training can develope an ordinary man into a giant or a Hercules. No intellectual training can make a genius. The error of our system is that it makes a great many ordinary men suppose themselves to be geniuses, while at the same time it does not develope their ordinary abilities in the best way.

I have often been surprised (until from the frequency of the phenomenon it ceased to surprise me) at the altered impressions made on me by these College geniuses in after life. I do not refer to their position or want of position in the world, so much as to the effect which their conversation had upon me. They seemed to have come back to me, if I may be allowed to use a sporting phrase. Their remarks seemed trivial and common-place, their ideas limited, till I was tempted to look down upon those whom I used to look up to. And more than one such man has confessed to me his regret at not having made better use of his College opportunities, and devoted himself more attentively to the

legitimate studies of the place; and has owned his reluctant conviction that the time which he anticipated was borrowed at usurious interest, and the apparent gain had turned out a real loss.

The truth of what I have asserted, namely that our literary precocity overreaches itself, may be brought home very briefly to every unprejudiced and capable man. We accustom our youth to the practice of Composition much sooner than the English do theirs. Do we on the whole write as well as the English? Will any candid and well informed man say, from his heart, that the average of our books published every year is equal in quality to the average of theirs, or that the average quality of our newspaper and periodical literature is anywhere near theirs? I think every man who can afford to have a conscience will admit that there is a difference in their favor, and a greater difference than can be accounted for by the absence of an International Copyright Law. Yet, in order to justify our practice, we should expect as a result a very decided superiority to the English-unless we suppose an original inferiority of material. But the natural quickness and cleverness of the American mind are universally admitted. Our most bigoted enemies have never charged us with incapacity or stupidity. Our keenness of intelligence is all but proverbial among the The inference seems unavoidable that there is

nations.

something better in the English mode of training.

But our public speaking!

we are unapproachable!

There we have them! There

Certainly this is our peculiar