the ribald pages of Antianassa or Tartaretus, or from Dr. Sybbidall's ponderous folio on Lampblack.

The difficulty of fixing the attention is a difficulty with which all who attempt to study have been obliged to contend. It is a difficulty which no one can succeed as a student without in a greater or less degree surmounting, It can be subdued only by repeated efforts; by turning back in the book, and reading the same passage again and again until it is properly perceived and comprehended. This is troublesome and vexatious; but it can be done, and it must be done if you would read to advantage. The labour of doing it is like the black bread supplied to the army of Charles the 12th. The soldiers complained of its bad quality; the king, in order to reconcile them to its use, commanded a loaf of it to be brought, broke it, ate the whole of it, and said to them, "It is not good, my children, but it can be eaten, and we must eat it." By recurring repeatedly to any subject of study to which we have not at first given sufficient attention, we are enabled not only to understand its meaning, but we gain the additional advantage of fixing it in the memory; for that faculty, as Locke has remarked, depends very much upon attention and repetition.*

* Essay on the Human Understanding, B. 2. C. 10.

To the labour of thinking while you read, you should reconcile your minds by reflecting that from any useful book so read you will derive a larger addition to your knowledge, and a greater improvement of your reasoning powers, than you could gain by reading rapidly and thoughtlessly all the volumes that were printed by Aldus and Elzevir, or studied by Bentley and Casaubon.

If it be still objected that the method of reading which I recommend is slow and toilsome, I admit the charge, and acknowledge that there are other modes which have the advantage of being far more easy and expeditious, and which are, for certain purposes, extremely efficacious.

Thus, if we read merely in order to hurry the flight of idle and tedious hours, to kill time as we say-time which kills itself, and will so soon kill us all-it matters but little what books we take up, or in what manner we peruse them, provided they serve for the moment to occupy our attention, and divert our thoughts from other subjects.

Or again, if we read merely for the sake of ostentation,-barely in order to say that we have read certain books or certain authors,-a very slight and hasty perusal will be sufficient for this weighty and valuable object.

Or again, if we read simply in order to know the his

torical fact that a certain author has expressed a certain opinion, or advocated a certain doctrine, or established a certain system, this also may be easily accomplished, and without the least necessity for inquiring whether the opinion, the doctrine, or the system be right or wrong, true or false.

Reading for any of these purposes is an easy process. But to the young and inexperienced student, when easy, it is also, in general, a comparatively useless process, one but little entitled to the appellation of study, one but little fitted to give knowledge of the facts and principles of science, and one still less adapted to train and prepare the mind for the discovery and investigation of truth. "We should read," says Bacon, "not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."*

In the study of science, it is useless to read if you neglect to think. When you resort to books, you should remember that there is but one volume in existence which consists of unalloyed and infallible truth; that in the best of all others there is an admixture of imperfection and error; that the oldest and most solemn of folios, and the newest and most flippant of duodecimos are alike liable to abound

* Essays, 50.

with falsehood and absurdity; that you are to act in this world, and to answer in the next, not according to the judgment of book-makers or others, but according to your own; and that you sin against the light of reason and the dignity of your own minds when you adopt opinions merely because you have found them in books, and without considering whether they are true, or knowing why they are true.

It is the labour and difficulty of thinking that, more than almost anything else, has tended to perpetuate erroneous opinions among mankind, and to make students, or those who profess to be students, the slaves of authority. Servile submission to authority in matters of philosophy has in all ages been one of the principal causes of the slow progress of real knowledge; the cause, which, according to Bacon, "has kept the sciences low, and at a stay, and without growth or advancement."* This fact is conspicuously marked in the history of the Middle Ages, or the Dark Ages, as we complacently call them from their contrast with our enlightened period of Tablemoving, Spirit-rapping and other forms of Devil-worship, with their innumerable fit and natural results and consequences, such as Free Love and Civil War. We certainly meet with many striking evidences of

*De Augmentis Scientiarum, Lib. 1.

devout respect for authority and disregard for truth and common sense among the records of those Dark Ages. Thus we read a decree of Francis the 1st of France, in 1540, prohibiting Peter Ramus, under pain of corporal punishment, from publishing doctrines contrary to Aristotle and other ancient and approved authors. Thus we find the Parliament of Paris in 1624, ratifying and confirming by solemn enactment all the opinions of Aristotle, and denouncing death against any one who taught or entertained tenets not reconcilable with the writings of that philosopher. Thus also we find the professors in the School of Bologna, those sausage-brained doctors, publishing their decision against Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, on the ground that it was not in accordance with the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen. Observing these and numerous other illustrations of the benighted condition of the human mind in those unhappy ages, we reflect with satisfaction that nothing of the same kind could occur in our own century. And this is, perhaps, in some degree true. No such public declaration in favour of authority and in prohibition of free inquiry could now be ventured. But the human mind is in its tendencies and propensities the same in all ages and all countries. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." Every where and always it has been