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WASTE OF TALENT.

CIVIL LIFE.

WASTE OF TALENT.

At present, we act with the minds of our young men, as the Dutch did with their exuberant spices. An infinite quantity of talent is annually destroyed in the Universities of England by the miserable jealousy and littleness of ecclesiastical instructors. — [E. R. 1809.]

MISTAKEN OBJECTS OF PURSUIT.

THERE is a delusive sort of splendour in a vast body of men pursuing one object, and thoroughly obtaining it; and yet, though it be very splendid, it is far from being useful. [E. R. 1809.]

TRUE EDUCATION FOR CIVIL LIFE.

WHEN an University has been doing useless things for a long time, it appears at first degrading to them to be useful. If we had to do with a young man going out into public life, we would exhort him to contemn, or at least not to affect the reputation of a great scholar, but to educate himself for the offices of civil life. He should learn what the constitution of his country really was, how it had grown into its present state,— the perils that had threatened it,—the malignity that had attacked it the courage that had fought for it, and the wisdom that had made it great. We would bring strongly before his mind the characters of those Englishmen who have been the steady friends of the public happiness; and, by their examples, would breathe into him a pure public taste, which should keep him untainted in all the vicissitudes of political fortune.—[E. R. 1809.]

DISCOVERY.-THE ELDER GENERATION.

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DISCOVERY.

THAT man is not the discoverer of any art who first says the thing; but he who says it so long, and so loud, and so clearly, that he compels mankind to hear him— the man who is so deeply impressed with the importance of the discovery that he will take no denial, but, at the risk of fortune, and fame, pushes through all opposition, and is determined that what he thinks he has discovered shall not perish for want of a fair trial. Other persong had noticed the effect of coal gas in producing light; but Winsor worried the town with bad English for three winters before he could attract any serious attention to his views. Many persons broke stone before Macadam, but Macadam felt the discovery more strongly, stated it more clearly, persevered in it with greater tenacity, wielded his hammer, in short, with greater force than other men, and finally succeeded in bringing his plan into general use.—[E. R. 1826.]

ENGLISH PERSEVERANCE.

If the English were in a paradise of spontaneous productions, they would continue to dig and plough, though they were never a peach nor a pine-apple the better for it.-[E. R. 1826.]

THE ELDER GENERATION.

Ir is by no means an uncommon wish of the mouldering and decaying part of mankind, that the next generation should not enjoy any advantages from which they themselves have been precluded.-"Ay, ay, it's all mighty well — but I went through this myself, and I

90 DIFFICULTIES TO OVERCOME.-BOYS AND GIRLS.

We

am determined my children shall do the same.” are convinced that a great deal of opposition to improvement proceeds from this principle. Crabbe might make a good picture of an unbenevolent old man, slowly retiring from this sublunary scene, and lamenting that the coming race of men would be less bumped on the roads, better lighted in the streets, and less tormented with grammars and lexicons, than in the preceding age. A greal deal of compliment to the wisdom of ancestors, and a great degree of alarm at the dreadful spirit of innovation, are soluble into mere jealousy and envy.[E. R. 1826.]

DIFFICULTIES TO OVERCOME.

NEVER be afraid of wanting difficulties for your pupil; if means are rendered more easy, more will be expected. -[E. R. 1826.]

DEAD AND LIVING LANGUAGES.

THE real way of learning a dead language, is to imitate, as much as possible, the method in which a living language is naturally learnt.-[E. R. 1826.]

LATIN AND GREEK.

If there be any thing which fills reflecting men with melancholy and regret, it is the waste of mortal time, parental money, and puerile happiness, in the present method of pursuing Latin and Greek. -- [E. R. 1826.]

BOYS AND GIRLS.

As long as boys and girls run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are both precisely alike. If

EDUCATION OF WOMEN.-AFFECTATION.

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you catch up one half of these creatures, and train them to a particular set of actions and opinions, and the other half to a perfectly opposite set, of course their understandings will differ, as one or the other sort of occupations has called this or that talent into action. There is surely no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse reasoning, in order to explain so very simple a pheno[E. R. 1810.]

menon.

EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

As the matter now stands, the time of women is considered as worth nothing at all. Daughters are kept to occupations in sewing, patching, mantua-making, and mending, by which it is impossible they can earn tenpence a day. They are kept with nimble fingers and vacant understandings, till the season for improvement is utterly past away, and all chance of forming more important habits completely lost.—[E. R. 1810.]

EDUCATION OF COUNTRY GENTLEMEN.

A CENTURY ago, who would have believed that country gentlemen could be brought to read and spell with the ease and accuracy which we now so frequently remark,— or supposed that they could be carried up even to the elements of ancient and modern history?-[E. R. 1810.]

AFFECTATION.

ALL affectation and display proceed from the supposition of possessing something better than the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing two legs and two arms;-because that is the precise quantity of either sort of limb which everybody possesses.-[E. R. 1810.]

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PEDANTRY.-EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

PEDANTRY.

As pedantry is an ostentatious obtrusion of knowledge, in which those who hear us cannot sympathise, it is a fault of which soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, gamesters, cultivators, and all men engaged in a particular occupation, are quite as guilty as scholars; but they have the good fortune to have the vice only of pedantry,-while scholars have both the vice and the name for it too. [E. R. 1810.]

KNOWLEDGE CURES CONCEIT.

DIFFUSE knowledge generally among women, and you will at once cure the conceit which knowledge occasions while it is rare. -[E. R. 1810.]

ENLARGE WOMAN'S EDUCATION.

WHY are we necessarily to doom a girl, whatever be her taste or her capacity, to one unvaried line of petty and frivolous occupation? If she be full of strong sense and elevated curiosity, can there be any reason why she should be diluted and enfeebled down to a mere culler of simples, and fancier of birds?- why books of history and reasoning are to be torn out of her hand, and why she is to be sent, like a butterfly, to hover over the idle flowers of the field?-[E. R. 1810.]

FEAR OF EDUCATING WOMEN.

THERE is a very general notion, that if you once suffer women to eat of the tree of knowledge, the rest of the family will very soon be reduced to the same kind of aërial and unsatisfactory diet.-[E. R. 1810.]