grown like fruit trees nailed to a garden wall, or box-wood in the old-fashioned tin moulds. Even in the fine arts, the pupil may be kept too long in the dull formalities of the drawing-school. The port-crayon need not be always in hand. As I was lately in a very interesting conversation, in a railroad car, with an eminent artist of Philadelphia, he related to me a pointed saying of our great Gilbert Stuart, dropped by the latter when he was painting in London; "If young men are ever to learn," said he, "it must be spontaneously. You must teach them to draw, as young puppies are taught to swim; chuck them in, and let them take their chance." It is somewhat so in letters; at least it has been so with the most successful. Pray, what list of authors had Franklin, Murray, or Gifford?

When I remember my boyhood, I am rapt into a little fairy-land. O how full of rules were my compulsory pursuits! O how free as air my reading! The dear old books in which I used to pore, without direction, nay, against direction-how do they rise before my memory, like ghosts of beloved friends! Their very looks are before me; I see their very "form and pressure." Nay, smile not, reader, the odours of ancient volumes, perused by me long, long ago, are in my mind's nostril this blessed night. There is Sanford and Merton-the very first "big book" I can call to mind; it was given to me by my father; I did not so much read it, as gloat over it. To this day

I cannot explain the charms of that volume; but who ever read it uncharmed? "Robinson Crusoe!" I need not tell an experience which is that of all the world. "The Thousand and One Nights"— It was somewhat a stolen enjoyment; but not less precious for that; and it opened an orient world, into which, on the mere strength of boyish fancies recollected and embalmed, it would have taken little at certain times to transport me bodily, as those incomparable fictions did in spirit. "The Pilgrim's Progress"-There were two things about this immortal story which made it dearer to me than all the rest; first, it carried with it a pleasing yet fearful shuddering as before high religious mystery; and, secondly, it was a prolonged enigma, and he is no child who loves not a riddle. In later days, the same work has commended itself to my riper judgment, by its solid sense, its holy unction, its lordly imaginings, its epic conduct, and its "English pure and undefiled"-my mother tongue-the dialect, not of the college or of books, but of the market, the shop, and the hall. I hope earnestly, that while they are hammering out for us a new language, to be called American-English, and new-vamping the orthography of all the old writers in order that the books printed on the two sides of the water may be as unlike as possible-I hope they will leave a little of the racy idiomatic speech of the old country still incorrupt, in such books as the Pilgrim's Progress.

Even in

Set a boy to read a large book through, for a task, and you kill the book's influence on him. But spread works before him, and let a little childish caprice govern his choice, and he will learn rapidly. It is not instruction merely that the young scholar wants; here is a great mistake; no, it is excitement. Excitement is that which drives his soul on, as really as steam does the engine. But then you must keep him on the track. And the same thing holds in self-culture. Somebody has said that every well-educated man is self-educated; and he said not amiss. universities the mind is its own great cultivator. Do for yourself, young reader, so far as you know how, what there is perhaps no kind friend or teacher to do for you. It may be, while you read this page, in your shop or garret, or by the dull light beside some greasy counter, that you would gladly have a lift above your present low pursuits, into the world of knowledge. O that I were near you, to give you such aid as I have; but in lieu of this take a friend's advice. My good fellow, write down that wish. I say, write it down. Go now and take a fair piece of paper, record your determination to get knowledge. My word for it all experience for it-you will not be dis appointed. There are, probably, not many books at your command, but no matter. Many wealthy young men, amidst thousands of volumes, pine away in listless ignorance. Sometimes we read with a double zest such things as we have to

enjoy by stealth-after hours of work, or before day. What is thus read sticks fast.

The deep impressions made by one's first reading are so delightful, that we are glad to renew them. It is like a first love. When the Bible opens before me at the story of Joseph, or the Prodigal Son, I am all at once arrested-my thoughts go back to childhood—a thousand perusals since have not dispossessed the first imaginations. They throng before my mental vision all the images of that dreamy time-all the tender cares-all the little innocent misapprehensions. What an unbought pleasure is here! Give me therefore my small shelf of books, in order that each one may be the centre of such remembrances. Let others throng the circulating libraries, and take the mingled alcohol and opium of the lecherous and envious Byron, the puling and blasphemous Shelley, the seducing Bulwer; give me my Bible, my Milton, my Cowper, my Bunyan, my shelf of histories, my shelf of biography, and my shelf of travels, and I will have more "thick coming fancies" in an hour than they in a day.

I wish you could be persuaded to let your young people run a little out of harness. A horse always in shafts learns to stumble. You would not send your boy or your girl into the orchard to eat apples and pears by a list of particulars; no, give them the key, and let them pick and choose,

XI.

READING FOR ENTERTAINMENT.

"Our kind relief against a rainy day,

We take our book, and laugh our spleen away."

DRYDEN.

THE man whose days are spent in labour does not need so great a proportion of light reading, as the professional man or the student. Nor need this paradox startle any one. As it is true that the lawyer or the bank-clerk does not need, when evening comes, to rest his limbs, for the very plain reason, that he has not been exerting them, and that they are not weary; so,it is equally true, that the wheelwright or the turner does not need to relax his reasoning powers, because he has not been putting them to task. The jaded body of the workman claims its repose, the jaded mind of the scholar claims its repose; but the tired labourer may rest his limbs while he studies mathematics, just as the exhausted student may refresh his spirit while he saws wood.

I have long thought that ignorance or oversight of this truth, has been a great stumblingblock in the way of the improvement of the industrious classes. The flood of cheap novels and other