fully determined to perform the necessary act and deed, some time or other. "But why just now? Another time will do as well." And thus they delay the thing from year to year, till at last the time of doing it is gone by; a precious widow, or a beloved and deserving child, is left to suffer, through life, the bitter consequences of this default.

Some Farmers double their labor, and lose half their profits, for want of doing things in the proper season. Their fields are overgrown with bushes and thorns, all which a little seasonable labor might have prevented. Their fences. and even their buildings, are neglected, till the cost of repairs becomes increased several fold; besides their sustaining a train of inconveniences and of serious injuries from the neglect.And so also their crops cost more labor, and at the same time are leaner in bulk, or inferior in quality, by reason that much of the labor that had been bestowed upon them was out of season. Nor is it uncommon to

see farmers of this sort in a mighty hurry and bustle. They are behind their business and running to overtake it; which is the cause of their being so often in a great-` er hurry than their neighbors.

Many a one, loses his custom as a mechanic, by not doing his work in season. It makes no odds, he thinks, whether the thing be done precisely at the time agreed upon-but so think not his customers.

What does not a merchant lose, in custom, in credit, and in cash, by neglecting his books, though it be only a few months, or a few weeks. How hard does he find it to set right, what might easily have been kept right, if he had done the work of each day within the day.

Honest Jonathan, borrows a sum of money of his particular friend, on the express promise of scrupulous punctuality. He gets the money by the day: but being busy here and there, he delays to carry or send it. The money happens to be wanted the very day it becomes due ;-and, with that particular friend, Jonathan's borrowing-credit is utterly lost.

Doctor possesses undoubted skill in his profession, but loves talk better than practice. Called away

in a case of pressing emergency, he sets out with speed; but meets an old acquaintance, to whom he opens a budget of news and politics, which takes him up half an hour in the relating; and by the time he arrives, all is over. Half an hour sooner and his patient might have been saved.

Ere

Violent pains and fevery chills seize us. If they go not off, we will send for the physician to-morrow. to-morrow arrives, the distemper gains a firmness that baffles the physician's skill.

Hark! The cry of fear and dismay. The Small Pox! our children have caught the contagion; we meant to have them vaccinated, but had put it off, and the time for it is now past.

Upon the whole:-That which may be done at any time, is seldom done in season, and often left undone; whereas a little time that is known to be the only time, suffices for bringing much to pass. Again, when we have various means of obtaining our object, we are less likely to obtain it than if we had only one, and that a feasible and good one; for a vibrating mind is inactive, and he that loiters rarely succeeds. For the same reason, one good calling is better than half a dozen.

CHAP. XLVI.

Of the well informed.

WHAT has been commonly termed the Republic of Letters, till a late period, had been no other than a monopolizing and overbearing aristocracy. The precious treasure was in the possession of only a few, who, with miserly feelings, locked it up from the mass of the people; communicating it merely to one another, and their select pupils.

"Knowledge that is hid, and treasure that is locked up, what profit is in them both ?" This question of the ancient sage that penned the book of Ecclesiasticus, carries its own answer along with it.

Of very little profit indeed to the world were these

philosophers of antiquity, whose philosophy was either wrapped up in mystery, or withheld from all but the initiated few. For as gold is of no service while it remains hoarded, and is made serviceable only when put in circulation, so also intellectual treasure can benefit mankind, only so far as it is generally diffused.

The Art of Printing, produced an astonishing change in this important respect: a change that is still progressing, and that promises a most happy consummation. Ere its discovery, the whole rational world consisted of only two classes, namely, learned sholars and an illiterate vulgar; between which, there was very little of fellowship, or of any thing in common. Whereas Printing, by multiplying copies with so much ease, and furnishing books in such plenty and cheapness, soon began to break away that "middle wall of partition." Yet it was not till a considerably late period, that the tree of knowledge has been brought fairly within the reach of the multitude.

From the beginning of the last century, and thence up to the present day, literature and science have advanced chiefly by diffusion. In the former ages, there were giants in the literary departments: men of iron constitutions of body and mind, who, by indefatigable industry and patience of toil, treasured up in their minds and memories, such a prodigious abundance of learning as would now seem incredible. This race of

Anakim is nearly extinct, and of learning there are no living prodigies comparable to those of earlier time. Nevertheless, knowledge has rapidly progressed, by the general spread of it. No longer confined to scholars by profession, or inherited exclusively by the lordly sex, there now are, of both sexes, very many readers, who, without any pretensions to deep scholarship, have arrived to respectable degrees of information. The truth of it is, among those especially who speak the English tongue, there has risen up a middle class, aptly denominated the Well Informed.

And who are these? These are persons who, though not to be ranked with men of deep scholastic lore, nor by any means affecting such distinction, are, notwithstanding, possessed of a fund of useful knowledge,

whether for conversation, or for the various practical purposes of life. They are often found, in short, to have more of general practical knowledge, than commonly falls to the lot of men of profound science or litFor one who devotes himself to science alone, or to literature alone, however deeply intelligent in that single respect, must needs be ignorant as to most other things.

erature.

But the class of the Well Informed requires a more particular description. By no means does it include all readers, and much less all that can read.

Of those who can read, the greater part make very little use of this inestimable advantage, and are very little the wiser for it. Again, of those who do read, a large proportion choose rather to be diverted or amused than instructed. They are diverted; they are amused; but enlightened and informed in any respectable measure, they are not. There are great readers, both male and female, who in no wise are well informed.Either their reading is futile and uninstructive, or they neglect to join with it the close exercise of their intellectual faculties; so that their judgments are not strengthened, nor their understandings enlarged, though an abundance of truths and facts are confusedly heaped together in their memories.

To attain the character of Well Informed, one must read with prudent selection as to books; with an attentive exercise of one's own reason and judgment; with close application of thought;-and one must improve one's own mind, not by reading only, but also by a living intercourse with intelligent society. For it is not in abstraction from the world, but in the bosom of society-of well regulated and well informed societythat the mind enjoys the best opportunities for obtaining expansion and vigor. Here alone, it experiences a genial warmth, and powerful stimulations to laudable exertions. Here alone it is, also, that the fallacies and errors of its own crude conceptions are corrected, by means of their frequent contact, comparison, and collision, with the conceptions of kindred minds.

The road is open.

The means of information are so ample and so easy of access, that the reading youth of

the present day, seem to have it fairly in their power to become well informed men and women. Two hours in the twenty-four, employed in well-directed intellectual industry, might suffice, in no very long time, for gathering a respectable treasure of valuable knowledge. A person who should walk only one hour, or three miles and an half, every day, would, in the course of twenty years, have travelled as many steps as would reach round the globe.

Though a bookworm is seldom good for much else, yet a reasonable degree of bookishness is not incompatible with business, nor any hindrance to it. There are men and women of considerably extensive reading, and well informed, who have been remarkable for diligence and punctuality in the various particulars of their busy callings. And besides, as there are numerous chasms in life, which they know not how to fill who are addicted neither to business nor books: so when men of business retire from it, they are generally restless in their retirement unless they have a taste for reading.

CHAP. XLVII.

Of general diffusion of Knowledge.

THE rapid progress of knowledge by diffusion, is deeply important to the civil and moral interests of society. It is probably a fact, that the number of readers, particularly readers of English, has increased threefold in the last thirty years. Add to this; there are making at the present instant, more strenuous and general efforts, by many degrees, for imparting the means of instruction to all classes of the people, than were ever made before. So that there is a fair prospect that the number of English readers will be threefold greater thirty years hence, than it is even now.

The nature and magnitude of the results cannot be fully conceived beforehand. No doubt there will be, in them, a mixture of good and evil, but there is reason to expect that the good will vastly preponderate,