was ludicrous to hear the professor quoting them all in succession, and with equal reverence submitting to the most contradictory opinions.

Books do a vast deal of mischief in the world, in so far as they interfere with three essential means to the advancement and elevation of man: First, the laborious observation and study of nature, in all her transcendant and minute perfection; secondly, in the humanizing moral influence, and electrifying power of social converse between man and man; and, thirdly, by superseding original reflection, meditation, and the effort to organize thought. Where they are studied therefore in the absence of all observation of nature, to the neglect of all active, manly, hearty intercourse with our fellow men, and to the superseding of intense thought, and creative effort of mind, they produce more mischief than any moral agent extant. They clothe a man in the rags and tatters of other men's opinions; they cripple his manly energies by constantly putting crutches under his arms; they place the yoke of opinion on his neck, and make him plow in fields not his own; they sap the very life of his manhood and youth, by the unnatural and tyrannous stimulus they apply to his mind.

What, then, is the use of books, and how shall they be studied? I have already intimated their use. They ought to stand in the same relation to the tree of the soul, that light, heat and moisture, and the stimulus of cultivation do to a natural tree; they are a means, and not an end, in self-improvement; they are occasions, and can never be causes, of individual growth; they should be made to suggest thought, and not to supersede it. We should seek in them the principles and laws to guide us in the study of nature and of man.

The practical question then occurs, how shall this view of the right use of books be carried out? It is an unfortunate circumstance in the intellectual progress of most of us, that we commence it by being obliged, most of our time, to hammer on single text-books. It leads to poverty of spirit, as it springs from poverty of purse.

We should be taught to study by subjects, under the guidance of lectures from intelligent teachers to mark out the course, and with the aid of several text-books. This is thought impracticable in schools; and hence the meagre dribblings of knowledge which the pupils get on any subject of school and college study. First, parents will not supply the text-books; secondly, it is thought children can not be taught to hunt up knowledge in a variety of text-books. No; they can understand what it is to "get a lesson," but to study a subject—that is out of the question. I grant that the first is a valid objection. Parents

will not, and many can not furnish a variety of text-books for their children on a single subject. I know of no other way to overcome this difficulty than to have libraries of text-books permanently belonging to each school, to which the pupils may refer. These would be furnished for the most part, gratis, by the publishers. I would have one textbook, as now, for the principal reliance in studying and illustrating the subject, after the teacher had marked out the course, laid down principles and rules, and illustrated for the purpose of clearness, and, in fact, accomplished all that is necessary for leading the student to an acquaintance with the subject in hand. Familiarity and discipline must be acquired by the pupil's own efforts; these must consist in reproducing, in some systematic form, but which is in a great part their own, the knowledge obtained from the teacher, and whatever text-books they may have access to.

No subject should be abandoned until it has thus been mastered by the pupil. I feel I am here treading on ground where some teachers will find it hard to understand what I mean. But I am giving the practical experience of some twelve years of thus teaching; and I speak advisedly, and with the support of the first teachers, when I say, that all children, but those of the tender age suitable to mere primary departments in schools, can be induced to study in this manner with the most striking results. The details of this method I must leave to another opportunity of writing.

I wish now more particularly to indicate how a man, who is pursuing his own culture, should read books. Miscellaneous, as well as continuous reading, is highly injurious to the mind. It is necessary that culture should proceed in single departments of knowledge at one time. The mind must be brought to a focus, and its attention riveted to a single subject, until at least its leading principles are mastered, and a certain measure of familiarity with details is acquired. Then it may be laid on the shelf, and taken up as the spirit moves; or be allowed to accumulate, as occasion offers. The manner of conducting study, must of course be determined by the nature of the subject. But all reading should be made subordinate, and auxiliary, to thinking and personal observation on the subject. Thus, is it a subject of science? place yourself, face to face, with that department of nature of which the science treats. Chemistry, Geology, Botany, Astronomy, Natural Philosophy, etc., must be studied chiefly by experiment and observation, and with the instrumentalities and materials for interrogating nature at every step. Is it the study of literature; as Poetry, Elocu

tion, Rhetoric, History, etc. ?-here we are studying productions of mind, which can be thoroughly understood and appreciated only by reproductions of our own, after the similitude of what we are studying. Composition is the great means of self-cultivation in these departments. We must read our models with much care and meditation; with a hearty surrender, for the time, of our whole soul to the power of their inspiration-not leading to a slavish imitation, but to a noble emulation.

I will close this brief essay with a few remarks on the use of books in the study of History. On no subject are you more likely to surrender your mind to books than on this. Facts may be so stated as to convey most erroneous opinions. Contemporary history, while it may be most reliable as to facts, is most likely to convey ex parte prejudices. No subject requires so much balance in the judgment, industry in the research, and profoundness in the analysis, as history; for it is the complex phenomena of man and society, with which we have to deal. But a capacity for accurate, historical criticism, is one of the last results of a highly educated and disciplined mind. To acquire this, the great and efficient means is composition-composition of our own thoughts, and recomposition of those of others. We should read history by epochs, and with the assistance of a variety of authors. After careful reading in reference to a period of which I wish to acquire a thorough acquaintance, I have generally been in the habit of throwing upon paper a sketch of the period, with whatever compression and graphic power I could give to the composition. I give one of these sketches below, written some time since, and illustrating my method of studying history, better than any thing I could say in extending my remarks.

THIERS' HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION; CARLYLE'S HISTORY, ETC., ETC.-This is the most instructive and interesting portion of human history. The stupendous facts and great principles illustrated in this Revolution, make it another Mount Sinai, whence, with the most fearful manifestations, another revelation is given to a terror-stricken world. Who can understand it? who can fathom its depths, and the awful meaning of those mystic characters which its red right hand has traced upon the page of history? But in order to speak of it more intelligently, one should be acquainted with the history of France and Europe for a hundred and fifty years previous. Let him take up the perspicuous and detailed history of the ages of Louis the Fourteenth and Fifteenth, by Voltaire; and read also his collateral histories of the

reign of Charles the Twelfth and Peter the Great, and he will have a grand tableau of the condition of Europe for a century and a half before the French Revolution. It is true, that it was previous to this period that most of those discoveries and inventions occurred that form the starting point in modern civilization; as the discovery of the magnetic property, the planetary system, of America; the invention of printing, of gunpowder, of the telescope, etc., etc., and the first outbreak from the thraldom of superstition in the Reformation; but all these began to manifest themselves with the greatest activity and power during the period of which I speak. With very narrow exceptions, it may be said that all the great poets, philosophers, mathematicians and orators that adorn modern history, flourished in this period. War did then put on his most glorious panoply, and went forth with his noblest sons to the battle. The great Conde, Marshall Turrenne, the Duke of Marlborough, Prince Eugene, Charles the Twelfth, Peter the Great, Frederic the Great-these are the giants of war that made Europe their battlefield during this period. After all, the history of mankind is a history of wars. What is the Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Saracen history, and of the European nations, but a description of battle-fields and campaigns, of conquests and reconquests-here and there the dark picture relieved by a ray of science and humanity?

The

It appears that man must purchase all his great blessings by their contraries; rest by toil, peace by war, joy by sorrow, virtue by vicethe one being a necessary correlative and a teacher of the other. peace that Europe now enjoys was purchased by the wars of that period. Fifty pitched battles, says Voltaire, were fought within as many years, without being attended with a single result of historical importance. But they went to swell the great amount by which man purchases peace. France was the greatest sufferer during those wars. Three times she was engaged against almost all united Europe, and each time with the same result―utter exhaustion of resources, and not a step of advance towards her ostensible objects. But they were wars of the kings, not of the people. The pride, the ambition, the hatred, or even the caprice of crowned heads, were the sole causes of all these wars. The monsters of legitimacy and arbitrary power showed their direful forms, first to be feared, and then to be hated. In the arbitrary assumptions, the cruel exactions, the wasting wars, the meretricious splendor, and even in the proud patronage of Louis the Fourteenth, are to be found the first occasions of the French Revolution: the causes lie in the human heart. Two great political events preceded this; the English Revolution, and

the American Revolution. The first brought about what may be regarded as a compromise, between three principles that have always been struggling for the mastery in human affairs-the Monarchic, the Oligarchic, and the Democratic. The second, was a pure light of liberty dawning on the world, but not unobscured by some clouds of error and inconsistency. By that mysterious sympathy that makes the hearts of men vibrate in unison, these two political events found an awful response in the French Revolution.

We now come to speak briefly of this-or rather of Thiers' account of it. It is one of the most perspicuous, detailed and impartial accounts of the French Revolution. The author writes with the polish, force and precision of a practiced writer, and with the clearness and minuteness of one well acquainted with the subject of which he treats. His style is neither philosophical nor rhetorical, nor dramatical, but is simply historical. He does not stop to "shriek," as Carlyle would say, over the terrible events which he is recording, but he goes straight forward with his tale, not as a man without a head or heart, but as one too deeply impressed with the fearful grandeur of the facts he is detailing, to be solicitous about their effect upon the reader's mind. Now and then a profound reflection, a burst of enthusiasm or a high-wrought apostrophe, show that both heart and mind are active and strong. The four volumes already published, include the period from the opening of the States-General, in May, 1789, to the overthrow of the Directory, and the appointment of the Consulship, in Nov. 1799.

Let us take one brief glance at this momentous period. It commences with that grand opening of the National Assembly. The representatives of twenty-five millions of people came together to consult for their safety and welfare. The representatives of tottering feudalism and arbitrary power are there, also, to do their part. The three estates -the Nobility, the Clergy, and what is called the Third Estate-commenced a struggle for their very existence, which was to determine the course and results of the Revolution. The Nobility, blinded with pride, mad with ambition, stultified with prejudice, incapable of stemming the torrent or of directing it, began by claiming every thing, and ended by giving up all. The Clergy, smooth-faced, double-tongued, temporizing, tenacious of forms and lax as to principles, think to save the one by sacrificing the other, but are involved in the common ruin. The Third Estate is alone equal to the great occasion which calls it forth. Modest, though conscious of power; firm, though storm-beaten by opposition; meeting passion with mildness, and violence by wisdom. The