Other arms may press thee, But when friends are nearest, When at eve thou rovest, Oft as summer closes, When around thee, dying, Then, should music, stealing All the soul of feeling, T. Moore. EXERCISE XCV. Hamlet's Advice to the Players. SPEAK the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you; 35 trippingly, on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of the players do, I had as lief the town-crier had spoke my lines. And do not saw the air too much with your hand; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robusteous, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, 5 to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. Pray, you avoid it. Be not too tame neither: but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the 10 action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end is to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the 15 time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy of, though it makes the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of one of which must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh! there be players 20 that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, that, neither having the accent of Christian, nor the gait of Christian, pagan nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well; they imi25 tated humanity so abominably. — Shakspeare. EXERCISE XCVI. Milton's Lamentation for the Loss of his Sight. May I express thee unblamed? Since God is light, 30 Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, Before the sun, 35 Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained Through utter and through middle darkness borne, 5 With other notes than to the Orphean lyre, I sung of Chaos and eternal Night; 10 Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, 15 Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the muses haunt, Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief 20 Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget Those other two, equalled with me in fate, So were I equalled with them in renown! 25 Blind Thamaris, and blind Mæonides; And Tyresias, and Phyneus, prophets old: — Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns 40 of nature's works, to me expunged and razed, Purge and disperse; that I may see and tell Milton. EXERCISE XCVII. Intellectual Improvement. THE great mass of mankind consider the intellectual powers as susceptible of a certain degree of development 5 in childhood, to prepare the individual for the active duties of life. This degree of progress they suppose to be made before the age of twenty is attained, and hence they talk of an education being finished! Now, if a parent wishes to convey the idea that his 10 daughter has closed her studies at school, or that his son has finished his preparatory professional course, and is ready to commence practice, there is perhaps no strong objection to his using of the common phrase, that the education is finished; but in any general or proper use of 15 language, there is no such thing as a finished education. The most successful student that ever left a school, or took his degree at college, never arrived at a good place to stop, in his intellectual course. est In fact, the further he goes the more desirous will he feel 20 to go on; and if you wish to find an instance of the greateagerness and interest with which the pursuit of knowledge is prosecuted, you will find it undoubtedly in the case of the most accomplished and thorough scholar that the country can furnish, one who has spent a long life in study, 25 and who finds that the further he goes the more and more widely does the boundless field of intelligence open before him. Give up, then, at once, all idea of finishing your education. The sole object of the course of discipline at any 30 literary institution, in our land, is not to finish, but just to show you how to begin; to give you an impulse and a direction upon that course which you ought to pursue with unabated and uninterrupted ardor as long as you have being. 35 It is unquestionably true, that every person, whatever are his circumstances or condition in life, ought at all times to be making some steady efforts to enlarge his stock of knowledge, to increase his mental powers, and thus to ex 5 pand the field of his intellectual vision. I suppose most of my readers are convinced of this, and are desirous, if the way can only be distinctly pointed out, of making such efforts. 66 In fact, no inquiry is more frequently made by intelligent young persons than this: What course of reading shall pursue? What books shall I select, and what plan in reading them shall I adopt?" These inquiries I now propose to answer. The objects of study are of several kinds; 10 some of the most important I shall enumerate. To increase our intellectual powers.-Every one knows that there is a difference of ability in different minds, but it is not so distinctly understood that every one's abilities may be increased or strengthened by a kind of culture 15 adapted expressly to this purpose; I mean a culture which is intended not to add to the stock of knowledge, but only to increase intellectual power. Suppose, for example, that when Robinson Crusoe on his desolate island had first found Friday the savage, he 20 had said to himself as follows: "This man looks wild and barbarous enough; he is to stay with me and help me in my various plans; but he could help me much more effectually if he were more of an intellectual being and less of a mere animal. Now I can increase his intellectual 25 power by culture, and I will. But what shall I teach him?" On reflecting a little further upon the subject, he would say to himself as follows: -"I must not always teach him things necessary for him to know in order to assist me in my work, but I must try to teach him to think for himself. 30 Then he will be far more valuable as a servant than if he has to depend upon me for everything he does." Accordingly, some evening when the two, master and man, have finished the labors of the day, Robinson is walking upon the sandy beach, with the wild savage by 35 his side, and he concludes to give him his first lesson in mathematics. He picks up a slender and pointed shell, and with it draws carefully a circle upon the sand. "What is that?" says Friday. 66 'It is what we call a circle," says Robinson. I want you now to come and stand 40 here, and attentively consider what I am going to tell you about it." 66 Now Friday has, we will suppose, never given his serious attention to anything, or rather he has never made a serious mental effort upon any subject for five minutes at |