have some object beyond mere recreation, beyond mere entertainment; that it should have, for its distinct and leading object, the improvement of the mind. To become wiser and more intelligent beings; to know more and more of all that our Creator has given us the power to know, of nature, of the mind, of the eternal principles of truth and virtue; to add continually to the stock of just and valuable ideas, and to the power of just reasoning upon them; to cultivate all our faculties, throughout the whole of life, as if it were a school to fit us for a nobler action and a higher advancement in some loftier sphere, this should be the object. And to accomplish this, there should be a settled and serious design, we believe, if not a definite plan. A definite plan, indeed, a course of studies for this purpose, is what many have ability and opportunity to mark out and pursue. But all may entain a settled design of this nature, which would prevent them from giving up their minds to waste, or indolence, or mere amusement. We presume that we lay down the law of all intellectual, and, also, of all moral improvement, when we say, that to this end the powers of our nature must be tasked; more than amused, more than employed, that they must be tasked. The heart, in this progress, must overcome temptations; the mind must overcome difficulties. To do what we did yesterday is only to confirm ourselves in the position then taken, To advance, we must do more than we did yesterday. The first process, the process of repetition, is doubtless important. It strengthens habit; it fixes the acquisitions of knowledge and the perceptions of truth. But to recall the same ideas, or to repeat the same efforts for ever, would not be to advance. One may read for ever, and it his mind passively resigns itself to the same entertainment, or mechanically runs the round of the same ideas, he will be growing none the wiser, nor stronger; he will be, for all his reading, as really stationary, as if he had slept through the years or the ages, There must be a grappling with new thoughts, and new forms of thought, in order to become intellectual and to grow strong in intellect. There must be something studied; something searched out, that is not at first obvious; something investigated, that will task the powers of reasoning; something, on which the mind will feel that it must pause and concentrate its utmost efforts. Labor like this must come in among lighter employments of the mind, or we would not give much for any man's reading. We would not give much for it, that is, as a means of mental progress. It may answer other purposes, but these we are not considering. The question before us is, How shall the mind be strengthened and improved? And we know of nothing that will answer this end, but action, strong action; action, not passion; and there is a great difference. There may be a passion of feeling about a book, and yet no action of mind whatever. We We have sometimes had this question, How shall we improve? put to us by the young; and none could be more interesting or put in more interesting circumstances, having reference, as it often has, both to mental and moral progress, and that too, on the very threshold of its great career. have given the best answer we are able to give; 'You must make effort. You must resolutely address your heart to the task and trial of virtue. It is no well-devised scheme of moral discipline, well as it may be in its place, it is no institution nor book, it is no moralist nor preacher, that will save you; it is yourself, with God's help, that must save you. The discipline, the book, the preacher, may arouse and guide, but the work you must do yourself.' And for mental culture, of which it is our special business, at present, to treat, we say, you must set the mind to work. And we re peat this answer, for the sake of adding, that neither the subjects nor the books for this purpose are wanting. The philosophy of mind, of morals, of government, of trade; the mathematics, the natural sciences, some or other of these subjects will furnish tasks, and there are books in all these departments, which are generally accessible. The rage for publishing Libraries,' as they are called, is putting every thing in our way. Nobody, who reads at all, can fail to find something upon which to try the powers of his mind. This, then, is the point we urge. Read something every now and then, we say, that will task you. We will not venture to recommend books, for reviewers cannot help showing a little modesty sometimes, though they are apt to get not much credit for it; but we will venture to say, 'Read something, any thing, that will put your mind to an effort and stretch to follow it out.' We may be thought singular in recommending such a course to general readers, and to young readers, but we do it most advisedly and seriously. We believe that the immense reading of the day does not yield half the results it might, for the want of a settled purpose of self-improvement; and we see no way in which this improvement is to be gained, but by some voluntary efforts at thinking; and it does not appear to us that even the reading of history, much less that of voyages and travels, is likely to awaken this effort. But to sink still further below the point of intellectual activity, to throw one's self into the current of an all-absorbing tale, to be borne in dreary listlessness or with hurrying speed upon its bosom, to make no other intellectual excursions than these, and to make these from day to day, or from week to week, never a whit wiser at the end than at the beginning, never making any progress of thought, never the more prepared either for this world or another, this is a folly and sin, against which we think it is time loudly to protest. It is but one step from that absorption in card-playing and other games, which occupied so many hours in the social and domestic circles of the last century. The objection to excess in all these cases is the same; it is, that time and talents are wasted, not merely taken up with recreation, when recreation is fit, but wasted, when they might be devoted to nobler ends. It is for the young, to whom we have already had reference, that we most feel the importance of this subject. We feel it as parents, and we cannot help regarding it as eminently deserving of the attention of all parents. Much is said, at this day, about the great advantages that are enjoyed for education; and nothing is more frequently pointed to in proof of this, than the children's book-shelves. Now we confess that we look upon this multiplication of books, or, to speak more accurately, upon the use which is made of them, with more distrust and doubt than upon any other department of early discipline. Discipline did we say? These books are the very foes of discipline. They are the most of them novels, and nothing else but novels. The reading of them, as we have already said, is novel-reading. And there are as jaded, and almost as listless novel-readers in the ten thousand nurseries of the land, as there are stretched upon the parlour couches, not to say, in the study easy-chairs. Children too much indulged in this way, and that may happen long enough before the parent is aware of it, acquire an -- almost inveterate hostility to all severe application of mind. There are thousands of such, who need to be put, without delay, upon a dispensation of hard study, to save them from utter ruin. Alas! for those, whose parents, instead of offering any counteraction to this mighty power of the press, resolve that their children shall have nothing but a lot of ease and gratification, that they shall be urged with no tasks, that they shall be lead in none but inviting and flowery paths, to the heights of knowledge and power. It is all mistake; and utter mistake. There are no steps to those heights, but rugged steps. There is no way of intellectual advancement, but the way of strenuous effort and patient toil. The subject has wider bearings. It concerns the national character, that a healthful and manly taste be cultivated. It concerns the national literature. Authors write to be read; and if nothing will be read but what is easy and amusing, or if the prevailing and craving demand is for that species of composition, if profound disquisitions of learning stand but a poor chance with the people, if all science must be brought within the compass of Libraries of Entertaining Knowledge,' if the deeper meditations of genius must give place to the light and flashy productions of extemporaneous wit and fancy, it is not difficult to predict the result. We shall have a light and trifling literature. We shall have the songs of the Troubadours back upon us. We shall hear again that flagitious reasoning, as abandoned in morals as in taste, that talks of soft and voluptuous forms and features, from which severe intellect is banished, as the forms and features of beauty. We shall hear of that light and graceful drapery wherewith imagination clothes its creations, and which cannot bear the eye of reason. We shall become excessively afraid of good sense, and account that dull, which is, if it can be understood, the grand and predominant quality of real genius. Heaven avert the plague from our young and rising literature! The truth is, that the same law obtains in the cultivation of the mind that governs all other success, the law of labor. Woe to the young man who thinks to rise to the heights of intellectual power by any easy flight! All the noblest efforts of the mind are intense, laborious, patient efforts. All real genius, all true originality, all lofty poetry, all powerful writing and speaking consist in these, and in nothing else. And the young man, the professional man, let us say, in particular, who spends much of his time in reading Reviews and Romances, and abhors every severe task, though he may be a clever or a respectable man, can never be much more, be his talents what they may. The rule we have proposed, as one that ought to govern the hours of reading, may be unusual, and may be thought, we are aware, too strict for general application. It may need, therefore, to be defended; and we wish to say a word or two, to objections that may be easily anticipated. Some will think that they are too ignorant, ill-educated, or ordinary; others, that they are too old, to take up the business of improving their minds. Our answer shall be brief. We ask such objectors if they expect to remain for ever ignorant and ordinary. Nay, we ask then if it is their expectation at all, to live for ever. It is striking to observe how little the great doctrine of immortality has yet entered into most of the practical calculations of this life; how little that sublime truth has yet penetrated into the mass of our actual and governing sentiments and principles. A man says, 'I am ignorant, and cannot learn; I am ill-educated, and have no intellectual habits, and cannot form any; I am ordinary, and cannot improve:' and he who says this, stands upon the threshold of an immortal progress, and may hope to surpass all that angels now are, in the career of improvement. From the opening vision of eternity, that invites him to its high and ever-rising seats of knowledge, he sinks down into supineness and despondency. And why? Because he knows so little now. Strange argument, in itself considered! as if a man should say, 'I am poor, therefore I will not try to better my condition; I am degraded in reputation, therefore I will not attempt to rise; I am miserable, therefore I will not strive to be happy.' But yet stranger is the argument, with the lights of eternity shining upon our path; and worse than strange, it is inadmissible, it is fatal to all progress, since so long as there are different degrees of knowledge in the creation, all, that are not at the highest point, may, by the same reasoning, give up in despair. It has been said, that a well-educated school-boy of this day knows more on many subjects, than did Socrates or Cicero. shall men,—men, who stand on such vantage-ground, conclude that they never can advance? And how are they ever to advance, but by taking, at some time or other, the first step? VOL. XII. — N. S. VOL. VII. NO. I. 12 And |