this vein of docility, which easily prompted me to learn
whatever was proposed for my instruction and improvement, I felt in
myself a sentiment of ambition, a desire to possess the qualifications
which I found to be productive of esteem, and that should enable me to
excel among my contemporaries. I was ambitious to be a leader, and to be
regarded by others with feelings of complacency. I had no wish to rule
by brute force and compulsion; but I was desirous to govern by love, and
honour, and "the cords of a man."

I do not imagine that, when I aver thus much of myself, I am bringing
forward any thing unprecedented, or that multitudes of my fellow-men do
not largely participate with me.

The question therefore I am considering is, through what agency, and
with what engines, a youth thus disposed, and with these qualifications,
is to be initiated in all liberal arts.

I will go back no further than to the commencement of the learning of
Latin. All before was so easy to me, as never to have presented the idea
of a task. I was immediately put into the accidence. No explanation was
attempted to be given why Latin was to be of use to me, or why it was
necessary to commit to memory the cases of nouns and the tenses of
verbs. I know not whether this was owing to the unwillingness of my
instructor to give himself the trouble, or to my supposed incapacity to
apprehend the explanation. The last of these I do not admit. My
docility however came to my aid, and I did not for a moment harbour
any repugnance to the doing what was required of me. At first, and
unassisted in the enquiry, I felt a difficulty in supposing that the
English language, all the books in my father's library, did not contain
every thing that it would be necessary for me to know. In no long
time however I came to experience a pleasure in turning the thoughts
expressed in an unknown tongue into my own; and I speedily understood
that I could never be on a level with those eminent scholars whom it was
my ambition to rival, without the study of the classics.

What then were the obstacles, that should in any degree counteract my
smooth and rapid progress in the studies suggested to me? I can conceive
only two.

First, the versatility and fickleness which in a greater or less degree
beset all human minds, particularly in the season of early youth.
However docile we may be, and willing to learn, there will be periods,
when either some other object powerfully solicit