t is the most
difficult thing in the world for the schoolmaster to inspire into his
pupil the desire to do his best. An overwhelming majority of lads at
school are in their secret hearts rebels to the discipline under which
they are placed. The instructor draws, one way, and the pupil another.
The object of the latter is to find out how he may escape censure and
punishment with the smallest expence of scholastic application. He
looks at the task that is set him, without the most distant desire of
improvement, but with alienated and averted eye. And, where this is the
case, the wonder is not that he does not make a brilliant figure. It is
rather an evidence of the slavish and subservient spirit incident to
the majority of human beings, that he learns any thing. Certainly
the schoolmaster, who judges of the powers of his pupil's mind by the
progress he makes in what he would most gladly be excused from learning,
must be expected perpetually to fall into the most egregious mistakes.

The true test of the capacity of the individual, is where the desire to
succeed, and accomplish something effective, is already awakened in the
youthful mind. Whoever has found out what it is in which he is qualified
to excel, from that moment becomes a new creature. The general torpor
and sleep of the soul, which is incident to the vast multitude of the
human species, is departed from him. We begin, from the hour in which
our limbs are enabled to exert themselves freely, with a puerile love of
sport. Amusement is the order of the day. But no one was ever so fond
of play, that he had not also his serious moments. Every human creature
perhaps is sensible to the stimulus of ambition. He is delighted
with the thought that he also shall be somebody, and not a mere
undistinguished pawn, destined to fill up a square in the chess-board
of human society. He wishes to be thought something of, and to be gazed
upon. Nor is it merely the wish to be admired that excites him: he acts,
that he may be satisfied with himself. Self-respect is a sentiment dear
to every heart. The emotion can with difficulty be done justice to, that
a man feels, who is conscious that he is breathing his true element,
that every stroke that he strikes will have the effect he designs, that
he has an object before him, and every moment approaches nearer to
that object. Before, he was wrapped in an opake cloud, saw nothing
distinctly, and struck this way and that at hazard like a blin