ot suppose that I
desire the impossible. I would not if I could destroy the examination
system. But there are times, I confess, when I feel tempted somewhat to
vary the prayer of the poet, and to ask whether Heaven has not reserved,
in pity to this much-educating generation, some peaceful desert of
literature as yet unclaimed by the crammer or the coach; where it might
be possible for the student to wander, even perhaps to stray, at his own
pleasure without finding every beauty labeled, every difficulty
engineered, every nook surveyed, and a professional cicerone standing at
every corner to guide each succeeding traveler along the same well-worn
round. If such a wish were granted, I would further ask that the domain
of knowledge thus "neutralized" should be the literature of our own
country. I grant to the full that the systematic study of _some_
literature must be a principal element in the education of youth. But
why should that literature be our own? Why should we brush off the bloom
and freshness from the works to which Englishmen and Scotchmen most
naturally turn for refreshment,--namely, those written in their own
language? Why should we associate them with the memory of hours spent in
weary study; in the effort to remember for purposes of examination what
no human being would wish to remember for any other; in the struggle to
learn something, not because the learner desires to know it, because he
desires some one else to know that he knows it? This is the dark side of
the examination system; a system necessary and therefore excellent, but
one which does, through the very efficiency and thoroughness of the
drill by which it imparts knowledge, to some extent impair the most
delicate pleasures by which the acquisition of knowledge should
be attended.

How great those pleasures may be, I trust there are many here who can
testify. When I compare the position of the reader of to-day with that
of his predecessor of the sixteenth century. I am amazed at the
ingratitude of those who are tempted even for a moment to regret the
invention of printing and the multiplication of books. There is now no
mood of mind to which a man may not administer the appropriate nutriment
or medicine at the cost of reaching down a volume from his bookshelf. In
every department of knowledge infinitely more is known, and what is
known is incomparably more accessible, than it was to our ancestors. The
lighter forms of literature, good, bad, and i