is way, is not only a healthier and happier
boy, but is abler in mind and body for entering upon the great game of
life, than the pale, nervous, bright-eyed, feverish, "interesting" boy,
with a big head and a small bottom and thin legs, who is the "captain,"
the miracle of the school; dux for his brief year or two of glory, and,
_if he live_, booby for life. I am, of course, not going in for a
complete _curriculum_ of general ignorance; but I am for calling the
attention of teachers to drawing out the minds, the energies, the hearts
of their pupils through their senses, as well as pouring in through
these same apertures the general knowledge of mankind, the capital of
the race, into this one small being, who it is to be hoped will contrive
to forget much of the mere words he has unhappily learned.

For we may say of our time in all seriousness, what Sydney Smith said in
the fulness of his wisdom and his fun, of the pantologic master of
Trinity--Science is our _forte_; omniscience is our _foible_. There is
the seed of a whole treatise, a whole organon in this joke; think over
it, and let it simmer in your mind, and you will feel its significance
and its power. Now, what is _science_ so called to every 999 men in
1000, but something that the one man tells them he has been told by some
one else--who may be one among say 50,000--is true, but of the truth of
which these 999 men (and probably even the teaching thousandth man) can
have no direct test, and, accordingly, for the truth or falsehood of
which they, by a law of their nature, which rejects what has no savor
and is superfluous, don't care one fig. How much better, how much
dearer, and more precious in a double sense, because it has been bought
by themselves,--how much nobler is the knowledge which our little
friend, young Edward Forbes, "that marvellous boy," for instance--and
what an instance!--is picking up, as he looks into everything he sees,
and takes photographs upon his retina--the _camera lucida_ of his
mind--which never fade, of every midge that washes its face as a cat
does, and preens its wings, every lady-bird that alights on his knee,
and folds and unfolds her gauzy pinions under their spotted and glorious
lids. How more real is not only this knowledge, but this little
knowledger in his entire nature, than the poor being who can maunder
amazingly the entire circle of human science at second, or it may be,
twentieth hand!

There are some admirable, though