mere act of filling in everything forever into a
poor lad's brain, would give him the ability to make anything of it, and
above all, the power to appropriate the small portions of true
nutriment, and reject the dregs.

One comfort we have, that in the main, and in the last resort, there is
really very little that _can_ be done for any man by another. Begin with
the sense and the genius--the keen appetite and the good digestion--and,
amid all obstacles and hardships, the work goes on merrily and well;
without these, we all know what a laborious affair, and a dismal, it is
to make an incapable youth apply. Did any of you ever set yourselves to
keep up artificial respiration, or to trudge about for a whole night
with a narcotized victim of opium, or transfuse blood (your own perhaps)
into a poor, fainting exanimate wretch? If so, you will have some idea
of the heartless attempt, and its generally vain and miserable result,
to make a dull student apprehend--a debauched, interested, knowing, or
active in anything beyond the base of his brain--a weak, etiolated
intellect hearty, and worth anything; and yet how many such are dragged
through their dreary _curricula_, and by some miraculous process of
cramming, and equally miraculous power of turning their insides out, get
through their examinations: and then--what then? providentially, in most
cases, they find their level; the broad daylight of the world--its
shrewd and keen eye, its strong instinct of what can, and what cannot
serve _its_ purpose--puts all, except the poor object himself, to
rights; happy is it for him if he turns to some new and more congenial
pursuit in time.

But it may be asked, how are the brains to be strengthened, the sense
quickened, the genius awakened, the affections raised--the whole man
turned to the best account for the cure of his fellow-men? How are you,
when physics and physiology are increasing so marvellously, and when the
burden of knowledge, the quantity of transferable information, of
registered facts, of current names--and such names!--is so infinite: how
are you to enable a student to take all in, bear up under all, and use
it as not abusing it, or being abused by it? You must invigorate the
containing and sustaining mind, you must strengthen him from within, as
well as fill him from without; you must discipline, nourish, edify,
relieve, and refresh his entire nature; and how? We have no time to go
at large into this, but we will indic