ree, which grow and widen with it. We are not surprised to
hear from a school-fellow of the Chancellor Somers, that he was a
weakly boy, who always had a book in his hand, and never looked up at
the play of his companions; to learn from his affectionate biographer,
that Hammond at Eton sought opportunities of stealing away to say his
prayers; to read that Tournefort forsook his college class, that he
might search for plants in the neighbouring fields; or that Smeaton,
in petticoats, was discovered on the top of his father's barn, in the
act of fixing the model of a windmill which he had constructed. These
early traits of character are such as we expect to find in the
cultivated lawyer, who turned the eyes of his age upon Milton; in the
Christian, whose life was one varied strain of devout praise; in the
naturalist, who enriched science by his discoveries; and in the
engineer, who built the Eddystone Lighthouse.'

This accords very well with a notion of our own. We hold that men have
a tendency to follow what they are by nature best qualified to succeed
in; and that the fact ought to be regarded in the education of the
individual. Education should include the study and trial of aptitudes,
so that each may be directed to his appropriate vocation. It is true,
there are sometimes such things as 'false tendencies' to be
encountered; but these, as Goethe has shewn, may be readily detected,
inasmuch as they are plainly 'unproductive;' that is to say, the thing
aimed after does not come out as a recognisable success. False
tendencies are more easily perceived in others than in
ourselves--especially when ambition, interest, or vanity is involved
in the consideration; and on this account the difficulty, perhaps,
might not be insurmountable, if the charge of it could be committed to
a really judicious educator. But to say anything further on the
subject would be out of place at present; and, accordingly, we return
to what is more immediately before us.

'The instinct of flight,' continues our author, 'is combined with the
instinct of labour. Genius lights its own fire; but it is constantly
collecting materials to keep alive the flame. When a new publication
was suggested to Addison, after the completion of the _Guardian_, he
answered: "I must now take some time, _pour me delasser_, and lay in
fuel for a future work." The strongest blaze soon goes out when a man
always blows and never feeds it. Johnson declined an introduction to