young folk are shocking and deplorable; for it must be remembered that
in literature, as in the case of bodily nutriment, different foods are
required at different times of life. I have known boys and girls who
were forced to read "Rasselas." Now that allegorical production came
from the mind of a mature, powerful, most melancholy man, and it is
intended to show the barren vanity of human wishes. What an absurd
thing to put in the hands of a buoyant youth! The parents however had
heard that "Rasselas" was a great and moral book, whereupon the
children must be subjected to unavailing torture. It maybe said,
"Would not your hints tend to make people frivolous?" Certainly not,
if my hints are wisely used. Let it be observed that I merely wish to
do away with hypocritical conventions whereby timid men like my
correspondent are subjected to extreme misery and a vast waste of
intellectual power is inflicted on the world. Suppose that some
ridiculous guardian had taken up the modern notions about scientific
culture, and had forced Macaulay to read science alone; should we not
have lost the Essays and the History?

That one consideration alone vividly illustrates my correspondent's
quaint and pregnant inquiry. Macaulay was "colour-blind" to science,
and the most painful times in his happy life were the hours devoted at
Cambridge to mathematical and mechanical formulae. The genuinely
cultured person is the one who thinks nothing of fashion and yields to
his natural bent as directed by his unerring instinct. A certain
modern celebrity has told us how his early days were wasted; he was
first of all forced to learn Latin and Greek, though his powers fitted
him to be a scientific student, and he was next forced to impart his
own fatal facility to others. Thus his fame came to him late, and the
most precious years of his life were thrown away. He was colour-blind
to certain departments of literature which have gained a mighty
reputation, yet he was obliged by sacred use and wont to act as though
he relished things which he really abhorred. In a minor degree the
same process of lavish waste is going on all around us. The most
utterly incompetent persons of both sexes are those who, in obedience
to convention, have tried to read everything that was sufficiently
bepraised instead of choosing for themselves; in conversation they are
objectionable bores, and it would puzzle the best of thinkers to
discover their precise use in life. Take