dear; and I am glad that you have sense enough to tell me that this
book does not entertain you, though it is written by one of the best
authors in the English language. We do not think at all the worse of
your taste and understanding; we know that the day will come when this
book will probably entertain you; put it by until then, I advise you."

It may be thought, that young people who read only those parts of
books which are entertaining, or those which are selected for them,
are in danger of learning a taste for variety, and desultory habits,
which may prevent their acquiring accurate knowledge upon any subject,
and which may render them incapable of that literary application,
without which nothing can be well learned. We hope the candid
preceptor will suspend his judgment, until we can explain our
sentiments upon this subject more fully, when we examine the nature of
invention and memory.[111]

The secret fear, that stimulates parents to compel their children to
constant application to certain books, arises from the opinion, that
much chronological and historical knowledge must at all events be
acquired during a certain number of years. The knowledge of history is
thought a necessary accomplishment in one sex, and an essential part
of education in the other. We ought, however, to distinguish between
that knowledge of history and of chronology which is really useful,
and that which is acquired merely for parade. We must call that useful
knowledge, which enlarges the view of human life and of human nature,
which teaches by the experience of the past, what we may expect in
future. To study history as it relates to these objects, the pupil
must have acquired much previous knowledge; the habit of reasoning,
and the power of combining distant analogies. The works of Hume, of
Robertson, Gibbon, or Voltaire, can be properly understood only by
well informed and highly cultivated understandings. Enlarged views of
policy, some knowledge of the interests of commerce, of the progress
and state of civilization and literature in different countries, are
necessary to whoever studies these authors with real advantage.
Without these, the finest sense, and the finest writing, must be
utterly thrown away upon the reader. Children, consequently, under the
name of fashionable histories, often read what to them is absolute
nonsense: they have very little motive for the study of history, and
all that we can say to keep alive their intere