capacity for continuous working in any calling must necessarily
depend in a great measure upon this; and hence the necessity for
attending to health, even as a means of intellectual labor. It is
perhaps to the neglect of physical exercise that we find amongst
students so frequent a tendency toward discontent, unhappiness,
inaction, and reverie--displaying itself in contempt for real life
and disgust at the beaten tracks of men--a tendency which in England
has been called Byronism, and in Germany Wertherism. Dr. Channing
noted the same growth in our land, which led him to make the remark,
that "too many of our young men grow up in a school of despair." The
only remedy for this green-sickness in youth is physical exercise--
action, work and bodily occupation.

The use of early labor in self-imposed mechanical employments may be
illustrated by the boyhood of Sir Isaac Newton. Though comparatively
a dull scholar, he was very assiduous in the use of his saw, hammer,
and hatchet--"knocking and hammering in his lodging room"--making
models of windmills, carriages, and machines of all sorts; and as he
grew older, he took delight in making little tables and cupboards for
his friends. Smeaton, Watt, and Stephenson were equally handy with
tools when mere boys; and but for such kind of self-culture in their
youth it is doubtful whether they would have accomplished so much in
their manhood. Such was also the early training of the great
inventors and mechanics described in the preceding pages, whose
contrivance and intelligence were practically trained by the constant
use of their hands in early life. Even where men belonging to the
manual labor class have risen above it, and become more purely
intellectual laborers, they have found the advantages of their early
training in their later pursuits. Elihu Burritt says he found hard
labor _necessary_ to enable him to study with effect; and more than
once he gave up school teaching and study, and taking to his leather
apron again, went back to his blacksmith's forge and anvil for the
health of his body and mind's sake.

The training of young men in the use of tools would at the same time
that it educated them in "common things," teach them the use of their
hands and arms, familiarize them with healthy work, exercise their
faculties upon things tangible and actual, give them some practical
acquaintance with mechanics, impart to them the ability of being
useful, and implant in them the ha