on the Tweed, and ride a wild horse with any hunter in Yarrow.
When devoting himself in after life to literary pursuits, Sir Walter
never lost his taste for field sports, but while writing "Waverley"
in the morning he would in the afternoon course hares. Professor
Wilson was a very athlete, as great at throwing the hammer as in his
flights of eloquence and poetry; and Burns, when a youth, was
remarkable chiefly for his leaping, putting, and wrestling. Some of
the greatest divines were distinguished in their youth for their
physical energies. Isaac Barrow, when at the Charterhouse School, was
notorious for his pugilistic encounters, in which he got many a
bloody nose; Andrew Fuller, when working as a farmer's lad at Soham,
was chiefly famous for his skill in boxing; and Adam Clarke, when a
boy, was only remarkable for the strength displayed by him in
"rolling large stones about"--the secret, possibly, of some of the
power which he subsequently displayed in rolling forth large thoughts
in his manhood.

While it is necessary, then, in the first place to secure this solid
foundation of physical health, it must also be observed that the
cultivation of the habit of mental application is quite indispensable
for the education of the student. The maxim that "labor conquers all
things" holds especially true in the case of the conquest of
knowledge. The road into learning is alike free to all who will give
the labor and the study requisite to gather it; nor are there any
difficulties so great that the student of resolute purpose may not
surmount and overcome them. It was one of the characteristic
expressions of Chatterton, that God had sent his creatures into the
world with arms long enough to reach anything if they chose to be at
the trouble. In study, as in business, energy is the great thing.
There must be "fervet opus;" we must not only strike the iron while
it is hot, but strike it till it is made hot. It is astonishing how
much may be accomplished in self-culture by the energetic and the
persevering, who are careful to avail themselves of opportunities,
and use up the fragments of spare time which the idle permit to run
to waste. Thus Ferguson learnt astronomy from the heavens while
wrapped in a sheepskin on the highland hills. Thus Stone learnt
mathematics while working as a journeyman gardener; thus Drew studied
the highest philosophy in the intervals of cobbling shoes; and thus
Miller taught himself geology while workin