sequently the want of promptitude in action, is a defect of
character which is found to stand very much in the way of individual
progress; and the reason why so little is done, is generally because
so little is attempted.

There is usually no want of desire on the part of most persons to
arrive at the results of self-culture, but there is a great aversion
to pay the inevitable price for it, of hard work. Dr. Johnson held
that "impatience of study was the mental disease of the present
generation;" and the remark is still applicable. We may not believe
that there is a royal road to learning, but we seem to believe very
firmly in the "popular" one. In education, we invent labor-saving
processes, seek short cuts to science, learn French and Latin "in
twelve lessons," or "without a master." We resemble the lady of
fashion, who engaged a master to teach her on condition that he did
not plague her with verbs and participles. We get our smattering of
science in the same way; we learn chemistry by listening to a short
course of lectures enlivened by experiments, and when we have inhaled
laughing-gas, seen green water turned to red, and phosphorus burnt in
oxygen, we have got our smattering, of which the most that can be
said is, that though it may be better than nothing, it is yet good
for nothing. Thus we often imagine we are being educated while we are
only being amused.

The facility with which young people are thus induced to acquire
knowledge, without study and labor, is not education. It occupies but
does not enrich the mind. It imparts a stimulus for the time, and
produces a sort of intellectual keenness and cleverness; but, without
an implanted purpose and a higher object that mere pleasure, it will
bring with it no solid advantage. In such cases knowledge produces
but a passing impression; a sensation, gut no more; it is, in fact,
the merest epicurism of intelligence--sensuous, but certainly not
intellectual. Thus the best qualities of many minds, those which are
evoked by vigorous effort and independent action, sleep a deep sleep,
and are often never called to life, except by the rough awakening of
sudden calamity or suffering, which, in such cases comes as a
blessing, if it serves to rouse up a courageous spirit that, but for
it, would have slept on.

Accustomed to acquire information under the guise of amusement, young
people will soon reject that which is presented to them under the
aspect of study and labor. Le