the religious world; and it holds also in the
literary and scientific world.

If the actions of men may be taken as any test of their convictions,
then we have reason for saying this, viz.:--that the province and the
inestimable benefit of the _litera scripta_ is that of being a record
of truth, and an authority of appeal, and an instrument of teaching in
the hands of a teacher; but that, if we wish to become exact and fully
furnished in any branch of knowledge which is diversified and
complicated, we must consult the living man and listen to his living
voice. I am not bound to investigate the cause of this, and anything I
may say will, I am conscious, be short of its full analysis;--perhaps
we may suggest, that no books can get through the number of minute
questions which it is possible to ask on any extended subject, or can
hit upon the very difficulties which are severally felt by each reader
in succession. Or again, that no book can convey the special spirit
and delicate peculiarities of its subject with that rapidity and
certainty which attend on the sympathy of mind with mind, through the
eyes, the look, the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions
thrown off at the moment, and the unstudied turns of familiar
conversation. But I am already dwelling too long on what is but an
incidental portion of my main subject. Whatever be the cause, the fact
is undeniable. The general principles of any study you may learn by
books at home; but the detail, the colour, the tone, the air, the life
which makes it live in us, you must catch all these from those in whom
it lives already. You must imitate the student in French or German,
who is not content with his grammar, but goes to Paris or Dresden: you
must take example from the young artist, who aspires to visit the great
Masters in Florence and in Rome. Till we have discovered some
intellectual daguerreotype, which takes off the course of thought, and
the form, lineaments, and features of truth, as completely and
minutely, as the optical instrument reproduces the sensible object; we
must come to the teachers of wisdom to learn wisdom, we must repair to
the fountain, and drink there. Portions of it may go from thence to
the ends of the earth by means of books; but the fulness is in one
place alone. It is in such assemblages and congregations of intellect
that books themselves, the masterpieces of human genius, are written,
or at least originated.

The principle o