PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 323 



for each of these things requires a certain portion of time. When he 

 hears him, therefore, read four or five hues together, without any he- 

 sitation and in a breath, he will find it very difficult to believe that 

 the child never saw the book before. But if to the reading some 

 gesture should also be added — if the child should attend to all the 

 stops and observe all the breathings, rough and smooth, it will be 

 absolutely impossible to convince the man that this is true. From 

 hence, therefore, we may learn never to be deterred from any 

 useful pursuit, by the seeming difficulties that attend it ; but to en- 

 deavour rather to surmount those difficulties by practice and habit." 

 The practical lesson thus suggested to us is of the very highest 

 importance, and is calculated to inspire us with new confidence and 

 vigour in the acquisition and cultivation of intellectual habits. A 

 taste for refined mental exercises, even where it may not exist in the 

 individual mind itself, may be powerfully influenced and strengthened 

 by instruction, by imitation, by friendly intercourse, and by various 

 other adventitious circumstances. Again, there are numberless 

 minds in which the seeds of such taste, though abundantly sown, 

 never germinate ; partly through unconscious indifl'erence, and partly 

 also from a total want of opportunity to cultivate the habits by which 

 it is to be matured, or of an attention entirely devoted to other occu- 

 pations. Now, in instances such as these, nmch may be done to 

 awaken those dormant powers, and to remove the obstacles which 

 check their expansion. By an amicable collision of ideas between 

 man and man it may be found possible to attract the attention of the 

 man of uninformed mind to a new class of pleasures, to allure him 

 into that track of observation and study which may terminate in the 

 refinement of his taste, and enlargement of his views, and expansion 

 of his understanding. Instances have frequently occurred of indivi- 

 duals in whom, even at an advanced period of life, this improvement 

 has been wrought to a wonderful degree. In such men, what an im- 

 mense accession is made to their best enjoyments ! Awaking as if 

 from a trance, they luxuriate in a new existence. Those intellectual 

 objects which they had utterly disregarded now call forth the utmost 

 energies of their mental powers, and they feel a double transport, 

 while, looking back upon the blank region of the past, they partake 

 of the present with as keen a relish as they anticipate with delight the 

 distant and the future. Such are the high gratifications experienced 

 by the man who, after having consumed in low occupations and gro- 

 velling amusements the prime of his days, is at length enabled to 

 shake off the shackles with which he was bound, and walk forth in 

 all the blissful sensation of a renewed existence. 



As excursions into foreign climes animate the attention, excite the 

 curiosity, and improve the taste of the traveller, so do these surveys 

 of the regions of intellect spread a brightness and a beauty over the 

 scene of our contracted duty and our daily toil. Without some such 

 awakening cause, how many slumber on through the whole of life, 

 and go down to the grave with faculties unimproved ; having wasted 

 VOL. VII., NO. xxri. -i-i 



