WAS IT WELL ? 45 



and fodder them on the most approved scientific princi- 

 ples ; you will have them sleek and fat, but will there 

 be buoyancy or elastic strength in their limbs, will 

 there be the light of health and joy in their eyes, will not 

 the ' poor things,' like Tennyson's hot-house flowers, 

 ' look unhappy ' ? The law of freedom applies to all life, 

 human as well as animal, and the finer and fresher the 

 mental qualities, the greater is the risk that constraint 

 will benumb or pervert them. The grand thing to be 

 secured is mental force, and it is possible that laborious 

 effort to attain skill in the expression of force may draw 

 fatally on the original force itself. The faculties, like 

 over-drilled soldiers, may have no strength left to play 

 their part in life's battle. It is a Shakespearian opinion 

 that 



* Universal plodding prisons up 

 The nimble spirits in the arteries ; 

 As motion, and long-during action, tires 

 The sinewy vigour of the traveller.' 



The worst possible result of school discipline is to take 

 the edge from that exultant ardour with which a strong 

 youth thinks of work, for mind or for body, as the su- 

 preme of pleasures. Hugh Miller's freedom was not un- 

 redeemed trifling ; it was his native force developing in its 

 own way and seeking its own nourishment. If he turned 

 from the Latin Rudiments, he found a literature in 

 which he never tired to expatiate, a literature whose 

 teaching he accepted with enthusiasm, a literature which 

 acquainted him with foreign lands, and caused him to 

 thrill at the deeds of brave men, a literature whose in- 

 most spirit he vitally assimilated and made his own. If 

 attention to his grammatical task in the dingy school- 

 room pained him, his powers were concentrated in high- 

 est action when he accompanied Uncle Sandy in his 



