Chap. XXV.] Education. 121 



lightly over the fields, and plucking the flowers 

 of literature and science, instead of digging deeply, 

 and with unwearied patience, to gain the recon- 

 dite treasures of knowledge *. 



A further circur^stance, in some degree pecu- 

 liar to modern education, and which no doubt 

 produces a considerable effect, is the early age at 

 which students are admitted into the higher semii- 

 naries of learning, and, as a necessary consequence, 

 their premature entrance into the world. Lord 

 Bacon somewhere remarks, that it was a defect 

 ^n the plans of education, in his day, that studeats 

 were introduced at too early an age to the more 

 abstruse and grave parts of their philosophic stu- 

 dies. This remark, in the eighteenth century, may 

 be applied to the general period of beginning the 

 academic course. The universities and colleges 

 of modern times, especially in the United States, 

 are filled with children^ who are unable either 

 suitably to appreciate the privileges they enjoy, 

 or so much to profit by them, as at a more mature 

 period of life. If these higher seminaries be in-, 

 tended, as they commonly are, to complete the 

 education, then to send pupils to them before they 



* It has been asserted by good judges, and probably with truth, 

 that one of the principal reasons to be assigned for the compara- 

 tive superficiality of modern classical learning, even in the best 

 seminaries, is the increased use of translations, particularly within 

 the last sixty or seventy years. It is certain that helps of this 

 kind, to abridge the toil of the indolent and careless, never be- 

 fore had so general a circulation ; and it is proverbially true, that 

 acquisitions made by means of long and patient labour are more 

 deeply impressed on the mind, longer retained, and usually held 

 ju higher estimation, than those which cost but little time an4 

 pains. 



