698 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
rally prove, of whatever time and labour and money is 
bestowed upon them . 55 
Spenser's whole allegory of the entrance to the House of 
Holiness is equally applicable to the House of Knowledge. 
By the aid of humility and zeal alone will the tyro ever enter 
legitimately within its portals. 
“ Arrived there, the dore they find fast lockt; 
Tor it was warely watched night and day, 
For feare of many foes ; but when they knockt, 
The porter opened unto them streight way. 
He was an aged syre, all hoary gray, 
With looks full lowly cast, and gate full slow, 
Wont on a staffe his feeble steps to stay, 
Hight Humilta. They passe in, stouping low; 
For streight and narrow was the way which he did show. 
. “ Each goodly thing is hardest to begin; 
But entered in a spacious court they see 
Both plaine and pleasaunt to be walked in; 
Where them does meete a francklin, faire and free, 
And entertaines with comely courteous glee; 
His name was Zele, that him right well became : 
For in his speaches and behaveour hee 
Did labour lively to expresse the same, 
And gladly did them guide, till to the hall they came.”* 
Let, then, the habits of mind thus taught by our great 
allegorical poet be striven after by you. For the rest, the 
great secret of success in the study of your profession may 
be summed up in one little, but all-important, word, to wit, 
attention. This is the true secret of progress in know¬ 
ledge, whether of science or art;—this is the great arcanum 
of success. Study the lives of all those men who have most 
*/ 
benefited humanity and have made for themselves the 
largest and noblest fame, and you will find that each attri¬ 
butes to patient attention the greatness of his success. It is 
this attention which may link the loftiest to the lowliest 
mind, and which often enables the dullest plodder, in the 
end, to tread upon the skirts of the most brilliant and far- 
flying thinker. I would impress this truth upon you as fully 
as practicable. It is, I reiterate, the great secret of your suc¬ 
cess as learners. <e Studies teach not their own use/’ says 
Bacon, “ but there is a wisdom without them and above 
them, won by observation 5 '—that is—by careful and per¬ 
sistent attention. 
“ The greater capacity of continuous thinking that a man 
possesses / 5 Sir William Hamilton writes, “the longer and 
more steadily can he follow out the same train of thought, 
the stronger is his power of attention; and in proportion to 
* The Faerie Queene , B. I, c. x, s. vi and vii. 
