Howard, Mungo Park, Robert Hall, Franklin, and Washington, may well be studied, in detail, for the lessons they impress upon all. And so, of many of the brave and the good of our race—I but name such as passingly occur to me.
Do not permit newspaper and magazine reading to engross too much of your time, lest you gradually fall into a sort of mental dissipation, which will unfit you for more methodical literary pursuits.
A cultivated taste in Literature and Art, as, indeed, in relation to all the embellishments and enjoyments of life, is, properly, one of the indications, if not the legitimate result, of thorough mental education. But, while you seek, by every means within your control, to enlarge the sphere of your perceptions, and to elevate your standard of intellectual pleasures, carefully avoid all semblance of conscious superiority, all dilettanti pretension, all needless technicalities of artistic language. Remember that modesty is always the accompaniment of true merit, and that the smattering of knowledge, which the condition of Art in our infant Republic alone enables its most devoted disciples to acquire, ill justifies display and pretension, in this respect. So, with regard to matters of literary criticism—enjoy your own opinions, and seek to base them upon the true principles of art; but do not inflict crudities and platitudes upon others, under the impression that, because of recent acquisition to a tyro in years, and in learning, they are likely to strike mature minds with the charm of novelty! Thus, too, with scientific lore. If Sir Isaac Newton only gathered "pebbles on the shore" of the limitless ocean of knowledge, we may well believe that
——"Wisdom is a pearl, with most success
Sought in still water."
Let me add, while we are, incidentally, upon this matter of personal pretension, that to observing persons such a manner often indicates internal distrust of one's just claims to one's social position, while, on the contrary, quiet self-possession, ease and simplicity, are equally expressive of self-respect and of an entire certainty of the tacit admission of one's rights by others. Nothing is more underbred than the habit of taking offense, or fancying one's self slighted, on all occasions. It betokens either intense egotism, or, as I have said, distrust of your rightful position—that you are embittered by struggling with the world—neither of which suppositions should be betrayed by the bearing of a man of the world. Maintain outward serenity, let the torrent rage as it may within, and never allow the world to know its power to wound you through your undue sensitiveness!
Well has the poet asserted that
"Truth's a discovery made by travelled minds."
No one who can secure the advantage of seeing life and manners in every varying phase, should fail to add this to the other branches of a polite education. Do not imbibe the impression, however, that merely going abroad is travelling, in the just sense of the term.
"Oft has it been my lot to mark,
A proud, conceited, talking spark,
Returning from his finished tour,
Grown ten times perter than before.
Whatever word you chance to drop,
The travelled fool your mouth will stop:—
'Sir, if my judgment you'll allow,
I've seen, and sure I ought to know!'
So begs you'll pay a due submission,
And acquiesce in his decision."
Send a fool to visit other countries, and he will return—only a "travelled fool!" But give a rightly-constituted man opportunities for thus enriching and expanding his intellectual powers, and he returns to his native land, especially if he be an American, a better citizen, a more enlightened, discriminating companion and friend, and a more liberal, useful, catholic Christian!