There is a sense, in which it may be truly said that nothing in the universe of God is despicable, except moral evil. The most minute portion of matter—the slightest organization—the obscurest fact in nature—is worthy of the notice of Mind. But are there not choices to be made? Is EVERY man justified in spending his life in the comparing of the blades of grass, or the pebbles of the sand? No work of human skill is to be despised; and yet who may sit down to cut paper, or tie knots, as the business of his life?
We once called at the study of a fine young man, who had set out to do his best, and to make a scholar. He was pale with long and severe study, and seemed to labor under some special dejection. On inquiring into his course of study, he made the following statement.
'I have lately begun to read Cicero de Oratore. I have always been accustomed to hear Cicero spoken of as the prince of Latin writers, and I resolved to make myself master of one at least of his treatises, and to realize the whole benefit of a thorough and scholar-like acquaintance with this author. I commenced with the commentaries of Ernesti, Pearce, Proust, Harlessius, etc., etc., and resolved to know the whole. I soon came upon a passage which was obscure. I resorted to the Notes. Here I found six different readings proposed, and long comments on each. I read all the remarks of my commentators, which occupied me an hour. The conclusion to be derived from them was, that the original language of the sentence was not to be decided upon, and that the meaning of the author was left to conjecture. I then undertook to investigate the meaning of a legal term used by Cicero. After reading several pages of notes, and consulting half a dozen books of reference, I made myself master of the suppositions of the learned on the subject. I next took up the name of a Roman orator whom Cicero mentions. I read at great length, and discovered that his name had been found in several instances in the Latin writers, and that critics supposed that two persons of the same name had been alluded to in these instances. I had commenced the study with resolution, and had determined not to come short of the advantages of the thorough scholar. But, for an hour before you come in, I had been thinking, 'What am I doing, and what end am I securing? What if I should know a thousand things of this kind? Cui Bono? I do not intend to be indolent or fickle, but these thoughts have, I confess, made me dejected.'
The young man's honest and heart-felt account of himself was calculated to make one pause. Here was a high-toned and vigorous mind wearing away its energies, and narrowing its scope of vision, under the bondage of that public opinion respecting true learning, which took its rise and its form in the cells of the monastery, where the mind will seize upon any aliment rather than prey upon itself, and expend itself upon trifles, because it is shut away from the great realities of life. A mind which was made to display its energies in the highest track of thought, and on the widest field of action, is imprisoned to count its beads, and mutter its task, in the temple of monastic lore. Public opinion must be subjected to frequent revision—let us not be pronounced radical—or errors will cling to the community, with the tendency of a mill-stone about the neck. An error, hallowed by strong and widely-connected associations, is not easily exterminated. It passes on unharmed by those agitations which overwhelm the errors of a lower grade and humbler origin; and while the generation living in its shadow have never known the light which it intercepts, they regard it as a part of the system of things, and one of the conditions of their being. Thus has the high regard which mankind accord to mental efforts, as distinguished from physical, had the effect to hallow even the follies of intellect, and to prolong the existence of those errors respecting the cultivation of the mind, which lead us to regard it rather as a receptacle of hoarded knowledge, than as a thing of active powers; to seek the acquisitions of the scholar as valuable in themselves, rather than as giving scope and expansion to the energies of a noble existence, and in the high estimation which Education has properly imparted to the means of education, to make that mistake which comprehends so many others; to make the means the end.
[JUNE.]
The violet peeps from its emerald bed,
And rivals the azure in hue overhead;
To the breeze, sweeping by on invisible wings,
Its gift of rich odor the young lily flings,
And the silvery brook in the greenwood is heard
Sweetly blending its tones with the song of the bird.
The swallow is dipping his wing in the tide,
And the aspect of earth is to grief unallied;
Ripe fruit blushes now on the strawberry vine,
And the trees of the woodland their arms intertwine;
Forming shields which the sun pierceth not with his ray—
Screening delicate plants from the broad eye of day.
Oft forsaking the haunts and the dwellings of men,
I have sought out the depths of the forest and glen;
And the presence of June, making vocal each bough,
Would drive the dark shadow of care from my brow:
The rustling of leaves, the blithe hum of the bee,
Than the music of viols is sweeter to me.
When the rose bends with dew on her emerald throne,
And the wren to her perch in the forest hath flown;
When the musical thrush is asleep on its nest,
And the red-bird is in her light hammock at rest;
When sunlight no longer gilds streamlet and hill,
Is heard thy sad anthem, oh sad whip-poor-will!