exclusively by solitary, unguided study. Though he had swallowed a library, he was not a scholar; many of the books he cited were not first-rate; nor, as a thinker, did he engage in the special investigation of details, but reasoned upon those, often inadequate, gathered by others. And what was the result? Sweeping generalizations and arrogant assertions; "dogmas on every page of his book, and brilliant fallacies in every chapter," - faults from which, as well as from an intolerant, unsympathizing temper and a magisterial tone implying that all men who differed from him were fools; from a narrowness which blinded him to "the other side" of a question, and led him to call cathedrals "trifles;" from a disposition to exaggerate the importance of physical as contrasted with intellectual and moral agencies, he would have been saved by an Oxford or Cambridge training.

"A Little EVERYBODY is familiar with Pope's aphoKnowledge." rism, "A little learning is a dangerous thing." The absurdity of the saying is so evident that it is a wonder that it has gained so general a currency. Mr. Caxton, in Bulwer's admirable novel, happily observes that students and abstract thinkers are too apt, in their early youth, to look at the depth of a man's mind or knowledge, and not enough to the surface it may cover. There may be more water in a flowing stream only four feet deep, and certainly more force and health, than in a sullen pool thirty yards to the bottom. The cant about profundity has provoked some biting sarcasm from Macaulay, who says that it never yet has been his fortune to prevail upon any person who pronounces superficial knowledge a curse, and profound knowledge a blessing, to tell him what makes

the standard of profundity. There was a time, ages ago, when the branches of knowledge were so few that it was possible for a man by incessant study to become, in a certain sense, deeply learned; but to-day, when a schoolboy knows more than the sage of those times, profundity in one department involves, of necessity, neglect of many others of which it would be shameful for any person, not a professor, to be ignorant.

Again, if a little knowledge is to be shunned as dangerous, how is one ever to acquire a great deal? Shall one never go into the water till he has learned to swim? It seems to us that if a little knowledge is dangerous, no knowledge is more dangerous still. In the latter case, the danger is aggravated with time; whereas the former risk is sure to lessen, as hardly any person makes one acquisition of knowledge without being led by it to make another. A little knowledge of chemistry will enable one to distinguish the salts used in medicine from oxalic acid, with which, mistaking it for them, persons have been poisoned; and a smattering of the same science will teach a farmer whether his land needs animal or mineral dressing. A slight knowledge of botany will enable one to distinguish between cherries and the berries of the deadly nightshade, the confounding of which has cost many lives. A little knowledge of geology will keep a man from digging for coal, a little knowledge of mineralogy from digging for gold, in formations where it is never found. A little knowledge of antidotes to poison may save a man's life. A little knowledge of law may save a man from financial ruin. An acquaintance with the domestic and medical uses of salt is but a small extent of information; yet it may do much for one's health and happiness. To know that ice swallowed.

freely, in small lumps, is a remedy for inflammation of the stomach is comparatively a little thing; but it may enable one to escape a severe illness and even death. It is better to know than to be ignorant that your chance of drawing a twenty thousand-dollar prize in a lottery is hardly greater than that of your being struck by lightning, even though you may not have mastered De Moivre's or Morgan's doctrine of chances. It is well to know the multiplicationtable, though you should never scale the dizzy heights of mathematics, where La Place and Newton dwell like stars apart. A little knowledge of biography or of history is better than Baotian ignorance. It is well to know that Alexander Pope, the author of the contemptuous observation in question, was fond of epigram, and ready at any time to sacrifice truth to a startling paradox or a brilliant antithesis, even though you may not have read all his works or his biography.

The truth is, there is no objection to one's knowing a little about a great many things, provided his knowledge be clear and precise so far as it goes, and provided he is aware how little that knowledge is. "Nothing," say the Germans, "is so prolific as a little, known well." He is an intelligent man who is master of what he knows, however little that may be; and the most learned man in the world is not an intelligent man, if his learning has mastered him. When the School Board of London was debating whether elementary instruction in science should be given in the schools under their control, it was objected that the scholars would get only a smattering. "Who has more?" asked Sir John Lubbock in reply; "those who are the most advanced in knowledge will be the first to admit how slight that knowledge is." The view of such

men has been compared to that of an American forest, in which the more trees a man cuts down the greater is the expanse of wood he sees around him. But with the great mass of persons the choice is not between what is comparatively profound knowledge and superficial; it is the choice between superficial knowledge and none at all. Yet though Pope's aphorism is literally false, as false as the metaphor that follows it,

"For shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
But drinking deeply sobers us again,” –

it may be so interpreted as to convey a truth; a truth of which a happy illustration is given in "Guesses at Truth," a book full of wisdom, by Archdeacon Hare and his brother: "If you pull up your window a little, it is far likelier to give you cold, rheumatism, or stiff neck than if you throw it wide open; and the chance of any ill consequence becomes still less if you go out into the open air, and let it blow equally upon you from every side. Is it not just the same with knowledge? Do not those exposed to a draught of it blowing on them through a crevice usu

ally grow stiff-necked? When you open the windows of your mind, therefore, open them as widely as you can, and let the soul send forth its messengers to explore the state of the earth."

Here we have the secret of all one-sidedness, of excessive attachment to isms, in a nutshell. The best, the only way to escape the mischiefs that arise from teaching men a little, is to teach them more. Men stumble in the twilight, not because it is half light, but because it is half dark. As Macaulay says of liberty, -the only remedy for the evils of knowledge is knowledge. Knowledge, in

short, is the true spear of Achilles: only itself can heal the wounds it has made.

An "Old Field" Schoolmaster.

66

THE state of education in many parts of the South before the late war may be judged of by an incident in our experience while travelling on foot in Virginia in 1839. Reaching the inn at Stafford Court House, one evening, where we passed the night, we were introduced to the schoolmaster of the place, who was represented to us by the landlord as a very learned man." In the course of a conversation with us, he commended to our reading "The Universal History of the World," by Charles Rollin; "the greatest work," said he, "ever issued from the modern press. The account the author gives of the downfall of the Greek and Roman republics beats all the stories I've ever read. It's very affecting, sir; it's enough to make you wear crape on your arm for thirty days!" We asked whether he had made the work a text-book in his school. "Oh, no!" said he, "it is too edifying, too edifying." Here the conversation changed, and some allusion was made by a fellow-traveller to the river Susquehanna. "I know where that river is," said the pedagogue; "it empties into Lake Huron, near the State of Maine!"

Rufus

A BOSTON literary friend gave us fifty years Choate. ago the following report of an exchange of salutations with this famous lawyer:

"Quite cool this morning!" remarked our friend to the great New England advocate, one biting cold morning in February, when everybody's nose, cheeks, and ears were tingling with the pinches of Jack Frost.