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. 18, 1802.] in the back of your coat. Short cuts like these are generally mistakes. Indeed, as a rule, any invention, which you cannot share with others, is no gain in the long run. The construction of the zigzag was a short cut if you will; before that, the pass could be traversed only by men on foot or lines of mules, picking out an ill-marked, circuitous and jolting route; now that you have made your broad zigzag, however tedious it may seem, you can carry the contents of an hospital or a warehouse over the Splugen. If you are to help others, you must be content to make your short cut with deliberation and breadth. It is the same coming down-hill, if you want to do more than come down, for there are short descending cuts which land you speedily at the bottom, and—break your neck.

There are many other false short cuts. The most deceptive of all is an inherited good fortune or position in society. Don’t suppose I am going to jest at these things; they carry genuine influence, and are supposed by many to introduce the possessor at once to legislative and political power. They facilitate intercourse with the wit and wisdom of the country. Much of what others, little people, learn by books, these, fortunately born, acquire in the daily society of their lives. They mix with philosophers, statesmen, and lions. But do the noblest beasts themselves thus grow to be famous? Can you learn to roar merely from living in the Zoological Gardens? Do you suppose a man gets to the head of affairs from being familiar with the celebrities of his day? Have our greatest statesmen risen thus? Did the men who have the greatest influence in Parliament and literature learn it all of philosophers in their boyhood? Pooh! Great men have been their own masters. They have generally learnt much more from the toes than the heads of society. Skill in interpreting the complaints of the small, ears to hear, and sense to understand them, give political power more than the wise sentences and maxims of the great. There is no short cut to be made to statesmanship by living in the society of the rulers alone.

Of all short cuts, though, protect us most from any epitome, abbreviation, or analysis of a book. It is sad to think how numerous they are. Crams are the curses of education. If a book is so diffuse that it can be cut down to one-fourth of its size without loss of influence, the residue is sure not to be worth the trouble bestowed upon it. Reading the analysis of a good book, instead of the book itself, is like swallowing a meal without mastication or decent delay. The facts are there, inside you, no doubt; but the genius of the interior can make nothing of them. They are too solid. They have come in too suddenly. They are dry, tasteless, and unmanageable.

Suppose we had doors to us—like patent stoves—and could put in our dinners, all at once, as we do coals on a fire, with a scoop; do you think we should save either time or digestion? But this is what the cram does. He pops a shovelful of dates, conclusions, formulas and likely facts into the pupil’s head just where he thinks the examiner will dip in his net. They no more belong to the pupil than the goods which are brought over-night by train and are carried away next morning by the van to the goods-station do to the porter. The pupil is no better than he. He is not so good—he is not so honest. The porter merely transfers the parcel from one man to another; the pupil is encouraged to put a new direction on the hamper and make the receiver believe that it came from him,—that it was his; that he packed it full of his own honest property; that it is a sample of his own possessions. In fact, the tutor sends a load of learning to the examiner, with instructions for the bearer to cheat the latter, if he can. Of course the examiner can say nothing if the right answer is given to the question he puts, though he may feel sure that it no more comes from the examinee than a telegram does from the sparrow which sits upon the wire. The reply passes under the pert little animal’s claw or hand while his empty head has no conception of the reservoirs of intelligence and learning at either end of the course on which he is perched. He flies off, when it is all over, in conceited ignorance of the science whose machinery he has grasped for a minute.

If the student must have an analysis, let him make it himself. An epitome is tolerable only for a grown-up man, whose education has been fragmentary,—who has got together a good many facts and gained experience of the world, but wants some pegs in the storehouse of his memory to hang his goods upon. But to a boy, it is like supplying a larder with nothing but pegs. When dinner-time comes, lo! the safe is empty. At the most, he has some dry bones instead of solid ribs of beef and legs of mutton. I pity the man, however, who thinks he is compelled, by sheer want of years, to make any short educational cut. It is like learning to skate after you are grown up. You fall heavily, and likely enough make a fool of yourself, perhaps before your wife and children. Better stay on the bank and honestly admire what you cannot, or at least, do not choose to try to perform. Who knows but that you might have made a famous skater!

Some short cuts are temporary and legitimate, or at least legal. The barrister must not unfrequently “cram” the language of a trade or profession in order to examine a witness; but, in this case, the quickly acquired knowledge is dismissed from the brain without harm or reproach. It is wanted only for an hour. It serves its purpose, and may go. It would be impossible for a man to master thoroughly the details of any business he might be mixed up in. He has not time enough for such a course. Instead of it he cultivates the power of cram; of a vigorous grasp which can catch the passing situation. Thus a barrister is retained by a “Patent Ramoneur Society;” give him a day, and he will cross-examine an expert among sweeps in the professional language and details of his business. Twenty-four hours beforehand, probably he could not have told you how often his chimneys were swept: certainly not what became of the soot.

As the last toast is “the Ladies,” I can’t help repeating the stale remark, that women are best in making short, common-sense cuts. They don’t reason;—pardon me, I am not rude. They do not find it necessary to set that machinery of