a waste which has led so many educational reformers to entertain the
ill-judged proposal of discarding these languages altogether from
general education. If I had been by nature extremely quick of
apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory,
or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the trial
would not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts I am rather
below than above par; what I could do, could assuredly be done by any
boy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical constitution: and
if I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate
circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on
me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a
quarter of a century over my contemporaries.

There was one cardinal point in this training, of which I have already
given some indication, and which, more than anything else, was the
cause of whatever good it effected. Most boys or youths who have had
much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not
strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts,
and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are
accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own;
and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in
their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have
learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced
for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never
permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise
of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with
every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything
which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had
exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself. As far as I can trust
my remembrance, I acquitted myself very lamely in this department; my