school-boy guided by his teacher and text-book, but is spoken to as an
independent thinker. Authorities are quoted, which he may consult at his
leisure. No subject is exhausted,--it is only touched upon. He learns to
teach himself.

Far different is the mental training thus acquired from that gained in
the same amount of time spent in mere reading. Thought is stimulated to
a far greater degree. The lecture-room becomes a laboratory, where the
mind of the hearer, in immediate contact with that of a man mature in
the ways of study, of one whose whole life seems to have prepared him
for the present hour, assimilates to itself more than knowledge. The
lecturer gives what no books can give, his own force to impel his own
words. His mind is ever active while he speaks. The hearer feels its
workings, and his own is stirred into action by the contact. It is
not given to all to enjoy the conversation and intercourse of the
master-minds of the age: in the lecture-room they speak to us
immediately; we feel the current of their life-blood; it pulsates
through all they say.

That seeming exceptions may occur, as in the case of professors who year
after year deliver the same written course, can have no weight against
the system. The tone and gesture, the very look, must animate the
whole;--and these very written lectures, read and delivered so often,
are no dead stalk, but a living stem, which puts forth new leaves and
blossoms every spring.

Nor is the hearer himself without his corresponding influence. His
attention and eager desire for knowledge stimulate new thought in the
speaker day by day, hour by hour; and many a German scholar must have
felt with Friedrich August Wolf, when he says,--"I am one who has been