ridiculous guardian had taken up the modern notions about scientific
culture, and had forced Macaulay to read science alone; should we not
have lost the Essays and the History?

That one consideration alone vividly illustrates my correspondent's
quaint and pregnant inquiry. Macaulay was "colour-blind" to science,
and the most painful times in his happy life were the hours devoted at
Cambridge to mathematical and mechanical formulæ. The genuinely
cultured person is the one who thinks nothing of fashion and yields to
his natural bent as directed by his unerring instinct. A certain
modern celebrity has told us how his early days were wasted; he was
first of all forced to learn Latin and Greek, though his powers fitted
him to be a scientific student, and he was next forced to impart his
own fatal facility to others. Thus his fame came to him late, and the
most precious years of his life were thrown away. He was colour-blind
to certain departments of literature which have gained a mighty
reputation, yet he was obliged by sacred use and wont to act as though
he relished things which he really abhorred. In a minor degree the
same process of lavish waste is going on all around us. The most
utterly incompetent persons of both sexes are those who, in obedience
to convention, have tried to read everything that was sufficiently
bepraised instead of choosing for themselves; in conversation they are
objectionable bores, and it would puzzle the best of thinkers to
discover their precise use in life. Take it once and for all for
granted that no human creature attains fruitful culture unless he
learns his own powers and then resolves to apply them only in the
directions where they tell best; without so much of self-knowledge he
is no more a complete man than he would be were he deficient in
self-reverence and self-control. He must dare to think for himself, or
he will assuredly become a mediocrity, and probably more or less