[FALLACY OF PRESCRIBING TASTES.]

II. A second error against the limits of the human powers is the
prescribing to persons indiscriminately, certain tastes, pursuits, and
subjects of interest, on the ground that what is a spring of enjoyment
to one or a few may be taken up, as a matter of course, by others with
the same relish. It is, indeed, a part of happiness to have some taste,
occupation, or pursuit, adequate to charm and engross us--a ruling
passion, a favourite study. Accordingly, the victims of dulness and
_ennui_ are often advised to betake themselves to something of this
potent character. Kingsley, in his little book on the "Wonders of the
Shore," endeavoured to convert mankind at large into marine naturalists;
and, some time ago, there appeared in the newspapers a letter from
Carlyle, regretting that he himself had not been indoctrinated into the
zoology of our waysides. I have heard a man out of health, hypochondriac,
and idle, recommended to begin botany, geology, or chemistry, as a
diversion of his misery. The idea is plausible and superficial. An
overpowering taste for any subject--botany, zoology, antiquities,
music--is properly affirmed to be born with a man. The forces of the
brain must from the first incline largely to that one species of
impressions, to which must be added years of engrossing pursuit. We may
gaze with envy at the fervour of a botanist over his dried plants, and
may wish to take up so fascinating a pursuit: we may just as easily wish
to be Archimedes when he leaped out of the bath; a man cannot re-cast
his brain nor re-live his life. A taste of a high order, founded on
natural endowment, formed by education, and strengthened by active
devotion, is also paid for by the atrophy of other tastes, pursuits, and
powers. Carlyle might have contracted an interest in frogs, and spiders,
and bees, and the other denizens of the wayside, but it would have been