"To Athens gowned he goes, and from that school
Returns unsped, a more instructed fool."

They teach the elements really of ignorance, not of knowledge,
for, to speak deliberately and in view of the highest truths, it
is not easy to distinguish elementary knowledge. There is a
chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science
can never span. A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses
of _terra firma_, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art
of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.
_They_ must not yield wheat and potatoes, but must themselves be
the unconstrained and natural harvest of their author's lives.

"What I have learned is mine; I've had my thought,
And me the Muses noble truths have taught."

We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere,
human books, from frank and honest biographies. The life of a
good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a
freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the
infringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by
a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying
tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less
than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions
of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The
gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.

At least let us have healthy books, a stout horse-rake or a
kitchen range which is not cracked. Let not the poet shed tears
only for the public weal. He should be as vigorous as a