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The great error of modern reading is inattention. We are apt to read in order to be amused, or to search for something new to gratify us for the moment, rather than in order to occupy our minds with the whole subject concerned, and to secure our hold of it. It is well worth while then, to be careful in the selection of our reading, not despising a book because it is a common one; (really some people seem to think they know enough of a book when they know that it is accounted a good one, and what is its subject;) never grasping at great numbers and variety, but taking up what we are assured, by competent advisers or by a partial examination, is, on the whole, good and valuable, and then to read through what we have chosen, carefully and perhaps even repeatedly. It is often of very great use to know where to find matter suited to a particular occasion, or for the reading of a person under particular circumstances, for the sake of others as well as of ourselves. And the writings of holy men, read in the way above suggested, become to us a kind of friends and counsellors.-C. MARRIOTT, B.D., Hints on Private Devotion, 1848, x.

Dr. Arnold, in a letter to Sir John Coleridge, speaking of a Reader, says, 'He wants the examination not only to interest and excite him, but to dispell what is very apt to grow around a lonely reader not constantly questioned, -a haze of indistinctness as to a consciousness of his own knowlege or ignorance; he takes a vague impression

for a definite one, an imperfect notion for one that is full and complete, and in this way he is continually deceiving himself.'- MR. RUSSELL GURNEY, Speech at Southampton; Morning Post, 13 Nov. 1866.

I need hardly tell you that the possession of knowlege and the power of using it are two different things. Often in the hurry of life's business one sees reason to say that a little knowlege always at hand is much better than much more knowlege which is far off or unwieldy. Certain it is so in examinations. Two men of equal capacity come up at the same time: the one produces what knowlege he has, although it be the less, at once; the other does not. He can bring it to-morrow, but not to-day; or he could write a book, but he can't answer questions; and the result is, one passes and the other is plucked: and this is not altogether unjust. I don't say it is quite right, but it is not altogether wrong: for an examination for a diploma is only one of those instances of tests in which we have to spend the great part of our professional life, and in which knowlege scarcely deserves the name if it can not be produced at the right time and in the right place. In this view every emergency of practice is like a stern examiner requiring a swift and true answer. When men "grow wiser as they grow older," it is because they are constantly acquiring the power of using their knowlege more readily and aptly. A great deal of the fruit of experience, is not in learning to do better, but in learning to do well more easily.

Let me therefore recommend to you, on these as well as on collateral grounds, the advantages of the examinations which I advise you to submit to. You will find them the best means you can practise for learning the power of thinking calmly during difficulties; and he who has learned to think and to speak calmly in the midst of external pressure, is already far on his way to success in life. * * In all times and parts of life self-possession, — that is, the power of thinking during distracting circumstances, is one of the best possessions a man. can have. Let me, then, advise you to strive after it with all your mind. The best place in which you can learn it, is in the examination-rooms. - SIR JAMES PAGET, Address at Leeds; Med. Times and Gaz. 7 Oct. 1865.

One other claim I must make on behalf of the system of examinations. It is easy to point out their inherent imperfections. Plenty of critics are ready to do this: for in the case of first employment under the State, they are the only tolerably efficient safeguards against gross abuses; and such abuses are never without friends. But from really searching and strong examinations, — such as the best of those in our Universities and Schools, there arises at least one great mental benefit, difficult of attainment by any other means.

In early youth, while the mind is still naturally supple and elastic, they teach the practice, and they give the power, of concentrating all its force, all its resources, at a given time, upon a given point. What a pitched battle is to the Com

mander of an army, a strong examination is to an earnest Student. All his faculties, all his attainments, must be on the alert, and wait the word of command; method is tested at the same time with strength; and over the whole movement presence of mind must preside. If, in the course of his after life, he chances to be called to great and concentrated efforts, he will look back with gratitude to those examinations, which, more perhaps than any other instrument, may teach him how to make them. GLADSTONE, Speech at Liverpool; Morning Post, 23 Dec. 1872.

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One essential for this quality, (presence of mind,) however acquired, we hold to be a sense of responsibility. We must not expect it from people who are habitually kept under and checked in the exercise of their free will. * * * The man who knows what to do at a pinch must have learnt beforehand to set some value upon his own opinion and his own way of doing things; he must. be one who, when a thing has to be done, fancies he is the man to do it: and in no point do people differ more than in this. At a crisis of any sort it is the instinct of some persons to put themselves forward, or to feel that they ought to do so; and of others to wait, expecting their neighbors to act. It is no fault or cowardice: it is simply that they expect others to take the lead. ***

Not only the sense of responsibility, but the mere feeling of being trusted, is a promoter of this virtue. Two persons of equal powers, and

both in a position to judge and criticize, hamper one an other at a critical moment; neither trusts himself to the same extent, because neither is implicitly trusted by others, as though he stood alone in the gap. - Saturday Review, 28 Oct. 1865.

A firm conviction of one's own importance is a great help in life.-A. K. H. B., People who carried Weight in Life; Fraser's Mag. Nov. 1861.

In love, in war, in conversation, in business, confidence and resolution are the principal things. Hence the Poet's reasoning:

'For Women, born to be controll❜d,

stoop to the forward and the bold;
affect the haughty and the proud,

the gay, the frolic and the loud.'-Spect., 148. Nor is this peculiar to them, but runs all through life. It is the opinion we appear to entertain of ourselves, from which (thinking we must be the best judges of our own merits,) others accept their ideas of us on trust. It is taken for granted that every one pretends to the utmost he can do; and he who pretends to little is supposed capable of nothing. The humility of our approaches to power or beauty ensures a repulse, and the repulse makes us unwilling to renew the application; for there is pride as well as humility in this habitual backwardness and reserve. If you do not bully the world, they will be sure to insult over you, because they think they can do it with impunity

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