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Davy said "What I am I have made myself;" and the same holds true universally. To conclude: the best culture is not obtained from teachers when at school or college, so much as by our own diligent self-education when we have become men. Hence parents need not be in too great haste to see their children's talents forced into bloom.

For, if the active performance of the duties of a citizen interfere, and it undoubtedly does so, with the duty of self-education, of what importance is it that men enter upon them with such a personal character as may insure us confidence while it secures us from temptation? The formation of such a character depends mainly on mothers, and especially on their personal character and principles.

"'If American slavery, says one, 'be the horrid system of cruelty, ignorance, and wickedness represented by some writers of fiction and paid defamers of our institutions, how happens it that those who have been reared in the midst of it, when freed and planted in Africa at once exhibit such capacity for self-government and self-education, and set such examples of good morals?

This is frequently noticeable in the biographies of musicians, singers, and painters; less so in poets, because he who deals with words, not signs and tones, must perpetually compare his senses with the pure images of which the senses only see the appearances, in a word, he must employ his intellect, and his self-education must be large and comprehensive.

To find that one has progressed is always an encouragement to further effort. So far generally. As this book does not happen to be a guide to style, it is impossible here to discuss every point likely to arise during the aspirant's self-education in the art of literary expression. But there are several scarlet sins against which she must be briefly warned.

Secures good Mental Habits. Is Practical. Qualifies for Every Station. Inspires Virtue. Madame Neckar's View. Mrs. Jameson's. Conversation, an Art. Speak from your own Mind and Heart; of Principles, not Persons. Make Friendships Improving. Intimacies of the School-room. Self-education at Home, and in Private. Reading. Meditation. Extract from Coleridge.

Nay, self-education in any shape, in the most restricted sense, is preferable to a system of teaching which, professing so much, really does so little for the mind. Shut your college gates against the votary of knowledge, throw him back upon the searchings and the efforts of his own mind; he will gain by being spared an entrance into your babel.

For the People remembered that between "Andrew Johnson," one of the "poor white trash" of Tennessee, and the "aristocratic Slave-owners" of the South, who headed the Rebellion, there could be neither sympathy nor cooperation nothing, but hatred; and that this same Andrew Johnson, who, by power of an indomitable will, self-education, and natural ability, had, despite the efforts of that "aristocracy," forced himself upward, step by step, from the tailor's bench, to the successful honors of alderman and Mayor, and then still upward through both branches of his State Legislature, into the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States and, in the latter Body, had so gallantly met, and worsted in debate, the chosen representatives of that class upon whose treasonable heads he poured forth in invective, the gathered hatred of a life-time would probably be the very last man whom these same "aristocratic" Conspirators, "Rebels, and Traitors," would prefer as arbiter of their fate.

The second thing pre-supposed in education is personal application. There is no thorough education that is not self-education. Unlike the statue which can be wrought only from without, the great work of education is to unfold the life within. This life always involves self-action. The scholar is not merely a passive recipient. He grows into power by an active reception of truth.

Her self-education and her literary work went on side by side. Captain Hemans returned to Wales in 1811, and in the following year he was married to Miss Browne. His appointment as adjutant to the Northamptonshire Militia caused them to take up their residence at Daventry, a neighbourhood by its tameness strangely contrasting with her "own mountain-land."