AN ADDRESS ΤΟ A YOUNG STUDENT, ON HIS ENTRANCE INTO COLLEGE. BY EUMENES. [First Published, 1798.] Labor voluptasque, dissimillima natura, societate quadam inter se Dixeris hæc inter varicosos centuriones, Liv. 1. v. c. 4. Pers. Sat. v. WELCOME, my young friend! Welcome to our University. Allow me to hail your arrival at this seat of the Muses; and to express my fervent wishes, that you may richly participate in all the advantages, which an acquaintance with them affords. I have ever contemplated the situation of a young man, at his first entrance into college, with the most lively interest; as I consider it one of the most important periods of his life, and most likely to determine his future character on the great theatre of the world.-I remember-I well remember-when, in my schoolboy days, I looked forward with longing expectation, to the time when I should wear the academic gown, and engage in the wider field of literary competition, which a college opens to the ingenuous youth. You probably have felt some of the same impatient desire; and now that the long-expected time has arrived, permit one to address you as a friend, who can enter into your present feelings from no distant recollection. My dear young friend! you are now beginning to put away childish things and as at present you look back upon the days of boyhood as past, and may say with the poet-" Where are they?-with the years beyond the flood;"-so the period of riper youth, upon which you have entered, will soon be an object of retrospective survey in manhood; and manhood itself-if you live so long-in old age. You will find each succeeding year glide away imperceptibly like the past. Anticipate their flight; and remember that it would be melancholy at last, to have no note to take of time-but by its loss. But it is not more certain, that the misimprovement of life brings bitter recollection in the end, than that the right improvement of it constitutes present enjoyment. To lose-or, what is called, to kill time, is to destroy-not only usefulness-but comfort. And this I would wish particularly to impress upon you, that, if you would be happy, you must be industrious ;-you must exert your faculties in the vigorous prosecution of some useful objects. At school, application to business was in a great measure compulsory. It must henceforward depend more upon your own will: and it is therefore of importance that your judgment should be convinced of its expediency. Now-do not draw back from me, under the supposition that I want to make you a very drudge-a slave to business. Believe me, I do not and what I am going to add, I think, will convince you of this.-There are twenty-four hours in the day. How many of these would you think it reasonable to allow for sleep, food, society, recreation, &c.? Take an ample proportion. Will eighteen hours be sufficient?" Yes."-Well; give the remaining six to business, and I am content. Do this regularly; do it perseveringly and I will answer for the facility, comfort, and improvement, with which you will pass through the course of academic instruction. But mark; - regularity of application (be the time shorter or longer) is the chief thing, upon which your progress depends. Be assured no desultory efforts will do so much as this. I therefore strongly recommend to you, a constant adherence to some methodical arrangement of your time. This will keep your attention alive to its silent lapse; and tends to form in youth a habit, which you will find of the most important utility throughout your future life. Allot stated hours to the different occupations of the day and suffer not trifles to make you deviate from them.-Rise early:-it will conduce to health of body and serenity of mind, as well as to dispatch of business.- Do not leave to one day the business of two. That is a ready way of losing both. Remember that procrastination is the thief of time.—While you are at study, give to it all the energy of your mind: : and do not continue your application at any one time longer, than you can apply with vigour. Nothing tends more to enervate the mind, than the habit of poring over a book without any mental exertion. Before I quit this subject, let me caution you against a common error: the opinion that a superiority of natural talents will compensate for the want of application to study. Be assured it is a mistaken opinion. Your natural advantages, if duly cultivated, will facilitate your progress:-otherwise, mediocrity of genius, with patient industry, will leave you far behind in the literary race. I have recommended the diligent improvement of time, as essential not only to respectability and usefulness, but also to the comfort and true enjoyment of life. I have pointed out regularity of application, as the most effectual means of improvement.-Permit me now to say a few words, upon the nature of those objects which constitute your immediate employment in college. Here is opened to you the wide and diversified field of literature and science. Here you are conducted along its various paths, so far at least as will enable you to judge whither they lead, and to make progressive advances hereafter in such as most recommend themselves to your judgment or your taste. But you know that a man may pass through the finest country, with so little attentive observation, as to derive no accession to his knowledge, nor any gratification from the beauty of its scenes. There are men, who have made the grand tour, only for the purpose of having it to say that they made it; and have therefore obtained no other advantage from their travels. And I have known too many pass through college in a similar way;-disgraced by having possessed advantages, which they neglected to improve,-by having spent four long years in the regions of knowledge, and leaving them in the end as ignorant and uninformed as they came. I hope that you, my young friend, will spurn the thought of such indifference to the most interesting objects:-that it will be your ambition, while in college, to attain a higher and a higher rank in the scale of intellectual being.—In this respect, there appears not so wide a separation between some of the brute creation and the savage, as between the savage--whether of Africa or of Europe-and the man of cultivated understanding. Survey with a rapid glance the different studies to which successively your attention is directed in the university :-and say, which of them is not worthy to claim it;-say, of which you would contentedly be ignorant. LOGIC developes the fundamental principles and laws of reasoning, explains its various modes, and examines and analyzes the different powers of the mind employed in it.-If you would estimate the importance of this study,-compare the close precision-the luminous method-the manly argument of writers in the last century, when it was generally cultivated, with the flimsy-inconclusive-declamatory writings of those who neglect it in the present day;-men unaccustomed to think deeply, whose highest aim is to cover the poverty of meaning with the tinsel finery of verbiage, and the weakness of proof under the positiveness of assertion.-In truth, I have seldom met a person wholly ignorant of logic, who, when engaged in any speculative inquiry, was able to distinguish between a sound and fallacious argument, to state the grounds of his own opinion with clearness, or to examine another's with critical penetration. If we pass from LOGICAL to MATHEMATICAL studies;-there we behold the human mind, ascending, from principles the most simple and self-evident, to such heights of discovery in the abstrusest properties of all things, capable of numeration or measurement, as command our admiration ;-whether we regard them as objects of the most curious research, or as applicable to the most useful purposes in daily practice;-whether we consider the infallible certainty with which the judgment rests on each step of the ascent-the indissoluble connexion between all the links of the extended chain-or the unlimited scope for continued investigation. From pure MATHEMATICS, let us proceed to ASTRONOMY. On the outward face of the heavens, even the untutored rustic looks with in quisitive and admiring gaze. And will not you delight to explore the order and motions of the heavenly bodies, the laws by which they are regulated, and the various phenomena which they exhibit? What shall I say of the other parts of NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, which are comprehended in the course of collegiate study?—which investigate the forces existing in nature, and apply them to the solution of her most complex operations ;-which lay open the means of employing them for the purposes of life, and aiding the organs of man, so as to give him powers unknown before ;-which satisfactorily explain the phenomena of sounds, and the still more striking phenomena of vision,-which detect by palpable experiments the most secret properties of light itself-a substance so subtle in its particles, so amazingly rapid in its velocity, that it might be supposed to baffle the art of man's analysis. Which of all these branches of physical science is it, that does not hold out the strongest allurements to the ardour of the youthful student? Till at length, in ETHICS, his attention is directed to the foundations of moral obligation, the duties which man owes to man in the various relationships of life, the origin of property and the social system, with the principles of civil government. Let us turn our view from his graver scientific studies, to the humaniores litera-to the classic treasures of GREECE and ITALY: which, after the initiatory acquaintance with them formed at a school, he is now called to explore with a more ripened judgment and a more manly taste. : Here, do we not behold his path strewed indeed with flowers? My young friend! they invite your hand. Range among them with delight and cull their sweets with critical attention.-Here, converse with the sages and the wits of ancient days, with the historians, the orators, and the poets of antiquity,-living in their works. These men wrote, as the painter drew,-in æternitatem. And their works will remain the models of composition-the standard of literary taste: unless an iron age of unlettered barbarism should return.— Believe me, an intimate knowledge of them will amply repay any labour it may cost: and by vigorous and well-directed application, the labour itself will rapidly diminish, while the pleasure and improvement will as rapidly increase. On the other hand; if it should be your paltry object, merely to pass an examination, and to avoid all study but what is absolutely necessary for that,-it will be no wonder, if your academic course be unproductive of satisfaction, credit, or advantage.-I trust you will never realize the supposition. But there are some, I know, who cherish a most erroneous idea, that, although studious industry in college be needful-or at least expedient-for those who are to enter into some of the learned professions; yet for a youth of independent fortune it is not so necessary. The young squire may take his degree; and it will be a feather in his cap to take it :-but he need not trouble himself to be a scholar."-And he need not indeed,-if the only use of learning be to obtain a livelihood;-he need not, if the summit of his desires be to spend his fortune in the indulgencies of the table, and his time in the pursuit of the game on his estate-an animal not so noble as his horse, nor better informed than his groom. But, if he wish to fill with respectability the station which he holds; if he would desire any more refined enjoyments than those of his animal nature; if he would not have his intellectual debasement only rendered more conspicuous by his outward elevation;-then I must say, that for him it is more peculiarly needful to cultivate and inform his mind. Indeed I know not any class of persons, to whom a literary taste is of so much importance, as to country gentlemen. It humanizes their character; it affords them a perpetual source of innocent and improving gratification:-it raises them above the sycophants, on whom they are otherwise dependent for society;-the bane of our gentry, the panders to their vanity, their passion, and caprice. And though literature be not virtue, yet I am persuaded that the want of it, and the want of that taste for it which early culture alone can form, has plunged many a man of fortune into vice. Shew me a gentleman of independent property, to whom the elements of the sciences are not unknown, who can relish the beauties of the ancient and modern classics, and is fond of spending an hour in his library :-shew me such an one;-and I am mistaken if I will not shew you a man more eminently distinguished by his character and his conduct than by his rank,--a man of urbanity of manners,-courteous and beneficent to his dependents, select in his friendships, temperate in his life, and useful in society. To the poorer student our university affords numerous advantages. And if you be such, my young friend, I hope you are not ashamed of being poor. There is no disgrace in it :-and many of those who now fill high stations in life, are not ashamed of its being known that they were once in college such as you. Only maintain independence of mind; -establish respectability of character ;-exert your mental powers with diligence;-regard your tutor as your friend, and approve yourself worthy of his friendship :-you need not then fear but you will reach, at least, the aurea mediocritas of a competence, beyond which, I trust, you will not suffer any anxiety of desire to extend. Be assured, wealth is less connected with happiness, than is commonly supposed. And one of the great advantages of a collegiate education is, that it renders the happiness of the man less dependent upon outward circumstances.-Live within yours whatever they be. Abhor the idea of incurring debt. It embarrasses-it distracts— and often vitiates the mind. Be virtuous;-be useful ;-be industrious-and you will be more happy than the riches of Peru could make you. There appears in some students a contemptible vanity, that opposes the regulations of academic discipline. I trust you will think such a temper beneath you. It is foolish; it is absurd. Without discipline and subordination, such a seminary as this could not subsist: and those who enter it, are supposed to be aware of the rules by which it is regulated; and, in seeking admission, profess a willingness to submit to them. I should think I insulted your understanding, if I dwelt longer |