In these and the manifold other illustrations which might be given, the essential point is to quicken and keep alive the attention. Whatever be the subject of study, and whether the instructions be direct or incidental, let children be preserved from attending to it in a sluggish, listless, indifferent manner. The subject of study, in the case of young persons, is often of less importance than the manner of study. I have been led sometimes to doubt the value of many of the inventions for facilitating the acquisition of knowledge by children. That knowledge the acquisition of which costs no labor, will not be likely to make a deep impression, or to remain long upon the memory. It is by labor that the mind strengthens and grows: and while care should be taken not to overtask it by exertions beyond its strength, yet let it never be forgotten that mere occupation of the mind, even with useful and proper objects, is not the precise aim of education. The educator aims, not to make learned boys, but able men. To do this, he must tax their powers. He must rouse them to manly exertion. He must teach them to think, to discriminate, to digest what they have received, to work. Every day there must be the glow of hard work,--not the exhaustion and languor which arise from too protracted confinement to study,--which have the same debilitating effect upon the mind that a similar process has upon the body,--but vigorous and hardy labor, such as wakens the mind from its lethargy, summons up the resolution and the will, and puts the whole internal man into a state of determined and positive activity. The boy in such a case feels that he is at work. He feels, too, that he is gaining something more than knowledge. He is gaining power. He is growing in strength. He grapples successfully to-day with a difficulty that would have staggered him yesterday. There is no mistaking this process; and no matter what the subject of study, the intellectual development what it gives, is worth infinitely more than all that vague, floating kind of knowledge sometimes sought after, which seems to be imbibed somehow from the atmosphere of the school-room, as it certainly evaporates the moment a boy enters the atmosphere of men and of active life. XXVII. GAINING THE ATTENTION.