There is not one, of the formidable lists of studies before you, that might not of itself, so great are its capabilities, occupy your whole time. When you find yourself called to grapple at once with four or five such studies, to measure yourself with competitors, many of whom have had opportunities of preparation greatly superior to your own, and in the presence of teachers to whom the whole subject is as familiar and as plain as the alphabet, and when, in addition, the methods of recitation are for the most part new and strange, you are very apt to become discouraged, to feel that you shall never learn to recite in the manner required, that you can never master the difficulties before you. This feeling arises most frequently in the best class of minds, those most conscientious in regard to duty and most capable of comprehending the full length and breadth and depth of a subject. The shallow and the trifling are never troubled with the kind of difficulties now under consideration. I address myself to you, my young friend, because I know you have come here with an earnest purpose, with a mind acute enough to see something of the vast work before you, and I say to you, as one who has had large experience in conducting other pilgrims over the same track, never lose heart. Difficulties which now seem insurmountable, will gradually disappear; subjects which now seem impenetrable, will soon lighten up. Did you never enter a room in the dark? At first the apartment is a universal blank. After a while, as your eyes become adjusted to the place, one article after another of the furniture becomes outlined to the vision, until at length, especially if approaching day lends some additional rays of light, the whole scene stands out perfectly defined. So it is in entering upon a new study. Many a passage in it will seem to you at first a worse than Serbonian bog--a cave of impenetrable and undistinguishable darkness. But draw not back. Look steadily on. Light will come in time. Your power of seeing will, with every new trial, receive adjustment and growth, and you will in the end see with full and open vision where now you have only dim glimpses and guesses. Do not be discouraged, therefore, if at first you fail, or seem to yourself to fail, in almost every recitation you undertake. What seems impossible to-day, will be only next to impossible to-morrow, and only very difficult the day after. Your failures are often only the proofs that you have a glimpse at least of something below the surface of things. A discouraged pupil is never a source of anxiety to me. It is only the self-confident and over-wearing that are hopeless.