Among the best results which attend a course of regular academical education is this exclusive and concentrated direction of the mental powers to their appropriate objects. In the years employed principally in the study of the learned languages the necessity of finding out the meaning of each word and discerning either the agreement between different words or the dependence of some of them upon others in certain grammatical relations necessarily sharpens and fixes the attention. After this preparatory discipline of the intellect the student is introduced to the study of mathematical science, where proposition leads on to proposition in regular order, and his attention is necessarily enchained to each truth, as it follows with logical certainty, from truths previously demonstrated. He is then initiated into the mysterious laws of natural philosophy, as they have been discovered, explained and illustrated, by a course of rigorous induction, and is ultimately familiarized with the yet nobler and more sublime investigations of moral science, the refinements of taste, the beauties of eloquence, and the charm of heavenly poesy. And this admirable training is conducted remote from the bustle and cares of the world, in the very hush of the passions, and beyond the reach of beguiling and distracting pleasures. Here surely, then, the understanding is disciplined, its discrimination rendered more acute, its general health and vigor confirmed, while a facility is created for directing its powers to the various manly and trying services which may await in life's busy theatre. But not unfrequently is the question asked by querulous students, why all this devoted attention to the dead languages, to mathematical theorems, philosophical experiments, metaphysical disquisitions and critical subtleties? In the world [he soliloquizes] no one talks Greek or Latin, and in the forum or legislative hall we shall not be called upon to demonstrate the propositions of Euclid, or explain the phenomena of hydrostatics and optics. The motives of human action are better learned in that great practical school, the world, than by poring over the theories of metaphysicians; and all the rules of Quintilian, Rollin, or Blair will never make a powerful reasoner or an eloquent orator. Why, then, shall we consume our nights and days in the acquisition of that which is to be of no practical utility hereafter, and which brings with it no immediate advantage, except the gratification of pride, a shortlived honor, a distinction at commencement? Beware, my young friends, beware of the tempter! These are the suggestions of sloth--the most insidious, persuasive and dangerous of deceivers. _Vitanda est improba Siren Desidia._