“You have,” said he, “a considerable store of learning; far more than I could possibly have imagined you possessed; but it is knowledge not learning, in which I wish you to be skilled. I would rather, in order to gift you with the former, that you were more destitute of the latter. The object of education, is to instil principles which are hereafter to guide and instruct us; facts are only desirable, so far as they illustrate those principles; principles ought therefore to precede facts! What then can we think of a system which reverses this evident order, overloads the memory with facts, and those of the most doubtful description, while it leaves us entirely in the dark with regard to the principles which could alone render this heterogeneous mass of any advantage or avail? Learning without knowledge, is but a bundle of prejudices; a lumber of inert matter set before the threshold of the understanding to the exclusion of common sense. Pause for a moment, and recal those of your contemporaries, who are generally considered well-informed; tell me if their information has made them a whit the wiser; if not, it is only sanctified ignorance. Tell me if names with them are not a sanction for opinion; quotations, the representatives of axioms? All they have learned only serves as an excuse for all they are ignorant of. In one month, I will engage that you shall have a juster and deeper insight into wisdom, than they have been all their lives acquiring; the great error of education is to fill the mind first with antiquated authors, and then to try the principles of the present day by the authorities and maxims of the past. We will pursue for our plan, the exact reverse of the ordinary method. We will learn the doctrines of the day, as the first and most necessary step, and we will then glance over those which have passed away, as researches rather curious than useful. “You see this very small pamphlet; it is a paper by Mr. Mills, upon Government. We will know this thoroughly, and when we have done so, we may rest assured that we have a far more accurate information upon the head and front of all political knowledge, than two-thirds of the young men whose cultivation of mind you have usually heard panegyrized.” So saying, my uncle opened the pamphlet. He pointed out to me its close and mathematical reasoning, in which no flaw could be detected, nor deduction controverted: and he filled up, as we proceeded, from the science of his own clear and enlarged mind, the various parts which the political logician had left for reflection to complete. My uncle had this great virtue of an expositor, that he never over-explained; he never made a parade of his lecture, nor confused what was simple by unnecessary comment.