The Church--Felicities and advantages of the clerical profession--Its elevated ideal--That it is favorable to noble studies--French priests and English Clergymen--The professional point of view--Difficulty of disinterested thinking--Colored light--Want of strict accuracy--Quotation from a sermon--The drawback to the clerical life--Provisional nature of intellectual conclusions--The legal profession--That it affords gratification to the intellectual powers--Want of intellectual disinterestedness in lawyers--Their absorption in professional life--Anecdote of a London lawyer--Superiority of lawyers in their sense of affairs--Medicine--The study of it a fine preparation for the intellectual life--Social rise of medical men coincident with the mental progress of communities--Their probable future influence on education--The heroic side of their profession--The military and naval professions--Bad effect of the privation of solitude--Interruption--Anecdote of Cuvier--The fine arts--In what way they are favorable to thought--Intellectual leisure of artists--Reasoning artists--Sciences included in the fine arts. It may be taken for granted that to a mind constituted as yours is, no profession will be satisfactory which does not afford free play to the intellectual powers. You might no doubt exercise resolution enough to bind yourself down to uncongenial work for a term of years, but it would be with the intention of retiring as soon as you had realized a competency. The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.