Dryden said, all the translations of the old school “want to be translated into English;” and verbal translation he compares to “dancing on ropes with fettered legs.” Education cannot do all that Helvetius supposes, but it can do much. _Elle fait danser l’ours_,—It makes a bear dance. It is said that some insects take the colour of the leaf that they feed upon. “I was common clay till roses were planted in me,” says some aromatic earth, in an eastern fable. To unlearn is harder than to learn, and the Grecian flute-player was right in requiring double fees from those pupils who had been taught by another master. “I am rubbing their father out of my children as fast as I can,” said a clever widow of rank and fashion. The Education of princes, or indeed the spoilt children of rich and distinguished parents, must be the _experimentum crucis_ of teaching. “If Fénelon did succeed, as it is recorded he did, in educating the Dauphin, his success was little less than a miracle. How can any man, though of advanced age and of high reputation, perhaps also of a sacred profession and of elevated station, be expected to preserve any useful authority over a child (probably a wayward little animal), if he, the tutor, must always address the pupil by his title, or at least must never forget that he is heir to a throne?” There is some truth in the following remarks by a writer in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, upon information overmuch: We deal largely in general knowledge—an excellent article, no doubt; but one may have too much of it. Sometimes ignorance is really bliss. It has not added to my personal comfort to know to a decimal fraction what proportion of red earth I may expect to find in my cocoa every morning; to have become knowingly conscious that my coffee is mixed with ground liver and litmus, instead of honest chicory; and that bisulphuret of mercury forms the basis of my cayenne. It was once my fate to have a friend staying in my house who was one of these minute philosophers. He used to amuse himself after breakfast by a careful analysis and diagnosis of the contents of the teapot, laid out as a kind of _hortus siccus_ on his plate. “This leaf, now,” he would say, “is fuchsia; observe the serrated edges: that’s no tea-leaf—positively poisonous. This now, again, is blackthorn, or privet—yes, privet; you may know it by the divisions in the panicles: that’s no tea-leaf.” A most uncomfortable guest he was; and though not a bad companion in many respects, I felt my appetite improved the first time I sat down to dinner without him. It won’t do to look into all your meals with a microscope. Of course there is a medium between these over-curious investigations and an implicit faith in every thing that is set before you. --------------------- Footnote 86: