The Rambler, Vol. II | Page 7

thus, if we would know
the amount of moments, we must agglomerate them into days and
weeks.
The proverbial oracles of our parsimonious ancestors have informed us,
that the fatal waste of fortune is by small expenses, by the profusion of
sums too little singly to alarm our caution, and which we never suffer
ourselves to consider together. Of the same kind is the prodigality of
life; he that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past
years, must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and
endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.
It is usual for those who are advised to the attainment of any new
qualification, to look upon themselves as required to change the general
course of their conduct, to dismiss business, and exclude pleasure, and
to devote their days and nights to a particular attention. But all common
degrees of excellence are attainable at a lower price; he that should
steadily and resolutely assign to any science or language those
interstitial vacancies which intervene in the most crowded variety of
diversion or employment, would find every day new irradiations of
knowledge, and discover how much more is to be hoped from
frequency and perseverance, than from violent efforts and sudden
desires; efforts which are soon remitted when they encounter difficulty,
and desires, which, if they are indulged too often, will shake off the
authority of reason, and range capriciously from one object to another.
The disposition to defer every important design to a time of leisure, and
a state of settled uniformity, proceeds generally from a false estimate of
the human powers. If we except those gigantic and stupendous
intelligences who are said to grasp a system by intuition, and bound
forward from one series of conclusions to another, without regular steps
through intermediate propositions, the most successful students make
their advances in knowledge by short flights, between each of which
the mind may lie at rest. For every single act of progression a short
time is sufficient; and it is only necessary, that whenever that time is
afforded, it be well employed.
Few minds will be long confined to severe and laborious meditation;
and when a successful attack on knowledge has been made, the student
recreates himself with the contemplation of his conquest, and forbears

another incursion, till the new-acquired truth has become familiar, and
his curiosity calls upon him for fresh gratifications. Whether the time of
intermission is spent in company, or in solitude, in necessary business,
or in voluntary levities, the understanding is equally abstracted from
the object of inquiry; but, perhaps, if it be detained by occupations less
pleasing, it returns again to study with greater alacrity than when it is
glutted with ideal pleasures, and surfeited with intemperance of
application. He that will not suffer himself to be discouraged by fancied
impossibilities, may sometimes find his abilities invigorated by the
necessity of exerting them in short intervals, as the force of a current is
increased by the contraction of its channel.
From some cause like this, it has probably proceeded, that, among
those who have contributed to the advancement of learning, many have
risen to eminence in opposition to all the obstacles which external
circumstances could place in their way, amidst the tumult of business,
the distresses of poverty, or the dissipations of a wandering and
unsettled state. A great part of the life of Erasmus was one continual
peregrination; ill supplied with the gifts of fortune, and led from city to
city, and from kingdom to kingdom, by the hopes of patrons and
preferment, hopes which always flattered and always deceived him; he
yet found means, by unshaken constancy, and a vigilant improvement
of those hours, which, in the midst of the most restless activity, will
remain unengaged, to write more than another in the same condition
would have hoped to read. Compelled by want to attendance and
solicitation, and so much versed in common life, that he has transmitted
to us the most perfect delineation of the manners of his age, he joined
to his knowledge of the world such application to books, that he will
stand for ever in the first rank of literary heroes. How this proficiency
was obtained he sufficiently discovers, by informing us, that the "Praise
of Folly," one of his most celebrated performances, was composed by
him on the road to Italy; _ne totum illud tempus quo equo fuit
insidendum, illiteratis fabulis terreretur_: "lest the hours which he was
obliged to spend on horseback should be tattled away without regard to
literature."
An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto, that _time was his
estate_; an estate, indeed, which will produce nothing without
cultivation, but will always abundantly repay the labours of industry,

and satisfy the most extensive