Readers who have no time to Think.

Lord Bolingbroke humorously describes, in one of his works, an acquaintance of his—I have known such a one myself—who had read almost constantly "twelve or fourteen hours a-day for five and twenty or thirty years, and has heaped together as much learning as could be crowded into a head. In the course of my acquaintance with him, I consulted him once or twice, but not oftener; for I found his mass of learning of as little use to me as to the owner. The man was communicative enough; but nothing was distinct in his mind. How could page 15 it be otherwise? he had never spared time to think, all was employed in reading * * To ask him a question was to wind up a spring in his memory, that rattled on with vast rapidity and confused noise, till the force of it was spent; and you went away with all the noise in your ears, stunned and uninformed." Bolingbroke adds, "He who reads with discernment and closeness will acquire less learning but more knowledge."