With all our wisdom and foresight we can take a lesson in gladness and gratitude from the happy bird that sings all night, as if the day were not long enough to tell its joy.
I would address an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my own experience. It will be but short; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge: NEVER PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE.
The true key to the declension of the Roman empire which is not to be found in all Gibbon ‘s immense work may be stated in two words: the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.
![Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quote - It [is] very unfair to influence a child’s mind by inculcating any opinions before it [has] come to years of discretion to choose for itself.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/it-is-very-unfair-to-influence-a-childs-mind-by-in-683x1024.jpg)
