when you find weariness approaching, rouse yourself, and remember, that if you give up, all that you have done has been done in vain.  This is a matter of great moment; for out of every ten, who undertake this task, there are, perhaps, nine who abandon it in despair; and this, too, merely for the want of resolution to overcome the first approaches of weariness.  The most effectual means of security against this mortifying result is to lay down a rule to write or to read a certain fixed quantity every day, Sunday excepted.  Our minds are not always in the same state; they have not, at all times, the same elasticity; to-day we are full of hope on the very same grounds which, to-morrow, afford us no hope at all:  every human being is liable to those flows and ebbs of the mind; but, if reason interfere, and bid you overcome the fits of lassitude, and almost mechanically to go on without the stimulus of hope, the buoyant fit speedily returns; you congratulate yourself that you did not yield to the temptation to abandon your pursuit, and you proceed with more vigour than ever.  Five or six triumphs over temptation to indolence or despair lay the foundation of certain success; and, what is of still more importance, fix in you the habit of perseverance.

47.  If I have bestowed a large portion of my space on this topic, it has been because I know, from experience as well as from observation, that it is of more importance than all the other branches of book-learning put together.  It gives you, when you possess it thoroughly, a real and practical superiority over the far greater part of men.  How often did I experience this even long before I became what is called an author!  The Adjutant, under whom it was my duty to act when I was a Serjeant Major, was, as almost all military officers are, or at least were, a very illiterate man, perceiving that every sentence of mine was in the same form and manner as sentences in print, became shy of letting me see pieces of his writing.  The writing of orders, and other things, therefore, fell to me; and thus, though no nominal addition was made to my pay, and no nominal addition to my authority, I acquired the latter as effectually as if a law had been passed to confer it upon me.  In short, I owe to the possession of this branch of knowledge everything that has enabled me to do so many things that very few other men have done, and that now gives me a degree of influence, such as is possessed by few others, in the most weighty concerns of the country.  The possession of this branch of knowledge raises you in your own esteem, gives just confidence in yourself, and prevents you from being the willing slave of the rich and the titled part of the community.  It enables you to discover that riches and titles do not confer merit; you think comparatively little of them; and, as far as relates to you, at any rate, their insolence is innoxious.