Excerpt from Hints on Reading: An Address Delivered in the Ipswich Female Seminary, January 15, 1834

The advantages of Reviews, when candidly conducted, and judiciously used, will not readily be questioned. But they have their disadvantages too. When permitted to take the judgment of the reader into their keeping; and to relieve him from the burden of thinking, they become injuries, rather than helps a torpedo, rather than a stimulus to the mind.

Other obstructions there are to science, which appear in the shape of facilities and aids. I now refer to those abstracts, abridgments and epitomes, which meet us at every turn; which promise so much, and perform so little. Once they modestly claimed to be mere precursors and pioneers to the regular sys tems of science and there were cases in which they performed this humble office to advantage. Of late, they threaten to be come their substitutes; and unless these proud pretensions be resisted, they will turn our students into mere sciolists, and our' scenes of education into nurseries of ignorance and self-conceit.

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