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pursuit, is the felicitous result of excited genius. But of the thousands, who pore over the beaten track of mathematics, how many exhibit either sense or reason in the important transactions of life? To those who are not inventors, this study affords the means of unfolding only one faculty, that of reasoning closely and conclusively upon given premises; it confers no power of taking ground, and laying down premises on which to build up a system of prompt, various, inductive reasoning. A dull man may make a good mathematician, but by no possibility a good classical scholar.

It is the province of liberal education to develope and improve all the faculties of the mind, and to cultivate and improve the whole moral being; which desirable purpose is best accomplished by the study of language, as the chief object of instruction, attended, indeed, and aided by the cultivation of the arts and sciences, but itself the primary pursuit. The study of language is peculiarly fitted to render the faculty of associating similar and simple ideas, or of combining various and dissimilar images more facile and rapid. By attributing definite ideas to arbitrary signs and conventional sounds, and by forming abstract and general, when particular and definite notions cannot be obtained, the powers of association and imagination, like all the other faculties, must, by exercise and use, be greatly strengthened. Add to which, by increasing the rapidity and strength of the associative faculty, the study of language improves the capacity of reasoning, increases the brilliancy of wit, and brightens the blaze of imagination; whence all the mental powers are enabled to work with greater promptness and effect upon every subject of human inquiry submitted to their cognizance and consideration.

But, above all the dead languages, the Greek and Latin tongues should be more especially studied, as conducive to the great end of liberal education; not only because they contain some of the highest flights of genius, but also because they have a greater accuracy, a more philosophical precision than any living, floating,

continually-shifting language can possess. By paying particular attention to the study of these two inestimable languages, from the first dawning of academic instruction to the close of life, the mind is quickened, strengthened, and rendered clear and luminous in all its views. It is from the long experience of their utility that the study of these languages has been made the basis of all the establishments of liberal education which have trained up so many profound and accomplished scholars in Europe.

All the qualities and elements united in language are gradually comprehended by the student while engaged in translating from one tongue into another. All his faculties are improved by the process of mastering the peculiar idioms of two different languages at the same time. He is compelled, by the very nature of his study, to make himself acquainted with the several ideas presented by the words he reads in regular succession; to compare and combine different sorts of analogies and probabilities offered to his consideration in the opinions, sentiments, and propositions that he peruses. The number of faculties which this study awakens at the same time ensures it the pre-eminence over every other species of instruction. It quickens the power of perception, by accustoming the mind to discern the nicer peculiarities of idiomatical language in different tongues; it gives speed and force to the faculty of association, by presenting various shades of difference in the ideas expressed by words, similar or synonymous, in different languages; it renders the memory strong and retentive, by exercising it constantly in the recollection of new words and images; it deepens and strengthens the judgment, by continually soliciting its decisions on the more exquisite models of taste and beauty in composi→ tion which the great writers of antiquity have left; it invigorates and enlarges the capacity of reasoning, by perpetually requiring a train of argument upon the va rious questions in ethics and politics, started by the ancients, under very peculiar aspects of the human mind; it brightens and renders more intensely splendid

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the imagination, by introducing it to an intimate acquaintance with the finest specimens of poetry and eloquence, precisely at that period in the history of man when they were most eagerly and successfully cultivated. But further, the appropriate subject of the best portion of classical learning, the study of the poets, historians, orators, and philosophers of Greece and Rome, is the investigation and improvement of our moral nature; the feelings, passions, plans of action, hidden springs, and various movements of our being. The most exalted wisdom, the most sound, practical common sense of social life, in its highest refinement, is drawn from the springs of Helicon and the fountains of Parnassus, from the groves of Academus, and from the schools of the Portico and Lyceum. All narrow and single systems of education are bad; but if any one branch of learning deserves pre-eminence, it is that which induces an habitual contemplation of ourselves and of our common nature, in a close acquaintance with which men must always feel a deeper interest and possess a larger stake, than in the lines and diagrams of the mathematician, the retorts and alembics of the chymist, or any combination of material substances which the natural philosopher may explore. It is far better, however, that the study of the classics should be accompanied with that of all the sciences, in order to impart a course of full and accomplished education.

It might, perhaps, be of some utility to sketch a very brief outline of the system of instruction pursued in the schools and colleges of England, that the people of the United States might know how far classical literature is prized in the land of their fathers, and learn, themselves, to set a higher value upon it than they have hitherto done. Let us instance the three great public schools of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester, as leading the van of English liberal education. At these schools a boy stays until he is eighteen; before he reaches which period he is expected to be able to read, ad aperturam libri, Virgil, Horace, Terence, Cicero, and Livy; Homer, Demosthenes, Longinus, Aristophanes, and

the Greek tragedians, to compose, readily, and abundantly, and constantly, in English verse and prose, and in Latin verse and prose; and, occasionally, in Greek verse and prose; to make Latin epigrams extempore, to declaim in Latin, to write Latin critiques on a given book of Homer, or play in Aristophanes, or Eschylus, or Sophocles, or Euripides; to have the finest passages of the Greek and Latin classics always afloat in the memory, and ready for apt citation and allusion. In the English universities these studies are prosecuted on a wider scale, and with the additional pursuits of mathe matics, natural philosophy, history, moral philosophy, logic, belles-lettres, rhetoric, and municipal law. Cambridge is supposed to be peculiarly partial to mathematical, and Oxford to classical studies; but at both, the system of instruction is ample and highly liberal. At two and twenty they graduate, and after this, (except in the church, whose order of deacon is taken at three and twenty), they begin to study for the learned professions of law and physic. This is the general course in England and Ireland, which produce the most finished scholars in Europe. Trinity College in Dublin has long been celebrated for its great proficiency in all classical attainments. The English and Irish, generally, continue their acquaintance with the classics in after-life.

In Scotland the boys learn no Greek at school, which they leave at twelve, when they enter the university, and graduate at sixteen; so that classical literature is not much cultivated. A few years since, indeed, the study of prosody, and the composition of Latin verse, were introduced into the high school of Edinburgh. But the principal studies among the Scottish are moral philosophy, political economy, public law, and metaphysics.

It is an old objection of Mr. Locke, but bandied about the United States with as much eager triumph as if it were both novel and wise, "that it is foolish to require boys to compose in verse, if we do not wish to make them poets." The answer is-that boys are required to make verses, not in order to become poets, but to obtain a more complete acquaintance with, and dominion

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over the language in which they compose. Let any. one make the experiment, and he will find that he must pass more thought through his brain, and a greater abundance and selection of expression in composing twenty lines of verse, in whatever language, than in writing four times the same quantity of prose. Lord Mansfield was not disqualified for being one of the greatest lawyers, statesmen, and orators, the world ever saw, because, all his life, even after he was eighty, he used to write Latin verses in the various rythms, nearly equal to the best poetry of the Augustan age. Nor was Sir William Jones a less profound jurist and philosopher because he was an accomplished versifier in the English, Latin, and Greek languages.

It is too prevalent a fashion in the United States to consider all classical, nay, all general education, at an end, as soon as a boy leaves college at the age of eighteen, when he begins to prepare himself for becoming a merchant, who is supposed not to stand in need of any literature; or a clergyman, or physician, or lawyer, who are deemed to want nothing more than a mere knowledge of theology, medicine, or law. In addition to which, it is thought prodigious wisdom to rail at all studious habits, and talk loudly about trusting to the energies of native genius, which must not be stifled by poring over books. The consequence is, that the Latin of our college boys soon becomes threadbare, and their Greek quite worn out.

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When Demosthenes was reproached by a fopling of his day, that his orations smelt of the lamp, he replied, true, there is some difference between what you and I do by lamp-light." To derive all from native genius, to owe nothing to others, to scorn to look at objects through the spectacles of books, is the praise which many men who think little and talk much delight to bestow upon themselves and their kindred favourites. But no one in his senses would wish to exclude the student from an acquaintance with the works of others; for if it were possible, and men were forbidden to avail themselves of the labours of their predecessors, each succeeding gene