ject is so extensive a one, that I have felt that a mere lecture is far from sufficing for its full development. But I am confident that the thinking minds that I address will make a wise use of the suggestions which I have presented in this imperfect manner, whether they are in part new to you, or are coincident with views which you have already learned from others, or which you have derived from your own experience in teaching. And if by this effort I can contribute anything to that movement which is going on especially in New England, giving more and more prominence to facts in education, I shall consider myself amply repaid for my labor.

LECTURE III.

THE CLAIMS OF CLASSICAL CULTURE UPON THE ATTENTION OF AMERICAN TEACHERS AND AMERICAN

SCHOOLS.

BY ELBRIDGE SMITH.

IN urging the claims of Classical Culture upon the attention of American teachers and American schools, I do not propose to use the phrase Classical Culture in its common, and perhaps I may say technical, acceptation. Or, in other words, I am not about to attempt a eulogium upon the languages and literatures of ancient Greece and Rome. The Classics, properly so called, are not the exclusive productions of Grecian or Roman genius; they are the natural products of the human mind, whenever and wherever its powers have been stimulated to their highest and happiest development. The classics of Greece and Rome, which have received so large a portion of the attention of the civilized world, were formed upon the models of an earlier age. The spirit which they breathe is essentially

the spirit of enlightened man. But it did not originate with them. Three hundred years before Homer lived, sublimer strains were struck from "the harp the monarch minstrel swept," than were ever heard from the Grecian Rhapsodists. Before Cadmus had set foot on Greece, or Romulus and Remus had been nursed on the banks of the Tiber, the great features of a truly Classical Literature had not only been traced, but invested with the highest elements of beauty and power. Nor has the culture of which I speak been confined to the highest states of civilization.

.

"In climes beyond the solar road,

Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
The muse has broke the twilight gloom

To cheer the shivering native's dull abode.

And oft beneath the od'rous shade

Of Chili's boundless forests laid,

She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat

In loose numbers wildly sweet

Their feather-cinctured chiefs and dusky loves;

Her track, where'er the goddess roves,

Glory pursue, and gen'rous shame,

The unconquerable mind, and freedom's holy flame."

The primeval forests of Rhode Island resounded with an eloquence from Philip of Mount Hope, which, under other circumstances, might have proved as classic as that which was thundered against Philip of Macedon. The story and speech of Logan, the celebrated Mingo Chief, present to us all the elements of that heart-stirring eloquence which stayed for a time the declining fortunes of Grecian

and Roman liberty. In the rude war-songs which rung around the council-fires of our American Aborigines, we see the germs of what, beneath more genial skies, and in more prolific soils, have ripened into rhapsodies and pæans which the world has not yet consented to let die.

The purpose of these remarks is to illustrate the universal prevalence of what may be termed the Elements of a truly Classical Culture. The degree of maturity to which these elements have attained, has depended, of course, upon all the contingencies of physical, mental, social, and political organization to which the human race in its ever-varying career has been subjected. Whenever the human mind has been wakened to a consciousness of its own strength; whenever it has summoned its highest energies to surmount opposing obstacles, to seek out new channels for action, and to resist oppression; it has furnished the material for the orator, the historian, and the poet, to transform into enduring models of excellence and beauty. Or, to state the case somewhat figuratively, whenever the great depths of man's being have been broken up; whenever the volcanoes of the soul have sent forth their hidden stores of passion, both good and evil, blessing, cheering and invigorating, or, it may be, desolating, consuming and destroying, and seemingly threatening the very existence of the race, then have appeared, sooner or later, like the bow of heaven upon the retiring storm, those immortal works which genius has produced for the instruction of mankind. It is almost superfluous for me to mention as illus

trations of this remark, the two great epics of antiquity, and the work of the Father of History. The Iliad of Homer, the Æneid of Virgil, and the History of Herodotus, present to us only the different aspects of the first great conflicts between Asiatic and European civilization. The narrative of Thucydides exhibits a subsequent scene in what may perhaps be termed the same great drama, when the west, triumphant over the east, is rent asunder by internal dissensions, and the power which had twice rolled back the invading hosts of Persia, is, in turn, completely broken in the harbor of Syracuse. Our great English epic bears upon it the most indubitable marks of the greatest convulsion that ever shook the English mind. The overthrow of the rebel angels, in the Sixth Book of the Paradise Lost, is but an apotheosis, if I may so say, of one of those dreadful struggles in which the iron squadrons of Cromwell, charging in the name of the Most High God, had swept from the fields of Naseby and Worcester the last hopes of the Stuarts.

The poem of Milton, appearing as it did just after the decline of the Puritan power in England, and coming, too, from the great champion of the party whose spirit it breathes, is a most remarkable symbol of the spirit of the age, -the most impressive lesson of all time perhaps, of what the human mind can do when it dares to burst the shackles of prescriptive bondage, and obey the laws which the Creator has given it.

But the classical literature of mankind is not composed exclusively of Iliads and Æneids, nor has