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to three or four pages. These extracts are taken from authors, whose names are placed at the commencement or at the close of the selections, and, in some instances, there is found a brief biographical notice. They are all very beautiful, and they constitute the sum total of classical study which the majority of American youth pursue. They go forth to life, then, with their heads full of units and tens, of x's and y's, of triangles and circles and polygons, and, it may be, even of ellipses, hyperbolas, and parabolas, of asymptotes, and of rectangular and oblique angular coördinates, and, I should not forget to add, some knowledge of bills receivable and bills payable, of day-books and ledgers. These young ladies and gentlemen are, we are told, thoroughly disciplined. They have acquired great mental power by the study of mathematics, and are well fitted for all the emergencies of life. That is, I suppose we must understand, for all the emergencies that can be expressed in equations of the first, or second, or in the simpler forms of the third degree, or for such as come under the theorems and problems of Euclid; albeit, there may not arise a single case involving anything higher than the fundamental rules of Arithmetic. These young ladies and gentlemen soon find that they have to manage cases in which their formulæ utterly fail them, if, indeed, they ever think of them. They are called to act upon other minds, when demonstration, if it convince, will fail to persuade ; and, more than this, they are called upon to fill a vacuity in their own minds, of which their educa

tion has made them partially conscious, but has done nothing to satisfy, and the full extent of which they now begin to realize. They find themselves possessed of other faculties than mere reason. The imagination and taste, the whole world of passion, rise up and burst all the bulwarks of their mathematical logic away. Allow me here to fortify my position, by putting in the testimony delivered on this platform yesterday morning, by our great American Arnold, the friend and worthy representative of his great English prototype. I am emboldened to do this in obedience to the principle which he yesterday laid down, of taking large specimens to illustrate the tendency of a general law. Dr. Wayland tells us, that he read again and again the extracts contained in Murray's English Reader, without deriving any idea whatever from them, with the exception of the narrative selections. No one who has been permitted to receive instruction in the Sabbath evening Bible-class of Brown University, or in the exercises on Shakspeare in the senior recitation room, will question his present ability to appreciate and to impart classical culture of the highest order. Those before me who have enjoyed this high privilege, will feel their hearts swell with emotion as I recall to their minds those hours in which we drank in his instruction as he opened to us the ways of spiritual life.

"Just precepts thus from great example given

We drew from him what he derived from heaven."

If a mind like his fails to derive any benefit from

these flowers of Parnassus, as they are sometimes termed, what can we expect from this course of instruction from the great bulk of American youth? Judging from the a priori point of view, we might expect, what we actually find, an entire ignorance of English literature, and an entire absence of that taste and refinement which it is the province of literary studies to impart. Our scholars are told that they must avoid all cheap literature; but they are utterly unable to distinguish the cheap from that which is truly valuable; and in their eager craving after something, they endeavor to satisfy themselves with that which is the most exciting, and consequently the most corrupting. Utterly destitute of a correct taste, and wholly incapable of appreciating that which is truly classic, they turn to what has appropriately been termed the "Satanic literature" of the age, which is usually found within yellow bindings, with a large supply of illustrations in shocking taste, and in a still more shocking style of execution. The demand for this species of literature ought to surprise us into some degree of alarm. It ought to awaken the earnest inquiry, whether something besides mathematical and scientific training is not needed in our schools; whether the emotional elements of our natures do not require a degree of attention which they have hitherto failed to receive.

Without reflection it might be said, that this course of classical study can make no pretensions to discipline, and that, at most, it can only be said to furnish a pleasant and profitable amusement. There would be some truth in this remark, if our

English classics were simply to be read, that is, to be cursorily passed over by a rapid enunciation of the words; but the same remark would be still more true when applied to the same style of mathematical reading. Suppose you were to put into the hands of a class of suitable age one of Burke's speeches on American affairs, and that they be required to spend three or six months, as the case might require, in mastering the argument, in giving attention to all the properties of his rich and varied style, his chaste and yet brilliant rhetoric, in making out all his allusions, and in committing to memory and declaiming his best passages, would not this exercise call into action all the powers required in mathematical study, and, at the same time, awaken to a high degree of activity the taste, the imagination, and all those faculties which constitute our emotional nature? Or, suppose a play of Shakspeare to be studied in a similar way; that the scholar's mind be held to the work until he sees the whole plot from the same point of view with the poet himself, how varied would be the faculties which would thus be called into exercise, to say nothing of the fund of collateral knowledge which would be secured, and the habit of careful investigation which would necessarily be acquired. Exercises of this nature may be made in the highest degree disciplinary; and, as a course of mental gymnastics, are in the highest degree salutary, inasmuch as they call into action more varied intellectual qualities than any mathematical exercise possibly can. Mathematical reasoning is not the reasoning of common life. The reasonings of

Burke, and the plots and characters of Shakspeare, do most intimately concern human nature in its most common and in its most striking manifestations.

But, it will be asked, where shall we find time for this course of classical study? Our schools are already crowded to excess with different branches, and we cannot find time for more. I answer, the time that is devoted to reading in all our schools is amply sufficient. Throw aside your reading-books and take our English authors, in their native integrity and unmutilated strength. How far must any collection of extracts fall in effect below the entire works from which they are taken. And how absurd, to expect a scholar to read an author intelligently and impressively, when, from the very nature of the case, he cannot understand him. Take, as an illustration, the "Village Clergyman" of Goldsmith. This striking portrait is found in many of our readingbooks, and, by continual repetition and drilling, the scholar is galvanized into a kind of elocutionary pantomime which is dignified by the name of reading. But how little does he realize that in this description are embalmed the choicest memories of a father, a brother, and an uncle, and that the poet himself undoubtedly is the original of the "ruined spendthrift now no longer proud," who "claimed kindred" at the hospitable fireside of the venerable clergyman," and had his claims allowed"; that the "broken soldier" is none other than the village schoolmaster, who had spent the best portion of his life in the wars on the continent, and had retired to

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