thought. And is not the "sponging of a cloth” as worthy a conception as would have arisen in the mind of many a youth who has never been taught to think beyond the formulæ of Mathematics, or the technicalities of Grammar and Geography, and yet has the reputation of having received a thoroughly practical education? Why is it that some of the brightest names in English history have been either the outcasts or the drones of the Grammar Schools, and that, too, in cases where the moral character has been irreproachable? Are we to conclude that the first class of minds cannot conform to the culture and discipline of the schools, or are we to infer rather that the culture and discipline of the schools should be more nearly conformed to the wants of the human mind? Why should not the early educational wants of such minds as those of Goldsmith and Cowper be satisfied by a course of training which is properly conformed to the natural development of any intelligent, though less gifted, mind? Such a one might, indeed, advance more rapidly, and its career might be marked by a greater degree of brilliancy, but should not the great features of its early culture be essentially the same? Must we conclude that our Shakspeares and Miltons who have so successfully addressed themselves to the human heart, and gained such absolute dominion over it; who have, in fact, reached the great end proposed in education, must we conclude that they, in leaving the beaten track of the schools, have forsaken the order of Nature, or that the schools themselves are not in harmony with Nature? We - know the plea which is so frequently urged in behalf of what is termed genius "Great wits may sometimes gloriously offend, To This degree of license, which Pope has very properly allowed in respect to the rules of criticism, is, by a very rash generalization, extended to the intellectual and moral laws which govern our race. The laws of criticism and the laws of education, so far as they have been enacted by human wisdom, may oftentimes be more honored in the breach than in the observance. Not so the laws of mind. these our educational systems should conform, and, when brought into complete harmony with them, will attain their full perfection. And, may I not say, that, when that perfection is reached, it will be found to adapt itself to the wants of every order of talent? As the laws of health and physical development are the same for the race, why should not also the laws of mental and moral health be likewise the same? Any one, I think, who has read the life of Byron attentively, must have felt the inquiry arise whether that mind was not thrown from its sphere in a great measure by a faulty and even vicious education. This it is true was, but in part, the fault of his school. But he was never in sympathy with his school studies, though ardently attached to his teachers. And where, in literary biography, can we find one, who, while neglecting his required studies, · was yet making so rapid advancement in a collateral course of reading and study? The amount of reading which he had accomplished at the age of fifteen, was far greater than is ordinarily performed in a life-time. Who can say that those authors which he studied so diligently, to the neglect of his required studies, might not have been so mingled with those studies as to render his whole course of study at once useful and agreeable? The air we breathe is composed of two elements, either of which, acting by itself, is destructive of life; and that course of study best suited to the wants of the human mind might, and undoubtedly would, combine elements which, taken separately, would only nauseate and destroy. Does not the present neglect of English classical authors amount, in reality, to a neglect of all classical study? And that, too, in schools in which the main object proposed is the study of the Classics? I would put the question to any intelligent teacher of Latin and Greek, How much of the classical spirit can a scholar imbibe from the Greek and Latin Classics during the first years of his classical course? Can the classic spirit be imparted before the language is acquired in which that spirit is breathed? Do the mere words of the classic tongues, without any knowledge of the ideas which they convey, serve as a medium by which a kind of classical inspiration is breathed into the human mind? Am I not justified in saying, that at the point of advancement at which our scholars enter college, (I fear that in the majority of cases I should come much nearer the truth were I to specify the period at which they are graduated,) it is impossible that they should have acquired that command of the Latin and Greek languages which will enable them to read Virgil as it was read and understood. in Virgil's time, or to read and understand Homer as it was understood by those who listened to the Rhapsodists? The advantage which they hope to derive is, in a great measure, in prospect; and, so far as the really classical spirit is concerned, it is completely so. But why should this period of the scholar's life be wholly excluded from the influences of the Classics in his mother tongue? While he is taught to toil arduously, and wait patiently, until he shall have purified his mental vision to gaze upon the splendors which are in store for him, why should he be denied the pleasure and the profit of listening to the same spirit in his own language? While he is cultivating one class of his faculties by studying technical grammar, while he is preparing the instruments by which he is to acquire the treasures of the Greek and Roman Classics, why should he not cultivate another class of faculties,why should he not acquire æsthetic power in reading the authors of his own vernacular? Can a doubt exist in any reflecting mind that the study of the ancient classics would thereby be very much advanced? Are we not frequently guilty of requiring of our scholars impossibilities in requiring them to translate Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Homer, Thucydides and Xenophon, when, in fact, they have no English at their command into which these authors can be properly translated? The language of these authors is not the language of undisciplined and unreflecting childhood, and it cannot be worthily translated but by one who has been conversant, to some extent at least, with the English language in its classic forms. Dr. Arnold says that "every lesson in Latin or Greek may and ought to be made a lesson in English composition; that in translating the prose writers of Greece and Rome, Herodotus should be rendered in the style and language of the Chroniclers, Thucydides in that of Bacon and Hooker, while Demosthenes, Cicero, Cæsar, and Tacitus, require a style completely modern, the perfection of the English language such as we now speak and write, varied only to suit the individual differences of the different writers, but in its range of words and in its idioms substantially the same." What better preparation for the translation of Virgil's "Pollio" could there be than a careful study of Pope's Messiah? Not because a few of the lines of the latter might be considered as a free translation of the former, but because the spirit of both is the same except so far as the light of revelation has placed the author of the Messiah in a far clearer light than that which shone upon the author of the "Pollio." How much would the interest of a scholar be increased, in reading an oration of Cicero or of Demosthenes, were he to read properly, in connection with it, a speech of Burke, of Erskine, or of Webster. By properly adapting the selections to each other, how much greater benefit would be derived |