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.

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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

it been written entirely by Shakspeares and Miltons. In our vernacular tongue, for example, we have some of the happiest, if not the highest, efforts of genius, in forms suited to every age and capacity. For, I think, we must denominate those works as truly classical, which, for successive generations. have had a controlling and elevating influence, both as respects style and sentiment, upon a nation's character. The range of classical reading in our own vernacular is sufficiently extended to meet the demands of all grades of our public schools. No child can be found in an American school-room so young as to be beneath the influence which may be derived from some of the great masters of language and thought. The child who is taught, and taught rightly, a hymn of Mrs. Barbauld or Dr. Watts, becomes as really a classical scholar as he who has studied all the literature which was produced in the city of Minerva. Yes, gentlemen, the child of seven or ten years that can repeat understandingly the first of Watts's Moral Songs:

"I sing the almighty power of God

Which made the mountains rise;
That spread the flowing seas abroad,
And built the lofty skies,"

has already lisped in loftier strains than if he were able to declare all the terrible consequences of the wrath of Achilles, or the various fortunes of the hero who, as the victim of fate, first came to Italy and the Lavinian shores.

I am quite conscious that in these remarks I am

indulging in what, perhaps, many will consider an unauthorized license, in speaking of Classical Studies as suited to the capacities of our lowest grades of schools. But, as I believe, I have Plato on my side, and as I suppose the culture of which I speak to be the peculiar property of no one dialect or language, but to be manifested in a greater or less degree in all" languages which Babel cleft the world into," I will venture to proceed to a more systematic discussion of my subject, premising only what all must, on a little reflection, regard as but a very simple postulate, and what I have already stated less concisely, that a Classical Literature is, to say the least, the heritage of the Englishman, the Frenchman, and the German, no less than it was of the Athenian, and the Roman; and that the refinement and elevation of mind which result from classical study and classical training, may be shared by those to whom the letters of Cadmus and the arrow-headed characters of the Birs Nemroud, are alike barbarian and unintelligible.

And, first of all, let me say that I by no means intend to speak lightly of the study of the Greek and Roman Classics. As a means of human culture, taken in their due proportion, they must "stand acknowledged while the world shall stand," as among the most effectual instruments of human improvement. We see in them, without doubt, the master-pieces of unaided human genius. But we honor them most when we give them their true position, and never do we so abuse them, as when we claim for them a position which they never

would have claimed for themselves, by holding them up as the ends, and not as the means, of our improvement. The Classics were made for man, and

not man for the Classics.

I doubt if the history of the world presents to us a more melancholy waste of talent, than is found in the exclusive devotion to classical studies which has prevailed in some nations and at some periods. Take, for example, the course which has been quite extensively pursued in the great public schools of England. The only parallel that occurs to me, is that of which we read in sacred history, of the Jews, and some of their barbarian neighbors, causing their children to pass through fire to Moloch. The consequences of this classical idolatry, it will readily occur to you, have been most disastrous to the very pursuits which it was intended to promote. The world is comparatively little indebted, for its present classical knowledge, to the universities and schools which have sprung up upon the princely foundations of Englishmen. In England, it is true, in the absence of anything better, they have furnished the means of education to the higher classes of society. And it must be confessed that they have not succeeded in spoiling all the minds which they have undertaken to cultivate, that, in spite of a course of training, both obsolete and absurd, there have been found a stubborn strength and hardihood in the national character, which have not only withstood the legitimate tendencies of the system, but have risen above it, in some instances, to a truly high and generous culture.

The classical education of England has not only been exclusive, but narrow; it has not only neglected almost all other means of improvement, but has confined itself to those departments of classical study which have the least effect in enlarging and strengthening the mind. It has consisted in studying the literatures of two of the great nations of antiquity in their dead letter, and not in their living spirit,in their syntactical and prosodial laws, and not as the exponents and representatives of two great experiments in human civilization. It has, consequently, led to comparatively few philosophical results, as regards the laws of language; and if, in the civil and political history of Greece and Rome, it has been attended with better results, they are due, not to the universities nor to the grammar schools, but to the freedom and peculiar character of the British constitution. The truth of this view of English scholarship is seen, I think, by comparing it with the more liberal training in the German, and, to some extent, in the Scotch schools; and still more clearly by comparing the results attained under the old regime of Winchester, Harrow, and Eton, with the vastly superior intellectual and moral vigor attained in the improved methods adopted at Rugby, and perhaps at some of the other English schools. In one of the testimonials submitted to the trustees of Rugby school, previous to the appointment of Dr. Arnold to the mastership of that institution, it was predicted that, if elected to that office, he would change the character of education throughout the public schools of England.