studies are pursued jointly with the study of classical Eiterature. The notion of any hostility, therefore, between the philological researches of the Greek and Latin literator on the one hand, and the severe meditations on the other, of the geometrician and the inventive analyst-such a hostility as could make it necessary to weigh the one against the other - is, in practice, found to be imaginary. No comparative estimate, then, being called for, we may confine ourselves to a simpler and less invidious appreciation of classical erudition upon the footing of its absolute pretensions.

Perhaps a judicious pleading on this subject would pursue something of the following outline:

First. It is undeniable that the progress of sacred literature is dependent upon that of profane. The vast advances made in Biblical knowledge, and in other parts of divinity, since the era of the Reformation, are due, in a great proportion, to the general prosecution of classical learning. It is in vain to attempt a distinction between the useful parts of this learning and the ornamental: All are useful, all are necessary. The most showy and exquisite refinements in the doctrine of Greek melic metre, even where they do not directly avail us in expelling anomalies of syntax or of idiom from embarrassed passages, and thus harmonizing our knowledge of this wonderful language, yet offer a great indirect benefit: they exalt the standard of attainment, by increasing its difficulty and its compass; and a prize placed even at an elevation useless for itself, becomes serviceable as a guarantee that all lower heights must have been previously traversed.

Secondly. The general effect upon the character of young men from a classical education, is pretty much like that which is sought for in travelling; more unequivocally even than that, coming at the age which is best fitted for receiving deep impressions, it liberalizes the mind. This effect is derived in part from the ennobling tone of sentiment which presides throughout the great orators, historians, and littérateurs of antiquity ; and in part it is derived from the vast difference in temper and spirit between the modern (or Christian) style of thinking, and that which prevailed under a Pagan religion, connected, in its brightest periods, with republican institutions. The mean impression from home-keeping, and the contracted views of a mere personal experience, are thus, as much as by any other conceivable means, broken and defeated. Edmund Burke has noticed the illiberal air which is communicated to the mind by an education exclusively scientific, even where it is more radical and profound than it is likely to be under those theories which reject classical erudition. The sentiments which distinguish a gentleman receive no aid from any attainments in science; but it is certain, that familiarity with the classics, and the noble direction which they are fitted to impress upon the thoughts and aspirations, do eminently fall in with the few other chivalrous sources of feeling that survive at this day. It is not improbable, also, that a reflection upon the 'uselessness' of such studies, according to the estimate of coarse Utilitarians - that is, their inapplicability to any object of mercenary or mechanic science, co-operates with their more direct influences in elevating the taste. Thence, we may explain the reason of the universal hatred amongst

plebeian and coarse-minded Jacobins to studies and institutions which point in this direction. They hate the classics for the same reason that they hate the manners of chivalry, or the characteristic distinctions of a gentleman.

Thirdly. A sentiment of just respect belongs to the classical scholar, if it were only for the numerical extent of the items which compose the great total of his knowledge. In separate importance, the acquisitions of the mathematician transcend his: each several proposition in that region of knowledge has its distinct value and dignity. But in the researches of the scholar, more truly than in any other whatsoever, the details are infinite. And for this infinity of acts, on the parts of the understanding and the memory, if otherwise even less important, he has a special claim upon our consideration.

Fourthly. The difficulty, as derived from peculiar idiom and construction, of mastering the two classical languages of antiquity, more especially the Greek, is in itself a test of very unusual talent. Modern languages are learned inevitably by simple efforts of memory. And, if the learner has the benefit of a rational plan of tuition, viz. the tuition of circumstances, which oblige him to speak the language, and to hear it spoken, for all purposes of daily life, there is perhaps no living idiom in Europe which would not be mastered in three months. Certainly, there is none which presupposes any peculiar talent, as a conditio sine qua non for its attainment. Greek does; and we affirm peremptorily, that none but a man of singular talent can attain (what, after all, goes but a small way in the accomplishments of a scholar) the power of

reading Greek fluently at sight. The difficulty lies in two points: First, in the peculiar perplexities of the Greek construction; and, secondly, in the continual inadequation (to use a logical term) of Greek and modern terms; a circumstance which makes literal translation impossible, and reduces the translator to a continued effort of compensation. Upon a proper occasion, it would be easy to illustrate this point. Meantime the fact must strike everybody, be the explanation what it may, that very few persons ever do arrive at any tolerable skill in the Greek language. After seven years' application to it, most people are still alarmed at a sudden summons to translate a Greek quotation; it is even ill-bred to ask for such a thing; and we may appeal to the candor of those even who, upon a case of necessity, are able to do the trick,' whether, in reading a Greek book of history for their own private amusement, (Herodian for example,) they do not court the assistance of the Latin version at the side. Greek rarely becomes as familiar as Latin. And, as the modes of teaching them are pretty much the the same, there is no way of explaining this but by supposing a difficulty sui generis in the Greek language, and a talent sui generis for contending with it. Upon some such line of argument as we have here sketched illustrating the claims of the classical student according to the several grounds now alleged, viz. the difficulty of his attainments in any exquisite form, their vast extent, their advantageous tendency for impressing an elevated tone upon the youthful mind; and, above all, their connection with the maintenance of that 'strong book-mindedness,' and massy erudition, which are the buttresses of a reformed

church, and which failing (if they ever should fail), will leave it open to thousands of factious schisms, and finally even to destructive heresies possibly a fair pleader might make out a case, stronger than a modern education-monger could retort, for the scholar, technically so called, meaning the man who has surrendered his days and nights to Greek, Latin, and the Biblical languages.

Such a scholar, and modelled upon the most brilliant conception of his order, was Bentley. Wisely concentrating his exertions, under a conviction, that no length of life or reach of faculties was sufficient to exhaust that single department which he cultivated, he does not appear to have carried his studies, in any instance, beyond it. Whatsoever more he knew, he knew in a popular way; and doubtless for much of that knowledge he was indebted to conversation. Carried by his rank and appointments (and, from a very early age, by the favor of his patron, Bishop Stillingfleet) into the best society, with so much shrewd sense, and so powerful a memory, he could not but bear away with him a large body of that miscellaneous knowledge which floats upon the surface of social intercourse. He was deficient, therefore, in no information which naturally belongs to an English gentleman. But the whole of it, if we except, perhaps, that acquaintance with the English law, and the forms of its courts, which circumstances obliged him to cultivate, was obtained in his hours of convivial relaxation; and rarely indeed at the sacrifice of a single hour, which, in the distribution of his time, he had allotted to the one sole vocation of his life the literature of classical antiquity. How much he ac