adducing cases of female scholarship, we have shown that females are at least capable of becoming learned in the ultimate degree, but we have not meant to recommend a classical education to our country women. The German professor, Meiners, well observes, that in the sixteenth, and first half of the seventeenth centuries, the modern languages were unpolished, and had produced very few masterpieces; and therefore, the women of genius, who were desirous of cultivating their understandings and their hearts, were obliged to learn the ancient languages, in whose works alone they could find the treasures of useful and ornamental knowledge. This necessity has disappeared; the literature of each of the modern tongues, is sufficiently refined and comprehensive. Our state of society, and the offices of an American wife and mother, are, moreover, such, that the time requisite for the proper acquisition of the Greek and Latin, cannot be afforded, and the application, or general usefulness of this knowledge, would be much more limited than it is in Europe. SUMMER, SPRING, AND AUTUMN. BY FREDERICK S. ECKARD. ONE bright autumnal day, a weak old man "Oh, parent earth! when first the laughing spring Came with her sweet-toned winds and rosy hours, And bade the sky a golden mantle fling, To cheer the hills, and brightening world of flowers, "In that pure season, I, thy fervent child, "Well I remember the clear dream which rose, "Years cast their shadow o'er me, and once more, My thanks for ripen'd soul and strength to pour, "Yet death had crossed my path; the fragile flowers, "And other wreaths enchain'd me; I had led But that long since hath past, and now I stand "Earth, take thy kindred dust, for years have laid The old man's voice was hush'd-it seem'd that sleep, THE FINE ARTS. BY JOSEPH HOPKINSON. IN recommending to our fellow-citizens the cultivation of a general taste in the fine arts, and a liberal attention to every institution calculated to promote it, we should not overlook some of its most interesting uses to society. Every man who is a member of that society and has influence and power in it, either by his rank, his education, or his wealth, has a deep interest, perhaps a serious duty, to attend to on this subject. It is no new doctrine to assert that the fine arts are of great importance to the morals of the community. Their influence, in this respect, may reach where the voice of the preacher is never heard, and the lectures of the moralist never read. By providing an innocent, an interesting, and dignified source of pleasure, they not only draw the mind from gross and vulgar gratifications; but finally so entirely absorb and purify it; so quicken its sensibility and refine its taste, that pleasures more gross lose their attractions and become disgusting. Men, whose inclination and fortune withdraw them from scenes of active and necessary business, still require occupation and amusement. The mind that is stagnant loses its vital principle, and sinks either into a distressing lethargy, or low and corrupting vices. What a resource, what a refuge is opened to such men in the fascinating gardens of Taste. "Thou mak'st all nature beauty to his eye, Such are the pleasures of a mind purified by virtue, and cultivated by taste. Can a being capable of such sublime contemplations, and commanding such high sources of pleasure, drop from its dignity into some sink of vice, or be lost in the mazes of sensual dissipation ? When speaking of the morality of the fine arts, I should be unpardonable were I not to fortify myself with the sentiments of the elegant and philosophical critic, Lord Kaims. He remarks that the pleasures of the ear and eye" approach the purely mental, without exhausting the spirits; and exceed the purely sensual, without the danger of satiety."-That they have "a natural aptitude to draw us from immoderate gratifications of sensual appetite," and that the Author of our nature has thus qualified us to rise, by gentle steps, "from the most groveling corporeal pleasures, for which only the mind is fitted in the beginning of life, to those refined and sublime pleasures which are suited to maturity;" and these refined pleasures of sense lead "to the exalted pleasures of morality and religion." We stand, therefore, says this eloquent writer "engaged in honour, as well as interest, to second the purposes of Nature, by cultivating the plea |