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biblical losses of Alexandria being replaced by the cacoethes of the modern Hellenists, the question of Greek versus German may still lie open, at least till the next Leipsic Fair. Much may be hoped from the loquacity and esuriency of the Athenian rhetoricians, in spite of the long-winded voluminousness of German commentators, and we may yet hope to see our critics, even judging by tale and weight, assign the prize to the Greeks.

Indeed the Reviewer himself seems to have some touch of feeling towards the friends of his youth, and spite of all fundamental objections, drops iron tears over the necessity of abandoning them. "Demosthenes and Cicero: these are impressive terms. Isocrates: we will say nothing of him. But there were great men in those days; and we hope there have been great men in the present degenerate ones. There were great orators when there were great objects, great minds, great labors, with, what is not unimportant, hearers. Are we to believe that, if the names of Cicero and Demosthenes had never been heard, there would not be, or might not have been, or will not be, great orators now? Of the two great ends of oratory, to convince the reason and to influence the feelings, what are the debts due to the former orators? It is from his own soul that man speaks oratory, as from his own soul he writes poetry. He to whom nature has given voice, fluency, and grace, and to whom practice has given language-his own language, not the language of Greece and Rome-he to whom nature has granted the logical faculty, the mind that grasps rapidly and certainly the most remote as the nearest relations, which analyses, arranges, and condenses, and he to whom the study, not of two dead languages, but of all the infinite knowlege of modern days, has furnished materials, that man is the orator." Page 161. Why this is the most admirable fooling!

"It is from his own soul that man writes poetry." Yes, such poetry as Captain M'Intyre ascribes to the Celtic bard of the barearmed Fenians. Such poetry as Burns or Bloomfield would have written if they had never read a line of Dryden and Pope. Such poetry as Pope and Dryden would have written, if they had never read Homer and Virgil, (albeit, the Reviewer calls them, "stumblingblocks and trammels, enchaining free and bold spirits, and produ cing an endless herd of insipid imitators.") Page 161. Which imitators would, by the way, have been equally insipid, whether they had been imitators or not; as insipid, if they had written original radical articles, though not so harmless, as they are "with their Jupiters, and Venuses, and Daphnes."

"It is from his own soul that man speaks oratory!" What a useless process then does Cicero recommend to the tyro in oratory, in those magnificent passages in his De Oratore! beginning, "Sed

nimirum majus est hoc quiddam, quam homines opinantur et pluribus ex artibus studiisque collectum." De Oratore, lib. i. sect. 5 & 6.

"He to whom nature has given voice, fluency, and grace!" Yes, and he to whom nature has given a fiddle, and has not forgotten to teach him the art of playing on it, for this may chance to be of use, will make it discourse most eloquent music. What nonsense have the metaphysicians talked about the tabula rasa of the uncultivated mind ! and how mistaken was the modesty of that Hibernian, who even went so far as to doubt his power of playing on a fiddle, because, forsooth, he had never tried! "With the voice, fluency, and grace of nature," he might at least have struck up some vocal Dolce Concento, if he were so weakly modest as to doubt his power of fiddling.

"He to whom nature has given the logical faculty, the mind that grasps rapidly and certainly the most remote as the nearest relations, which analyses, arranges, and condenses!" Why this is what a Frenchman might call "a très bon naturel," or, as old Aristotle expressed it some ages ago, (for there is nothing new under the sun, this is τελεια και ἀληθινη εὐφυΐα. In fact, had this child of nature been only accommodated with the addition of a wig and a lawyer's gown, he would have stalked forth like Minerva, a ready. built pleader, and might have snapped his fingers at Jeremy Bentham's logic, and answered all his subtleties in the words of Pindar: σοφος ὁ πολ

λα είδως φυμ
Μαθοντες δε λαβροι
Παγγλωσία, κορακες ὡς
Ακραντα γαρυεμεν
Διος προς όρνιχα θείον.

But stay a moment-after all this florish about nature, a little corner, a very little one, is left for discipline, "and he to whom the study," &c. The leg of mutton may be put into the soup which was to have been made from a decoction of stones-because it will do no harm. Truly, many will be of the same opinion. But let them beware of supposing that this soupe au naturel would admit of the leg of any other animal. Mutton, indeed, may do no harm-but beef l-mention it not! Not the study of two dead languages, but of all the infinite knowlege of modern days." "All an infinite," is somewhat beyond ordinary metaphysics to comprehend; for, with the ancient school-men, many will be satisfied with half, some indeed, even with a quarter of an "infinite." But these are evidently not men of a comprehensive mind. Knowlege of things in general-general knowlege-(as an Oxonian very

properly made answer to the silly question of a wise woman who asked him what was studied in Oxford,) is this "all the infinite knowlege ?"

Be this as it may, we are to rest satisfied with the imitating the oratory of Sir James Scarlet and of Mr. Brougham (we speak of them in all honor), when we might take Demosthenes and Cicero for our models, herein acting on the firmly-established and well-known axiom, always to take the worse of two things. Nay, we are to exercise ourselves in repeating their speeches, in opposition to another absurd remark of Cicero :

Sed post animadverti, hoc esse in hoc vitii, quod ea verba quæ maxime cujusque rei propria quæque essent ornatissima atque optima, occupasset aut Ennius, si ad ejus versus me exercerem, aut Gracchus, si ejus orationem mihi forte proposuissem: ita, si iisdem verbis uterer, nihil prodesse: si aliis, etiam obesse, cum minus idoneis uti consues cerem. Postea mihi placuit eoque sum usus adolescens, ut summorum oratorum Græcas orationes explicarem: quibus lectis hoc assequebar, ut, cum ea, quæ legerem Græce, Latine redderem, non solum optimis verbis uterer, et tamen usitatis, sed etiam exprimerem quædam verba imitando: quæ nova nostris essent dummodo essent idonea. De Oratore, lib. i. sect. 34.

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Having settled the literary education of his Utopia, the Reviewer next provides for the sciences. "If the present world of Europe is a world of literature, it is also a world of science and art. Whatever remoter debts it may have to the former, it is to the two latter that it looks immediately for its comforts, all its wealth, and all its power. Directly and immediately we have risen to the station which we occupy not by literature, not by the knowlege of extinct languages, but by the sciences of politics, of law, of public economy, of commerce, of mathematics; by astronomy, by chemistry, by mechanics, by natural history. It is by these that we are destined to rise yet higher. These constitute the business of society, and in these ought we to seek for the objects of education." (p. 151.) That is, our universal youth should cease to waste their time in learning arithmetic, Euclid, algebra, grammar, logic, rhetoric, morals, &c., and should be early instructed in the art of swallowing whole treatises on the mechanique celeste and political economy, with a few digests of law and a small number of universal cambists as a wholesome condiment. If this be not the Reviewer's meaning, it is too deep for an ordinary apprehension. It would be an unchristian supposition, to think that he requires his pupil to obtain the knowlege taught by the system he proposes, as well as by that now established, in the same space of time. The fundamental engine would certainly be worn out in the attempt. Indeed, if it were possible to unite the two, it is

clear that the objects of the present system must be taught before his addenda, because it would be useless to add the foundations after the roof was laid. This would reduce his objections to a mere question of time, altogether unworthy of a Philosopher who is changing the fundamental machinery of education, not merely finding fault with the drivers or oiling the wheels. In truth the Reviewer has, what appears to him at least, a nobler object. He proposes neither more nor less than forthwith to make all our boys acquainted with the business of the world-to start where the present system ends-in a word, to make practical men in pin-a-fores. Now, with all due respect for the Reviewer and his plans, he may be asked whether it is ever quite safe to descend into the arena before we have had thorough practice in the school. The objectors to philological pursuits talk of the education of young men in the higher ranks of society, as if it were necessary to hurry them through a course of study confined to the mere business of life, that they may be enabled to get their bread at an early age; and, on the other hand, they do not attach a sufficient importance to the danger which must attend a premature attempt to instruct them in the great interests of life. Let us see how this could be managed in reference to the political sciences. Can the student enter on inquiries, which in some degree constitute him a judge of the institutions, laws, and policy of his country, with any wellfounded hope of benefit to himself and others, or without just fear of harm to both, before his mind has been well exercised in the labor of acute and diligent investigation; before he has acquired a power of detecting the fallacies of the sophist, and the arts of the rhetorician; before history has taught him to be as much on his guard against the enthusiasm of innovation, as against the prejudice of bigotry; in a word, before his powers have been cultivated by a wide range of literature? The very eagerness with which he will listen to political speculations, is not the least sure test of his unfitness for them, and of the probability that the impassioned hearer will become the vehement disputer and the reckless agitator in matters which ought to be handled with the greatest moderation. Only let the effrænati sibique præfidentes be well exercised in the gyrus rationis et doctrinæ, which our present discipline affords; let them inform their minds on the history and philosophy, the logic and the rhetoric, the oratory and the poetry, of Greece and Rome, and they will be prepared for the study of politics, and for the application of that science to the institutions, laws, and policy, of their own country. Where so much is at stake, it may be questioned whether the apathy of ignorance is not even less to be deprecated, at least in a country which stands in need of no political hurricane to clear its atmosphere, than the feverish excitement of premature knowlege

whether, in short, the brilliant display of political talents in a youthful senator, is not one of the very worst omens for the sound policy of his country. The words of Cicero are a fortiore applicable to a greater evil than he was contemplating when he wrote them. Ante implicatur aliquo certo genere cursuque vivendi, quam potuit, quid optimum esset, judicare.

I will not enlarge on a topic of very inferior importance to that of the expediency of what is called a classical education; but surely there must be little liberal curiosity in that mind, which, having the means of making itself familiarly acquainted with the opinions, feelings, and circumstances, in a word, with the literature of two great people long descended into the grave of nations, undervalues this wondrous privilege. Nor can we form a higher opinion of his judgment or taste, who denies the essential importance of the lessons they have left us to the feelings and interests of human life in all ages, or asserts that these are not conveyed in a style of such delicacy and force, as to afford a model in almost every kind of composition.

The danger to be dreaded, is not that we devote ourselves too ardently to classical studies, but that we stop short in the portal of learning, and rest satisfied with a school-boy scholarship vix hac ætate dignum. Even this danger is daily decreasing, as we press forward, in the train of a Blomfield and a Copleston, a Mitchell and a Whately, to seize the manner and the matter of the ancient writers; to transfuse the spirit of their impassioned poetry and nervous prose into our compositions; to catch something of that elevation of feeling and that force of intellect, which made their very errors splendid faults. Though it is no easy matter (the difficulty, however, is favorable to the cultivation of acuteness and diligence) to disinter their thoughts and feelings from the solid flood of ignorance, which the destruction of so many valuable sources of information has poured on their works, farther increased by the heavy matter accumulated through ages of dictionary makers and commentators, yet the labor of the diligent student will at length effect its object. He will again walk in their deserted streets, and almost imagine that he hears the busy hum of life around him; he will be a spectator at their gymnasia and their theatres, at their forum and their temples; will listen to their orators, senators, and philosophers; will even be present at their familiar and domestic meetings, and pierce into the penetralia of their solitary hours.

Per terram antiqua Ditis caligine mersam

Tendere et umbrarum sedes penetrare sepultas

Fert animus. Quisnam mihi dux Cylenius altum

Pandat iter?

If we would find such a guide, we must seek the Hermes of the

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