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buried in the ocean,-until it has been embodied in language, and made visible by signs, or audible by sounds. And however it may be rarely true that the man of accurate thought is incapable, because he has not studied language, of accurate expression, it is universally true that he who has greatly studied accuracy of expression, words, their arrangement, force, and harmony, in any language, dead or living, has also greatly attained towards accuracy of thought, as well as propriety and energy of speech. For divers philosophers hold,' says Shakspeare, clothing philosophy in the mantle of the Muse, 'that the lip is parcel of the mind.'

"A waste of life! Why, what is man, his pursuits, his works, his monuments,, that these niceties of language, the weight of words, and the value of sounds should be deemed unworthy of his immortal nature? He is fled like a shadow. The wealth which he toiled for is squandered by other hands. The lands which he cultivated are waste. That hearth-stone on which he garnered up the affections of his own home is sunk into the elements. The very marble, which his children raised over his ashes for a memorial unto eternity, is scattered to the winds of heaven. His sons, his kindred, his name, his race, his nation, all their mighty works, their magnificent monuments, their imperial cities, are vanished like a mist, and swept out of the memory of man. Yet the very word that he spoke,-that little winged word,—a breath, a vapor, gone as it was uttered, clothing a new and noble thought, embodying one spark of heaven's own fire, formed into letters, traced in hairy lines upon a deaf, enrolled, copied, printed, multiplied and multiplied, spreads over the whole earth; is heard among all tongues and nations; descends through all posterity;. and lives for ever, immortal as his own soul. Homer and ye sacred prophets, attest this truth!" pp. 23—26.

We have quoted this eloquent passage at length, because it expresses our own opinions with singular force and felicity, and because we are not unwilling to contrast the glowing, yet highly chastened diction of Mr. Gardiner, with the puerilities and common-places of such fourth form eloquence as the following; be-lieving, as we do, that the style of each orator is a natural and necessary result of the system he advocates, and the studies he recommends.

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Man, the noblest work of God in this lower world, walks abroad thro' its labyrinths of grandeur and beauty, amid countless manifestations of creativ power and providential wisdom. He acknowleges in all that he beholds, the might which calld them into being; the skill which perfected the harmony of the parts; and the benevolence which consecrated all to the glory of God, and the welfare of his fellow creatures. He stands entranced on the peak of Etna, or Teneriffe, or Montserrat, and looks down upon the far distant ocean, silent to his ear and tranquil to his eye, amidst the rushing of tempestuous winds, and the fierce conflict of stormy billows. He sits enraptur'd on the mountain summit, and beholds, as far as the eye can reach, a forest robe, flowing in all the varietys of graceful undulation, over declivity after declivity, as tho' the fabulous river of the sky's were pouring its azure waves o'er all the landskip. He hangs over the precipice and gazes with awful delight on the savage glen, rent open as it were by the earthquake, and black with lightningshatterd rocks; its only music the echoing thunder, the scream of the lonely eagle, and the tumultuous waters of the mountain torrent. He reclines in pensiv mood on the hill top, and sees around and beneath him, all the luxuriant beautys of field and meadow, of olivyard and vinyard, of wandering stream and grove-encircled lake. He descends to the plain, and amidst waving harvests, verdant avenues and luxuriant orchards, sees between garden and grassplat, the farm house embosomd in copswood or "tall ancestral trees." He walks thro' the vally, fenced in by barrier cliffs, to contemplate with mild enthusiasm its scenes of pastoral beauty, the cottage and its blossomd arbor, the shepherd and his flock, the clump of oaks, or the solitary willow. He enters the cavern, buryd far beneath the surface, and is struck with amazement at the grandeur and magnificence of a subterranean palace, hewn out as it were by the power of the Genii, and decorated by the taste of Armida, or of the Queen of the Fairys." Grimké, pp. 5, 6.

The

School for Orators" itself cannot produce a passage more exquisitely inflated.

We trust we have made sufficiently apparent the necessity of an early acquaintance with the classical tongues, considered merely as languages, and as an exercise of the mind, preparatory to a more intellectual progress afterwards. We are prepared now to go farther, and to maintain that the merit and peculiar character of their literature, entitle them, in the eyes of philosophy, to all the attention they receive at our schools and colleges. Subjected to the rules of criticism, that literature cannot be denied to contain the model of most that is graceful and true in modern letters. Tried by a severity of taste, and an accuracy of ear, which no recent nation has attempted to parallel, its poetry breathes of the very essence of harmony and strength, conveying sentiments at once elegant and just, in forcible and appropriate numbers. Its terse and dignified prose, characterized by that best definition of a good style, "proper words in proper places," to rival which, modern historians and critics have thought it their highest praise, speaks to the intellect seriously, earnestly, and effectively, like venerable age enforcing the maxims of wisdom. But aside from mere style, most of the compositions of the ancients, which have come down to us, must be included in that category so graphically characterized in Professor Sedgwick's Discourse, as the productions of men who seem

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-Invested, like the prophet of cld, with a heavenly mantle, and to speak with the voice of inspiration. Those that have appeared after them are but attendants in their train-scem born only to revolve about them, warmed by their heat, and shining by their reflected glory. Their works derive not their strength from momentary passions or local associations, but speak to feelings common to mankind, and reach the innermost movements of the soul; and hence it is that they have an immortal spirit, which carries them safe through the wreck of empires and the changes of opinion.

"Works like these are formed by no rule, but become a model and a rule to other men. Few, however, among us, are permitted to show this high excellence. Ordinary minds must be content to learn by rule; and every good system of teaching must have reference to the many and not to the few. But surely it is our glorious privilege to follow the track of those who have adorned the history of mankind to feel as they have felt-to think as they have thought—and to draw from the living fountain of their genius. Wonderful and mysterious is the intellectual communion we hold with them! Visions of imagination, starting from their souls, as if struck out by creative power, are turned into words, and fixed in the glowing forms of language: and, after a time, the outward signs of thought pass before our sense, and by a law of our being not under our control, kindle within us the very fire which (it may be thousands of years ago) warmed the bosom of the orator or the poet-so that once again, for a moment, he seems, in word and feeling, to have a living presence within ourselves." pp. 34, 35.

We e earnestly entreat the student of classical literature to remember, that the mechanical drudgery of his task was, or should have been accomplished, when he left the school-room; that it is not to be the business of his youth merely to adjust the trammels of prosody, to measure iambics, or to manufacture trochees. That the purpose of his advanced pursuit is not, in the phrase of Rol

lin, to crucify the intellect with themes," balancing the harmony, and determining the position of words, whose signification and force frequently depend upon a pronunciation, of which the moderns have lost the very shadow. That it is not, in the language of a greater than Rollin, "to learn a few words with lamentable construction," to load the memory with barren sounds, and to bear about a fardel of disjointed scraps, the offal of an index. He has a nobler vocation, for in the ancients he is to read the history of man, his passions, his aims, his end, in their primeval language. He is to study the future in the past. To learn those eternal laws, by which our nature, in its goodlier as well as baser characteristics, is identified. To feel the value and honour of our being, coupled as it is with the soul and spirit of antiquity. To enter upon a pursuit by which he may trace up all the uninspired ethics of the modern world to their early sources, and uncover the old fountains of the fertilizing Nile. To find whence the tongue we speak derived its polish and cadence, whence its force and energy. To seize the clue which makes the civilized earth as a single nation, assimilating its dissonant languages, and from the jargon of a thousand dialects, reproducing almost in elemental beauty,

"The Phenix daughters of the vanquisht old."

Nor is this all-he may gather from the same source, other and not less important matters. He may follow the progress of the social system, from the patriarchal union of priest and king, through the multiplied phases of government, up to the perfection of a polished democracy, thence down the circle, till despotism severed the cord, and society returned to its elements. He may learn the right use of the arts in their humanizing and enlightening influences, and the true end of philosophy, in inciting to worthy actions. And finally, he may well and worthily appreciate the great truth, that as with individuals so with nations, there is no true greatness, and no enduring name, without a union of knowledge with virtue.

And do we stand upon such vantage-ground over the whole earth, that we can forego this panoply, and extinguish the light by which all other nations have walked? It is the very prescription of an acute philosopher to make a despotism. "Destroy the ancient Greek and Latin authors," says Hobbes, "if you aim at absolute dominion, because if those are read, principles of liberty, and just sentiments of the dignity and rights of mankind, must be imbibed." Slaves only are always and necessarily ignorant. The Turk, on the very site of Byzantium, is the only inhabitant of Europe who preserves no records of the Roman name. They widely and vehemently err, who suppose that they can safely omit

* Milton: Tractate of Education.

a constant recurrence to original principles, or allow the sanctions and evidence of their truth to perish from the national remembrance. One step in silence over a prostrate right, is a stride towards the ruin of the republic. Rather than suffer it, we would read the history of the ancient commonwealths from the steepletops, and gather disciples from the highways and hedges, to teach them, at the general cost, the lessons and the warnings of antiquity.

The influence of any system of education may be fairly tested by the productions of the intellect of the nation which adopts it. We mean the average production, for by that we must judge of the standard of attainment. Great minds are self-educated. The state of public taste too furnishes a means of measuring the advancement of literature, for they uniformly march in company. In the United States, instruction, accurate, elegant instruction, although, as we believe, much above Mr. Grimké's standard, is far below Mr. Gardiner's, and we feel ready to join the latter gentleman in the opinions expressed in the following passage.

"I complain;-I complain, that the spirit of the age, and, I fear, the spirit of our government, and, I am sure, the present habits and impulses of society among us, notwithstanding the fine things which have been said of it (partly by ourselves), are adverse to the growth and cultivation of the more delicate and finer species of literature. I complain especially, that classical literature is little cultivated; less cultivated than it was; not absolutely, perhaps, but compared with the advancement of other things; it is not loved, it is not followed, as it used to be;-nay, I fear that at this moment it is barely in repute among us. I complain that education is not what it should be in this respect, even here in the midst of the flourishing schools of New England (in general our just boast), and in this enlightened age, which so vaunteth itself beyond its predecessors. And I charge you who have any lingering love of classical literature, all who regard the great common cause of letters, all who have at heart the real welfare and substantial reputation of our country, I charge you all, as you love that country and her institutions, and those children whom you hope shall inherit them, that you look carefully and candidly at the actual condition and prospects of our literary affairs. Grave questions are involved. Let them be well weighed." p. 3.

Let us examine for an instant, the condition of our literature, in reference to this depressed state of liberal education. And first, our newspapers are not all they should be, considered as the sources whence a large mass of the American people derive their most important political knowledge. We speak not now of the moral qualities of their conductors. They are like other men, not more corrupt, perhaps not more servile, and though occasionally one of them may seem to apostrophize power in the language of Cæsar's parasite;

"Dum voce tuæ potuere juvari

Cæsar, ait, partes, quamvis nolente Senatu

Traximus imperium tunc, cum mihi Rostra tenere

Jus erat, et dubios in te transferre Quirites,”

yet, on the other hand, the press can exhibit many noble instances of fearless disregard of interest, and magnanimous devotion to the true welfare of the nation.

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But it is in a literary, as well as in a moral and political point of view, that the conductors of newspapers should remember the dignity of their vocation. They are, each in his sphere, teachers of important matters, not mere vehicles by which events are communicated to their readers. Wholly unshackled and untaxed, their influence reaches the remotest confines of our population, and fastens itself upon the national mind with a tenacity not to be shaken off. It affects, and sometimes almost creates the public taste-at all events it does much to direct it. In this view, the standard of the newspaper press is not sufficiently high, and its tendencies, though on the whole beneficial, might be made more propitious to the advancement of the country, not only in important knowledge, but in generous, elevated and philanthropic sentiment, and useful pursuit. Although some of its members are accomplished men, there is a want of power, of matured and cultivated ability, in the profession, (may we not say it of other branches of pursuit, to the successful exercise of which great mental discipline is a pre-requisite?) which leaves it lower in the scale of occupation than it ought to be. Our newspapers, for the most part, cannot be advantageously compared with those of France or England. Their tone is lower, and the circle of their speculations more contracted. We know that editors are worse paid than the members of any other profession. We are aware of the debasing tendencies of a protracted political contest, and that in the fury of the encounter, men stop not to choose their weapons. But even a poisoned shaft may be polished. Truth always gains by an alliance with decency, and even falsehood loses some of its ignominy when disguised in the garb of honesty. It is the part of liberal learning to soften the rancour of the passions, as much as it is its province to enlarge the faculties and elevate the moral sense. "Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros." A correct taste, and a cultivated understanding, for the most part, accompany and sustain each other. In the opinion of Hume, they are never met with but in combination. To the political press we still look with hope (for we are yet young as a nation,) for the elevation and improvement of our extended country-but it is to the press under the influence of enlarged views, a purified taste, and that generous education which humanizes while it enlightens, and which, seconding the influence of free institutions, shall produce among the people a greater aptitude for political instruction, a higher standard of thought, and a broader basis of morals.

The miscellaneous literature of the United States, is much in want of a similar infusion of sound and invigorating learning. The national mind is active and inquiring, and exhibits, from time to time, products honourable to itself and advantageous to the country. In all that relates especially to ourselves, there is no reason to apprehend a deficiency of accurate and philosophical

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