greatly of boarding-houses; and that state of things will pretty nearly settle the whole matter of religion, art, literature, and every thing else worth settling."

"What is the tendency of these graded schools?' Most persons, who thoughtfully review from the beginning the course of their intellectual discipline and development, trace the best results of the former to the competitive strife of public schools; of the latter, to personal contact with stronger and richer natures. This is one advantage of private tutorship which enables a nature weak and immature to draw constantly from a nature mature and strong. Recall the early periods of life: omit all consideration of parental influence as well as that of external nature, and consider what teachers those were who most thoroughly and permanently promoted our growth and culture. Not those surely on whose learning we could most confidently rely; but rather those whose blended thought and feeling brooded over us until a new life was called into existence. These were our intellectual parents.”

"Now, so far as the present classification of schools and modes of teaching tend to set teacher and pupil apart― to prevent actual contact of mind with mind, and interfere with intimate personal relations, so far they are to be deplored."

"But the system is a present fact, possibly an inevitable one in the future. Then what? Counteract its tendency to produce poverty of thought, insensibility of feeling, and indifference to culture on the part of pupils. How? Let them drink deep at the 'well of English undefyled.'"

"But why English literature in preference to Greek or Roman? Because, for the purpose we should ever hold, viz: to lay the foundations on which to raise a superstructure of cultivated society -society that can appreciate literature as an Art-nothing can supersede or rival English literature; - better than all Greek or Roman thought. Milman says, 'It is a law of human genius, without exception, that no man can be a great poet, except in his native speech.' Niebuhr says, -No epic poem can be successful, if it is anything else than a living and simple narrative of a portion of something which as a whole, is the common property of a nation.' I shall not stop now to show how these great thinkers

justify me in saying, that, by the same law, it is equally true that no people ever became distinctively great, except when their culture was in the direction of the national aptitudes and characteristics or genius. The Romans tried a different course. They attempted to create a literature on Greek foundation and failed; as all such attempts must fail. Literature is a growth and not a creation. They taught Greek in their schools; their youth repaired to Athens and studied it there. Their authors modelled themselves on Greek thought and form. What was the result? Whenever they attempted the higher Greek lyric they failed. They tried the Greek drama, and could make nothing of that. They attempted the epic, and Niebuhr says, failed in that also. Finally, they cut loose from Greek thought and form, and on unoccupied ground following the national genius, they became unrivalled. 'Wherever,' says Milman, 'poetry would not disdain to become an art, wherever lofty sentiment, majestic, if elaborate verse, unrivalled vigor in condensing and expressing moral truth, dignity, strength, solidity, as it were, of thought and language, not without wonderful richness and variety, could compensate for the chastened fertility of invention, the life and distinctness of conception, and the pure and translucent language in which the Greek stands alone, there the Latin surpasses all poetry.'

"There is no controversy with those who merely claim that Greek literature, as a whole, surpasses all other literature; but controversy begins whenever its culture is claimed as the proper foundation of our own, or that from the few most deeply embued with the Greek sense of form, beauty and proportion, are to arise those who shall advance our literature to its highest excellence."

"Literature is not a concession from its Kings to their subjects, but a grant from the National wealth of thought and feeling, made current by the royal stamp of genius. Mt. Blanc reigns not by 'sovereign sway and masterdom,' nor alone; but is proclaimed monarch of mountains by according voices of attendant peers, only made potent by the uprising of a continent. All of which simply means that literature is to come from the people; not from Greek people, but from our people. We must fight it out on that line if it takes forever. We are a chip of the old block; not Greeks,

but Americans of English ancestry. Neither we, nor those from whom we are sprung, have, or ever had, anything of the Greek sense of beauty, and never shall have. English literature, when it is English and not a Greek or French imitation, represents English heart and mind and ever will do so. We know its excellences and

its defects. On the purely intellectual side, in form, proportion and æsthetic qualities, it bears no comparison with the Greek, nor even with French literature. But it is our mother milk. It is in

⚫ earnest, and so are Englishmen. Think of an English audience hissing Chatham for a mispronunciation when speaking for the life and greatness of England. It is honest. Neither its founders nor their related neighbors were liars above all men. It is genuine, but homely. Englishmen never did, and probably never will, greatly value, nor deeply feel, the classic beauty; nor beauty of any sort not connected with pathos. What Englishman regards, or if he regards, much cares for the marvellous construction of Paradise Lost, or the Greek form of Samson? It is in the old English masque that he is loved; and in his Hebrew, rather than Grecian, imagination and sublimity that he is admired."

"Neither Englishmen nor their American descendants can be very fully developed, nor deeply cultivated by the grand qualities of Greek literature. These have their place and will exert their influence. But our inspiration depends upon quite other conditions. It is the English sense of beauty, English thought and English feeling, as modified by the influence of changed conditions and circumstances, that must serve us in the production of a genuine literature. Therefore, I would teach it to those, who are to become our people and the creators of our literature, the pupils in our High and Grammar Schools."

"That it can be done with most surprising and happy results, I am confident. Whether I should enter upon the how at this time or wait, I am in doubt."

"You say, now. Well, I will briefly relate what I have myself seen and heard. A teacher in a high school, who knew Greek and Latin as they are taught in fresh-water colleges, and English literature as any one with industrious spirit and loving heart may know it, once, as an experiment, in the place of an ordinary

reading lesson, slowly and distinctly repeated to his class these lines of Wordsworth:

A slumber did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears;

She seem'd a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;

She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course

With rocks, and stones, and trees!

"What did it all mean?' they asked. And no wonder; for a less promising poem could not have been selected for the experiment. I cannot detail all the processes of question and suggestion by which in a half hour, these wonderful lines with all their wealth were transferred into their souls, there to remain forever. It was the first awakening of their sense of poetical beauty as found in books. Never shall I forget their wonder as the main idea was at length developed to their imagination and feeling. It was their first lesson in English literature, but not their last. A few days later they asked might they have another lesson in poetry?' And then, but not at once of course, the whole of Wordsworth's mighty Ode was theirs. This process with the best things of English literature, continued with intervals for a year, gave them not merely many detached thoughts and feelings as a permanent part of their own souls but, by and by, they acquired the logic of the imagination and feelings, the sequence of ideas, and the laws of congruity, development, form and proportion. For example: they raised the question, whether the third stanza of Gay's Black-eyed Susan, was in keeping, notwithstanding its exquisite beauty. Nor could they restrain indignation that Francis Turner Palgrave had made nonsense of Campbell's fine lines entitled by him, 'A thought suggested by the New Year,' by changing it to The River of Life,' as may be seen in No. CCLXXXIII. of the Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics. But I cannot go more fully into details."

"A word in review. This was a graded school of large size. The teacher could have no intimate personal relations with his pupils; but, with the aid of good English literature, he could pre

vent the attenuating, soul-destroying process of mere intellectual discipline. His pupils at least became men and women, cultivated, according to the measure of their years, by an acquaintance with the best thoughts, and, what is more, the best feelings of the great ones of our kith and kin. They are of the people whose libraries will show character, and be read and remembered; they are of those who are to form that cultivated society in which, if ever, literature, as an art, will find a place in America. If one in that class is now an artist studying in Italy, and another, one of the most promising pulpit orators in America, they trace their first inspiration to the study of good English literature in a high school."

"Why should it not be studied in every such school in the country?

“Will I be so kind as to write out for publication what I have said?' No to write out, with the necessary limitations and qualifications, my 'sweeping and exaggerated' statements would require a volume."

"Have I any objection if you write it substantially for publication?' Not the least, and will so far assist as to furnish accurate quotations from the authors I have mentioned."

C. S.

THE BLUE COAT SCHOOL.

I recall my visit to this school with peculiar pleasure. It was on the first day of May, and although an English spring "comes slowly up," it begins so early and keeps on so steadily, it makes at last a great success, and by May-day justifies the welcome it receives from poets, invalids, and little children. This particular day was altogether bland and beautiful. My escort, too, was an old graduate of the school, enthusiastic in his praises of Alma Mater, and not unnaturally anxious I should share his feeling. On our way to Newgate Street, from which is the principal entrance, the conversation turned mostly on the perhaps three greatest Blue Coat boys, Charles Lamb, Coleridge and Leigh Hunt, and I was particularly struck by the following, as related of Leigh Hunt: It seems that during the time he was at the school, in his ward, which