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men learn to follow where true knowledge leads the way. The real interests of our race have been warred with by the stern and destroying passions of conquerors, and the multitude have shouted mad pæans. while dragged after their chariot wheels. And as to the history of the church, what is the lesson taught by her flames of martyrdom, her inquisition, and her almost infernal refinements in cruelty? Is it that the spirit of christian love breathes a divine influence in regions overshadowed by the clouds of ignorance? Is it that our holy faith beams with a more celestial radiance, when the mind, in the purest depths of which that faith serenely dwells, is shrouded in a bewildering mist which the sun of knowledge has not yet pierced? Is the lesson such that we may confidently expect a millenium for christianity without an effort to improve the heart by kindling the light of mind? We answer unhesitatingly, no. The voice of reason is with us. The mind is gifted with powers capable of infinite expansion. The more these powers are called into action and improved by knowledge of whatever sort, the readier must be its comprehension of the sublime truths of religion, the highest and noblest objects of the soul. Let him, then, who would do good service to his country and to his religion, use his utmost to promote the cause of true knowledge, either by contributing to its actual advancement, or by removing the obstacles to its progress.

VINDICATION OF CLASSICAL STUDIES.

Of all the objections to classical literature, that which denounces it as the study not of things but words, is the most superficial objection. There ought to be no bigotry on this subject, and we may grant, that a man may be a proficient in any department of natural science, may even be a model of good writing, like Dr. Franklin, may distinguish himself as a statesman, nay, may charm the world with wisdom, poetry, and nature, like Shakspeare; and like him, too, in the language of Johnson, have 'small Latin and less Greek:'but the question is not what can be done in the secret primitive organization of the mind, nor what miracles Providence may work on distinguished intellects. Nobody thinks to make Shakspeares, Franklins, or Washingtons by a more or less judicious course of education. If any one were so sim

ple, we doubt still whether he would fix on deer-stealing and holding noblemen's carriages at a play house, like Shakspeare; or setting types as a journeyman printer, like Franklin; or surveying with a chain and theodolite, like Washington, as, upon the whole, the best methods, respectively, for training up rivals to those great men. Sir Richard Arkwright was originally a journeyman barber, and followed his trade in a cellar under the name of 'subterraneous shaving.' The greatest proficient in oriental literature, which this country has produced, the late Mr. Harris, was an indifferent copper-plate engraver. Such instances are quoted to prove that a classical education is not necessary to great eminence in useful science, or even to profound literature. But we have strong doubts, whether there is another barber of the day likely to invent a spinning jenny; or another engraver's apprentice, who will make himself master of the Semitic dialects. The question is, what kind of school education is the best for the mass of young, volatile, bright or stupid, docile or froward spirits, who, on the present plan, are put down at the age of eight to the Latin grammar.

But it is said, still, that the study of the languages is the study not of things but words. This, however, is a most narrow discrimination. What becomes of ideas, of thoughts, of feelings, of the art of expression? It may perhaps be assumed, without rashness, that in all free countries, communication of mind with mind is the most important object of education of every kind. This communication is effected by written and spoken words, so that this object, so much sneered at, so invidiously contrasted with things, turns out, after all, to be itself the one thing-humanly speaking-needful. It is, indeed, almost beyond the limits of pardonable paradox to have the name of things conferred on hexahedral crystals and asymptotic lines, that always approach and never touch; while the great vehicle of thought and feeling, the band which unites, and the engine which moves all the social combinations of men, is derided as 'words.'

If any one then will grant that, after all, words are among the most important of things, but will still qualify, and say that classical study deals not with words, as the signs of thought, but in a merely grammatical view, we deny altogether the assertion. The study of classical literature, like poetry, like architecture, like statuary, does indeed require a combination of seemingly opposite things, some very high, and

some very humble. An accomplished statuary must, on the one hand, be a good stone-cutter, and on the other, must have a soul filled with all grand and lovely images, and be able to embody ideal beauty. The architect must know what pressure can be put on different sorts of timber, and what kind of mortar will bind strongest and shrink least, and must have also courage to plant his moles against the heaving ocean, and to hang his ponderous domes and gigantic arches in the air; while his taste must be able to combine the rough and scattered blocks of the quarry into beautiful and elegant structures. The poet must know, with a school master's precision, the weight of every syllable and what vowel follows most smoothly on what consonant; at the same time, that he must be inspired with images, with visions, with thoughts, beyond the power of language to do more than shadow forth. This mixture of great and little, seems to be the essential condition of our natures, that lay hold, on the one side of eternal life, and tend, on the other, to dust and ashes. The surgeon must at once have a mind that penetrates the dark recesses of organic life, and be able to hold a lancet in his left hand to cut into the eye. The lawyer must be able to reason from the noblest principles of human duty; and must comprehend at a glance, the mighty maze of human relations, and must, at the same time, be conversant with a tissue of the most arbitrary fictions and artificial technology that ever disgraced a liberal science. The general must be capable alike of calculating for a twelve month in advance the result of a contest, in which all the power, resource, strength, and spirit of two great empires, on land and at sea, enter and struggle; and he must have an eye that can tell how the stone walls and trenched meadows, the barns, and the woods, and cross roads of a neighborhood will favor or resist the motions of a hundred thousand men, scattered over a space of five miles, in the fury of the advance or the agony of flight, covered with smoke, dust, and blood. The merchant must be able to look, at the same moment, at the markets and exchanges of other countries and the other hemisphere, and combine considerations of the political condition, the natural wants, the tastes, and habits of different parts of the world, and he must be very apt at figures, understand book keeping by double entry, and be as willing to look after a quarter chest of tea as a cargo of specie. In like manner, the student of classical literature must be conversant, it is true, with

grammar, prosody, and syntax; he must, as has been ingeniously, though invidiously said, be able to 'conjugate, decline, and derive; but, on the other hand, he deals more directly than any one else with the finest intellectual processes. He marks the effort of the mind to discriminate and express its most delicate perceptions; he traces the secret source of the pathetic, the sublime, the agreeable, to the deliberate or instinctive choice, now of the phrase, which gathers in the widest circle of associated images, and now of the expression, which presents the leading thought, in its most simple form; and his profession is to be the minister of the soul and understand the whole system, by which the unseen spirit converses with kindred beings and future ages. His science is not the invention of the schools, the dream of literary monks. Tenses and modes, and conjugations were not made within the walls of a library; but by thinking, speaking, and acting men: by the primitive lawgivers, the pioneers of civilization; by elder bards, poets, and prophets of infant humanity; by the mind of man struggling, through its articulate organs, to converse with other minds. The grammarian came, ages after, found the phenomena, and gave them their names; but to suppose the structure of languages to be the grammarian's work, would be to suppose that Newton made the stars or Werner the mountains.

GREECE.

He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
-Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,-
And mark'd the mild angelic air,

The rapture of repose that's there,

The fix'd yet tender traits that streak

The langor of the placid cheek,
And-but for that sad shrouded eye,

That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now
And but for that chill changeless brow,

Where cold Obstruction's apathy
Appals the gazing mourner's heart,

As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
Yes, but for these and these alone,
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd,
The first, last look by death reveal'd!
Such is the aspect of this shore;
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start, for soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death,

That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb,
Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of Feeling past away!

Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth,
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherish'd earth!

RESPECTABILITY

Independent of one's occupation.

It is impossible, in our free and liberal forms of government, that respectability should depend on the mode of life, which, among the vast variety of human pursuits, a man has selected for himself. How a man's duty is performed, is the true subject of inquiry. Real respectability is undoubtedly as great, when the moral and intellectual faculties are employed at the bench of the artisan, as in the forum or at the merchant's desk. But public opinion may be influenced by general conduct. If a man, with the energy of a parent's love, insists that to promote his son's interests, he will not permit him to follow his own employment, what is such conduct but the most effectual of all modes of declaring, that there are other avocations more respectable and desirable than his own? That something of this kind has occurred here, is too obvious to require any illustration. Men of most industrious habits have used the success which has crowned their efforts, not in continuing them with the accumulated impulse of experience and practice, and the aid of good judg