And is thus elegantly rendered by Porson;

"The Germans in Greek

Are sadly to seek ;

Not five in five score

But ninety-five more;

All, save only Hermann ;

And Hermann 's a German."

Those who know the comparative value of the services rendered to Greek studies by the English and the German scholars, have long smiled at the harmless vanity of the Professor and his metrical disciples. Hermann's investigations have entirely set aside the principles of the English school; and, though many of his refined details have been rejected, still he is to be regarded as the great teacher of the laws of metre and rhythm.

The effects of this careful classical training on the minds of English scholars and statesmen are sufficiently obvious. Their writings and their spoken eloquence are marked by a degree of simple, manly taste, which is nowhere else to be found, except in the literature of the ancients. The English language is used by them with a neatness, propriety, exactness, and force, to which "the cheap extemporaneous rant of most American legislators is a perfect stranger. And, above all, they have the art, so utterly unknown to nine tenths of the thrilling," "irresistible," "overwhelming" orators in our republic, of stopping when they have done. They know how to find the point in question, and keep to it; they are clear, vigorous, and logical. We do not mean to say, that they owe all this to their early skill in hexameters and pentameters. We know well, that a Latin or Greek prize man is not, of necessity, a master of that "harp of thousand strings," the English language. A man may be able to put together faultlessly Greek and Latin verses, who cannot write a page in his mother tongue, without being laughed at; and a man may, like Franklin, acquire by laborious practice a correct and elegant English style without the smallest assistance from Greek and Latin masters. But single examples prove nothing either way. The habits of mind acquired by studying accurately the elegancies of two such instruments of thought, as the languages of Greece and Rome; that nice discrimination, which is for ever called in

to exercise; the constant comparisons and selections, which the mind is compelled to make, especially in composition in those languages, cannot fail to prove eminently favorable to correct thinking and writing when the same powers are wielding another instrument, though so widely different from them as the Englishman's mother tongue.

It is true, on the other hand, that persons of no great intellectual powers have sometimes been remarkable for their skill in writing the dead languages. Men without the smallest spark of poetical genius have figured as brilliant authors of elegies, Sapphics, and so on, and received the applauses of listening senatus academici. And, from the very nature of the case, in such exercises the language must be an object of primary care, as a thing almost independent of the sentiment and thought. It would be difficult to find, probably, in productions of this sort by the most illustrious poets, many evidences of that creative genius which their native writings display. The "Africa" of Petrarch and the Latin poems of Milton at once occur as illustrations of this remark. Every original genius is bound, by cords he cannot break, to his mother tongue. Its words and forms of expression are intertwined with the very fibres of his intellectual being. His most subtile and peculiar associations, every thought that marks him as a distinct and self-dependent mind, is indissolubly interwoven with the tissue of the language he lisped in his infancy. Before he can freely use a foreign and dead language, he must take from his thoughts all that individualizes them; he must reduce his conceptions to their simplest form; in short, he must attempt to say only what everybody else may say with equal propriety.

Another consideration ought also to be taken into the account. Labor as we may upon the ancient languages, we cannot approach the style of the great masters. We should not like to submit a modern Sapphic to Sappho. We can imagine the smile of ridicule, that would pass over the lovely Lesbian's lips, as she read the faultless lines even of a Valentine Blomfield, with their perfectly adjusted trochees, spondees, and dactyles, and their unimpeachable Æolicisms. The most Ciceronian Latin of modern times would, it is likely, fall harshly on the ears of Cicero. Still the effort to imitate those great teachers of thought and style cannot be made without gaining a clearer perception of their beauties, and of

the profound principles on which their works are formed. A close investigation of the harmonies of style naturally prepares the mind to open itself to the deeper harmonies of thought. And the more carefully this is done, the nearer and more distinct will be the student's view of the transcendent excellences of those works, which the world has for many centuries united in admiring. We cannot write Greek prose like Xenophon, or poetry like Homer; but, by the scrutinizing study of the exquisite structure of their language implied in attempting to imitate them, we come to understand them better and feel their beauties more sensibly. The judgment is exercised, the taste refined, and knowledge increased. We make the great authors of antiquity our own, and we attain a sense of literary beauty, which no other productions perhaps would have bestowed upon us. Not that we can ever relish the epics of Homer or the tragedies of Sophocles, like an ancient Greek. There is a skill in the native ear, that passes the comprehension of the duller organ of the foreign critic. A thousand readings of the Antigone will not bring to the perception of the closet scholar in modern times, all the delicate graces of its style, which every person in an Attic audience of thirty thousand men caught, the instant the actor's voice struck upon his senses. Many idiomatic arrangements of words, a thousand nameless touches of the master's native hand, on which, to a great extent, the mysterious effects of poetical works depend, must pass unheeded by the profoundest scholar's mind. Conjectural emendations by the ablest philologist are much more likely to mar than mend an exquisite original. Changing the order of a phrase, or the place of a word, or substituting one minute particle for another, may break a charm, which held enthralled the passions of listening thousands. How many flowers of grace in the Odes of Horace withered, for a time at least, under the rude touch of Bentley's daring hand. And perhaps we should never have known what the trouble with them was, had he not tried the same wanton treatment upon the "Paradise Lost" of Milton. Then, indeed, men saw the folly of trusting to modern skill, to restore the faded or injured beauties of an antique original. But we have wandered a little from our subject. Classical studies, if pursued with proper views, are unquestionably the best means to train the manly mind to habits of accuracy

and of patient labor. They form the taste with greater certainty and to greater purity, than any other studies; and composition in the classical languages, both in prose and verse, is a most important means towards the full accomplishment of all the useful results to which these studies are capable of leading; not, as may well be supposed from what we have said above, with any prospect of rivalling the ancients in their own arts, or of acquiring a Greek or Latin style that would not strike a Greek or Roman as insufferably stiff and awkward, but to exercise the judgment and the taste, and to learn to comprehend more completely the mighty genius of antiquity.

To our shame it must be confessed, that classical studies have been pursued in the United States with little comparative success. We have individual scholars among us of distinguished acquisitions; men who stand upon a level with the best scholars of Europe. A steady progress is making towards a better state of things in this respect. Schools are improving, books are multiplying, and college courses are becoming more complete. But we fear the great body of what are humorously called our educated men would make but a poor figure at present by the side of the corresponding classes in the other great civilized nations. We have no fear, however, that the defects in our hurried systems of public education will not in time work out their own remedy.

We have no idea, that American gentlemen will submit for ever to the imputation of inferiority in those intellectual accomplishments from which life borrows its grace and lustre; or that they will consent to stand apart from those beautiful associations of scholarship, drawn from the common sources of ancient letters, which bind together the cultivated minds of all the European races into an intellectual brotherhood. But many of the prevailing vices of our society might be corrected more speedily than seems likely at present. Why should our young men be in such a hurry as they universally are, to rush into the business and professions of life? Why should they not be content to pass two or three more years in filling their minds with the treasures of elegant literature; with classical learning beyond the superficial courses of most American colleges; with historical reading, and moral and intellectual philosophy? No satisfactory reason

certainly can be assigned, except the temptations in the shape of rapidly accumulating wealth, or early notoriety, those two monstrous cheats, those pernicious dreams, ovo ovεigo, which lead astray so early into paths of toil οὖλοι ὄνειροι, and peril, the best intellects of the republic.

It requires only a sound public opinion to set this matter right; and a sound public opinion can only spring from a right example set by the few who see and feel the wants of the country, and, seeing, dare to do what they can to supply them. The best educated men ought to look to the condition of our classical schools, and take care that their defects are not allowed to pass unscrutinized. We have some schools that would do honor to any country. The Boston Latin School, raised to great eminence by a succession of able teachers, has done more than any other institution of its kind in the country, to cherish among the young a love of classical learning. In that school, the foundation is deeply laid for the suitable education of a gentleman. There, no boy is allowed to hurry over the preparatory studies of his literary training, for the sake of getting through the work as if it were a necessary evil, and the sooner disposed of the better. But every thing is thoroughly learned, and in order. The elements of a classical education are properly understood and conscientiously taught, and not easily forgotten by the pupils. One thing, however, we have regretted, the omission of late years to publish the prize compositions of the boys in Greek, Latin, and English, which formerly excited much interest in the literary community, and drew great attention at home and abroad, upon that school. Why this publication was given up, we have never been very clearly informed. If the movement was owing to one of those sudden spasms of economy, to which all public bodies are occasionally subjected, we can only say, that the palliative was applied at a very unlucky spot. That little annual pamphlet, besides the excellent effects it produced among the pupils of the Latin School, was a yearly reminder to the masters and pupils of other schools, of what could and ought to be done by the highspirited boys, who were emulous of the pleasures and honors of literary acquisition; it excited a generous ambition far beyond the circles for which it was more particularly designed. We hope the enlightened city of Boston will some time or other reconsider this matter; her literary reputation