Avoiding the extravagant extremes of each argument, so much is to be said on both sides as to make it probable that neither is wrong; and that the question must be decided differently according to circumstances. To investigate this matter in detail, would be tedious; yet it may be possible to throw out heads for consideration, which may help to guide us to a right conclusion. Few of the present audience need be told that some three centuries ago there was no English literature to be compared to that of the Greeks and Romans. At that time, not those only who desired to study the jurisprudence of Rome or the speculative philosophy of Greece; but all who thirsted after information or burned with philosophic curiosity, all who were smitten with the love of fine writing and elegant poetry, all who desired to defend the Christian faith and examine its earliest institutions, were alike impelled to an intense devotion to the two languages, emphatically called literæ humaniores. It was not that none could then attain the highest accomplishments, but none could attain any considerable intellectual culture, while ignorant of both these tongues. Hence our land was filled with "Grammar Schools" by philanthropic persons; at which schools the rudiments of Latin were to be communicated to poor boys, as a method of national education. Their benevolent intentions were partially fulfilled; but it hardly needs to be said that as a whole the system has failed. In the present day, very few indeed will imagine that the mass of the nation ought to be instructed through the medium of a dead language. We may assume it as universally conceded, that the poor will be better taught by means of their native tongue; and this branch of the question may be set aside as beyond controversy. Before it is possible to decide what languages a boy may most profitably learn, it is requisite to ask how many years will be devoted to his scholastic education. Without affecting an accuracy which is unattainable, or desiring to lay down a dogma, I will venture to express the opinion that one who will certainly leave school at the age of twelve, should learn neither Latin nor Greek, but ordinarily French, or in particular cases German. Those who can continue at school until fifteen should learn Latin, but not Greek; for it is far better to gain a firm hold of one language, so as to read it with ease and pleasure, than to have an imperfect knowledge of two; otherwise both are probably disused and forgotten. But a young man whose scholastic studies can be prolonged to the age of eighteen or nineteen, may reap the greatest advantages from a knowledge of both languages. Reasons for these opinions will be laid before you in this lecture; and the peculiar advantages of studying at least some one or other foreign tongue will be briefly set forth. In manufacturing towns such as this, where men are daily witnesses to the vast importance of modern knowledge; where not merely mechanics, chemistry, and the other physical sciences, but modern history, physical and general geography, political economy, and politics constantly vindicate their claims to attention; it is not to be wondered at, if some are incredulous as to the utility of the ordinary school education. And this incredulity is perhaps increased by the injudicious zeal in favor of their own system often seen on the opposite side; as though no person ignorant of Latin and Greek could be a man of cultivated mind. Is it forgotten that those very ancients of the Greek nation who are set up as our intellectual models were one and all unacquainted with any foreign literature? The glory of Greek literature is that it was entirely of home growth. This is no empty boast, but a great secret of its real excellence: the Latin on the contrary was in part deteriorated by too close a copying of the Greeks. The historian Herodotus must have possessed a conversational acquaintance with various languages; nor could the soldier Xenophon have been wholly ignorant of several; but we have no ground to imagine them versed in any foreign literature. Moreover, so far were Æschylus and Thucydides from receiving a grammatical education, that the rules of grammar were not yet investigated until all the most eminent pieces of Greek literature had been produced. But again, some advocates of classical education are accustomed to lay stress on the cultivation of taste, which, they say, boys acquire from reading Greek and Latin poetry. But there is only too much reason to doubt whether boys at an early age have any perception and relish of the beauties and excellencies of the ancient poetry which they read. Personal experience leads me to the same conviction as might be inferred from the nature of the case, that it is long before the majority become intimate enough with the language, feeling, religion of the ancients, to sympathise with their poetry; longer still before they can appreciate and distinguish its good or bad taste for it is too much to lay down the axiom that they are never in bad taste. In short, boys who might relish Thomson, Pope, Gay, Scott, nay, even Milton and Wordsworth, can often find nothing to admire in Virgil and Horace; and if they are interested in Homer, it is for the sake of his battles and the prowess of his heroes, not for his poetical merits. Other grounds than these seem requisite to defend the received course of classical study. Perhaps from these remarks I may seem to have too little enthusiasm in behalf of the studies which I am called to superintend. To be a zealous and successful teacher, a certain measure of romance may seem so necessary, as to make it not venial only, but becoming. That I do not really underrate the value of ancient literature, I will try to show before I sit down but as the practical good sense and experience of many present would detect any exaggerated statements, it is possible that a more enthusiastic lecturer, if more interesting at the moment, might not ultimately be so convincing. : The importance of an acquaintance with antiquity cannot easily be exaggerated, if it be not made exclusive. A man who so lives with Plato or Cicero as to neglect a commensu rate study of that which is passing around him, will of course be incapacitated for judging of the modern world, and at best becomes a piece of machinery to be used by others. We do not advocate any thing exclusive. A one-sided cultivation may appear at first like carrying out the principle of division of labour, yet in fact it does not tend even to the general benefit and progress of truth, much less to the advantage of the individual. Each of us has a heart and mind valuable for its own sake, and not to be looked on as a mere machine for producing. Now if we ask wherein the civilized differs from the savage intellect, we find it is mainly in the disposition and power to look backwards and forwards; while in the most degraded barbarism, the mind is fixed solely on the present moment. But the future can only be known from experience of the past; hence no thoughtful person can disown the bond which unites us to the men of former days; he must admit the value of history in its largest sense, moral and social, as well as political, the history of literature and of opinion, of prejudices and of sentiments. The knowledge of antiquity, by reason of the strong contrasts in which it shows us human nature, is peculiarly valuable; and Latin, Greek, Hebrew are the three languages which chiefly open to us this knowledge. Particularly important is it for a nation to enlarge its circle of information, when it is called to take an ampler share in self-government; else its inexperience will plunge it into a thousand mischievous errors. There are sciences, like political economy, which, proceeding from a few very simple principles, admit of being reasoned-out, in a chain of propositions, similar to those of geometry: but such is not the science of Politics. The intimate relationship of the political and social state of every nation, renders an extensive experience of the past eminently necessary to all sound judgment; and the only question can be, how far back we ought to go. Not to dwell on general topics longer than is necessary, it is enough to say, there are special reasons which make the study of the Greek history peculiarly instructive, some of which it may be well here to set forth. Greece is to us a sort of microcosm; a Christendom in miniature; and hereby offers us many advantages in the study of human nature. Most histories progress too slowly, if they progress at all, to be brought within convenient compass for elementary instruction. It demands the devotion of half a life to the history of Europe, complicated as it is and various, slowly unfolding itself in the lapse of fourteen centuries; before it can be thoroughly understood. Abridgments are highly unsatisfactory and uninteresting, because too little biographical: they talk of senates, national assemblies, armies, but do not exhibit to us the men who compose them, nor explain the working of the machinery. Now Greece furnishes us with a singularly complete course of history, having striking analogies to that of Europe, but acted in narrower space and time. Her physical geography is remarkably varied, considering how small a corner of Europe she occupies. The Mediterranean is her ocean, the gulf of Lepanto her mediterranean: the deep bays with which she is indented, give her a sea-coast of great length; and, with the numerous islands at small distances, fostered the spirit of navigation. Her lofty mountains, while they divided her into natural kingdoms, gave her within a small compass many climates, and tribes of various character, as to genius, arts, arms and government. Indeed, the races which peopled Greece, though talking dialects of one language, and seldom wholly unintelligible to one another, had decided peculiarities, and doubtless a primitive diversity of temperament. Provision was thus made for variety as well as for a substantial unity. Greece felt herself to be Greek, by her common language and religion, just as Christendom ever since the Crusades, has been conscious of union by a common faith. The oracle of Delphi, the Olympic games, were to her what Papal Rome was to our ancestors. But the confined limits of space which Greece embraced, allowed |