CLASSICAL LEARNING.-STORY.

THE importance of classical learning to professional education is so obvious that the surprise is, that it could ever have become matter of disputation. I speak not of its power in refining the taste, in disciplining the judgment, in invigorating the understanding, or in warming the heart with elevated sentiments; but of its power of direct, positive, necessary instruction.

There is not a single nation from the north to the south of Europe, from the bleak shores of the Baltic to the bright plains of immortal Italy, whose literature is not embedded in the very elements of classical learning. The literature of England is, in an emphatic sense, the production of her scholars; of men who have cultivated letters in her universities, and colleges, and grammar-schools; of men who thought

lifa ton shout chiefly because it left some relic of antiquity

MIND THE GLORY OF MAN.-WISE.

THE mind is the glory of man. No possession is so productive of real influence as a highly cultivated intellect. Wealth, birth, and official station may and do secure to their possessors an external, superficial courtesy; but they never did, and they never can, command the reverence of the heart. It

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is only to the man of large and noble soul, to him who blends a cultivated mind with an upright heart, that men yield the tribute of deep and genuine respect.

But why do so few young men of early promise, whose hopes, purposes, and resolves were as radiant as the colors of the rainbow, fail to distinguish themselves? The answer is obvious; they are not willing to devote themselves to that toilsome culture which is the price of great success. Whatever aptitude for particular pursuits nature may donate to her favorite children, she conducts none but the laborious and the studious to distinction.

Great men have ever been men of thought as well as men of action. As the magnificent river, rolling in the pride of its mighty waters, owes its greatness to the hidden springs of the mountain nook, so does the wide-sweeping influence of distinguished men date its origin from hours of privacy, resolutely employed in efforts after self-development. The invisible spring of self-culture is the source of every great achievement.

Away, then, young man, with all dreams of superiority, unless you are determined to dig after knowledge, as men search for concealed gold. Remember, that every man has in himself the seminal principle of great excellence, and he may develop it by cultivation if he will TRY. Perhaps you are what the word calls poor. What of that? Most of the men whose names are as household words were also the children of poverty. Captain Cook, the circumnavigator of the globe, was born in a mud hut, and started in life as a cabin-boy.

Lord Eldon, who sat on the woolsack in the British parliament for nearly half a century, was the son of a coal merchant. Franklin, the philosopher, diplomatist, and statesman, was but a poor printer's boy, whose highest luxury, at one time, was only a penny roll, eaten in the streets of Philadelphia. Ferguson, the profound philosopher, was the son of a half-starved weaver. Johnson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, and multitudes of others of high distinction, knew the pressure of limited circumstances, and have demonstrated that poverty even is no insuperable obstacle to success.

VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE.-H. L. PINCKNEY.

WHAT is it that unfolds the structure of the human frame, showing, indeed, how fearfully and wonderfully it is made, or has invested Surgery with the admirable precision and dexterity which it now exhibits, or that enables Medicine to conquer all the maladies to which mankind is subject, those plagues and pestilences alone excepted which seem destined by Providence to perform the office of special judgments, and to remain incurable scourges of the human race? What is it that disarms the lightning of its power, elevates valleys and depresses hills, cleaves the ocean, and ascends the sky? What is it that we behold in every elegant and useful art, in the diversified hues that attract the eye, in the dresses and decorations of our persons and our houses, in every implement of husbandry or war, in the subterraneous aqueduct, or the heaven-kissing monument, in the animated canvas, or speaking marble? What are all these but the varied triumphs of the human mind?

And who can estimate their value? To say nothing of that

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"when wild in woods the noble absolute state of barbarism, Savage ran," who can measure the difference between the splendid illumination of the nineteenth century and that glimmering condition of society; when astrology assumed to regulate events, and alchymy to transmute all other metals into gold; when ignorance was affrighted by an ignis fatuus, and comets and meteors were regarded as the immediate precursors of the dissolution of the world; when science was considered synonymous with magic, and punished as the evidence of atrocious crimes; when superstition occupied the seat of justice, and guilt or innocence was established by the righteous decisions of fire or water, or the infallible ordeal of military prowess? Science is, indeed, to the moral, what the great orb of day is to the natural world; and as the extinction of the latter would necessarily be followed by universal darkness and decay, so, were art and science lost, society would inevitably. relapse into the savagism from which it is their proud boast to have elevated and redeemed it.

KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT RELIGION.-H. L. PINCKNEY.

BUT what is knowledge without religion? Of what avail will it be that thou make the voyage of life with favoring currents and propitious gales, if it only bring you at last to an undone eternity? Of what avail will be all the honors and enjoyments of this transitory scene, if they are destined to terminate in that unending misery which no eloquence can soothe, no learning alleviate, no applause divert? What then! Are you fond of roaming in the fair fields of literature, and can you not be persuaded to cultivate the sacred as well as the profane? Is there no flowery height but Helicon, no golden stream but Hermes? Is there no virtue but in the dreams of Plato, no immortality but in the hopes of Socrates, no heaven but Elysium? Have you no desire to explore the exquisite beauties of Lebanon or Carmel, or to drink of the pure water of