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Fundamental Importance of the Classics.

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other studies of great importance, and which ever ought to form a part of the collegiate course. They meet necessities, which neither Greek nor Geometry can supply, and no reasonable man would banish them from the lecture-room if he could. Still, they might be better dispensed with than the two studies in question. They do not enter so deeply into the idea of collegiate discipline. Their value, relatively to mathematics and the classics, is indicated by the less time which is assigned to them in the schedule of studies.

As this topic is awakening special interest at the present time, we may be allowed to dwell upon it at some length. It will be readily inferred, that in naming these two departments of human knowledge as of primary and indispensable value, we have respect to the domain of the intellect. It is taken for granted that in Christian institutions, as all our American colleges profess to be, the training of the moral faculties is of permanent and indescribable importance, and that all necessary provisions will be adopted to secure their development. Indeed the classics, and the sciences are not to be taught with an exclusive aim to their intellectual effects. The wise, Christian teacher will draw valuable moral lessons from the satires of Horace and the histories of Thucydides. Ethics may be taught and exemplified without the aid of Paley or Brown. The laws of the Divine government are as palpable in the melancholy lines of Tacitus, as in the reasonings of Butler.

The fundamental position of the classics and mathematics in the collegiate system may be shown from a variety of considerations. Let us first look at their nature, or their inherent fitness and tendencies in disciplining the faculties. And first as to the classics.

One of the most obvious and important results of classical study is the habit of discriminating thought which it ensures. It involves from beginning to end a nice analysis, a delicate perception, a constant collocation of words, a sharp definition of synonymous terms, a patient process of comparison till the words which hit the case are determined, a weighing of evidence, a balancing of shades of thought almost imperceptible. In these processes, the mind acquires the power of recognizing the slightest varieties in thought and speech, something like a quick and unerring instinct; the judgment becomes like the scale capable of weighing the smallest particles, of detecting the slightest variations. Language is no longer an uncertain instrument. Many apparent synonyms are shown not to be such in reality. Forms of speech long acquiesced in as of a general or indefinite character, are divested of the haze which has settled around them. The

ancient writers stand forth vindicated as masters of the subtlest elements of thought, as possessing weapons of the most perfect temper and of the keenest edge-a system of symbols for communicating the finest mental conceptions such as the world has never seen. This power of discrimination has respect, be it remembered, both to words and thoughts. One, trained under this discipline, has acquired, at the same time, the elements of the most effective style, and the ability to form the most careful moral judgments. He can detect the plausible sophism, disentangle the web of error, and exhibit truth in its just proportions. He will not be so likely, as other men, to adopt an erroneous theory, to defend a system whose plausibility consists in the ambiguity of its terms, or to make war, in the temper of a bigot, upon his brethren, who differ from him only or mainly in the language which they employ.

Again, the study of the classics ensures a copious vocabulary. The careful student of Cicero and Plato has enriched himself with many spoils. He has laid in a large stock of invaluable materials, gathered from the choicest fields of literature. In all the exigencies of life, in the thousand calls of duty, at moments when no preparation can be made, he can draw upon resources which are admirably classified and whose value has often been tested. The copious stores of the English tongue have been necessarily digested, compared, arranged, as the emergencies required. Successive terms, one phrase after another, have been carefully weighed, and while one has been chosen, the entire series have been sedulously deposited in the records of the memory, ready to trip as "nimble servitors" at the bidding of him who needs them. That the acquisition of a copious stock of select language is one of the effects of classical study, might be proved from the experience of distinguished men in all the learned professions. We have in our eye an eminent American senator, now deceased, who could clothe his beautiful and effective thoughts, in the most varied as well as pertinent forms, who was listened to with delight by all his auditors, and who was an earnest classical scholar when he was an octogenarian.

We may advert, in the third place, to the effects of the study on the taste, imagination and general culture. The sculptor, who is aspiring to the highest excellence, repairs to Rome to study the Belvidere Apollo and the wondrous group of the Laocoon, or to Florence to gaze upon the Venus or the Dancing Fawn. The young painter idealizes his conceptions before the great masters of his art at Dresden, Venice and Rome. The landscape painter plunges into the

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Effects on the Imagination and Taste.

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recesses of the Alps, or lingers under the "purple" light and amid the eternal spring of Southern Italy, that he may copy his model in her most awful or fairest attitudes. The forms of mediaeval architecture, which shoot up so gracefully and in such inimitable proportions in the Netherlands, are patiently studied by him who would produce works worthy to live. So he, who would be drawn to the beauty of written symbols, who would gaze at the "winged words" of the masters of language, who would worthily educate his own instinctive love for beautiful sounds and forms, who would place himself under the full influences of compositions which combine the freshness and simplicity of nature with the last polish of an art that conceals itself, will repair to the pages of the classics. He will carefully study their finished sentences. He will mark the perfect truth of expressions which can never grow old. He will dwell upon some word or phrase exquisitely chosen which is a picture in itself. To these cherished passages, he will revert so fondly, that they will be forever singing in his ears, or be vitalized as it were, and incorporated into his own being. We need not refer any true scholar to the passages which can be excelled by no specimens of sculptured or pictured beauty. The Odes of Horace, the Georgics of Virgil, the Poems of Homer, the Dialogues of Plato will at once recur to the mind. They furnish models which combine all the excellences of which the subject is capable-perfect truth to nature, sweet simplicity, most felicitous selection of epithets, a collocation of words which is music itself, the repose of conscious power. It may be said, indeed, that this is in part a deception. The antiquity of the poems casts a deceitful halo around them. The rich clustering associations of two thousand years are with them. So much the better, we reply. If to their unapproached intrinsic excellences, we add the mellowing and exalting influences of time, then they will be only the more worthy of study.

The distinct benefits which the classics confer on the taste and imagination are such as these: The mind learns to delight in order, proportion, fitness, congruity. It instinctively shuns extravagance, finical terms, unseemly plays of words, all straining after effect, all ostentatious parade, all'dainty expressions, all cant phrases, all tautology and wearisome diffuseness. It would be an unpardonable offence against his old teachers, if the scholar should deck out his compositions with tawdry ornament, or deform them with unseemly adjuncts. He feels as the student of Raphael or Michael Angelo does, that they will frown on aught which interferes with the severe simplici. VOL. VIII. No. 29.

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ty or the heavenly beauty, which speak in every lineament of their works.

These excellences are strikingly contrasted with the defects of many of those writers who do not make the classics their model. They may possess great force of thought and language, and in certain directions great power of execution. But in an unexpected moment, a sad prejudice will be revealed, an extravagant opinion will be broached; the mind will be developed in a one-sided and disjointed manner. The charm and usefulness of symmetrical culture never meets our eyes. They are able but not finished thinkers and writers. We never repose upon them with entire affection and confidence. We always suspect some lurking weakness, or dread some unlicensed outbreak. We do not look to this class of men for finished writers, for men of the purest taste or comprehensive views, or perfectly sound opinions.

There is another class of these influences, to which we have already alluded, and which must be felt rather than described. We refer to those reminiscences which forever linger in the memory, which people the fancy, which excite the imagination, which attract the affections, like strains of the sweetest music. There are passages in Cicero's works which seem like the dear faces of departed friends yet remembered. They are full of an elevating, genial influence. They crowd the mind with solemn and affecting impressions. They suggest thoughts which, for the time being, expel every low desire and frivolous fancy. They have not indeed a religious efficacy, yet they are powerfully auxiliary to all virtuous tendencies. The music of their words does not sound harshly along with the holier strains that come from the hill of Zion. Passages in nearly all the greatest writers of Greece and Rome embody the beautiful yet fragmentary notes which natural theology utters through all her domains. It is this melancholy association in part, in company with words of the most exquisite fitness and grace, which gives to the passages in question their deathless power. Some of them are the words of men who saw the ancient glories of their country fading away never to return. Hosts of barbarians, or the sands of the deserts were mutilating or burying works which their authors fondly thought they were fashioning for eternity. But, whatever may be the causes of this peculiar influence, it certainly exists, and is like a perennial spring in the hearts of all genuine scholars, and it is an influence which no literature but the classical supplies, except in a very limited measure. We look in vain for it to the stu dent of Johnson, or Burke or Addison. We find it in a degree in the

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Classics the Key to Literature.

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pages of great poets like Milton and Wordsworth, for they were imbued with the spirit of classic song.

We will now refer, in the fourth place, to another great benefit of classical study. By means of it we can trace no inconsiderable part of our own language to its source, and we lay an excellent foundation for the study of the languages of all Southern Europe. The part of the English language derived from the Latin, or variously affected by it, through the Norman conquest of England, the juxta-position of England with countries that use languages derived from the Latin, and the influence on the English of the studies of learned men, conversant with Latin, is quite important. It is only the classical scholar who enjoys the signal advantage of being able to trace these various forms to their roots on the Roman soil, and of having spread out before his mind, without investigation, their thousand modifications and associations, at once enriching his style and enlarging his knowledge. The same is true, to a less extent, of words derived from the Greek language. An acquaintance with the derivation and history of these expressive terms, many of them so useful in modern science, is an acquisition of no mean value. Again, the classical student is possessed of the elements of all the South European dialects, with a few insignificant exceptions. The traveller in Italy, without a particle of acquaintance with the Italian language, soon feels at home. The sounds, and in many cases, the identical words of a familiar speech greet his ear. The student who sits down to French or Spanish literature, finds that half his labor is accomplished, if he has mastered the Latin. Many of his old friends, indeed, appear under a somewhat different costume. They have enlarged or diminished their attire, not always, as it seems to him, in the best taste, but no transformations can hide from him their original parentage under Roman skies.

We may refer to a recent but, eminent benefit which results from classical study. It introduces us to a vast body of varied and profound criticism. It unlocks treasures of inestimable value. Some of the greatest minds of the present day have traversed the fields of classical literature, and have illuminated with the light of a happy erudition, the most secret nooks, and the remotest corners. Great classical scholars, like Niebuhr, Müller, Savigny, Hermann, have brought stores of learning to bear upon the illustration of the classics, no more admirable in amount than in selection, pertinence and sterling value. Multitudes of very able men have labored, not in verbal criticism merely, not in the lighter matters of metre and prosody, but on