son of one of his disciples, and purchased by a Roman, and deposited in a mutilated form in a Roman library, in the best days of the Republic. They came well nigh being finally lost amidst the lumber. of manuscripts in a later day in modern Italy, and were only accidentally saved and brought to light. The whole of the writings of LIVY, and also those of VARRO, appear to have been in existence in the days of PETRARCH, and were seen by him. Now, after ransacking the whole world, only thirty-five of the one hundred and forty books of Livy are to be found; and as to VARRO-the " walking library," and contemporary of CICERO-Who wrote five hundred volumes and seven hundred lives of distinguished Romans, and from whom PLINY borrowed largely in the compilation of his profound Natural History-scarcely a fragment of VARRO is now to be found. CICERO-the orator, statesman, philosopher, and scholar-probably the most accomplished man upon whom the sun ever shone, gained his wonderful stores of knowledge by devoting his days and nights to VARRO'S admirable library of manuscripts gathered from Greece.

Some of the early historians, whose writings would have poured a flood of light on the dark annals of antiquity, have entirely disappeared, except so far as a few fragments have been incorporated into the works of others. SANCHONIATHO, the Phoenician, who wrote a history of his country, is lost-a work of which, PORPHYRY gives us just enough to enable us to realize the loss the world has sustained. MANETHO, the Egyptian, is not to be found, and the light which is lost to the world by the disappearance of his history of Egypt, is poorly compensated by what JOSEPHUS and EUSEBIUS have gleaned from his pages. BEROSUS, the Babylonian, and great historian of Chaldea, is represented to the world only by a few meagre fragments, which JOSEPHUS has rescued from his works. The mysterious splendors of the HETRUSCI, a wonderful people of ancient Italy, the remains of whose refinement are now to be found only in some English Cabinets and the Museum of the Vatican, and whose curious relics amaze the antiquarian, must now remain forever a wonder to the world. The stately monuments of Egyptian Thebes, with her hundred gates that classic land "where MOSES meditated, and PLATO wandered, and EUCLID composed his elements"-must ever remain a sealed book; her monumental ruins lie scattered upon the earth like a prostrate forest, and the voice of her unexplored and inexplicable antiquities rolls solemnly over us like thunder tones, demonstrating the impotence of man to rescue his works from oblivion and ruin,

For the most authentic records of antiquity, next to the Sacred Scriptures, we are mainly indebted to HERODOTUS, THUCYDIDES, XENOPHON, and PLUTARCH. HERODOTUS, after travelling to an incredible extent, and the most laborious and pains-taking research, wrote the history of the Lydians, Ionians, Lycians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks and Macedonians. "His style is gay and splendid, free and flowing;" his accuracy and fidelity are not questioned, and the correctness of his geographical delineations is receiving constant confirmation from modern discoveries. THUCYDIDES is the great historian of the Peloponnesian war, and carries back his history to the close of that of HERODOTUS. "He is grave, intelligent, judicious and exact;" his energy and brevity sometimes render his style harsh and obscure. He was stimulated to an ambition for historical fame, and excited even to weeping, when a youth of fifteen, by hearing HERODOTUS recite his histories to enraptured crowds at the Olympic games. Of PLUTARCH, that prince of biographers, who throws an immense flood of light on contemporaneous history, a profound critic and classical scholar has said, if every work of ancient profane history was doomed to destruction but one, and he had his choice of selection, that one should be PLUTARCH'S Lives. Of XENOPHON, I need not speak, whose smooth and mellifluous periods have made him every where a favorite author.

The other historians, who treat of these early times, are DIOGENES, LAERTIUS, OROSIUS, ARRIAN, DIODORUS SICULUS, CORNELIUS NEPOS, and JUSTIN.

The ancient historic Muse called to the aid of the Roman Empire a splendid galaxy of talent, learning and research, to portray her glories and to transmit her fame to posterity. The principal early historians to whom the moderns are indebted for their data on the subject of Rome, are (besides some of those already mentioned,) DIONYSIUS Of Halicarnassus, POLYBIUS, SALLUST, CESAR, SUETONIUS, TACITUS, and DION CASSIUS. To complete very nearly the list of ancient historians of any repute, I have only to add the names of APPIAN, QUINTUS CURTIUS, and VELLEIUS PATERculus.

It is fortunate for history, that whilst a large proportion of every one of the most distinguished of these authors is lost, a sufficient portion of each one is retained to cover almost every point of Roman history, and to illustrate it to a considerable degree of satisfaction.

DIONYSIUS, in the age of AUGUSTUS, spent twenty-four years in Rome, searching all the Greek and Latin authors to prepare a history

of Rome, which appeared in twenty-four books, called Roman Antiquities, only eleven of which are extant containing the history of the Kings. DIODORUS SICULUS, of the same age, spent thirty years in compiling a historical Library-fifteen of the forty books of which are all that are now to be found. POLYBIUS wrote a general history in forty books, five of which remain, besides a meagre epitome of the rest, compiled in the tenth century. He was carried a hostage to Rome, and being detained there for seventeen years, had a fine opportunity to lay in those wonderful stores of knowledge which are so remarkable in what remains of his writings. LIVY is supposed to have copied and incorporated into his Latin History whole books verbatim from the original Greek of POLYBIUS —and it is not to his credit that, after his plagiarisms, he simply speaks of the author as "haudquaquam auctor spernendus." BRUTUS, the murderer of CESAR, is said often to have retired from the field of battle to his tent, to be absorbed in the pages of POLYBIUS describing his ancestors. Still, LIvy is a beautiful writer, abounding in elegant narrative and useful reflections. POLYBIUS and TACITUS, are perhaps the most remarkable of ancient historians for profoundness and intimate knowledge of human nature. The last of the ancient historians, and the most elegant in style of his age, was DION CASSIUS, who died A. D. 230; he spent ten years in collecting materials, and twelve years in preparing his eighty books, twenty only of which remain in a mutilated form, besides a meagre epitome compiled by XIPHILUS during the dark ages.

It was from the ancients that medieval Italy, with her poets, historians, painters and scholars, borrowed her literature - Italy! that bright land which caught the expiring rays of science, and reflected them over Europe, lighting up a flood of glory when darkness had long brooded over the face of the deep.

Such is a glance at the treasures of Greece and Rome. Their works embody ages of thought and research, conveyed in the most perfect dialects ever spoken, and clothed in a style of elegance and beauty that human pen has never equalled. If parents had only a more correct conception of these ancient store-houses of wisdom, and these treasuries of mental discipline, more seldom would the message be conveyed to teachers: "I want my son to be made a mathematician, chemist, natural philosopher; but as to the useless lumber of Greek and Latin, I care not to have his time wasted upon it."

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I had wished, on this occasion, to advert to some other topics, but the time already occupied admonishes me to close. I will only add that there is an alarming process of corruption going on in this country, in the adulteration of the English language, which demands a serious note of warning and rebuke. The innovations upon our mother-tongue are such, that if not speedily arrested, we shall soon require a glossary to enable us to appreciate the eloquent strains, drawn from the well of English undefiled, in which MILTON and SHAKSPEARE, and DRYDEN and POPE, have sung, and ADDISON and MACAULEY, have so beautifully discoursed. At the hazard of the charge of rashness from certain quarters, I will venture to say that NOAH WEBSTER, in canonizing hundreds of provincialisms and barbarisms, by inserting them in his American Dictionary, has committed an outrage on the Saxon tongue- and the most alarming feature of the case is, that distinguished patrons of letters in the Northern Colleges have lent the sanction of their names to his unauthorized production. If it is not beneath the dignity of the occasion to specify a few of the strange words that are beginning to straggle and obtrude their unlawful forms, even into judicial decisions and grave senatorial debates, I would say, that the barbarous words, lengthy for lengthened, jeopardize for jeopard, talented for almost any thing, illy, as an adverb, for ill, progress, as a verb, for advance, &c., should be scouted from the circles of the refined. I trust a barrier will be raised, in the South at least, against these lawless corruptions, and that, by the common consent of our scholars, these and similar unauthorized and unwarrantable terms will never be permitted to cross MASON and Dixon's Line, to poison and corrupt our mother tongue.

But I must close, and in doing so, I owe an apology to this Society for whatever of inappropriateness this address contains, as there is no other general association of liberal and enlightened men in the State, to whose protection to commend these important topics. May the Historical Society long live and flourish, to enlighten the sons of Georgia as to the past, and to reflect the hallowed light of that past on their future pathway to the fame and renown which the great and generous OGLETHORPE so fondly anticipated for the Colony. May it prove, under a benignant Providence, a pillar of cloud in the day of prosperity to shade and to guide-a pillar of fire in the night season of depression and gloom, to illuminate and cheer.