all that can adorn and benefit the human race, this is the source from which they ultimately flowed *. From the Greek and Roman authors the moderns learned to think. While they investigated with unconquerable perseverance the ideas and sentiments of antiquity, the feculence of their own understanding subsided. The shackles of superstition were loosened. Men were no longer shut up in so narrow boundaries; nor benumbed in their faculties by the sound of one eternal monotony. They saw; they examined; they compared. Intellect assumed new courage, shook its daring wings, and essayed a bolder flight. Patience of investigation was acquired. The love of truth displayed itself, and the love of liberty.

Shall we then discard that, to which our ancestors owed every thing they possessed? Do we not fear lest, by removing the foundations of intellect, we should sacrifice intellect itself? Do we not fear lest, by imperceptible degrees, we should bring back the dark ages, and once again plunge our species in eternal night?

This however, though a plausible, is not a strict and logical argument in favour of classical learning; and, if unsupported by direct reasoning, ought not probably to be considered as deciding

* I do not infer that they could have flowed from no other source; I relate a fact.

the controversy. The strongest direct arguments are as follow. They will be found to apply with the most force to the study of Latin.

The Latin authors are possessed of uncommon excellence. One kind of excellence they possess, which is not to be found in an equal degree in the writers of any other country: an exquisite skill iņ the use of language; a happy selection of words; a beautiful structure of phrase; a transparency of style; a precision by which they communicate the strongest sentiments in the directest form; in a word, every thing that relates to the most admirable polish of manner. Other writers have taken more licentious flights, and produced greater astonishment in their readers. Other writers have ventured more fearlessly into unexplored regions, and cropped those beauties which hang over the brink of the precipice of deformity. But it is the appropriate praise of the best Roman authors, that they scarcely present us with one idle and excrescent clause, that they continually convey their meaning in the choicest words. Their lines dwell upon our memory; their sentences have the force of maxims, every part vigorous, and seldom any thing that can be changed but for the worse. We wander in a scene where every thing is luxuriant, yet every thing vivid, graceful and correct.

It is commonly said, that you may read the works of foreign authors in translations. But the

excellencies above enumerated are incapable of being transfused. A diffuse and voluminous author, whose merit consists chiefly in his thoughts, and little in the manner of attiring them, may be translated. But who can translate Horace? who endure to read the translation? Who is there, acquainted with him only through this medium, but listens with astonishment and incredulity to the encomiums he has received from the hour his poems were produced?

The Roman historians are the best that ever existed. The dramatic merit and the eloquence of Livy; the profound philosophy of Sallust; the rich and solemn pencil of Tacitus, all ages of the world will admire; but no historian of any other country has ever been able to rival.

Add to this, that the best ages of Rome afford the purest models of virtue that are any where to be met with. Mankind are too apt to lose sight of all that is heroic, magnanimous and publicspirited. Modern ages have formed to themselves a virtue, rather polished, than sublime, that consists in petty courtesies, rather than in the tranquil grandeur of an elevated mind. It is by turning to Fabricius, and men like Fabricius, that we are brought to recollect what human nature is, and of what we are capable. Left to ourselves, we are apt to sink into effeminacy and apathy.

But, if such are the men with whose actions it

is most our interest to familiarise ourselves, we cannot do this so successfully as by studying them in the works of their countrymen. To know them truly, we must not content ourselves with viewing them from a distance, and reading them in abridgment. We must watch their minutest actions, we must dwell upon their every word. We must gain admission among their confidents, and penetrate into their secret souls. Nothing is so wretched a waste of time as the study of abridgments.

If it be allowable to elucidate the insufficiency of the modern writers of ancient history by instances, it might be remarked, that Rollin takes care repeatedly to remind his reader that the virtues of the heathens were only so many specious vices, and interlards his history with an exposition of the prophecies of Daniel; that Hooke calumniates all the greatest characters of Rome to exalt the reputation of Cæsar; and that Mitford and Gillies are at all times ready to suspend their narrative for a panegyric upon modern despotism. No persons seem to have been more utter strangers to that republican spirit which is the source of our noblest virtues, than those moderns who have assumed to be the historiographers of the ancient republics.

A second argument in favour of the study of the Latin classics may be thus stated. Language is the great medium of communication among

mankind. He that desires to instruct others, or to gain personal reputation, must be able to express himself with perspicuity and propriety. Most of the misunderstandings which have existed, in sentiment or in science, may be traced to some obscurity or looseness of expression as their source. Add to this, that the taste of mankind is so far refined, that they will not accept an uncouth and disgustful lesson, but require elegance and ornament. One of the arts that tend most to the improvement of human intellect, is the art of language; and he is no true friend to his species, who would suffer them from neglect to fall back, from their present state of advancement in this respect, into a barbarous and undisciplined jargon

But it is perhaps impossible to understand one language, unless we are acquainted with more than one. It is by comparison only that we can enter into the philosophy of language. It is by comparison only that we separate ideas, and the words by which those ideas are ordinarily conveyed. It is by collating one language with another, that we detect all the shades of meaning through the various inflections of words, and all the minuter degradations of sense which the same word suffers, as it shall happen to be connected with different topics. He that is acquainted with only one language, will probably always remain