adorned with new and greater charms than ever, because high beauty acquires higher power by time and acquaintance.

Ancient literature has, besides, an interest peculiar to itself, in its perfect originality, and in the most remarkable history of its development. But we should trespass too far, if we intended to say all which occurs to us in favor of ancient literature. It is an inviting theme, and has been treated often in an admirable manner; and in particular in a late number of the Southern Review.

It is often an invidious, but necessary task, to recal the mind, fondly and involuntarily wandering in the regions of the beautiful, to the merely useful. There is no doubt, but ancient languages are an indispensable part of a complete literary education. But this study amounts, when prosecuted in the best manner, to little more than poetry, poetical philosophy, and half poetical history.

It is the first and most solemn duty of those, who have received the high trust of the education of the young, to prepare them for real and practical life, and to teach less poetry; which, when true, is the free, unforced, untaught offspring of the heart. That heavenly gift-poetry,-is a sickly, deadening plant, creating discontent, and visionary vanity, and unbending the energies of the soul, if not grafted upon the broad foundation of large views of life and men. There is more poetry in what is, than in any thing, that can be imagined.

A complete liberal education is never finished in college; and for this reason we believe, that in most cases the ancient languages should be made an optional study, and should in every case be taught later, than they usually are, and supplied in the meantime by other studies.

We prescribe no study; but we wish, that every one may be taught, what is most fit for him. For the immense majority of those, that study Latin and Greek, these languages are, and particularly the latter, of no use. These studies are for such persons, most certainly a culpable waste of time. Others who receive an elegant and classical education, manifest a neglect of modern languages equally culpable. We have already mentioned, that in another article, we hope to prove, that by means of rational methods this latter study may become comfortably easy; and we shall here only make some observations that will show that for most actual learners, the dead languages are, to a great extent, useless.

To this purpose we request our readers, to answer candidly the following questions: How long do pupils study these languages? How much time do they give to them, how many authors and how much of these authors do they read? (we do not ask, how large the book is, in which, but how much of it he reads?) and finally, what is the amount of useful knowledge, they have thus collected?

Imagine all the fragments of fragments, the pupil has read, collected and put into one or more volumes; look that volume over, and you will have a scrap-book. True, if well selected, it will contain a good many fine and interesting pieces, just enough to furnish him with quotations for all his life. But to give him a tolerable idea of ancient history, you have been obliged, and you have done well, to give him a history of those times, which an English scholar has collected, and digested from a vast number of ancient authors.

In some parts of Europe, Rhetoric, moral and natural Philosophy, Mathematics and (catholic) Divinity are taught in Latin; and this was still more the case a few years ago. The pupil, when entering these studies, is full of Ciceronian Latin; he is first scandalized with the barbarous dialect he hears; which, however, he soon exchanges for his elegant ancient Latinity, which from its ambiguity would be ill adapted to strict scientific purposes. This new Latin enables him, however, with no additional facility to read Juvenal, Tacitus, or even Horace, or still easier authors, than the Physician's or Lawyer's, or that Latin, which is so fluently spoken in Hungary by most persons, who have received a shadow of an education, and which is nothing, but a faithful and literal translation of phrases of their vernacular tongue.*

Many persons would urge the necessity of these studies for acquiring an elegant style. Our belief is, that taste is not formed by the study of a few writers, but by extent and variety of reading. The ancient writers, who, according to our modern notions, could fairly be proposed, as models of style, are reduced to very few. Would the nervous sententiousness of Tacitus, so admirable in the original, be tolerated in a modern writer? To what would the exclusive study of the numerous works, even of that great master Cicero, lead, but to imitation? To imitation much more, than to formation of taste; and that imitation is never fortunate in the dress of a modern language. We are admonished of its danger by the example of modern philologists; and especially of those of the preceding two or three centuries, who distinguished themselves, and had indeed ample reason to do so, by their contempt for every thing not ancient. Some few are, indeed, models of style: but by far the greater number are turgid and affected, delighting to see themselves moving on in the phrases and expressions of some favorite ancient writer. They gather them carefully, and overload their own writings with them, as if a mass of roses in a basket were more charming than a few flowers on their native stem, with the branches, leaves, and variety of its movements. Such writers remind us of that period of our literary education, when we gloried in the high sounding phrases and mouth filling words, with which our tasks were

*Hungarians feel no scruple in speaking Latin, to use such Hungarian words, indicative of objects of common life, as the Latin Language does not af ford, or which in Latin have not a sufficiently defined meaning, and a Latin termination. They are, however, sufficiently acquainted with Latin grammar. We state this in correction of a passage in Dr. Walsh's interesting journal from Constantinople, which has been copied into several papers of this country. Dr. W. says, that he heard a postmaster in Transylvania speaking Latin with his servant; and he quotes several phrases of disfigured Latin, which he has heard.The fact is, that Dr. Walsh has disfigured what he heard, which can easily be accounted for; because it is almost impossible for an English scholar, to understand the Latin of a continental European, their pronunciation being widely different. But what Dr. Walsh heard, was not Latin, but Wallachian, the language of Moldavia, Wallachia, the Bukovina and of the most numerous of the three nations, by which Transylvania is peopled-the Wallachian; branches of this nation are scattered over several parts of the Austrian Empire and European Turkey. They are the descendants of Roman colonies in Dacia and Mæsia, and as this is, of all the nations, that derive their origin from the Romans, the poorest and the least civilized, so is also their language, not only the least cultivated and literary, but also naturally the least sonorous and harmonious of these filiations of the Latin language.

overstocked, and when bombast was our beau ideal. In no stage of our literary life were we prouder of our style.

Taste in some detached phrases can be borrowed; but that taste, which, like a perfumed atmosphere, surrounds the whole performance of a gifted writer, escapes analysis, and cannot be traced or imitated more in one phrase than another. We confess, that we like to see in our great masters those trifling irregularities, which show, that the thought was pressing for utterance, and that the word was too slow to follow it. We are ungrateful for the care, which polishes every phrase to the utmost. We are apt to find the author too laboriously inspired, or we follow with less intensity the thoughts, while pausing and admiring the splendour and purity of expression, in which they are dressed.

But to make the pupils write Latin verses, or prosaical lucubrations, is a most criminal waste of time. Of this certainly is true, what Cicero applied to something else, "Dignitas in tam tenui scientia, quæ potest esse? res enim sunt parvæ.' 99 What glory is there in such things, but to be obliged to do, what other people cannot do? Who reads now the certainly fine poetry of Jacob Balde, or Sanazarius or other modern Latin poets? And in a very few years the pupil will have lost the ability of writing Latin. It is clear, people will thus get rid of their time. And in the same space of time, which they have thus thrown away, they might have learned to read fluently, if not to speak, two or three modern languages. And the useless curiosity, of being able to write what nobody reads, is too often a dignified excuse for our gross ignorance of the literature and almost the existence of nations, with whom we pass our days, and with whom we are in continual contact.

The professional philologist will, and ought completely to master the languages, which are the principal object of his studies. But in our days, when the field of knowledge is so amazingly extended, let us not torture our young students, most of whom will be any thing, but philologists, with studies, in place of which others of infinitely more general usefulness might be substituted.

Further, how many ancient authors remain, in great part, and often to tally unread, because we are ashamed to read a translation? We insist upon our vulgar advice, to read plenty of translations.

We do not confine our ideas of the usefulness of studies to their immediate applicability to the duties of particular professions. We regard those studies, which expand the mind, and make it susceptible of high intellectual enjoyments, which are as highly useful; and we advise, to choose among the studies, which tend to produce such an effect, those, which in the shortest time are likely to operate most powerfully and most beneficially on the youthful mind. With this view we shall briefly class under several heads the considerations, that induce us to attribute this effect to the study of modern languages.

1st. Commercial relations are generally the principal reasons, that prompt to this study-but we consider it, as an element of a liberal education, more for reading, than for speaking; and shall therefore not insist on its evident necessity for the man of business.

2nd. This study will dissipate prejudices more than any other. With regard to the languages themselves, nothing is more common, than to hear

that the French language is adapted only for light and frivolous subjects; that the German is harsh, ill sounding, good for speaking to horses; that the Italian is redundant with vowels, effeminate, and without energy.There is some truth in all this; but very little. This truth is, that the French is more graceful and pleasing for light and playful subjects; the German more forcible, more fit, with its strongly marked quantities, to adopt the ancient rhythm; and the Italian more melodious and adapted to music than any other. From these facts, according to the vulgar notions of logic, the conclusion has been drawn, that because they possess the above mentioned qualities in an eminent degree, they possess none besides, and are good for nothing else. What would the English reader say, if he heard that the Frenchman, the Italian, and even the German, unanimously pronounce his language disagreeably hissing and full of unutterable sounds?

But as soon as the learner is familiar with the language, as soon as he no longer experiences the difficulties of the commencement, in pronouncing awkwardly sounds, that are unknown to his language, as soon as he believes no more, that the German of Saxony is the same as the barbarous jargon of the usual German emigrants to this country from Swabia and Switzerland, when he is so identified with the language, that in reading, he pronounces it as rapidly, as his own language,-a complete abstraction from the technical part of the language takes place, and he perceives that each of these languages is fully competent to assume, and to sustain all that passes in the human mind and heart; and that most people prefer their own language to all others, because they are not able to perceive the beauty of other languages.

He will not believe, that the language of the gigantic Dante, the stern Alfieri, is effeminate and wanting energy; that the language of the thundering Bossuet, the fierce Mirabeau,* of Lamartine, who in the delicious melancholy of his poetry, is continually longing after immortality,-is frivolous and fit only for light subjects,-that the airy and vanishing figures of Goethe's Elfenkonig, which seem to disappear before the eyes of the reader, are delineated in a harsh, hoarse and disagreeable language. The modulations of the voice, which adapts itself to the character of the subject, obliterate, so to say, the differences peculiar to the sounds of the language, and bring them near to those tones, which we might call the voice of the human heart, which is so widely understood. For this reason, also, the difference of pronunciation is much more sensible in common conversation, which is spoken in a few tones only, not forgetting the

*In the late public debate in this city between Messrs. Owen and Campbell, Mr. Campbell frequently quoted Mirabeau as the author of the "Systeme de la Nature," and as the chief of what Mr. C. calls the French atheistical school.The chief declaimers of this school,-if the wild schemes of some vain and noisy individuals, which have never been reduced into a system, because, as Mr. C very rightly observed, no two of them agreed,-can be called a "school," were Helvetius, Diderot, Naigeon, and such pedants as Boulanger, and Freret, to whose ponderous and heavy works posterity has already done justice by forgetting them. The "Systeme de la Nature," has always been considered as a bad work, even by "the School," and its author was not Mirabeau, but the Baron d'Holbach, a German who resided in Paris. That "Systeme de la Nature," has been very ill treated by Voltaire.

slovenly and incorrect manner, in which most people speak their language. 3d. By means of an acquaintance with modern languages, we study new literature; and we shall soon be astonished at the partiality and peevishness of the opinions, which we entertained before, and which we had imbibed, because they were generally received by our nation. We shall see, that superiority is frequently claimed, where it is not possessed; and that, where it is real, the rival's inferiority is insisted upon with an exaggeration exceedingly vulgar. Until the present, our practical knowledge of those literatures had been confined to the translation of some works or fragments, which some writer in our language had served us up, as a fair specimen of the literature of such, or such a country. But in this selection the nation concerned had by no means been consulted; if moreover, we discover in such a work some instances of bad taste, affectation, exaggeration, &c. this is a proof, that the author's nation has bad taste or loves bombast and affectation. We are, also, very apt to forget the time and the circumstances in which a writer wrote; because, for instance, a thing was true in France, before the revolution, it follows in such minds that it must be true now.

Read modern works; read occasionally foreign reviews; and, if possible, newspapers; and you will better know, what the stranger thinks of you, in what you excel, and in what you are wanting. You will often correct your opinions. You will have a very different idea of foreign politics and literature, than by reading the ludicrous extracts given by your own papers, which, we assure our readers, are very generally so made as if we were to make a volume of extracts and quotations from newspapers immediately preceding the late presidential election; by means of which, we pledge ourselves to prove to any body who has no better evidence, and who knows nothing else about the United States, that horror, anarchy; despotism, civil war, &c. &c. were impending this country.

4th. Each of the great literary nations has favorite notions and schemes, and the same questions are often treated, if not better, at least, differently in one country than another. Much is to be learned in all these varieties; much, that we could not find recorded in our own language. We learn, for instance, that the same word, or words, which the dictionary gives, as exactly corresponding, signify sometimes a very different thing in different countries. Such a word as "every body," the French tout le monde"-in this country it signifies pretty much the United States and England. Every body believes that he knows what the Catholic Religion is. She declares herself, "one and indivisible." She cannot help, however, being a very different thing in Italy, France and Germany.

Some national qualities, to which we lay almost an exclusive claim are, to our great astonishment, not less sternly ascribed to themselves by other nations.

How singularly variable do we discover the conceptions of the beautiful to be, in travelling from country to country? Their different tastes in literature, the fine arts, music, &c., show how variously this great question can be viewed. As for the fine arts, let us remember the Greek, Egyptian and Etruscan style; and the times nearer to our own offer anal ogous, though for obvious reasons, less striking instances. The collections of the busts of the Emperors again, not uncommon in the larger VOL. III.-No. 1.

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