The mind of man, asserting its immortality, and refusing to be bound by the narrow confines of the corporeal senses, would embrace the mysterious future and the mighty past, and while it dreams of personages and events yet to be, hold communion with the great men and high deeds of ancient days. And if it be natural to linger with soul-absorbing interest over the canvas or marble which has preserved the features and form of departed worth and genius, it is no less interesting to contemplate, through their own writings, or the writings of others, the deathless spirit by which the features and the form were animated. Nec magis expressi vultus per ahenea signa, The classic compositions of Greece and Rome then, not only challenge our admiration and regard, by the sublimity of their truths, and the purity of their moral precepts, but as perpetual models of taste and judgement, and as having come down to us with all the charms, and mellowed glories of venerable antiquity. No one is so barbarous as to be opposed to all knowledge. Some cultivation is necessary to meet the wants and obligations of society in its humblest grades; and those who are loudest in the decrial of classical learning, do not refuse to attribute much utility to mathematical study, as affording practical knowledge, and as a means of strengthening the intellect and fitting it for a discharge of the duties of life. It will certainly be conceded that the study of the Mathematics, improves the reasoning faculty and induces a kind of mechanical precision in the arrangement of affairs and the performance of duties, but that improvement is at the expense of the other mental powers-that precision is the dull round of the horse in the bark-mill, in opposition to the activity of the courser or the generous spirit of the war-steed. In the study of the mathematics, the mind is restricted to few ideas, and those of the most barren nature; the genius is repressed; the imagination restrained; the understanding limited, and the heart contracted-while at the same time, the disposition, induced by the study, to reject every thing that does not admit of a positive demonstration, withholds the assent from all the sublime mysteries of faith, and promotes a general skepticism. The attempt, too, to carry out in the social and political world the abstract truths of the mathematics, where principles are to be estimated by their consequences, must ever be attended with inconvenience, danger and unhappiness. And from the days of Epicurus, who maintained the atomic theory, down to the present time, the exclusive study of the mathematics and philosophy has had a tendency to lead weak minds into Atheism. The fruit of the tree of knowledge has been drugged with death. Finding the universe one vast assemblage of mathematical truths, they mistake them for the principles of things-recognize nothing beyond secondary causes, refuse to behold the Deity behind the circle and triangle-God becomes nothing more than the properties of bodies; in the beautiful language of Chateaubriand, the very chain of numbers robs them of the grand Unity. "This truth, Philosophy, though eagle-eyed, In nature's tendencies, oft overlooks; On the contrary, it is the natural tendency of literary studies, by enlivening the imagination, and creating a passion for the sublime and beautiful, to elevate the soul to the contemplation of that august MAJESTY, from whom every thing that is grand and glorious, has emanated. In the organization of the human frame every limb and muscle has its proper use; and the well-being of the whole depends upon a due exercise of the parts-and that system of gymnastics will ever be considered the most perfect which promotes the strength and activity of the several members of the body. The mind in like manner is composed of a number of faculties with their appropriate spheres of action; and that exercise is best calculated to strengthen, improve, ennoble and beautify it, which brings into healthy and vigorous play all its diversified powers. Away! then with the miserable folly and wickedness which would enjoin the cultivation of the reason and judgement alone, and the deadening and annihilation of the finer powers of that mind which is the inspiration of the Almighty God—the imagination, the perceptions and the sensibilities. Is there any one so impious as to tax creative wisdom with forming faculties that are unnecessary-so dull as to question the duty of cultivating them, or so insensate as not to feel that the most exquisite delight is to be derived from their exercise? 'Who would exchange for mathematical abstractions for all the meagre ideas derived from a consideration of the properties of circles and triangles, the pleasures of the imagination alone? which from nothing can call into being ideal worlds clothed with beauty, and, unrestrained by time and distance, be versant with all scenes and present in all places— that etherial faculty, which is a lively symbol of the Deity in his omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. The study of the mathematics then, although affording much knowledge of a practical nature, can never be of exclusive importance, inasmuch as it is at best, but a partial exercise of the mind. The study of the Greek and Latin classics, exercises in common with the reasoning faculty, all the other powers, greatly increases the stock of general knowledge, gives scope, and freedom of thought, quickens the sensibilities of the soul; by noble examples and generous precepts, fills it with lofty impulses, and merges the love of self in the love of country, or in the wider charities of all human kind. And while the man who has limited his views and feelings to numbers alone, may be expert to calculate interest or usury, and to accumulate a large fund from which he will scarcely permit himself to draw-or, like Archimedes, buried in mathematical abstractions, be unconscious of his country's danger, the man whose breast has been formed by liberal studies, will live less for himself than others—and in the day of peril, obeying the call of honor, stand in the front rank of the battle plain. I consider the study of the Languages superior to any other mental exercise in disciplining the mind. It tends to fix the attention, invigorate and enliven the memory, and promote reflection and discrimination. The ordinary exercise of translation, where the import of each word is modified by those with which it stands connected, demands considerable mental effort; but to be enabled to resolve subtleties of construction, perceive the force or delicacy of expression and minute shades of meaning in a sentence-distinguish the poetic style from the prose, the conversational from the rhetorical-and to discriminate between the idiomatic and general use of words, the obvious and figurative, the vulgar and elegant, and to render them in an appropriate and graceful manner, requires more severe and chastening thought, and cannot fail to improve the memory, the taste and the judgement. And while the study of the classics is as efficient as the study of the mathematics in strengthening the intellect and even more extended in its sphere of action, it has certain advantages peculiar to itself. When the student is pursuing the science of numbers, he acquires no other knowledge, while, on the contrary, he who is prosecuting the study of the Greek and Latin tongues, at the same time that his mind is thoroughly disciplined, becomes acquainted with the principles of grammar, criticism, rhetorick, history, philosophy, morals and civil polity-and they will be more firmly impressed upon the memory from the exercise connected with them. No one, I presume, will question the value of these acquisitions. Speech is the high prerogative of him whom the Deity has placed at the head of creation; and its dignity and usefulness alike require that the arts should be cultivated which tend to promote its copiousness, significancy, force, purity, harmony and beauty. A better understanding of the philosophy of language in general, and of grammatical construction, will be obtained from a knowledge of Greek and Latin, which have enriched with so many valuable additions the English tongue, than by the study of the vernacular-and for the same reason rhetorick and criticism will be better learned by a contemplation of those beautiful and sublime compositions which have been the admiration of ages, and the copious sources from which modern genius has derived its richest treasures. Nothing can be more interesting and instructive than the historical records which have been bequeathed to us by the writers of Greece and Rome-representing, as they do, the simplicity of the early ages-the daring of the heroic-the triumphs of brute force, and the still wider empire of mind-with all the varied changes that have marked the social and intellectual progress of man. The systems of Philosophy which they unfold, it must be admitted, are in many respects erroneous, but their labors, though imperfect, are worthy of admiration, when we consider their limited means of investigation, and the want of guides to direct their way. Few discoveries or inventions are complete at first, yet I believe all generous minds will assign pre-eminence to the great, original genius of the discoverer or projector rather than the subordinate capacity of him who has carried out his suggestions. Profiting by the labors and investigations of centuries, the moderns have only developed more fully the systems of the ancients that were true, and corrected the errors of those that were imperfect. The system of Pythagoras laid the foundation of the true solar system. Thales computed solar eclipses. Meton invented the golden number. Aristarchus taught the diurnal and annual revolutions of the earth. Hipparchus invented an astrolabe, and determined with considerable correctness the solar year, the precision of the equinoxes and the eccentricity of the sun's orbit. Besides astronomy, they were respectable in the mathematics, as the Elements of Euclid and other works will establish—in mechanics, in natural history and dynamics. Those who maintain that the moderns are wiser than their fathers, should not forget their ancient fathers from whom they received, at least, the elements of knowledge. I believe there is scarcely any thing valuable in modern philosophy, of which we do not find a hint in the writings of Greece and Rome. Newton's apple, with all the stir it has made in the world, appears to me as fabulous as those of the garden of the Hesperides. It is more likely that the idea of gravitation was the result of an impression made upon his censorium by the works of Lucretius, than any |