suppose himself to have thoroughly understood the scope of history, and no man of research so diligent, that he can suppose himself to have obtained possession of all the materials of history, so neither is there any man so low or so high, that he can suppose himself to be placed in a situation, wherein his own examination of that which is recorded may not be of essential benefit to himself, in regard to that which is and is to come.

Now, where and how is History to be studied? I answer, first and best in the great historians of antiquity. The men whom these present to our view, have embodied, in their lives and persons, almost all that we can think of as forming the true greatness and true honour of our nature. The events which they describe, however small the apparent sphere of their influence may sometimes be, were those which decided the fate of nations which for ages ruled and disciplined the world, and the influence of whose rule and discipline is still preserved, and likely to be preserved, even in parts of the earth to which their actual and corporeal sway never found access. The thoughts, and feelings, and actions of these men and these nations, must for ever be regarded, by all who can understand them, as the best examples or patterns of us, our nature, our powers, and our destinies. We are the intellectual progeny of these men. Even their blood flows in our veinsat least some tincture-but without them what had our Spirits been? That question cannot be answered-but, at least, they had not been what they are. In every thing which we see, hear, and do, some knowledge of them and their nature is taken for granted-that is a postulate in all communication between men who can read and write in Christendom. For what reason, therefore, should we be satisfied with a superficial knowledge of that, whereof knowledge is practically admitted to be not only an ornament, but a necessary? For what reason should we neglect to store our minds, when they are most open for impressions, with full, clear, and indelible memorials of the mighty past?

It is possible, it is often said, to know all that is to be known about the ancients, without being acquainted with their languages. The assertion is a contradiction in terms. The most true, the most lasting, the most noble creation by which an independent nation seeks to manifest her spirit and her independence, is her formation and cultivation of an indepen

dent speech. And it is impossible to know such a nation as she deserves to be known, without knowing also, and that thoroughly, this is the first and best of her productions. Her language is her history. What, after all, are battles, and sieges, and kings, and consuls, and conquerors, to the processes of thought, and the developments of feeling? Wherein does the essence of a nation exist, if it be not in the character of her mind? and how is that mind to be penetrated or understood, if we neglect the pure and faithful mirror in which of old it has stamped its likeness-her language? Men may talk as they choose about translations; there is, in brevity and in truth, no such thing as a translation. The bold outline is, indeed, preserved, but the gentle, delicate, minute shadings vanish. And if our study be MAN, is it not clear enough that the more delicate and minute these may be, the more likely are they to reveal the true springs of his working?

The advantages to be derived from a more patient and accurate course of classical study than prevails in Scotland, might be explained in a way that, to every rational person, could not have less than the power of demonstration. Of the poetry, and, above all, of the philosophy of antiquity, it would be easy to speak even at more length than of her history. But the truth is, that the whole of these things hang together in indissoluble union, and no man could, if he would, understand any one of them well, without understanding a very great deal of the others also. In Scotland, they understand, they care about none of the three. I have conversed with a very great number of her literary men-and surely it is not necessary to say any thing in praise of their manifold general attainments-but I honestly tell you, that I have not yet conversed with any one, who seemed to me ever to have gone through any thing like a complete course, either of Greek poetry, or Greek history. As for Greek philosophy, beyond Xenophon's Memorabilia, the Phaedon, and Aristotle's Poetick, I have never heard any allusion made to the existence of any books connected with that subject; and I am convinced, that a man who had read through Plato or Aristotle, or even who was entitled to say that he had any tolerable acquaintance with the works of either of these great authors, would be scarcely more of a wonder at Otaheite than in Edinburgh. Butthis indeed it is extremely unnecessary to explain

to you, who have read and admired so much of the works of Dugald Stewart; for nothing can be more clear to the eyes of the initiated, than that this great and enlightened man has been throughout contented to derive his ideas of the Greek philosophy from very secondary sources. When he dies, there will not, most assuredly, be found among his books, as there was among those of David Hume, an interleaved copy of Duvall's Aristotle. And if such be his ignorance, (which, I doubt not, he himself would be candid enough to acknowledge without hesitation,) what may we not suppose to be the Cimmerian obscurity which hangs over his worshippers and disciples?-Without the genius, which often suggests to him much of what kindred genius had suggested to the philosophers of antiquity, and which still more often enables him to pass, by different steps, to the same point at which these had arrived the pupils of this illustrious man are destitute of the only qualities which could have procured any pardon for the errors of their master. The darkness is with them "total eclipse."

I have wandered, you will say, even more widely than is my custom. But you must keep in recollection the terms on which I agreed to write to you during this my great northern tour. As for the subject from which I have wandered, viz. the Greek and Latin Muses of the University of Edinburgh, I assure you I feel very easy under the idea of having treated these ladies with slender courtesy. Their reputation is extremely low, and I verily believe they deserve no better. They are of the very worst and most contemptible of all kinds of coquettes; for they give a little to every body, and much

to no one.

The Professors of the two languages here are both, however, very respectable men in their way; that is, they would both of them do admirable things, if they had any call upon their ambition. Mr. Christian, the Professor of Latin, or, as their style is, of humanity, is a very great reader of all kinds of books, and, what is rather singular in one fond of excursive reading, is a very diligent and delighted student of the higher mathematics. I went to hear his prælection the other day, and after the boys were sent away, began to ask him a few questions about the system adopted in their tuition, but in vain. He insisted upon talking of fluxions, and fluxions only; and, as I know nothing of fluxions, I was glad

to break up the conference. With him, if a pun may be allowed,

Mr. Dunbar, the professor of Greek, has published several little things in the Cambridge Classical Researches, and is certainly very much above the common run of scholars. I observe, by the way, that in one of his Latin title-pages, he subjoins to his name a set of English initials.

*

LETTER XIV.

P. M.

TO THE SAME.

AFTER Mr. Christian and Mr. Dunbar are supposed to have given their pupils as much Latin and Greek as people of sense ought to be troubled with, they are transferred to the Professor of Logic, and recorded in the books of the University, as students of philosophy. The style used by their new professor would, however, convey to a stranger a very erroneous notion of the duties in reality allotted to him. Logic, according to our acceptation of the word, is one of the least and last of the things which he is supposed to teach. His true business is to inform the minds of his pupils with some first faint ideas of the Scotch systems of metaphysics and morals-to explain to them the rudiments of the great vocabulary of Reid and Stewart, and fit them, in some measure, for plunging next year into the midst of all the light and all the darkness scattered over the favourite science of this country, by the Professor of Moral Philosophy, Dr. Thomas Brown.

I could not find leisure for attending the prælections of all the Edinburgh professors; but I was resolved to hear, at least, one discourse of the last mentioned celebrated person. So I

went one morning in good time, and took my place in a convenient corner of that class-room, to which the rising metaphysicians of the north resort with so much eagerness. Before the professor arrived, I amused myself with surveying the well-covered rows of benches with which the area of the large room was occupied. I thought I could distinguish the various descriptions of speculative young men come thither from the different quarters of Scotland, fresh from the first zealous study of Hume, Berkeley, and Locke, and quite sceptical whether the timber upon which they sat had any real existence, or whether there was such a thing as heat in the grate which was blazing before them. On one side might be seen, perhaps, a Pyrrhonist from Inverness-shire, deeply marked with the small-pox, and ruminating upon our not seeing double with two eyes. The gaunt and sinewy frame of this meditative mountaineer-bis hard legs set wide asunder, as if to take full advantage of their more usual integument, the philabeg-his features, bearing so many marks of the imperfect civilization and nomadic existence of his progenitors-all together could not fail to strike me as rather out of place in such a situation as this. On the other side might be remarked one, who seemed to be an embryo clergyman, waiting anxiously for some new lights, which he expected the coming lecture would throw upon the great system of Cause and Effect, and feeling rather qualmish after having read that morning Hume's Sceptical Solution of Sceptical Doubts. Nearer the professor's table was probably a crack member of some crack debating-club, with a grin of incorrigible self-complacency shining through his assumed frown of profound reflectionlooking, as the French say, as grave as a pot-de-chambreand longing, above all things, for seven o'clock in the evening, when he hoped himself to assume a conspicuous position behind a green table, with a couple of candles upon it, and fully refute the objections of his honourable and eloquent friend who spoke last. A little farther to the right might be observed a fine, healthy, well-thriven lad from Haddingtonshire, but without the slightest trace of metaphysics in his countenance-one who would have thought himself much better employed in shooting crows on Leith sands, and in whom the distinction between Sensation and Volition excited nothing but chagrin and disgust.

Throughout the whole of this motley assemblage, there was a prodigious mending of pens, and folding of paper;