existing generation to themselves and their immediate predecessors; you will cut off so many centuries of the world's experience, and place us in the same state as if the human race had first come into existence in the year 1500. For it is nothing to say that a few learned individuals might still study classical literature; the effect produced on the public mind would be no greater than that which has resulted from the labors of our oriental scholars; it would not spread beyond themselves, and men in general, after a few generations, would know as little of Greece and Rome as they do actually of China and Hindostan. But such an ignorance would be incalculably more to be regretted. With the Asiatic mind we have no nearer connection and sympathy than is derived from our common humanity. But the mind of the Greek and of the Roman is, in all the essential points of its constitution, our own; and not only so, but it is our mind developed to an extraordinary degree of perfection. Wide as is the difference between us with respect to those physical instruments which minister to our uses or our pleasures; although the Greeks and Romans had no steam-engines, no printing presses, no mariner's compass, no telescopes, no microscopes, no gunpowder, yet in our moral and political views, in those matters which most determine human character, there is a perfect resemblance in these respects. Aristotle, and Plato, and Thucydides, and Cicero, and Tacitus, are most naturally called ancient writers; they are virtually our own countrymen and contemporaries, but have the advantage. which is enjoyed by intelligent travellers, that their observation has been exercised in a field out of the reach of common men; and that, having thus seen in a manner with our eyes what we cannot see for ourselves, their conclusions are such as bear upon our own circumstances, while their information has all the charm of novelty, and all the value of a mass of new and pertinent facts, illustrative of the great science of the nature of civilized man.

Now, when it is said that men in manhood so often throw their Greek and Latin aside, and that this very fact shows the uselessness of their early studies, it is much more true to say that it shows how completely the literature of Greece and Rome would be forgotten if our system of education did not keep up the knowledge of it. But it by no means shows that system to be useless, unless it followed that when a man laid aside his Greek and Latin books, he forgot, also, all that he had ever gained from them. This, however, is so far from being the case, that even where the results of a classical education are least tangible and least appreciated even by the individual himself, still the mind often retains much of the effect of its early studies in the general liberality of

its tastes and comparative comprehensiveness of its views and

notions.

All this supposes, indeed, that classical instruction should be sensibly conducted; it requires that a classical teacher should be fully acquainted with modern history and modern literature, no less than with those of Greece and Rome. What is, or perhaps what used to be, called a mere scholar, cannot possibly communicate to his pupils the main advantages of a classical education. The knowledge of the past is valuable, because without it our knowledge of the present and of the future must be scanty; but if the knowledge of the past be confined wholly to itself, if, instead of being made to bear upon things around us, it be totally isolated from them, and so disguised by vagueness and misapprehension as to appear incapable of illustrating them, then, indeed, it becomes little better than laborious trifling, and they who declaim against it may be fully forgiven.

THE PURITANS.

To say that the Puritans were wanting in humility, because they did not acquiesce in the state of things which they found around them, is a mere extravagance, arising out of a total misapprehension of the nature of humility, and of the merits of the feeling of veneration. All earnestness and depth of character is incompatible with such a notion of humility. A man deeply penetrated with some great truth, and compelled, as it were, to obey it, cannot listen to every one who may be indifferent to it, or opposed to it. There is a voice to which he already owes obedience, which he serves with the humblest devotion, which he worships with the most intense veneration. It is not that such feelings are dead in him, but that he has bestowed them on one object and they are claimed for another. To which they are most due is a question of justice: he may be wrong in his decision, and his worship may be idolatrous; but so also may be the worship which his opponents call upon him to render. If, indeed, it can be shown that a man admires and reverences nothing, he may justly be taxed with want of humility; but this is at variance with the very notion of an earnest character, for its earnestness consists in its devotion to some one object, as opposed to a proud or contemptuous indifference. But if it be meant that reverence in itself is good, so that the more objects of veneration we have the better is our character, this is to confound the essential difference between veneration and

love. The excellence of love is its universality; we are told that even the Highest Object of all cannot be loved if inferior objects are hated. And with some exaggeration in the expression, we may admit the truth of Coleridge's lines-

"He prayeth well who loveth well

Both man, and bird, and beast:"

Insomuch that, if we were to hear of a man sacrificing even his life to save that of an animal, we could not help admiring him. But the excellence of veneration consists purely in its being fixed upon a worthy object; when felt indiscriminately, it is idolatry or insanity. To tax any one, therefore, with want of reverence, because he pays no respect to what we venerate, is either irrelevant or is a mere confusion. The fact, so far as it is true, is no reproach, but an honor; because to reverence all persons and all things is absolutely wrong: reverence shown to that which does not deserve it, is no virtue-no, nor even an amiable weakness, but a plain folly and sin. But, if it be meant that he is wanting in proper reverence, not respecting what is to be really respected, that is assuming the whole question at issue, because what we call divine he calls an idol and as, supposing that we are in the right, we are bound to fall down and worship; so, supposing him to be in the right, he is no less bound to pull it to the ground and destroy

it.

THE DISCOURAGEMENTS AND ENCOURAGEMENTS OF THE

SCHOOLMASTER.1

Since I began this letter, I have had some of the troubles of school-keeping, and one of those specimens of the evils of boynature which make me always unwilling to undergo the responsi bility of advising any man to send his son to a public school. There has been a system of persecution carried on by the bad against the good, and then, when complaint was made to me, there came fresh persecution on that very account; and, likewise, instances of boys joining in it out of pure cowardice, both physical and moral, when, if left to themselves, they would have rather

"The diligent and pious teacher, who properly instructeth and traineth the young, can never be fully rewarded with money. If I were to leave my office as preacher, I would next choose that of schoolmaster, or teacher, for I know that, next to preaching, this is the greatest, best, and most useful vocation; and I am not quite sure which of the two is the better; for it is hard to reform old sinners, with whom the preacher has to do, while the young tree can be made to bend without breaking."

Martin Luther.

shunned it; and the exceedingly small number of boys who can be relied on for active and steady good on these occasions, and the way in which the decent and respectable of ordinary life (Carlyle's "shams") are sure on these occasions to swim with the stream and take part with the evil, makes me strongly feel exemplified what the Scripture says about the strait gate and the wide one-a view of human nature which, when looking on human life in its full dress of decencies and civilizations, we are apt, I imagine, to find it hard to realize; but here, in the nakedness of boy-nature, one is quite able to understand how there could not be found even ten righteous in a whole city. And how to meet this evil I really do not know; but to find it thus rife after I have been years fighting against it, is so sickening that it is very hard not to throw up the cards in despair, and upset the table. But then the stars of nobleness which I see amidst the darkness are so cheering, that one is inclined to stick to the ship again, and have another good try at getting her about.

THE WORLD OUR COUNTRY.

But here that feeling of pride and selfishness interposes, which, under the name of patriotism, has so long tried to pass itself off for a virtue. As men, in proportion to their moral advancement, learn to enlarge the circle of their regards; as an exclusive affection for our relations, our clan, or our country, is a sure mark of an unimproved mind; so is that narrow and unchristian feeling to be condemned which regards with jealousy the progress of foreign nations, and cares for no portion of the human race but that to which itself belongs. The detestable encouragement so long given to national enmities-the low gratification felt by every people in extolling themselves above their neighbors should not be forgotten amongst the causes which have mainly obstructed the improvement of mankind.

Exclusive patriotism should be cast off, together with the exclusive ascendency of birth, as belonging to the follies and selfishness of our uncultivated nature. Yet, strange to say, the former at least is upheld by men who not only call themselves Christians, but are apt to use the charge of irreligion as the readiest weapon against those who differ from them. So little have they learned of the spirit of that Revelation which taught emphatically the abolition of an exclusively national religion and a local worship, that so men, being all born of the same blood, might make their sympathies co-extensive with their bond of universal brotherhood. Appendix to Thucydides, vol. i.

THE OXFORD CONSPIRATORS.

But on the character of no party does history throw so full and clear a light as on the high church party of the Church of England-the party of the Oxford conspirators. Unlike the political Tories, who are only analogously like the Tories of the Revolution, by being as much in the rear of the existing generation as the old Tories were in the rear of theirs, these church Tories have stirred neither actually nor relatively; they are the very Nonjurors and high church clergy of King William's, and Anne's, and George the First's reign reproduced, with scarcely a shade of difference. Now, as then, this party is made up of two elements-of the Hophni and Phinehas school, on the one hand-the mere low worldly clergy, careless and grossly ignorant-ministers not of the Gospel, but of the aristocracy, who belong to Christianity only from the accident of its being established by law; and of the formalist Judaizing fanatics, on the other hand, who have ever been the peculiar disgrace of the Church of England; for these high church fanatics have imbibed, even of fanaticism itself, nothing but the folly and the virulence. Other fanatics have persecuted, like the Romanists, in order to uphold a magnificent system, which, striking its roots deep and stretching its branches wide, exercises a vast influence over the moral condition of man, and may almost excuse some extravagance of zeal in its behalf. Others, again, have been fanatics for freedom, and for what they deemed the due authority of God's own word. They were violent against human ceremonies-they despised learning-they cast away the delicacies, and almost the humanities of society, for the sake of asserting two great principles, noble even in their exaggera tion-entire freedom towards man, and entire devotion towards God. But the fanaticism of the English high churchman has been the fanaticism of mere foolery. A dress, a ritual, a name, a ceremony; a technical phraseology; the superstition of a priesthood without its power; the form of episcopal government, without the substance; a system imperfect and paralyzed, not independent, not sovereign-afraid to cast off the subjection against which it is perpetually murmuring. Such are the objects of high church fanaticism, objects so pitiful that, if gained ever so completely, they would make no man the wiser or the better; they would lead to no good, intellectual, moral, or spiritual; to no effect, social or religious, except to the changing of sense into silliness, and holiness of heart and life into formality and hypocrisy.