shone in the Court of Frederick the Great, and who were, in their own opinion, qualified to dictate to mankind, upon all subjects of human interest, civil or political, moral or religious, literary or scientific, undertook to prove that Homer did not understand his own language, at the same time that he candidly admits his own ignorance of any one letter in the alphabet. But to return to my subject: the Greeks studied their own language exclusively; and to the study of that language, with all its natural advantages, they brought an assiduity, a minuteness, and an intenseness of application, that had no example, and has had no parallel. The popular spirit of their different governments, (for amongst them, as it has been observed, in respect to us, republicanism strove in vain to conceal itself under the forms of monarchy) rendered eloquence the grand object of every citizen, who wished to obtain, or maintain, an ascendancy in the state; an eloquence, however, which was not sought in the "shops of the rhetoricians," as CICERO terms them, but in the intellectual gymnastics of the Academy. The unwearied labour, the indefatigable

zeal, with which they pursued this grand object, are exemplified in the instance of DEMOSTHENES, *who is distinguished for having carried the ordinary methods to extraordinary lengths, and not for having adopted any novel plan of institution. The same observations apply, in a great measure, to the Romans; and what do I infer from them? Why this, Sir; that, if the moderns, with, beyond all comparison, an inferior in strument, and comparatively, but with little effort; having their attention, likewise, distracted by the acquisition of a superficial knowledge of a variety of languages, have succeeded so far as to equal the celebrated masters of antiquity in their own peculiar art, they must have, infinitely, transcendently, surpassed them, in point of genius, and to a degree, in fact, to be accounted for, by nothing short of inspiration!

* Fingebatur apud Græcos TOITIKOS ang litteris, studio, memoria, sed multò maxumè secessu; quæ omnia, jam planè diu nota civibus, ipse, ut sibi ipsi præ cæteris necessaria, in extremum quoddam perse

cutus est.

Greece had no universities, nor any set forms

and degrees, through which it was necessary that candidates for professsons, or public favour, should pass, before they attained either. Hence her system of education, if it could be called a system, had no partial object, and the general enlargement of the human mind, by the attainment of real knowledge, was all that they aimed at. Provided that a man was possessed of this, they gave themselves no trouble to enquire when, where, or how, he had acquired it. An intimate acquaintance with their own tongue was easily obtained; for we have the authority of PLATO for saying, that the very populace was an excellent teacher of it. Like ALCIBIADES, they learned this from their infancy, and with it they learned whatever else was to be taught; not because it was requisite for particular schools, or for graduation in particular professions; but generally because it was useful. They were a people of freemen; and, therefore, their education was liberal; they were all intended for active life; therefore, it was practical; they were desetined for the common service of their Country ;

therefore, it was general. Theory, but as subservient to practice, was but little known amongst them. They had no licenced offices, wherein, as at our modern universities, certificates of character were to be obtained; and, therefore, they were expected to give sensible proof of the qualifications, that they pretended to.

Such were the Greeks; a people, with a singularity of feature in their character, which distinguished them, not only from all the nations of antiquity, but also from mankind at large, without exception of either time or country; I mean their general aptness to every art and science, their intuitive perception of the sublime and beautiful in each, and their transcendant excellence in all. For, whether poetry, or history, rhetoric, philosophy, or the liberal arts, be the object of our consideration, they have produced such master-pieces in each, that, according to a celebrated writer, a hope to rival them is the strongest proof of ignorance and incapacity, in the person that entertains it. Neither was this the tran

sient consequence of a happy, but fortuitous, concurrence of events; nor confined, as among the Romans, to a particular period of their history. We cannot, as we do in modern tongues, trace the slow progress of their intellect and language, from the first faint dawn of light, to the effulgence of meridian splendour. The genius of Greece seemed to be interwoven with the soil, and blended with the mind, while the manners of its natives were in the first rudiments of society, and with its language, independent of the circumstances of time and gradual improvement, appears, like Pallas, issuing in Panoply complete from the head of the thunderer, to have been struck out at once, by some Creative Spirit, in all the fulness and vigour of perfection. The conquests partook of the character of the people; unlike the degrading tyranny of Rome, they rather exalted than depressed the nations, whom they subdued; and their arts, in some degree repairing the ravages of their arms, served to reclaim, to enlighten, and to civilize the world.