friendly terms with those whom he contends with, so that in the struggle itself he may learn to wish not to hurt his antagonist but to conquer him. Whenever he has gained the day or done something praiseworthy, we should allow him to enjoy the victory, but not to rush into transports of delight; for joy leads to exultation, and exultation leads to swaggering and excessive self-esteem.

We ought to allow him some relaxation, yet not yield him up to sloth and laziness, and we ought to keep him far beyond the reach of luxury, for nothing makes children more prone to anger than a soft and fond bringing-up, so that the more children are indulged, and the more liberty is given them, the more they are corrupted. He to whom nothing is ever denied, will not be able to endure a rebuff, whose anxious mother always wipes away his tears, whose pedagogue is made to pay for his shortcomings.

Do you not observe how a man's anger becomes more violent as he rises in station? This shows itself especially in those who are rich and noble, or in great place, when the favoring gale has roused all the most empty and trivial passions of their minds. Prosperity fosters anger, when a man's proud ears are surrounded by a mob of flatterers, saying, That man answer you! you do not act according to your dignity, you lower yourself." And so forth, with all the language which can hardly be resisted even by healthy and originally well-principled minds. Flattery, then, must be kept well out of the way of children.

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Let a child hear the truth, and sometimes fear it; let him always reverence it. Let him rise in the presence of his elders. Let him obtain nothing by flying into a passion; let him be given when he is quiet what was refused him when he cried for it. Let him behold, but not make use of his father's wealth; let him be reproved for what he does wrong.

It will be advantageous to furnish boys with even-tem

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pered teachers and pedagogues; what is soft and unformed clings to what is near, and takes its shape. The habits of young men reproduce those of their nurses and pedagogues. Once a boy, who was brought up in Plato's house, went home to his parents, and, on seeing his father shouting with passion, said, "I never saw any one at Plato's house act like that." I doubt not that he learned to imitate his father sooner than he learned to imitate Plato.

Above all, let his food be scanty, his dress not costly, and of the same fashion as that of his comrades. If you begin by putting him on a level with many others, he will not be angry when some one is compared with him.

It is of the bounty of nature that we live, but of philosophy that we live well, which is, in truth, a greater benefit than life itself. Not but that philosophy is also the gift of heaven, so far as to the faculty, but not to the science, for that must be the business of industry. No man is born wise, but wisdom and virtue require a tutor, though we can easily learn to be vicious without a master. It is philosophy that gives us a veneration for God, a charity for our neighbor; that teaches us our duty to heaven, and exhorts us to an agreement one with another. It unmasks things that are terrible to us, assuages our lusts, refutes our errors, restrains our luxury, reproves our avarice, and works strangely upon tender natures.

To tell you now my opinion of the liberal sciences, I have no great esteem for anything that terminates in profit or money; and yet I shall allow them to be so far beneficial, as they only prepare the understanding, without detaining it. They are but the rudiments of wisdom, and only then to be learned when the mind is capable of nothing better, and the

knowledge of them is better worth the keeping than the acquiring. They do not so much as pretend to the making of us virtuous, but only to give us an aptitude of disposition to be so. The grammarian's business lies in a syntax of speech; or if he proceed to history, or the measuring of a verse, he is at the end of his line. But what signifies a congruity of periods, the computing of syllables, or the modifying of numbers, to the taming of our passions, or the repressing of our lusts?

The philosopher proves the body of the sun to be large, but for the true dimensions of it we must ask the mathematician. Geometry and music, if they do not teach us to master our hopes and fears, all the rest is to little purpose. What does it concern us which was the elder of the two, Homer or Hesiod, or which was the taller, Helen or Hecuba? We take a great deal of pains to trace Ulysses in his wanderings, but were it not time as well spent to look to ourselves, that we may not wander at all? Are not we ourselves tossed with tempestuous passions, and both assaulted by terrible monsters on the one hand, and tempted by sirens on the other? Teach me my duty to my country, to my father, to my wife, to mankind. What is it to me whether Penelope was honest or not? Teach me to know how to be so myself, and to live according to that knowledge. What am I the better for putting so many parts together in music, and raising a harmony out of so many different tones? Teach me to tune my affections, and to hold constant to myself. Geometry teaches me the art of measuring acres; teach me to measure my appetites, and to know when I have enough; teach me to divide with my brother, and to rejoice in the prosperity of my neighbor. You teach me how I may hold my own, and keep my estate; but I would rather learn how I may lose it all, and yet be contented.

He that designs the institution of human life should not be

over curious of his words; it does not stand with his dignity to be solicitous about sounds and syllables, and to debase the mind of man with small and trivial things, placing wisdom in matters that are difficult rather than great. If he be eloquent, it is his good fortune, not his business. Subtile disputations are only the sports of wits that play upon the catch, and are fitter to be contemned than resolved. Were not I a madman to sit wrangling about words, and putting of nice and impertinent questions, when the enemy has already made the breach, the town fired over my head, and the mine ready to play that shall blow me up in the air? Were this a time for fooleries? Let me rather fortify myself against death and inevitable necessities; let me understand that the good of life does not consist in the length or space, but in the use of it. Let us rather study how to deliver ourselves from sadness, fear, and the burthen of all our secret lusts. Let us pass over all our most solemn levities, and make haste to a good life, which is a thing that presses us.

VI. QUINTILIAN.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Quintilian, the famous rhetorician of Rome, was born at Calahorra in Spain about 43 A. D. Comparatively little is known about his family and early life; but, like most other great men of his time, he was educated at the metropolis of the empire. After returning for a brief period to his native province, he established himself in Rome in 68 A. D., and soon achieved distinction as an able pleader in the forum and as a successful teacher of eloquence. Among his numerous pupils was the younger Pliny. He was invested by Vespasian with the consular dignity, and granted an allowance from the public treasury. He was the first Roman teacher that was salaried by the state and honored with the title of "professor of eloquence.”

After twenty years of pleading and teaching, in which he had accumulated an ample property, he retired from public employments and devoted the later years of his life to the preparation of his "Institutes of Oratory." This celebrated work consists of twelve books, and is the most comprehensive and systematic treatise on education that has descended to us from antiquity. It has been a storehouse from which subsequent educational writers, particularly in the period of the Renaissance, have drawn copiously for materials. Of its wide scope the author says: "I shall proceed to regulate the studies of the orator from his infancy, just as if he were entrusted to me to be brought up."

"The great merit of Quintilian's treatise on oratory," says