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confine this praise exclusively to the study of Latin and Greek, or to suppose that other difficulties might not be found which it would be useful to overcome; but though Latin and Greek have this merit in common with many arts and sciences, still they have it; and, if they do nothing else, they at least secure a solid and vigorous application at a period of life which materially influences all other periods. To go through the grammar of one language thoroughly is of great use for the mastery of every other grammar; because there obtains, through all languages, a certain analogy to each other in their grammatical construction. Latin and Greek have now mixed themselves etymologically with all the languages of Modern Europe, and with none more than our own; so that it is necessary to read these two tongues for other objects than themselves.

The two ancient languages are, as mere inventions-as pieces of mechanism-incomparably more beautiful than any of the modern languages of Europe; their mode of signifying time and case by terminations, instead of auxiliary verbs and particles, would of itself stamp their superiority. Add to this, the copiousness of the Greek language, with the fancy, harmony, and majesty of its compounds; and there are quite sufficient reasons why the classics should be studied for the beauties of language. Compared to them merely as vehicles of thought and passion, all modern languages are dull, ill-contrived, and barbarous.

That a great part of the Scriptures have come down to us in the Greek language is of itself a reason, if all others were wanting, why education should be planned so as to produce a supply of Greek scholars.

The cultivation of style is very justly made a part of education. Everything which is written is meant either to please or to instruct. The second object it is difficult to effect without attending to the first; and the cultivation of style is the acquisition of those rules and literary habits which sagacity anticipates, or experience shows to be the most effectual means of pleasing. Those works are the best which have longest stood the test of time, and pleased the greatest number of exercised minds. Whatever, therefore, our conjectures may be, we cannot be so sure that the best modern writers can afford us as good models as the ancients; we cannot be certain that they will live through the revolutions of the world, and continue to please in every climate, under every species of government, through every stage of civilization. The moderns have been well taught by their masters; but the time is hardly yet come when the necessity for such instruction no longer exists. We may still borrow descriptive power from Tacitus; dignified perspicuity from Livy; simplicity from Cæsar: and from Homer some portion of that light and heat which, dispersed into ten thousand channels, has filled the world with bright images and illustrious thoughts. Let the cultivator of modern literature addict himself to the purest models of taste which France, Italy, and England could supply, he might still learn from Virgil to be majestic, and from Tibullus to be tender; he might not yet look upon the face of nature as

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Theocritus saw it, nor might he reach those springs of pathos with which Euripides softened the hearts of his audience. In short, it appears to us, that there are so many excellent reasons why a certain number of scholars should be kept up in this and in every civilized country, that we should consider every system of education from which classical education was excluded, as radically erroneous and completely absurd.

23.-TAXES.

LORD BROUGHAM.

PERMIT me to inform you, my friends, what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory:-Taxes-upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot-taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste-taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotiontaxes on everything on earth, and the waters under the earth, on everything that comes from abroad or is grown at home-taxes upon the raw material-taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man-taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health-on the ermine which decorates the judge, and the rope which hangs the criminal— on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice-on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride-at bed or board we must pay taxes.

The schoolboy whips his taxed top-the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle on a taxed road-and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine which has paid seven per cent. into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent., makes his will on an eight pound stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothecary, who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers to be taxed no more.

24.-ON THE ACCUMULATION OF MODERN POETRY. LORD JEFFREY.

[Francis Jeffrey was born in Edinburgh, 1773, and educated at the Edinburgh High School, Glasgow University, and Oxford. On completing his education he adopted the profession of the law. In 1802, in co-operation with Brougham and Sydney Smith, he commenced "The Edinburgh Review," and may be considered as the founder of the modern school of criticism. In the course of his professional career he was elected Dean of the Faculties, Lord Advocate,

and ultimately advanced to the Bench as one of the Lords of Session.-He died, 1850.]

NEXT to the impression of the vast fertility, compass, and beauty of our English poetry, the reflection that occurs most frequently and forcibly to us, in accompanying Mr. Campbell through his wide survey, is that of the perishable nature of poetical fame, and the speedy oblivion that has overtaken so many of the promised heirs of immortality! Of near two hundred and fifty authors whose works are cited in these volumes, by far the greater part of whom were celebrated in their generation, there are not thirty that now enjoy anything that can be called popularity, whose works are to be found in the hands of ordinary readers, in the shops of ordinary booksellers, or in the press for republication. About fifty more may be tolerably familiar to men of taste or literature-the rest slumber on the shelves of collectors, and are partially known to a few antiquaries and scholars. Now the fame of a poet is popular, or nothing. He does not address himself, like the man of science, to the learned, or those who desire to learn, but to all mankind; and his purpose being to delight and be praised, necessarily extends to all who can receive pleasure or join in applause. It is strange, then, and somewhat humiliating, to see how great a proportion of those who had once fought their way successfully to distinction, and surmounted the rivalry of contemporary envy, have again sunk into neglect. We have great deference for public opinion, and readily admit that nothing but what is good can be permanently popular. But though its vivat be generally oracular, its pereat appears to us to be often sufficiently capricious; and while we would foster all that it bids to live, we would willingly revive much that it leaves to die. The very multiplication of works of amusement necessarily withdraws many from notice that deserve to be kept in remembrance; for we should soon find it labour, and not amusement, if we were obliged to make use of them all, or even to take all upon trial. As the materials of enjoyment and instruction accumulate around us, more and more, we fear, must thus be daily rejected and left to waste. For while our tasks lengthen, our lives remain as short as ever; and the calls on our time multiply, while our time itself is flying swiftly away. This superfluity and abundance of our treasures, therefore, necessarily renders much of them worthless; and the veriest accidents may, in such a case, determine what part shall be preserved and what thrown away and neglected. When an army is decimated, the very bravest may fall; and many poets, worthy of eternal remembrance, have probably been forgotten, merely because there was not room in our memories for all.

By such a work as the present, however, this injustice of fortune may be partly redressed some small fragments of an immortal strain may still be rescued from oblivion—and a wreck of a name preserved which time appeared to have swallowed up for ever. There is something pious, we think, and endearing, in the office of thus gathering up the ashes of renown that has passed away; or rather, of calling back the departed life for a transitory glow, and

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enabling those great spirits which seemed to be laid for ever, still to draw a tear of pity, or a throb of admiration, from the hearts of a forgetful generation. The body of their poetry probably can never be revived; but some sparks of its spirit may yet be preserved in a narrower and feebler frame.

When we look back upon the havoc which two hundred years have thus made in the ranks of our immortals, and, above all, when we refer their rapid disappearance to the quick succession of new competitors, and the accumulation of more good works than there is time to peruse, we cannot help being dismayed at the prospect which lies before the writers of the present day. There never was an age so prolific of popular poetry as that in which we now live; and as wealth, population, and education extend, the produce is likely to go on increasing. The last ten years have produced, we think, an annual supply of about ten thousand lines of good staple poetry, poetry from the very first hands that we can boast of, —that runs quickly on to three or four large editions, and is as likely to be permanent as present success can make it. Now, if this goes on for a hundred years longer, what a task will await the poetical readers of 1919! Our living poets will then be nearly as old as Pope and Swift are at present; but there will stand between them and that generation nearly ten times as much fresh and fashionable poetry as is now interposed between us and those writers; and if Scott, and Byron, and Campbell have already cast Pope and Swift a good deal into the shade, in what form and dimensions are they themselves likely to be presented to the eyes of our great-grandchildren? The thought, we own, is a little appalling; and we confess we see nothing better to imagine than that they may find a comfortable place in some new collection of specimens-the centenary of the present publication. There, if the future editor have anything like the indulgence and veneration for antiquity of his predecessor, there shall posterity still hang with rapture on the half of Campbell, and the fourth-part of Byron, and the sixth of Scott, and the scattered tithes of Crabbe, and the three per cent. of Southey; while some good-natured critic shall sit in our mouldering chair, and more than half prefer them to those by whom they have been superseded! It is an hyperbole of good-nature, however, we fear, to ascribe to them even those dimensions at the end of a century; after a lapse of 250 years, we are afraid to think of the space they may have shrunk into. We have no Shakspeare, alas! to shed a never-setting light on his contemporaries; and if we continue to write and rhyme at the present rate for 200 years longer, there must be some new cut of short-hand reading invented, or all reading will be given up in despair.

H

25.-CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

DR. CHALMERS.

[The Rev. Dr. Thomas Chalmers was born at Anstruther, in Fife, 1780. He was educated at St. Andrew's University, of which college he obtained the chair of moral philosophy in 1824. In 1828 he was removed to the chair of theology in the University of Edinburgh, where he died suddenly in the spring of 1847. His works, published during his lifetime, in twenty-five vols., embrace a wide range of subjects, chiefly relating to theology and political economy. His posthumous works, in nine vols., comprise his "Daily Scripture Readings," &c. &c.]

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MAN is the direct agent of a wide and continual distress to the lower animals; and the question is, "Can any method be devised for its alleviation ?" On this subject that Scriptural image is strikingly realized: "the whole inferior creation groaning and travailing together in pain" because of him. It signifies not to the substantive amount of the suffering, whether this be prompted by the hardness of his heart, or only permitted through the heedlessness of his mind. In either way it holds true, not only that the arch-devourer Man stands pre-eminent over the fiercest children of the wilderness as an animal of prey, but that for his lordly and luxurious appetite, as well as for his service or merest curiosity and amusement, nature must be ransacked throughout all her elements. Rather than forego the veriest gratifications of vanity, he will wring them from the anguish of wretched and ill-fated creatures; and whether for the indulgence of his barbaric sensuality or barbaric splendour, can stalk paramount over the sufferings of that prostrate creation which has been placed beneath his feet. That beauteous domain, whereof he has been constituted the terrestrial sovereign, gives out so many blissful and benignant aspects; and whether we look to its peaceful lakes, or to its flowery landscapes, or its evening skies, or to all that soft attire which overspreads the hills and the valleys, lighted up by smiles of sweetest sunshine, and where animals disport themselves in all the exuberance of gaiety,-this surely were a more befitting scene for the rule of clemency than for the iron rod of a murderous and remorseless tyrant. But the present is a mysterious world wherein we dwell. It still bears much upon its materialism of the impress of Paradise. But a breath from the air of Pandemonium has gone over its living generations; and so "the fear of man and the dread of man is now upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into man's hands are they delivered every moving thing that liveth is meat for him; yea, even as the green herbs, there have been given to him all things." Such is the extent of his jurisdiction, and with most full and wanton licence has he revelled among its privileges. The whole earth labours and is in violence because of his cruelties; and from the amphitheatre of sentient nature, there sounds in fancy's ear

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