to an entire destitution of personal worth, have recourse to cunning and artifice; or, from a spirit of servility, added to other traits of meanness, become panders to the ambition of higher and stronger jugglers of state, and descend to the sycophancy and vileness of parasites and retainers. In this way is the whole community becoming imbued, to a fearful extent, with the rank leaven of political corruption. Nor is all yet told. Of this career of petty and misplaced aspiration to power, intemperance rarely fails to be the issue: for the tavern and the dram-shop are the places of resort of vulgar politicians; where, after having forged their calumnies, and concerted their plots against the upright and deserving, they hold high carnival, and celebrate their orgies. Thus is useful industry abandoned by them, honesty and moral observances neglected or violated, and habits of dissipation and debauchery formed. And thus do sottishness and beggary prove the lot of some of them, guilt and the penitentiary of others, and ruin, in some shape, of nearly all.'

A remedy for these evils, under which our country groans, is supposed to be found in a system of popular education, wisely planned and digested, faithfully pursued, and diligently executed.' But without the aid of compulsory laws, we doubt whether any system of popular education, how wisely soever planned, would be greatly efficacious. Let us not be thought enemies of liberty, when we assert, that parents should be compelled to have their children educated, if this sacred duty be not voluntarily attended to. There are many erroneous ideas on the subject of right, which it behooves wise legislators to heed, before the evils resulting from them shall have become too formidable to be controlled by law. Parents think that they have a right to manage their offspring as they please; and, if it be not convenient to educate them, that the neglect of their trust is not a proper subject of civil interference. Among the lower classes, especially, there is an unwillingness in sending their children to school, when it is conceived that their interest is promoted by retaining them at home. And even when instruction is offered at the public expense, many refuse to accept of the privilege, under the mistaken notion that there is an ignominy attached to education, which bears the impress of public charity. The result is, that the children of the poor, in our towns and cities, have become an intolerable nuisance. They swarm in the streets, committing all sorts of excesses; and along the wharves of our sea-ports, their boldness in plundering has long been an evil of increasing magnitude. The impunity which generally attends these petty thefts, has the tendency to augment them; as few people are willing to give themselves the trouble to resort to law, when the process demands time which can be ill spared from important occupations. In truth, if every larceny, committed by our vagabond youth, were prosecuted to conviction, no jail, how extensive soever its accommodations, would suffice to contain the criminals.

'If parents neglect to educate their children,' says our author, 'or if they set them a flagitious and ruinous example, those children should be taken from them, and be educated at their expense -provided they have the means: and if not, at the expense of the state.

The children of the poor should be treated in the same way. I am aware that evils might attend this proceeding. But, in a free representative government, no evil is so great as an uneducated populace. At every hazard, therefore, it should be put down voluntarily on the part of the parents, if practicable-compulsively, if necessary. If a father can be compelled to provide for his children corporeal food, why not, in like manner, food for the mind? No scheme of personal freedom should be carried so far, as to put in jeopardy the freedom and safety of the state, which an ignorant populace unavoidably does.'

We shall not pursue the author of the address through his details of school discipline; but shall now proceed to take notice of the second division of his subject, liberal education.

Professor Caldwell has been represented as unfriendly to the study of the ancient languages. But he declares that this is a mistake. I am hostile,' says he, only to the misapplication and abuse of that study to an excessive consumption of time in it, in some cases, and to the pursuit of it, in others, to the neglect of more useful and important studies. I am opposed, moreover, to the compulsory study of Greek and Latin, by all the pupils in a seminary, without discrimination; while it is obvious that, to some of them, the task is irksome and vexatious, even to distress; and that with all their industry and toil, their progress in it is slow, discreditable, and mortifying to them. The pupils thus foiled and perplexed, are palpably deficient, to use a phrenological term, in the organ of language,' and can never become ready and respectable linguists, by any kind or degree of discipline. As well may an attempt be made to form a musician out of a youth who has no ear (more properly no organ) for music; or to make an expert opera-dancer, or tumbler, of one who is deformed in his person and limbs, rickety in his bones, or feeble in his muscles.'

The correctness of the foregoing remarks is incontrovertible; then why is it that nature is not consulted in education? Can any mental discipline form a poet or an orator? Education can develope a genins which nature had implanted, but can never create one. Even the higher mathematics can be rendered useful to but few of those persons who are ordinarily indoctrinated in these recondite studies. The opinion that skill in mathematics is essential to the perfection of the reasoning faculties, may admit of a doubt, when we consider that some of our best reasoners in the pulpit, at the bar, and in our legislative bodies, never evinced any particular aptitude for this science; and farther, that it is no unusual circumstance to find expert practical logicians among those of the lower orders of society, who are unacquainted with mathematics, even by name. We are told, by Lord Orrery, that Swift held logic and metaphysics in the utmost contempt; and he scarce considered mathematics and natural philosophy, unless to turn them into ridicule.' If the Dean of St. Patrick's despised mathematics, it is not reasonable to suppose that he made any proficiency in these studies; and yet that his reasoning faculties were of a high order, we have only to look into his writings to be convinced. The poet Gray had no affection for mathematics, according to his own account, in one of those admirable letters,

which, in the opinion of Johnson, evinced a mind of a large grasp,' and a cultivated judgment.' Mathematical studies, then, although indispensable to some pursuits, ought to be confined to those individuals who have a talent for them, or take delight in them; and students of this class only, are fit for astronomers, architects, engineers, etc. To the majority of youth, a knowledge of the higher branches of mathematics is of little use, and is seldom put to account in the ordinary transactions of life. It is a fact, that the most extensive commercial dealings may be maintained, with the utmost exactness, by means of some of the first rules of vulgar arithmetic.

On this head, we are aware of the dictum of a great philosopher, Lord Bacon, who pronounces of the pure mathematics, that they 'do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For, if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it.' With the most profound deference for the authority just quoted, we cannot comprehend by what means mathematics operate to the cure of defects in the intellectual faculties; or how they are enabled to give to dull wit that acumen which nature had denied it. He who is physically absent of mind, is irreclaimable by art. And he who is dull-witted, or, which is the same thing, deficient in understanding, is not a proper subject for mathematical reasoning; nor is it in the power of this science to metamorphose a stupid man into a philospher.

'It is a dictate of common sense, as well as of experience,' says our author, that youths should be educated, not altogether according to the notions of their parents, guardians, and instructors, but according to their own talents, and somewhat in accordince with their tastes, and the pursuits to which, as adults, they purpose to devote themselves. Let those, therefore, whom nature has endowed with a peculiar fitness, and a predominate love, for the study of languages, indulge their inclination, and become polyglots, and even pedants, if they please; for the knowledge of the dead languages makes more pedants, than all other sorts of knowledge. But let youths, who are differently endowed, pursue a different course. Let their minds be mainly directed to those branches for which they are most peculiarly qualified. It is thus, and thus alone, that the educated portion of the community can attain to the highest eminence and usefulness for which their faculties have fitted them. A contrary course has often driven young men from colleges and universities, who, had they been indulged in their favorite studies, and liberated from those toward which they had a native and unconquerable aversion, might have become ornaments to science, and benefactors of their race. And I venture to say, that toiling and puzzling over Greek and Latin has disgusted and discouraged more young men, and frustrated their education and hopes of distinction, than any or all other forms of study. Indeed, I have rarely seen a youth driven from college by his dislike of any other particular exercise than the study of Greek and Latin some abstruse branch of mathematics perhaps excepted. One reason of this is, that when a youth has no taste for the dead languages, he consults his judgment on the subject,

and that tells him that the study of them is useless. And as respects himself, it tells him truly; for to him, with his unfitness and aversion, it is useless, and can never be turned by him to any purpose either of profit or honor.'

It has been strenuously maintained by some writers, that a knowledge of Greek and Latin is indispensable in the study of the modern languages; and it is upon this principle that a boy is first put to the Latin Grammar, in order to qualify him for the comprehension of that of his vernacular tongue. This, in vulgar phrase, is putting the cart before the horse.' 'Universal grammar,' as Lowth justly observes, cannot be taught abstractedly: it must be done with reference to some language already known, in which the terms are to be explained, and the rules exemplified. The learner is supposed to be unacquainted with all but his native tongue; and in what other, consistently with reason and common sense, can you go about to explain it to him?' The converse, then, of the proposition is true: to the modern student a knowledge of his own grammar is the proper preliminary to an understanding of that of the ancient tongues; for, in the words of the author just cited, 'a competent grammatical knowledge of our own language is the true foundation upon which all literature, properly so called, ought to be raised.'

We are far from underrating the classical dialects of Greece and Rome - those languages which have been immortalized by a Homer and a Virgil, a Thucydides and a Cicero. He who can boast of their acquisition, may lay claim to intellectual treasures of no ordinary value. But that they are indispensable to the knowledge of our mother tongue, we are not disposed to admit. The English language has its own grammatical construction, and its own idiom; and these are to be illustrated, not by foreign grammars, and foreign idioms, but by those native writers, whose compositions are the only exemplars of grammatical arrangement, and the models of idiomatic peculiarities. In vain may we expect to obtain a knowledge of English, without studying its authors; and what the construction of the language of these authors has in common with the ancient tongues, is of small moment, compared with that which is its distinguishing characteristic. So much for grammar and idiom. With respect to words, a knowledge of their derivation is the business of the etymologist, and is useful to the lexicographer, but it is not essential to the ordinary student, who need look no farther than to their proper use, and accepted signification. We should never forget, that all languages were originally formed, not by the learned, but by the vulgar; and to the latter we are frequently compelled to resort for the explanation of vernacular words or phrases, which have been overlooked by the compilers of dictionaries. The celebrated French critic, Vaugelas, was in the habit of consulting his female acquaintance, on the import of terms which had obtained the sanction of polite usage, under the persuasion that people of good-breeding, but whose minds had received no bias from foreign discipline, were the most proper arbiters in matters of current locution. That we have adopted many words derived from the ancient tongues, is true; but are we to be told, that, unless we are acquainted with their etymology, we cannot

correctly ascertain their signification? The illiterate beggar, who implores our alms, requires something to comfort him in his distress; and he as perfectly understands the meaning of the verb comfort, as the scholar who has been taught that comfort is formed of the Latin words con or cum and fortis; and he pockets our charity, without caring whether this evangelical noun be derived from the Greek or Latin.

The erudite writers who lay so much stress upon the study of the dead languages, as instrumental to the acquisition of our own tongue, are silent on the subject of that dialect which is the basis of the English the Saxon. The reason is, that the language of our primitive ancestors forms no part of the studies of those philomaths, who esteem every literary pursuit vulgar, which cannot claim affinity with classical antiquity. Now if any one language be necessary to the elucidation of another, it is the Saxon we ought principally to invoke, for from this source many of our most expressive and vigorous words have been derived. But in the study of English, we need no auxiliaries. A language so simple in its form and construction, so easily understood, so rich and expressive in its phraseology adapted, as it unquestionably is, to the fervor of oratory, the dignified discussions of history, the elegance and rythmical flow of poetry, and, above all, to the precision of science- is worthy of being studied for its own intrinsic excellence; and could be thoroughly acquired, if all the remains of antiquity were swept from the earth.

Professor Caldwell maintains, that it is possible a critical acqaintance with Greek and Latin may even mislead a scholar respecting the meaning of an English word; as the signification attached to many English words, by custom, which is the law of speech, is materially different from the signification of their Greek and Latin roots.' Bishop Lowth declares, that the greatest critic, and most able grammarian of the last age, when he came to apply his learning and his criticism to an English author, was frequently at a loss in matters of ordinary use, and common construction, in his own vernacular idiom.'

We are disposed to believe that a special application to foreign literature, whether ancient or modern, has a tendency, not only to vitiate our oral speech, but to corrupt our written language, by the introduction of a phraseology which neither good taste can approve, nor can it be justified by the practice of standard authors. One of the best examples of unadulterated English, of the age in which it was written, is the admirable letter of Anne Boleyn to her brutal husband, Henry VIII., in which letter the sorrows of the calumniated queen are depicted in a language which was the spontaneous offspring of the heart. Her daughter Elizabeth, whose masculine mind was imbued with classical lore, under the tuition of the pedantic Ascham, wrote in the scholastic dialect which characterizes the English of that courtly pedagogue. The style of Sir Thomas Browne,' says Johnson, is a tissue of many languages; a mixture of heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of another. It is vigorous, but rugged; it is learned, but pedantic; it is deep, but obscure; it strikes, but does not please;