German would have had better results? Of course, he does not. Mr. Adams justly anathematizes superficiality in anything as "contemptible as well as dangerous, and apt to invite defeat." It is fair, then, to ask Mr. Adams what right the failure of the Greek of Harvard thirty years ago to accomplish desired results in his case gives him to conclude that Greek rightly taught, or, to use his own words, "Greek really studied, lovingly learned," would not accomplish all that a college "fundamental” ought to accomplish?

Does Mr. Adams think that the mere fact that German

66

or French may be chosen by the student in place of Greek, would change the "limp superficiality" which he charges upon the Harvard of his day, into a scope and thoroughness of instruction and attainment, to repeat his own words, "which should set at defiance the science of cramming?" It is surely hard to see why German should be taught with greater thoroughness than Greek in Harvard or other colleges, and unless such is the result, it is hard to see what gain could come in this respect from admitting German to an equality with Greek as a college "fundamental."

But at this point I am glad to express my agreement with Mr. Adams in all he says or can say of the duty of thoroughness, and of the absolute demand for better, more thorough, more inspiring instruction in Greek, as well as in all languages. The real force of Mr. Adams's challenge and arraignment of Greek lies, I think, in the degree of truth which most college graduates will find in his description of the methods and standards of instruction in that language. I have said that I do not believe Mr. Adams's strictures of Harvard are accurate or just in degree. My own observation leads me to think that Greek

is at least taught as well as German in our schools and colleges, but that a great and in some respects a radical change is needed in our methods of instruction in all the languages—a change which may be generally described as from an artificial to a natural method, from a predominating attention to matters of syntax and grammar to an effort to teach a better knowledge of the language as a vehicle of thought and a more adequate appreciation and enjoyment of the literature which it embodies.

When Mr. Adams gives us what he represents as the experiences of the Adams family for four generations, he might be regarded as speaking with authority. But the Adams family belongs to the public, and the lessons to be drawn from the history and experiences of its members are not confined to such as those who are lineal representatives of that family may choose to set forth, but they are such only as the facts of their history establish.

It may be remarked that by recalling the fact that John Adams himself, near the close of his long life, was unqualifiedly convinced of the pre-eminent value of the study of Greek, so that he specially provided, in those closing years, in founding the academy which bears his name, for a "schoolmaster learned in the Greek and Roman languages," as well as to some other very characteristic provisions which he made, intended to secure thoroughness in the Greek and Hebrew languages in that academy; Mr. C. F. Adams, Jr., gives us the most convincing proof possible of the value which John Adams deliberately set upon his own classical training. To be sure, our present Mr. Adams tells us that this was "bowing low before the fetish;" that "instead of taking a step forward, the old man actually took one backward"; and that "this was fetish-wor

ship, pure and simple." And he then brings forward, as the only evidences of the correctness of such opinions, two passages from the correspondence of John Adams, written respectively in 1813 and 1814, in one of which, at the age of seventy-eight, John Adams tells Thomas Jefferson that he had recently been reading Isocrates and Dionysius Halicarnassensis, and that he found that "if he looked a word to-day, in less than a week he had to look it again,” and that "it was to little better purpose than writing letters on a pail of water"; and in the other of which, in his seventyninth year, he writes to Jefferson, that thirty years before he read Plato, and learned little or nothing from him.

He then dismisses the great patriot and statesman, with the remark: "As a sufficiently cross-examined witness on the subject of Greek literature, I think John Adams may now quit the stand”!

I do not think this will be likely to lead the world to forget that the life of John Adams was one of incessant labor and immeasurable service for his country, covering a period of considerably more than a half-century of our most eventful history; that he received a classical education at Harvard; that even at the age of seventy-nine he was not obliged to confess that he had forgotten the Greek alphabet; but throughout his laborious and anxious life. he never forgot or abandoned his classical studies, and at last gave, as we have seen, the most signal proof of his estimate of their value to himself by founding an Academy in which the study of Greek and Latin was made "fundamental," with Hebrew, "if thought advisable."

The real life-long testimony of John Adams is to the superior value of classical studies. There is no doubt that familiarity with the French language would have been invaluable to John Adams in his diplomatic career, but he

had in its stead that stoutness of spirit and flexibility of mind which enabled him at forty-two to undertake the task of learning French, and to accomplish as a diplomatist at the council-boards of Europe what he himself always regarded as the greatest triumphs of his life.

I know no reason why the education of Harvard is not entitled, on all grounds, to regard John Adams, as he evidently regarded himself, as its debtor for the foundation of that mental equipment which made him as Jefferson describes him in the debates which led to our Declaration of Independence, "our Colossus on the floor. Not graceful, not elegant, not always fluent in his public addresses, he yet came out with a power, both of thought and expression, which moved us from our seats."

ences.

Mr. Webster in his oration on Adams and Jefferson says: "They were scholars, ripe and good scholars; widely acquainted with ancient as well as modern literature, and not altogether uninstructed in the deeper sciI would hazard the opinion that, if we could ascertain all the causes which gave them eminence and distinction in the midst of the great men with whom they acted, we should find not among the least, their early acquisitions in literature, the resources which it furnished, the promptitude and facility which it communicated, and the wide field it opened for analogy and illustration; giving them thus, on every subject, a larger view and a broader range, as well for discussion as for the government of their own conduct."

I set the testimony of John Adams himself, and the judgment of Daniel Webster as to the sources of his power in public life, against the conclusions which Mr. C. F. Adams, Jr., would have us draw.

Of John Quincy Adams, his grandson says, "I would

for the sake of my argument, give much could I correctly weigh what he owed during his public life to the living languages he had picked up in Europe, against what he owed to the requirements of Harvard College." I think the friends of classical education might safely join in this wish. Very sure I am that the accidents of boyhood, what our author twice calls "the languages which he picked up in Europe" had no considerable part in giving to John Quincy Adams that marvellous mental equipment which made him, as his grandson justly thinks, more than the equal of any one whom he ever met in debate. I do not believe such a training was "picked up" from any source or in any sense. I believe it was the result of careful, laborious training in which classical studies did their share. His attainments in the continental languages of Europe, like all our most valuable acquisitions, were the result of thorough, systematic and long-continued studies. They were undoubtedly of the greatest value to him in personal intercourse as a diplomatist in Europe, a period, however, of only fifteen years. For a period of fifteen years, then, in a public career of more than half a century, the modern languages were, in the work of foreign diplomacy, very valuable instruments in the hands of John Quincy Adams. Let all this be conceded ungrudgingly. But in the more than third of a century which lies outside of his residence aboard, he was a Senator of the United States, Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at Harvard, nominated and confirmed a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, eight years Secretary of State, President of the United States, closing the longest, and in many ways the most remarkable public career in our history by seventeen years of service as a member of the National House of Representatives. What were the influ