Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,
Immortal heirs of universal praise !

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!"

It is this feeling, more than anything else, which produces a marked difference between the study of the ancient and modern languages, and which, from the weight and importance of the consequences attached to the former, stamps every word with a monumental firmness. By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.

It is hard to find in minds otherwise formed either a real love of excellence, or a belief that any excellence exists superior to their own. Everything is brought down to the vulgar level of their own ideas and pursuits. Persons without education certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been re

marked as the characteristic of self-taught men, and which degenerates into obstinate prejudice, or petulant fickleness of opinion, according to the natural sluggishness or activity of their minds. For they either become blindly bigoted to the first opinions they have struck out for themselves, and inaccessible to conviction; or else (the dupes of their own vanity and shrewdness) are everlasting converts to every crude suggestion that presents itself, and the last opinion is always the true one. Each successive discovery flashes upon them with equal light and evidence, and every new fact overturns their whole system. It is among this class of persons, whose ideas never extend beyond the feeling of the moment, that we find partizans, who are very honest men, with a total want of principle, and who unite the most hardened effrontery and intolerance of opinion, to endless inconsistency and self-contradiction.

A celebrated political writer of the present day, who is a great enemy to classical education, is a remarkable instance both of what can and what cannot be done without it.

It has been attempted of late to set up a distinction between the education of words and the education of things, and to give the preference in all cases to the latter. But, in the first place, the knowledge of things, or of the realities of life, is not easily to be taught except by things themselves, and, even if it were, is not so absolutely indispensable as it has been supposed. "The world is too

much with us, early and late"; and the fine dream of our youth is best prolonged among the visionary objects of antiquity. We owe many of our most amiable delusions, and some of our superiority, to the grossness of mere physical existence, to the strength of our associations with words. Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects. There can be no true elegance without taste in style. In the next place, we mean absolutely to deny the application of the principle of utility to the present question. By an obvious transposition of ideas, some persons have confounded a knowledge of useful things with useful knowledge. Knowledge is only useful in itself as it exercises or gives pleasure to the mind; the only knowledge that is of use in a practical sense is professional knowledge. But knowledge, considered as a branch of general education, can be of use only to the mind of the person acquiring it. If the knowledge of language produces pedants, the other kind of knowledge (which is proposed to be substituted for it) can only produce quacks. There is no question but that the knowledge of astronomy, of chemistry, and of agriculture, is highly useful to the world, and absolutely necessary to be acquired by persons carrying on certain professions; but the practical utility of a knowledge of these subjects ends there. For example, it is of the utmost importance to the navigator to know exactly in what degree of longitude and

latitude such a rock lies; but to us, sitting here at our Round Table, it is not of the smallest consequence whatever, whether the map-maker has placed it an inch to the right or to the left; we are in no danger of running against it. So the art of making shoes is a highly useful art, and very proper to be known and practised by somebody, that is, by the shoemaker. But to pretend that everyone else should be thoroughly acquainted with the whole process of this ingenious handicraft, as one branch of useful knowledge, would be preposterous. It is sometimes asked, What is the use of poetry? and we have heard the argument carried on almost like a parody on Falstaff's reasoning about Honour. "Can it set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Poetry hath no skill in surgery, then? No."

It is likely that the most enthusiastic lover of poetry would so far agree to the truth of this statement, that if he had just broken a leg, he would send for a surgeon instead of a volume of poems from a library. But "they that are whole need not a physician." The reasoning would be well founded, if we lived in a hospital, and not in the world.

William Hazlitt.

(From the Second Book of Songs and Airs, 1601)

MY

Y Love is neither young nor old,
Nor fiery-hot nor frozen-cold,
But fresh and fair as springing briar
Blooming the fruit of love's desire:
Not snowy-white nor rosy-red,
But fair enough for shepherd's bed:
And such a love was never seen
On hill or dale or country-green.

Robert Jones.

In a Shaded Garden

(From The Praise of Life, 1896)

OWN in a shaded garden

DOWN

I laid on earth my head:

The deep trees murmured, darkly fresh,
Over my bed:

I looked through living leaves to the sky,
Odours and songs were quivering nigh;
The warm grass touched my cheek as I lay
And care from me was far away.

As a child to its mother, to Earth I drew ;
I felt her true.

Of Life, sweet Life, enamoured,

I closed my eyes to feel

The sweetness pierce to the inmost veins
And the whole heart steal;