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cations. This is a portion of what we designate as classical knowledge

"Patient CARE by just degrees

Word and image learn to class;
Those confounds and separates these
As in strict review they pass;

Joins as various features strike,

Fit to fit and like to like,

Till in meek array advance

Concord Method, Elegance."

He who without such information would presume to claim the high and honorable title of a classical scholar, may be well placed in the same category as the writer who should locate the falls of Niagara upon the Ocmulgee, or the one who would assure us that after escaping many perils in descending the Chattahoochie, his mind resumed its calm as he found himself quietly gliding from its turbid stream into the deep and broad waters of Delaware bay, with the Chesapeake expanding in the distance and Bunker's Hill and the other Alleghanies proudly rising within his view to the clouds.

There is no power of the mind which stands in greater need of judicious restraint and yet which requires more freedom than does the imagination. Horace finely shows its dangers and its imperfections in the opening of his essay on the art of poetry, and he soon afterwards exhibits the principle of restraint.

"But not through nature's sacred rules to break
Monstrous to mix the cruel and the kind,

Serpents with birds, and lambs with tygers joined."

Its duty is to embody before the mind's eye some sensible representation which shall, when expressed, better arrest the ́attention of the hearer and communicate information, than will any abstract description.-Our nature is not merely spritual; the chief part of our knowledge is received through our senses, -we live and we move in a world of sense amongst objects of sense, and though we may often indulge in metaphysical abstraction and may reason upon essences and generaliza

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tions, yet we are more vividly and powerfully and permanently affected by the objects of sense; and thus the soul forms for itself as it were sensible representations or images of even what in truth are spiritual beings not to be apprehended by our senses, or of an abstraction which has no real existence out of those subjects in which it is found as a quality. Thus though angels have no bodies we imagine them existing in bodily shape. Strength is not a being, neither is prudence, nor valor, nor piety, nor strife, nor revenge. The imagination must as it were give to them existence in some scenery which represents what it is sought to describe; the picture must not only shew each figure, perfect in itself, but the entire must be harmoniously grouped to give a pleasing effect, and Akenside finely dis plays the object—

"Know then, whate'er of Nature's pregnant stores,
Whate'er of mimic art's reflected forms,

With love and admiration thus inflame

The powers of fancy, her delighted sons

To three illustrious orders have referr'd

Three sister graces, whom the painter's hand,
The Poet's tongue confesses; the sublime,
The wonderful, the fair. I see them dawn!

I see the radiant visions, where they rise,
More lovely than when Lucifer displays

His beaming forehead through the gates of morn,
To lead the train of Phoebus and the Spring."

Nothing is more generally admitted than the impossibility of giving a precise and graphical description of what is not plainly seen and accurately comprehended. There is in many minds, and perhaps more generally discoverable in our southern regions, as great an impatience of that delay and labour necessary to arrange this exhibition as there is extensive power to call up the figures and to cast the scenes. And nothing is better calculated to remedy this very serious evil than habitual and intimate intercourse with the classical authors. Insensibly, the results of the rule they followed become so impressed upon our minds as to cause almost an identification

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thereof with our habits of thought and a taste is cultivated which will instinctively detect any aberration from the great principle which was their guide.

"Hear how learned Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress and when to indulge our flights,
High on Parnassus' top her sons she showed

And pointed out these arduous paths they trod.

Held from afar, aloft, the immortal prize,

And urged the rest by equal steps to rise.

Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n

She drew from them, what they derived from Heav'n."

POPE.

This creative power of the mind is not only regulated by the use of their precepts and the imitation of their example, it is wonderfully enriched by the vast treasures of materials which they have accumulated. These are inexhaustible for their extent; and wonderful in their variety: though so immense yet you carry them without inconvenience and no robber can despoil you nor speculator strip you. Your own sloth is the only plunderer who can on this side of the grave deprive you of the valuable possession. You are also taught, how from a poor and seemingly barren field you may by industrious cultivation raise an abundant harvest. Go to the sands, the groves, the pools and the sulphureous little mounds of Cumæ. How uninteresting! how valueless do they appear!-Open the pamphlet of the Canon Jario, and read the sixth book of the Eneid as you examine its contracted limits, and how is the scenery changed. The Hell, the Purgatory and the Heaven of Virgil are around you, Lethe is at your feet, Phlegethon is before you, you find the bark of Charon on the Styx, the rude. threatenings of Cerebus are echoed around; the gloomy Avernus is behind you, and accompanied by the Sybil the shades of the mighty dead pass in review before you. The wand of imagination has brought the surface of the globe and the generations of multiplied ages within the narrow compass of a short excursion, and has spread over this barren spot the panoramic view of the years that have passed away, and of the

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immortality that succeeds them!-Yet how far short is this of the power that Imagination possesses?

"Tired of earth

And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft
Through fields of air; pursues the flying storm;
Rides on the vollied light'ning, through the Heavens,
Or yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast,
Sweeps the long tract of day. Then high she soars
The blue profound, and hovering round the sun,
Beholds him pouring the redundant stream
Of light; beholds his unrelenting sway
Bend the reluctant planets to absolve

The fated rounds of time. Thence far effused,
She darts her swiftness up the long career
Of devious comets; through its burning signs,
Exulting, measures the perennial wheel
Of Nature; and looks back on all the stars
Whose blended light, as with a milky zone,
Invests the Orient. Now amazed she views
The empyreal waste, where happy spirits hold
Beyond this concave heaven, their calm abode ;
And fields of radiance whose unfading light
Has travelled the profound six thousand years,
Nor yet arrives in sight of mortal things.
Even on the barriers of the world, untired,
She meditates the eternal depth below;
Till half recoiling, down the headlong steep
She plunges; soon overwhelmed and swallowed up
In that immense of being. There her hopes

Rest at the fated goal: For from the birth

Of mortal man, the sov'reign maker said,

That not in humble nor in brief delight,

Not in the fading echoes of renown,
Power's purple robes, nor Pleasure's flowery lap,

The soul should find enjoyment: but from these

Turning disdainful to an equal good,

Through all the ascent of things enlarge her view,

Til every bound at length should disappear,

And infinite perfection close the scene."

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AKENSIDE.

And thus, my friends, well regulated imagination promotes the enjoyments of the soul and sustains the cause of Truth.

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Afiother serious advantage derivable from continuing this familiarity with the ancient authors is, that it affords for us ample scope for the study of the human mind, exhibiting its epochs of acquisition in science, its improvement in the arts, the true field for its labours, and the mode in which we may be more likely to insure success. We may thence learn the fallacy of those theories which have, under the garb of philosophy and science, at various times, betrayed great minds into egregious folly.

Thus we perceive immediately that the art of writing and the discovery of letters bear us back to no very remote period from the origin of our christian epoch, and, sustain our religion's history. And though some nations had made progress in legislation, in arts and in arms, though agriculture was greatly improved and commerce wa's extending its dominion, tho' several mighty monuments were raised at early periods, still the first efforts at writing were exceedingly rude, and their application was very limited. We trace the progress of science from one period to another, but beginning with what was most in demand for the necessities, then the comforts and subsequently for the luxuries of man. We find our forefathers under the influence of the same passions and subject to the same infirmities as we are, and equally the slaves of prejudice and of pride as we are, having the same appetites and taking the like means for their gratification. If we come down to more recent epochs we perceive that though in the contest with the barbarian much of the more polished literature and the finer arts were for a time overwhelmed, still they were not altogether lost, and that the restoration gives a very different appearance from what took place at the invention.

Whilst we behold the ancient nations exceeding us in many instances in works of architecture, in persevering industry, in the amassing of wealth, in the productions of their soil, in military prowess, in force of eloquence and the sweets of Poetry, in one respect they are confessedly infinitely below usthat is in their notions of Cod and of religion and in their max

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