schulen,' because the mass of those who in commercial and manufacturing cities belong to the 'Burgher' or citizen class will, under a well-ordered system, find their most appropriate education in these schools. Lastly, there is a class of persons in society whose high privilege it is to work by mind upon mind; to this class, statesmen, clergymen, teachers of youth, literary and scientific men of all kinds, belong. For those who are destined to put forth their energies in this sphere, a higher, more extensive, and more speculative education, is necessary. For such the Gymnasia' or 'Gelehrte Schulen' are open; and open not as a finishing school, but merely as an introduction to the universities.

་

This threefold division of the great public schools in Germany being distinctly in his eyes, the reader will now be prepared to appreciate the justice of the author's reasoning in the following extract. The question discussed is a much controverted one in Germany, but not less so among ourselves. 'Whether in schools destined for the sons of the middle classes, in the Burgerschulen,' the learned languages, and especially the Latin, ought to be admitted as a subject of instruction.' Herr Beneke answers decidedly, 'No!' and for the following reasons:

fective; in mathematics and natural history and physics, the staple of a good Bürger education, we can learn little from the ancients which will repay the trouble of studying them; and the little that may be learned, is to be learned by him only who is at once a man of profound science, a philosopher, and a scholar, not certainly by a merchant, an agriculturist, or an engineer.

"As little weight are we disposed to allow the argument that Latin ought to be taught in Bürger-schools as a sort of preparation and test for those who may possibly be advanced from those schools to the gymnasia and the unifor the sake of one or two to miseducate the versities; for it is perverse and preposterous whole; and, besides this, an elementary instruction in Latin is by no means a thing peculiarly calculated to afford such a preparation and test as is supposed. Many a boy will make admirable proficiency in Latin vocables and paradigms merely because he is too dull dead words and formulas will find a ready enand stupid for any thing more intellectual; trance where the lack of strong vital pulsations leaves the chambers of the brain empty. There are many better ways of judging of a boy's aptitude for the higher branches of learning than by forcing him to tack a few Latin sentences together; and if parents have so cities as to send him to a Bürger-school, when miscalculated their son's inclinations and capahe ought to have been sent to a gymnasium, they must just take consequences and go back to the starting point.

"But the Latin language, we are told fur"Those who advocate the claim of the learn- ther, is in many views the only proper basis ed languages are wont to bring this forward in of all knowledge. To this I answer directly,the first place, that our modern intellectual name the branch of knowledge to the attainculture is historically so intimately connected ment of which Latin is now essential, to which with antiquity, that into any thorough course Latin is to such an extent the key, that the of education, going beyond the claims of mere profit to be obtained will stand in an intelliginecessity, at least one of the ancient languages ble relation to the labor expended? That ought to be admitted. But the answer to this many technical phrases in the different sciis evident; our intellectual culture in modern ences are derived from the Latin, is an argutimes has made itself gradually more and ment that scarcely can be advanced seriously. more free from the influence of ancient litera- These phrases can easily be explained etyture, in such a manner as that it is now able mologically as they occur; and besides, this to stand on its own merits and in a position reason, if it were any reason at all, would be altogether independent. Those, indeed, whose a much stronger plea for the introduction of position in the social system calls upon them Greek than of Latin into the education of a to know and to teach, not only what the world German merchant or engineer. As for what now is and ought to he, but also how it came is commonly said that the Latin is the root of to be, what it is, and through what strange most modern languages, and must, therefore, mutations and metamorphoses it has passed, be studied, if not for its own sake, at least for may, nay must, go back to the original germs the sake of these, there is a practical fallacy in and far withdrawn beginnings of things; bu this, too obvious to demand any labored refor such as mean only to work on the prepared futation. The time spent in the Latin prefoundation of modern society, and whose activ-paration for learning the modern languages, ity is principally directed to the external re-might have been as well spent in learning the lations of life, such laborious pilgrimages into languages themselves. The bulk of the lanthe remote past are neither necessary nor ex-guage, that is to say, the vocables, can be pedient. It is to be particularly observed, also, that the ancients, however high they stand in literature and philosophy, are in those branches of science which are most useful to the classes we now speak of, particularly de

taken up as readily in an English, or a Spanish, as in a Roman shape. And what should we say of the man who, when building a house, first throws away all his money on a magnificent threshold, and then finds that he

Italian.

has been laboriously constructing an entry to Greek are exclusive or preponderant, hownothing? Such is the wisdom of many of ever useful as preparatory palæstræ for those who learn Latin, that they may with philosophising clergymen and gentlemen the greater ease learn French, Spanish, and with a large library, are not the schools for "The next argument is that drawn from them; and they have, accordingly, in Glasthe more formal side of the question. Latin, gow and elsewhere, taken various steps, it is urged, however useless as an acquisition, more or less successful, to hunt down the is so admirable as a mental discipline that it pedantic old autocracy of the Humanists. cannot be exchanged for any other subject of This is good; but it does not, therefore, study that might seem more directly to bear follow, as some eager innovators will have upon the education of the 'Bürger' class. But here also, unfortunately, the advocates of it, that Homer and Virgil are to be banishclassical ascendancy are found sadly at fault. ed from our public schools altogether, and No well-instructed educationist will deny the steam-engines and calculating machines superior virtues of the ancient languages as substituted in their place. Μη γενοιτο!— instruments of mental discipline; but this dis- Let it not be !-Let us not snap cruelly the cipline is most beneficial in the higher steps of golden chain that has so long and so pleasadvancement, when the spirit of ancient literature begins to be breathed sensibly upon the antly bound us to the past!-Let us not soul of the student; the mere external ele- unbridge the mystic gulf of centuries proinents of language, and the simple combina- fanely!-Let Virgil and Homer live, as tions of syntax, have comparatively little pow- good things, and among the best, for those er in training the intellect; can achieve no- who have time and capacity to 'drink deep thing that may not be attained in a far supe- of the Pierian spring,' that never yet gave rior degree by the study of the mother tongue strength to shallow bibbers. How this is and foreign languages. "But, continue the Latinists, granting all to be done, we have already, we think, this, is not the learning of the Latin language, sufficiently indicated. Let Latin and Greek if nothing more, at least one of the best exer- be reserved for a higher class of schools, cises for improving the memory that the circle for the gymnasia; and let none be sent to of school instruction presents? This argu- begin Latin there who is not likely serigument is the weakest of all. For to exercise ously to carry it out in the university. the memory on that which does not materially This is Herr Beneke's opinion; and, howadvance the understanding, is surely any thing but wise; and then considering how rich the ever different the practice of good old Engmaterials are which modern science presents land in many places may be, there can be no for exercising, nay, severely trying the reten- doubt it is a sound opinion. But we shall tive powers of the mind, what need is there now hear at greater length how chivalrousthat we should resort to the artificial ma-ly our catholic-hearted educationist chamchinery of the vocables of a dead tongue? There is a danger, moreover, that by overtaxing the memory with extraneous things (which Latin words certainly are in a Bürger-school) a general distaste to learning may be generated in the minds of the scholars. And, after all, it "As to what they urge against the ancient is a great mistake in psychology to suppose, too far removed from our modern habits of languages, in the first place, that they are that there is any abstract faculty of memory thought, too strange, to interest or to edify which can be improved by exercise: memory is improved by exercise, not absolutely, but us, I must be allowed to say, without meaning only in the particular direction of the exercise: to say any thing paradoxical, that this very and so it may be that the improvement of the memory in the direction of the dead languages, however great, may, to all the effects and purposes which belong to the educated modern Bürger, be worse than fruitless."

pions those very classics in the gymnasia, which in the Bürger-schools he had so decidedly condemned.

strangeness is precisely the thing that ought ical student works himself sympathetically to invite our familiarity. For, while the classinto the sentiments and manner of expression of the ancient world, he by this very act necessarily receives a mental expansion and a breadth of view that the study of no modern Latin, therefore, is to be altogether ex-languages could have conferred; for in these cluded from the Bürger-schools, in the last both the modes of thought and the matter opinion of Herr Beneke; and the Berlin coincide so much with our own that for the professor, it is instructive to see, merely purpose of supplementing our intellectual desystematizes the current opinion of a great feeble. Besides, this greater contrast between ficiencies, they must ever be comparatively class of intelligent citizens in our commer- the ancient habits of thought and the modern, cial and manufacturing cities. These men has a strong virtue to stir the interest, and to have long been convinced that the old fix the attention; an ancient author, even grammar-schools, in which Latin and where he is only second or third rate, is in

finitely more suggestive than a modern, mere- j the teacher, therefore, rather to put a drag on ly because he is ancient; it is by the strong the light and rattling spirits of youth than to power of contrast that we most readily learn pioneer the road too smoothly before them. to compare and in the habit of extended Now this salutary drag on the precipitancy of comparison and faithful deduction, the art of youthful minds is exactly what the ancient philosophizing consists. languages are so well calculated to supply. While the scholar is laboriously employed in constructing piecemeal a historical, poetical, or rhetorical whole, from the biographies of a Plutarch, the tragedies of a Sophocles, or the orations of a Demosthenes, he is forced to expend as much intellectual strength on a single elementary trait as he does on a whole work in the mother tongue, or on a whole comparison in any modern tongue; and in this way both the matter and the manner of the thing rad are appropriated and assimilated in a way most conducive to a healthful reproduction on the part of the receiver, and to a free development of the higher powers of reflection on the phenonema of the intellectual world.

"But it is not only that ancient literature, by power of contrast, is more suggestive to us moderns; there is, at the same time, a simplicity of character both in the thoughts and in the manner of expression of the ancients that is more readily appreciable by the youthful mind than the more complex relations of our modern development. The works of the ancients, are a mirror of the childhood and boyhood of humanity: our children and boys now understand these works by a natural sympathy, better than our men. There is too much reflection and philosophizing of all kinds in modern literature for the juvenile taste; there is something more elementary and immediate, more fresh, and. as it were, transparent among the ancients. The ancient world also presents something more self-contained. less straggling and involved than the moderus. If the approach to the view be, as we have admitted, more laborious, the objects, when they fairly start out from the mist, are more tangible and more comprehensible.

"In the second place: if it he a more difficult task to attain an available knowledge of the ancient languages than of the modern, this difficulty also is an advantage. It has been and is the most perverse of all methods of proceeding in education, to think only how we may make all instruction as easy as possible for the learner. Knowledge of any kind can be easily taken up and appropriated only in proportion as it is superficial. When the time for instruction commences, the time for play is over; the time for intellectual exertion is come; and it is the business of the teacher so to select and apportion the objects of teaching that they may afford a course of gymnastics to the learner. Instead, therefore, of invent | ing methods to make study easy, some talk might be expected to be made of the best art of inventing difficulties. Now there are few studies that present such a complete course of intellectual gymnastics as the study of ancient literature. We do not speak here of the mere external elements of ancient literature-the lexicographical and grammatical frame work -all this we most willingly give up to the objector, as by no means peculiarly fitted either to expand or to strengthen the mind; and the more such merely mechanical processes, can be facilitated and accelerated, the better. But the sacrifice which we make in mastering the mere externals of ancient learning, is more than compensated by the developing power which they possess in so eminent a degree when duly followed out. Those compositions which can be had without any great demands on our intellectual activity, flit across our minds superficially, leaving scarcely a trace behind. Take, for example, any historical or poetical work in our mother tongue or in any modern language. Spurred on by an interest "This holds true of ancient literature in a in the subject, we drive rapidly forward from triple sense: it is true of the grammatical comone point of prominence to another; but this binations in the first place (compare Herodovery celerity of progress, which is so pleasant, tus, for instance, in this respect, with Hume or prevents us from thoroughly grasping and de- | Gibbon); it is no less true of the forms which taining the characters and events as they pass art assumed in the hands of antiquity; the before us; at the end of our movement there ancient Epos, the ancient tragedy, and the anremains but an imperfect shadowy outline of cient eloquence and philosophy, are nearer to what we have read; and in a short time even this the mind of young persons in modern times shadowy outline vanishes. The same thing than works of the same class in our own tongue; happens with the mere style and manner of and it is true, finally, of the matter of the clasexpression. We may pause, perhaps, for asics as well as of their style, of the characters moment over this and the other passage, pe- of the various relations of life, social and politiculiarly pointed and impressive; but in gen eral we are in too great a hurry to receive any distinct impression from the beauties of style; or will not dwell on a passage long enough to know in what its rhetorical excellet ce con sists. And if this be so with grown up men how much more must it be the case with young persons whose minds are so disposed to triviality and dissipation. It is the duty of

cal. The distance in point of time between an ancient and a modern is more than compensated to the young mind by the proximity in point of tone, and sentiment, and character. Ancient history, for example, how infinitely more simple than the modern! it is more the history, in fact, ol' individual men, or of separate groups and misses of men easily distinguishable; and the relations that occur between

them are at the same time comparatively sim- [in estimating the influence which the pattern ple; the passions and the motives also of the specimens of ancient literature exert on the historical characters (think only of the patri- modern mind; on account of the different sitarchs in the book of Genesis, or the leaders in nation in which we are placed, and the difthe Trojan war) are simpler and more kin-ferent circumstances by which we are surdred to the habits of thought and feeling that rounded, there is much less danger of a slavish characterize young persons. Modern history, and passive imitation of antiquity, than there on the other hand, the nearer it comes to the is in the case of a modern model. An ancient young student in point of time, the farther it model will be admired, and exercise a henefirecedes from him in point of affinity; its com-cial influence on the taste of those who admire plicated relations, its strange disguises, its it; but as it does not excite, and is not meant state plots and counterplots, and diplomatic in- to excite to any imitation of exactly the same trigues, may be made to envelope the youthful kind, it seems to stimulate exertion without mind, but they can never mould it. In what-inciting a discouraging comparison. The ever light, therefore, we view the matter, ancient literature, when the scholar fairly enters into the spirit of it, affords a much more congenial nourishment for young minds than modern.

classic models of our own literature, on the other hand, stand so near to us, and so obviously incite comparison with our own performances, that a servile imitation, or a despairful abandonment of self-development, is too apt to be the result of the early admiration which is fixed on them.

"It is to be observed, moreover, that this bond of connection which attaches us to the ancient mind, is not one of psychological rela- "To meet these views, many persons intertionship merely; it is essentially also an his-ested in the education of youth have proposed, torical tie. Our whole modern culture is what that instead of the classical languages, the old it is in a great measure as a growth from the German should be used in our higher schools. fertile soil of antiquity, and continues still to In our early Teutonic literature, it is alleged, draw no inconsiderable part of its nourishment we have a contrast to the modern development from the same source. As the modern lan of the German mind, sufficiently strong to guages can be grammatically comprehended stimulate the reflective faculty, and at the same only through the medium of the Latin out of time an extension of the view beyond the narwhich they sprung; so in tracing back the rowness of the present horizon. But to this various branch streams of modern intellect we proposal there are two obvious objections. arrive, from whatever point we may have set Our old German literature, in the first place, out, always at the same two fresh fountains of though different in several accessory modificaGreece and Rome; so that if a man will not tions, is, in its fundamental ideas, the same as be content to receive traditionally, and by a the modern. The contrast, therefore, is not blind instinct, but strives with a full conscious-sufficiently marked and decided for the purness and a sympathetic reproduction to under-pose. In the second place, even supposing the stand the modern mind, he can do so in no fundamental ideas of our old German poetry way at once so speedily and so thoroughly, as were every thing that could be desired in this by beginning with the ancient. The food. respect, the forms of art in which they have which whether we will or no, we must receive been handed down to us, are any thing but from the ancients with shut eyes, a classical models. As in every other point of human education enables us to adopt and to enjoy culture, so in literary development, the prowith open vision. gress of the northern nations was at first ex"Whatever truth there may be in these rep ceedingly slow and painful. It was not till resentations is independent altogether, it will after they had appropriated and worked up be observed, of any mere external elegance the early ripe literature of the southern nations and polish that may belong to the remains of that they began to exert their independent ancient literature handed down to us. The energies in a more vigorous form, and to creadvantages of which we have been talking ate works in some respects superior to the result from the essential character of ancient models by which they had originally been works, in thought, and emotion, and expres-stimulated. In consequence of this difference sion: these advantages belong to them as proof historical development, it is altogether imducts of the ancient mind, not as models of possible for us Germans to go back to the what is finished and satisfying in works of art sources of our civilization with the same intelBut when we consider further, that in addition lectual benefit that the Greeks did to theirs, or to the simplicity and tangibility of their con- that even we ourselves can go to the civilizatents, and their less complex character gene-tion of the Greeks; much less can young perrally, the works of the ancients stand unrival-sons grow up healthily in an environment that led as models of chasteness and truth in art. is full of waste places and monstrosities even we find ourselves provided with another and a most salutary check against that looseness. ill-regulated luxuriance, and extravagance, by which the compositions of modern literature have too frequently been characterized. There is another matter, also, of no small importance

for full grown men.

"But, continue the advocates of the old Gernan education, do we not historically grow out of German ground-are we not GERMANS

and shall we be at home at Rome, and a: Athens, and every where-only not amongst

ourselves?—Here also there is a fallacy. I shall not play off upon us any sophism of What we are as a literary people, we are in this kind. He tells us not only what clasa much greater degree through the influence sics are worth, but for whom- für denof the Greeks and Romans, and more lately jenigen welcher auf die höchste Bildungsof the English and the French, than through the continued working of our own most ancient na-stufe gestellt werden soll,'-for him whom tional literature. Nay, it has been experimen- it is intended to plant upon the highest tally manifested (as it was supereminently in platform of intellectual culture. Thus his the late war of liberation in 1813) that as often championship of a classical education for as an attempt has been made to bring old the gymnasia, is in the most perfect harGermanism into the fore-ground of our modern mony with his determined exclusion of the culture, so often (after a little artificial paradsame studies from the Bürger-schools. 'Non ing) has it been thrown aside. People, however patriotic, had such an instinctive, if not omnia possumus omnes;' the merchant goes always conscious, feeling of the inferiority of to his counting-house, the young agricultuthese northern productions to those of the rist to his model farm, when the young phisouth and east, that, in spite of all patriotic losopher is going from Homer and Herotrumpeting, and blowing up, the Niebelungen dotus in the gymnasium, to Plato and Imwas forced in a few years to leave the Iliad manuel Kant in the university. This is and the Odyssey in quiet possession of the the way they manage matters in Germany; academic ground. We do not pretend to de- but cide which course of development is the ourselves there is still reason to ferable for a people, a development thoroughly and entirely national, or a complex growth springing from varied foreign impregnation: but Providence has so ordered it that the development of the German people should be in this latter fashion decidedly: and with this, as an arrangement of Providence, beyond the hope of human change, we must ever be con

tent.

pre

among

fear that the true position and value of classical education in relation to the different classes of society, and their intellectual wants, is not every where distinctly understood; that there is too much of a general indiscriminating idol-worship of the mere letter of Greek and Latin, to which languages, in their mere rudiments and disciplinarian externals, a sort of magic virtue is attributed, as if they alone, without aid from living poetry and philosophy, and without the least regard either to social position or intellectual wants, had the power of turning every thing into gold. On some such notion as this the exclusive classicism of Oxford, and whatever in England is connected with that, seems to depend; while in Scotland we find, in many places, herds of young men who should begin and end their education at a commercial school, drilled for five years principally into the

"We conclude, therefore, on a review of the whole matter, that for him who wishes to plant himself upon the highest position of intellectual cultivation, an initiation into ancient literature is absolutely indispensable. Only when so initiated is he in a condition to survey comprehensively, to contemplate clearly, and to see profoundly into what human na ture under its various aspects can achieve; by the aid of ancient learning alone is the educator enabled to extend his view beyond the narrow horizon of the Now which encompasses him, and to distinguish between that which is merely local or temporary, and that which is of universal and human significancy. And this extent of vision alone, it unquestion-mere beggarly elements of Latin, and then ably is that entitles a man to say, that he is educated in the highest and complete sense of

that word."

sent to college (still in the shape of mere boys) for a little more Latin, and a little Greek, that they may forget both in a year or two over the toils of the comptoir and the recreations of the circulating library. We have patintly followed our author Now how do the Berlin educationist's senthrough this long defence of classical edu- sible remarks apply to such a case as this? cation, because, hackneyed as the theme Plainly thus, that one-half of the lads, who may be, it is not always that it is handled in Scotland study Latin and Greek at with the requisite degree of discrimination grammar-schools and universities, should and appreciation. Many of our eulogizers have been sent to a Bürger-school, from of a Latin and Greek education in this which the classical languages were excludcountry, plead the cause of classicality on ed, and the other half should have been grounds which are satisfactory enough in brought beyond the point of nibbling at a the abstract, but which have no bearing shell, and really taught to live in the atmoswhatsoever on the circumstances to which phere, and drink from the fountains, of anthey are meant to be applied. Herr Be-cient wisdom. As things stand at present neke, however, takes anxious care that he we have good reason, with the late Profes