That the Christian oracles have come down to us in Greek, will make Greek scholars forever a necessity.

These studies, then, should not be neglected; they should neither devour nor be devoured. I insist they can be made more valuable and at the same time less prominent than they now are. A large part of the labor now bestowed upon them is devoted, not to learning the genius and spirit of the language, but is more than wasted on pedantic trifles. More than half a century ago, in his essay entitled "Too much Latin and Greek," Sydney Smith lashed this trifling as it deserves. Speaking of classical Englishmen, he says: "Their minds have become so completely possessed by exaggerated notions of classical learning, that they have not been able, in the great school of the world, to form any other notion of real greatness. Attend, too, to the public feelings look to all the terms of applause. A learned man! a scholar! - a man of erudition. Upon whom are these epitaphs of approbation bestowed? Are they give to men acquainted with the science of government? thoroughly masters of the geographical and commercial relations of Europe? to men who know the properties of bodies and their action upon each other? No; this is not learning: it is Chemistry, or Political Economy-not learning. The distinguishing abstract term, the epithet of Scholar, is reserved for him who writes on the Æolic reduplication, and is familiar with the Sylburgian method of arranging defectives in w and μ. The object of the young Englishman is not to reason, to imagine, or to invent; but to conjugate, decline, and derive. The situations of imaginary glory which he draws for himself, are the detection of an anapæst in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case which Cranzius had passed over, and the never-dying Ernesti failed to observe. If a young classic of this kind were to meet the greatest chemist, or the greatest mechanician, or the most profound political economist of his time, in company with the greatest Greek scholar, would the slightest comparison between them ever cross his mind? would he ever dream that such men as Adam Smith and Lavoisier were equal in dignity of understanding to, or of the same utility as, Bentley or Heyné? We are inclined

to think that the feeling excited would be a good deal like that which was expressed by Dr. George about the praises of the great king of Prussia, who entertained great doubts whether the king, with all his victories, knew how to conjugate a Greek verb in μu." He concludes another essay written in 1836 with these words: "If there is anything which fills reflecting men with melancholy and regret, it is the waste of mortal time, parental money, and puerile happiness, in the present method of pursuing Latin and Greek."

To write verses in these languages, to study elaborate theories of the Greek accent, and the ancient pronunciation of both Greek and Latin, which no one can ever know he has discovered, and which would be utterly valueless if he did discover it; to toil over the innumerable exceptions to the arbitrary rules of poetic quantity which few succeed in learning and none remember these, and a thousand other similar things which crowd the pages of Zumpt and Kühner, no more constitute a knowledge of the spirit and genius of the Greek and Latin languages than counting the number of threads to the square inch in a man's coat and the number of pegs in his boots, makes us acquainted with his moral and intellectual character. The greatest literary monuments of Greece existed hundreds of years before the science of Grammar was born. Plato and Thucydides had a tolerable acquaintance with the Greek language, but Crosby goes far beyond their depth.

Our colleges should require a student to understand thoroughly the structure, idioms, and spirit of these languages, and to be able by the aid of a lexicon to analyze and translate them with readiness and elegance. They should give him the key to the store-house of ancient literature, that he may explore its treasures for himself in after-life. This can be done in two years less than the usual time, and nearly as well as it is now done.

I am glad to inform you, young gentlemen, that the Trustees of the institution in this place have this day resolved that in the course of study to be pursued here, Latin and Greek shall not be required after the Freshman year. They must be studied the usual time as a requisite to admission, and they may be carried further than Fresh

man year as elective studies; but in the regular course their places will be supplied by some of the studies I have already mentioned. Three or four terms in general literature will teach you that the republic of letters is larger than Greece or Rome. The Board of Trustees have been strengthened in the position they have taken, by the fact that a similar course for the future has recently been announced by the authorities of Harvard University. Within the last six days I have received a circular from the Secretary of that venerable college, which announces that two-thirds of the Latin and Greek are hereafter to be stricken from the list of required studies of the college

course.

I rejoice that this movement has begun. Other colleges must follow the example, and the day will not be far distant when it shall be the pride of a scholar that he is also a worker, and when the worker shall not refuse to become a scholar because he despises a trifler.

I congratulate you that this change does not reduce the amount of labor required of you. If it did I should deplore it. I beseech you to remember that the genius of success is still the genius of labor. If hard work is not another name for talent, it is the best possible substitute for it. In the long run, the chief difference in men will be found in the amount of work they do. Do not trust to what lazy men call the spur of the occasion. If you wish to wear spurs in the tournament of life, you must buckle them to your own heels before you enter the lists.

Men look with admiring wonder upon a great intellectual effort, like Webster's reply to Hayne, and seem to think that it leaped into life by the inspiration of the moment. But if, by some intellectual chemistry, we could resolve that masterly speech into several elements of power, and trace each to its source, we should find that every constituent force had been elaborated twenty years before, it may be in some hour of earnest intellectual labor. Occasion may be the bugle-call that summons an army to battle, but the blast of a bugle cannot ever make soldiers or win victories.

And finally, young gentlemen, learn to cultivate a wise self-reliance, based not on what you hope, but on what