and illustrated often and distinctly. Hence biog raphy and dramatic compositions have a fascination beyond the historical, or, as we might term it perhaps, the abstract delineation of circumstances precisely the same. As an illustration of this sentiment I may be excused in referring to an example which, however trite when adduced as a specimen of irresistible power, has not to my knowledge been analyzed for the purpose of detecting the elements of its pathos, and of showing its applicable ness to our present topic. You all do know this mantle: I remember Look! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through: For where the noble Cæsar saw him stab, Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart. It is easy to conceive how this mode of address would touch the hearts of men who have not learned to subdue their feelings by reason, who approach nearest to the state of intellectual childhood. The effect of this appeal on the populace to whom it was addressed, is not the point to which we are now to direct our attention; it is the effect on ourselves, on those who read it as a portion of ancient history. And who does not feel the influence of its particularity? Who does not acknowledge that in those minute specifications which the grave chronicler would pass without a word, there is a True there charm which he can never command? is an interest, an importance, attached to the death of Cæsar, which does not belong to all events; and in addition to this there are circumstances requireing abstraction of reasoning which poetry refuses because they are repulsive. History is under the disadvantageous ncessity of describing incidents comparatively trivial, or it is not full; it must unfold principles, or it is not true to the highest ends of its composition. Yet there are instances, if not in our own language, yet in the Grecian, of history which scarcely yields, even in the power of awakening interest, to the drama or the romance. Such are Xenophon's biography, of Cyrus the Elder, his Expedition of Cyrus the Younger, and his Memoir of Socrates. The style of these admirable compositions illustrates the doctrine of which I have given an example from Shakspeare. The writer leads us into the midst of the action; he does not merely set it before us, he seems to make us companions of his heroes,so perfect is the painting, so full, so fresh, so like the life, are his descriptions. That history may be fitted to occu py successfully the place which it deserves in edu cation, it should seek some position of the spirit which these models breathe,it should win attention by bringing us close to the deeds and conversation of men. It should assume a less formal aspect. It should have less of stateliness, more of flexibility & familiarity. From the study of such works,from the reading of simple and attractive narratives, like those of the inspired volume,-the young gradually acquire fitness to peruse in their further progress the philosophical works of the Highest class of historians. In connexion with this train of thought, let me add that to the youthful mind, that history must be most interesting which has most of biography. It is said, I think, of Dr. Johnson, that to the last, he retained an aversion to general history, though his attachment to biography was uncommonly strong. It is the very taste of childhood. With events separate from their relation to living agents, there is little sympathy in the nature of man.On this principle the history of animated nature is in itself more pleasing than that of the vegetable or mineral world; so that before we can bring the thousands to fix on the latter, its associations with the former must be discerned. On the same principle also, the history of the inferior animals is less fascinating than the description of man, his high passions and high deeds. From the pebble to the flower, from the the flower to the animal, from the animal to man, nay, from man in a remote situation to man near us and connected with us, is a regular graduation of attachments,-a law which bends each to the heart in a proportion always inverse to the seeming distance at which it stands from us, and in direct ratio to the number and intimacy of those associations by which it is brought more to our own state and prospects. If these views be correct, the difficulty of making history a part of common education, (so far as it comes from its literary character) may be removed by bringing it into better harmony with these principles of the mind which are earliest developed. To the important problem involved in the last remark I shall recur after attending to a still more serious objection to the early pursuit of historical science, founded on the moral tendencies of books in which it is embodied. They magnify public virtues, as they are called, though often unjustly, at the expense of private excellence; they lead us to look on military power, or civil at the best, as the highest of ends, and of course to undervalue the pursuits of a retired and obscure life; they cherish national animosities and inflame party spirit; they inculcate those sentiments of honour, as it has been misnamed, those ambitious, wrathful, proud, vindictive feelings, which for ages have enslaved men, and involved them in bloodshed, vice, and woe. History yet pays its homage to "the abomination that maketh desolate;" it is yet seen offering its adoration on the alter of the cruel god of antiquity; it stands aloof from the Prince. of Peace, or, if it gives him a condescending word of praise, refuses to be baptized. Take the historians of Greece, of Rome, of England, of America; take the lives of Nelson, of Bonaparte, of some of our own heroes. I make the appeal with perfect confidence to every reader who is at once well in formed and liberal, whether they recognize the principles of that kingdom which is not of this, world; whether they are impartial, honest, philan thropic, christian. Not to go to foreign examples, I confess for myself, that I have no knowledge of a work professing to be the history of our last war, which I can read without disgust So contrary is the temper of our historians to the mild spirit of Jesus Christ: so obtrusive, and if I may thus apply the epithet, so bald are their expressions of pride and prejudice. They seem to have transferred to their writings the spirit of Nelson's celebrated advice to a young soldier;-you have only to change a word. "Obey your superiors and hate an Englishman as a fiend," and you have drawn their character. The pen of a Plutarch or a Sallust could scarce add a touch to the delineation. It is the heavy task of an age yet future, to evoke this unholy spirit, and breathe through the records of time, a new and noble temper. The writings of the Greeks and Romans are often condemned for. their moral sentiments, but the sentence by which they are sometimes proscribed as unfit and unsafe for Christian youth, has a most sweeping operation. It banishes literature, when it only asks the excis ion of an offensive member. We need a change: we need history which shall take off its lustre from heroic crime; which shall win the soul to love that virtue that lives and spreads aloft in the witness of God; which shall break down the narrow distinctions of party, and tribe, and nation, and bind the brotherhood of man; which shall teach the proud" man humanity, and infuse mildness into the wrathful; which shall subdue the arrogance of titled rank, and uniting with the principles of the gospel, shall make us all "one in Christ Jesus." Yet the books that exist, must exist. They have the foundations of their fame too deeply laid in our nation, to perish. They did not make man what he is; they gave utterance to the soul within him. Their sympathies with the intellectual nature are unchangeable; the regeneration of the world will not impair this pillar of their power. Without exhausting our strength in fruitless declamations against existing monuments of other ages, we must erect nobler and mightier. Christians must invoke of the muse of history richer and holier gifts than she has yet youchsafed. Let them take the bolt of intellectual power into their own hands, and wield it more effectually than its representatives and sovereigns now enthroned in the firmament of lit erature. There is a shorter,-for the present perhaps, the only practicable way to the attainment of historical knowledge without infection from the pestilential principles of the world. It is the earlier infusion of Christian sentiments, the inculcation of evangelical lessons before pagan and unholy maxims have been suggested by the process of education. Prevention, rather than eradication, is the antidote to be sought. It is not the war-horse, after his neck has clothed itself with thunder, whichyou persuade to gentleness; you would subdue him earlier while his mood is milder and his native fierceness governable. It is in the field of literature, as in that of religion, error is mingled with truth; their roots and fibres are so closely intertwined that they cannot be dissevered without difficulty. Whenever we go for instruction to man, we are destined in one degree or another to witness and to feel this unnatural combination. Now the question is whether we shall doom ourselves and our children to the degredations of ignorance rather than prepare ourselves to rise above it by the resistance of spiritual and purifying sentiments. Shall we let the stream of knowledge pass by us untouched because it has the taste of the bitter soil from which it springs? or shall we invite it into the mind, opening a channel for its full and majestic current, taking care at the same moment to infuse the healing and invigorating influences of eternal truth? The question I |