y of Latin and Greek as was possible, and of the number of
persons, whom I have so frequently heard declaiming against the
exclusive attention paid to their attainment, and with whom, during my
pupillage, I entirely coincided, I cannot help smiling at the extent
to which I have since _ratted_ in this respect. Now that I am no
longer forced to profit by such studies, I have arrived at the
conviction of their necessity. If a knowledge of our own language be
desirable, they afford the only means of understanding the true import
of the words which constitute it; and when, at times, I have
sufficient diffidence to suspect my own capabilities of forming a
correct opinion in the matter, and examine into that of others, I have
to acknowledge, not only that the advocates of the dead languages are
the most competent judges, but that the persons who oppose them the
most strenuously, are invariably those who are the least conversant
with them; while the former, again, are rarely heard to regret the
time expended in their acquirements; while what superior though
uneducated man, but has deplored his ignorance of them, and his want
of opportunity to acquire them?

But I have, of late, arrived at such an extreme as to advocate the
study to the exclusion of all others, with the exception of modern
languages. My paradox is this, that which is downright indispensable
for everyday life, do not teach us; for then, in spite of ourselves,
we must, in these subjects, become our own instructors. If, in a few
years after we have left the school, we possess not a respectable
knowledge of such common, and easily acquired subjects, as arithmetic,
history, and geography, we alone are culpable; and the more the world
makes us sensible of our deficiency, the more we deserve it, and the
sooner we shall set about to apply the remedy. Teach us, then, in
boyhood, that which we will not, or in this case, perhaps, cannot
teach ourselves--a knowledge of the classics.

I sometimes suspect that many persons doubt of their importance, from
the fact of their being distinguished as the dead languages, while,
perhaps, they are exactly the only immortal ones--unchangeable
throughout all ages in their primitive purity. In an unwary, or
perhaps charitable moment, I am seized with enthusiastic admiration of
our forefathers' good taste in so justly appreciating the beauties of
ancient literature, though I now and then have a misgiving that it is
a relic of the cloist