ve years of the most
susceptible part of life in acquiring a minute familiarity with tongues
which are daily becoming more obsolete." We welcome this address as an
important ally for those who desire that our schools and colleges shall
not insist that every young man wishing for their advantages shall
devote one half of his time to the details of Greek and Latin Grammar
and Prosody. Dr. Bigelow is no rash reformer, no youthful enthusiast, no
reckless radical. He has the confidence of the whole community for his
science, scholarship, and ripe judgment. When, therefore, a man of his
character and position, without passion or prejudice, publishes the
conclusions which this address contains, we may hope that a change is at
hand in the course of study now pursued in our colleges and
universities, and in the schools which prepare for them. Dr. Bigelow
does not desire Latin or Greek to be excluded from the college course;
but he thinks that "under the name of classical literature they premise
and afterward carry on a cumbrous burden of dead languages, kept alive
through the dark ages, and now stereotyped in England, by the persistent
conservatism of a privileged order." He thinks that the mind might be
disciplined and trained quite as well and more cheaply by other studies
than that of the Greek language. He is of opinion, that, if Greek should
once cease to be made a requisite in our universities, though it would
be studied still by a certain class, it would never be adopted again as
an indispensable academic study.

In all this we quite agree with him. Thus far, almost everything else
has been subordinated in our college course to the study of Greek and
Latin. At least one half of the time of a young man desiring a liberal
education, from twelve to twenty years of age, is given up to Greek and
Latin. The other half is left for Mathematics, Geography, History,
Geology, Chemistry, Natural History, Metaphysics, Ethics, Astronomy, and
General Reading. Before entering college, his time must be almost wholly
occupied with the study of Latin, Greek, and Mathematics. For he is
required, in order to enter our principal university, to know Virgil,
Caesar, Cicero, Xenophon, three books of the Iliad, Arithmetic, Algebra,
and Geometry, and to have the whole Latin and Greek Grammar at his
tongue's end. He must also be able to _write_ Latin, and to write Greek
_with the accents_. But he need not know a word of American or Modern
History (h