spirits to go "far hence unto the gentiles," and bestowing their highest honours on men who have laboriously earned them on the foreign field. I beg leave to submit, secondly, that if such be the characters of the classic writers themselves, and such the character of their works, it is of the utmost importance that the study of them be conducted not. only with due regard to the interests of morality, but also to the formation of a right judgment relative to true greatness. The period of life at which such studies are carried on is of itself a matter for grave consideration; early impressions are deep and lasting; and it is, therefore, the more necessary to look well to their nature and tendency. On this subject but little care has hitherto been exercised, and the result has been a world of mischief. The time, however, draws nigh when the Christian spirit of Great Britain will acquire sufficient purity and strength to force on the consideration of this question. You will not anticipate, from an admiring disciple of your illustrious relative and predecessor, Dr. Hunter, any sympathy with those who clamour against classical learning. The pupils of that great man are in no danger of falling into this error. By him I was taught its incalculable importance; and time has only served to confirm the lesson. In my humble judgment, indeed, it can hardly be overestimated. It has been, beyond controversy, the main source of the massive, profound, various and copious literature of England. All our mighty masters in history, in morals, in theology, in politics, in oratory, and, with a solitary and but partial exception, all our great poets drank deeply at the fountains of Greece and Rome. In this way their stupendous intellects were disciplined; their taste was formed; their stock of imagery was increased; and their stores of language were augmented. It appears to me that what the classics themselves are to a national literature, that the study of them is to the literary character. It is difficult, in fact, to conceive of such a character apart from an acquaintance with the ancient languages. point, one month's attendance on your predecessor would have sufficed to banish for ever all scepticism. How full of instruction and pleasure were his philological discussions, expositions, and dissertations! On this celebrated The benefits derived from classic study are as lasting as they are great. Even where the acquirements of early age are largely forgotten in after life, the substantial advantages remain. The value of classic learning for the work of Christian missionaries is very great. For generations to come the business of translation will constitute a chief part of the evangelical enterprise; and the preparation of translators will consequently become an increasingly important branch of college education. The drilling and toil of the Latin and Greek classes will exceedingly contribute to expedite the superior performance of this all-important undertaking. On these, my dear Sir, not to mention other grounds, I cheerfully and emphatically give my feeble voice for the widely increased spread of classical learning. Let it fill the plains, towns, and cities of England, and spread through all the world! But I submit that its study ought to be combined with a careful, a copious, and an elaborate exposition of its manifold and momentous deficiencies. The prose writers, on the score of purity, are seldom much at fault: the leprosy cleaves principally to the poets, who, therefore, require the greater vigilance. Of the poets, however, the more vicious, with the exception of Ovid, are not read in our great schools. The batteries of heathenism are masked! The history, the epic poetry, the ethics, and the biography, of the ancients, which have too generally been thought safe territory, are full of peril, and most to be feared, as the sources of a spirit wholly anti-Christian. It is well known that Homer was the Bible of Alexander. Day and night the blood-stained pages of the Iliad lay open before him; and that ignorant, obstinate madman, Charles XII., was, in turn, intoxicated with the history of Alexander; while the principal human butchers, of more modern times, in addition to Homer, are known to have made manuals of the martial rhapsodies of Ossian, and the elegant commentaries of Cæsar. These are the sources from which the hearts of heroes have been filled with infernal fire! Even at this late period of the Christian era, the spirit of European courts and senates is emphatically the spirit of Greece and Rome. The spirit of the mass of modern literature is the same. It is far more allied to the classics than to the prophets and apostles. It is, in truth, the atheistic, the idolatrous, the unchanged, and-unless by Christianitythe unchangeable spirit of the ancients, clothed in the attire of other tongues. It is the fierce flame which has prevailed in colleges; and which, unextinguished by the "waters of life," in passing through our Halls of Theology, has found its way into nearly all the pulpits of Christendom; which, with few exceptions, have been for centuries enlisted in the service of human slaughter! Great divines have aspired to the honour of being editors and expositors of Homer, the poet of the mammoths of murder! Yes, and even the gentlest spirits of our race, men whose sensibility has been such, that they have renounced the friendship of a man who could needlessly "trample upon a worm," have devoted the finest talents, and the best portion of life, to the translation of the Iliad! Surely the conduct of the amiable Cowper, in this matter, was one of the greatest anomalies of letters. Nothing, perhaps, so strikingly exemplifies the intoxicating, infatuating, and bewildering, character of the Homeric poetry. A full half of the Iliad is devoted to the description of battles. Battles, then, were the spectacles on which the Bard of Olney, the poet of Truth, Hope, and Charity, delighted to dwell! How strange, that the soul of this trembling type of all that was sweet, gentle, and humane, could exult with rapture at such feats as the following! "The fierce coursers, as the chariot rolls, Tread down whole ranks, and crush out heroes' souls! All grim with dust, all horrible in blood!" Poor Cowper, at once the poet of pity and the object of it, in the elaborate preface to his translation, utters not a word in reprobation of war, not a breath of regret that the powers of the mighty Greek were not bestowed on a worthier theme! It thus concludes: "I purposely decline all declamation on the merits of Homer. He has been the wonder of all countries that his works have ever reached,-even deified by the greatest names of antiquity—and in some places actually worshipped! And, to say truth, were it possible that mere man could entitle himself, by pre-eminence of any kind, to divine honours, Homer's astonishing powers seem to have given him the best pretensions. And now I have only to regret that my pleasant work is ended. To the illustrious Greek I owe the smooth and easy flight of many thousand hours. He has been my companion at home and abroad, in the study, in the garden, and in the field; and no measure of success, let my labours succeed as they may, will ever compensate to me the loss of the innocent luxury that I have enjoyed, as a translator of Homer."- Such a tribute, from such a man, supplies a proof, which it were difficult to strengthen, of the overwhelming, bewitching fascination of this great poet. If Cowper was thus subdued by the mighty spell, is it a marvel that the whole world should have fallen before it? If such, then, is the power of the adversary, and such the peril of intellectual prostration, it surely becomes us to inquire into the best means of resistance. This question has occupied the minds of some of our ablest writers. Our public-spirited and gifted friend, Dr. Thomson, of Coldstream, has done excellent service to the church of Christ by his very judicious remarks in his "Comparative View of the English and Scotch Dissenters." He suggests, that every purpose might be answered by selections from the Latin and Greek classics. John Foster, in his immortal "Essay on the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion," has given expression to a multitude of profound, accurate, and valuable conceptions concerning the spirit |