ESSAYS ON ANCIENT LITERATURE AND ART. WITH THE BIOGRAPHY AND CORRESPONDENCE OF EMINENT PHILOLOGISTS. BY BARNAS SEARS, PRESIDENT OF NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION. B. B. EDWARDS, PROFESSOR IN ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. C. C. FELTON, PROFESSOR IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY. BOSTON: GOULD, KENDALL AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. 1843. 87554 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, BY GOULD, KENDALL & LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. WM. S. DAMRELL, PRINTER, PA25 54 INTRODUCTION. 1843 MAN In the United States, the question of classical education has often been discussed, and its utility sometimes vehemently denied. In the meantime, the study of the Greek and Roman authors, and the taste for ancient art, have been making constant progress, both in schools and colleges. Many of the choicest works of the classical writers have been carefully and learnedly edited by American scholars. Professor Woolsey's selection of the Attic Tragedies has been welcomed with applause, both at home and abroad; and his recent edition of the Gorgias of Plato is the best edition of that admirable dialogue, for practical use, that has ever yet appeared. Other works, prepared on similar principles, have been published from time to time; and, at present, the classical course, in several of our colleges, instead of being limited to a volume or two of extracts, embraces a series of entire works in all the leading departments of ancient literature. The mode of studying antiquity has also been materially changed and improved within a few years. History, the arts, the domestic life, the private and public usages, the mythology, and the education of the ancients, have been carefully investigated, and their scattered lights concentrated upon the literary remains of |