STUDY OF GREEK LITERATURE. In closing my lectures on Thucydides, I complete, at the same time, the course of public instruction which I have pursued, for twelve years, in the university. The moment when one quits an old calling, to which his feelings are more or less attached, is naturally crowded with interest. He thus stands on the threshold of a new period in his existence; it is an epoch, a kind of new year, which must awaken many emotions in every heart that is not utterly dead. Back of us lies the past, with all its reminiscences. If some of these occasion regret, still the shadows cover them; while those of a delightful kind pass before us in unwonted brightness. High on the shore they stand, like our kindred, and wave an adieu to those sailing away. It is as when we leave our native country, not feeling how dear it is till we are separated from it; or like bidding farewell to friends and companions, with whose faults we have become familiar, and whose worth we never value so much as when we part from them. And there is the future, and the new relations which it brings with it. How dark and doubtful are they! Forests lie in the distance; who knows what dwells among their boughs? Indeed, familiarity with an object works strongly on the human heart; and every kind of employment, be it what it may, binds insensibly, with a thousand cords, from which no one can easily free himself. Is he now convinced, that it is intrinsically valuable, and that it is not, or at least should not be, without its effect on human improvement? then must the moment, when he is to quit it for ever, be alike solemn and touching. It were easy to close my lectures with that with which many begin theirs,-a eulogy on the subject itself. I might say, that not only no academic scholarship, but, in general, no higher culture is possible, without a knowledge of Greek. In favor of such a position, I might adduce the testimonies of eminent men, and add the weight of the convictions of centuries. Thus I could exalt the study at the expense of all, or at least, of most others. But this would be clearly a partial decision. I readily admit, on the contrary, that, in the present state of the world, much culture, a large amount of true learning, can be secured without a knowledge of the classical languages. Why, then, is that epithet applied to them? Not merely because of their inward development, but, specially, on account of their literature. Such a literature, however, several of the living languages possess. The stock of ideas, which made up the culture of the ancients, has gradually passed over into the general modes of thinking. We live on the capital that the early ages amassed. So must it be, for nothing in man's existence remains alone. Human improvement is a continuous chain. The present link ever joins to the one before it, and that again to the preceding, up to the creation. One generation bequeaths its estate to the next. The history of education is a progressive illustration of the great law of man's inheritance. Such a heritage, however, is strictly nothing more than the materials, the rough mass, which one age takes from another, and, in its own way, works up and appropriates. The form, the outward manifestation, is inseparably connected with the present time, and its accidental relations. In this way, our age, long ago, employed in legislation, in the sciences, and in elegant literature, all the essential ideas of the ancients. They are no longer new; they are readily accessible to every one, and may be found in all languages. We understand, not simply what the ancients knew, but, in many respects, infinitely more. The materials which they left, are not only collected, but in manifold ways enlarged. The knowledge, which was with them a child, has gradually grown into a mature and perfect form. We should certainly be right in maintaining, that classical literature is now superfluous, were we to regard it simply as materials. But no where have the materials, the stores of knowledge, been so closely united with their form, no where have they grown so much together, as with the Greeks. The idea was always one element only in culture. The other element, which was just as essential, was the expression, the visible representation of it in accordance with the general laws of the beautiful. Their oldest philosophical speculations on nature, their earliest historical reminiscences, shaped themselves to poetic forms, from the very beginning. Their first legislation was metrical. Even their gods gave responses only in poetical oracles. The rough, but significant, mythical images, which they received from the East, were transformed by them into bright ideals of beauty. Olympus became a museum, just as the national traditions became an epos. In a word, the external form, for them, was never a matter of indifference. The Greeks were born with love to beautiful forms. That which distinguished them, was a natural sense for the apt and the fitting; an innate dislike of extravagance in |