Are there not "classics" enough which would not suffer by being put to such uses? In Greek, Homer is a book for a boy; must you give him Plato because it is harder? Is there no choice among the Latins? Are all who wrote in the Latin tongue equally fit for the appreciation of sixteen Yankee years? In Italian, have you not Tasso, Ariosto, and other writers who have really a great deal that the immature mind can enjoy, without choking it with the stern politics of Alfieri, or piling upon a brain still soft the mountainous meanings of Dante? Indeed, they are saved from suffering by the perfect ignorance of all meaning in which they leave these great authors, fancying, to their life-long misfortune, that they have read them. I have been reminded, by the remarks of my young friends on these subjects, of the Irish peasant, who, having been educated on a book prepared for his use, called "Reading made easy," blesses through life the kindness that taught him his "Radamadasy;" and of the child who, hearing her father quote Horace, observed _she_ "thought Latin was even sillier than French." No less pedantic is the style in which the grown-up, in stature at least, undertakes to become acquainted with Dante. They get the best Italian Dictionary, all the notes they can find, amounting in themselves to a library, for his countrymen have not been less external and benighted in their way of regarding him. Painfully they study through the book, seeking with anxious attention to know who Signor This is, and who was the cousin of Signora That, and whether any deep papal or anti-papal meaning was couched by Dante under the remark that Such-a-one wore a great-coat. A mind, whose small chambers look yet smaller by being crowded with furniture from all parts of the world, bought by labor, not received from inheritance or won by love, asserts that he must understand Dante well, better than any other person probably, because he has studied him through in this way thirty or forty times. As well declare you have a better appreciation of Shakspeare than any one else because you have identified the birthplace of Dame Quickly, or ascertained the churchyard where the ghost of the royal Dane hid from the sight of that far more celestial spirit, his son.