The current of fashion has for some time been setting strongly against classical learning. In an age of so much intellectual activity as the present, all sorts of new opinions are received with favor. The most extravagant have their hour of triumph until they are chased from the stage by some new absurdity, or until the restless love of change is drawn off to some more startling paradox. This insatiable thirst for novelty is carried into literature as well as other things. But the principles of good taste are unchangeable. They have their foundations deeply laid in nature and truth, and the tide of time which sweeps into oblivion the sickly illusions of distempered imaginations, passes over these unhurt. The Bavii and Maevii of former ages, who like those of later times enjoyed for their hour the sunshine of fashionable celebrity, have been long ago gathered to their long home, but the beauties of Homer and Virgil are as fresh now as they were at the beginning. Independent of the arguments commonly used in favor of classical learning, there are two considerations which recommend these studies to peculiar favor in this country. I advert to them the more willingly, because they have not been usually urged in proportion to their importance. The first is addressed to our literary ambition. If there be any department of elegant literature in which we may hope to surpass our European ancestors and cotemporaries, it is in eloquence. It is the fairest and most hopeful field which now remains for literary distinction. In every other the moderns, if they have not equalled, are not far behind the ancients. Their poetry can scarcely claim an advantage over that of the moderns, except what it owes directly to the superiority of the ancient languages. But if we except some of the finest productions of the French pulpit in the reign of Louis XIV. there is nothing in modern literature which approaches the eloquence of antiquity. The most accomplished of our forensic and parliamentary speakers are at an immeasurable distance from the perfection of the ancient orators. If there be any modern nation, which may hope to emulate them with some prospect of success, it is our own. In our free institutions and in the free genius of our countrymen we have all that is necessary. The soil is prepared and we are already a nation of debaters. But if we would add to the faculty of fluent speaking the gifts of eloquence, these must be sought where the ancients found them, in a patient and persevering devotion to the art. We must be made sensible both of its dignity and its difficulty, and nothing can so effectually give us this knowledge as a familiar acquaintance with the inimitable remains of the orators of Greece and Rome.