But if Mr. Carey cannot argue down the ancient languages, he will frighten parents from putting their sons to the study of them, and the sons from studying, by asking, “how many years of life are spent in learning—how much labor, pain, and imprisonment are endured by the body—how much anxious drudgery by the master—how many habits are formed of reluctance to regular employment, and how——” and the rest of the bugbears. Oh, how will the preceding paragraph be hailed as pregnant with wisdom by all our vigorous, idle, southern youth, who long for more time out of school, to hunt, fish, and scamper over the broad, umbrageous Campus. If Mr. Carey only knew the quantity of swine and pancakes devoured by our students at a meal, and then behold them rush to their sports, and jump twelve feet in the “clear,” he would never again say that Latin kills boys. There might be some truth in the assertion contained in the quotation now before us, if predicated of German seminaries, where we are told the youth frequently study fourteen hours out of the twenty-four. But let any one carefully examine the pupils of an American academy, and he will be convinced that they enjoy more happiness, health, and leisure than any other class of the community. This fact is farther proven by the common observation of educated men, that their school-boy days were the happiest of their whole life, and that they never pass a group of students, and witness the joyous outpourings of youthful feelings, without envy. There is no royal road to learning. It is admitted that the languages are not to be acquired without labor—hard labor. Is this an evil to be deprecated? No. Whatever is acquired without it is generally worthless, not prized—because no price, no toil, no sweat has been paid for it. Constituted as society is, the original curse denounced against man, “in the sweat of thy brow thou shall eat bread,” has proven a blessing. Truly says the adage, “an idle brain is the devil's work-shop.” An industrious one is the chosen abode of the sister virtues. Why, then, should we increase the temptation to idleness, already great to the youth of the south, by the banishment of the only study, perhaps, suitable to the idlest stage of human life? We should thus leave a chasm in the plan of instruction, and that precious time unfilled up, when a regard to the formation of good habits would imperiously require that it should _be filled up_ as far as is consistent with health. Substitute something else, you say. If what has already been said, does not prove that nothing else effectually supplies their place, perhaps the following reflection may assist to do it. The principal point in which we fall short of our northern brethren, and of most European nations, is in our want of system in our employments, and attention to the _small things_ of business. Now the Classics demand constant attention to the most