his knowledge makes to his wisdom is another link by which he mounts in the chain of spiritual existence, he will lose the original ends for which he was laboring in the nobler objects which unfold themselves to his mind. He learns to disregard what men may say of him, sustained by the proud consciousness of what he is. And like the mariner who has become weary of coasting adventures, he boldly puts forth to sea in quest of that unknown land which his spirit has seen in its dreams. These are the higher uses of the pursuit of knowledge, and although we are far from asserting that classical {224} studies are the only pursuits that are thus rewarded, yet we will hazard the assertion, that there are none more eminently fitted for strengthening the human mind and elevating its character. But to return to the first position which we have taken as to the peculiar fitness of this pursuit for the early employment of the human mind. It is something in its favor, that for centuries past, until of late, there has been nearly a common assent amongst literary men that the study of the ancient languages affords the best exercise for the youthful mind,--an opinion so old and so prevalent, must have had at least some foundation in truth. Indeed, when we come to look at the nature of the system of training necessary for the youthful mind, we cannot long doubt the fitness of these pursuits for that end. There is no period, but boyhood, of a man's life at which he would submit to the drudgery necessary for training his memory in the exercises by which it is most strengthened. It would be difficult to induce him to submit to such tasks when he had arrived at a more advanced period of life, and taken even a superficial view of the more agreeable walks of knowledge. With a boy who stands upon the threshold of science, it is far different. Taught that the end in view is worthy of all his pains, and that his commencement of the pursuit of knowledge must of necessity be difficult, he is as willing to seek science through that pass as any other, and the more especially as he perceives that the exercises are not beyond his strength. In the study of the ancient languages, (the Greek especially, because it is more regular than any other) he not only finds an improvement in the powers of simple suggestion or mere memory, but he is insensibly led to processes of generalization from the great saving of labor which he discovers in classification, thus burthening his memory with a rule only, instead of the mass of facts which the rule serves to recall and connect--an advantage which the study of none of the modern languages will afford to the same extent. In the difficulties of translation, which occasionally present themselves, he is not only forced to reason upon the rules which regulated their forms of construction, but often finds it necessary, by an examination of the context and subject matter, to ascertain the