Such, my brother, are the men who have gone before you. "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." These have rested from their labors, and you have entered into the field, and, I doubt not, into the fruit of their labors. God grant you his presence and his smiles! And, if I might be permitted now to express a wish for you and for myself, it would be this: that our gracious Master, who, when he was on earth, sent forth his seventy evangelists, by two and two, to preach the gospel in Judea, would send us forth together by his authority, would permit us to travel in company through the journey of a useful ministry, and would enable us to return to his presence at last, rejoicing to find that our names have been written, with the names of our people, in "the book of life."

DISCOURSE

ON THE

DANGERS AND DUTIES OF MEN OF LETTERS.

[Pronounced at Cambridge before the Society of . B. K., on Thursday, August 31, 1809.]

It is not without reluctance, my friends, that I appear before you this morning; not because I feel any distrust of your candor, but because I find it so difficult to offer you anything which shall be worthy of your candor. The orator, on this occasion, as he has no definite object, is not restrained in the choice of his topics. This appears, indeed, to be a privilege; but others, I doubt not, as well as myself, have found themselves embarrassed by the liberty of choosing without direction, and their spirits exhausted by indecision, before the thoughts were fixed, as they were, at last, by necessity.

When I look round, however, on those whom I am called to address, and find them to be men with whom learning is, at least, in esteem; men, too, whose mutual friendships, as they commenced on classic ground, will always preserve, I trust, something of the raciness of their origin, I should think myself unfaithful to this occasion, and

to the character of the audience, if I were to choose any other subject than that which is common to us as scholars. For, however different our professions, opposite our connexions, wide our opinions, or uncertain our destinies in life, in this we agree, that letters have been our study, perhaps our delight. By these we are to live; and by these, too, si qua fata aspera sinant! we are to be remembered. In your company, then, I have no inclination to stray beyond the gardens of the Academy, or within the noise of the city and the forum.

Is there a man, who now hears me, who would not rather belong to an enlightened and virtuous community than to the mightiest empire of the world, distinguished only by its vastness? If there is, let him cast his eye along the records of states. What do we now know of the vast unlettered empires of the east? The far extended conquests of the Assyrian hardly detain us a moment in the annals of the world, while the little state of Athens will forever be the delight of the historian and the pride of letters; preserving, by the genius of her writers, the only remembrance of the barbarian powers which overwhelmed her. To come down to our own times; who would not rather have been a citizen of the free and polished republic of Geneva, than wander a prince in the vast dominions of the Czar, or bask in the beams of the present emperor of a desolated continent ?

In the usual course of national aggrandizement, it is almost certain, that those of you, who shall attain to old age, will find yourselves the citizens of an empire unparal leled in extent; but is it probable, that you will have the honor of belonging to a nation of men of letters? The review of our past literary progress does not authorize

very lofty expectations, neither does it leave us entirely without hope.

It is our lot, to have been born in an age of tremendous revolution; and the world is yet covered with the wrecks of its ancient glory, especially of its literary renown. The fury of that storm, which rose in France, is passed and spent, but its effects have been felt through the whole system of liberal education. The foul spirit of innovation and sophistry has been seen wandering in the very groves of the Lyceum, and is not yet completely exorcised, though the spell is broken. When we look back to the records of our learning before the American revolution, we find, or think we find, at least in New England, more accomplished scholars than we have since produced; men, who conversed more familiarly than their children with the mighty dead; men who felt more than we do the charm of classical accomplishments; men, in short, who had not learned to be ashamed of being often found drinking at the wells of antiquity.* But so greatly have our habits of thinking been disturbed by the revolutions of the last thirty years, that the progress of our education, and, of course, the character of our learning, have not a little suffered. It is true, we have shared the detriment with Europe; but the effect upon us, though, perhaps, temporary, has been

*Chief Justice Pratt, James Otis, Prof. Sewall, Bowdoin, Winthrop, Chauncy, perhaps from the natural effect of distance, appear to us to have been eminent scholars. Whether in New England we have since produced their superiors, docti judicent. There are now living a few men, who were educated before the revolution, whom we should be proud, though not, perhaps, at liberty, to We can only wish that they may long animate us by their living example, rather than by their remembrance.

name.

peculiarly extensive and unfortunate, because our government and our habits were, in some degree, unsettled.

In France and in some other countries of Europe, what literature has lost seems to be compensated by the progress of science. In England the trunk of her national

*We have lately seen a discourse of M. Dacier, Secrétaire perpetuel de la Classe d'Histoire et de Littérature ancienne de l'Institut, delivered 20th February, 1808, before the Emperor, on presenting a report of the progress of literature in France during the last twenty years. This class of the Institute, which comprises very nearly the same objects with the Ancient Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and to which its remaining members have been transferred, was charged by the Emperor with an inquiry into this subject, preparatory to some steps, which will be taken, to revive these studies. The following extracts are made here; the first, because it gives a very accurate definition of the different objects and value of literature and of physical science; the others, because they contain the deliberate result of the inquiries of a body of men of letters on the present state of French learning.

"Si les sciences de calcul et d'observation ajoutent à nos jouissances physiques, et nous en font espérer de nouvelles pour l'avenir, les sciences morales exercent leur empire sur l'âme; elles l'éclairent, la dirigent, la soutiennent, l'élèvent, ou la tempèrent; elles avancent ou conservent la civilisation; elles apprennent à l'homme à se connoître lui-même, et lui donnent, dans tous les temps, dans tous les lieux, dans toutes les conditions, ce bonheur dont les autres sciences ne peuvent lui promettre que des moyens." p. 5.

"Votre Majesté verra que, malgré les troubles politiques qui ont agité la France, elle n'est, jusqu'à présent, restée en arrière dans aucune des branches de la littérature; mais c'est avec un sentiment pénible que nous sommes forcés de lui faire apercevoir que plusieurs sont menacées d'un anéantissement prochain et presque total. La philologie, qui est la base de toute bonne littérature,