the noblest and bravest thoughts of the world. When the universities were founded, modern science had not been born. Scarcely a generation has passed since then, without adding some new science to the circle of knowledge. As late as 1809, the Edinburgh Review declared that "lectures upon political economy would be discouraged in Oxford, probably despised, probably not permitted." At a much later date, there was no text-book in the United States on that subject. The claims of Latin and Greek to the chief place in the curriculum have been gradually growing less, and the importance of other knowledge has been constantly increasing; but the colleges have generally opposed all innovations, and still cling to the old ways with stubborn conservatism. Some concessions, however, have been made to the necessities of the times, both in Europe and America. Harvard would hardly venture to enforce its law (which prevailed long after Cotton Mather's day) forbidding its students to speak English within the college limits, under any pretext whatever; and British Cantabs have had their task of composing hexameters in bad Latin reduced by a few thousand verses during the last century.

It costs me a struggle to say anything on this subject which may be regarded with favor by those who would reject the classics altogether, for I have read them and taught them with a pleasure and relish which few other pursuits have ever afforded me; but I am persuaded that their supporters must soon submit to a readjustment of their relations to college study, or they may be driven from the course altogether. There are most weighty reasons why Latin and Greek should be retained as part of a liberal education. He who would study our own language profoundly must not forget that nearly thirty per cent of its words are of Latin origin, that the study of Latin is the study of universal grammar, that it renders the acquisition of any modern language an easy task, and is indispensable to the teacher of language and literature, and to other professional men. Greek is, perhaps, the most perfect instrument of thought ever invented by man, and its literature has never been equalled in purity of style and boldness of expression. As a means of intellectual discipline, its value can hardly be overestimated. To take a long and complicated sentence in Greek, to study each word in its meanings, inflections, and relations, and to build up in the mind, out of these polished materials, a

sentence perfect as a temple, and filled with Greek thought which has dwelt there two thousand years, is almost an act of creation: it calls into activity all the faculties of the mind. That the Christian oracles have come down to us in Greek, will make Greek scholars forever a necessity.

These studies, then, should not be neglected: they should neither devour nor be devoured. I insist they can be made more valuable, and at the same time less prominent, than they now are. A large part of the labor now bestowed upon them is not devoted to learning the genius and spirit of the language, but is more than wasted on pedantic trifles. In 1809 Sydney Smith lashed this trifling as it deserves in the Edinburgh Review. Speaking of classical Englishmen, he says:

"Their minds have been so completely possessed by exaggerated notions of classical learning, that they have not been able, in the great school of the world, to form any other notion of real greatness. Attend, too, to the public feelings; look to all the terms of applause. A learned man! a scholar! a man of erudition! Upon whom are these epithets of approbation bestowed? Are they given to men acquainted with the science of government, thoroughly masters of the geographical and commercial relations of Europe? to men who know the properties of bodies and their action upon each other? No: this is not learning; it is chemistry, or political economy, not learning. The distinguishing abstract term, the epithet of scholar, is reserved for him who writes on the Æolic reduplication, and is familiar with the Sylburgian method of arranging defectives in and μ. . . . . His object [the young Englishman's] is not to reason, to imagine, or to invent, but to conjugate, decline, and derive. The situations of imaginary glory which he draws for himself are the detection of an anapest in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case which Cranzius had passed over and the never-dying Ernesti failed to observe. If a young classic of this kind were to meet the greatest chemist, or the greatest mechanician, or the most profound political economist of his time, in company with the greatest Greek scholar, would the slightest comparison between them ever come across his mind? Would he ever dream that such men as Adam Smith and Lavoisier were equal in dignity of understanding to, or of the same utility as, Bentley or Heyne? We are inclined to think that the feeling excited would be a good deal like that which was expressed by Dr. George about the praises of the great king of Prussia, who entertained considerable doubts whether the king, with all his victories, knew how to conjugate a Greek verb in μι."

1 The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, (Boston, 1856,) p. 75

He concludes another article, written in 1826, with these words: "If there is anything which fills reflecting men with melancholy and regret, it is the waste of mortal time, parental money, and puerile happiness, in the present method of pursuing Latin and Greek."

To write verse in these languages; to study elaborate theories of the Greek accent, and the ancient pronunciation of both Greek and Latin, which no one can ever know he has discovered, and which would be utterly valueless if he did discover it; to toil over the innumerable exceptions to the arbitrary rules of poetic quantity, which few succeed in learning, and none remember, - these, and a thousand other similar things which crowd the pages of Zumpt and Kühner, no more constitute a knowledge of the spirit and genius of the Greek and Latin languages, than counting the number of threads to the square inch in a man's coat and the number of pegs in his boots makes us acquainted with his moral and intellectual character. The greatest literary monuments of Greece existed hundreds of years before the science of grammar was born. Plato and Thucydides had a tolerable acquaintance with the Greek language; but Crosby goes far beyond their depth. Our colleges should require a student to understand thoroughly the structure, idioms, and spirit of these languages, and to be able, by the aid of a lexicon, to analyze and translate them with readiness and elegance. They should give him the key to the storehouse of ancient literature, that he may explore its treasures for himself in after life. This can be done in two years less than the usual time, and nearly as well as it is done now.

I am glad to inform you, young gentlemen, that the trustees of this institution have this day resolved that, in the course of study to be pursued here, Latin and Greek shall not be required after the Freshman year. They must be studied the usual time as a requisite to admission, and they may be carried farther than the Freshman year as elective studies; but in the regular course their places will be supplied by some of the studies I have already mentioned. Three or four terms in general literature will teach you that the republic of letters is larger than Greece or Rome.

The board of trustees have been strengthened in the position they have taken, by the fact that a similar course for the future 1 Hamilton's Method of Teaching Languages.

has recently been announced by the authorities of Harvard College. Within the last six days, I have received a circular from the secretary of that venerable college, which announces that two thirds of the Latin and Greek are hereafter to be stricken from the list of required studies of the college course. I rejoice that the movement has begun. Other colleges must follow the example; and the day will not be far distant when it shall be the pride of a scholar that he is also a worker, and when the worker shall not refuse to become a scholar because he despises a trifler.

I congratulate you that this change does not reduce the amount of labor required of you. If it did, I should deplore it. I beseech you to remember that the genius of success is still the genius of the lamp. If hard work is not another name for talent, it is the best possible substitute for it. In the long run, the chief difference in men will be found in the amount of work they do. Do not trust to what lazy men call the spur of the occasion. If you wish to wear spurs in the tournament of life, you must buckle them to your own heels before you enter the lists.

Men look with admiring wonder upon a great intellectual effort, like Webster's reply to Hayne, and seem to think that it leaped into life by the inspiration of the moment. But if by some intellectual chemistry we could resolve that masterly speech into its several elements of power, and trace each to its source, we should find that every constituent force had been elaborated twenty years before, it may be, in some hour of earnest intellectual labor. Occasion may be the bugle-call that summons an army to battle; but the blast of a bugle can never make soldiers, or win victories.

And finally, young gentlemen, learn to cultivate a wise reliance, based not on what you hope, but on what you perform. It has long been the habit of this institution, if I may so speak, to throw young men overboard, and let them sink or swim. None have yet drowned who were worth the saving. I hope the practice will be continued, and that you will not rely upon outside help for growth or success. Give crutches to cripples; but go you forth with brave, true hearts, knowing that fortune dwells in your brain and muscle, and that labor is the only human symbol of Omnipotence.

THE CURRENCY.

SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 15, 1868.

WHAT was the original view of the Legal Tender Act and the suspension of specie payments, was pointed out in the introduction to the speech of March 16, 1866. That this view was still the current one at the close of the war, is shown by the fact that the House of Representatives, by a vote of 144 to 6, adopted the resolution of Dec. 18, 1865, quoted in this speech. A further test of the same kind is found in the act of April 12, 1866, which gave the Secretary of the Treasury power to call in and cancel legal-tender notes, ten millions of dollars the first six months, and after that at the rate of four millions per month. But even at that time the effect of an inflated currency, and of the general use of unredeemed promises as money, could be seen in many ways. The public intelligence was becoming darkened, and the public conscience hardened. Henceforth for several years a settled and determined popular movement in the direction of inflation can be traced. Congress responded to popular opinion by enacting, January 23, 1868, "That from and after the passage of this act the authority of the Secretary of the Treasury to make any reduction of the currency, by retiring or cancelling United States notes, shall be and is hereby suspended." Since the passage of the act of April 12, 1866, the Secretary of the Treasury had retired $44,000,000 of greenbacks. The act of 1868 took from him the power further to contract the currency, and indefinitely postponed the return to specie payments. The proposition to pay the five-twenty bonds in legal-tender notes had already been submitted to the public, and received with much favor. These extreme financial doctrines were advocated upon the floor of Congress. Day by day, the tide of folly and dishonor rose higher and higher. Hence, as an attempt to check its higher rise, if possible to turn it back, Mr. Garfield prepared and delivered the following speech. As the House was in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, he was able 1 See also note to speech of March 16, 1866, ante, p. 200.