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of the subject. Pike and Daboll will not answer all the purpose. The teacher must go higher than mere technical rules and formal demonstrations. He must go beyond the science of mere numbers, however perfect that may be in itself, to the more radical science of quantity, and make himself master of algebra, where is contained-what in those days may be called-the philosophy of numbers.

We do not affirm that no one can teach arithmetic well who has not studied algebra, but we do affirm that one who has studied both accurately, will prove a more successful, because a more able teacher, than he who has studied only one. Let the case we have put, stand for a sample of all teaching, and we may conclude that one will prove a better teacher of any science who has, and because he has, an acquaintance with the science, in the same kind, next above it.

Not only does this additional, and in a sense extra knowledge aid by being an interpreter of that actually taught,— by its intrinsic relation to it-but the very acquisition is an advantage. It keeps the mind open, free, and active-its curiosity is kept alive-its powers augmented,—and all this acts with great power on the pupil, though indirectly. The profession of the teacher has gained the odium of irksomeness, and the community he has taught has suffered incalculable loss, by this contentment with knowledge enough for daily duties. Hence we have so much of the tread-mill round, the eternal monotony and repetition of the teacher's life. Doubtless there is much; we cannot deny it. But we know too, that all the drudgery may be lightened and made cheerful, and the repetitions become enlivened and enlivening by this rule of constant progress.

We believe there is no department of instruction, in respect to the true standard of which, and the attainments requisite for it, more inadequate ideas prevail, than in respect to classical instruction. Now what ought the teacher of the classics to know, that he may do his work well? Is it enough for him to construe and parse Cicero's Select Orations, and Virgil? Or even if he add to all this, what seven out of ten do not add, some knowledge of prosody and the scanning of hexameters? Or is he fit to teach, who has hastily, and with no digestion crammed down a few authors, or fragments of authors in a college course, whom

now moreover he can hardly recognise, he has kept them at a distance so long?

We hold, on the contrary, that, while he who knows the rudiments only may in some sort be able to teach the rudiments, one who aspires to the true dignity of this vocation, needs to be thoroughly furnished on all points as becomes a scholar. Consider what variety and extent of learning he must have attained who would impart a thorough knowledge of Virgil,-not to inspire a genuine poetic taste-but to ensure a due intelligence,-how minutely and exactly he must have studied mythology, antique and almost forgotten history -how many questions of geography and chronology he must settle-many of which demand laborious investigation and accurate judgment. Add to this the thorough knowledge of the science of philology, without which he cannot give clear explanations of the common rules of syntax-of the rules of verbal criticism, that he may decide between varying editions-the particular and endless store of antiquities he must acquire for the interpretation of difficult passages-and then above all that clear perception, that shall at once relish and impart a relish for poetic beauties, and we have hardly a catalogue of the matters it is indispensable for him to know. If his range of teaching extends beyond a single author, then he must have learned the peculiarities of the style of each, his temper, language, and cast of thought, so that he can discern them as plainly as he can the diverse strains of Milton and Goldsmith, or the prose of Burke and of Swift,—all which cannot be attained but by painful collation and perpetual familiarity.

We have not designed to overcharge the picture. We believe we have not done it. But if it be a just one, how very far short of its requirements do most teachers among us come! And being rightly judged, how little reason have we to complain of the low estimation that is put on our attainments and labors! And, as the stream can hardly rise higher than the fountain, what may we expect of the pupils trained under so imperfect influences ?

An important question suggests itself here, how these imperfections are to be remedied? We know of only one effectual way. Each teacher must do the work in and for himself. By private meditations and watchings he must gain a clear apprehension of the measure of attainment he is

to aim at, and by books and conversation, by days devoted to labor and nights of study, by the sweat of the brow even as he would earn bread, must he acquire the knowledge and discipline that shall make him an useful, honorable, and happy teacher. H. M.

ART. VI.-HOW JOHN MILTON READ AND PROFITED.

THE influences which formed the character of Milton,one of the finest specimens of man which has ever appeared in our world, is a subject of great interest, whether considered psychologically, or in relation to practical self culture. The following passage, which contains his own brief sketch of his own studies, and of their effect on him, is taken from a refntation of certain aspersions of his character, in his apology for Smectymnuus.

I HAD my time, readers, as others have, who have good learning bestowed upon them, to be sent to those places, where the opinion was, it might be soonest attained; and as the manner is, was not unstudied in those authors which are most commended; whereof some were grave orators and historians, whose matter methought I loved indeed, but as my age then was, so I understood them; others were the smooth elegiac poets, whereof the schools are not scarce, whom both for the pleasing sound of their numerous writing, which in imitation I found most easy and most agreeable to nature's part in me, and for their matter, which what it is, there be few who know not, I was allured to read, that no recreation came to me better welcome; for that it was then those years with me which are excused though they be least severe, I may be saved the labor to remember ye. Whence having observed them to account it the chief glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that could esteem themselves worthiest to love those high perfections which under one or other name they took to celebrate, I thought with myself by every instinct and presage of nature which is not wont to be false, that what emboldened them to this task, might with such diligence as they used, embolden me; and that what judgment, wit, or elegance

was my share, would herein best appear, and best value itself, by how much more wisely, and with more love of virtue I should choose, let rude ears be absent, the object of not unlike praises; for albeit to some these thoughts will seem virtuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a third sort perhaps idle, yet the mentioning of them now will end in serious.

Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible, when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For by the firm settling of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a proficient, that if I found those authors any where speaking unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me; from that time forward their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all, preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honor of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion; that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy.

These reasonings, together with a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness, and self-esteem either of what I was or what I might be, which let envy call pride, and lastly that modesty, whereof though not in the title page, yet here I may be excused to make some beseeming profession; all these uniting the supply of their natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind, beneath which he must deject and plunge himself, that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitutions.

Next, for hear me out now, readers, that I may tell ye whither my young feet wandered, I betook me among those lofty fables and romances, which recount in solemn cantos, the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings,

and from hence had in renown over all Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he should defend to the expense of his best blood or of his life, if it so befell him, the honor and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the defence of which so many worthies by such a dear adventure of themselves had sworn; and if I found in the story afterward, any of them by word or deed breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault of the poet as that which is attributed to Homer, to have written indecent things of the gods; only this my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight, nor needed to expect the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder to stir him up both by his counsel and his arm, to secure and protect the weakness of any attempted chastity. So that even these books, which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose living, I cannot think how, unless by divine indulgence, proved to me so many incitements, as you have heard, to the love and steadfast observation of that virtue which abhors the society of bordelloes.

Thus from the laureat fraternity of poets, riper years, and the ceaseless round of study and reading, led me to the shady spaces of philosophy; but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato, and his equal Xenophon; where if I should tell ye what I learned of chastity and love, I mean that which is truly so, whose charming cup is only virtue. which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy, (the rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating potion, which a certain sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about) and how the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and virtue; with such abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth your listening, readers, as I may one day hope to have ye in a still time, when there shall be no chiding; not in these noises, the adversary, as ye know, barking at the door, or searching for me at the bordelloes, where it may be he has lost himself, and raps up without pity the sage and rheumatic old prelatess, with all her young Corinthian laity, to inquire for such a one.

Last of all, not in time, but as perfection is last, that care was ever had of me, with my earliest capacity, not to be

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