or seeming wise-but for enriching the intellect, for ennobling the heart, and for training him, by constant example and inspiring intimations, to the noblest form of manhood. Poor though he be, he will ever have some such-Petrarch with his fine learning and love of unsphered purity, Milton with his noble and prophetic visions of liberty and virtue, Plato dwelling and dreaming in realms of pure light, or passing up the high ascent. Though he values insight more than art, as the spirit that dwells in the temple is more than the outward decorations of the temple, yet as genuine art is the offspring of nature and bears in every feature tokens of that parentage, he loves art also. Nor is art in the province of the painter only or of the sculptor. Its highest and most enduring trophies are in the constructions of reason and of imagination. What canvass or marble can match in beauty or immortality with the theorems of Euclid or the lofty impersonations of Sophocles? The harmonies of a true poem are more subtile and not less real than of the finest symphonies of Mozart or Bethoven. The scholar has a quick perception of this quality of art, and judges nicely of it, and with a keen relish. Therefore among his books shall be found the masters, who have wrought with patient devotion, and struck every blow with delicate insight, to realize in forms of poesy or the sober vesture of prose, which has hardly less of grace, the idea that haunted them. The scholar being of an unworldly spirit, is but scarcely furnished with worldly goods, and from his necessity can own but few books. He has also a better reason for what may seem a deficiency in his furniture. He cares to live with only those brave and excellent spirits who have looked gladly on the countenance of virtue and in cloistered seclusion have held communion with truth, who have been ennobled by their toils and endurance, who by sympathy with the life of nature have been chosen the interpreters of her wisdom, and by their fellowship with humanity can speak to their fellows, in clear tones, heard everywhere. To such voices he listens in cheerful hope. The multitudinous and uncouth gibberish that steams up from earth's dens and thickets, if it intrude into his sanctuary, is a strange and oppressive noise, full of dissonance and harshness. He would have fellowship with the creative. What man soever has felt the excellence of goodness is welcome to him. Whoever has a hearty insight is his friend and brother. His temper tends not so much to accumulation and proof of particulars, insulate and dead facts, as to the embracing law which gives them their significance and meaning; and who has passed into this realm of principles and elements, is his companion and teacher. Few as may be the chosen ones in whom he delights, he would fain treat them becomingly. He is therefore carefu of their shape and dress, that he may have all fair and fitting. The Stagyrite shall not, in his keeping, put on the airs of a petit maitre. Each shall, if may be, wear traces of his age and worth. The aged shall stand forth in the parchment of his day, or in some grave dress that beseems him, and the young may stand loosely clad, and bide his time. Your scholar has some whims withal-a quiet corner for a favorite. He loves oddness provided it be true to itself and to the mind it springs from, a native and ingrained warp. Doubtless the tall straight tree with branches curving evenly, has the most of grace and beauty, yet also one may look with something of fondness even on the gnarled, the knotted, and whatever shoots of its own nature into wild and fantastic forms. And for this reason clearly, that each is, as we say, natural, meaning thereby, a genuine product of the original forming and living nature. Seen in this relation, ugliness and deformity have no more existence; all things are alike beautiful. The oddity, moreover, is a charm, from its very unlikeness and rarity. A man may properly like a friend all the better for the queer kink he has in his head, and the scholar may in like manner indulge his whim and take pleasure in this peculiarity he loves. Who shall banish Charles Lamb,-the gentle, humorsome, quaint and sincere, -from our shelves? Or what price shall steal from us the honest waywardness of Thomas Brown? THE SCHOLAR AMONG HIS BOOKS. The true Scholar makes of his books a two-fold use, increase of knowledge, and growth in manliness and virtue. These two ends, though they seem diverse and be commonly named so, are still coincident, and evermore, in the wise man, the same. For that is not a true knowledge which only puts words on a man's tongue, whereby he may seem to know somewhat, nor that enables one to utter and exchange a coin which he and others make themselves believe genuine, though it has no ring in it. It has not to do with merely names and dates, husks and rinds. It must reach more than the outside, though to grasp that fully were much. Neither is it memory and ready narration. Far otherwise than all this. Knowledge is of a clear insight. Where true knowledge is, there is or hath been a creation, a product of a living mind. There is no knowledge where there is no thought. And what is thought but the embracing by a conscious spirit of the reality and substance of nature? In this union does the life of the soul gain developement and daily strength, and hence has a genuine thought its quickening power. Ixion and a cloud beget only Centaurs, huge rampant monsters, whom in the mists only we can mistake for men. How then, and by what affinity does the scholar find in books this union and fellowship with real nature, which perpetually satisfies and urges on him? By no means in all books, nor wholly in any. A book, being a record of the thought and experiences of another man, and thus a picture of his being, is a projection and presentation to the reader's mind of that which he has in common with other men. There is mirrored to him his own past, or that which he shall yet become. Thus does he come to learn the meaning and end of those vaguely tossing aspirations, and ideal hopes, which the forces of nature are ever and anon putting forth in him. He in this book-it may be Milton on divorce, or Sydney on government, or the sonnets of Petrarch -has learned where in the intellectual world they stand, whither they are tending, and by what influences, inward or outward, they rise and go onward. This book then is not a mere didactic treatise, which doles out to him propositions by weight and measure. It has become an impersonation, and carries within it the secret agencies of a human life. It is no more, as to the unthinking, a series of letters fairly set up and duly pointed. It speaks to him in the tones of brotherhood, and is indeed a brother and close friend. What matters it to me that David sang thousands of years ago. The plaintive record of his sorrows and of his hopes brings us together. We dwell in company in the cave of Adullam, unite and join our shouts when the people bring home the ark, and he instructs me in the ways of human life, its sad falls and cheerful uprisings, with fraternal gentleness and affection. Books teach him too what the mind of man can do. Each shall tell him of the wonders that have been disclosed to men, and every new truth awakens in him an active progeny of hints, and doubts, and confirmations. They forewarn him of rocks and shoals on which former adventurers have made shipwreck. * ART. IV.-LITERARY INSTITUTIONS IN DENMARK.* I. THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN. THE desired information will be found for the most part in the accompanying description. (copied from a MS. by Dr Kirkegaard, written for a German periodical,) and the following remarks may supply what further accuracy may be required. As the University was established with the express purpose of fitting men to fill the official situations in church and state; the professors are nearly all of them likewise examiners; in addition to the examinations spoken of in the MS. namely, the examinations in arts and in philosophy, (the object of which is to ascertain what knowledge the student brings with him from school, and secondly what progress in general informatain he has made in his first academical year, both which are held by the members of the philosophical faculty;) these have beside to hold an examination for office, for those who desire to be directors or head teachers in the classical schools of the country. The theological faculty holds an examination for office for all those intended for the ministry of the established church. The juridical, for all the legal officials, (judges) advocates and attorneys. From the American Quarterly Register, for November, to which it was communicated by Rev. John C. Brown, St Petersburgh. The medical faculty examined hitherto only those who, beside the right to practice, wished to be admissible to the more important offices in this profession payed by the state, whilst the other were examined by the chirurgical academy spoken of in my MS. ;* but from the present year, 1838, there is to be but one common examination for all who will practice or seek office as physicians, and this held by the professors of the faculty and academy in common. As a consequence of the absence of all sound religious tendency in the past generation, as well as their utter disregard of the lesson to be derived from the history of past times, the theological and juridical faculties in particular are devoid of any living connection with, and influence upon the intellectual developement and moral state of the people. Medicine and the natural sciences are cultivated with more vigor and in a closer connection with real life, and, together with philology, number amongst their teachers the university's most celebrated names: in physics, Oersted; astronomy, Schumacher; botany, Scow; Brönsted, celebrated for his travels in Greece, together with Denmark's most celebrated poet, Oehlenschlager. The number of the professors is: 22 4 The number of students is about 900. The number entered yearly on the books is between 150 and 200. The estates of the University amount according to hartkorn, † to about one hundredth of Denmark proper; besides it possesses a capital of 150,000‡ rigsbankdaler, and manages and appropriates to the support of needy students the income of considerable estates, together with the interest of 830,000$ Rbd. granted, the first by different kings, the last by private individuals.2 * The accompanying German MS. + The figures 1, 2, 3, 4, refer to notes at the end of the article. |