judgment, he falls very short of them in generosity of spirit, and leaves the impression that much labour has been expended for no adequate result.

In Euripides the spirit of poetry—that is, the consonance of thought with nature-ceased to have any prominence. Living in times when rhetoric was predominant, a false taste is often apparent. He undoubtedly possessed great power of language, and much pathetic feeling, marred with many and grave errors. Too often he prostituted his noble powers, and disgraced poetry, by an unworthy exhibition of personal feeling.

The great poets gave place to the historians. At the head stands the father of gossip, Herodotus, who has left us a charming mixture of history and fable; yet we cannot but be surprised at his knowledge, researches, inquiries, and remarks; and even with our present increase of information, Herodotus maintains his position, if he does not increase our regard and esteem.

Thucydides made no empty boast, when he said he intended his work to be an ever-abiding possession. His straightforward manliness, his terse brevity, and his interesting narrative, can never fail to delight and instruct, and must make the careful reader rise from a perusal with chastened and improved feelings. Xenophon, from the simplicity of his style, the beauty of his periods, and the lifelike energy he imparts, must continue to be a favourite. Once begun, his Anabasis lays hold of our very affections; and, though we may lay it down for a time, we cannot shake off its influence, but return to its pages with fresh and increasing delight.

We have already noticed the peculiarity of the native, the home growth of Greek literature. The early poets may have gathered something from all the wisdom of the Egyptians; they may have known something of the Theo

power.

cracy of the sons of Jacob; they may have heard of the wisdom of Solomon, and drawn knowledge from the books of Moses; but yet we must wonder at and admire their reflex Whencesoever they gathered their materials, their own minds were the alembics in which they transmuted all into gold. They communed with nature and with their own hearts, and thence built up a structure, whose fall will be coeval with the end of all things.

In a discursive sketch like this, it is impossible to enter fully into details of illustration, or to quote passages corroborative of the high position we claim for the Greek poets, historians, and philosophers. We regard them with love, mingled with veneration; but we do not hold them up as our masters in wisdom, for we have an element which they did not possess. Nature, with all its gifts, is common to us, but we are more deeply versed than they in its mysteries. Language we have in common; and our nervous, sound and sense agreeing Saxon is not behind the most polished Greek, in conveying sentiment or expressing passion.

They dimly saw Deity in the storm, read His power in the earthquake, marked His justice in retribution, and felt an undefined awe in the contemplation; a great gulf, which they could not pass, lay, however, between Him and them. They are not our masters in wisdom-wisdom the highest, purest, ever enduring. They felt of a truth they were all His offspring; but we ascend far higher, in the consciousness that we may grow up to Him in all things. We have higher and purer sources of inspiration than Homer or Plato, and therefore it should be no wonder that in moral wisdom we may excel them, and rise to heights of which they had no imagination.

Another branch of Ancient Classical Literature is of more recent date. After a long twilight, the language of Rome shone forth with a short-lived intensity. A golden

age of literature and poetry adorned the general peace which the all-powerful Augustus had conferred on the conquered world. Plautus and Terence may be regarded as garlandweavers of Grecian flowers; they give the shape and arrange the colours, and when they succeed it is as imitators. Virgil has beauties of the highest order, and descriptions which do not pale in the full glory of highest Grecian art. Horace sows pearls, both in thought and expression; we know not sometimes which to admire most, his clear and happy ideas, or his suggestive language. Ovid has left for our deep interest the outpourings of his rich, copious, and inventive genius. We read, and are delighted; we read again, and new beauties arise; but yet, after the sunny, ripe, full-flavoured clusters of Grecian poetry and art, it is but as the gleaning of grapes when the vintage is done.

In History it is different. What can equal the simple grandeur of Cesar? or which of the Greeks can with Tacitus. fathom the depths of human corruption? while Livy may fearlessly occupy a niche close by the most illustrious of the sons of Attica. Cicero needs no panegyrist—his deep insight into moral duties, his philosophical meditations, and his polished eloquence are become as household words.

The Latin language has another claim upon us; it has been until very lately the vehicle of communication between the learned of every nation; and though, from the very great facilities of intercourse now existing, and the intercommunication of European languages, it has ceased to be a means of correspondence, yet much of the treasures of human thought and human diligence, up to a recent period, has been left us written in Latin. For many centuries it was the language of a great part of the civilised world, first as the language of the wide extended Roman Empire, then of the Western Church, and till recently the common. mode of intercourse in the literary world. The consequence

of this is that the languages of Southern and WesternEurope are deeply impressed with Latin characteristics, and tinged by a mixture of Latin words and modes of speech. In an especial manner is this the case with our own language; its connection with Latin is so intimate that the reader who has no knowledge of that language loses many of the beauties, if he does not even miss some part of the meaning, of our best writers.

I may, perhaps, with propriety now say a few words in regard to translations, as it is sometimes argued that with their aid we can acquire all we need know respecting the sentiments of the ancients. If such knowledge could be called education, the assertion would have weight; but if a man were filled even to repletion with all that has been left of ancient classical literature, he would not on that account be a liberally educated man. He has really held no intercourse with the original writers-he has not put himself in their places, surrounded himself with their circumstances, or entered into their feelings. He has viewed them through an imperfect medium, and made their acquaintance only by name. Translations, as they at present exist, extinguish the fire of genius, and caricature the loftiest flights of poetic genius with the dullest prose.

In conclusion, I would fain hope that the opening of the Ladies' College in Liverpool may not be in vain— that, standing forth as it does the educator of females, it will win its way not only to acceptance but to confidence. Feeling, as we do, that education is not the imparting of merely showy accomplishments-that it consists not in a wonderful facility of hand power over musical notation, or in the capability of filling a page in an album, but that it lives. in bringing out our proper humanity, in training the mind, the imagination, the poetry of our nature; we look forward to our recompense in the assurance that, under the education

purposed in this College, some, at least, in time to come, in the full enjoyments of woman's highest rights—mental equality-finding that mind answers to mind, as face does to face in a glass, and that pure happiness results from intellectual culture, will preserve one small niche in the affection of their hearts for the College at Blackburne House.