We have of late heard much of the neceffity of ftudying oratory. Vefpafian was the first who paid profeffors of rhetoric for publicly inftructing youth at Rome. However those pedants never made an orator. The beft orations that ever were spoken were pronounced in the parliaments of King Charles the First. These men never ftudied the rules of oratory. Mathematics are perhaps too much studied at our universities. This feems a fcience to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that fays, "All men might understand mathematics if <6 they would." The moft methodical manner of lecturing, whether on morals or nature, is first rationally to explain, and then produce the experiment. The moft inftructive method is to fhew the experiment firft; curiofity is then excited, and attention awakened to every subsequent deduction. Hence it is evident, that in a well-formed education a course of history should ever precede a course of ethics. The fons of our nobility are permitted to enjoy greater liberties in our univerfities than thofe of private men. I fhould blush to ask the men of learning and virtue, who prefide in our feminaries, the reafon of fuch a prejudicial diftinction. Our youth fhould there be inspired with a love of philofophy: and the first maxim among philofophers is, That merit only makes diftinction. Whence has proceeded the vain magnificence of expenfive architecture in our colleges? Is it that men study to more advantage in a palace than in a cell? One fingle performance of taste or genius confers more real honours on its parent univerfity than all the labours of the chiffel. Surely pride itself has dictated to the fellows of our colleges the abfurd paffion of being attended at meals, and on other public occafions, by thofe poor men who who, willing to be scholars, come in upon fome charitable foundation. It implies a contradiction, for men to be at once learning the liberal arts and at the fame time treated as flaves; at once ftudying freedom and practifing fervitude. CHAP. XIV. The CONCLUSION. EVERY fubject acquires an adventitious importance to him who confiders it with application. He finds it more clofely connected with human happinefs than the rest of mankind are apt to allow; he fees confequences refulting from it which do not ftrike others with equal conviction; and ftill purfuing fpeculation beyond the bounds of reafon, too frequently becomes ridiculously earneft in trifles or abfurdity. It will perhaps be incurring this imputation, to deduce an univerfal degeneracy of manners from fo flight an origin as the depravation of tafte; to affert that, as a nation grows dull, it finks into debauchery. Yet fuch probably may be the consequence of literary decay; or, not to ftretch the thought beyond what it will bear, vice and stupidity are always mutually productive of each other. Life at the greatest and best has been compared to a froward child, that must be humoured and played with till it falls afleep, and then all the care is over. Our few years are laboured away in varying its pleafures; new amufements are purfued with ftudious attention; the most childifh vanities are dignified with titles of importance; and the proudest boast of the the most afpiring philofopher is no more, than that he provides his little play fellows the greatest pastime with the greatest innocence. Thus the mind, ever wandering after amusement, when abridged of happiness on one part endeavours to find it on another; when intellectual pleasures are difagreeable thofe of fenfe will take the lead. The man, who in this age is enamoured of the tranquil joys of ftudy and retirement, may in the next, fhould learning be fashionable no longer, feel an ambition of being foremost at an horse-courfe; or, if fuch could be the abfurdity of the times, of being himfelf a jockey. Reafon and appetite are therefore mafters of our revels in turn; and as we incline to the one or pursue the other, we rival angels or imitate the brutes. In the purfuit of intellectual pleafure lies every virtue; of fenfual, every vice. It is this difference of pursuit which marks the morals and characters of mankind; which lays the line between the enlightened philofopher and the half-taught citizen; between the civil citizen and illiterate peafant; between the law-obeying peafant and the wandering favage of Africa, an animal less mifchievous indeed than the tiger, because endued with fewer powers of doing mifchief. The man, the nation, muft therefore be good, whofe chiefest luxuries confift in the refinement of reafon and reason can never be univerfally cultivated unless guided by tafte, which may be confidered as the link between fcience and common-fense, the medium through which learning fhould ever be seen by fociety. Taste will therefore often be a proper ftandard, when others fail, to judge of a nation's improvement or degeneracy in morals. We have often no permanent characteristics, by which to compare the virtues or the vices of our ancestors with our own. A generation may rise and pass away without leaving any traces traces of what it really was; and all complaints of our deterioration may be only topics of declamation or the cavillings of disappointment: but in Taste we have standing evidence; we can with precision compare the literary performances of our fathers with our own, and from their excellence or defects determine the moral, as well as the literary, merits of either. If then, there ever comes a time when Taste is fo far depraved among us that critics shall load every work of genius with unneceffary comment, and quarter their empty performances with the fubftantial merit of an author, both for fubfiftence and applaufe; if there comes a time when cenfure shall speak in ftorms, but praise be whispered in the breeze, while real excellence often finds fhipwreck in either; if there be a time when the Mufe fhall feldom be heard, except in plaintive elegy, as if the wept her own decline, while lazy compilations fupply the place of original thinking; fhould there ever be fuch a time, may fucceeding critics, both for the honour of our morals as well as our learning say, that such a period bears no resemblance to the prefent age! END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. VOL. I. T Printed by H. Baldwin and Son, |