cellent edition of Abbott on the Law of Shipping. Soon after his appointment to the Dane Professorship, he published his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, in three volumes, octavo. These were followed by a succession of treatises on different branches of the law, the extent and excellence of which, with the vast amount of legal learning displayed in them, leave it a matter of astonishment that they could be prepared, within the short space of twelve years, by a man who was all the while discharging, with great assiduity, the onerous duties of a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, and a Professor in the Law School of the University. But in his devotion to the science of the law, he did not forget the claims of literature and general scholarship; and his addresses on public occasions, his contributions to the "North American Review," and other miscellaneous writings, show a mind imbued with sound and varied learning.

As a man, and a member of society, he was remarkable for his domestic virtues, his warm affections and generous temper, and the purity, elevation, and simplicity of his life. The members of the Suffolk Bar, in their resolutions upon the occasion of his death, declare "that the death of one so great as a judge, as an author, as a teacher, and so good as a man, is a loss which is irreparable to the bar, to the country, and to mankind."

THE IMPORTANCE OF CLASSICAL LEARNING.

The importance of classical learning to professional education is so obvious, that the surprise is that it could ever have become matter of disputation. I speak not of its power in refining the taste, in disciplining the judgment, in invigorating the understanding, or in warming the heart with elevated sentiments, but of its power of direct, positive, necessary instruction. Until the eighteenth century, the mass of science, in its principal branches, was deposited in the dead languages, and much of it still reposes there. To be ignorant of these languages is to shut out the lights of former times, or to examine them only through the glimmerings of inadequate translations. What should we say of the jurist who never aspired to learn the maxims of law and equity which adorn the Roman codes? What of the physician who could deliberately surrender all the knowledge heaped up for so many centuries in the Latinity of continental Europe? What of the minister of religion who should choose not to study the Scriptures in the original tongue, and should be content to trust his faith and his hopes, for time and for eternity, to the dimness of translations which may reflect the literal import, but rarely can reflect, with unbroken force, the beautiful spirit of the text?

I pass over all consideration of the written treasures of antiquity which have survived the wreck of empires and dynasties, of monumental trophies and triumphal arches, of palaces of princes and temples of the gods. I pass over all consideration of those admired compositions in which wisdom speaks as with a voice from heaven; of those sublime efforts of poetical genius which still

freshen, as they pass from age to age, in undying vigor; of those finished histories which still enlighten and instruct governments in their duty and their destiny; of those matchless orations which roused nations to arms and chained senates to the chariot-wheels of all-conquering eloquence. These all may now be read in our vernacular tongue. Ay! as one remembers the face of a dead friend, by gathering up the broken fragments of his image; as one listens to the tale of a dream twice told; as one catches the roar of the ocean in the ripple of a rivulet; as one sees the blaze of noon in the first glimmer of twilight.

FREE SCHOOLS.

I know not what more munificent donation any government can bestow than by providing instruction at the public expense, not as a scheme of charity, but of municipal policy. If a private person deserves the applause of all good men, who founds a single hospital or college, how much more are they entitled to the appellation of public benefactors who, by the side of every church in every village, plant a school of letters! Other monuments of the art and genius of man may perish, but these, from their very nature, seem, as far as human foresight can go, absolutely immortal. The triumphal arches of other days have fallen; the sculptured columns have crumbled into dust; the temples of taste and religion have sunk into decay; the pyramids themselves seem but mighty sepulchres hastening to the same oblivion to which the dead they cover have long since passed. But here, every successive generation becomes a living memorial of our public schools, and a living example of their excellence. Never, never may this glorious institution be abandoned or betrayed by the weakness of its friends or the power of its adversaries! It can scarcely be abandoned or betrayed while New England remains free, and her representatives are true to their trust. It must forever count in its defence a majority of all those who ought to influence public affairs by their virtues or their talents; for it must be that here they first felt the divinity of knowledge stir within them. What consolation can be higher, what reflection prouder, than the thought that in weal and in woe our children are under the public guardianship, and may here gather the fruits of that learning which ripens for eternity!

THE DANGERS THAT THREATEN OUR REPUBLIC.

The fate of other republics-their rise, their progress, their de cline, and their fall-are written but too legibly on the pages of history, if, indeed, they were not continually before us in the

startling fragments of their ruins. Those republics have perished, and have perished by their own hands. Prosperity has enervated them, corruption has debased them, and a venal populace has consummated their destruction. The people, alternately the prey of military chieftains at home and of ambitious invaders from abroad, have been sometimes cheated out of their liberties by servile demagogues, sometimes betrayed into a surrender of them by false patriots, and sometimes they have willingly sold them for a price to the despot who has bidden highest for his victims. They have disregarded the warning voice of their best statesmen, and have persecuted and driven from office their truest friends. They have listened to the counsels of fawning sycophants or base calumniators of the wise and the good. They have reverenced power more in its high abuses and summary movements than in its calm and constitutional energy, when it dispensed blessings with an unseen but a liberal hand. They have surrendered to faction what belonged to the common interests and common rights of the country. Patronage and party, the triumph of an artful popular leader, and the discontents of a day, have outweighed, in their view, all solid principles and institutions of government. Such are the melancholy lessons of the past history of republics down to our own.

* * *

If our Union should once be broken up, it is impossible that a new constitution should ever be formed, embracing the whole territory. We shall be divided into several nations or confederacies, rivals in power, pursuits, and interests; too proud to brook injury, and too near to make retaliation distant or ineffectual. Our very animosities will, like those of all other kindred nations, become more deadly, because our lineage, our laws, and our language are the same. Let the history of the Grecian and Italian republics warn us of our dangers. The National Constitution is our last and our only security. United, we stand; divided, we fall.

Let, then, the rising generation be inspired with an ardent love of their country, an unquenchable thirst for liberty, and a profound reverence for the Constitution and the Union. Let the American youth never forget that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capable, if wisely improved and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, of property, of religion, and of independence. The structure has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity, its foundations are solid, its compartments are beautiful as well as useful, its arrangements are full of wisdom and order, and its defences are impregnable from without. It has been reared for immortality, if the work of

man may justly aspire to such a title. It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour, by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, THE PEOPLE. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall when the wise are banished from the public councils because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded because they flatter the people in order to betray them.

Conclusion of his Exposition of the Constitution.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

"What! Irving! thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain!
You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain,
And the gravest sweet humor that ever was there
Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair.
Nay, don't be embarrass'd, nor look so beseeching,
I sha'n't run directly against my own preaching,

And, having just laugh'd at their Raphaels and Dantes,
Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes;
But allow me to speak what I honestly feel;-

To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele,
Throw in all of Addison minus the chill,

With the whole of that partnership's stock and good will,

Mix well, and, while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell,

The 'fine old English gentleman;'-simmer it well:

Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain,

That only the finest and clearest remain:

Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives

From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves;
And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving
A name either English or Yankee-just Irving."

James Russell Lowell's Fable for the Critics.

THIS most justly celebrated and widely-known of all American prose-writers was born in the city of New York, on the 3d of April, 1783. After receiving an ordinary school-education, he commenced, at the age of sixteen, the study of the law. In 1804, in consequence of ill health, he sailed for Bordeaux, and thence roamed over the most beautiful portions of Southern Europe, visited Switzerland, sojourned in Paris, passed through Holland to England, and returned home in 1806 and again resumed the study of the law. He was admitted to the bar in November of that year, but never practised. Shortly after, he joined Mr. Paulding in writing Salmagundi, the first number of which appeared in 1807. It was a miscellany full of humor and fun, which captivated the town, and decided the fortunes of the authors. In December of the following year, he published The History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker,-a most original and humorous work; and, a few years after, he edited the "Analectic Magazine." In the autumn of 1814, he joined the military staff of the Governor of New York, as aidde-camp, and secretary, with the title of colonel. At the close of the war, he embarked for Liverpool, with a view of making a second tour of Europe; but, financial troubles intervening, and the remarkable success which attended his literary enterprises being an encouragement to pursue a vocation which necessity, no less than taste, now urged him to follow, he embarked in the career of author

ship. In 1818 appeared the papers called the Sketch-Book, transmitted from London, where he wrote them, to New York, which at once attracted universal admiration, not here only, but in England, where they were republished in 1820. After residing a few years in England, Mr. Irving again visited Paris, and returned to England to bring out Bracebridge Hall, in London, May, 1822. The next winter he passed in Dresden, and in the following spring put Tales of a Traveller to press. He soon after went to Madrid, and wrote The Life of Columbus, which appeared in 1828. In the spring of that year, he visited the south of Spain, and the result was the Chronicles of the Conquest of Grenada, which was published in 1829. The same year, he revisited that region, and collected the materials for his Alhambra. In July, he went to England, being appointed Secretary of Legation to the American Embassy in London, which office he held until the return of Mr. McLane, in 1831.

While in England, Mr. Irving received one of the twenty-guinea gold medals provided by George IV. for eminence in historical composition, and the degree of LL.D. from the University of Oxford. His return to New York, in 1832, was greeted by a festival, at which were gathered his surviving friends, and all the illustrious men of his native metropolis. The following summer, he accompanied one of the commissioners for removing the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi. The fruit of this excursion was his graphic Tour of the Prairies. Soon after appeared Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, and Legends of the Conquest of Spain. In 1836, he published Astoria, and in 1837, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville. In 1839, he entered into an engagement, which lasted two years, with the proprietors of the Knickerbocker Magazine, to furnish, monthly, articles for that periodical. Early in 1842, he was appointed minister to Spain; and on his return to this country, in 1846, he began the publication of a revised edition of his works, to the list of which he afterwards added a Life of Goldsmith. He has recently published a Life of Washington, in five volumes, which promises to be the most popular life of that illustrious statesman whose name he wears.

After the genial lines of James Russell Lowell, above quoted, so happily descriptive of Mr. Irving's style, we will add nothing but a short quotation from a beautifully-written and appreciative sketch of his life, in the "Homes of American Authors:""The eminent success which has attended the late republication of Irving's works teaches a lesson that we hope will not be lost on the cultivators of literature. It proves a truth which all men of enlightened taste intuitively feel, but which is constantly forgotten by aspirants for literary fame, and that is, -the permanent value of a direct, simple, and natural style. It is not only the genial philosophy, the humane spirit, the humor and pathos, of Irving, which endear his writings and secure for them an habitual interest, but it is in the refreshment afforded by a constant recurrence to the unalloyed, unaffected, clear, flowing style in which he invariably expresses himself."

1 Read "Homes of American Authors;" "North American Review," ix. 322, xxviii. 103, xxix. 293, xxxv. 265, xli. 1, xliv. 200; "Edinburgh Review," xxxiv. 160, xxxvii. 337. But for a full account of Irving's writings, with well-selected criticisms upon his works, both from English and American Reviews, consult that admirable book,-Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors. See p. 771 of this book.