we see the indications and the evidence; but what signifies genius for an art without discipline, without knowledge of its principles and skill in that art? "Vis consili expers, mole ruit sua;

Vim temperatam, Dii quoque provehunt,

In majus."

Literature is now every where mediocre-because the arts of literature are no where cultivated, but every where neglected-and apparently despised.

The object of education is two-fold, knowledge and ability; both are important, but ability by far the most so. Knowledge is so far important as it is subsidiary to the acquiring of ability, and no further; except as a source of mental pleasure to the individual. It is ability that makes itself to be felt by society; it is ability that wields the sceptre over the human heart and the human intellect. It is a great mistake to suppose that knowledge imparts ability of course. It does indeed impart ability of a certain kind; for by exercising the attention and the memory it improves the capacity for acquiring; but the capacity to acquire is not ability to originate and produce. No; ability can only be given by the appropriate studies, accompanied with the appropriate exercises-directed by a certain rule, and conducting infallibly to a certain result.

In all the celebrated schools of Athens, this was the plan of education; and there the ingenuous youth blessed with faculties of promise, never failed to attain the eminence aspired to, unless his perseverance failed. Hence the mighty effects of those schools; hence that immense tide of great men which they poured forth on all the departments of science and letters; and especially of letters; and hence, too, the astonishing perfection of their works. A celebrated writer, filled with astonishment at the splendor as well as the number of the works preduced by the scholars of these schools, ascribes the event to the hand of a wonder-working Providence, interposed in honor of human nature, to show to what perfection the species might ascend. But there was nothing of miracle in it; the means were adequate to the end. It is no wonder at all that such schools gave to Athens her Thucydides in history, her Plato in ethics; Sophocles to her drama, and Demosthenes to her forum and her popular assemblies; and gave to her besides, that host of rivals to these and almost their equals. It was the natural and necessary effect of such a system of education; and especially with a people who held, as the Athenians did, all other human considerations as cheap in comparison with the glory of letters and the arts.

It is true, this their high and brilliant career of literary glory was but of short duration; for soon as it had attained its meridian blaze, it was suddenly arrested, for the tyrant came and laid the proud freedom of Athens in the dust, and the Athenians were a people with whom the love of glory could not survive the loss of freedom. For freedom was the breast at which that love was fed; freedom was the element in which it lived and had its being; freedom gave to it the fields where its most splendid triumphs were achieved. The genius of Athens now drooped; fell from its lofty flights down to tame mediocrity-to ephemeral works born but to languish and to die; and so remained during the long rule of that ruthless despotism-the Macedonian; and until the Roman came to put it down, and to merge Greece in the Roman Empire. Athens now was partially restored again to freedom. Her schools which had been closed, or which had existed only in form, revived with something of their former effect. They again gave forth some works worthy of her former fame, though of less transcendent merit; and they now gave to Rome the Roman eloquence and literature.

Græcia capta serum Victorem cepet, et artes
Intulet agresti satis:

and, if we are wise to profit by their example, may yet give to us an equal eloquence and literature.

I mention these things to show what encouragement we have to this enterprise-what well-grounded hope of success. We have only to tread the path that led the Athenian to his glory, and to open that path to the youth of our country. All the animating influences of freedom exist here in still greater force than they existed there; for, while it is not less absolute here, it is better regulated-better combined with order and security. Neither is the gift of genius wanting here; the gleams of this precious ore are seen to break out here and there all over the surface of our society; the animus acer et sublimis is daily displayed by our countrymen in all the forms of daring and enterprise; the Eagle, their emblem, is not more daring in his flights. And if the love of fame, which was the ruling passion of the Greek, is not now so strong with us, it is because the want of the means, the want of plain and sure directions for its pursuits, begets a despair of its attainment. The Greek had these means, had these plain and sure directions; and it was the certainty of success by perseverance and by their guide that kindled and sustained his passion and made it his ruling passion. This passion is now burning in the young bosoms

Let

of thousands of our youth; but it is, as I have said, vis consili expers, and struggles in vain because it struggles blindly for the fame it pants after. this Athenian mode of education be adopted in this instance* let it produce but a few examples of eminent success, and thousands would rush to the path that had led to that success; and there are many among us yet young enough to see a new era arising in our land-another golden age of literature, no less splendid than any that has gone before it-not excepting even the Athenian.

OLD GRIMES.

BY ALBERT G. GREENE.

OLD Grimes is dead; that good old man

We never shall see more :--
He used to wear a long, black coat

All buttoned down before.

His heart was open as the day,

His feelings all were true;
His hair was some inclined to grey,
He wore it in a queue.

*Referring to the Smithsonian bequest.