Litchfield enquirer., 1879-02-13

Tn hand, 1t Will do hlm little good. NOW, let young man first learn how to think accurate ly, and then his after acquisitions will be at his service. Knowledge IS poeoe,'' only on . condition that one masters hls knowledge, and does not let it master Ai,n. And the best place to do that is in the method, and by the arduous training of thorough college course. Any student in college, or out of it, who will thoroughly master-and many young men in our colleges do-the higher departments of Algebra and Geometry the two Latin authors, Livy and Tactus the two Greek, Homer and Thucydldes; German also, with years hard study in the leading scences-this and no moreover then he will have, ordinarily, a vast advantage in available mental capital over another of equal natural capacity. In the race of life he will, in nine cases out of ten, distance him before they have gone five years in their profession. And that every where acknowledged and undisputed fact is a sufficient answer to your whole argument againsf colleges and universities. The entire course of studies, as now pursued in our lead ing institutions, touching and unfolding as far as the curriculum of four-I wish it were five years will permit, the most important branches of human thought,i is eminently fitted to quicken every power of the mind, and qual- ify young men in America for their difficult and inevitable duties If we are not to have shallow men on the Bench, at the Bar, in the Pulpit, in the professions of journalist, now so noble and influential as we'll as in all edu- cational positions, now another profession and one we'll worthy of the name, then we must have just such courses of thorough instruction as our best colleges alone can furnish for young men ambitious of success in these higher walks of life.
 1 must, also, take exception to your opinion that the Latin language is ''vastly inferior in literary value to the Greek. No scholars of eminence have ever thought so. Although more derivative and less finely philosophical and euphonic than the Greek, yet the Latin tongue has a most distinct and powerful indi- vidualty of it's own. And as for portions of it's literature, the world has never produced their superior, hardly their equal. may safe ly challenge you, Mir. Editor, or any other in telligent man, however widely read, to pro duce anything from the Greek, the German, or from English authors, whether in poetry or prose, equal to, certainly surpassing in beauty. in finish, in every element of literary perfec- tion, such immortal productions as, for exam- pie, Cicero's Orations for Marcellus, the Poet Archias; the first and sixth Books of Virgils fneid "a score or so of the finest Odes of H0r- ace; the first Book of Livy; Tacitus' Life of Agricola, and Ciceros Treatises on Friend ship, and Old Age That is the judgment of competent critics the world over. 1 do not hesitate to say that the English language can not produce two pages of composition by any author equal to the two pages of Livy's Pre- face to his History. And are we now to be told that studies like these do not ''broaden and liberalize" boys mind? The experi- And am ready 1o HYsgHdfe@v wthf & &60nttrary t; question before the widest jury of competent critics whom your paper can reach. am not surprized that the Washington verdict was al- most overwhelmingly against your side of the debate, as learn it was. I should expect that intelligent people to stand by those insti tutions of the higher education that have ben efitted them so much in generations gone, and that continue to benefit them still.
 have only to say at the close that the fail ure of so many young men to get much benefit from their college course, argues nothing against the course itself. The college cannot furnish brains. It cannot make men of power out of dolts and dullards. But, we'll used, it does prepare young men in the broadest and best sense as nothing else does or can, for the highest and most practical success in life of which they are capable W.S. C.. HOW DEAD THE DEAD LANGUAGES REALLY
 [We copy from Philip Gilbert Hammerton 8 Intellectual Life," the following admirable illustration of the imperfect appreciation of the dead languages to which even the best scholars can attain.-ED. ENQ.]
 The scholars of this century do net write Latin except as mere exercise, they uo not write books in Latin, and they never speak it at all They do not use the language actively; they only read it, which is not really using it, but only seeing how other men have used it. There is the same difference between reading language and writing or speaking it that ly and painting them.
 
 Suppose a society of Frenchmen, in some secluded little French village where no Eng lishman ever penetrates. and that these French men learn English from dictionaries and set themselves to speak English with each other. without anybody to teach them the collouuial language or it's pronunciation, without ever once hearing the sound of it from English lips, what sort of English would they create amongst themselves? This is a question that happen to be able to answer very accurately, because 1 have known two Frenchmen who studied English literature just as the French men of the sixteenth century studied the liter ature of ancient Rome. One of them, especi- ally, had attained what would certainly in the case of dead language be considered a very high degree of scholarship indeed Most of our great authors were known to him, even down to the close critical comparison of differ S1S ASoui1So AAAoOu ny eAC AuOSG pOWcflul memory 1 ever knew, he had amassed such stores that the acquisitions, even ofcultivated Englishmen, would in many cases have ap peared inconsiderable beside them. But he could not write or speak English in a manner tolgable to an Englishman; and, although he knew nearly all the words in the language, it was dictionary knowledge, and so different from an Englishman's apprehension of the same words that it was only sort of pseudo English that he knew, and not our living tongue. His appreciation of our authors, es pecally of our poets, differed so widely from English criticism and English feeling that it was evident he did not understand them as we understand them. Two things especially proved this; he frequently mistook declamato- " verslication of the most mediocre quality for poetry of an elevated order; whilst. on the other hand, his ear failed to perceive the mu- sic of the musical poets, as Byron and Tenny- son. How could he hear their music, he to whom our English sounds were unknown :? Here, for example, is the way he read ''Clar- ibel":-
 At ev ze bittle bommess
 Azvart zeeket lon
 At hone ze veeld be ommess