are wearied or disgusted with books and lectures addressed neither to the heart nor the imagination; and, strange as this may appear, are not the heart and imagination, after all, constituent principles of man's nature, as much as intellect itself and the rational faculty? Is man, on all subjects and occasions, convinced by reasoning? Are not imagination and sentiment, in most cases, minions that must be first courted and caressed, if we wish to gain an audience of the EMPRESS, REASON? In order to persuade, (and the great purpose of speech, orationis, as well as rationis, is to persuade,) we must speak truth to satisfy the understanding; we must color truth with pictures, to please the imagination; we must enliven truth with sentiment, to touch the heart; and to introduce truth into the mind, in all its force, we must excite emotions, in its favor. Such is the constitution of our nature: God has so made us; and our education ought to be conformable to the constitution of our nature, and to the will of him who made us; a will, manifestly revealed by that very constitution. The habit of reading, in early life, the best poets, orators, historians, whom the world ever saw; the habit of composing in imitation of the best poets, orators, and historians; the habit of committing to memory their finest passages,must tend to elicit our noblest talents, and to improve and confirm them all; and this constitutes the education of our grammar schools, their daily, hourly, business being, to excite the most generous sentiments, to paint the most enchanting imagery, and to encourage emotions favorable to every kind of virtue, particularly to that virtue, in which ourselves and our fellow-creatures are most deeply interested, UNAFFECTED BÉNÉVOLENCE. The mind, to be engaged, must see a FORM. The true meaning of the word IDEA, so carelessly used, is a FORM. Mathematics represent this form, by diagrams, lines, circles, and angles. Ethics (the most important of all sciences to a moral agent,) have no diagrams that can represent rectitude or obliquity of behaviour; they must, therefore, have rhetorical FIGURES, tropes, and metaphors, to charm the imagination, and thus to win the attention and assent of the mind, by delineating a pleasing or striking picture. To do this effectually, the CLASSICS, who have done it in perfection, must be studied as models. To show how compatible are mathematics with the absence of sentiment and imagination, we may recollect, that a famous geometrician, after reading one of the finest tragedies ever written, asked, "But what does it PROVE? what does it DEMONSTRATE ?" The constant study of the grammar school, especially when the pupils advance to the higher classes, is the TO KAAON, the beautiful; the То ПРЕПоN, the becoming; and not the TO XPHEIMON, the profitable, in the mean and vulgar sense of the word, but in the most extensive and liberal sense, that a generous heart and a well-informed intellect, can conceive. As to making utility, or money, the principal object in education, let us consider how little an overgrown fortune, with ignorance and vulgarity, contributes to render a man happy, or a character respectable. Many men, in this commercial and enterprising country, rise from an origin extremely poor and low, to enormous opulence, and by the power of wealth alone, are exalted to the magistracy, and adorned with chains of gold and robes of scarlet; yet when they speak or write, violate every law of Priscian; tarnish the splendor of the golden chain, and sully the vivid hue of the scarlet robe, by a lamentable defect in syntax and orthography. Those persons must, at certain times, be sensible of their misfortune; and amidst all the splendor which money can purchase, they must know, that the dullest of animals might be adorned with the trappings of a Bucephalus; must observe the sneer and concealed laughter of those with whom their office obliges them to associate, and look back with regret, at the grammar school of their native country town where they might, however poor and low, have learned without cost, the elements of those attainments, which The following quotation from Horace is so apposite, that though I determined to avoid many quotations from Latin and Greek, I must insert it: it is curious and instructive on the very point under discussion. Si neque avaritiam, neque sordes Objiciet quisquam mihi'; Causa fuit pater his, qui macro pauper agello Noluit in FLAVI ludum me mittere. [FLAVIUS erat (as the Delphin editor observes,) arithmetice, sive computandi, numerandi, rationes et calculos conferendi magister et doctor famosus; ad quem instituendi mittebantur pueri ab iis qui FÆNORI studebant et AVARITIE. Vide Epist. ad Pisones. Romani pueri longis rationibus assem Discunt in partes centum diducere: dicat Uncia, quid superat? poteras dixisse, triens: eu, Rem poteris servare tuam: redit uncia, quid fit ? Sed puerum est ausus Romam portare docendum Semet prognatos. As if he had said, My father, though but a poor country gentleman, did not send me to the ordinary writing school, but had spirit enough to place me in the best grammar schools, to learn those intellectual accomplishments, in which persons of rank and consequence choose to have their sons instructed. Nec timuit sibi ne vitio quis verterit, olim would have enabled them to sit more easily in the Prætorian chair, or roll, with real dignity, in the gilded car of state. Exclusively of personal esteem, when men remarkably illiterate are raised by the frolic of fortune' to high office, the public interest and safety suffer; because that power, which should operate by example, as well as by authority, becomes contemptible. With pain I have observed that the metropolis of the world, (for so I may call it,) has lost something of its honor, and much of its weight, by the want of a liberal education among some of those who have constituted its magistracy and its council. Great indeed, as it ought, would be its preponderance in all public questions, if courtiers and ministers could see, in the members of the judicial, or legislative assembly of the GREAT CITY, their equals in that polish and knowledge; which can be derived from no other source, but an education truly and completely liberal. Many of the civic representatives and functionaries have possessed great integrity, great munificence, great every-day abilities; but such is the world, and particularly the spirit of the present age, that if education be remarkably deficient, a public character is hardly redeemable by all the cardinal virtues combined. A public character requires talent to justify the assumption of superiority: it is to act for others, to protect the interests and rights of the people, to maintain an intercourse with houses of parliament and palaces of princes; and how can this be, when the lapsus of the tongue excites, in the gravest negotiations, the grin of the patrician's ridicule. Our forefathers, willing to maintain the honor of the greatest city in the universe, placed, in its very centre, most excellent grammar schools, from which have issued, during centuries, celebrated scholars, and high and useful characters in every department of many-colored life. The catalogue of great and good men, from these city schools, would occupy many of my pages; and shall such schools be neglected, by those who are hereafter, in consequence of successful commerce, to aspire at the MANSION of supreme magistracy, or to the representation of their fellow citizens in the senate house? Should such schools be converted into writing schools, when writing schools already abound in every street and lane, and when these stand illustriously conspicuous, the lamps, or luminaries, of the greatest emporium in Europe? should they be lowered to mere charity schools, when in their present undegraded state, they send forth multitudes of Christian theologists, whose eloquence supports, not only the schools of charity, but all other beneficent institutions, and recommends every virtue that adorns human nature? 1 Quoties voluit Fortuna JOCARI. -Juvenal. THE END OF NO. XXXVII. OF JOSEPH II. WRITTEN TO DISTINGUISHED PRINCES AND STATESMEN, ON VARIOUS INTERESTING SUBJECTS. NOW FIRST TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE PAMPHLETEER. [Continued from No. XXXVII. p. 96.] LONDON: VOL. XIX. Pam. NO. XXXVIII. S LETTERS OF JOSEPH II. To Cardinal Herzan, Imperial Royal Minister in Rome. MONSIEUR le Cardinal,-Since I have ascended the throne, and wear the first diadem in the world, I have made philosophy the legislator of my empire. In consequence of its logic, Austria will assume another form, the authority of the Ulemas will be restricted, and the rights of majesty will be restored to their primitive extent. It is necessary I should remove certain things out of the domain of religion which never did belong to it. As I myself detest superstition and the Sadducean doctrines, I will free my people of them; with this view, I will dismiss the monks, I will suppress their monasteries, and will subject them to the bishops of their diocese. In Rome they will declare this an infringement of the rights of God: I know they will cry aloud, "the greatness of Israel is fallen;" they will complain, that I take away from the people their tribunes, and that I draw a line of separation between dogma and philosophy; but they will be still more enraged when I undertake all this without the approbation of the servant of the servants of God. To these things we owe the degradation of the human mind. A servant of the altar will never admit that the state is putting him into his proper place, when it leaves him no other occupation than the gospel, and when by laws it prevents the chil |