regions of philosophy and science, which a Bacon and a Newton took, is a question scarcely worth the trouble of debating. A thousand instances have already been produced, by various writers, to disprove the mental inferiority of females, and it is universally acknowledged, that their minds are capable of infinitely higher cultivation than it has usually been their lot to receive.

But whatever we say of their rank in the scale of mere intellect, surely there can be no doubt of their pre-eminence above man in their moral feelings and affections, and in the vigour, courage, and fortitude arising out of these, which is the true test, and genuine essence of merit. The thousand instances of their heroic conduct during the French revolution, have settled this fact for ever. No personal danger could for one instant deter them from seeking, in the foulest dungeons, the father or the child, the husband or the lover. Months after months have they been known to secrete from revolutionary vengeance, some object of their affection, when the discovery of the concealment would have been inevi. table and immediate death. Were a friend arrested, their ingenuity never relaxed a moment in contrivances for his escape; were he naked, they clothed him; were he hungry, they fed him; were he sick, they visited him; and, when all efforts were unavailing for his deliverance, often did they infuse into his sinking soul their own courage to meet death with fortitude, and even with cheerfulness.

In infancy they nourish us; in old age they cherish and console us; and, on the bed of sickness, the exquisite delicacy of their attentions, the watchings they will undergo without a murmur, the fretting querulousness they will bear with complacency, the offensive, the nauseous offices which they are at all times ready to perform, demand from us more than every return of attachment, kindness, and gratitude,

which it is in our power to confer. These qualities are not the offspring of civilization; they are charac teristic of the sex, and proudly distinguish it in every quarter of the globe. This is that excelling beauty which nature gives to woman, in ample recompence for inferior deprivation; this is that beauty which indeed turns the edge of the sword, and makes the spear fall pointless. Every traveller through inhospitable wilds and pathless desarts confirms the grateful testimony of Ledyard to the compassion, and sympathy, and tenderness of woman, and authorizes us to estimate the degree of civilization, in any country, by the degree of respect and and kindness which the female sex receives.

For the Literary Magazine.

ON CLASSICAL LEARNING.

I AM sorry to find that sensible and well meaning persons of both sexes have been influenced by the arguments or the authority of Mr. Godwin. I say of Godwin, for I have not seen the same sentiments in any other writer. He advises parents to give their sons a classical education, because, says he, "they can never certainly foresee the future destination and propensities of their children." This argument is very weak and inconclusive.

He might better recommend the languages of Italy, France, and Germany, because their sons may possibly visit those countries. What humane and prudent parents would require their sons to pore over Greek and Latin, during six or seven of the best years of their lives, without any specific object in view? In the English grammar schools, boys generally study Latin and Greek seven or ten years, before they can be admitted into college.

If a boy be intended for trade or business, a classical education will be injurious to him. It is a common

observation in England, that men, who have been educated at the university, seldom make as active, expert, and successful merchants or tradesmen as those who have served an early apprenticeship, and have been regularly bred to business. Instances of this nature have occurred in our own country. Habits of indolence, or of studious industry, are formed at college, which are inimical to the mechanical processes of trade, and to the activity and bustle of a man of business. If young men, of a liberal education, have a propensity for science or literature, they often neglect their necessary business to gratify their taste for learning. The dull uniformity and confinement of a shop or accounting room, are irksome to men of genius and studious minds.

Mr. Locke, who was well acquainted with the Greek and Roman languages, and able to appreciate their value and utility, opposes Mr. Godwin's opinions. "Children," says he," are made to spend their precious time uneasily in Latin, who, after they are once gone from schools, are never to have more to do with it, as long as they live. Can there be any thing more ridiculous than that a father should waste his own money, and his son's time, in setting him to learn the Roman language, when, at the same time, he designs him for a trade, wherein he, having no use of Latin, fails not not to forget that little which he brought from school, and which it is ten to one he abhors for the ill usage it procured him?”

We shall find, upon enquiry, that Mr. Locke's observations are strictly true. How few can read a page of Latin, after they have been absent from college two or three years! Men of a liberal education, who are engaged in trade or business, find the superficial knowledge of Latin and Greek, which they acquired at school, entirely useless, and therefore take no pains to retain it. They regret the loss of the time and money which they have expended

in such vain pursuits. Formerly, it was considered an accomplishment to be able to repeat a sentiment in Greek or Latin, even in the company of ladies; but now such pedantic nonsense is banished from the conversation of polite society.

The following anecdote of Dr. Priestley is authentic, and can be confirmed by the testimony of living witnesses:

In March, 1802, an acquaintance of Dr. Priestley offered to lend him some recent poetical translations of certain Greek and Roman poets. The doctor declined the offer, and replied, that a man of his age ought to be better employed than in reading translations of Greek and Roman poets. Struck with the singularity of this answer, by a man who was conversant with the writings of the ancients and moderns, his friend then asked him, whether he thought the time and labour usually employed in learning Greek and Latin were compensated by any advantages to be derived from the knowledge of those languages? The doctor answered, no, and the conversation ended.

The relation of this anecdote brings to my recollection an interesting anecdote of that prince of classical scholars, the celebrated M. Brunck, editor of Aristophanes, Sophocles, Anacreon, Virgil, Plautus, Terence, and various other Greek and Latin classics, who died at Strasburgh, June 12, 1803. See his Life, by J. G. Schweighauser.

"Long before the termination of his career, while in the full possession of his mental and and corporeal energies, Mr. Brunck could not endure to hear a word spoken concerning Greek. He took no interest in the discovery of a manuscript of Aristophanes, which confirmed many of his boldest conjectures. My father could never induce him to read a very beautiful eulogy, composed for him by a German professor, at a time when a false report of his death had been propagated in Germany. I read nothing but tra

vels, said he to me, to prepare my self for that journey which I shall doubtless soon undertake."

These anecdotes prove the low estimation in which those two great men held classical learning. And, in fact, we find that men, who have mispent much time in study of the profane and fabulous writings of the ancients, generally lament the irreparable loss which they have

sustained.

Dr. Lowth, late bishop of London, was better acquainted with the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English languages than most men of the age. He wrote an English Grammar for the use of his countrymen, and advises all persons concerned in the education of youth, to make a grammatical knowledge of their maternal language the basis of the study of foreign languages.

"A competent grammatical knowledge of our own language," says he, "is the true foundation upon which all literature, properly so called, should be raised. If this method were adopted in our schools, children would have some notion of what they were going about, when they should enter into the Latin Grammar, and would hardly be engaged so many years as they now are, in that most irksome and difficult part of literature, with so much labour of the memory, and with so little assistance of the understanding."

Lowth produces numerous instances, from the best English writers, to prove that the knowledge of Latin and Greek does not enable a man to write his own language.

"It has been the custom of our nation, for persons of the middle and lower ranks of life, who design their children for trades and manufactures, to send them to the Latin and Greek schools. There they wear out four or five years of time in learning a number of strange words, that will be of very little use to them in all the following affairs of their station. When they leave the school, they usually forget what they have learned, and the chief advantage they gain by it is to spell and pro

nounce hard words better when they meet them in English; whereas this skill of spelling might be attained in a far shorter time, and at an easier rate, by other methods, and much of life might be saved and improved to better purposes. It is a thing of far greater value and importance that youth should be perfectly well skill. ed in reading, writing, and speaking their native tongue in a proper, a polite, and graceful manner, than in toiling among foreign languages. It is of more worth and advantage to gentlemen and ladies to have an exact knowledge of what is decent, just, and elegant in English, than to be a critic in foreign tongues; and, in order to obtain this accomplishment, they should frequently con verse with those persons and books which are esteemed polite and ele gant in their kind. Even tradesmen and the actors in common life should, in my opinion, in their younger years, learn geography and astrono my, instead of vainly wearing out seven years of drudgery in Greek and Latin."Watts on the Mind.

If the authority of men who have distinguished themselves by the usefulness of their lives and writings can have any influence in counteracting and exploding old prejudices, the inefficacy of a classical education must be manifest. Most of the advantages which the advocates for the languages and learning of the ancients propose exist only in their own imaginations, or perhaps in old books written soon after the revival of literature, and in the infancy of modern learning and civilization.

For the Literary Magazine.

THE PRAISE OF PHILOSOPHY.

WHICH intellectual pursuit, among the endless circle of intellectual pursuits, is most worthy of a wise man's regard, is a question which can never be practically decided: no reasoning on this topic can have any influence on the conduct of

mankind. Even when we undertake this grave discussion ourselves, with a view to the regulation of our own judgment, our discussion is either entirely warped and guided by our previous inclination, or, if our judgment should chance to pronounce a verdict contrary to that of our inclination, it will be but a barren, nugatory, inefficient sentence.

There is still, however, some advantage in hearing what can be said on such a subject, and a dispassionate mind may learn candour and charity, at least, from observing that the science he has been accustomed to despise and neglect is not wholly without recommendation.

That study which will find the greatest number of advocates and votaries may be distinguished by the name of science. To resolve things into their first principles is the noblest employment of the mind, and that which alone confers a title to real wisdom. Without it, the experience of a long life may only serve to accumulate a confused mass of opinion, partly true, partly false, and leading to no certain conclusions. The want of a scientific mind makes many men of business mere plodders, and many men of reading, and even of observation, mere retailers of vague, unconnected notions. Order, precision, concatenation, analysis are all the results of science, yet even this word has sometimes been the subject of obloquy. It has been branded with the epithet of impious by the bigot; of arrogant by the cautious; and of visionary by the dull. It has drawn down the anathemas of the serious, and the ridicule of the light.

A very common topic of railing against science or philosophy, is the extravagant and contradictory opinions held by the ancient philosophers. But with whom ought they to be compared? Not with those who have been enlightened by direct revelation, but with the vulgar and bigoted of their own times, who implicitly received all the absurdities which fraud and superstition had foisted into their systems of

VOL. III. NO. XIX.

faith. If, by the efforts of unaided philosophy, from a people thus debased, could be raised a Socrates, an Epictetus, an Antoninus, what honours are not due to it?

Nor have its services to mankind in latter ages been much less conspicuous; for not to insist on the great advancements in arts and science which have originated from natural philosophy, what man of enlarged ideas will deny that the science of the human mind, of law, of commerce, of government, of morals, and, I will add, of religion, have greatly contributed to any superiority this age may claim over former periods. If philosophy, thus employed, have occasioned some evils, a more correct and diligent use of the same will remove them. If erroneous conclusions have been drawn from a partial or premature induction of facts, they will be rectified by a future and more extensive induction.

One of the most material circumstances on which the relative value of an object of study depands is, that it be something real, stable, of general import, and not indebted for its consequence to temporary and conventional modes of thinking. In this respect nature has greatly the advantage over art. Whatever is learned concerning her is an eternal truth, which will preserve its relation to other things as long as the world endures. The motions of the heavenly bodies, the influence of the elements, the properties of minerals, vegetables, and animals, speak a common language to ali mankind in all ages, and afford a perpetual fund of use and entertainment. The more wide and comprehensive is the survey taken of these objects, the more they enlarge the mind, and establish a basis for truths of universal application. Hence the advantage of studying them in a connected and systematic mode, and framing general propositions con. cerning them. But the foundation for these must be a very accurate investigation of particular facts, since the instant their guidance is

3

quitted, and reliance is placed upon analogical deductions, error commences. Observation and experiment must therefore go hand in hand with reasoning; nor was there ever a true philosopher who did not unite these processes. No employment of the human faculties is nobler than thus taking the scale of creation, detecting all its mutual connexions and dependencies, investigating the laws by which it is governed as a whole, and the economy of its constituent parts,and alternately making use of the sagacity of the senses in minute inspection, and the powers of intellect in comparing and abstracting. The studies which are comprehended under the term physics, take the lead of all mental pursuits, with respect to extent, variety, and dignity. I include among them the study of one of the noblest objects nature presents, and certainly the most interesting to a human creature, that of man himself. To ascertain what he essentially is, what are the faculties of body and mind which characterize him as the head of the animal creation,and what are the variations induced in him by education, habit, climate, and mode of life, is strictly a branch of physics, and has by the best writers been treated as such.

Though nature thus studied is the noblest of all subjects that can occupy the mind, I am far from affixing the same proportionate value to investigations of the detached parts of the works of nature. In these all the grandeur of large and connected views is frequently lost, and the whole attention is employed on petty details, which lead to nothing further.

For the Literary Magazine.

ENGLISH PUBLIC WORKS.

THE great public works carrying on in Great Britain are striking proofs of the national prosperity, notwithstanding the evils of military preparation, and excessive taxation.

The latest intelligence from thence (within the last six weeks) affords us the following particulars of the state of some great designs, at the close of the last year.

The outward-bound West India dock is excavating, and will, it is expected, in the course of this year, be ready for ships to load in it.

The London dock in Wapping, for the accommodation of shipping from all parts, the East and West Indies excepted, was opened in January. The completion of the wharf, warehouses, and entrance, did not keep pace with that of the dock.

The East India dock at Blackwall is excavating with all possible dispatch; the steam engine house and apparatus is erected, and every impediment in the way of the contrac tor is now removed. The utmost exertion will be used to have it ready to receive shipping by Christmas next. The Brunswick dock, late Messrs. Perry and Wells's, is purchased by the company, for the East India shipping outward bound. It is to be deepened and extended.

The following are the dimensions of those different stupendous works:

West India dock, for unloading, 2,600 feet long, 510 feet wide, or 30 acres. Ditto, for loading, 2,600 feet long, 400 feet wide, or 24 acres.Western entrance bason, six acres. Eastern entrance bason, two acres.

London dock, for unloading, 1,262 feet long, 690 feet wide, or 20 acres. Ditto, for loading, not settled. Two basons, not settled.

East India dock, for unloading, 1,410 feet long, 560 feet wide, or 18 acres. Ditto, for loading, not settled. One entrance bason, 24 acres.

The commercial road, an appendage to the docks, is three miles long exactly, from the Royal Exchange to the entrance gate of the West India dock wall. It is to be paved, and will be most completely and substantially finished next summer. The traffic on it, in the mean while, is not in the least impeded. The tolls taken weekly are from 80 to 1001, and will be increased when