162 CONGRESSIONAL PllOCEEDINGS, 



and the memory, it improves the capacity for acquiring : 

 but the capacity to acquire is not ability to originate and 

 produce. ISTo { abiHty can only be given by the appropriate 

 studies, accompanied with the appropriate exercises — di- 

 rected by a certain rule, and conducted infallibly to a cer- 

 tain result. 



In all the celebrated schools of Athens, this was the plan 

 of education ; and there the ingenious 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 in all the depart- 

 ments 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 produced b}' the schol- 

 ars 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 wer.e 

 adequate to the end. It is no wonder at all that such 

 schools gave to Athens her Thucydides in history, her Plato 

 in ethics ; her Sophocles to her drama, and her Demosthe- 

 nes 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 natui-al and necessary efi:ect 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 Avhich it lived and had its being ; freedom gave 

 to it the fields where its most splendid triumphs Avere 

 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 Mace- 

 donian ; 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 



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