TWENTY -FIFTH CONGRESS, 1837-1839. 165 



cent all destined to the grave of oblivion. Nor is it that our coun- 

 trymen have not the gift of genius for literary works of that high and 

 immortal character. Probably no people were ever blessed with it in 

 a greater degree of which everywhere 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 provebunt, 



In majus. 



"Literature is now everywhere mediocre because the arts of litera- 

 ture are nowhere cultivated, but everywhere neglected and appar- 

 ently despised. I recollect to have seen in a late and leading periodical 

 of Great Britain an article in which the writer congratulates the age 

 upon having thrown off the shackles of composition, and says (in a 

 tone of triumph) that no one now thinks of writing like Junius (as if 

 it was an easy matter, but beneath him, to write like Junius), except, 

 he adds, some junior sophister in the country corresponding with the 

 editor of some village newspaper. The whole tribe of present writers 

 seem by their silence to receive this description as eulogy, as a 

 tribute of praise properly paid to their merit, while in truth it is the 

 characteristic of a barbarous age, or of one declining to barbarism; it 

 is the very description applied to mark the decline and last glimmer- 

 ing of letters in Greece' and Rome. 



"The object of education is twofold knowledge and ability; both 

 are important, but ability by far the more so. Knowledge is so far 

 important as it is subsidiary to the acquiring of ability, and no fur- 

 ther, 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 scepter over the human heart and the human intellect. Now, 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 conducted 

 infallibly to a certain result. 



"In all the celebrated schools of Athens this was the plan of educa- 

 tion; 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 whi(*h they poured forth in 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 

 produced by the scholars of these schools, ascribes the event to the 



