[HISTORY OF GREECE.]
The installment of Grecian History required in the C. L. S. C. course is not extensive, but has been prepared with much care, and is adapted to its purpose. A careful study—enough to give possession of the principal facts stated, can hardly fail to kindle the desire for further knowledge of a people who had so many elements of greatness, and for centuries surpassed all others in knowledge and culture. The most advanced nations of to-day are largely indebted to the Greeks. Modern art and literature bear witness to the indebtedness. The race had wonderful capabilities. Their country, climate, blood, early habits of self-control, or all these together, secured in that corner of Europe a class of stalwart men, physically and intellectually capable of great deeds.
Much of their early history is, of course, fabulous. The gods, goddesses, heroes and kings, whose councils and exploits are rehearsed, were but myths. Yet the legendary traditions respecting them have charms that attract and hold the reader. We may utterly discredit the story, but pay homage to the ability and versatile genius of the writer, whose glowing words so paint the scenes described. Only a slight basis of fact is conceded to some of the most captivating Homeric descriptions; yet they are in an important sense true. False in history, but sublimely true to the conceptions of the greatest of poets, as a bold delineator, peerless in his own, or any other age. If the ideal of the divinities thought to be interested in the affairs of men falls far below the conceptions of a monotheist, and seems unworthy of a philanthropic heathen, the portraiture is both complete and captivating.
When the mists, that for centuries shrouded Greece and the neighboring isles, are dispersed, and we recognize the certain dawn of the historic period, though the descendants of those mighty heroes and kings that were deified as sons of the gods, shrink to the proportions of men, they are still found to be mighty men, whose noble deeds and achievements have been an inspiration to millions in the generations since. Excepting only such as have the true light, and are blest with Christian civilization, we adopt the statement “No other race ever did so many things well as the Greeks.”
Let the book be closely studied. If the cursory, objectless reader lacks interest, and tires in the work, the student feels more than compensated for his toil.
[A COLLEGE REFORM.]
The present agitation touching college courses of study is one from which good is likely to come. There is danger, however, that we swing to the other extreme. That undue prominence in the ordinary college curriculum has hitherto been given to classical studies, and too little room made for the modern languages, natural science, and English literature is coming to be widely felt. But the true reform is not utterly to eliminate the classics; it is not the part of wisdom to decry as folly the study of the dead tongues.
The oration of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., last summer at Harvard, published under the title of “A College Fetich,” was quite as unexpected and sensational as that of Wendell Phillips on another similar occasion. Mr. Phillips arraigned his alma mater that her sons were no more active in social reforms, while Mr. Adams charged upon her that, in retaining the dead languages as a required part of the course of study, she was guilty of worshiping a fetich. This grandson and great-grandson of a President, whose illustrious ancestors one after another were inmates of Harvard’s halls, makes against the venerable institution, the most serious charge that her graduates, upon leaving her, are not fitted as they should be for practical life. She sends them forth, he affirms, with a smattering of the dead languages, which is quite without advantage, instead of with a thorough knowledge of what can be turned to practical account and will qualify them for the duties of active life. He would have a drill in the classics no longer required of the college student; but would allow him to win his A. B. by pursuing other and more useful branches of study. Mr. Adams’s bold claim against Harvard, if sustained, would of course hold against other colleges, and against some others would hold in a higher degree.