ber, it seems to me a wonderful thing that I should have lived to see a poem in Old French edited by a young American scholar (present here this evening) and printed in the journal of this Society, a journal in every way creditable to the scholarship of the country. Nor, as an illustration of the same advance in another language, should we forget Dr. Fay's admirable Concordance of the "Divina Commedia." But a more gratifying illustration than any is the existence and fruitful activity of this Association itself, and this select concourse before me which brings scholars together from all parts of the land, to stimulate them by personal commerce with men of kindred pursuits, and to unite so many scattered energies in a single force controlled by a common and invigorated purpose.

We have every reason to congratulate ourselves on the progress the modern languages have made as well in academic as in popular consideration. They are now taught (as they could not formerly be taught) in a way that demands toil and thought of the student, as Greek and Latin, and they only, used to be taught, and they also open the way to higher intellectual joys, to pastures new and not the worse for being so, as Greek and Latin, and they only, used to do. Surely many-sidedness is the very essence of culture, and it matters less what a man learns than how he learns it. The day will come, nay, it is dawning already, when it will be understood that the masterpieces of whatever language are not to be classed by an arbitrary standard, but stand on the same level in virtue of being

masterpieces; that thought, imagination, and fancy may make even a patois acceptable to scholars; that the poets of all climes and of all ages "sing to one clear harp in divers tones;" and that the masters of prose and the masters of verse in all tongues teach the same lesson and exact the same fee.

I began by saying that I had no wish to renew the Battle of the Books. I cannot bring myself to look upon the literatures of the ancient and modern worlds as antagonists, but rather as friendly rivals in the effort to tear as many as may be from the barbarizing plutolatry which seems to be so rapidly supplanting the worship of what alone is lovely and enduring. No, they are not antagonists, but by their points of disparity, of likeness, or contrast, they can be best understood, perhaps understood only through each other. The scholar must have them both, but may not he who has not leisure to be a scholar find profit even in the lesser of the two, if that only be attainable? Have I admitted that one is the lesser? O matre pulchra filia pulchrior is perhaps what I should say here.

If I did not rejoice in the wonderful advance made in the comparative philology of the modern languages, I should not have the face to be standing here. But neither should I if I shrank from saying what I believed to be the truth, whether here or elsewhere. I think that the purely linguistic side in the teaching of them seems in the way to get more than its fitting share. I insist only that

in our college courses this should be a separate study, and that, good as it is in itself, it should, in the scheme of general instruction, be restrained to its own function as the guide to something better. And that something better is Literature. Let us rescue ourselves from what Milton calls "these grammatic flats and shallows." The blossoms of language have certainly as much value as its roots; for if the roots secrete food and thereby transmit life to the plant, yet the joyous consummation of that life is in the blossoms, which alone bear the seeds that distribute and renew it in other growths. Exercise is good for the muscles of mind and to keep it well in hand for work, but the true end of Culture is to give it play, a thing quite as needful.

What I would urge, therefore, is that no invidious distinction should be made between the Old Learning and the New, but that students, due regard being had to their temperaments and faculties, should be encouraged to take the course in modern languages as being quite as good in point of mental discipline as any other, if pursued with the same thoroughness and to the same end. And that end is Literature, for there language first attains to a full consciousness of its powers and to the delighted exercise of them. Literature has escaped that doom of Shinar which made our Association possible, and still everywhere speaks in the universal tongue of civilized man. And it is only through this record of Man's joys and sorrows, of his aspirations and failures, of his thought, his speculation, and his dreams, that we can become

complete men, and learn both what he is and what he may be, for it is the unconscious autobiography of mankind. And has no page been added to it since the last ancient classic author laid down his pen?

THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD.1

1886.

As at noon every day the captain of a ship tries to learn his whereabouts of the sun, that he may know how much nearer he is to his destined port, and how far he may have been pushed away from his course by the last gale or drifted from it by unsuspected currents, so on board this ship of ours, The Earth, in which that abstract entity we call The World is a passenger, we strive to ascertain, from time to time, with such rude instruments as we possess, what progress we have made and in what direction. It is rather by a kind of deadreckoning than by taking the height of the Sun of Righteousness, which should be our seamark, that we accomplish this, for such celestial computations are gone somewhat out of fashion. It is only a few scholars and moralists in their silent and solitary observatories that any longer make account of them. We mostly put faith in our statisticians, and the longer they make their columns of figures, the bigger their sums of population, of exports and imports, and of the general output of fairy-gold,

1 This paper was written for an introduction to a work entitled The World's Progress (published by Messrs. Gately & O'Gorman, Boston), in which the advance in various departments of intellectual and material activity was described and illustrated.