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GIFT OF 
 Benjamin Ide Wheeler 
 
GREEK AND WHAT NEXT ? 
 
 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 SOLOMOS' HYMN TO LIBERTY, 
 
 A POEM. 
 
 READ BEFORE THE 
 
 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF BROWN UNIVERSITY, 
 
 JUNE 17, 1884, 
 ARNOLD GREEN. 
 
 PROVIDENCE 
 SIDNEY S. RIDER. 
 
 1884. 
 
V 
 
 PROVIDENCE PRESS CO., PRINTERS. 
 
" A decline in the state of Greek scholarship implies even more than the 
 failure of esteem for the most valuable and influential of all languages ; it 
 involves with it a gradual but certain decay of general culture, the sacrifice 
 of learning to science, the neglect of the history of man and of thought for 
 the sake of facts relating to the external world." Isaac Todhunter, Conflict 
 of Studies, p. 135. 
 
GREEK AND WHAT NEXT? 
 
 Gentlemen of the Alumni Association. In asking one to 
 speak before you, whose daily life is removed from academi- 
 cal influence and collegiate association, and in assigning to 
 him a subject peculiarly fitted for academical discussion and 
 collegiate decision, you certainly do not expect from him 
 either learned disquisition or technical argument. The claim 
 of the classical languages to a place in our schools, has been 
 so often disputed and so vigorously defended, has for so 
 many generations been the theme of writers and speakers, 
 has gathered around itself so huge a literature, that the 
 studious critic finds nothing left to say. Year by year we read 
 statements and counter statements, that were as familiar to 
 Michael Neander and Jerome Wolf, as they are to the teacher 
 and learner of to day. Nay more, in this long dispute 
 between the defenders of what is called the old, and the 
 partizans of what is styled the new, in this continued con- 
 flict of studies, from Erasmus of De venter to Herbert 
 Spencer of London, I do not believe that anybody lias ever 
 convinced anybody else. For the difference between the- 
 disputants is not in detail, but in substance ; is radical, not 
 merely superficial. On the one side, we are told, that th& 
 object of boyhood's training is to open vistas of varied learn- 
 ing and so to strengthen the neophyte's sight, as to enable* 
 him to scan the broad horizon of mental achievement before 
 he chooses his own special pathway of labor, to harden his 
 intellectual fibre, and to form judgment and taste, without 
 reference to definite ends, to prolong and broaden prepara- 
 
6 
 
 tion in the belief that future work will reflect and return the 
 long labor of discipline, and the long years of hopeful teach- 
 ing and study. On the other, we are reproached with 
 wasting the plastic period of youth in pursuits which bring 
 no reward, in employments which compared with the 
 demands of active life, are trivial and trifling, in studies 
 which rather unfit than prepare the student for the world in 
 which he must soon struggle to obtain success, or it may be 
 to maintain his existence. The plea for years of study to 
 ensure knowledge, which must be gained before life's work 
 is begun, or be given up forever, is answered by a demand 
 for early fruit, and for such speedy and special training as 
 may insure its production. 
 
 The education, which is general, involves a long period 
 of labor and waiting that contributes little to the student's 
 support, and is therefore beyond the reach of large classes 
 in every community. It thus becomes to them an object of 
 envy or distrust or, perhaps, dislike. Having no sympa- 
 thy with it, they possibly gain a repugnance to it, and the 
 theorist's dream is used as a foil to bring into bolder relief 
 the useful work of the practical laborer. Again, the pros- 
 pect of speedy reward is the strongest incentive to work in 
 minds that cannot as yet have been accustomed to the inter- 
 val between seed time and harvest, and long waiting in patient 
 labor breeds discouragement, which induces belief that a 
 new age demands a new training ; that a modern society 
 calls for modern methods ; that the old is worn out, and that 
 all things should be mude new. 
 
 Of the classical languages, the more elaborate and the 
 more perfect one has been selected, of late years, for special 
 attack. The Latin is grudgingly allowed a place among 
 useful studies, at least as yet, but the advocates of a 
 reformed education demand the exclusion of the Greek from 
 our schools and colleges so far as it is a part of the regular 
 and required courses, and the substitution for it of some 
 modern language or of some scientific study. Greek has 
 
been selected as the weak point to attack, and I believe it to 
 be the most important in our whole educational system. I 
 come before you, gentlemen, accepting your invitation to 
 address you in the spirit which prompted you to give it, and 
 I come to express my gratitude that our collegiate course 
 circled around the classical languages, and to confess my 
 own conviction that had boyhood received more Greek, 
 manhood's work would be better done. 
 
 Yet I congratulate those who love the classics that there 
 are men as able, as acute, as enthusiastic in other depart- 
 ments to watch their performance and to criticize both their 
 methods and their results. The alertness of an antagonist 
 is the best earnest of faithful work, his aggressive opposi- 
 tion the best assurance of honest labor. I hope that the 
 classical instructor and the scientific teacher will each main- 
 tain his respective cause with unabated interest and unfailing 
 zeal, that the dispute between them will neither cease nor 
 grow less warm, that neither will allow the other to rest in 
 routine or to drown vigor in the bitumen lake of a mediaeval 
 dialectic. Certainly the humanist may look back over the 
 last century with unalloyed pleasure. Decade after decade, 
 our schools have demanded more from their pupils, and the 
 response has been ready and easy. More Latin and more 
 Greek, more science pure and applied, more modern lan- 
 guages have been put into the required courses, and the 
 student has increased his acquisitions without exhaustion. 
 The masters of knowledge have themselves set the example, 
 and the success of classical scholars has quite equalled that 
 of their scientific rivals. As Lavoisier and Davy reformed 
 chemistry, Friedrich Wolf reconstructed Greek learning 
 and Gustav Hugo rewrote Roman law ; Humboldt de- 
 signed and executed his encyclopaedic manual of science, 
 and by an intellectual grasp of detail not less amazing, 
 Niebuhr recognized and Gceschen and Bethmann-Hollweg 
 deciphered the palimpsest of Gaius. While Kirchhoff 
 at Heidelberg was blinding himself with the study of the 
 
8 
 
 solar spectrum, Ritschl at Bonn was rediscovering the text 
 of Plautus. Rowan-Hamilton gave to mathematics a new 
 instrument of research, and Laurent completed his wonder- 
 ful commentaries on the civil jurisprudence. Our own gen- 
 eration has, with bewildered surprise, followed the observa- 
 tions of Charles Darwin, and read the inscriptions of August 
 Breckh and Theodor Mommsen. Nor has less energy been 
 shown in the humbler tasks of classical learning. Frere 
 and Rogers have compelled Aristophanes to talk English. 
 Jowett has again translated Platon and has tried to translate 
 Thoukudides. Prendergast and Dunbar have finished their 
 concordances of Aristophanes and of Homeros. Wide as 
 may be the differences, earnest as may be the dispute 
 between the scientist and the Grecian, the outcome of their 
 discussions must be good so long as each feels the inspira- 
 tion of his own study and the stimulus of his opponents' 
 criticism to acquisition and production. 
 
 But we must not imagine that the dispute can be con- 
 cluded, and the disputants reconciled. The scientific school 
 and the classical cannot coalesce. They differ in the choice 
 of studies. They also differ in the modes and in the aims 
 of study. The one is special, the other general. The one 
 assumes a chosen field of work, and prepares the student to 
 till it. The other knows nothing about the student's ultimate 
 intentions, and cares nothing for them. The one dismisses its 
 pupil with a certificate of preparation for his future work. 
 The other admonishes him that his broader study must be 
 supplemented by his technical training. To substitute the 
 scientific school for the classical is merely to build the super- 
 structure at the expense of its foundation to Jet an easier 
 and a shorter discipline take the place of a severer and a 
 more prolonged. If the additional time gained for a practi- 
 cal branch of education secures greater depth of acquire- 
 ment, this advantage is offset by the loss of that breadth 
 which is even more important to youth. Of course, in deal- 
 ing with the higher education we must assume the student's 
 
ability to give to it the necessary time, just as the existence 
 of the higher schools implies wealth and leisure and culture 
 in the community which supports them. The classical 
 school could not exist in a purely industrial society, depend- 
 ent for its daily support on its daily labor. 
 
 The choice then urged upon us is between a preparatory 
 education that is general, and one that is special ; between a 
 course of study which is built up on the Greek as the most 
 perfect language for the expression of human thought ever 
 used by man, the language underlying all modern literature 
 and permeating all western culture, and a course that substi- 
 tutes for the 'Greek something, the acquisition of which 
 involves less labor and requires less time. I say build up on 
 the Greek, for its influence upon the Latin was so strong 
 that to one ignorant of it, Roman literature is meaningless, 
 and Roman history, during the periods in which Roman 
 action and Roman thought have most affected our own, 
 becomes unintelligible. I say build up on the Greek, for 
 broad culture involves Greek learning by an implication 
 more close and necessary than I fear even some of our in- 
 structors are willing to admit. Without Greek the very 
 name of classical education becomes a misnomer. One half 
 of modern and medieval life can be explained only by refer- 
 ence to Roman letters, Roman thought, and Roman law, and 
 all these drew their inspiration and much of their matter from 
 that long roll which contains the records of Greek genius, 
 beginning with the marvellous songs of the Homeric Skalds, 
 and for us ending with the splendid harangues of Chru- 
 sostomos. 
 
 With the choice thus presented, as with all questions 
 regarding the higher education, popular demand has nothing 
 to do. The decision must come from the comparatively 
 small body of educated men, whose training has enabled 
 them to form and defend their opinions from familiar know- 
 ledge. I am inclined to think that our professed collegiate 
 practice fairly corresponds to their views. I do not over- 
 
10 
 
 look the prejudice, if you please so to call it, the natural 
 feeling which may lead them to regard the training which 
 they have received, as the best for others, nor do I disregard 
 the feeling which prompts those who have not enjoyed their 
 advantages to consult their experience and follow their 
 advice in order that a child may secure more finished culture 
 than his father could obtain. 
 
 Thus far, I am glad to say, those who demand the excision 
 of one or both of the classical languages from our school 
 programmes, have failed to obtain the support which they 
 professed to expect. Forty two years ago Francis Way land 
 wrote, 1 " The colleges, so far as I know, which have obeyed 
 the suggestions of the public, have failed to find themselves 
 sustained by the public. The means which it was supposed 
 would increase the number of students, in fact diminished it, 
 and thus things gradually, after every variety of trial, have 
 genei ally tended to their original constitution. So much 
 easier is it to discover faults than to amend them, to point 
 out evils than to remove them ; and thus have we been 
 taught that the public does not always know what it wants, 
 and that it is not always wise to take it at its word." This 
 criticism on the changes made in one Massachusetts college 
 and afterwards to be tried in another, was prophetic of the 
 fate of his own plan introduced here eight years later. 
 Some of you remember the care with which it was arranged, 
 the brilliant anticipations which attended its adoption, and the 
 completeness of its practical failure. Not less suggestive is 
 the history of the school which Julius Hecker founded in 
 Berlin in 1747.' 2 He endeavored to combine in a single 
 institution, preparatory courses for the universities, courses 
 of instruction for students, who, not intending to pursue 
 university studies, wished to be fitted for military life, or 
 civil, artistic, mechanical or agricultural, and also courses 
 for others, who, as artizans or peasants, desired a merely 
 elementary education. Three departments partly coordi- 
 nate and partly graded, a German, a Latin and a Technical 
 
11 
 
 furnished the machinery. The effect at first was to develop 
 inordinately the technical division, which provided teachers 
 in arithmetic, geometry, mechanics, architecture, drawing 
 and natural science, and soon furnished special teaching in 
 nearly every branch of work. An effort seemed making to 
 teach everybody everything. After twenty years of trial 
 the death of its founder put the school into other hands. 
 The new^ Superintendent rearranged the departments, and 
 gave to them their characteristic names of German or Arti- 
 zan's School, Art School and Paedagogium. The two former 
 continued their work with ample provision and a minuteness 
 of detail which approached caricature. Meanwhile, term by 
 term, the paedagogium, following the irresistible law of its 
 development, assumed more and more the peculiarities of 
 a general classical school, until just fifty years after its crea- 
 tion it deserved and received the name of the " Friedrich 
 "VVilhelm Gymnasium." In 1811 it was formally separated 
 from the other departments of the former foundation. 
 
 In urging the radical difference between our classical 
 schools and those demanded by our so called reformers, in 
 insisting upon their incompatibility, and in thus illustrating 
 it, I should anticipate your criticism by an explanation. 
 The special preparation of a German student is understood 
 to begin with the university. He selects his department of 
 study at his matriculation, and is supposed during his uni- 
 versity career to be preparing himself for his own life's 
 work. Everything before the university, work in the pro- 
 gymnasium and gymnasium, whatever names they bear, is 
 general education leading up to the special university train- 
 ing. With us this special preparation begins after gradua- 
 tion from college. All before this, study in the prepara- 
 tory school and the college under whatever names, is gen- 
 eral culture. So that our graduate, when he receives his 
 academical degree, corresponds pretty nearly in develop- 
 ment and in age with the " abiturient " of the foreign gym- 
 nasium. Bearing this in mind, we may, I think, properly 
 cite the experience of others as well as our own. 
 
12 
 
 What is to be the future of our American colleges, is an 
 interesting and not wholly profitless subject for speculation. 
 Some of them, with the aid of age and wealth, will prob- 
 ably surround themselves with special schools for final train- 
 ing, until these become grouped into a proper university 
 which the college will feed with its graduates, and for which 
 it will become a preparatory academy. Others, I think, 
 while increasing the number of departments and of their 
 teachers, will stop short of the university development and 
 grow into large schools, either technical or classical ; possi- 
 bly, if their endowments permit, uniting the two more or 
 less closely under a single government ; probably, confining 
 their educational efforts to one of these two different objects ; 
 preparation for a university and preparation for active life. 
 Meanwhile the colleges are bearing the double burden of 
 general and also of limited training, perhaps carrying on 
 neither so well as they might were the other removed. 
 While this state of things lasts we cannot quote the old 
 practice and urge the presumptions of experience in its 
 favor, for the past and the present may be quite transitional ; 
 and many institutions are like, many men, the fact that they 
 exist is no good reason why they should continue to be. 
 AVe may, however, refer to our experience as showing that 
 the higher culture is more in honor among us than the lower, 
 that the general education is more in demand than the spec- 
 ial, and we may be contented that the influence which blessed 
 us, is still exerted to elevate culture, not to depress it ; to 
 broaden education, not to narrow it; to extend discipline, 
 not to contract it. 
 
 With most of the familiar objections to Greek study I 
 have no patience whatever. I do not know whether to be 
 amused or vexed at seeing a brilliant scholar like Robert 
 Lowe select from the rich armory of Hellenic culture the 
 very weapon with which he assaults it ; but when we are 
 seriously asked, in the alleged interests of scholarship, to 
 substitute German for Greek, I cannot help doubting whether 
 
13 
 
 the request comes from one able to read either of the two 
 languages. Shall Greek be abandoned on account of its 
 inutility, a reason which the accomplished Legare truthfully 
 and keenly called the fundamental and ultimate argument of 
 the opponents of classical education, 3 then what is to take 
 its place ? Exact science ? But are not the practical affairs 
 of this world managed by men who are as ignorant of deter- 
 minants and quarternions as they are of Greek, who recog- 
 nize as little distinction between differentiation and integra- 
 tion, as they do between the Ionic dialect and the Attic? Is 
 therefore the calculus to be given up, then what becomes 
 of physics and mechanics? Is Greek to be rejected, then 
 what becomes of the humanities? Or natural history? to be 
 pursued in ignorance of its vocabulary and its terminology ? 
 Will the scalpel of the anatomist and the lens of the botanist 
 give a knowledge of the development, the structure and the 
 classification of animal and plant which will compensate the 
 student for his inability to follow the intellectual develop- 
 ment of man, the structure of society and the classification 
 of thought ? Or systematic politics ? Can their history and 
 spirit l>e apprehended by one who knows nothing of Aristo- 
 teles, who has never studied the independent statelets of 
 Hellas, or looked for the source of that administrative 
 wisdom which made the Byzantine government keep the 
 standard and weight of its gold coinage unimpaired from 
 Constantine to the crusades, 4 who has never made the Stras- 
 burg of Maurer and the Ghent of Froissart a commentary 
 upon the Kerkura of Thoukudides? Or modern literature? 
 Can its achievements be understood by a reader unable to 
 comprehend the debt which Milton owes to Euripides, Gray 
 to Pindaros, Tennyson to Theokritos, and I beg you not to 
 misunderstand me, Swinburne to the choral lyrics of Aristo- 
 phanes ? 
 
 But we are told that our Greek study is not only useless 
 but wasteful ; that it is so conducted as to leave the stu- 
 dent, after the instruction of years, unfamiliar Avith Grecian 
 
14 
 
 thought, and unable to read with ease an ordinary Greek 
 page. If the latter is true, the former certainly is, for lan- 
 guage is the key to the spirit's casket. The, statement is 
 serious, and it should have serious consideration, for I fear 
 that it contains a most uncomfortable and a most unneces- 
 sary amount of truth. Many of us, who after receiving 
 our degrees, were sent to continue our studies at continental 
 schools, can recall the feeling of surprise and discourage- 
 ment with which we took up the work imposed on us by the 
 daily lectures that we attended. Instead of the few pages 
 we were wont to spell out with the aid of lexicon and notes, 
 our professors threw at us Latin and Greek by the chapter 
 and the book, and they expected us, day after day, to fol- 
 low them and to read their references. Our companions in 
 the lecture room, no older than ourselves but trained in 
 their native schools, were able to do it; we were not, until 
 we had spent in laborious drudgery, months which should 
 have been otherwise employed. For my own part, I shall 
 never, during: life, forget the feeling of heart sickening in- 
 dignation with which I saw others who had studied no 
 longer and no harder perform tasks beyond my own power, 
 and with which I turned back to work which ought to have 
 been long before finished. Great changes and great im- 
 provements have doubtless been made in our modes of teach- 
 ing and study during the last quarter of a century, and I do 
 not wish to be unju-t ; but I appeal to those of you who 
 twenty five years ago went from an American college to a 
 German university, to corroborate or refute my statements. 
 How many of you endured the torture of a similar experi- 
 ence ? Now this was all wrong, and the more wrong because 
 remediable. I do not believe that learning to read Greek is 
 more difficult than learning to read German, so far as the 
 vocabulary is concerned, and the subtleties of expression in 
 any language are only appreciable to one who has read much 
 and carefully. I do not know whence came the idea that 
 the classical languages, unlike all others, are themselves 
 
15 
 
 ends and not means ; are the adytum and net the vestibule 
 of learning. 5 Nor do I know why a student, if properly 
 taught, should not, after four or five years of study, be able 
 to read ordinary Greek with ease. Does he ? For this ques- 
 tion is pregnant with the fate of our classieal studies, and 
 with the destiny of our liberal schools. If our boys are 
 trained to use Greek as a tool and to use it readily, I do not 
 believe that it can ever be supplanted by anything. If they 
 are not, it is quite possible that the advocate of classical ed- 
 ucation may hereafter find difficulties in his way harder to 
 contend with than any which he has heretofore met ; difficul- 
 ties which our instructors will either prevent or create. 
 
 Of the two classical languages, Greek is certainly the more 
 difficult ; and yet, in the circular of one of our large prepara- 
 tory schools, I read but a few days ago that Latin was studied 
 for six years and Greek for three. The necessary result of 
 this is clear. Would it not be better to allot five years to 
 Greek and four to Latin? Karl von Raumer tells us 6 that 
 in the school at Stendal the different teachers gave weekly 
 forty five hours of instruction in Latin and twenty three in 
 Greek ; in the school at Erfurt, forty two in Latin and 
 twenty one in Greek ; in the school at Koesfeld, sixty one 
 in Latin and twenty eight in Greek; and that these figures 
 embody the practice in the other gymnasia. Perhaps these 
 figures explain the dissatisfaction with the work of even 
 these German schools, expressed or implied by several of 
 the faculties of those nine universities which gave to the 
 Prussian Minister of Education, toward the close of the year 
 1869, their formal opinions on the admission of graduates 
 from the technical schools to university degrees. That the 
 standard of classical education is higher in Germany than 
 with us, only makes the subordination of Greek to other 
 studies in our schools more surprising. What can we ex- 
 pect, if the easier language is to receive twice the time al- 
 lowed to the harder, assuming that instruction in the easier 
 one is economically given and is not excessive? Again, how 
 
16 
 
 many of our boys are taught that Greek is studied to be 
 read, not to serve as an admission ticket to college? How 
 many of them are compelled to use those modes of becom- 
 ing familiar with words and sentences, rhythm and sense, to 
 which we all resort in studying a modern language ? How 
 many of them are required to read Greek aloud, or asked 
 to memorize the brilliant verses of the scholia or the an- 
 thology? Again, are they not forced to rely too much on 
 the dreary rules of syntax, and to lose the grammatical 
 knowledge only obtainable by a wider acquaintance with 
 the classical texts? "The aorist was made for man, not 
 man for the aorist," and I incline to think that the portions 
 of a foreign grammar which become parts of ourselves, are 
 those learned from reading which is not a task, rather than 
 from syntactical systems, whose very aspect is repulsive. 
 The great Melancthon followed the instinct of a profound 
 scholarship in ending his school grammar with the para- 
 digms of the verbs in p. I wish that our college teachers 
 could introduce the seminar. The labor would be discour- 
 aging for a time, but, if persistent, would reap a rich re- 
 ward. It was in the seminar that Wolf, at Halle, educated 
 Boeckh and Bekker. The recent presentation of the Oidi- 
 pos at a neighboring university, was a pleasant proof of con- 
 tinued interest in Greek letters and a cheering illustration 
 of profitable work, not so much in the exhibition of old cos- 
 tume and the old stage, though this was curious, as in the 
 close acquaintance with a great drama, the familiarity with 
 its construction, its details and its expression, which the par- 
 ticipants could perhaps have gained in no other way. The 
 representation became thus academic work of the truest and 
 most fruitful kind. Again, do not our professors, at times, 
 deal with Greek in their classes as an element in compara- 
 tive philology rather than as an introduction to Hellenic let- 
 ters and Hellenic thought? No honor is too great for phi- 
 lological science. Its masters have opened a new volume 
 in the history of man, and have read to us pages of the fresh- 
 
17 
 
 est and most vivid interest from the old recoids of society 
 and of thought. They have illumined their work with pict- 
 ures of the brotherhood of races of the kinship of languages 
 and laws. They are the keepers of the archives of human- 
 ity, 7 and yet the student ought to read easily the text of at 
 least some of those archives before he is led to philosophize 
 on their contents. Their achievements are in a special de- 
 partment of labor, and Greek is the corner stone of a gene- 
 ral education. I can imagine a classical teacher with math- 
 ematical tastes leading his students in their Greek studies 
 to the writings of Eukleides or Apollonios or Diophantos. 
 His work could not be called wasted, for these men pushed 
 their science up to the limits which were to confine it for a 
 thousand years ; but would this be a legitimate use of Greek 
 school study? Would it not be an attempt to specialize 
 what ought to be kept general ? Again, are not our pre- 
 paratory schools sending their pupils to our colleges at such 
 a stage of classical acquirement as to hamper the professor 
 and trammel the student alike, so that the instruction which 
 the one wishes to impart and the other should desire to re- 
 ceive, can be neither given nor assimilated? An experi- 
 enced university teacher once told me that his whole effort 
 was directed to the middle third of his class. The first third 
 did its o\vn work, the last third was hopeless, while the in- 
 tervening third received all the instruction. And it is this 
 middle third, the typical average of the school and of life, 
 which liberal education does most to strengthen and to 
 broaden, which profits most from the teacher's skill. Have 
 our preparatory teachers, in their instruction and guidance, 
 remembered that, under the old "trivium," grammar meant 
 criticism and history as well as word form? Have they 
 borne in mind the often repeated question of Edward Free- 
 man, Why do our boys know so much of Miltiades and Leon- 
 idas and Pausanias and so little of Aratos and Kleomenes 
 and Philopoimen? Or have they thought that a like query 
 might apply to Latin study also ? Five men lived under the 
 
18 
 
 Roman emperors, the influence of whose intellectual work 
 on the after history of Europe has been greater than that of 
 all the rest of the Latin writers put together. Every school 
 boy is familiar with the names of Cicero and Horatius and 
 Tacitus, but he hears little of the debt which he owes to 
 Gains and Paulus and Ulpianus, to Modestinus and the great 
 Papinianus. 
 
 The specialization of study, when allowed to begin, pro- 
 ceeds with an accelerating and dangerous rapidity, often 
 helped on by the inclination of both teacher and pupil, the 
 one pursuing his hobby and the other his tastes. It is the 
 business of a liberal culture to prevent it, and each depart- 
 ment of this culture must be carefully guarded against it. 
 If it controls a school, general education can no longer find 
 there a proper training ground. If it takes possession of a 
 department of study, instruction becomes partial and one 
 sided. The teacher learns at the student's expense, for the 
 teacher has passed out of his general studies into his own 
 special ones, and makes the discipline in these more severe 
 and more engrossing. Just the rigid and absorbing study 
 of mathematics, which has made English Cambridge famous, 
 prompted Hamilton, of Edinburgh, to call that school a 
 "slaughter house of intellect." 8 
 
 If a boy's home life is subject to educating and elevating 
 influences, his school work may be made of the most gene- 
 ral kind. He may be trusted to learn, untaught, much that 
 is given by elementary education, and he will certainly learn 
 it. If his circumstances enable him to pursue liberal studies 
 for the usual time, he may safely, during the years of prepa- 
 ration for college, confine his school labor to Greek, Latin 
 and mathematics, and if physical weakness or accidental in- 
 terruption requires one of these to be given up, I would re- 
 gretfully but unhesitatingly cut out the Latin, for, necessary 
 as it is in the study of science, of history, of literature and 
 of the Romance tongues, still it is less important than the 
 Greek, and its acquisition in later years requires less pro- 
 
19 
 
 longed and less irksome toil. But the condition of success 
 in this classical discipline is that the boy should learn to read 
 the ancient languages, both of them as a rule, the Greek, 
 if but one can be studied, and to read them until confidence 
 in his power to understand has taken the place of distrust. 
 Of course this involves two things not always found coinci- 
 dent, that the pupil should be an earnest student and that his 
 teacher should be a mature one. Of course too, this involves 
 the mastery of manifold difficulties ; arising from the subject 
 matter which is studied, and I have no wish to represent it as 
 easy ; from the student's idiosyncracies, which are often very 
 trying to the teacher ; from the student's environment, the 
 influence of which is potent for good or evil ; and from the 
 teacher's peculiarities ; the old idols are all here of the tribe 
 and the cave of the forum and the theatre, but where in life 
 can we escape them? The labor is arduous, but the reward 
 is great. 
 
 And moral rewards, which are obtained by faithful and 
 successful struggle, far surpass the expectations of the aspi- 
 rant. They are governed by a rule the direct opposite of 
 that which agricultural economists call the law of diminish- 
 ing returns. Recorded experience seems to show that clas- 
 sical students who have profited by proper teaching, are 
 better fitted for the pursuits of technical science, far better 
 for those of the so called learned professions, than students 
 specially trained from the beginning of their studies for their 
 special departments. I have already alluded to the reports 
 made in the year 1869, by nine German universities, to the 
 Minister of Education in Prussia. 9 The universities were 
 Kosnigsberg, Berlin, Greifswald, Breslau, Halle, Kiel, Goet- 
 tingen, Marburg and Bonn. Each of them has a theological 
 faculty, a legal, a medical and a philosophical, but at Bonn 
 and Breslau there are two theological faculties, one Protest- 
 ant and one Roman Catholic. The question submitted to 
 them was, whether, and how far graduates of the technical 
 schools should be admitted to the universities as candidates 
 
20 
 
 for university degrees. This meant whether students with- 
 out Greek, and with less Latin than is taught in the classi- 
 cal schools, should be received in the universities on the 
 same footing as students from the gymnasia. The theologi- 
 cal faculties unanimously answered no. Seven of the legal 
 faculties answered no, those of Koenigsberg and Goettingen 
 answering yes. Five of the medical faculties answered no, 
 and four, yes. Four of the philosophical faculties answered 
 no, two of them yes, and the other three were in favor of re- 
 ceiving the technical students upon certain expressed condi- 
 tions. December 7, 1870, a ministerial order directed that 
 the testimonial of a Prussian technical school of the first rank 
 should be received in the Prussian universities like the tes- 
 timonial of a gymnasium, so far as Prussians were concerned, 
 intending to devote themselves to the study of mathematics, 
 natural science or modern languages, under the philosophi- 
 cal faculties. March 8, 1880, the philosophical faculty of 
 Berlin, after an experience of nearly ten years, unanimously 
 requested the minister of education to reconsider this or- 
 der. 10 The memorial of request distinctly asserts that the 
 gymnasial graduates had shown themselves better fitted than 
 the technical for the departments of study open to them both, 
 that the classical students outstripped the technical in the 
 higher mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, descriptive nat- 
 ural science, the English language, the German language, 
 philosophy, political economy and statistics. This action is 
 made very significant by the fact that between 18C9 and 1880 
 the faculty had greatly changed and had much increased its 
 membership. The opinions of 1869 expressed by one body 
 of men were ratified in 1880 by the experience of a practi- 
 cally different body. Prophecy was fulfilled in history. We 
 may learn a like lesson from recent experiments in France. 
 A government circular of September, 1872, and a law of 
 February, 1880, reduced the bchool time allowed to the 
 classics and prescribed courses of instruction in which the 
 French language held a secure preponderance. Four years 
 
21 
 
 have elapsed since this change was consummated, and the first 
 of French reviews 11 is already sounding an alarm. The stand- 
 ards of examinations have fallen, not only in the provincial 
 schools but even in the Sorbonne, and a French scholar asks 
 for the revision of the school programmes, not in the inter- 
 est of the classics, but for the sake of general French cul- 
 ture and of the French language itself. Add to this that 
 Zupitza, of Berlin, states, in his faculty's request of March, 
 1880, that he often found a difficulty in teaching the Eng- 
 lish grammar to those of his students who were unfamiliar 
 with the Greek, which he did not meet with in the case of 
 the classical graduates, and the advocates of classical study 
 may, I think, rest satisfied. Those of us who believe in 
 Greek felt that we were right in claiming for it acknowl- 
 edgement as an integral part of liberal education, but we 
 could not have looked for such testimonies as these. Greek 
 has been selected as the point of attack, but selected be- 
 cause it is the salient bastion of the whole educational line. 
 The student's indebtedness to Greek begins with the first 
 hour of his reading when he first tries to understand words 
 rich in derivatives of every kind, inflected with every shade 
 of meaning, and combined with prepositions and particles 
 which are his despair. He believes that the sentences ex- 
 press definite ideas, but he cannot easily be persuaded that 
 given words have any fixed significance, or that their collo- 
 cation is determined by anything save the writer's will. 
 When he has overcome this skepticism and has learned that 
 prepositions in their manifold combinations and uses, and 
 the whole bewildering multitude of particles, all denote or 
 connote ideas ; that the nouns and verbs do mean something, 
 and do present by their changeful forms the lights and shades 
 of thought, he has practically mastered all the grammar 
 which the Western scholar needs. The freedom of the 
 Greek sentence, in contrast with the rigid construction of 
 the Latin, makes the one seem a formula, of which the other 
 illustrates a subordinate rule. There language is subjected 
 
22 
 
 to thought, and follows its direction in a path straight or 
 crooked. Here language and thought move over the or- 
 dered rails of rule. The study of Latin is exercise in lin- 
 guistic geometry : that of Greek is discipline in the calcu- 
 lus of grammar. This flexibility of grammatical construc- 
 tion gives to the student his first great difficulty. After 
 he has so far mastered it that it ceases to be a constant em- 
 barrassment, he begins to understand the absolute power 
 with which the Greeks made their language the slave of 
 their thought. In reading even the greatest of the Latin 
 lyrics, I think we are conscious of the writer's skill and feel 
 a pleased surprise at his success. I think our impulse is to 
 wonder that confined in the unyielding framework of syn- 
 tactical law the poet can so lovingly make the sparrow peck 
 the finger tips of Lesbia, so gracefully promise a young 
 Torquatus to his parents' prayers, so wildly wail the lament 
 of Attis through the Phrygian groves ; but when the Greek 
 song writer wraps the myrtle around his sword blade, as did 
 Harmodios and Aristogeiton, or when the choir of the Ilip- 
 polutos chants the destined misery of Phaidra wrecked on 
 her awful woe, we are conscious of neither poet nor metre. 
 The closing scene of the Prometheus bound, is sublime in 
 its grand defiance, but the poet's language is lost in the 
 poet's thought. Attempt to translate it ; your English mind 
 fails to grasp the relation of the demi god to the Supreme, 
 you have broken the connection between feeling and utter- 
 ance, and your words will be either bombast or rant. 
 Brilliant as are the writings of Tacitus, full of meaning and 
 irresistible in their attractiveness of condensed wisdom and 
 cold epigram, the style is btill obtrusive, the author is stand- 
 ing between his subject and his reader. Turn to Thouku- 
 dides and the author has disappeared, the student is com- 
 muning directly with the writer's ideas. There is no style, 
 only page after page of sentences, whose grammatical struc- 
 ture is bursting with the pressure of the thought which has 
 been crowded into them, till the reader doubts whether the 
 
23 
 
 master workman wrestled with a language as yet unformed, 
 or was lost in his work and wrought on reckless of gram- 
 mar. Among the Latin prose writers, Caesar, in his com- 
 mentaries, shows perhaps the most perfect subjection of lan- 
 guage to thought, l)ii t Caesar was the most perfect Greek of 
 them all. 
 
 That a language of surprising flexibility and wealth, of 
 great power and grace, typical in its characteristics of the 
 people who used it, mirrors the development of a race which 
 was unrivalled in its skill of adaptation, its perception of 
 symmetry and its love of liberty ; that this language reflects 
 the spirit of an ancient culture which has become part of our 
 own, shows to us those masterpieces of intellectual workman- 
 ship which are recognized models of literary invention, con- 
 struction and presentation, is the medium through which the 
 master minds of a remote past have made us the heirs of 
 their thought ; that this language differs from our vernacular 
 as much as two allied languages can differ from each other, 
 and yet is one of the elements which are combined in our 
 modern English ; is a sufficient vindication of its study. Yet 
 all this does not express the claim which the Greek has upon 
 us. Our chief debt is not to the Greek tongue, but to the 
 Greek genius, to its science and art and letters ; its geome- 
 try and politics, its temples and statues, its history and lit- 
 erature. It dealt Avith every department of intellectual 
 work, and in each its mission was to broaden, to adorn, to 
 invigorate. It gave to its ministers a birth gift of breadth, 
 beauty and strength, in virtue of which they still do and 
 ever will live. 
 
 Look, for example, at the speech in which Lukourgos at- 
 tacks Leokrates, for violating the orders adopted in be- 
 half of the public safety, after the disasters of Chaironeia. 
 "Three things," says the speaker, "make up the State, the 
 ruler, the judge, the citizen, and each of these has bound 
 himself to the others by oath, for men may be deceived, but 
 the gods cannot be. Wherefore the Greeks at Plataiai, 
 
24 
 
 when drawn up against the force of Xerxes, bound them- 
 selves by an oath not then devised, but imitated from the 
 one which is habitual among you, which it is worth while 
 for you to listen to. Let the clerk read it." u Ou Troajffo/jiat 
 Tisot TT//OM>C TO fy r ^ /eu#e/?/c. 12 . . . ." I will not value 
 life more than liberty. And we can hear echoes ringing 
 through the annals of our own land from the words of the 
 old Puritan of Athens. 
 
 The great philosopher of the Academy taught his pupils 
 to look beyond life and across its surrounding boundary of 
 death. As he closed his Politeia with the rewards and punish- 
 ments which Er saw distributed in vision, so he closed his 
 teaching by boldly lifting up the veil of the infinite. You 
 recall the noble words with which his followers uttered their 
 loftiest thought in the opening sentence of that manual so 
 familiar to you, which Platon himself would have rejoiced 
 at could he have lived to see it : "'AV doyjj fa b /o/-oc xai b 
 /o?-oc fy TTOOC rov Szov xai Szbz ty b /o^o^." In the beginning 
 was reason, and reason dwelt with God and God was reason. 
 Shall we recognize the evangelist as the follower of the phil- 
 osopher, or shall we look on the Platonic dialogues as an in- 
 struction to the Sermon on the Mount? 
 
 The orations of Isaios are one of the wonders of litera- 
 ture. They are professional arguments on doubtful and 
 technical questions of the Athenian law of inheritance, on 
 subjects bristling with legal difficulty and repellant with le- 
 gal formality. Yet they have taken their place in the polite 
 letters of the world. True, similar successes have been won 
 since. Witness a few of the arguments of the half dozen 
 greatest advocates who have used our own language ; wit- 
 ness, too, the Merctiriales of the Chancellor D'Aguesseau, 
 and you may judge from these how great is the triumph of 
 the Attic lawyer. Nor is he alone in his power to give last- 
 ing interest to a discussion of themes whose importance 
 seems transient. Isokrates and Demosthenes have described 
 the business dealings of the banking house of Pasion, and 
 
25 
 
 their narratives read like an article from last month's review. 
 Nor is this world spirit which arrests decay and keeps the 
 passing- ever fresh, found only in the work of the master 
 craftsmen. The verses of Theognis can make no preten- 
 sion to greatness in any way. I doubt if they even be- 
 long to literature proper, and yet they are so full of that 
 unexpected commonplace which makes up life, the expres- 
 sion is so plain and so like the thought, and both so like 
 ourselves, that we read, half wondering if we have not seen 
 it all before, perhaps in last week's magazine. 
 
 Greek poetry and Greek philosophy are trite subjects. 
 Let us for a moment confine our attention to the orators, for 
 what is true of them applies also to those who have in other 
 branches of work, made the Greek name immortal. 
 
 The breadth and strength of Greek oratory are more strik- 
 ing to us than its beauty, but are, in fact, not more charac- 
 teristic of it. The broadness and vigor of its workmanship 
 vibrate sympathetic chords in our own minds ; hence we ap- 
 preciate these excellencies without trouble, hence, too, we 
 can analyze them without difficulty. Let me cite the words 
 of two writers, both accomplished scholars, both celebrated 
 authors, both familiar with Hellenic work, and yet the men- 
 tal antipodes of each other. Edward Bulwer, in his oration 
 before the undergraduates at Edinburgh,^ said of Demos- 
 thenes, "Many speakers have literally translated passages 
 from his orations and produced electrical effects upon sober 
 English Senators by thoughts first uttered to passionate 
 Athenian crowds. Why is this? Not from the style, the 
 style vanishes in translation. It is because thoughts, the 
 noblest appeal to emotions, the most masculine and popu- 
 lar." Edwards Park, in his address on the life of Leonard 
 Woods, tells us, 14 "Clear thought deeply felt, and having 
 possession of the speaker who has possession of himself, is 
 eloquence." Put these statements together and they ex- 
 plain much of the power of the Attic speakers. The ex- 
 tent of their mental grasp whence came their utterance, the 
 
26 
 
 virile vigor of their feeling which controlled their hearers, 
 the limpid clearness of their ideas and language, account for 
 much, but much still remains, all of their beauty. 
 
 We Teutons have an idea, which the uneducated mind 
 thoroughly believes in, and with which even the educated is 
 somewhat tinctured, that strong appeal on grave subjects is 
 or should be the result of what we are pleased to call in- 
 spiration, that good speaking is extemporaneous, and that 
 the orator loses dignity and power by dependence upon pre- 
 vious preparation. Jebb, in his introduction to the Attic 
 orators, attributes this to the Hebrew element of our educa- 
 tion, 15 emphasized by the reformers, and I suppose due to 
 the Old Testament in our vernaculars. I am not sure that 
 he is right, for the idea is older than the reformation, and 
 too deeply rooted not to have great antiquity. If Hebrew 
 in its origin it may have come by direct tradition through 
 the mouths of the great rabbis of the .Ashkenazim and the 
 Sephardim, but it more probably is a survival from the times 
 when our forefathers recognized the prophetess and obeyed 
 the Aurinias and the Veledas 16 of old German story. 
 
 The Greek conception of the speaker's task was quite dif- 
 ferent. According to it the speech is a work of art, and the 
 speaker an artist. In mastering the subject matter, in ar- 
 ranging the mode and order of presentation, in determining 
 the style and expression of delivery, no drudgery of labor 
 is excessive, no detail of preparation is trivial. This study 
 of matter, of arrangement, of delivery is perhaps what the 
 great Athenian meant when he defined oratory by a three- 
 times repeated "bxox peats." 
 
 The beauty of the Greek orators springs from their hav- 
 ing so fully realized this conception, which I believe to be 
 the true one. Before we can appreciate it we must put off' 
 something of the Germanic and put on something of the 
 Hellenic. We must truly feel that symmetry and simplic- 
 ity are essential elements of the speakers success, as well 
 as earnestness of thought and speech. If we can do this, 
 
27 
 
 the Greek orators will find in us at least enough of the spirit 
 with which they were once heard, to secure admiration for 
 their massive strength and love for their honest and perfect 
 beauty, beauty of expression in words which are the hand- 
 maidens of thought, beauty of thought which traverses its 
 subject like sunlight in a path direct and clear. 
 
 And those who listened to these Greek speakers were 
 trained into full sympathy with them by an education prob- 
 ably the broadest and the most thorough to which a free 
 people ever submitted. We have heard a great deal about 
 the influences surrounding an Athenian boy, how he lived 
 amid the masterpieces of architectural and plastic art ; how 
 the masters of thought kept open schools to instruct him by 
 their conversation ; how the masters of speech were con- 
 stantly addressing the people, of whom he was one ; how 
 the masters of poetry were ever illustrating the history and 
 faith of his race in the great theatres, where he sat all day 
 listening to elevated sentiment and polished verse. Rheto- 
 ricians have described these things as if they believed the 
 Greek citizen to be a lounger, who received his culture by 
 simple absorption. But for forty years of his life, from 
 twenty to sixty, the Athenian was at the command of his 
 government, in peace and war, for deliberative discussion, for 
 judicial decision, for religious festival and for military service. 
 At eighteen 17 the boy passed from his father's care into the 
 hands of the State, and for two years received a compulsory 
 preparation for every department of the citizen's duty. He 
 was kept under arms in the field and in garrison ; he was 
 obliged to attend the courts and the assemblies ; he was 
 forced to study under the grammarians, the orators and the 
 philosophers ; he was made a participant in the State re- 
 ligion, twice he sang in the procession of the great God- 
 dess of Eleusis ; a sharer in the State festivals, twice in 
 honor of the great dead he marched to the mound at Mara- 
 thon and to the shore opposite Salamis, and when he was 
 admitted to citizenship there was nothing in his public du- 
 
28 
 
 ties which had not been made familiar to him. All this 
 breadth and strength of educational purpose, and for ends 
 political and practical, characterized the routine life of a 
 people that we too often regard as only artistic and visionary, 
 as boasting of a freedom which it degraded to license. There 
 are certainly passages in the annals of free Greece which I 
 would not willingly defend, but if we strike out those which 
 fall under the four hundreds, and the thirties, and the 
 TO pav, they are very few in number. I do not believe 
 that history can show a State which more perfectly realized 
 than did Athens, the proud words which its historian puts 
 into the mouth of its statesman : " (fdoxaAoitfjtev '/-do /JLET" 
 2or&U/ac xat yiAoaoifoufj.s.\< di^e'j ^tt/x:c," 18 which more ideal- 
 ized man's actual life, which so kept vigor and so combined 
 with it grace. It was the Attic Greek who first conceived 
 the perfect man of our own later and Christian civilization, 
 and called him the "x/oc x dyafioz," the elegant and the 
 good. 
 
 Moreover, the symmetry of the Greek intellect forbade a 
 partial training. As if to anticipate the lament of a subse- 
 quent age, that modern life requires so much of those who 
 live it, the Greeks found that society demanded from its 
 members all the vigor of a well disciplined mind, all the 
 endurance of a well trained body. They gave to the physi- 
 cal and the metaphysical equal care, and tended them both 
 in the same spirit. There is neither materialism nor sensu- 
 ality in the songs which Pindaros sang of the victorious 
 athletes. It was neither of these things, I think, which 
 gave rise to the story of Hupereides unveiling Phrune before 
 the judges of the Areiopagos. The Greek sense for the 
 beautiful in form is beyond our apprehension. We can not 
 imagine the pleasure with which the Greek eye followed 
 the perfect development of perfect figures, or the delight 
 with which it watched the sinuous movement of steel like 
 muscles that undulated in their play beneath the surface of 
 a healthy skin. I frankly wish that we could. We should 
 
29 
 
 then make parts of oar education strong which are now 
 weak. The Greek training affected the very aspect of the 
 race, for while the Greek woman was white, the Greek man 
 was brown, and meanwhile the vigor of mind and the vigor 
 of body acted and reacted on each other. Later the Stoic, 
 and still later the Ascetic, in their contempt for the physical 
 left behind them a baleful influence which we still feel, but 
 if these bodies of ours are the instruments with which our 
 mental and moral work is to be done on earth, if they are 
 creations in the image of the Creator, if they are temples of 
 the Holy Spirit in us, 19 there is no greater nonsense than to 
 regard them with indifference or to speak of them disparag- 
 ingly. Mentally, morally, physically, I would gladly see our 
 boys moulded in the type of that marble hero who stands at 
 the end of one of the Vatican galleries, leaning on the head 
 of the conquered boar, his figure instinct with the spirit of 
 Hellenic thought and of Hellenic art, muscular, masculine, 
 comely, complete. 
 
 But can the study of Greek be changed with in utility, 
 even by the most practical of reformers who demands the 
 most practical of results? Generation after generation boys 
 have left our schools trained by Greek and its companion 
 Latin, some of whom have displayed in their after lives the 
 breadth, the strength and the beauty of mind, will and 
 character which made them living illustrations of how the 
 past teaches the present, of how the present vivifies and 
 reproduces the virtue of the past ; have borne into life's con- 
 tests the humanity of classical learning, have decorated life's 
 triumphs with the elegance of classical grace. It may be 
 that daily duty left them little time for communion with the 
 ancient teachers of boyhood. It may be that these teachers 
 grew strange to the sight of later life ; but the work of 
 teaching was still done. The loaf is none the less leavened 
 because the yeast plant is killed in the oven's heat. Nor do 
 I shrink from examples.. If of the men in our land who 
 have recently passed from the stage of action, I was asked 
 
30 
 
 to say whose lives typified the Greek spirit which I have 
 referred to, whose honors were the fruitage of severe classi- 
 cal discipline in youth, I should give the names of Horace 
 Binney and Charles Francis Adams. 
 
 In all great mind work there is something which overlies 
 all mere mind training, something which Ave feel but cannot 
 grasp, which we can neither define nor analyze. We are 
 conscious that it is present, but we cannot tell why. TTe 
 yield to its power, which we can neither explain nor criti- 
 cize. It is strong, subtle, impalpable. Let me illustrate, 
 for this something completes our indebtedness to the Greek. 
 You remember how a score of years ago two men well 
 known in public life, met at a solemn festival in the out- 
 skirts of a little town in Pennsylvania, one learned, accom- 
 plished and scholarly, full of the doctrines of the schools, 
 the finished rhetor in New England's history , the other of 
 all this the opposite, void of learning, accomplishment and 
 scholarship, yet I ask you to weigh the ten minute speech of 
 Abraham Lincoln in that graveyard at Gettysburg, against 
 the two hour oration of Edward Everett, and to tell me if 
 there is not in pure literature something which no education 
 can give, if there is not even here something of more value 
 than all culture? Of the classical languages, it is the 
 crowning glory of the Greek that this something Demos- 
 thenes and Platon had, Cicero and Seneca lacked. If my 
 illustration surprises you, open your Thoukudides and you 
 will find that the fire which glows through the words of 
 Lincoln was kindled by Perikles to honor the Athenian 
 dead. 
 
 Fellow graduates of the University, again and again we 
 have met to find the hope of years once before us changed 
 into the experience of years w r hich we have left behind, to 
 miss well known figures, and to see vigorous forms pressing 
 on to take the places of those of us who are falling, or have 
 fallen. As we occupied the seats that our fathers once 
 filled, our sons are now sitting where we sat in yonder halls. 
 
31 
 
 We look at the familiar scenes and greet each other with 
 our hearts full of that feeling which made the aged Kreousa 
 weep over the cradle of her boy. The problems of prepar- 
 ing for life and of performing life's duty, which long ago we 
 thought in boyhood's way were weighty and urgent, now 
 press upon our minds with a tenfold force, for it is not of 
 ourselves that we think, but of those, flesh of our flesh and 
 blood of our blood, who are soon to take from our hands the 
 torch of our culture to speed with it through a new genera- 
 tion, and to hand it in turn to others yet unborn. This 
 yearning that our children may be wiser and stronger than 
 we is more than a w T ish that they may enjoy the excellencies 
 which we imagine that we have, and be free from the defects 
 which we know that we labor under ; it claims, and you will 
 recall another old Greek thought, the performance of a duty 
 not to ourselves, not to our children only, but a duty which 
 the citizen owes to his State. It is for us, so far as we can, 
 to take care that our successors may go forth into life pano- 
 plied with the wisdom of the past, to battle as paladins for 
 the good, the beautiful and the true. Have we done our all 
 to make ourselves fathers of such children as we would fain 
 have ? Are we doing our all to make our children such as 
 we wish them to be, for we must remember that we and they 
 live under the reign of a law as inevitable as fate, as inex- 
 orable as justice, as eternal as God. What our fathers were, 
 we are ; what we are, our children must be. The best, the 
 most fruitful, the most effective methods of school training 
 are matters to us not for ornamental debate, but of intense 
 and imminent interest. Where can we find the influences, 
 whither shall we look for the models, whence can we draw 
 the spirit, of a culture whose discipline may give to healthy 
 and hopeful minds a strength which will not fail in the 
 strenuous struggle, a breadth which will not attenuate in the 
 grooves of routine, a beauty which will not fade in the arid 
 years of drudgery, a culture which may become an inspira- 
 tion to youth, a comfort to wearied manhood, a support to 
 reflective age ? 
 
32 
 
 Brothers Alumni, have I done rightly in pleading with 
 you for the Greek? May I ask you to look up the long 
 arcades of time and see those fair creations, the Eixpftoauv^ 
 and the IcoypoaoKy as they walk toward us from a distant past, 
 accompanying an older and a grander figure, cheering and 
 relieving the august austerity of the Hebraic Torah, and 
 may I remind you that the joyousness of conscious prepara- 
 tion, the self restraint of conscious ability, and the convic- 
 tion of conscious duty, are the three things which carry man 
 through all the work that man does well. Shall we not 
 then, mindful neither of the difficulty of the labor nor of 
 its length, nerve ourselves to fulfill this duty to our children 
 and the State before the night cometh, when no man can 
 work, before we, too, must abandon our tasks, and join our 
 fathers who have gone before us where 
 
 sv Tnivrsc d-l frdxov awiyo'jat xal s 
 dfioorov, 
 
33 
 
 1. Noah Porter. The American Colleges and the American public, pp. 
 14-16. 
 
 2. Karl von Raumer. Geschichte der Paedagogik, vol. 2, pp. 167-171. 
 
 3. Hugh S. Legare's Writings, vol. 2, pp. 22, 26, 
 
 4. George Finlay. Greece under the Romans, pp. 533, 534. Byzantine 
 Empire, vol. 2, p. 389. 
 
 5. Hieronymus Wolf. " Sunt enim latina et graeca lingua non tarn ipsa 
 eruditio, quam eruditionis fores aut vestibulum." Karl von Raumer, 
 Geschichte der Psedagogik, vol. 1, p. 439. 
 
 6. Karl von Raumer. Geschichte der Predagogik, vol. 3, p. 61. 
 
 7. Martin Wohlrab in the Neue Jahrbuecher, vol. 110, p. 368. "Die Haupt- 
 lehrer am Gymnasium sind die Philologen. Was sind Philologen? 
 Kurz gesagt, die Archivare der Menscheit." 
 
 8. Isaac Todhunter. Conflict of Studies, p. 238. 
 
 9. Akademische Gutachten ueber die Zulassung von Realschul-Abiturient- 
 en zu Facultsets-Studien. Amtlicher Abdruck. Berlin, 1870, Verlag von 
 Wilhelm Hertz. 8vo. pages 112. 
 
 10. Die Frage der Theilung der philosophischen Facultset. Rede zum 
 Antritte des Rectorats in der Aula der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitset 
 zu Berlin am 15 October, 1880, gehalten von Dr. August Wilhelm Hof- 
 mann. Zweite Auflage mit einem Anhange: Zwei Gutachten ueber die 
 Zulassung von Realschul-Abiturienten zu Facultsets-Studien, Sr. Excel- 
 lenz dem Koenigl. Minister des Unterrichts erstattet von der philosophi- 
 schen Facultset der Koenigl. Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitset in den 
 Jahren, 1869 und 1880. Berlin, Ferd. Duemmlers Verlagsbuchhandlung, 
 1881, 8vo. pages, 83, see pp. 49, 81 sq. 
 
 11. Albert Duruy in the Revue des Deux Mondes issue of February 15, 
 1884, p. 845 sq. See pp. 888, 870 sq. 
 
 12. Lukourgos against Leokrates 79. Cap. 19. 158 pag. Steph. 
 
 13. January 18, 1854, quoted from the newspapers of the day. The oration 
 is printed in the Southern Literary Messenger, vol. 20, p. 278, see p. 283. 
 
 14. Edwards A. Park. Address on life &c., of Leonard Woods, p. 28. 
 
 15. R. C. Jebb. The Attic orators from Antiphon to Isaeus. Introduction 
 p. Ixxxiii. 
 
 16. Tacitus Germania, 8. 
 
 17. The <f>yflfia See Gaston Boissier in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 issue of March 15, 1884, pp. 319, 320. 
 
 18. Thoukudides II. 40, pag. Steph. 
 
 19. Epist. to Corinthians I., 6: 19. 
 
 20. A. C. Swinburne, dedication of Atalanta in Calydon, 55, 56. 
 
 5 
 
A HYMN TO LIBERTY, 
 
 WRITTEN BY DIONUSIOS SOLOMOS, OF ZANTE, IN THE MONTH OF MAY 
 
 1823. 
 
 Liberta va cantando ch'e'si cara. 
 Come sa chi per lei vita rifluta. 
 
 Dante Purgatorio, i. : 71 72. 
 
 I know thee by the trenchant gleaming 
 
 Radiant from thy battle sword, 
 I know thee by that eye whose beaming 
 
 Rules the earth as victor Lord. 
 
 Sprung from hero bones that scattered 
 
 Hallow every Grecian vale, 
 With thy pristine soul unshattered, 
 
 Spirit of Freedom Hail all Hail ! 
 
 Buried in them thou didst languish 
 
 Lost in shame and woe and fear, 
 Waiting till to end thine anguish 
 
 '* Come to me" should greet thine ear. 
 
 But that hour came slowly, slowly ; 
 
 Near thee silence reigned alone ; 
 Terror shadowed all things holy ; 
 
 Round all slavery's chains were thrown. 
 
 Hapless thou I all gladness banished, 
 
 But one cheer thy fancies keep ; 
 To recall thy glories vanished, 
 
 Tell thy tale of eld and weep. 
 
 Waiting, hoping that each morrow 
 
 Words of liberty would bear, 
 While thy hands in bitter sorrow 
 
 Beat the cadence of despair, 
 
 And thy low voice " Is my measure 
 
 Not yet filled with suffering," saith, 
 Answer from you heavens' azure, 
 
 Moanings, clanging fetters, death. 
 
36 
 
 Then thine eyes were raised, dim, blotted 
 With the tears of sorrow's store. 
 
 On thy garment folds were clotted 
 Trickling blood and Grecian gore. 
 
 Stained with crimson, spite of danger, 
 All unknown in unknown lands, 
 
 Thou didst go to sue the stranger 
 For the help of his strong hands. 
 
 Alone thou wentest and with mortal 
 
 Anguish earnest back alone, 
 Never easily the portal 
 
 Opens to want's plaintive tone. 
 
 Nowhere rest. One loved to hear thee, 
 While his heart with pity yearned ; 
 
 One with promises to cheer thee 
 
 Scorned thee when thy back was turned. 
 
 Others laughed to see the waters 
 Of thy woe swell round thee high, 
 
 " Back and find thy sons and daughters, 
 Back to them," the monsters cry. 
 
 Over mountain, mead and river 
 
 Thy retreating footstep flies, 
 Where the funeral shadows quiver 
 
 Of illustrious memories. 
 
 Low was bowed thy head and wearing 
 Furrows scored by anxious strife, 
 
 As the beggar's who despairing 
 Groans beneath his load of life. 
 
 Hark ; Thy sons march out to battle, 
 
 With one spirit praying all, 
 'Mong the deaths that round them rattle, 
 
 To live victors or to fall. 
 
 Sprung from hero bones that scattered 
 
 Hallow every Grecian vale, 
 With thy pristine soul unshattered, 
 
 Spirit of Freedom Hail all Hail! 
 
 Skies that with the fruit and flower 
 Greenly draped thy native wild 
 
 To adorn a tyrant's dower, 
 Looked upon thy zeal and smiled. 
 
37 
 
 Smiled and lo a cry infernal 
 
 Through earth's bosom pealed along 
 Answering with a strain supernal 
 
 Rang thy Rhegas' battle song. 1 
 
 Thee with words of welcome greeted 
 Every land where patriots dwelt; 
 
 And in shouts each tongue repeated 
 What each heart so warmly felt. 
 
 Thee like stars with music sphery, 
 
 Greets Ionia's starry band. 
 Pledge of joy heart felt and cheery 
 
 Every islet lifts her hand. 
 
 Though each island wears her fetters 
 Forged with skill and closely now 
 
 And each bears in branded letters 
 " False liberty" upon her brow., 
 
 With a soul born love outspoken 
 Greets the land of Washington, 
 
 Glad that she her bonds has broken, 
 That her freedom she has won. 
 
 While the Western lion tosses 
 
 Haughtily his head and mane, 
 From his tower a welcome crosses 
 
 The blue sea 'twixt thee and Spain. 
 
 Then the pard of Britain's islands 
 
 Pauses, startled, in his path, 
 Against Russia's dim blue highlands 
 
 Growls the utterance of his wrath ; 
 
 Shows in every nervous motion 
 How his limbs are clad with might, 
 
 And o'er .ZEgsea's mimic ocean 
 Glares his eye with meteor light. 
 
 From his haunt in clouds untrodden 
 That eagle's eye is fixed on thee, 
 
 Whose claws are crimsoned, pinions sodden 
 In the blood of Italy. 
 
 Swooping down with hate and wonder 
 In circles each of narrower span, 
 
 Croaks and screams the bird of plunder 
 To destroy thee if it can. 
 
38 
 
 And thou all the while unshrinking 
 Strugglest on forgetting fear, 
 
 Silent to those threats nor thinking 
 Of the sounds which meet thine ear. 
 
 As some rocky cliff where dashes 
 Every streamlet soiled with clay 
 
 Down to its moveless foot and crashes 
 Into flakes of foamy spray, 
 
 Which the clouds are thickening under, 
 
 Raining hail upon its breast 
 While the tempests throb and thunder 
 
 Round its great eternal crest. 
 
 Woe, triple woe, to them whose labor 
 Thy divine impulse shall brave, 
 
 Who withstand thy lifted sabre, 
 Who oppose thy falling glave. 
 
 From her ravaged den outbursting 
 
 Toward her young, the wild beast ran 
 'Thwart the hunter's circle, thirsting 
 
 For the red life-blood of man. 
 
 v ~ 
 
 On and on her maddened sally 
 
 Through the woods a pathway traced ; 
 Up the mountain, through the valley, 
 
 Spreading terror, death and waste. 
 
 W r aste and death and terrors lashing, 
 Thou didst bid thy progress be ; 
 
 From its sheath the sabre flashing 
 Nobler courage gives to thee. 
 
 See the p.ain before thee whitening, 
 
 Tripolitza's leaguered wall ; 
 Now destruction's bolt of lightning 
 
 Thou art burning to let fall. 
 
 Thine eye, with generous exultation, 
 Scorns the foeman near and far, 
 
 Through the battery's diapason, 
 Through the combat's mad hurrah. 
 
 Stalking on, around thee prowling, 
 As to fright thee with their noise, 
 
 Listen to the direful howling 
 Of ten thousand men and boys. 3 
 
39 
 
 Wailing lips and eyelids clouded 
 
 Soon shall mark the living few 
 Who lament the dead, unshrouded, 
 
 Of that motley slaughtered crew. 
 
 On they come ; the heavens brighten 
 
 With the red of battle's glare, 
 Guns are levelled, muskets lighten, 
 
 Swords flash whirring through the air. 
 
 Ho ! the struggle so soon ended, 
 
 And our losses how so small ; 
 I see the foe ranks broken, blended, 
 
 Flying to the castle's wall. 3 
 
 Count them, numberless the cravens, 
 Crowded on each other's track. 
 
 Fated carrion food for ravens, 
 With your wounds upon the back. 
 
 In your fortressed shelter tarry 
 
 For inevitable doom, 
 Not enough? then let night carry 
 
 Forth your answer through the gloom. 4 
 
 They answer, and begins another 
 
 Battle din which o'er the plain, 
 Mount to mount its distant brother 
 
 Wildly echoing rolls again. 
 
 I hear the musket's rolling clatter, 
 I hear the clash of sword and sheath, 
 
 The axe and club, the thud and spatter, 
 I hear the grinding gnash of teeth. 
 
 Night of horrors, none can number 
 
 Woes which clog the struggling breath, 
 
 Night of fear which knew no slumber 
 But the nightmare sleep of death. 
 
 The scene, the place, the hour, all saddened, 
 Shout and cheer and mob like crowd, 
 
 War's resolve, soul steeling, maddened 
 Battle's surgy, smoky cloud. 
 
 Streams of lightning, groans of thunder, 
 Bursting through the midnight fogs, 
 
 Show the gates of Hell asunder 
 Waiting for the Othman dogs, 
 
40 
 
 Opened wide, and thence emerging 
 Throngs of naked figures pressed, 
 
 Shadowy sire and son and virgin, 
 Shadowy infants at the breast. 
 
 Black the funeral masses hover 
 And the swarming spirits tread, 
 
 Black as the pall's enfolding cover 
 On the last, the narrow bed. 
 
 And they all from every quarter, 
 All came rising from the tomb, 
 
 Who in Moslem rage of slaughter 
 Met the hero martyr's doom. 
 
 As the fallen sheaves when reapers 
 Cut the harvest fields of grain, 
 
 These awakened ghostly sleepers 
 Seemed to cover all that plain. 
 
 Not a starry beam descended 
 As the spirits upward sped, 
 
 And they toward the castle wended 
 With the stillness of the dead. 
 
 So beneath the moon's pale crescent, 
 In the forest's leafy night; 
 
 When the vale lies phosphorescent 
 In a stream of vaporous light; 
 
 When the low toned zephyrs rustle 
 Through the tendril bordered way, 
 
 While above the branches justle, 
 Sweeping shadows fitful sway. 
 
 Eagerly they scan the places 
 
 Where the blood pools stiffened lie, 
 
 And through blood in weird embraces 
 Dance with hoarse sepulchral cry. 
 
 And each dance impassioned presses 
 Closely to the Grecian band ; 
 
 Each a warrior's breast caresses 
 With his death chilled icy hand. 
 
 Through the vital members thrilling 
 Falls the touch of that caress, 
 
 And destroys all grief, instilling 
 Kage and hatred merciless, 
 
41 
 
 Then the battle choir engages 
 
 In a yet more awful glee, 
 As the tempest's fury rages 
 
 O'er unbroken wastes of sea. 
 
 Blows are hailing hither, thither, 
 And each blow a death sent call ; 
 
 All are striking reckless, whither, 
 But no second stroke need fall. 
 
 Every limb is reeking, flowing, 
 
 'Tis as if the soul would fly, 
 And from hatred's fiery glowing 
 
 Strives its winged strength to ply. 
 
 But the heart beat pulses coldly 
 In the bosom's sluggish calm, 
 
 While more fiercely still and boldly 
 Falls the sabre swinging arm. 
 
 Not a thought the spirit enters, 
 Nor of earth, nor sea, nor air, 
 
 All in all for each one centres 
 In the crowded combat there. 
 
 Such the whirl of mad endeavor, 
 You might well be sure, I ween, 
 
 None from those two bands would ever 
 Leave alive that battle scene. 
 
 See them hopeless, hero hearted, 
 Harvest in death's crimson crop; 
 
 How from member member parted, 
 Heads, hands, feet before them drop. 
 
 Cartridge boxes, steel in shivers, 
 Brain clots reeking from the knife, 
 
 And the battered trunk that quivers 
 With the thrill of parting life. 
 
 Not a fleeting thought is given 
 To the slaughtered in the fray ; 
 
 On, still on. Have ye not striven 
 Long enough? Cease, cease to slay. 
 
 Recreant to his post or willing, 
 
 Though death struck to yield, not one; 
 Tireless seems the task of killing, 
 
 And the conflict but begun. 
 6 
 
42 
 
 But the dogs now few and daunted, 
 
 Allah shout, with Allah die; 
 Fire ! Fire ! rises, chaunted 
 
 As the Christians' battle cry. 
 
 Fire, and the while they shouted, 
 Lion like they fought and bled, 
 
 Till the infidels were routed, 
 Howling Allah, as they fled. 
 
 Everywhere an anguished moaning, 
 Curses mixed with fear and prayer, 
 
 There was wailing, there was groaning, 
 And death's ruckle everywhere. 
 
 Once so many ! the ball's whistle 
 Sings no longer past their ears, 
 
 Graveless all in grass and thistle, 
 While four times the dawn appears. 
 
 And the blood each hillock drenches, 
 Stream like rolls each valley through, 
 
 And the guiltless herbage quenches 
 All its thirst with blood, not devv. 
 
 Breeze of morning, dewy, balmy, 
 On the crescent breathe no more, 
 
 Leave the heathen star 5 and calmly 
 On the cross thy blessings pour. 
 
 Sprung from hero bones that scattered 
 
 Hallow every Grecian vale, 
 With thy pristine soul unshattered, 
 
 Spirit of freedom. Hail, all hail! 
 
 Corinth's plain, behold it glisten, 
 But the sun shines not alone, 
 
 Where the vine and the plane tree listen 
 To the fountain's purling moan. 
 
 And the air no longer treasures 
 The low echoes soft and sweet, 
 
 Of the flute's responsive measures, 
 Of the lambkin's gentle bleat. 
 
 As the breaking wave of ocean 
 Horsemen surge by thousands on ; 
 
 But the Pallekar's devotion 
 Tarries not its foe to con. 
 
43 
 
 Rise, three hundred, rise returning: 
 To the spots which once ye knew, 
 
 Look upon your children burning: 
 To behold them so like you. 
 
 With their courage flower like faded, 
 
 All the foemen blindly fly, 
 In the walls of close blockaded 
 
 Aero Corinth, all to die. 
 
 Plague and famine, the destroyers, 
 The death angel's trusted ones, 
 
 Stalk among the languished warriors, 
 Arm in arm, two skeletons. 
 
 And upon the green sward thicken 
 All around, the wretched dead, 
 
 Remnants who were left unstricken 
 As they battled as they fled. 
 
 Freedom, thou divine and deathless, 
 Hast all power to work thy will; 
 
 On the plain I watch thee breathless, 
 Walking stained with blood, and still. 
 
 And where yonder shadow lingers, 6 
 
 There I see in embrace coy, 
 Maidens with their lily fingers 
 
 Interlaced in choral joy, 
 
 Dancing, while love's passion gushes 
 From the eye lids parted fold, 
 
 And the toying zephyr flushes 
 With their ringlet waves of gold. 
 
 And my soul with joy is swelling, 
 That each virgin breast shall be 
 
 To its babe's soft lips a quelling 
 Fount of manhood bold and free. 
 
 On the grass, among the flowers, 
 I dare not lift the reveller's cup, 
 
 Songs of freedom in those hours 
 I, like Pindar, offer up. 
 
 Sprung from hero bones that scattered 
 
 Hallow every Grecian vale, 
 With thy pristine soul unshattered, 
 
 Spirit of Freedom, Hail all Hail! 
 
Thy foot beneath wax clouds lowering 
 
 Mesolongi's rampart trod, 
 Christmas morn, when forest flowering, 7 
 
 Hailed the new born child of God. 
 
 Then religion with her torches, 
 
 And her cross led on thy way, 
 Pointing upward to the porches 
 
 Of eternal, heavenly day. 
 
 " Here beside this battle dinted 
 
 Mound," she cried, " Stand, Freedom, fast," 
 On thy lips a kiss imprinted, 
 
 And within the Church door passed. 8 
 
 Stands beside the Holy Table, 
 While a thickened cloud and dim; 
 
 Round and round in hue of sable 
 Rises from the censer's brim. 
 
 Listens to the chanted psalter, 
 
 Hyinns of praise herself had taught, 
 
 Sees her saints beside the altar 
 With its outpoured radiance fraught. 
 
 These who are they pressing nearer 
 With the noise of tramping heel? 
 
 Thou art listening. Hark, now clearer 
 Sounds the ringing din of steel. 
 
 And a light, a dazzling whiteness, 
 
 Like the sun's at noon of day, 
 Robes thee with its beamy brightness, 
 
 Shining with no earthly ray. 
 
 Fiery gleams, a flashing cluster, 
 
 Hang from lip, eye, forehead bright, 
 
 Hand and foot are clothed in lustre, 
 And around thee all is light. 
 
 Poised on high thy sabre standeth, 
 And thy step thrice forward tends, 
 
 As a tower thy form expancleth, 
 Another step, the blow descends. 
 
 Thou defiant in behavior, 
 And thy voice instinct with scorn, 
 
 Criest, " Infidels, our Saviour 
 And the world's this day was born." 
 
45 
 
 He hath spoken, "Nations tremble, 
 " I am Alpha, Omega I, 9 
 " Can ye before me dissemble? 
 " Will ye from my anger fly? 
 
 "On ye quenchless flame I shower, 
 
 " And all fire known to you, 
 " Of earthly, or of hellish power, 
 
 " Is beside it morning's clew. 
 
 " A consuming bolt it shooteth 
 " Hills too high for eye to scan, 
 
 " Plain and mountain it uprooteth, 
 " Felling beast and tree and man. 
 
 " All in fiery doom en wreathing, 
 " Till each thing of life is slain, 
 
 " And the wind alone is breathing, 
 " Through the ashes that remain." 
 
 Asketh any? The hand maiden 
 Of His direful wrath thoii art, 
 
 Who can meet thee, or who laden 
 With thy conquered spoils depart? 
 
 Thy strong hand earth feels and blesses 
 
 A deliverance in her need, 
 And a vengeful death that presses 
 
 On the Christ despising seek. 
 
 And the waters feel it pouring 
 
 Foam flecked 'on, and through the air, 
 
 Peals the deep voice of their roaring, 
 Like a wild beast's in his lair. 
 
 Fate accursed fly and welter 
 
 In the Acheloos bed, 10 
 Struggle valiantly for shelter 
 
 From the onslaught fierce and red. 
 
 Hasten, for the wave all blinding 
 Swells as with a tempest sound, 
 
 There ye lie, a burial finding 
 Before ye a death have found. 
 
 Curses, howls and groans redouble 
 From the throat of every foe, 
 
 And the gurgling eddies bubble 
 With the oaths of rage and woe. 
 
46 
 
 And iu troops the slipping horses 
 Stumble, plunge and frightened rush, 
 
 Neighing through the watery courses, 
 And the falling bodies crush. 
 
 Here an outstretched hand is pleading 
 For the succor none can give, 
 
 Here one knaws his flesh, unheeding 
 All save only not to live. 
 
 While the heads are surged and drifted, 
 With despair all blank, their eyes 
 
 Opened staringly, uplifted 
 For the last time toward the skies. 
 
 All is hushed : its 'whelming torrent, 
 
 Acheloos pours again. 
 The neighs, the noise of weapons horrent, 
 
 Hushed the groans of dying men. 1 
 
 Oh, to hear deep ocean follow, 
 
 With the roaring of its flood ; 
 See the stifling breaker swallow 
 
 All that sprang from Othman's blood ! 
 
 Naked corpses, without pity, 
 Beaten on the rocks and sands, 
 
 Heaped along the seven hilled city, 
 Where the Holy Wisdom stands. 11 
 
 Onward by God's curses driven, 
 
 And to see, oh, highest boon, 
 See those mangled bodies given 
 
 To the " Brother of the moon !" 12 
 
 Let each rock that lieth yonder 
 Be a tomb. There let the twain 
 
 Freedom and Religion wander 
 
 With slow step, and count the slain. 
 
 Now a bloated corpse, unbidden, 
 Riseth, stretched upon its face, 
 
 While another sinkeih hidden 
 In the wave, and leaves no trace. 
 
 And with wilder rage, the river 
 
 Surges onward iu the gloam; 
 And the swollen waters shiver, 
 
 Tossed in tumult and in foam. 
 
47 
 
 Could I sing such praise ascription 
 As triumphant Moses gave 
 
 When the God accursed Egyptian 
 Fell beneath the wall of wave ; 
 
 High above the raging breaker 
 
 The thanksgiving psalm be poured, 
 
 And before their God and Maker 
 All the host with him adored. 
 
 Then an echoing strain resounded 
 From prophetic Miriam's tongue, 
 
 In the timbrel pulses bounded 
 Notes by Aaron's sister sung. 13 
 
 All the virgin choirs were dancing 
 With wreathed arms and tuneful feet, 
 
 Crowned wifh song and garlands, glancing 
 As they t^o the timbrel beat. 
 
 I know thee by the trenchant gleaming 
 Radiant from thy battle sword, 
 
 I know thee by that eye whose beaming 
 Rules the earth as victor Lord. 
 
 Yes the earth knows well thy valor, 
 Thou wast never conquered there. 
 
 Ocean cannot cause thee pallor, 
 For its waves thy trophies bear. 
 
 With their elemental girtle 
 
 Billows flowing to the land, 
 Clasp it as a zone of myrtle, 
 
 And thy shining image stand. 
 
 In the moaning storm they shudder, 
 
 Hold the palsied ear in check, 
 And the seaman turns his rudder 
 
 Shoreward from impending wreck. 
 
 Then a radiance clear and queenly 
 
 Haloes all the clouds anew, 
 And the breaking sun serenely 
 
 Gilds the softest sky of blue. 
 
 Yes, the land knows well thy valor, 
 Never wast thou conquered there, 
 
 Ocean cannot cause thee pallor, 
 For its waves thy trophies bear. 
 
48 
 
 On its azure fields are bristling 
 Like a wood the crowded masts, 
 
 With the spiry cordage whistling, 
 The sails bellying in the blasts. 
 
 Thou thy gathered few, thy truest, 
 To the battle line dost call ; 
 
 Victor still that fleet pursuest. 
 Sinking, capturing, burning all. 
 
 I see thee, as thine eye, unsated, 
 Against two hugh hulks is bent, 
 
 From thy hand a lightning freighted 
 Bolt of fiery death is sent. 14 
 
 Kindles, streams in flame and deadens, 
 And a thunder clap peals high, 
 
 And the wave around thee reddens 
 As a vat of bloody dye. 
 
 Of those crews in order serried, 
 No corpse even tells the tale. 
 
 Hail, oh martyred and unburied, 
 Spirit of the Patriarch, Hail ! 
 
 Friend and foe in secret union, 
 On the morn of Easter met, 
 
 Their lips trembling in communion, 
 With the mutual kiss were wet. 
 
 The bays strewn with love endearing, 15 
 His foot presses now no more, 
 
 And his hand ye kissed revering 
 Gives no blessing as of yore. 
 
 Wail, wail, with the woe that hallows ! 
 
 For the church's head is gone, 
 Mourn ye all, upon the gallows 
 
 Hangs he like a murderer Mourn! 
 
 With his white lips shrunk and wasted, 
 And mouth gaping, that so late 
 
 Christ's own blood and body tasted, 
 For those words ye almost wait. 
 
 That he spake before the halter's 
 Martyr glory crowned his brow, 
 
 Cursed be the wretch who falters, 
 Who can fight and fights not now." 
 
49 
 
 Them I hear, unresting, wondrous 
 On the land and on the deep, 
 
 Tis they fulmine and the thundrous, 
 The eternal lightings leap. 
 
 Throbs my heart with fevered spasm, 
 But what see I? Lo in peace, 
 
 She the godlike, grave phantasm 
 Lifts her hands and bids rne cease. 
 
 Three times her eye westward ranging, 
 Europe's utmost border wins, 
 
 Then her downward look unchanging, 
 Fixed on Greece she thus begins : 
 
 Pallekars, a note of gladness 
 Kings the war trump to your ears, 
 
 'Mong you in the battle's madness 
 No knee trembles, no heart fears. 
 
 Every foe before you quailing, 
 Turns and flies. But even now, 
 
 One remains unconquered, paling 
 The bay chaplet around each 
 
 One though like mad wolves, the dreary 
 
 Crimson field of strife ye fill 
 Till with triumph ye grow weary, 
 
 One remains your tyrant still. 
 
 Disunion, and her wily offers 
 
 Of a sceptre's regal shine, 
 That to each she smiling proffers, 
 
 Saying, " Take it; it is thine." 
 
 And that sceptre in her keeping 
 Seems in sooth a winsome thing, 
 
 Touch it not woe, sorrow, weeping, 
 Are the guerdon it will bring. 
 
 Never by the tongues of slander 
 
 Let it, Pallekars, be said, 
 That your hands to hatred pander 
 
 Raised against a brother's head. 
 
 Let the thought unspoken perish, 
 By the stranger's wish begot, 
 
 If a mutual hate they cherish, 
 Liberty befits them not. 
 
50 
 
 Leave such brooding; equal splendors 
 
 Of heroic worth embrace, 
 All the slain who fell defenders 
 
 Of your fathers' faith and race. 
 
 By the blood ye gave unsparing, 
 For your faith your fatherland, 
 
 I adjure ye, all forswearing 
 But your love, as brothers stand. 
 
 Think of how your faith was plighted, 
 Of how much remains to do, 
 
 Ever if ye stand united, 
 Ever victory follows you. 
 
 Heroes in whom fame rejoices 
 Now your standard cross uprear, 
 
 Summon with accordant voices, 
 Look ye kings and princes here, 
 
 On this symbol of your pleading, 
 Whither all your prayer is sent; 
 
 In its cause behold us bleeding, 
 With the bitter conflict spent. 
 
 Ceaselessly that cross insulting, 
 The dogs trample it in pride, 
 
 And its sons they kill exulting 
 And its holy faith deride. 
 
 Shed for it, a red baptism, 
 Christian blood and guiltless lies, 
 
 That from out night's dark abysm 
 Unto you for vengence cries. 
 
 Still it cries. It ceases never 
 While the ages onward plod, 
 
 Hear ye it now? Have heard it ever 
 Earthly images of God? 
 
 Hear ye not? And all earth pealing 
 The blood cry of Abel slain, 
 
 'Tis no breath of zephyr stealing 
 Through a maiden's tressy train. 
 
 Is your will forsooth to set us 
 
 As a stake on policy ! 
 Mincl ye that, or will ye let us 
 
 Make ourselves and children free? 
 
51 
 
 If this counsel ye have taken, 
 See before you stands the cross, 
 
 Strike, ye monarchs, waken, waken, 
 Strike and rescue us from loss. 
 
52 
 
 Dionusios Solomos was born in Zante, April 8-10, 1798, and died in Corfu, 
 November 9-21, 1857. His collected poems were published soon after his 
 death. u Jeovuffioi) 2'o%a)fJLOU ra l Eupiaxajjteva." l vol. 8vo., Corfu, 
 1859, Terzakes. 
 
 The events referred to in the foregoing poem are described by George Fin- 
 lay in his Greek Revolution, vols. 6 and 7 of his history of Greece in Tozer's 
 edition ; Thomas Gordon in his Greek Revolutions and Campaigns, and G. G. 
 Gervinus in his Geschichte des 19ten Jahrhunderts, vol. 5. As the last has 
 neither index or table of contents, I add the references. Tripolitza, p. 252. 
 Corinth, p. 371. Mesolongi, p. 364 sq. Kanares' attack on the Turkish fleet 
 at Tenedos, p. 348. The arrest and execution of the patriarch Gregorios, p. 
 215. 
 
 1. Rhegas' song is the 
 
 ' H -OLTlZ <TC TTfWZXah?" &C 
 
 2. All over fourteen years of age were in arms. 
 
 3. The Castle is a poetical license of Solomos. 
 
 4. Current report put the assault at 3 o'clock A. M. It really took place after 
 
 day break. 
 
 5. The star in the crescent on the Turkish flag. 
 
 6. Byron's Don Juan Canto III, 86 stanza, 15 verse of ode. 
 
 7. Isaiah &5 : 1, in the text of the Seventy. 
 
 8. Current report kept the churches open. They were in fact closed to con- 
 
 fine attention to the walls of the place. 
 
 9. Revelations 21 : <;. 
 
 10. The battle of Christmas and the passage of the river are described by 
 
 the historians, L e. the Greek Christmas. Our January 6. 
 
 11. ' H (Lfifi Otfiv. nicknamed the Church of St. Sophia. 
 
 12. One of the Sultan's titles. 
 
 13. Exodos, Cap. 15. 
 
 14. October 29. i. e. November 10, 1822, Kanares blew up the Turkish Vice 
 
 Admiral with sixteen hundred men. 
 
 15. The Greek Christians scatter bay branches in their churches at Easter. 
 
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