...
All that we ask, then, is, that a boy should be thoroughly taught the
ancient languages from his eighth to his sixteenth year, or thereabouts,
in which time he will have his taste formed, his love of letters
completely, perhaps enthusiastically, awakened, his knowledge of the
principles of universal grammar perfected, his memory stored with the
history, the geography, and the chronology of all antiquity, and with
a vast fund of miscellaneous literature besides, and his imagination
kindled with the most beautiful and glowing passages of Greek and Roman
poetry and eloquence; all the rules of criticism familiar to him--the
sayings of sages and the achievements of heroes indelibly impressed upon
his heart. He will have his curiosity fired for further acquisition,
and find himself in possession of the golden keys which open all the
recesses where the stores of knowledge have ever been laid up by
civilized man. The consciousness of strength will give him confidence,
and he will go to the rich treasures themselves, and take what he wants,
instead of picking up eleemosynary scraps from those whom, in spite of
himself, he will regard as his betters in literature. He will be let
into that great communion of scholars throughout all ages and all
nations,--like that more awful communion of saints in the holy church
universal,--and feel a sympathy with departed genius, and with the
enlightened and the gifted minds of other countries, as they appear
before him, in the transports of a sort of vision beatific, bowing down
at the same shrines, and flowing with the same holy love of whatever is
most pure, and fair, and exalted, and divine in human nature.
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