recommend to our educated men," he says, 66 a more extensive acquaintance with the intellectual labors of continental Europe. Our reading is too much confined to English books, and especially to the more recent publications of Great Britain. In this we err. We ought to know the different modes of viewing and discussing great subjects in different nations. We should be able to compare the writings of the highest minds in a great variety of circumstances. Nothing can favor more our own intellectual independence and activity. Let English literature be ever so fruitful and profound, we shall still impoverish ourselves by making it our sole nutriment: If our scholars would improve our literature, they should cultivate an intimacy not only with that of England, but of continental Europe."

But it is not for the sake alone of avoiding exclusiveness that we should not confine ourselves to English literature, but because, in many leading departments of knowledge, the productions of the continental authors are of greater intrinsic value. In philosophy, to take a single example, there is more strength and originality in the writers of France and Germany, than in those of England. The places of Hobbes, and Bacon, and Cudworth, are better filled by Victor Cousin, Bonald and Schlegel.

Of the modern languages, the French is the most generally studied and the most widely diffused. It is the received idiom of diplomacy, the medium of much of the commerce of Europe, the language of its courts and its elevated classes, and the conventional tongue of the traveller. Such are its advantages as a spoken language. In estimating its value by the amount of intellectual wealth it has brought to the common stock of human knowledge, it may be seriously questioned whether the claims of France yield to those of any nation. Her arms, her arts, her literature, have at different periods swayed the sceptre of the universe, and we need 'not go far to find the traces of her domination.

The connection France has had with England, her neighbor, and, in some respects, too powerful rival, has made us long familiar with the reputation of her brightest literary ornaments. Indeed, many of their works exert a strong influence on our education throughout its whole course-although they come to us through the dull medium of translation. The child dwells with delight on the fascinating pages of St. Pierre; he catches his first glimpses of the glories of the old dynasties of which there rests but the name, through the instructive lectures of Rollin and the pathetic unction, the calm dignity of Fenelon, lend their enchantment to the lessons of the mother, the precepts of the instructor, and the exhortations of the divine. Buffon and Cuvier open to us the riches of the animal kingdom; and Laplace, whose Mecanique Celeste is worthy a place by the side of Newton's Principia, reveals to our gaze the beauties of the celestial world. In the ad

:

mirable Anacharsis of Barthelemy, we see and hear again the illustrious dead of ancient Greece. Malte Brun and Balbi teach us the world as it is; the philosopher and the moralist discover rich mines of thought in Montaigne, La Bruyere, Pascal, and La Rochefoucault; the political economist has a treasure in Say; all nations have bowed to the genius of Montesquieu. In pulpit oratory they have given us the elevated elegance of Massillon, the dignified austerity of Bourdaloué, the sublime majesty of Bossuet. Lesage is a fund of humor,-while Blaise Pascal, with his astonishing combination of genius for the mathematical sciences and the noblest faculties of the imagination, has left us a masterpiece in his "Thoughts."

But my limits will not allow even an enumeration of what is most worthy of note in French literature. It was said, of old, “there is much unwritten wisdom.” We may now say as truly, "there is more that is untranslated." In history alone, France has a number of classic works of rare merit, of which there are no English versions. Among them are Daru's History of Venice, De Barante's History of the Dukes of Burgundy, Anquetil's France, Ginguene's History of the Literature of Italy, Thier's History of the French Revolution,t Michaud's History of the Crusades, Sismondi's History of the French, Thierry's Conquest of England by the Normans,t and Sismondi's Italian Republics, of which last there is, I believe, an abridgement.

In every branch of chemistry, the scientific world recognises French talent as among the most highly endowed and most persevering. The successors of Lavoisier, Fourcroy, and Berthollet continue by their inestimable labors to maintain the high eminence they so justly won.

The productions of the French jurists haye poured a flood of light on great legal questions, and, independently of Pothier, portions of whose works have been repeatedly translated and who is authority in our courts, we remark the opinions of nineteen of their writers on jurisprudence cited by Judge Story in one of his late valuable works:

The cultivator of the exact sciences finds his studies abridged and simplified by the treatises of Bourdon, Legendre, Biot and Lacroix. The labors of the French mathematicians, it is generally. conceded, are unsurpassed either for the importance of their researches or the brilliancy of their results. Indeed, in such high value are they held in the institution in which the mathematics are in this country the most successfully and thoroughly taught, that the mathematical recitations are in French.

*

To the physician, in particular, a sufficient knowledge of this language to read it with facility, is of the utmost importance. The

The National Military Academy.

† Since the delivery of this address translations of these works have been announced.

high reputation of the Parisian schools of medicine, and of their professors, is no fictitious one. Every thing appertaining to the medical and surgical arts is there cultivated with a zeal and success unsurpassed only by the talent that adorns them. In Pathology, we have no works in the English language to compare with theirs -and in many other departments, their translated treatises are the leading text books of a majority of our schools. Richerand, Bichat, Lænnec, Louis, Dupuytren, Andral, Broussais, are but a few of their eminent professors of the healing art whose reputations are already co-extensive with civilization.

To philosophy, the brilliant Cousin has given an attraction unprecedented in the annals of metaphysics.

Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, are well known as the present ornaments of her polite literature,—while for solidity of acquirement, elevation of talent, and the high moral tendency given to both these endowments, I know no greater names belonging to the nineteenth century than Thierry, Villemain, and Guizot.

The German is the tongue of more than forty millions of people. It yields to no living language in energy and wealth. Its literature is most prolific, and to the theologian, the historian, and the classical student precious-I might say-indispensable. Germany is remarkable for her eminent scholars, critics and archaiologists. She started late, 'tis true, in the race for intellectual distinction, but has overtaken her competitors with gigantic strides.

I would appeal to her example as a strong argument for the cultivation of foreign literature. It is, in fact, through a simultaneous effort on the part of her scholars to reproduce in their own tongue, the master-pieces of other languages, that the German has acquired its wonderful richness and flexibility. On this account, it is essentially the language of translation. Hear the opinion of one who wields-it with magic power-Goethe: "The English are quite right in applying themselves so diligently as they have recently done to the German language. It is not only that our language on its own account deserves. this attention, but it is also impossible to deny, that he who now knows German well, may dispense with the knowledge of almost every other language. I do not here include the French, for that is the language of conversation, and is indispensable as a universal interpreter to every gentleman who moves beyond the four corners of his own home. It is a peculiarity of the German mind to give its due and natural value to what is foreign and to accommodate itself to the particular character of every kind of national poetry. This, taken along with the great power and flexibility of our tongue, renders German translations as perfect in the whole as they are accurate in the detail."

The poets of all countries are, for Germany, faithfully rendered, not only in thought and in style, but in their own peculiar measure and cadence. The great dramatic poet of Spain, and the four pöets of Italy have been repeatedly reprinted and translated. Thanks to the labors of Schiller, Schlegel, Voss, and Wieland, Shakspeare is as much Shakspeare for Vienna and Berlin as he is for London. They have analyzed him with as great success as his own countrymen. Of Lord Byron they have several versions, and the ablest disquisition upon his character and writings by their own poet Goethe. The productions of Scott, of Cooper, of Franklin, of Washington Irving, and of Story, are not only familiar to their men of letters, but, both in reprints and translations, are as widely circulated there as at home.

Germany has studied and appropriated the works of antiquity and of her cotemporaries, and still watches as narrowly and profits as much by the writings of all the rest of Europe as though she depended upon them for her intellectual nutriment. And yet what literature has more native soul and independence? So the monarch of rivers flows on, his wave swelled but not changed, his tide deepened by the streams received on his course.

Contrast the English labors with the German in the reciprocal cultivation of their literatures. When you have enumerated the translation of a few fugitive pieces by Scott, Coleridge aud Taylor, the list is nearly complete of what they have taken from the extensive stores of her polite letters. With her scientific productions we are, I believe, more familiar, although we do not sufficiently apply to the language to avail ourselves of its treasures.

The study of Biblical criticism is enriched by the works of Scholz, Eichhorn, Schleiermacher, Voland, Jahn, and Molitor, who has created a new era, not only in Biblical literature, but in the philosophy of history. Her classical scholars have finished and extended the researches of the Italian commentators. The most remarkable amongst them is Wolff, who has with great success advocated the claims of classical antiquity as a separate branch of learning. He has infused new life into Homer, and Plato, and Tacitus, and moulded them into the plastic styles of his own rich vernacular. Niebuhr has discovered a new world in the history of Rome. Wincklemann has disinterred for us the glories of antiquity from the dust of ages. The student of Hebrew recognizes in Gesenius the living head of that language, while Von Hammer, after the profound French scholar Silvestre de Sacy, is unsurpassed in oriental philology.

Germany possesses a great number of original minds in every department of her literature. They are distinguished for patient investigation, acute criticism, and lucid expression. They are the deep and slow, exhausting thought,

And hiving wisdom with each studious year."

Their's is the devoted spirit of scientific research. In their works we find that finish, that thoroughness, so different from the fondness for dazzling novelty, and the thin erudition of our Family Library philosophy. 'Tis among them we remark so many striking examples of devotion to science in men, many of them now the luminaries of their Father land, who have spent years of their early life in utter obscurity-laboring, mining in the cells of gathered wisdom, unencouraged by the smiles of public favor or the flattery of a coterie, supported solely by a pure love of their study, and the hope that, some day, the result of their investigations might discharge the debt they deemed their country's. 'Tis there, in fine, we will feel in every page, that inspiration of all the kindlier feelings, that redundancy of charity, that elevation of the simplicity of the heart, which is too effectually crushed in our practical, money-getting age.

And is this seriousness of pursuits, this singleness of devotion, this simplicity of soul, this solidity of aequirement, adorned by no gem of poetry ?-brightened. by no fire of eloquence? In the sublimity of Klopstock, the brilliancy of Kant, the noble patriotism of Uhland, the glowing beauty of Schiller, the veneration of Novalis, the elevated purity of Tieck, the versatility of Goethe, the child-like piety of Richter, the polished enthusiasm of Schlegel-you will find an answer.›

Small as is the attention bestowed upon the languages whose claims upon our admiration I have thus feebly endeavored to set forth, that given to the Italian is still less. We yield it all the credit it deserves as the most beautiful and musical of tongues, and, apparently, care not to be informed that it possesses merits of a more solid nature. Indeed, from the indifference manifested concerning its literature we might be led to imagine it had none.

"Criticism," says the London and Westminster Review, "is usually silent on the literature of Italy, or if it speaks, mentions her only to repeat in worn out phrases, a feeble mockery of gratitude towards the country which first trod the path we all have followed."

It was the blaze of her genius that first broke the intellectual night of the dark ages, and the labors of her profound philologists that restored to light the buried literature of antiquity. Villani originated literary history, the Philosopher of Pisa founded the present system of physics and astronomy, Amalfi was the cradle of jurisprudence. She rekindled, in short, the slumbering fires of civilization, and the names of her statesmen, her warriors, her poets, are among the brightest on the rolls of fame.

Look back upon the literary annals of the now living nations. Contemplate the thousands and tens of thousands who have struggled for that most unattainable of earthly glories-universal repu