In pursuance of these principles it shall be my first business to enquire, whether or not the languages ought to make any part of a perfect system of education; and if they ought, at what time they should be commenced.  The study of them does indeed still retain its ground in our public schools and universities.  But it has received a rude shock from some writers of the present age; nor has any attack been more formidable, than that of the author of Emile.  Let us endeavour to examine the question, neither with the cold prejudice of antiquity on the one hand; nor on the other, with the too eager thirst of novelty, and unbounded admiration of the geniuses, by whom it has been attacked.

When we look back to the venerable ancients, we behold a class of writers, if not of a much higher rank, at least of a very different character, from the moderns.  One natural advantage they indisputably possessed.  The field of nature was all their own.  It had not yet been blasted by any vulgar breath, or touched with a sacrilegious hand.  Its fairest flowers had not been culled, and its choicest sweets rifled before them.  As they were not encumbered and hedged in with the multitude of their predecessors, they did not servilely borrow their knowledge from books; they read it in the page of the universe.  They studied nature in all her romantic scenes, and all her secret haunts.  They studied men in the various ranks of society, and in different nations of the world.  I might add to this several other advantages.  Of these the noble freedom of mind that was characteristic of the republicans of Greece and Rome, and that has scarcely any parallel among ourselves, would not be the least.

Agreeably to these advantages, they almost every where, particularly among the Greeks, bear upon them the stamp of originality.  All copies are feeble and unmarked.  They sacrifice the plainness of nature to the gaudiness of ornament, and the tinsel of wit.  But the ancients are full of a noble and affecting simplicity.  By one touch of nature and observation they paint a scene more truly, than their successors are able to do in whole wire-drawn pages.  In description they are unequalled.  Their eloquence is fervent, manly and sonorous.  Their thoughts are just, natural, independent and profound.  The pathos of Virgil, and the sublimity of Homer, have never been surpassed.  And as their knowledge was not acquired in learned indolence, they knew how to join the severest application with the brightest genius.  Accordingly in their style they have united simplicity, eloquence and harmony, in a manner of which the moderns have seldom had even an idea.  The correctness of a Caesar, and the sonorous period of a Cicero; the majesty of a Virgil, and the politeness of a Horace, are such as no living language can express.