to the law itself, which authorizes the capital punishment of heretics. Had the law been against blasphemy, or heresy assuming that form, much might be said in favor of punishing those who rail at or revile the Being whom the State adored, and certainly Servetus was chargeable with this high offence.-Considering the nature of the heretic's conduct, the odium which Geneva had contracted as a receptacle of heretics, and the outery which had been made against Calvin as an anti-trinitarian, I would have justified the council of Geneva for punishing Servetus, or detaining him in prison. But besides the horror that I feel at blood or fire in anything immediately connected with religion, I am afraid of any principle which leads either to persecution, or to a confounding of the objects of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction."1

Is it right, we ask, to try a man belonging to the sixteenth century by a jury belonging to the nineteenth? Nothing is plainer than that in order to judge intelligently of a person's conduct, we must know the influences which act upon him and the motives by which he is urged to action. It cannot be denied that the measure of Calvin's guilt is that of all the best men of the age. If he deserves the reprobation which he has often received, not one of the early reformers can escape it. We should not forget, in making up our decision upon this case, that Roger Williams had not then lived, and that the great secret of toleration which was first discovered on our own shores, was then shrouded in darkness. Who is sure that if he had lived at the same time, and in the same circumstances, he should have conducted, with as great moderation as Calvin. Who will cast the first stone? If any, let him look well to himself and inquire what manner of spirit he is of. For intolerance in judging those, whose motives we cannot fully appreciate, is allied in its nature to persecution for heretical opinions. Fortunate are we in living at an age when we are not exposed to the temptations which assailed the pioneers of the reformation. We ought ever to rejoice that a more excellent way is discovered, for the treatment of those who differ from the established maxims of the community in religious belief. Where arguments are of no avail, neglect is a far better antidote for heresy than the civil tribunal; and the insane retreat is often a good substitute for the criminal prison, and kind treatment, for the gibbet or the flames.

Life of Thomas M'Crie, D. D., by his son, Edinburgh, 1840, pp 381, 2.

THE theme on which it is proposed to present some free observations, is the youth of the scholar, or the early training which is best fitted to form the useful and accomplished scholar.

I shall enter into no direct argument to prove, that a genuine scholar holds a most important position in human society, and that the higher and more perfect is his scholarship, the greater and the more salutary is his influence. These two points I shall consider as conceded; though my remarks may tend still farther to vindicate their truth. Still less, shall I argue, that if scholars are to be had, they must be educated. How this may be done at the college or the university, it is not my business to inquire, The inquiry is most important, and much may be said upon it; but it is not a question with which I have any concern at present, My concern is with the scholar in his youth, before he enters the college; and the questions which I would discuss all relate to the early training of one set apart to a finished and genuine scholarship.

But what is genuine scholarship? What is it to be a scholar? Opinions upon this point are very diverse. Often are they indefinite and confused; often they are little better than strong and bitter prejudices. I seem forced therefore to define my own views, in order to save myself from being misunderstood; certainly I am, if I would be rightly understood.

The scholar is more than a man of great natural genius or native force of mind. He may be a man of genius. It is desirable that he should be. His native force may, and must be respectable, and it is well that it should be commanding. this of itself does not make him a scholar. One may accomplish much by this native force, that educates itself upwards and onwards; but he would have done far more, had he strengthened and sharpened and regulated this natural power by the discipline of the schools.

He is also more than a man, whose powers have been called forth by the stern discipline of life. The discipline of life is not

to be despised or overlooked. Its large observation, its close and shrewd insight into men, its contact with stern realities that put all a man's mettle to the proof, and often call out giant energies whence they were least expected; all these give an education, such as the schools can never furnish, and without which, the teachings of the schools are often well nigh in vain. But important and essential as this discipline is, it is not the discipline of the schools, and cannot supply its place.

The true scholar is also more than one who is thoroughly qualified for a particular profession. A man may know enough to be useful and successful in one of the liberal professions, without a scholar's accomplishments and a scholar's power. He may be learned even, in his department, certainly he may be skilful and shrewd, and yet lack the method, the dignity, the force, and the nameless graces that are peculiarly scholarlike.

He is even more than a universal reader; more even than one acquainted with a vast variety of facts upon subjects in literature and science. A man may know the principles and facts in Geol. ogy, Mineralogy, Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, Zoology, Botany and all the sections of Natural History. He may speak "of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." He may know all that Chinese Chronologists would pass off for facts centuries before the world had any facts to record; and all that lying Zodiacs utter from Egyptian monutments. He may be decent in mathematics, and read in a certain way ten or twenty or fifty languages, and yet possess but little of a scholar's power, and possess but small claims to a scholar's name. In short he may be as great a wonder for a man, as the learned pig is for his species, and be almost as far as that very learned animal from being a true scholar. The reason is that he might be all that has been described, and yet lack most of that which makes scholarship of priceless value, and which gives it its peculiar advantage. These are the scholar's method, that arranges all knowledge by its principles; his insight, that looks through a subject at a glance; his power, that scatters the arts of the sophist by a keen and fearless eye; his resources, by which he marshals the splendor and the force, the majesty and the might, that there is in human language, and gathering up all that he needs of illustration from the wide field of varied attainments, and condensing all into one resistless and eloquent argument, brings it to bear upon its point with the skill and energy of Napoleon or of Napoleon's great conqueror; and last of all his self-re

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spect that after achieving a triumph more memorable than that of Austerlitz or Waterloo, leaves the field that he has won, with the modest and simple bearing that the man of highest culture cannot but assume.

These peculiarities are the fruits of culture. They are the results of the discipline of the schools, and of that generous and life-long pursuit of literature, for which the schools are but the beginning. They are the matured and purple clusters, which hang from a vine of generous kind, that has been reared under the choicest cultivation.

The scholar then is one who, to the greater or inferior advantages of genius, of discipline in life, and of professional skill, adds the discipline and knowledge that is gained by a training in the schools, and a close and long continued contact with books.

I hardly need add, that the scholar is not necessarily a pedant, but that the more scholarlike are his feelings and his taste, the less of a pedant is he. Nor is he a recluse who cherishes a proud disdain of man's ordinary doings and interests, or gives but a cold sympathy to his ardent enterprises. He is and must be a man of solitary studies, but these studies are mainly interesting, as they cast light on the present and give him power to connect himself with it, and guide it to a more glorious future. It is by more than a figure that letters are called the humanities, from their humanizing tendencies, and their generous and elevating influence.

Nor is the scholar of necessity ignorant of men. He may be ignorant of the doublings of craft and the narrow and fox-eyed policy of selfish cunning. For such skill, his studies may give him deficiency both in taste and capacity; but it cannot be that the knowledge of man through books, renders a man unable to read living men, if he will but study them.

Least of all does eminent and thorough scholarship unfit for practical usefulness. The history of the world will show, that in all trying exigencies, in those sublime crises on which has turned the destiny of ages, it is men who have been trained as scholars, who have given forth the oracles of profoundest wisdom, who have laid the wisest and most practicable plans, and have carried them through, by their skill and eloquence, by their faith and martyr-like devotion.

A product so rare and precious as the one I have described, the scholar as he ought to be, is from its very nature, the result of training. But youth is preeminently the season for educaVOL. III. No. 9.

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tion of every kind, and of necessity the season for the education of the scholar. For some of the elements of a scholar's education, youth, early youth, is the peculiar and the only season. To establish this point I shall not linger, but trust that it will become apparent as I proceed to describe under several particulars, what the youth of the scholar should be.

The youth of the scholar should be early and largely employed in the study of language. Language is thought made visible and tangible. It is through language that it is seen and felt, in a great measure by the thinker to himself; entirely so from him to others. Language is to thought as the body is to the spirit, not only giving it shape and outward being; but contributing most effectually to its development and growth, or hanging upon it as a heavy and clogging incumbrance. The study of language is the study of thought. The close analysis of a sentence in one's own or a foreign language, is to retrace step by step, the successive footmarks of the mind that constructed it. To be familiar with the writings of Plato and Demosthenes, of Milton and Burke, is to be familiar with the men themselves. As we do justice to their felicity of expression, to the power of their words, to the force and grace of their wondrous creations, so do we call into being the mind that shaped the structure, and the heart that breathed into it its fire.

The office of language is twofold. It aids in the discovery of truth. It makes truth known, when discovered. Or in other words, by language we express our thoughts to ourselves, and by language we express them to others.

It is by language, that we express our thoughts to ourselves. It is not uncommon for children to say "I know the thing but cannot tell it. I have the thought, but cannot utter it." We have now and then known grown-up children to say as much. But nothing is more false. No one, be he child or man, knows a thing in the sense of the scholar, until he can speak it. If he cannot say what he thinks, he has not fully mastered it. He may be conscious that he can find the thing, but he has not found it yet. If it be a subtle distinction, which he is certain should be drawn, there is a word for the distinction; but he has not made it till he has reached that word. Is it a grand conception or a glowing idea? He has not reached it till he has formed the body and enshrined therein the spirit. Is it a cogent and resistless argument? He has not framed it, till he has found the words, and made the propositions, and linked the whole into an iron chain of resistless logic.