ication and the distinctness
of Nature herself; to which nothing was vulgar, from which nothing
was excluded; speaking to the ear like Italian, speaking to the
mind like English; with words like pictures, with words like the
gossamer films of the summer; at once the variety and
picturesqueness of Homer; the gloom and the intensity of AEschylus;
not compressed to the closest by Thucydides, nor fathomed to the
bottom by Plato; not sounding with all its thunders, nor lit up
with all its ardours even under the Promethean touch of
Demosthenes!

"And Latin--the voice of empire and of war, of law and of the
state, inferior to its half-parent and rival in the embodying of
passion and in the distinguishing of thought, but equal to it in
sustaining the measured march of history; and superior to it in
the indignant declamation of moral satire; stamped with the mark
of an imperial and despotising republic; rigid in its
construction, parsimonious in its synonyms; reluctantly yielding
to the flowery yoke of Horace, although opening glimpses of
Greek-like splendour in the occasional inspirations of Lucretius;
proved indeed, to the uttermost, by Cicero, and by him found
wanting; yet majestic in its bareness, impressive in its
conciseness; the true language of history, instinct with the
spirit of nations and not with the passions of individuals;
breathing the maxims of the world, and not the tenets of the
schools; one and uniform in its air and spirit, whether touched by
the stern and haughty Sallust, by the open and discursive Livy, by
the reserved and thoughtful Tacitus.

"These inestimable advantages, which no modern skill can wholly
counterpoise, are known and felt by the scholar alone. He has not
failed, in the sweet and silent studies of his youth, to drink
deep at those sacred fountains of all that is just and beautiful
in human language.

"The thoughts and the words of the master-spirits of Greece and of
Rome, are inseparably blended in his memory; a sense of their
marvellous harmonies, their exquisite fitness, their consummate
polish, has sunk for ever in his heart, and thence throws out
light and fragrancy upon the gloom and the annoyance of his
maturer years. No avocations of professional labour will make him
abandon their wholesome study; in the midst of a thousand cares