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party on their way to the grave, deserted their leader, as Mr. Oppert says in his narrative, was a discharge of all their guns so as not to hurt any one. The trial ended in Jenkins' acquittal of a conspiracy, for the witnesses made him out to be simply a passenger. Mons. Féron disappeared as soon as he reached China, so that no information was obtained from him. When the facts became known, the community and writers in the Shanghai papers all condemned the expedition in strong terms.

It is not by such means, now-a-days, that commerce, civilization, or national intercourse are promoted. From all that we can learn, the chief stimulus to the violent conduct of the Corean Regent and authorities, is to be found in their ignorant fears. Having no knowledge of foreign nations or their policy, these isolated rulers can imagine no other reason than conquest of their country as adequate to explain these repeated visits up to the last one under Admiral Rogers, in the U. S. S. Colorado, in 1871. The wretched and destitute crews of the Narwhal, the Surprise, the Cleopatra, and other vessels, had been reasonably well treated in former years and returned to China. Now that Japan has such commercial relations with it as enables both countries to trade under well-defined regulations, we may hope that Corean ignorance, prejudice, and treachery, will yield to the gradual effects of instruction and patience.

Mr. Oppert prefaces his own voyages with six chapters on the history, foreign wars, social condition, language, and productions of Corea, with notices of the French missions carried on for forty years. Their contents are very imperfect, and derived from old books. He gives countenance to the unusual phrase, The Corea, as a name for the kingdom, and which is merely a Gallicism translated into English; Burmah, Siam, China, might each be introduced by an article with the same propriety. A careful synopsis of what is now known respecting all these topics, derived from Japanese and Chinese sources, as well as later German, French, and English authors, would prove to be a useful work.

The area of the peninsula is roughly estimated at 90,000 square miles, or equal to the island of Great Britain; and its resources are very poorly developed in comparison with the neighboring empires. Hundreds of Coreans come to Peking

every winter bringing ginseng, paper, and raw cotton, which they exchange for silks, medicines, and some foreign articles. They are quite different in features from the Chinese, bony in contour and muscular, rude in manners, and given to drink. Those who compose this trading embassy are mostly able to talk Chinese, but the citizens of Peking do not care to have much to do with their quarrelsome visitors. The Chinese government exercises no real control in Corean affairs, but that people themselves keep up this ceremonial intercourse chiefly for the sake of the trade, and the opportunity it affords them for learning something of the outer world. The people must possess much personal courage and discipline to make the resistance their troops offered at Fort McKee, when they were attacked by the Americans, June 11, 1871. On that occasion they left two hundred and fifty dead on the ground, before they were entirely disabled. The tyranny of the Regent is now ended by his death; but the course of events cannot long enable any Government which follows it to refuse all intercourse with other nations.

ARTICLE VI.--THE OBJECTS AND METHODS OF
CLASSICAL STUDY.

MUCH has been written, in a general way, concerning the benefits of classical study, and of the excellence of the classics as compared with the other subjects of study which are so largely replacing them in American colleges.

We propose in this paper to speak, not directly of the benefits, but rather of the objects of classical study, and of the methods by which these objects may best be attained.

For, admitting that certain vaguely conceived advantages are sometimes, or even generally realized as the results of classical study, it by no means follows that such advantages will certainly accrue if the study is pursued carelessly, and, as it were, without object or method. What we need is greater definiteness of conception with regard both to the objects to be attained, and the methods to be pursued. If the study is to be made intelligent and profitable, the proposed benefits should be clearly conceived and kept steadily in mind, so that the study may be pursued with a view to these benefits as the objects to be realized in the efforts of the student.

Otherwise, whether the advantages desired and expected be worth little or much, we shall very likely fail to secure them because our efforts will be unintelligent and misdirected, and the discussion with regard to the merits of the classics will continue to be so far enveloped in the fogs of a misty generalization that there will be no well-established, clearly-defined data upon which to make out a case, either on one side or the other. There are, in the view of the writer, three distinct objects of classical study, which we shall proceed to consider in the order in which they naturally suggest themselves to the mind.

The first of these objects is an appreciation of the literature of the languages studied.

No one will deny that this is a proper and important object in the study of the ancient classics, and we have only to inquire whether it is fairly realized in the usual methods of

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study. We presume that upon this point also, there will be general agreement. For our own part we should say that not one in ten, probably not one in twenty, of the graduates of American colleges has anything like a fitting appreciation of the Greek and Roman literature -even of the scant portions he has read in his college course.

But lest this proposition should appear startling to some of our readers, let us proceed to consider the matter a little more in detail.

When a German scholar reads

Willst du, Hector, ewig von mir wenden,

Wo Achil, mit den unnahbaren Händen,
Dem Patroclus schrecklich Opfer bringt ?--

he apprehends and appreciates the sentiment of the verse in the language in which it is written. He does not even think of an English word. The ideas come to him instantly and directly from the German, and the German rhyme and rhythm, which are inseparable from the words and ideas, spontaneously contribute their peculiar charm to the effect on his mind. The beauty of the sentiment, the force and fitness of the expression and the charm of the versification he receives simultaneously and immediately from the text, without the intervention of an interpreter of any kind.

But observe the Freshman in college when he reads,-

Δαιμόνιε φθίσει σε τὸ σὸν μένος· ουδ' ελεαίραις

παϊδά τε νηπίακον, καὶ ἔμ' ἄμμορον ἢ τάχα χήρη

σεῦ ἔσομαι· τάχα γάρ σε κατακτανέουσιν ̓Αχαιοι
πάντες ἐφορμηθέντες.

and you will perceive by the manner of his reading that he does not understand a word that he utters.

He labors with the still comparatively unfamiliar Greek character, with the pronunciation and with the scanning; and these difficulties take his whole attention. He reads all with the same monotonous intonation, without variety or spirit, and will run over a period the same as over a comma, or colon, or a mark of interrogation. He gets only sound, utterly void of sense or expression, and generally even the sound is incorrectly, or at least very imperfectly, rendered. Surely thus far there is not much appreciation of the Greek poetry of the passage.

Ask him now to translate. By an effort of memory he recalls the equivalents of the different Greek words, and gives the approximate sense of the passage probably in a very poor style of English. Write down the translation as he gives it, and you have what he really appreciates of the passage he has read.

We have seen that his scanning was mere sound, and the language might as well have been Chinese or Arabic for any idea he received from it while reading.

His translation is not Greek poetry, nor any poetry at all. It is not generally even good prose English. He has the idea, we will say, correctly. But it takes not only sentiment or statement, but also the charm of the rythmic structure and the spirit and beauty of forcible, felicitous expression to constitute the literature of poetry; nay, rather it requires a simultaneous combination of all these elements, and the appreciation of the literature of the Homeric poems is impossible to the student until he has reached the point of familiarity and proficiency where sentiment, expression and rhythm instantly and spontaneously unite in his apprehension. In the present case, while he labors to apprehend and express the thought in his own. stilty English, he loses the peculiar appropriateness of the Greek expression, as well as the charm and beauty of the versification.

It is universally admitted by scholars that the literature of no language, least of all the ancient languages, can be adequately represented in translation. But our Freshman gets English instead of Greek, and instead of poetry he gets only a poor quality of prose. He easily finds the evidence, and may be impressed with the conviction that there is something very fine in the original poem, but this conviction is very far from an actual appreciation and enjoyment. What he really gets and appreciates in the only language whose literature he is capable of appreciating, is scarcely more than a caricature of the Greek poem he is attempting to read.

Give him Bryant's translation of the passage, and he will undoubtedly get a better appreciation of it than from the text; but that is because Bryant's translation is better than his own, and he is dependent upon translation in either case. English of some kind must stand between him and the Greek as an

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