blance in geographical form and place, but these resemblances are slight compared with the ethnic and linguistic ties which unite them. An eminent authority has recently styled the Latin the sister rather than the daughter of the Greek. No doubt common roots appear in both languages, some of which could not have been derived by Italy from Greece. Still the broad statement, I think, may be made that the Latin language is as a learned or literary language historically the descendant of the Greek. However much recent linguistic study may have modified the absolute accuracy of this statement, I judge that its substantial accuracy may still be affirmed, while the great fact of the precedence of the literary development of the Greek is undisputed. These facts establish at once the basis of one great claim of Greek upon our supreme attention as students of language. Here are found more nearly in their primitive forms, and still more nearly in their actual primitive uses, the great constituent elements of the classical languages. The value of this fact in determining the relative place of the Greek language as an instrument of language, does not require further discussion. The actual bodily presence of Greek words and phrases in the Latin, and the all-pervading literary influ ence exerted by that language over the Latin in all the later stages of its development, and especially in the great days of its highest perfection and renown, is known and unquestioned. Indeed, the golden age of the Latin language, the whole period from Cicero to Tiberius, was synchronous with what may be called its great Hellenistic transformation. But to the more general scholar and to the interests of edu cation, the second great claim of the Greek language rests on the perfection of its structural development and the incomparable value of the knowledge it embodies. To trace the causes of this perfection of form and matter, especially to exhibit it. by examples, is impossible here except in general outline. The part which climate and geographic relations perform in the development of national character was never more prominently exhibited than in Greece. The local scene of classic Greek life was the diminutive, triangular peninsula, which occupied nearly the exact geographical center of the world. according to the conception of the Homeric age, extending through only four degrees of latitude, from the peak of Olympus on the north to Cape Tænarus on the south, and through scarcely three degrees of longitude, from Actium on the west to the plain of Marathon on the east. To this must be added, by linguistic as well as ethnic affinity, the islands which dot the southern half of the Egean Sea; "The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace, The face of this narrow region was broken and irregular in the extreme; chains of mountains separated by narrow, rocky plains, the coast line fretted by numberless bays and harbors. The soil was in general hard and at best but moderately productive, but the glorious climate covered this rugged face with an atmosphere of indescribable loveliness. If ever we may read the designs of Providence in outward nature, here we might say God had prepared the home of a people who should be separated by natural barriers into distinct communities, never to be permanently united for great schemes of physical empire or external conquest, and yet predestined to be frugal, aspiring, warlike, freedom-loving, adventurous. The poverty of the soil and the all-surrounding Mediterranean and Ægean forced and tempted the Greeks to traffic and adventure by sea. Here we find one of the most active and distinct influences in forming the typical Greek character. Commerce widened the little peninsular world of physical Greece till it took in by acquaintance and appropriation of arts and knowledge, nearly all the known world. The adventurous prow of the early Greek had become familiar with Phenicia and Egypt on the east, and had caught sight, even while Herodotus lived, of the pillars of Hercules on the west; while within the great encircling Oceanic stream the world of Strabo swept from Thule and the frozen wastes of Scythia on the north, to Ethiopia, Arabia, and India on the south. And now mark how this influence was tempered and controlled by another. The topography of Greece proper, and the individual isolation of her islands, had sundered her people into separate communities, so marked and distinct, that no thirst for common conquest or martial glory was ever able for a long period to fuse them into one mass. The idea of Greek autonomy, self-government for each State, became as fixed as the forms of external nature. Except for this fact, it might now be said, I think, that Greece would have preceded Rome in her great career of physical power and dominion. Dis aliter visum. Nature decreed better things for Greece, and Ulysses, type of his race, "That sagacious man Who, having overthrown the sacred town Of Ilium, wandered far and visited The capitals of many nations, learned The customs of their dwellers, and endured returned to enrich his little, barren, much-loved Ithaca with the spoils of the world, leaving to his son a kingdom no greater in extent than he himself had inherited. Thus it happened that while Greek valor became and now is the highest type of the martial virtues, and the little peninsula and the surrounding seas are sown thick with names at mention of which the martial and patriotic blood of every man to-day thrills with delight, the Greek mind was never possessed or absorbed with the idea and dream of martial prowess conquering the world. The subtle influences of a delicious climate leading largely to an out-door, free, simple, home-life, were another great contribution to Greek character. The physical heavens seem indeed to have bent low with all gracious influences over this marvelous people. Thus, by influences which I must not longer pause to state, classical Greece has developed. And what a development! The free, simple, youthful, eager, art-loving spirit of the Greek covered that land with an atmosphere of taste and culture more indescribable in its loveliness than the physical atmosphere which enveloped it,-trophies and monuments of art in all its forms. The Greek in truth touched nothing which he did not adorn. Besides literature, he carried architecture to a degree of perfection which has never been equalled, either in its great conceptions and combinations or the beauty and finish of its details,-temples alike majestic in monumental proportions, and rich in minute tracery of frieze and cornice. In painting and sculpture the Greek is still, as in the days of Apelles and Phidias, the arbiter of form. But it is with his language and literature that we are chiefly concerned to-night. Here the power of the Greek mind developed itself alike in form and thought. In form the Greek language became the embodiment of strength and beauty which no other language can describe. Its words became, now pictures, now thunderbolts; liquid with music, resounding with joy, harsh with terrors. Its structure became at once exact and flexible. The highest results of the inflectional characteristic were reached, and in addition to this the use of intensive particles to add emphasis to words or force to whole sentences, gave it a peculiar power of expression nowhere else attained. With Homer words are instinct with life, έπεα πτερούντα, winged, with passion, with terror, with pathos, with description. Demosthenes by single phrases exhausts the power of invective; in one sentence of less than seventy words paints the long roll of Athens' glories, or with incomparable art of words and grammatical construction summons before his hearers the vast array of Grecian patriots to blast with eternal shame the suggestions of Eschines. The capacity of single words and phrases to paint a scene or present a figure, to swell the soul with lofty and resistless emotion, or to give power and pathos to a narrative, can never be known, in my judgment, till one has read in the original Greek, passages of the sixth and eighteenth books of the Iliad, of Demosthenes' Oration on the Crown, or the account of the Sicilian Catastrophe in the seventh book of Thucydides. But still it was by the rigid, complete dominion of taste to which the Greek subjected himself, that his language and literature reached their most conspicuous excellence. Consider this. The Greek had an exuberant, passionate nature, a flowing fancy, a boundless imagination. Place him to-day with such a nature, in Germany, in England, or even in France, and his rich, picturesque vocabulary, his ardent temperament would run riot with graces of style, with delicacies and conceits of language and thought, the curiosa felicitas of Horace. Look now at the supreme example of Demosthenes. Grace is there, fancy is there, emotion is there, but never for an instant allowed to hinder the steady, increasing volume of his argument,--nothing, absolutely nothing for mere beauty's sake: all, all, every embellishment of word or figure tested with remorseless severity by its capacity to give strength, and sweep, and momentum to the great current of his triumphant thought. In the height and passion of his greatest effort, he recalls and sketches his Theban policy, and having read his famous decree, he pauses only by one mighty sentence, every word of mingled power and beauty, at once a picture, a simile, an argument, a demonstration, an appeal, to enforce the great lesson. Or when in the celebrated Oath he has called up the heroes of Marathon, of Platea, of Salamis, of Artemisium, one word, ayadovs, is the limit of his eulogy. But finally when we look at what this vehicle of thought contains, we find Greek literature touching the utmost limit of ancient knowledge. In each department of literary art Rome was a conscious borrower from the Greek. In poetry, history, and oratory, hardly any one will dispute the preeminence of the Greek masters, while in pure philosophy Plato and Aristotle occupy places for which Roman literature offers no rivals,— heights and depths of speculation and analysis which the modern world has never exceeded, -methods of thought and reason of which the great advances of modern science are, I think, but revealing the perfection and power. My friends, the field which I sketched at the outset of this address has been traversed. By your most kind patience, my humble contribution to the interest of this occasion has now been presented. It has been wrought from opening to close amidst the unremitted pressure of labors and cares and anxieties, little suited, as I need not remind you, to the contemplative and studious mood which classical studies suggest. But the subject is one filled with so many delights of sentiment and memory that I rejoice to have been called to this service. My feelings for the classics are tinged, I know, by sweet and tender memories of youth and its struggles. As I look again on the pages of the old, worn books of school and college, by a kind of palimpsestic process the forms of the |