PASSAGE FROM TACITUS. WH HEN we are told lib. iii. Annal. that Agrippina, "postquam duobus cum liberis, feralem urnam tenens, egressa navi, defixit oculos," &c. it seems from the testimony of concurrent historians, that the two children of Germanicus were Caligula, who went with his father into the East; and Julia, who was born in the Isle of Lesbos. PASSAGE FROM QUINCTILIAN. THE great Roman authority, on the subject of education, was nearly as general in his system as those of the moderns who object to our public schools and universities, as being too confined and exclusive. He evidently wishes young students to revolve round all the sciences:-"Hæc de Grammatica, quam brevissime potui, non ut omnia dicerem sectatus, quod infinitum erat; sed ut maxime necessaria: nunc de cæteris artibus, quibus instituendos prius, quam tradantur rhetori, pueros existimo, strictim subjungam, ut efficiatur orbis ille doctrinæ, quam Græci yxúxλov waidelay vocant." — Quinct. lib. i. ch. 10. PASSAGE FROM ARISTOPHANES. ARISTOPHANES is the most artful of satirists. He slides almost imperceptibly from general sarcasm to personalities. Before he particularises Socrates and his disciples by name, he sets their doctrines in an invidious light, and describes what he represents as their sophistry, to consist in injury to the state, by the evasion of the laws, and fraud on individuals by bilking their creditors. Ψυχῶν σοφῶν τοῦτ ̓ ἐστὶ φροντιστήριον. The govTiTigo here mentioned is a school, or large establishment, of which many persons are inmates, living on a footing of common interests, without exclusive property, and for the purpose of cultivating literature and philosophy. We here see the germ of monastic institutions. THE END. LONDON: Printed by A. & R. Spottiswoode, New-Street-Square. |