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TIIE NATURE AND CAUSES OE

a necessary part of the common course of university edu-cation. There are some Spanish universities, I am assured,in which the study of the Greek language has never yetmade any .part of that course. The first reformers found theGreek text of the New Testament, and even the Hebrew textof the Old, more favourable to their opinions, than the Vul-gate translation, which, as might naturally be supposed, hadbeen gradually accommodated to support the doctrines of thecatholic church. They set themselves, therefore, to exposethe many errors of that translation, which the Roman catholic clergy were thus put under the necessity of defending or ex-plaining. But this could not well be done without someknowledge of the original languages, of which the study wastherefore gradually introduced into the greater part of uni-versities ; both of those which embraced, and of those whichrejected, the doctrines of the reformation. The Greek lan-guage was connected with every part of that classical learn-ing, which, though at first principally cultivated by catholicsand Italians , happened to come into fashion much about thesame time that the doctrines of the reformation were set onfoot. In the greater part of universities, therefore, that lan-guage was taught previous to the study of philosophy, andas soon as the student had made some progress in the Latin .The Hebrew language having no connexion with classicallearning, and, except the Holy Scriptures, being the languageof not a single book in any esteem, the study of it did notcommonly commence till after that of philosophy, and whenthe student had entered upon the study of theology.

Originally the first rudiments both of the Greek and Latin languages were taught in universities, and in some univer-sities they still continue to be so. In others it is expectedthat the student should have previously acquired at least therudiments of one or both of those languages, of which thestudy continues to make everywhere a very considerable partof university education.

The ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three greatbranches ; physics, or natural philosophy ; ethics, or moralphilosophy; and logic. This general division seems per-fectly agreeable to the nature of things.

The great phenomena of nature, the revolutions of theheavenly bodies, eclipses, comets; thunder, lightning, andother extraordinary meteors; the generation, the life, growth,and dissolution of plants and animals; are objects which, as