parent who puts it, if ignorantly, at any rate honestly, to such a statement as ought to satisfy him in the choice of his son's studies. It is no reply to say that there is no education so good as that of public schools, and that Greek and Latin are the chief staple of that education; for the question still recurs, "Why should the public schools insist on the study of the classics?" May not the sceptical parent complain with much force that if he cannot do better than send his boy to a public school, it is very hard that he should be compelled to purchase that advantage at the cost of a mischievous waste of time and energy? It is not enough to say, as is so commonly said, that the best and ablest men in England are trained at public schools, and thence to argue that the education must be excellent; there would be a sad illicit process in this reasoning. The course of education adopted at public schools must be defended on its own merits, if it is to be defended successfully; otherwise the great men that have issued from their walls might be turned into a justification of every conceivable abuse. On the very face of the inquiry, the classics, or Greek at least, are not needed for direct application to some positive want of society. No one is required to speak or to write in these languages; their virtues, whatever they may be, are expended on the general formation of the boy's mind and character, not on supplying him with knowledge demanded by any calling in life; and consequently the burden of proof lies plainly on the system which imposes on thousands of English boys-not selected boys, but the general mass of the sons of the upper classes-the study of dead languages, and with the certainty, moreover, as demonstrated by experience, that a very few only of these students will ever acquire any but the most meagre acquaintance with these tongues.

Is such a case capable of being defended? I think that it is. I hold that the nation judges rightly in adhering to classical education: I am convinced that for general excellence no other training can compete with the classical. In sustaining this thesis, I do not propose to compare here what is called useful education with classical, much less to endeavour to prescribe the portion of each which ought to be combined in a perfect system. Want of space forbids me to examine here a problem involving so much detail. Let it be taken for granted that every boy must be taught to acquire a certain definite amount of knowledge positively required for carrying on the business of life in its several callings; and, if so it be, let it be assumed that there is a deficiency of this kind of instruction at the public schools. Let that defect be repaired by all means: let Eton and Winchester be forced, by whatever means, to put into every one of their scholars the requisite quantity of arithmetic, modern languages, geography, and physical science. The adjustment of this quantity does not concern us now; let us recognize its necessity and importance. Let all interference of Greek and Latin with this indispensable qualification for after-life be forbidden; but let us at the same time maintain that both things may go on successfully together. The problem before us here is of a different kind. The

education of the boys of the upper classes is necessarily composed of two parts,-general training, and special, or, as it is called, useful, training, the general development of the boy's faculties, of the whole of his nature, and the knowledge which is needed to enable him to perform certain specific functions in life. Of those two departments of education, the general far transcends in importance the special: and finally I maintain that for the carrying out of this education, the Greek and Latin languages are the most efficient instruments which can be applied.

Their chief merits are four in number.

I. In the first place, they are languages: they are not particular sciences, nor definite branches of knowledge, but literatures. In this respect high claims of superiority have been advanced for them on the ground that they cultivate the taste, and give great powers of expression, and teach a refined use of words, and thus impart that refinement and culture which characterize an educated gentleman. But I cannot help feeling that too much stress has been laid on this particular result of classical training. In the first place it is realized only by a very few, either at school or college: the vast bulk of English boys do not acquire these high accomplishments, at least before their entrance on the real business of life. On the other hand, the great development which civilization, and with it general intelligence, have made in these modern days, produces in increasing numbers vigorous men who have acquired these powers in great eminence without the help of Greek or Latin. The Senate, the bar, and many other professions, exhibit men whose gifts of expression, vigour of language, neatness as well as force in the use of words, and discrimination of all the finer shades of meaning, are fully on a par with those of men who have been prepared by classical and academical training. A Bright and a Cobden are good set-offs against a Marquis of Wellesley or even a Lord Derby, and with this advantage, moreover, that the growth of modern England is sure to to furnish an everexpanding supply of men of the former class. There has been a vast amount of excellent writing in France put forth by men who knew nothing of Greek, and often very little Latin; and there has been equally an incredible quantity of bad writing in Germany, which has flowed, or rather been jerked out of the pens of men whose heads were stuffed with boundless stores of classical learning. The educational value of Greek and Latin is something immeasurably broader than this single accomplishment of refined taste and cultivated expression. problem to be solved is to open out the undeveloped nature of a human being; to bring out his faculties, and impart skill in their use; to set the seeds of many powers growing; to teach as large and as varied a knowledge of human nature, both the boy's own and the world's about him, as possible; to give him, according to his circumstances, the largest practicable acquaintance with life, what it is composed of, morally, intellectually, and materially, and how to deal with it. For the perform

The

ance of this great work, what can compare with a language, or rather with a literature? not with a language carried to soaring heights of philology, for then it becomes a pure science, as much as chemistry or astronomy, but with a language containing books of every degree of variety and difficulty. Think of the many elements of thought a boy comes in contact with when he reads Cæsar and Tacitus in succession, Herodotus and Homer, Thucydides and Aristotle : how many ideas he has perforce acquired; how many regions of human life-how many portions of his own mind he has gained insight into; with how extended a familiarity with many things he starts with, when the duties of a profession call on him to concentrate these insights, these exercised and disciplined faculties, on a single sphere of action. See what is implied in having read Homer intelligently through, or Thucydides, or Demosthenes; what light will have been shed on the essence and laws of human existence, on political society, on the relations of man to man, on human nature itself. What perception of all kinds of truths and facts will dawn on the mind of the boy; what sympathies will be excited in him; what moral tastes and judgments established; what a sense of what he, as a human being, is, and can do; what an understanding of human life. Every glowing word will call up a corresponding emotion; every deed recorded, every motive unfolded, every policy explained, will be pregnant with instruction; and that instruction must be valued, not only by its use when applied to practice, or by the maxims or rules which it lays down for human action, but infinitely more by the general acquaintance with human nature which it has generated, by the readiness for action which it has produced in a world now become familiar, by the consciousness it has brought out of the possession of faculties, and the tact and skill it has created for their use. Knowledge is not ability, cram is not power, least of all in education. A man may be able to count accurately every yard of distance to the stars, and yet be most imperfectly educated; he may be able to reckon up all the kings that ever reigned, and yet be none the wiser or the more efficient for his learning. But the unfledged boy, who starts with a mind empty, blank, and unperceiving, is transformed by passing through Greek and Latin: a thousand ideas, a thousand perceptions are awakened in him, that is, a thousand fitnesses for life, for its labours and its duties.

But is he able to reason? asks the mathematician. Can he correctly deduce conclusions from premises? Can he follow out step by step a chain of sequences? Can he push his principles to just results? He can, and necessarily must, if he has honestly worked through his books, if he has been properly handled by a competent teacher, if his progress, step by step, has been challenged and justified. Let it be gladly acknowledged that every large exercise of thought has its true and intrinsic advantages: and the patient investigator of natural or mathematical science unquestionably uses and cultivates powers which are amongst the most valuable accorded to humanity. But, on the other hand, no one familiar with education can have failed to perceive what immense stores of

arithmetic and algebra and the calculi may be piled up without calling forth scarcely a single conscious effort of ratiocination; how completely the advance has been obtained by quickness of intelligence, sharpness of observation, and dexterity in the use of expedients. Excellent and valuable qualities, be it cheerfully granted; but still not qualities implying powers of sustained reasoning. George Stephenson, in working his way to the safety-lamp, and many a gardener and sailor, have over and over again displayed capacities for reasoning which all but the highest mathematicians might envy. The opportunities, the demands for reasoning, in a real and sound study of the classics are absolutely endless, and in no field has a teacher such a range for forcing his disciples to think closely and accurately. No doubt a huge amount of continuous thought is needed by the mathematical or astronomical discoverer; but this is a professional quality, and it is very questionable whether it exceeds in severity the demands made on the advocate or the moral philosopher. The question here raised is that of educational value; and I confidently assert that for the purposes of making a youthful student think long and accurately, and of forcing upon him the perceptions of the efficiency and the results of right reasoning, no better tool can be applied than a speech in Thucydides, a discussion in Aristotle, or a chapter in the Epistles of St. Paul.

But is it so in practice? it will be asked. Do boys realise all these fine things? How many, as they emerge from Eton or from Oxford, would venture to be judged by such a test? Is it not notorious rather that the great portion of either public school boys or undergraduates know little of the classics they have spent years upon, and can hardly be said to possess any real knowledge of any kind? Can this be called education? Many answers can be given to this reproach. First of all, it is quite as easy to teach the classics badly as anything else, and there is an immense quantity of bad teaching of the classics in England. A glaring proof of this is found in the great difference which separates school from school, and the proportionate difference in the quality of the products. Then, though it is true that few of the many submitted to classical training become scholars, in the full sense of the word, it does not at all follow that they have gained nothing from their study of Greek and Latin; just the contrary is the truth. The test of educational success is not solely or even chiefly the amount of positively accurate and complete knowledge which has been acquired; but the extent to which the faculties of the boy have been developed, the quantity of impalpable but not the less real attainments he has achieved, and his general readiness for life, and for his action in it as a man. Most unquestionably English education might be and ought to be a great deal better than it is; but would the result have been more satisfactory if the boys of England had never touched Greek or Latin, and had been brought up either in the study of modern languages or of chemistry, astronomy, or mathematics? This is the true issue, the true question to be debated, Each of these two methods would probably have yielded

a larger product of positive knowledge, or, at least, of what is called If the useful information, though even that is not absolutely certain. boys were entirely to fling aside their Greek and Latin books, and to be surrounded by French, German, and mathematical masters, most of them would become tolerably familiar with these modern tongues, and a certain amount of mathematical and natural science would be found in them also. But would the gain thus made have compensated for the loss incurred? It must not be said that the knowledge would have been of the useful kind, because at the outset I started with the admission that for the purposes of a satisfactory education a fitting portion of direct and useful knowledge ought to be combined with the study of Greek and Latin. It is on the excess beyond this, on the general training and broad development of the human being, that the dispute turns; and on this view of the matter I am profoundly convinced that England and Englishmen would be enormous losers. On modern languages, as compared with Greek and Latin, more will be said presently; and it is hoped that it will be shown that of the benefits to be derived from the study of language a far higher proportion can be realized from the classical than from modern languages. With respect to science it seems to be obvious at once that it would leave portions-and those the largest and most important portions of the youth's nature absolutely undeveloped. I do not believe that there would be any gain in the expansion of intellect; whilst the boy would be turned out empty of countless perceptions, destitute of a multitude of insights into things moral, social, and political, which constitute the most important parts of human life and of his own being. He would be, what was once not uncommon, but is now happily rare, a senior wrangler in the calculus, and an infant among men.

II. But let us now proceed with the second merit of the classical languages as an instrument of education: the greatness of the works they contain, and of the writers who made them. This is a consideration of superlative importance. I hold that the first cardinal principle of education is to bring the nature to be opened out and trained into contact with the highest possible standard of greatness. The rule of educating by means of safe mediocrity is to me purely detestable. No writer is too lofty, provided only that he is capable of being understood, to be placed in the hands of the young: no man too high to be fit for a schoolmaster. This was a truth recognized in the great universities of the middle ages, and it has received in our own days worthy homage from a Niebuhr and an Arnold. The greater the excellence--the loftier, more varied, and richer the influences brought to bear on the youngthe riper and the more valuable the fruits. A great writer wields in education a force a thousand times more powerful than an inferior one : the difference is in kind, not in degree. A mind of the first order awakens in those who come under its sway far many more ideas than one of lower degree, expresses them with greater truth, flashes them into lower depths of the spirit of the recipient, kindles a more fervid