might have been those many barren hours which have been lavished on the impotent effort to acquire a merely elegant accomplishment,-then I confess that my regret deepens into sorrow, indignation, and shame. Is it pleasant to know that the first thing of which an old pupil may think, when he meets us in after life, is the little intellectual cause he has for gratitude towards men who occupied his boyhood by teaching him that which he has not only long forgotten, but to reach which he would not now take the trouble to raise his little finger? [p. 217.]

And again,

If in any part of this essay I appear to use strong language, let me frankly ask pardon for it beforehand, as having sprung from the pent-up bitterness of twelve years' experience. Those who know what leisure is, and who can afford to while it away in writing Latin Verse, are apt in the beauty of the exotic to forget its costliness. They forget that they are admiring the flowers-and after all they are but fruitless flowers!of the one productive seed which has here and there survived its countless abortive brethren. The aspect of Latin Verse to the classical scholar who recurs to it as the light amusement of his manhood, is very different from that which it wears to the weary teacher, who has wasted so many of his own and his pupils' precious hours in the hopeless task of attempting to make poets of the many. [p. 211.]

It may indeed be urged that these remarks do not apply to our colleges, for they have never gone to the extreme of folly reached by the universities of England. It is indeed true that our colleges have not been able to be insensible to the all present, all pervading influence of the American spirit, to the genius of our democratic institutions. Yet it cannot be denied that it was not without justice that Professor Atkinson, (himself a classical instructor of many years' experience,) on the title page of his "Address on Classical Education in the Public Schools of England," inscribed the motto Mutato noming, de te fabula narratur.

As the volume is not probably accessible to the great body of American readers, we subjoin a list of the subjects and the authors of the essays:

ESSAY I-On the History of Classical Education. By CHARLES STUART PARKER, M. A., Fellow of University College, Oxford.

ESSAY II.-The Theory of Classical Education. By HENRY SIDGWICK, M. A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

ESSAY III.-Liberal Education in Universities. By JOHN SEELEY, M. A., Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, and Professor of Latin in University College, London.

ESSAY IV.-On Teaching by Means of Grammar. By E. E. BowEN,

M. A., Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Assistant Master at Harrow.

ESSAY V.-On Greek and Latin Verse Composition as a General Branch of Education. By the Rev. F. W. FARRAR, M. A., F. R. S.

ESSAY VI.-On Teaching Natural Science in Schools. By J. M. WILSON, M. A., F. G. S., F. R. A. S., Assistant Master in Rugby School, and Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.

ESSAY VII.-The Teaching of English. By J. W. HALES, M. A., Late Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Christ's College, Cambridge.

ESSAY VIII.-On the Education of the Reasoning Faculties. By W. JOHNSON, M. A., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Assistant Master at Eton.

ESSAY IX. On the Present Social Results of Classical Education. By LORD HOUGHTON, M. A., Trinity College, Cambridge, and Hon. D. C. L., Oxford.

Without doing the eminent essayists the injustice of attempting to give a skeleton of the views presented by them, merely expressing the hope that some one among our publishers will have the enterprise to reproduce the volume, may we venture to express in brief our own view of "The Education that we Need."

We have before intimated our belief that the question of the comparative value of various studies, and of the differing modes of prosecuting them, is to be settled by appeal to fact, to experience, to argument. It will, perhaps, effect an economy of time, if we spend a moment in stating what (in our opinion), are not arguments in the premises.

And first, it is not argument to urge that a particular study, or mode of study, has been in use from immemorial time, that it was the child and favorite of the ages most properly called dark. It may certainly be understood that the nineteenth century, with its weight of experience, is as competent to provide for itself, as was the sixteenth century to provide for it. Professor Youmans justly remarks in his valuable introductory essay on "Mental Discipline in Education," "All educational inquiries assume that man is individually improvable, and therefore collectively progressive." If we are to go on the basis of antiquity and long-established usage, surely nothing human is more venerable than sin.

Again, we may count out of the list of valid arguments that which we may venture, for want of a better name, to call the argument de non existentibus. If a certain thing does not exist, it is idle to base a process of reasoning, or a course of action, upon its existence. If a result does not follow, it is idle to argue from its sequence. If the current course of classical study does not produce on the part of the

pupil any acquaintance with the classical literature, or any love for it, it seems idle to argue for the pursuit of the classics from the richness of this literature and its value to the student. Probably both experience and observation would lead the great body of classically educated persons to feel that Mr. Sidgwick, in his invaluable essay, speaks with great moderation, and in words even more applicable to America than to England, when he says,

It will not be denied that in the English, French and German languages (I only omit Italian because it is rarely taught at schools, and I am not prepared to recommend that it should be more generally taught), there is a sufficiency of good literature to fill the leisure of a person engaged in any active calling, a sufficiency of works calculated to give a high kind of enjoyment, and to cultivate, very adequately, the literary taste. And if such a person was ever visited by a painful hankering after the time-honored volumes that were sealed to him, he might console himself by taking note how often his contemporaries who had enjoyed a complete classical education, were in the habit of taking down these master-pieces from their shelves. For I cannot help thinking that classical literature, in spite of its enormous prestige, has very little attraction for the mass even of cultivated persons at the present day. I wish statistics could be obtained of the amount of Latin and Greek read in any year (except for professional purposes), even by those who have gone through a complete classical curriculum. From the information that I have been able privately to obtain, I incline to think that such statistics, when compared with the fervent admiration with which we all still speak of the classics, upon every opportunity, would be found rather startling. [p. 106.]

That this should be the case is scarcely matter for wonder. Mr. Clark (an eminent classical advocate), remarks (in the Cambridge Essays, as quoted by Mr. Sidgwick), "It is a strong recommendation to any subject to affirm that it is dry and distasteful." And the educational re-actionists never cease iterating that a man's dislike to any particular study affords a strong reason why he should be compelled to give to this study the largest share of his time and attention.

We cannot but think that the conservatives are less original in this view than might appear. Have they sufficiently acknowledged their indebtedness, for their golden rule in education, to Mr. Bumble, the beadle, immortalized in Oliver Twist?

"Don't you think out-of-door relief a very bad thing any way, Mr.. Bumble," said Mrs. Corney. "You are a gentleman of experience and ought to know. Come." "Mrs. Corney," said the beadle, smiling as men smile when they are conscious of superior information, "out-of-door relief, properly managed, properly managed, ma'am,-is the parochial safe-guard. The great principle of out-of-door relief is to give the

paupers exactly what they don't want, and then they get tired of coming."

The principle announced by Mr. Clark and the champions of the classics may be very just (though we believe it to be the wildest folly), but the advocate of classical culture, after imposing studies, on the express ground of their being repulsive to the student, is surely concluded from the privilege of being surprised, at the pupil's abandonment of these studies, as soon as he is free to choose for himself.

Once more that is not quite a valid argument which is drawn from a view of the absolute value of any study, without a comparison being instituted between it and the other competing branches of knowledge. When Lord Clive, after the battle of Plassey, was ushered into the treasury of Bengal, where he "walked between heaps of gold, and silver, crowned with rubies and diamonds, and was at liberty to help himself," if he had filled his hands with silver only, no doubt he would have been wiser and better off than if he had come away empty handed. But the inevitable question would be, why not have chosen gold, or jewels, when they were equally at his disposal? It is not between the classics and entire ignorance that the comparison lies, for of course any thing is better than mental stagnation. The real question is, "Shall the very limited time allotted to education be given to one study or to another?"

Again, it is not quite a valid process of argumentation to urge that because the acquirement of one of the classical languages confers a given amount of benefit, therefore the acquisition of both the classic tongues will confer a double amount of good. When we have learned one foreign language, and have compared it with our own, we have exhausted a very large proportion of the disciplinary value found in linguistic study. To imagine that the acquisition of another tongue will confer a corresponding benefit is as unfounded as to imagine that because a wife is a gift of unspeakable value therefore two wives would duplicate the blessing.

Again, it does not seem argument to claim for certain studies a place in a liberal and non-professional education, while urging this claim on grounds that apply only to a technical and special education. When the advocate of science asks that a thorough course (e. g. of geology) may have a place in the college curriculum, he is told, "This is all technical and special. Our aim is, not to make mining engineers, or analysts, but to make men of enlarged and liberal culture." But when it is asked in turn, "Why do Latin and Greek demand and receive so large a share of consideration in the preparatory and college course?" it is answered, "without a knowledge of Greek, the

clergyman cannot read his New Testament in the original tongue; without a knowledge of Latin the lawyer cannot read the Institutes of Justinian." All very true, and unanswerable as an argument for making these a part of a special education, but to urge, on these grounds, that the classics should form a compulsory part of a liberal education does not seem quite according to Aristotle.

Lastly, we feel compelled to add, abuse is not argument; calling names is not argument; neither is violent and unproved assertion; or taking the thing to be proved as a part of the proof. We beg pardon for saying all this, which probably we should not have done, but for meeting recently with the following passage in the New Englander, occurring in an article by an ardent and, no doubt, able advocate of the classics. We take the liberty to italicise a few of the clauses, as in an eminent degree illustrating the felicities of speech, which we have enumerated as not constituting arguments.

It is our settled conviction that a liberal education is to be distinguished from all forms of special or technical education, whatever value may belong to these in their place. And the fundamental parts of a liberal education it is not left to fancy or choice to determine. The constitution of things, and the course of history, as well as the structure of the human mind, define what these shall be. The study of the classical languages and literature is a leading, essential, indispensable part of such a scheme of education. The clamor which we are now hearing about "heathen learning" and "dead languages" is the outcry, to a great extent, of ignorance and superficiality. The proper study of mankind is man; and man is to be known through the study of history and literature. The foundation in this study, as well as the necessary key to large attainments in it, lies in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek. The disciplinary and humanizing influence of classical studies is something of inestimable value, and which nothing else can provide. The modern languages and the physical sciences will not do the work that is done by Latin and Greek, and that appears even when the ancient tongues are deficiently taught. Mr. Lowe, a member of Parliament, has lately amused an Edinburgh audience by a lively piece of declamation against the accepted system of university training. . . Mr. Lowe could never have made a speech having the rhetorical merits that belong to his late address had he been educated in the method which he recommends; and whatever brilliancy pertains to his harangue, he owes chiefly to the drill he has had in the branches which he decries. As for his argument, it is a tissue of sparkling fallacies.

May we beg leave to direct the attention of the New Englander to the words of Mr. Sidgwick.

I am not in a position to institute a close comparison of the efficacy of