must follow that those who now live have as perfect a right and claim to alter and amend what they think amiss as their predecessors had to dictate what they believed to be right and holy.

It may be urged, practically speaking, that a revision of the standards would be productive of disastrous results, in so far as the minds of the more ignorant would be unhinged as to the revision of the standards of their religious faith. That is, their confidence in its infallibility would be shaken. With this effect, or rather supposition, we have nothing to do; as the expediency of a revisal of our standards appears to be necessary to make them complete and comprehensive in themselves to suit the advanced state of the age.

Considering the question at issue from a common sense standpoint, we have no hesitation in taking the negative side of this discussion. G. M. SUTHERLAND.

THE RIGHT AND DELIGHT OF INQUIRY.- "Annihilation is not a more appalling prospect than that of the day when everything shall be intelligible, when a formula shall be the key to unlock every secret of Nature, when there shall be nothing to strive after, for there will be nothing to learn. To grope in the dark may be unpleasant, but to be exposed to the untempered blaze of the sun is equally disagreeable. To blunder in our estimates of authors and their works is humiliating only when we are conscious that our errors are due to carelessness in collecting facts, and heedlessness or partiality in weighing them. The critic may some day be endowed with an infallible instrument by which to probe the human mind and discover its secrets. We have no ambition to possess that magical wand. Enough is it for us, as it was for Lessing, to be always pursuing the truth, knowing well that we chase a divine phantom; knowing, also, however, that the delight of the chase is infinitely preferable to the surfeit of possession. Our homage is paid to the Goddess Truth all the more heartily and reverently because we believe her to be far

'Too bright and good For human nature's daily food.""

Westminster Review.

Education.

DO THE CLASSICS HOLD THEIR PROPER PLACE IN BRITISH EDUCATION?

AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-I.

It has become the habit recently of many who idolize the practical to sneer at classical studies. Most of those who do so, however, have not had the advantage of a thorough training and sound drill in them. They are for the most part men who have been shrewdly successful in " getting on" in the money-making sense of that phrase, and who, taking full credit for their sagacity, exclaim against any education which does not directly aim at being effectively useful in promoting what they denominate "the main chance." This, we protest, is a false way of judging of the matter. As a man who had been blind from his birth would be but a bad authority upon the use of eyes, and not a very good adviser upon optical contrivances, so a man who has not himself been subjected to the academic discipline of classical study cannot rightly adjudicate on such a question as this. The converse argument, which some of our opponents may gently hint, does not, however, hold; for as a man who is blessed with eyesight can easily experiment upon the evils of blindness, by the simple process of shutting his eyes, so can the person who has diligently studied the classics dismiss, pro tempore, the associations he has acquired through them, and ask himself what his condition would have been if he had been deprived of all those sources of joy which classical studies have supplied him with? It would perhaps seem as ungenerous as the twitting of a blind man with his sightlessness, were we to attempt to enumerate the various elements of benefit which arise from the prosecution of a diligent perusal of the works of the chief writers of Greece and Rome, and from that special kind of attentive thoughtfulness which is cultured in man by acquiring a knowledge of the syntax and construing of the ancient languages. We might enlarge at some length on the improvement in one's own language attainable by endeavouring to fix in the mind the various fine gradations of meaning implied in the accurate translation of the exquisite productions of the authors usually read in school and at college; on the power of comparison elicited by the constant need of dismissing the ordinary associations of our life from our minds, and living, in idea, the life of the times of other far-distant years, that we may get at the standing-place for a good view of the meaning of an author; and on the minute and sedulous care which

requires to be habitually expended on the authors studied, to acquire
a mastery of their meaning and peculiarities.
But we shall not
venture on these topics now. Nor shall we ourselves venture on
an estimate of the worth of the literature of the old ages. We
shall call an unexceptionable witness to the excellence of the
language of Greece-Milton it is-who tells us that we may,-

"See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Illissus rolls

His whispering stream; within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages; his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next;

There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand; and various measured verse,
Eolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath but higher sung.
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own;
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received

In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing:
Thence to the famous orators repair,

Those ancients, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratic,

Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,

To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne:

To sage philosophy next lend thine ear,

From heaven descended to the low-roofed house

Of Socrates; see there his tenement,

Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe:

These here revolve, or as thou lik'st at home,
Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight;
These rules will render thee a king complete
Within thyself, much more with empire joined."
Milton's "Paradise Regained."

This is, we apprehend, an unexceptionable witness on behalf of the advantage of Greek culture: similar evidence might easily be adduced as to the value of that of Roman literature. We need not,

however, do more than advert to the names of Horace and Virgil, Cicero and Cæsar, Sallust and Livy, to show that there are associations of most noble sorts connected with and derived from the classics of Rome. We hold, therefore, that we have shown that classical literature possesses a real worth and an intrinsic value. This renders them specially fitted for being used as a storehouse of the materials for imparting to our British youth the mental wealth of knowledge. As classical study effects this, we assert that it holds its fit place in British education.

The proper place of classical instruction is to be the basis and groundwork of a thorough disciplinary training of the youthful intellect in the use of language as an expression of thought, as a drill in the various methods of written style and thoughtful speech, and in the artistic shaping of ideas, so as to accomplish their purposes. The classics contain a complete round of developed thought connected with a past civilization, in which the capabilities and graces of language have been treasured up for our learning, for the refinement of our taste, and the culture of our style. To these works a vast mass of historical, geographical, and philosophical matter accrete, and they form the foundation and ground-plan on and according to which the young may be trained to clearness of apprehension, force and neatness of expression, and the attentive pursuit of thought through all the devious mazes of artistic language. Such a place is generally assigned to classical learning in British education. Classics form the model studies of our youths; they are employed to form the centre of a whole network of associations, and for training the mind to the upbuilding of an idea of a whole framework of life, in which the entire development has gone from the earth. The evoking of such a power of mind, and of such methods of exercising it, cannot fail to be useful; while no one can readily doubt the advantage of possessing a full knowledge of—

"All the glory that was Greece, all the grandeur that was Rome."

The necessities of life are very much those which a diligent study of the classics can supply. Attentive industry and laborious research, the painstaking performance of duty, the careful consideration of every minute point, the endeavour to think into another's ideas,-all these are good qualities of thought, and lie at the root of all excellence in business. Experience may develop some of these in men who have not had a classical education; but few would prefer the constant training of absolute every-day life, and its grieving realities, to the school drill which accomplishes the same end without the grim accompaniments of risk and loss, of labour enforced by a sense of impending ruin and change, which the gaining of such habits by life-experience implies. All special branches of education are easily gained when the mind has been duly cultured to the sedulous pursuit of its given aims. When the mind is its own master it can fulfil any duty it may be asked to perform. Classical learning imparts to the student this mastery

T

over his mind, and hence it holds the chief place in British education properly. Nothing as yet has been found capable of competing with the study of the classics for bringing under culture all the faculties of the mind-clear apprehension, perspicuous judgment, active imagination, and close reasoning. Where there are no adequate competitors, what is first is surely rightly placed! It will not do to elide from our collegiate halls the study of the great masters of old, or with the mere contemptuousness of scorn to sweep

"The works

Of liberty and wisdom down the gulf
Of all-devouring night."

They belong to a past civilization, and can therefore be read and studied without risk of being mixed up with the living interests of our own day, or made subservient to the advocacy of views of society which may affect man's present civilization. They are rounded off and completed, and can therefore be studied as perfected things. The literature of England is still vital, and cannot be studied with the same minuteness of dissection as the literature of the elder ages and centuries. They, too, are farther removed from our present state of thought and feeling than the languages of France, Germany, or Italy. Besides, they are really studies. which can be pursued for their own sake, and not for the advantage they promise to yield. Hence they are better fitted for being appointed as the disciplinary studies of youth, and ought to hold a high place in the education of the young. Such a place they hold in British education now, and such we hope they shall continue to maintain. There are enough of tendencies pulling man earthward and selfward; let us have for our British youth a generous and a noble culture.

I do not know on what principles this question may be argued whether the negative writers will produce some new notion on the subject, showing what is superior to classics, or whether they will speak in derogatory terms of classical learning. If the former, I at least shall listen gladly to them; but if the latter, I shall only point to the fact, that all our most distinguished thinkers and writers have been educated through the classics, and hence their whole course of thought is tinged with the results of these studies. Often, therefore, to understand them a knowledge of classical literature is required. Almost every man who has risen to any eminence through his own exertions has lamented his deficiency in regard to classical learning. He sees the advantage in clearness and consecution of reasoning which those have acquired who have been made companions of the great intellects of Rome and Greece; and they have confessed that experience has not granted to them a power of insight equal to that implied in classical training. Let us hold, therefore, in its proper first place the study of the classics as the basis of our school training. ARNOLD.