MODERN LITERATURES IN EDUCATION. 399 



manner of life far more complex, and it will be admitted that here we 

 have a snbject well worthy of systematic and regnlar treatment. 

 These are not topics that can be handled satisfactorily in the idle lei- 

 sure of a summer tour, in a long vacation. They deserve that a far 

 more steady attention should be devoted to them. Let this first be 

 recognized fully the importance, which cannot be exaggerated, of a 

 kind of study in which no man in England has had a regular training 

 and then we may proceed to consider the method by which this 

 study may be raised to the prominence which it deserves. That there 

 are difficulties in the way of its assuming this position is not to be de- 

 nied. It will be the endeavor of the present essay to remove, not the 

 whole of these difficulties, but so many of them as bar the way to any 

 practical consideration of the subject in its entirety. 



First, however, it is necessary to consider what is actually done at 

 our schools and universities toward giving students a knowledge of 

 modern languages and literatures. It is a little curious that the ques- 

 tion excites more attention in relation to schools than in relation to 

 the universities. Already, there is hardly any (if any) school of high 

 rank in the country in which French, at least, does not form a regular 

 part of the instruction. Whereas at the universities there are only in- 

 cidental exceptions to the general neglect with which the subject is 

 treated. And this very fact shows that the whole significance of the 

 question is misunderstood. As languages, French and German (espe- 

 cially the former) are less powerful instruments of training, for the 

 abler boys, than Latin and Greek. As literatures that is, as sum- 

 ming up the whole thought and history of a nation they would, if prop- 

 erly managed, be much more powerful instruments (in proportion to 

 the much greater variety of modern life as compared with ancients), 

 and are, besides, much more important for us to know. Now, school- 

 boys have more need to apply themselves to languages as languages 

 than to the wide field of information comprised in a literature ; for lin- 

 guistic study gives a constant yet not too fatiguing exercise to the in- 

 tellect, an exercise quite indispensable in the first formation of the 

 mind, without demanding on the part of the student any experience of 

 actual realities. And this is the principal benefit gained at present in 

 schools by the study of French and German, that the slower boys have 

 something more within the range of their capacity than they had for- 

 merly ; a benefit which, though it may in time receive augmentation, 

 is in itself no inconsiderable gain. At the universities, however, the 

 importance of linguistic study, as compared with material study, is 

 much less. A youth of twenty will have the fibre of his mind, his 

 actual mental grasp and capacity, in a great measure, determined ; it 

 is not so important, though it is not unimportant, that he should be 

 subjected to an incessant intellectual stimulus. On the other hand, he 

 will no;v begin for the first time to take an interest in a variety of 

 topics ; knowledge will seem to him worth acquiring for its own sake ; 



