100 A LIBERAL EDUCATION; iv 



to classical studies. To this I reply that it is only 

 a very strong man wlio can appreciate the charms 

 of a landscape as he is toiling up a steep hill, 

 alono: a bad road. ^A^hat with short-windedness, 

 stones, ruts, and a pervading sense of the wisdom 

 of rest and he thankful, most of us have little 

 enough sense of the beautiful under these circum- 

 stances. The ordinary schoolboy is precisely in 

 this case, lie finds Parnassus uncommonly steep, 

 and there is no chance of his having much time or 

 inclination to look about him till he gets to the 

 top. And nine times out of ten he does not get to 

 the top. 



But if this be a fair picture of the results of 

 classical teaching at its best — and I gather from 

 those who have authority to speak on such matters 

 that it is so — what is to be said of classical teach- 

 ing at its worst, or in other words, of the classics 

 of our ordinary middle-class schools? * I will 

 tell you. It means getting up endless forms and 

 rules by heart. It means turning Latin and Greek 

 into English, for the mere sake of being able to do 

 it, and without the smallest regard to the worth, 

 or worthlessness, of the author read. It means 

 the learning of innumerable, not always decent, 

 fables in such a shape that the meaning they once 

 had is dried up into utter trash; and the only im- 

 pression left upon a boy's mind is, that the people 



* For a justificntion of whnt is here said about thoso 

 schools, see that valuable book, Essays on a Liberal Edu- 

 ration, jxtssi'jn. 



