in.] A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 43 



these subjects and no others, would be a real educa- 

 tion, though an incomplete one; while an education 

 which omits them is really not an education at 

 all, but a more or less useful course of intellectual 

 gymnastics \ 



For what docs the middle-class school put in the place 

 of all these things which arc left out % It substitutes 

 what is usually comprised under the compendious title 

 of the " classics " — that is to say, the languages, the 

 literature, and the history of the ancient Greeks and 

 Romans, and the geography of so much of the world 

 as was known to these two great nations of antiquity. 

 Now, do not expect me to depreciate the earnest and 

 enlightened pursuit of classical learning. I have not 

 the least desire to speak ill of such occupations, nor 

 any sympathy with those who run them down. On 

 the contrary, if my opportunities had lain in that di- 

 rection, there is no investigation into which I could 

 have thrown myself with greater delight than that of 

 antiquity. 



"What science can present greater attractions than 

 philology ? How can a lover of literary excellence fail 

 to rejoice in the ancient masterpieces ? And with what 

 consistency could I, whose business lies so much in the 

 attempt to decipher the past, and to build up intelligible 

 forms out of the scattered fragments of long-extinct 

 beings, fail to take a sympathetic, though an unlearned, 

 interest in the labours of a Niebuhr, a Gibbon, or a 

 Grote ? Classical history is a great section of the pa- 

 laeontology of man ; and I have the same double respect 

 for it as for other kinds of palaeontology — that is to say, 

 a respect for the facts which it establishes as for all 

 facts, and a, still greater respect for it as a preparation 

 for the discovery of a law of progress. 



