52 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [in. 



as it were, and, except a modicum of physical science, 

 we are not able to offer much more than is to be found 

 in an ordinary school. 



Moral and social science — one of the greatest and 

 most fruitful of our future classes, I hope — at present 

 lacks only one thing in our programme, and that is a 

 teacher. A considerable want, no doubt; but it must 

 be recollected that it is much better to want a teacher 

 than to want the desire to learn. 



Further, we need what, for want of a better name, 

 I must call Physical Geography. What I mean is that 

 which the Germans call " Erdkunde" It is a descrip- 

 tion of the earth, of its place and relation to other 

 bodies ; of its general structure, and of its great features 

 — winds, tides, mountains, plains ; of the chief forms 

 of the vegetable and animal worlds, of the varieties 

 of man. It is the peg upon which the greatest quantity 

 of useful and entertaining scientific information can be 

 suspended. 



Literature is not upon the College programme ; but 

 I hope some day to see it there. For literature is 

 the greatest of all sources of refined pleasure, and one 

 of the great uses of a liberal education is to enable 

 us to enjoy that pleasure. There is scope enough for 

 the purposes of liberal education in the study of the 

 rich treasures of our own language alone. All that 

 is needed is direction, and the cultivation of a refined 

 taste by attention to sound criticism. But there is 

 no reason why French and German should not be 

 mastered sufficiently to read what is worth reading 

 in those languages, with pleasure an,d with profit. 



And finally, by -and -by, we must have History; 

 treated not as a succession of battles and dynasties ; 

 not as a series of biographies ; not as evidence that 

 Providence has always been on the side of either Whigs 



