422 EEPORT— 1891. 



husks of obsolete declensions and the dry straws of grammar. 

 I confess that a sense of shame often comes over me, when 

 yomig souls eager to learn are asking as it were for bread, and 

 I feel that I am giving them but a stone. 



I know that literature is not all that is needed in education, 

 though I maintain it should be the main element because of 

 the riches which it contains, because of its all-powerful in- 

 fluence in teaching the expression of ideas and in forming 

 character. If we drop the burden of the dead languages we 

 shall be free to move ; so long as we keep them we are in 

 danger of breaking our backs with too heavy a load if we add 

 much else. Freed from the dead languages we should have 

 time not only for more literature, but for more science and art ; 

 and we could then hope that these subjects would be taught 

 and learnt iii the right spirit ; that science would be learnt not 

 as a catalogue of tables and classifications, but as the philoso- 

 phic interpretation of the mysteries of the universe and of the 

 physical conditions of life ; and that art would be studied with 

 leisure and love, as being the poetry of form and colour, which 

 presents to us the ideal, the beautiful, and the sublime, where 

 words fail us and the mind is moved through the eye and 

 through the heart. 



Many points have been discussed in this address ; perhaps 

 a brief restatement of my main contention will make it clearer. 

 A truly liberal education is what we want to frame : one which 

 shall give real culture to all who will go through its course, 

 instead of cultivating only a few, as does the present system ; 

 one which shall prove attractive to the majority of our pupils, 

 instead of burdensome and repulsive because it dea,ls mainly 

 with barren knowledge. In such a system, as I have tried to 

 point out. Modern Literature should hold the chief place, 

 though Science and Art should have far more cultivation than 

 they can get at present ; and such a system cannot be formed 

 merely by adding new subjects, one after the other, to the old; 

 we can only escape from confusion on the one side, and stag- 

 nation on the other, by letting go the burden of the dead lan- 

 guages. It is the universities who must lead the reform, and 

 it is to them that we must appeal for help. They are too apt 

 to consider themselves simply as the depositories of the old 

 learning, and that the maintenance of this is their sacred 

 charge. The outside world, however, demands that they 

 should be the centres of light from which the illumination of 

 the age radiates. It is for them to open the way for reform 

 by allowing Modern Literature to serve invariably as a substi- 

 tute for the classics, and by turning out men rich in the know- 

 ledge of modern writings. At present few university men can 

 teach well except on the old lines. Modern Literature will 

 then only need its fair proportion of prizes and scholarships to 



