PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 951 



all tliat tlic\y can give to them afterwards. That is to say, in the 

 eai'lier years the study is comparatively barren of results; it fails 

 to impart an amount of knowledge bearing any fair proportion to 

 the amount of time expended on it. And this fact is sufficient 

 proof in itself that the disciplinary value of the study, at that 

 period of tJic education, cannot *be what has been claimed for it. 



I shall l)e very much misunderstood if I am supposed, because 

 of what I liave said, to undervalue classical learning. I shall be 

 misunderstood if I am supposed to desire to exclude the classics 

 from our course of liberal education. No one places a higher esti- 

 mate upon the ancient learning than I do.* No one feels more 

 sensibly than I thS force of all the arguments which have been 

 urged in its favor. The iniluence wliich the perusal of the many 

 models of literary excellence which it furnishes upon the forma- 

 tion of a correct taste in letters, thq pleasure which the perusal 

 of such affords to those who are able to read them freely in their 

 original tongues, the importance of an acquaintance with the 

 ancient languages to the correct understanding and scholarly use 

 of our OAvn, the many modes in which the history of ancient polity 

 and ancient thought has affected the course of events in more 

 recent times, in the political no less than in the intellectual world — 

 these considerations, and others like them, will ever secure for the 

 ancient learning a large space in any judicious system' of liberal 

 mental culture. Nor do I in the least question that the discipli- 

 nary value of these studies, considered as furnishing a wholesome 

 mental gymnastics, is, when introduced at the right time, and in 

 the right place, all that has been claimed for them. What I 

 maintain is, that the right time is not, as the prevailing practice 



*It seems worth while to insist a little upon this point. There is a great deal that is 

 sensible and well worth attention uttered by the class of educational controversialists who 

 take the greatest pains to display their contempt of classical learning; but this fails to 

 impress their opponents, because their heterodoxy upon the point esteemed most vitally 

 important discredits them with these upon every other. The writer is not to be confounded 

 with such. He has labored as earnestly as any man in vindication of the claims of classi- 

 cal learning to the prominent place which it holds in our systeji of highef edueatian — a 

 place which he hopes to see it still maintain. But there is certainly danger, and a daily 

 increasing danger, that it will lose this pre-eminence ; and this appears to the writer to b« 

 inevitable, unless some such reform as is recommended above shall be introduced into the 

 earlier periods of the educational course. So far, therefore, is the writer in what he has 

 said from meditating any assault upon the classics, that he honestly believes that the pre- 

 valence of tho views here advocated, and the practical consequences which would follow, 

 would do more than anything else to fortify them against assault, and to quiet the grow- 

 ing disposition to assail them. This belief may be a mistaken one; but however that may 

 be, its existence is an evidence that the foregoing remarks and Reasonings are dictated by 

 a friendly, and not by a hostile spirit. 



