XIII. 



LIBERAL EDUCATION. 1 



EARLY in the last century Sir William Temple 

 declared that literature is constantly degenerat 

 ing, and that the oldest books are always the 

 best. Not only is Homer the greatest of poets 

 and ^Esop the wittiest of fabulists, but Phalaris 

 was a letter-writer with whom Pascal and Ma 

 dame Se*vign are not fit to be compared. Thus 

 wrote Sir W. Temple, much to his own satisfaction 

 and to the edification of many of his contempora 

 ries. But lapse of time and changes of circum 

 stance bring about signal alterations in the opin 

 ions of men. The other day Dr. J. W. Draper 

 in a book entitled &quot; Civil Policy of America./ and 

 made up chiefly of disconnected statements about 

 physical geography, Arabian chemists, and Jewish 

 physicians told us that &quot; the grand depositories 

 of human knowledge are not the ancient, but the 

 modern, tongues : few, if any, are the facts worth 



1 Essays on a Liberal Education. Edited by Rev. F. W. Farrar, 

 M. A., F. R. S. London: Macmillan & Co. 3867. 



