AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS 101 



study of a language is an intellectual discipline of the 

 highest kind. If I except discussions on the compara- 

 tive merits of Popery and Protestantism, English gram- 

 mar was the most important discipline of my boyhood. 

 The piercing through the involved and inverted sen- 

 tences of * ' Paradise Lost' ' ; the linking of the verb to its 

 often distant nominative, of the relative to its distant an- 

 tecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb, 

 of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it gov- 

 erned, the study of variations in mood and tense, the 

 transpositions often necessary to bring out the true gram- 

 matical structure of a sentence all this was to my young 

 mind a discipline of the highest value, and a source of 

 unflagging delight. How I rejoiced when I found a great 

 author tripping, and was fairly able to pin him to a cor- 

 ner from which there was no escape! As I speak, some 

 of the sentences which exercised me when a boy rise to 

 my recollection. For instance, "He that hath ears to 

 hear, let him hear"; where the "He" is left, as it were, 

 floating in mid- air without any verb to support it. I 

 speak thus of English because it was of real value to me. 

 I do not speak of other languages because their educa- 

 tional value for me was almost insensible. But knowing 

 the value of English so well, I should be the last to 

 deny, or even to doubt, the high discipline involved in 

 the proper study of Latin and Greek. 



That study, moreover, has other merits and recom- 

 mendations. It is, as I have said, organized and sys- 

 tematized by long- continued use. It is an instrument 

 wielded by some of our best intellects in the education of 

 youth; and it can point to results in the achievements 

 of our foremost men. What, then, has science to offer 



