A Liberal Education 63 



many a time eat your bread in sorrow and in bitterness, 

 and you shall not have learned to take refuge in the 

 great source of pleasure without alloy, the serene resting- . 

 place for worn human nature, the world of art." 



Said I not rightly that we are a wonderful people? 5 

 I am quite prepared to allow, that education entirely de- 

 voted to these omitted subjects might not be a completely 

 liberal education. But is an education which ignores 

 them all, a liberal education? Nay, is it too much to 

 say that the education which should embrace these sub- 10 

 jects and no others, would be a real education, though 

 an incomplete one; while an education which omits them 

 is really not an education at all, but a more or less useful 

 course of intellectual gymnastics? 



For what does the middle-class school put in the place 15 

 of all these things which are left out? It substitutes 

 what is usually comprised under the compendious title 

 of the "classics" that is to say, the languages, the 

 literature, and the history of the ancient Greeks and 

 Romans, and the geography of so much of the world 20 

 as was known to these two great nations of antiquity. 

 Now, do not expect me to depreciate the earnest and 

 enlightened pursuit of classical learning. I have not 

 the least idea to speak ill of such occupations, nor any 

 sympathy with those who run them down. On the 25 

 contrary, if my opportunities had lain in that direction, 

 there is no investigation into which I could have thrown 

 myself with greater delight than that of antiquity. 



What science can present greater attractions than 

 philology? How can a lover of literary excellence fail 30 

 to rejoice in the ancient masterpieces? And with what 

 consistency could I, whose business lies so much in the 

 attempt to decipher the past, and to build up intelligible 



