A Liberal Education 65 



boys upon easy fossils, and bring out all their powers 

 of memory and all their ingenuity in the application 

 of my osteo-grammatical rules to the interpretation, or 

 construing, of those fragments. To those who had reached 

 the higher classes, I might supply odd bones to be built 5 

 up into animals, giving great honor and reward to him 

 who succeeded in fabricating monsters most entirely in 

 accordance with the rules. That would answer to verse- 

 making and essay-writing in the dead languages. 



To be sure, if a great comparative anatomist were to 10 

 look at these fabrications he might shake his head or 

 laugh. But what then? Would such a catastrophe 

 destroy the parallel? What think you would Cicero, or 

 Horace, say to the production of the best sixth form 

 going? And would not Terence stop his ears and run 15 

 out if he could be present at an English performance of 

 his own plays? Would Hamlet, in the mouths of a set 

 of French actors, who should insist on pronouncing Eng- 

 lish after the fashion of their own tongue, be more 

 hideously ridiculous? 20 



But it will be said that I am forgetting the beauty, and 

 the human interest, which appertain to classical studies. 

 To this I reply that it is only a very strong man who 

 can appreciate the charms of a landscape, as he is toiling 

 up a steep hill, along a bad road. What with short- 25 

 windedness, stones, ruts, and a pervading sense of the 

 wisdom of rest and be thankful, most of us have little 

 enough sense of the beautiful under these circumstances. 

 The ordinary schoolboy is precisely in this case. He finds 

 Parnassus uncommonly steep, and there is no chance of 30 

 his having much time or inclination to look about him till 

 he gets to the top. And nine times out of ten he does not 

 get to the top. 



But if this be a fair picture of the results of classical 



