100 A LIBERAL EDUCATION; IV 



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-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 circum- 

 stances. The ordinary schoolboy is precisely in 

 this case. He finds Parnassus uncommonly steep, 

 and there is no chance of 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 classi- 

 cal teaching at its best and I gather from those who 

 have authority to speak on such matters that it is so 

 what is to be said of classical teaching at its worst, 

 or in other words, of the classics of our ordinary 

 middle-class schools ? l I will tell you. It means 

 getting up endless forms and rules by heart. It 

 means turning Latin and Greek into English, for 

 the mere sake of being able to do it, and without 

 the smallest regard to the worth, or worthlessness, 

 of the author read. It means the learning of in- 

 numerable, not always decent, fables in such a 

 shape that the meaning they once had is dried up 

 into utter trash ; and the only impression left upon 

 a boy's mind is, that the people who believed such 



1 For a justification of what is here said about these schools, 

 Beo that valuable book, Essays on a Liberal Education t passim. 



