AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS. 93 



the comparative merits of Popery and Protestantism, 

 English grammar was the most important discipline of 

 my boyhood. The piercing through the involved and 

 inverted sentences of ' Paradise Lost'; the linking of 

 the verb to its often distant nominative, of the relative 

 to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of 

 the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or 

 pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in 

 mood and tense, the transpositions often necessary to 

 bring out the true grammatical 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 corner 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 Eng- 

 lish because it was of real value to me. I do not 

 speak of other languages because their educational 

 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, organised and sys- 

 tematised by long-continued use. It is an instru- 

 ment 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 which is in the least degree likely to 

 compete with such a system? I cannot better reply 

 than by recurring to the grand old story from which I 

 have already quoted. Speaking of the world and all 



