AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS. 411 



through the education of the present time. The object of 

 that education is, or ought to be, to provide wise exercise 

 for his capacities, wise direction for his tendencies, and 

 through this exercise and this direction to furnish his 

 mind with such knowledge as may contribute to the use- 

 fulness, the beauty, and the nobleness of his life. 



How is this discipline to be secured, this knowledge 

 imparted? Two rival methods now solicit attention the 

 one organized and equipped, the labor of centuries having 

 been expended in bringing it to its present state of per- 

 fection; the other, more or less chaotic, but becoming daily 

 less so, and giving signs of enormous power, both as a 

 source of knowledge and as a means of discipline. These 

 two methods are the classical and the scientific method. I 

 wish they were not rivals; it is only bigotry and short- 

 sightedness that make them so; for assuredly it is possible 

 to give both of them fair play. Though hardly authorized 

 to express an opinion upon the subject, I nevertheless hold 

 the opinion that the proper study of a language is an 

 intellectual discipline of the highest kind. If I except 

 discussions on 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 English because it was of real value to me. 

 1 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. 



