A.N ADDRESS TO STUDENTS. 93 



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 #gent to the object of 

 the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or 



I pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in 



i 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. I 

 do not speak of other languages because their educa- 

 tional value for me was almost insensible. But know- 

 ing 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 

 systematised 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 

 hav3 already quoted. Sp-rdk~rg of the world and all 

 that therein is, of the sky and the stars around it, the 



