A LIBERAL EDUCATION 45 



head masters out of the field in all these excellences. Next, 

 I could exercise my boys upon easy fossils, and bring out all 

 their powers of memory and all their ingenuity in the appli- 

 cation of my osteogrammatical rules to the interpretation, or 

 construing, of those fragments. To those who had reached 5 

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

 into animals, giving great honor and reward to him who suc- 

 ceeded in fabricating monsters most entirely in accordance 

 with the rules. That would answer to verse-making and 

 essay- writing in the dead languages. 10 



To be sure, if a great comparative anatomist were to 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 produc- 

 tion of the best sixth form going? And would not Terence 15 

 stop his ears and run 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 pro- 

 nouncing English 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 appre- 

 ciate the charms of a landscape, as he is toiling up a steep hill, 

 along a bad road. What with short-windedness, stones, ruts, 25 

 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 his having much time or inclination to 30 

 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 teach- 

 ing at its best and I gather from those who have authority 



