52 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



one; while an education which omits them is really not 

 an education at all, but a more or less useful course of 

 intellectual gymnastics ? 



For what does the middle-class school put in the place of 

 all these things which are left out? It substitutes what 

 is usually comprised under the compendious title of the 

 "classics" — that is to say, the languages, the literature, and 

 the history of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the 

 geography of so much of the world as was known to these 

 two great nations of antiquity. Now, do not expect me to 

 depreciate the earnest and enlightened pursuit of classical 

 learning. I have not the least desire to speak ill of such oc- 

 cupations, nor any sympathy with them who run them down. 

 On the contrary, if my opportunities had lain in that 

 direction, there is no investigation into which I could have 

 thrown myself with greater delight than that of antiquity. 



What science can present greater attractions than phil- 

 ology ? How can a lover of literary excellence fail to rejoice 

 in the ancient masterpieces? And with what consistency 

 could I, whose business lies so much in the attempt to de- 

 cipher the past, and to build up intelligible forms out of the 

 scattered fragments of long-extinct beings, fail to take a 

 sympathetic, though an unlearned, interest in the labours 

 of a Niebuhr, a Gibbon, or a Grote? Classical history is 

 a great section of the paleontology of man; and I have the 

 same double respect for it as for other kinds of paleontology 

 — that it to say, a respect for the facts which it establishes 

 as for all facts, and a still greater respect for it as a prepa- 

 ration for the discovery of a law of progress. 



But if the classics were taught as they might be taught — 

 if boys and girls were instructed in Greek and Latin, not 

 merely as languages, but as illustrations of philological 

 science; if a vivid picture of life on the shores of the Med- 



