XIII. 



LIBEKAL EDUCATION. 1 



EARLY in the last century Sir William Temple 

 declared that literature is constantly degenerat- 

 ing, and that the oldest books are always the 

 best. Not only is Homer the greatest of poets 

 and JEsop the wittiest of fabulists, but Phalaris 

 was a letter- writer with whom Pascal and Ma- 

 dame Sdvigne are not fit to be compared. Thus 

 wrote Sir W. Temple, much to his own satisfaction 

 and to the edification of many of his contempora- 

 ries. But lapse of time and changes of circum- 

 stance bring about signal alterations in the opin- 

 ions of men. The other day Dr. J. W. Draper 

 in a book entitled " Civil Policy of America," and 

 made up chiefly of disconnected statements about 

 physical geography, Arabian chemists, and Jewish 

 physicians told us that " the grand depositories 

 of human knowledge are not the ancient, but the 

 modern, tongues : few, if any, are the facts worth 



1 Essays on a Liberal Education. Edited by Rev. F. W. Farrar, 

 M. A., F. R. S. London : Macmillan & Co. 1867. 



