LORD HOUGHTON ON EDUCATION 183 



great as they were in their day, have now given place 

 to greater. It is only fair to say that some of the 

 most severe critics of the social effects of classical 

 education have been drawn from the ranks of scholars 

 and men of letters. I can recommend to your 

 perusal the Essays on a Liberal Education, edited 

 by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, and published by 

 Macmillan and Co. in 1867. Lord Houghton, the 

 father of a recent Minister of Education, the Marquis 

 of Crewe, in the concluding essay is the author of one 

 of the most notable of these indictments, to which it 

 would be possible to add little even to-day. Dis- 

 cussing the product of this education he says, for 

 example : ' To the social phenomenon of all this 

 elaborate study, which cannot be applied to any 

 practical purpose, must be added this other peculiarity 

 of the system, that, when once the ordinary British 

 youth has bidden farewell to school and college, any 

 attempt to prosecute, or even keep up, his classical 

 attainments and interests, would make him an object 

 of curiosity, if not of censure and alarm, to all who 

 might be solicitous for his future welfare." He 

 touches on the snobbery of the assumed universality 

 of classical culture on the one hand and the artificial 

 barrier which " makes it seem something incongruous 

 and offensive in any man's assuming to know or care 

 about classic objects or classic letters without having 

 been taught to construe Greek and Latin," though 

 no one needs to have a first-hand acquaintance with 

 Italian to enjoy Dante, or with Oriental languages 

 to appreciate the Arabian Nights or Sanskrit 

 philosophy. And he remarks : 



'There are too many flagrant examples in the 

 history of the human mind of the persistent adher- 

 ence, not only of public opinion and private judgment, 

 but of the religious conscience and the moral sense, 

 to forms and ceremonies after the belief on which 



