CLASSICAL STUDIES IN ENGLAND 69 



going to do it; in the more limited sphere of 

 education, it was sometimes comparative phi- 

 lology, and more often science, that held the 

 key to all mental elevation. And in the six- 

 ties thoughtful men imagined that the world 

 was to be regenerated — in the true spirit of 

 the sadly iconoclastic liberalism of those days 

 — by getting rid of a classical education. At 

 least, that was the way these early contro- 

 versialists put it, in their first fine, careless 

 rapture. The time for half measures and com- 

 promises was not yet. Probably they felt that 

 the best way to inaugurate reform was to at- 

 tack with more vehemence than was really 

 right and necessary; to strike a little harder 

 than they need in order that they might have 

 a stronger position in the day of negotiation. 

 What they really meant to do, and what the 

 fairest of their critics read between the lines, 

 was not to expel but to equalize; to assert the 

 right, too much neglected at that time, of 

 other subjects; to give modern things, as well 

 as Latin and Greek, their place in the sun. 



Well, it is needless to point out that that 

 place in the sun has been very amply con- 



