918 RELATIVE VALUE OF CLASSICAL AND SCIENTIFIC TRAINING. 



natural science, with the drawing and modelling so indispensable to 

 it. Von Pettenkofer deprecates the making of any material increase 

 in the number of hours to be spent in the Gymnasien, on the un- 

 deniable ground that the day is no longer and man no stronger 

 now than were the days and the men of :zooo years ago ; and the 

 space for such additamenta as must be made to the curriculum must 

 be found by bettering the methods and means for communicating 

 instruction, and effecting thus an economy of time. The Bavarian 

 chemist and hygienist does not himself suggest any ways and 

 means whereby this economy may be effected, and presumptuous 

 though it be, we will attempt to supplement this deficiency by 

 saying that such an economy might be effected in England and 

 English schools by applying one or other, or all three, of the 

 following lines of treatment to the classical curriculum, even with- 

 out cutting its Greek adrift. Latin and Greek, to put the boldest 

 suggestion first, might be studied in certain, and those not a few, 

 eases, as literatures and not as philologies ; or, as a second alterna- 

 tive, when some training in philology is to be retained at whatever 

 cost, such training might be made more intelligible, and so less dis- 

 tasteful and wasteful of time, by making the study of it comparative, 

 as recommended by Professor Max Miiller in his evidence before the 

 Commission just referred to; or thirdly, synthetical scholarship, in 

 the way of verse-making, should be considered as a luxury and 

 refinement to be reserved for the delectation and cultivation of 

 those few who, in any age, show any aptitude for it, and synthetical 

 scholarship in the way even of writing Latin prose might, due 

 precautions having been taken, be dispensed with in the cases of 

 youths who, whilst wholly incapable in that, had shown some 

 capacity in some other line. Our ' due precautions ' should consist 

 in the multiplying the practice of synthetical scholarship in the 

 way of translation from Latin into English. We know the horror 

 which these suggestions will excite in the breasts of schoolmasters 

 of the type represented by the gentleman who told the Com- 

 missioners already referred to, that if he were set to teach history 

 in set lessons, he ' should not know how to do it.' But we believe 

 that by the adoption of any one of the three lines of action just 

 glanced at, space and time might be found for the introduction of 

 the natural sciences into the curriculum of any public school, and 

 that at once without injury to the dignity of either the one or the 



