ADDRESS. 9 
his evidence before a Parliamentary Committee in 1884, has given a time- 
table for grammar-schools. He demands that out of their forty hours 
for public and private study, ten should be given to modern languages and 
history, eight to arithmetic and mathematics, six to science, and two to 
geography, thus leaving fourteen hours to the dead languages. No time- 
table would, however, be suitable to all schools. The great public schools 
of England will continue to be the gymnasia for the upper classes, and 
should devote much of their time to classical and literary culture. Even 
now they introduce into their curriculum subjects unknown to them 
when the Royal Commission of 1868 reported, though they still accept 
science with timidity. Unfortunately, the other grammar-schools which 
educate the middle classes look to the higher public schools as a type to 
which they should conform, although their functions are so different. 
It is in the interest of the higher public schools that this difference 
should be recognised, so that, while they give an all-round education and 
expand their curriculum by a freer recognition of the value of science as 
an educational power in developing the faculties of the upper classes, 
the schools for the middle classes should adapt themselves to the needs 
of their existence, and not keep up a slavish imitation of schools with a 
different function. 
The stock argument against the introduction of modern subjects into 
grammar-schools is that it is better to teach Latin and Greek thoroughly 
rather than various subjects less completely. But is it true that 
thoroughness in teaching dead languages is the result of an exclusive 
system? In 1868 the Royal Commission stated that even in the few 
great public schools thoroughness was only given to thirty per cent. of 
the scholars, at the sacrifice of seventy per cent. who got little benefit 
from the system. Since then the curriculum has been widened and the 
teaching has improved. I question the soundness of the principle that it 
is better to limit the attention of the pupils mainly to Latin and Greek, 
highly as I value their educational power to a certain order of minds. 
As in biology the bodily development of animals is from the general to 
the special, so is it in the mental development of man. In the school a 
_ boy should be aided to discover the class of knowledge that is best suited 
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for his mental capacities, so that, in the upper forms of the school and in the 
university, knowledge may be specialised in order to cultivate the powers 
of the man to their fullest extent. Shakspeare’s educational formula 
may not be altogether true, but it contains a broad basis of truth— 
No profit grows, where is no pleasure ta’en ;— 
In brief, sir, study what you most affect. 
The comparative failure of the modern side of school education arises 
from constituting it out of the boys who are looked upon as classical 
asses. Milton pointed out that in all schools there are boys to whom the 
dead languages are ‘like thorns and thistles,’ which form a poor nourish- 
ment even for asses. If teachers looked upon these classical asses as 
beings who might receive mental nurture according to their nature, 
