534 Report on a, Course of Liberal Education. 



cidetl advantage. If the elements of modern languages arc 

 acquired by our students in connection with the estabhshed 

 collegiate course, and abundant facilities for this purpose, 

 have for a long time, been aft'orded, further acquisitions will 

 be easily made, where circumstances render them important 

 and useful. From tiie graduates of this college, who have 

 visited Europe, complaints have sometimes been heard, that 

 liieir classical attainments were too small for the literature 

 of the old u'orld ; but none are recollected to have express- 

 ed regret, that they had cultivated ancient learning while 

 here, however much time they might have devoted to this 

 subject. On the contrary, those who have excelled in clas- 

 sical literature, and have likewise acquired a competent 

 knowledge of some one modern European language besides 

 the English, have found themselves the best qualified to 

 tnake a full use of their new advantages. Deficiencies in 

 modern literature are easily and rapidly supplied, where the 

 mind has had a proper previous discipline ; deficiencies in 

 ancient literature are supplied tardily, and in most instances, 

 imperfectly. 



A sort of middle course has, indeed, been proposed by 

 some, by which students for admission to college are requir- 

 ed to have some elementary knowledge of Latin and Greek ; 

 bat after they are once admitted, the ancient languages are 

 to be thrown aside, and modern literature alone attended to. 

 Or students, on their admission to college, are to have their 

 option, whether to pursue this new course, or the one long 

 established. Both parties start in this case, it is said, from 

 the same point; and like travellers to the capital of the Un- 

 ion, take different roads, but at last, that is, when they grad- 

 uate, all come together again, before their final separation to 

 the various occupations of life. 



But this project is liable to the objection, that students who 

 should discontmue the study of Latin and Greek on their ad- 

 mission to college, would know just enough of these languages 

 to undervalue and hate them. These would be the persons to 

 proclaim on every side the worthlessness of ancient litera- 

 ture ; that they had learned the Latin and Greek languages, 

 and had derived no benefit from them ; that they had even 

 forgotten all they ever knew. All which, with the exception 

 of their over estimate of their former knowledge, would be, 

 as respects themselves, the exact truth. Besides, these per- 

 sons, thus educated for the purposes of real life, would in ma- 



