Heport on a Course of Liberal Education. 3o J 



HV instances after their graduating, find it practically con- 

 venient to set up as instructors in these worthless languages. 

 With {ew^ or rather no qualifications, for the office they 

 would assume, the cause of instruction must necessarily 

 suffer under their management. The college, if ancient 

 learning is to be retained at all as a part of its course, as 

 it must rely on its graduates to instruct in the preparatory 

 schools, would be the first sufferer from this improved sys- 

 tem ; and thus be made to minister to its own destruction. 



It is besides a matter of some curiosity to know, what is 

 intended, by the final union of students who take these dif- 

 ferent paths. That they would find, at the end of their 

 course, that they had all acquired the same education, is 

 certainly not the meaning; as this contradicts the original 

 hypothesis. The only union manifest is this, that they 

 would be all admitted to a degree. They would unite in re- 

 ceiving their diplomas. If to obtain the honors of college, 

 as they are called, was the great object of an education, this 

 improvement in the old collegiate course might be consider- 

 ed as real. But if the substance and not the shadow, if the 

 thing signified and not the sign only are aimed at, — the ques- 

 tion is still open for consideration, — whether these different 

 roads would not lead those who travel them, to entirely dif- 

 ferent regions. 



Manifest, however, as is the fallacy of substituting a diplo- 

 ma for an education, this scheme might not improbably be 

 approved of by a portion of the community ; and a tempora- 

 ry popularity follow the change. Nor is there reason to be- 

 lieve, that this is the limit of improvements on the old modes 

 of literary travelling. 



% i!' ■» % * 



Such, then, being the value of ancient literature, both as 

 respects the general estimation in which it is held in the lite- 

 rary world, and its intrinsic merits, — if the college should 

 confer degrees upon students for their attainments in mod- 

 ern literature only, it would be to declare that to be a liberal 

 education, which the world will not acknowledge to deserve 

 the name ; — and which those who shall receive degrees in 

 this way, will soon find, is not what it is called. A liberal 

 education, whatever course the college should adopt, would 

 without doubt continue to be, what it long has been. An- 

 cient literature is too deeply inwrought into the whole system 

 of the modern literature of Europe to be so easily laid aside. 



