LIBERAL EDUCATION. n 



scholars of the Revival, without Shakespeare or Milton, had to master 

 Homer and iEschylus, or go without poetry altogether. With no 

 wealth of modern literature, such as lies all round us, they were per- 

 force classical students in order to be scholars. We cannot put back 

 the wheels of time, and reproduce their circumstances. The mind of 

 the generation refuses to be bound within antiquated limits : it will 

 seek the new world of thought which lies before it. Try, therefore, 

 to make classical scholars now of all liberally-educated boys, and 

 you make nine-tenths of them into dunces or pedants. How many 

 of the regiments of young men of this generation who have gone 

 through, as it is well called, our older colleges, are real classical 

 scholars ? But the liberally-educated men of the times of the revival 

 of learning were real classical scholars. 



The Rev. Mark Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, gives the 

 following account of the present state of classical study even at Ox- 

 ford : " We must not close our eyes to the fact that the honor-stu- 

 dents " (that is to say, the students who have any expectation of win- 

 ning the pecuniary prizes) " are the only students who are undergoing 

 any educational process which it can be considered as the function 

 of a university either to impart or to exact; the only students who 

 are at all within the scope of the scientific apparatus and arrangements 

 of an academical body. This class of students cannot be estimated 

 at more than thirty per cent, of the whole number frequenting the 

 university. The remaining seventy per cent, not only furnish from 

 among them all the idleness and extravagance which are become a 

 byword throughout the country, but cannot be considered to be even 

 nominally pursuing any course of university studies at all." * 



If the treasurer of a great manufacturing corporation were to re- 

 port to his stockholders that, of all the raw material furnished, their 

 machinery was capable of making only thirty per cent, into cloth, and 

 that of a very peculiar and unsalable pattern ; that the remaining sev- 

 enty per cent, was not only not manufactured into any kind of cloth, 

 but was much of it disseminated over the country, in the shape of 

 deadly, poisonous rags, we should think there was something wrong 

 in the machinery of that mill. 



Thus it is that, classical education having dwindled into a shadow, 2 



1 " Suggestions on Academical Organization," p. 230. 



2 " I think it incontestably true," says Prof. Sidgwick, " that for the last fifty years 

 our classical studies (with much to demand our undivided praise) have been too critical 

 and formal ; and that we have sometimes been taught, while straining after an accu- 

 racy beyond our reach, to value the husk more than the fruit of ancient learning. 

 .... This, at least, is true, that he who forgets that language is but the sign and vehi- 

 cle of thought, and while studying the word knows little of the sentiment-— who learns 

 the measure, the garb and fashion of ancient song without looking to its living soul or 

 feeling its inspiration, is not one jot better than a traveler in a classic land who sees its 

 crumbling temples, and numbers, with arithmetical precision, their steps and pillars, but 

 thinks not of their beauty, their design, or the living sculptures on their walls, or who 



