158 ON SCIENCE AND ART 



varied and wonderful kind as we possess, and, what is 

 still more important and still more neglected, the habit 

 of using that language with precision, with force, and 

 with art. I fancy we are almost the only nation in the 

 world who seem to think that composition comes by 

 nature. The French attend to their own language, the 

 Germans study theirs; but Englishmen do not seem to 

 think it is worth their while. Nor would I fail to in- 

 clude, in the course of study I am sketching, transla- 

 tions of all the best works of antiquity, or of the modern 

 world. It is a very desirable thing to read Homer in 

 Greek; but if you don't happen to know Greek, the 

 next best thing we can do is to read as good a transla- 

 tion of it as we have recently been furnished with in 

 prose. You won't get all you would get from the 

 original, but you may get a great deal; and to refuse 

 to know this great deal because you cannot get all, 

 seems to be as sensible as for a hungry man to refuse 

 bread because he cannot get partridge. Finally, I would 

 add instruction in either music or painting, or, if the 

 child should be so unhappy, as sometimes happens, as 

 to have no faculty for either of those, and no possibility 

 of doing anything in any artistic sense with them, then 

 I would see what could be done with literature alone; 

 but I would provide, in the fullest sense, for the develop- 

 ment of the aesthetic side of the mind. In my judgment, 

 those are all the essentials of education for an English 

 child. With that outfit, such as it might be made in the 

 time given to education which is within the reach of 

 nine-tenths of the population with that outfit, an 

 Englishman, within the limits of English life, is fitted 

 to go anywhere, to occupy the highest positions, to fill 

 the highest offices of the State, and to become distin- 

 guished in practical pursuits, in science* or in art. For, 

 if he have the opportunity to learn all those things, and 



