tion ?" "If a master can solve all the difficulties that occur to his pupils, what more can we want ?” To these questions I reply by others. Would you like your Son's morals to be entrusted to a man of deceitful, disingenuous and mean habits, whose mind was always false, though from worldly policy his words were true? Undoubtedly you would say that a man of frank open mind, who would blush at the first thought of insincerity, watch with the greatest jealousy every attempt to split the truth or act a lie, scorning all fear but the fear of Godthat such a man, by his honest bearing and bold demeanour, even though truth and falsehood should never come in question, would exercise a most wholesome influence on the youthful character. Children are wonderful physiognomists. Children have the strongest power to imitate. Children form their standard, not by reason in the common sense of the word, but by a process, I suspect, for which we have no name. To them, what others do is right. How their observation goes on, no human mind can say. They hear all that is said: hence come part of their facts and data for their rule of conduct; but how far they gain other data from those minute actions and habits which the mind of a child is wonderfully formed to notice in older persons, how far looks and gestures as well as express words, how far other indications of character too subtle for thought to analyze, also are the basis of the principles they are forming for their future guidance, no human mind can tell. Again, would you think that the demeanour and

gentlemanlike manner of your child would not be affected by constant intercourse with a master of the unpolished habits of a Lecturer from a Mechanics' Institute? Undoubtedly you would remember that children copy even ridiculously the very style and manner of those about them. No one would dream that the manners, dress, or notions of what is becoming, would be the same in a youth who has been one year at Eton, as in one who has been educated in a manufacturing town. If then it is acknowledged that the morals and the manners of children are formed by minute imitation of those with whom they are brought up, if they adopt also the same tone and modulation of the voice, the same expressions, the same topics, and the prolixity of dwelling on them in some cases, I shall be justified by analogy in my opinion, which I boldly assert, that "the liberal education of a child in its truest sense, depends not so much on the erudition of his master, not so much on the power of storing the mind with sound knowledge, as first and foremost, in a refined taste and nice perception of all that is beautiful in nature, or in nature's copies by the man of letters or of art, in a spirit of enquiry that adopts no conclusion till it has sifted facts, as also in his accuracy, application, and general energy of his character." The Spiritual application of this principle I reserve for a separate chapter, lest it should lose its due effect.

These are qualifications on the part of a master in which I must maintain that all pupils are interested from the youngest to the eldest. Even the

youngest will be insensibly improved by choice expressions and chaste ideas, nor will any fail to profit by the discursive yet accurate habits of a superior mind, nor to be excited by the energy and vigour of its thoughts. As to pupils of ́maturer years, I shall presently make some remarks, that will shew that their interests require that a preference should be given at any cost to the most refined and erudite teachers they can pro

cure.

To apply this to my present argument, those who allow the force of this reasoning must abandon all notions of any other than Classical education, because it is quite certain that in the present state of schools, you will hardly find an instance in which English education is conducted by a person of the qualifications I have described. Let it be remembered, that my position is not that mental discipline cannot be accomplished by any English education we can conceive, but that you may send your son to five hundred schools, without finding such; not that the master of such a school cannot be a man of intellectual refinement, but only that he rarely is. And further, I assert that should all these advantages be combined, the pupil would not learn more English because he learned no Latin and Greek; because, such English subjects as are suited to youth, do not supply sufficient variety either to relieve or to occupy the mind. Also, that this variety cannot well be supplied by modern languages, because an English schoolboy is not to be entrusted to foreign masters; and further, that

French and Italian are not so well worth learning at an early age as Latin and Greek.

This last assertion I am afraid is too much for a postulate or an axiom: the demonstration too is lengthy, but I must patiently undertake it.

Now were I reasoning on the abstract question as to whether society at large is benefited by diffusion of Classical literature, or as to its value to men of leisure, whose only occupation is the improvement of their minds, I should argue that Greek and Latin literature is the direct channel by which all our knowledge of antiquity is conveyed; that this and this alone can inform man of the essential quality of his intellectual and moral nature, by enabling him to observe his fellow men under all varieties and vicissitudes, and thus to discriminate between the real bias and impulse of the human will and affections and the direction received from temporary restraints and local associations. I would dwell on the advantage of not simply reading our finest authors, but seeing the very moulds in which those master minds were formed and fashioned, of recognising a pure stream of classic thought amidst the fullest flow of modern song, of discerning in every page of our noblest writers ancient associations and models suggesting ideas, and determining the very words that shall convey them at the distance of two thousand years. I might expatiate on the lesson of humility which it teaches us, that human intellect should check its pride by seeing the limits of the sphere prescribed it, and that "the

thing that hath been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done, is that which shall be done," that without these Classic annals of the past we should have often said, "See, this is new," not knowing" it hath been of old time which was before us," and that because there would have been “no remembrance of former things," as the Wise Man said.

On such topics I might dwell, but could only hope to gain the assent of those whom no argument were needed to convince. I should still have to answer such a question as the following:"What good will Classics do my Son, that I intend for the army or for the counting-house? for I want him qualified to help himself and not to benefit society at large. If he learns French he may talk to some one, but men do not talk Latin and Greek." These remarks have been often made to me. Indeed many men of more than ordinary intelligence have limited the use of Latin to physicians, allowing that the reputed blunder of triginta for tres pilulas, "thirty pills" instead of "three," and similar inaccuracies in scholarship, were worth avoiding.

In addressing such narrow minds on narrow grounds, I would ask if it is desirable that a man should know as much as possible of his own language? If so, Latin and Greek will give him a more exact knowledge of it than any modern languages. Would you have him reputed a man devoid of the education of a gentleman? No. Then teach Latin and Greek at all events, or it