But there is yet another advantage in an extended study of English literature—­I mean the more national tone which it ought to give the thoughts of the rising generation.  Of course to repress the reading of foreign books, to strive after any national exclusiveness, or mere John-Bullism of mind, in an age of railroads and free press, would be simply absurd—­and more, it would be fighting against the will of God revealed in events.  He has put the literary treasures of the Continent into our hands; we must joyfully accept them, and earnestly exhaust them.  This age is craving for what it calls catholicity; for more complete interchange and brotherhood of thought between all the nations of the earth.  This spirit is stirring in the young especially, and I believe that God Himself has inspired it, because I see that He has first revealed the means of gratifying the desire, at that very time in which it has arisen.

But every observant person must be aware that this tendency has produced its evils as well as its good.  There is a general complaint that the minds of young women are becoming un-English; that their foreign reading does not merely supply the deficiencies of their English studies, but too often completely supersedes them; that the whole tone of their thoughts is too often taken from French or German writings; that by some means or other, the standard works of English literature are becoming very much undervalued and neglected by the young people of this day; and that self-will and irregular eclecticism are the natural results.

I must say that I consider the greater part of these evils as the natural consequence of past mis-education; as the just punishment of the old system, which attached the most disproportionate importance to mere acquirements, and those mostly of foreign languages, foreign music, and so forth, while the “well of English undefiled,” and not only that, but English literature, history, patriotism, too often English religion, have been made quite minor considerations.  Therefore so few of the young have any healthy and firm English standard whereby to try and judge foreign thought.  Therefore they fancy, when they meet with anything deep and attractive in foreign works, that because they have no such thoughts put before them in English authors, no such thoughts exist in them.

But happily we may do much towards mending this state of things, by making our pupils thoroughly conversant with the aesthetic treasures of English literature.  From them I firmly believe they may derive sufficient rules whereby to separate in foreign books the true from the false, the necessary from the accidental, the eternal truth from its peculiar national vesture.  Above all, we shall give them a better chance of seeing things from that side from which God intended English women to see them:  for as surely as there is an English view of everything, so surely God intends us to take that view; and He who gave us our English