him conjugate and decline for life and death; and so teaching him to estimate his progress in real wisdom as he can scan the verses of the Greek tragedians.”  So said Sydney Smith, and with perfect truth.  “The grand, old, fortifying, classical curriculum” was enforced on the boy whose whole heart was in the engineer’s shed, while his friend, to whom literature was a passion, was constrained to simulate an interest in the blue lights and bad smells of a chemical lecture.  “Let it be granted” (as the odious Euclid, now happily dethroned, used to say) that there is a certain amount that all alike must learn but this amount will prove, when scrutinized, to be very small.  I suppose we must all learn to read and write, and it is useful to be able to do a sum in simple addition; though very eminent people have often written very illegible hands, and Dean Stanley—­one of the most accomplished men of his day—­could never be persuaded that eighteen pence was not the equivalent of 1s. 8d.  Zealots for various “knowledges” (to use the curious plural sanctioned by Matthew Arnold) will urge the indispensability of their respective hobbies.  One will say let everybody learn that the earth is round; another, that James I. was not the son of Queen Elizabeth.  But let us leave, these pribbles and prabbles.  Let every boy be coerced into learning what is absolutely necessary for the daily work of life; but let him, at a very early age, have his powers concentrated on the subject which really interests him.

One of the highest gifts which a teacher can possess is the power of “discerning the spirits”—­of discovering what a boy’s mind really is; what it is made of; what can be made of it.  This power is a natural gift, and can by no means be acquired.  Many teachers entirely lack it; but those who possess it are among the most valuable servants of the State.  This power may be brought to bear on every boy when he is, say, from fourteen to sixteen years old—­perhaps in some cases even earlier; and, when once the teacher has made the all-important discovery, then let everything be done to stimulate, and at the same time to discipline, the boy’s natural inclination, his inborn aptitude.  Fifty years ago, every boy at every Public School, though he might be as unpoetical as Blackstone who wrote the Commentaries, or Bradshaw who compiled the Railway Guide, was forced to produce a weekly tale of Latin and Greek verses which would have made Horace laugh and Sophocles cry.  The Rev. Esau Hittall’s “Longs and Shorts about the Calydonian Boar,” commemorated in Friendship’s Garland, may stand for a sample of the absurdities which I have in mind; and the supporters of this amazing abuse assured the world that Greek and Latin versification was an essential element of a liberal education.  It took a good many generations to deliver England from this absurdity, and there are others like unto it which still hold their own in the scholastic world.  To sweep these away should be the first object of the educational reformer; and, when that preliminary step has been taken, the State will be able to say to every boy who is not mentally deficient:  “This, or this, is the path which Nature intended you to tread.  Follow it with all your heart.  We will back you, and help you, and applaud you, and will not forsake you till the goal is won.”