But it will be said that I am forgetting the beauty, and the human interest, which appertain to classical studies.  To this I reply that it is only a very strong man who can appreciate the charms of a landscape, as he is toiling up a steep hill, along a bad road.  What with short-windedness, stones, ruts, and a pervading sense of the wisdom of rest and be thankful, most of us have little enough sense of the beautiful under these circumstances.  The ordinary school-boy is precisely in this case.  He finds Parnassus uncommonly steep, and there is no chance of his having much time or inclination to look about him till he gets to the top.  And nine times out of ten he does not get to the top.

But if this be a fair picture of the results of classical teaching at its best—­and I gather from those who have authority to speak on such matters that it is so—­what is to be said of classical teaching at its worst, or in other words, of the classics of our ordinary middle-class schools[2]?  I will tell you.  It means getting up endless forms and rules by heart.  It means turning Latin and Greek into English, for the mere sake of being able to do it, and without the smallest regard to the worth, or worthlessness, of the author read.  It means the learning of innumerable, not always decent, fables in such a shape that the meaning they once had is dried up into utter trash; and the only impression left upon a boy’s mind is, that the people who believed such things must have been the greatest idiots the world ever saw.  And it means, finally, that after a dozen years spent at this kind of work, the sufferer shall be incompetent to interpret a passage in an author he has not already got up; that he shall loathe the sight of a Greek or Latin book; and that he shall never open, or think of, a classical writer again, until, wonderful to relate, he insists upon submitting his sons to the same process.

These be your gods, O Israel!  For the sake of this net result (and respectability) the British father denies his children all the knowledge they might turn to account in life, not merely for the achievement of vulgar success, but for guidance in the great crises of human existence.  This is the stone he offers to those whom he is bound by the strongest and tenderest ties to feed with bread.

If primary and secondary education are in this unsatisfactory state, what is to be said to the universities?  This is an awful subject, and one I almost fear to touch with my unhallowed hands; but I can tell you what those say who have authority to speak.

The Rector of Lincoln College, in his lately published, valuable “Suggestions for Academical Organization with especial reference to Oxford,” tells us (p. 127):—­

“The colleges were, in their origin, endowments, not for the elements of a general liberal education, but for the prolonged study of special and professional faculties by men of riper age.  The universities embraced both these objects.  The colleges, while they incidentally aided in elementary education, were specially devoted to the highest learning....