It is unnecessary for me to say that all this is only from the unsympathetic and worldly side.  I should think myself a criminal if I said anything to chill the enthusiasm of the young scholar, or to dash with any skepticism his longing and his hope.  He has chosen the highest.  His beautiful faith and his aspiration are the light of life.  Without his fresh enthusiasm and his gallant devotion to learning, to art, to culture, the world would be dreary enough.  Through him comes the ever-springing inspiration in affairs.  Baffled at every turn and driven defeated from a hundred fields, he carries victory in himself.  He belongs to a great and immortal army.  Let him not be discouraged at his apparent little influence, even though every sally of every young life may seem like a forlorn hope.  No man can see the whole of the battle.  It must needs be that regiment after regiment, trained, accomplished, gay, and high with hope, shall be sent into the field, marching on, into the smoke, into the fire, and be swept away.  The battle swallows them, one after the other, and the foe is yet unyielding, and the ever-remorseless trumpet calls for more and more.  But not in vain, for some day, and every day, along the line, there is a cry, “They fly! they fly!” and the whole army advances, and the flag is planted on an ancient fortress where it never waved before.  And, even if you never see this, better than inglorious camp-following is it to go in with the wasting regiment; to carry the colors up the slope of the enemy’s works, though the next moment you fall and find a grave at the foot of the glacis.

What are the relations of culture to common life, of the scholar to the day-laborer?  What is the value of this vast accumulation of higher learning, what is its point of contact with the mass of humanity, that toils and eats and sleeps and reproduces itself and dies, generation after generation, in an unvarying round, on an unvarying level?  We have had discussed lately the relation of culture to religion.  Mr. Froude, with a singular, reactionary ingenuity, has sought to prove that the progress of the century, so-called, with all its material alleviations, has done little in regard to a happy life, to the pleasure of existence, for the average individual Englishman.  Into neither of these inquiries do I purpose to enter; but we may not unprofitably turn our attention to a subject closely connected with both of them.

It has not escaped your attention that there are indications everywhere of what may be called a ground-swell.  There is not simply an inquiry as to the value of classic culture, a certain jealousy of the schools where it is obtained, a rough popular contempt for the graces of learning, a failure to see any connection between the first aorist and the rolling of steel rails, but there is arising an angry protest against the conditions of a life which make one free of the serene heights of thought and give him range of all