is
still more important and still more neglected, the habit of using that
language with precision, with force, and with art. I fancy we are almost
the only nation in the world who seem to think that composition comes
by nature. The French attend to their own language, the Germans study
theirs; but Englishmen do not seem to think it is worth their while.
Nor would I fail to include, in the course of study I am sketching,
translations of all the best works of antiquity, or of the modern world.
It is a very desirable thing to read Homer in Greek; but if you don't
happen to know Greek, the next best thing we can do is to read as good a
translation of it as we have recently been furnished with in prose.[83]
You won't get all you would get from the original, but you may get a
great deal; and to refuse to know this great deal because you cannot get
all, seems to be as sensible as for a hungry man to refuse bread because
he cannot get partridge. Finally, I would add instruction in either
music or painting, or, if the child should be so unhappy, as sometimes
happens, as to have no faculty for either of those, and no possibility
of doing anything in any artistic sense with them, then I would see what
could be done with literature alone; but I would provide, in the fullest
sense, for the development of the aesthetic side of the mind. In my
judgment, those are all the essentials of education for an English
child. With that outfit, such as it might be made in the time given
to education which is within the reach of nine-tenths of the
population--with that outfit, an Englishman, within the limits of
English life, is fitted to go anywhere, to occupy the highest positions,
to fill the highest offices of the State, and to become distinguished
in practical pursuits, in science, or in art. For, if he have the
opportunity to learn all those things, and have his mind disciplined
in the various directions the teaching of those topics would have
necessitated, then, assuredly, he will be able to pick up, on his road
through life, all the rest of the intellectual baggage he wants.

If the educational time at our disposition were sufficient, there
are one or two things I would add to those I have just now called the
essentials; and perhaps you will be surprised to hear, though I hope you
will not, that I should add, not more science, but one, or, if possible,
two languages. The knowledge of some other language than one's own is,
in fact, of sin