rack; instead of
leaving the limbs supple and well knit, they are strained, disjointed,
and feeble. Even the flower of our classical system are too often left
without any original power of expression; critical, fastidious minds,
admiring erudition, preferring the elucidation of second-rate authors
to the study of the best. A man who reads Virgil for pleasure is a
better result of a system of education than one who re-edits Tibullus.
Instead of having original thoughts, and a style of their own to
express them in, these high classicists are left with a profound
knowledge of the style and usage of ancient authors, a thing not to be
undervalued as a step in a progress, but still essentially an anteroom
of the mind.

The further task that lies before us educators, when we have trained a
mind to be useful, consists in the awakening, in whatever regions may
be possible, of the soul. By this I do not mean the ethical soul, but
the spirit of fine perception of beauty, of generous admiration for
what is noble and true and high. And here I am sure that we fail, and
fail miserably. For one thing, these great classicists make the mistake
of thinking that only through literature, and, what is more, the
austere literature of Greece and Rome, can this sense be developed. I
myself have a deep admiration for Greek literature. I think it one of
the brightest flowers of the human spirit, and I think it well that any
boy with a real literary sense should be brought into contact with it.
I do not think highly of Latin literature. There are very few writers
of the first rank. Virgil is, of course, one; and Horace is a splendid
craftsman, but not a high master of literature. There is hardly any
prose in Latin fit for boys to read. Cicero is diffuse, and often
affords little more than small-talk on abstract topics; Tacitus a
brilliant but affected prosateur, Caesar a dull and uninspiring author.
But to many boys the path to literary appreciation cannot lie through
Latin, or even Greek, because the old language hangs like a veil
between them and the thought within. To some boys the enkindling of the
intellectual soul comes through English literature, to some through
history, to some through a knowledge of other lands, which can be
approached by geography. To some through art and music; and of these
two things we trifle with the latter and hardly touch upon the former.
I cannot see that a knowledge of the lives, the motives, the
performances of