, a dissatisfaction with what is being done. The
movement must have a certain positive character before it can take
shape. There must arise a desire and a respect for intellectual things,
a certain mental tone, which is wanting. At present, public opinion
only indicates that the rising generation is not well trained, and that
boys, after going through an elaborate education, seem to be very
little equipped for practical life. There is no complaint that boys are
made unpractical; the feeling rather is that they are turned out
healthy, well-drilled creatures, fond of games, manly, obedient, but
with a considerable aversion to settling down to work, and with a firm
resolve to extract what amusement they can out of life. All that is, I
feel, perfectly true; but there is little demand on the part of parents
that boys should have intellectual interests or enthusiasms for the
things of the mind. What teachers ought to aim at is to communicate
something of this enthusiasm, by devising a form of education which
should appeal to the simpler forms of intellectual curiosity, instead
of starving boys upon an ideal of inaccessible dignity. I do not for a
moment deny that those who defend the old classical tradition have a
high intellectual ideal. But it is an unpractical ideal, and takes no
account of the plain facts of experience.

The result is that we teachers have forfeited confidence; and we must
somehow or other regain it. We are tolerated, as all ancient and
respectable things are tolerated. We have become a part of the social
order, and we have still the prestige of wealth and dignity. But what
wealthy people ever dream nowadays of building and endowing colleges on
purely literary lines? All the buildings which have arisen of late in
my University are either buildings for scientific purposes or clerical
foundations for ecclesiastical ends. The vitality of our literary
education is slowly fading out of it. This lack of vitality is not so
evident until you go a little way beneath the surface. Classical
proficiency is still liberally rewarded by scholarships and
fellowships; and while the classical tradition remains in our schools,
there are a good many men, who intend to be teachers, who enter for
classical examinations. But where we fail grievously is in our
provision for average men; they are provided with feeble examinations
in desultory and diffuse subjects, in which a high standard is not
required. It is difficult to imagi