d altogether incredible were it not sufficiently vouched by
contemporary writers, and by the acts of the various governments which
labored to suppress it. A certain German worthy writes to his son, who
is about to enter the university: "You think, perhaps, that in the
universities they sup pure wisdom by spoonfuls,... but when you are
arrived there, you will find that you must be made a fool of for the
first year.... Consent to be a fool for this one year; let yourself be
plagued and abused; and when an old veteran steps up to you and tweaks
your nose, let it not appear singular; endure it, harden yourself to it.
_Olim meminisse juvabit._"[D] The universities legislated against this
barbarism; all the governments of Germany conspired to crush it; but in
spite of all their efforts, which were only partially successful, traces
of it still lingered in the early years of this century. It was not
completely abolished until, in 1818, there was formed at Jena by
delegates from fourteen universities a voluntary association of students
on a moral basis, known as "The General German Burschenschaft," the
first principle in whose constitution was, "Unity, freedom, and equality
of all students among themselves,--equality of all rights and
duties,"--and whose second principle was "Christian German education of
every mental and bodily faculty for the service of the Fatherland."
This, according to Raumer, was the end of Pennalism in Germany. What the
governments, with their stringent enactments and formidable penalties,
failed to accomplish, was accomplished at last by a voluntary
association of students, organizing that sense of honor which, in youth
and societies of youth, if rightly touched, is never appealed to in
vain.

* * * * *

The question has been newly agitated in these days, whether knowledge of
Greek and Latin is a necessary part of polite education, and whether it
should constitute one of the requirements of the academic course. It has
seemed to me that those who take the affirmative in this discussion give
undue weight to the literary argument, and not enough to the
glossological. The literary argument fails to establish the supreme
importance of a knowledge of these languages as a part of polite
education. The place which the Greek and Latin authors have come to
occupy in the estimation of European scholars is due, not entirely to
their intrinsic merits, great as those merits unquestionab