as almost
a waste of time to analyse the grandiloquent assertions of Mr. Bonamy
Price. But if we were to analyse them, we should find that _boys_ never
read Caesar and Tacitus through in succession; still less Thucydides
Demosthenes, and Aristotle; that very few _men_ read and understand
these writers; that the shortest way to come into contact with Aristotle
is to avoid his Greek altogether, and take his expositors and
translators in the modern languages.

The professor is not insensible to the reproach that the vaunted
classical education has been a failure, as compared with these splendid
promises. He says, however, that though many have failed to become
classical scholars in the full sense of the word, "it does not follow
that they have gained nothing from their study of Greek and Latin; just
the contrary is the truth". The "contrary" must mean that they have
gained something; which something is stated to be "the extent to which
the faculties of the boy have been developed, the quantity of impalpable
but not less real attainments he has achieved, and his general readiness
for life, and for action as a man". But it is becoming more and more
difficult to induce people to spend a long course of youthful years upon
a confessedly _impalpable_ result. We might give up a few months to a
speculative and doubtful good, but we need palpable consequences to show
for our years spent on classics. Next comes the admission that the
teaching is often bad. But why should the teaching be so bad, and what
is the hope of making it better? Then we are told that science by itself
leaves the largest and most important portion of the youths' nature
absolutely undeveloped. But, in the first place, it is not proposed to
reduce the school and college curriculum to science alone; and, in the
next place, who can say what are the "impalpable" results of science?

[WORTH OF THE CLASSICAL WRITERS.]

The second branch of the argument relates to the greatness of the
classical writers. Undoubtedly the Greek and Roman worlds produced some
very great writers, and a good many not great. But the greatness of
Herodotus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plato, and Aristotle can be
exhibited in a modern rendering; while no small portion of the poetical
excellence of Homer and the Dramatists can be made apparent without
toiling at the original tongues. The value of the languages then
resolves itself, as has been often remarked, into a _residuum_.
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