n to say that a man
who can read French with comfort need never have a dull hour. Our own
literature has assuredly many a kingly name. In boundless riches and
infinite imaginative variety, there is no rival to Shakespeare in the
world; in energy and height and majesty Milton and Burke have no
masters. But besides its great men of this loftier sort, France has a
long list of authors who have produced a literature whose chief mark
is its agreeableness. As has been so often said, the genius of the
French language is its clearness, firmness, and order; to this
clearness certain circumstances in the history of French society have
added the delightful qualities of liveliness in union with urbanity.
Now as one of the most important parts of popular education is to put
people in the way of amusing and refreshing themselves in a rational
rather than an irrational manner, it is a great gain to have given
them the key to the most amusing and refreshing set of books in the
world.

And here, perhaps, I may be permitted to remark that it seems a pity
that Racine is so constantly used as a school-book, instead of some of
the moderns who are nearer to ourselves in ideas and manners. Racine
is a great and admirable writer; but what you want for ordinary
readers who have not much time, and whose faculties of attention are
already largely exhausted by the more important industry of the day,
is a book which brings literature more close to actual life than such
a poet as Racine does. This is exactly one of the gifts and charms of
modern French. To put what I mean very shortly, I would say, by way of
illustration, that a man who could read the essays of Ste. Beuve with
moderate comfort would have in his hands--of course I am now speaking
of the active and busy part of the world, not of bookmen and
students--would, I say, have in his hands one of the very best
instruments that I can think of; such work is exquisite and
instructive in itself, it is a model of gracious writing, it is full
of ideas, it breathes the happiest moods over us, and it is the most
suggestive of guides, for those who have the capacity of extensive
interests, to all the greater spheres of thought and history.

This word brings me back to the second fact that has struck me in your
Report, and it is this. The subject of English history has apparently
so little popularity, that the class is as near being a failure as
anything connected with the Midland Institute can be. O