ar as they went, and
which gradually associated in one, and assimilated, and took possession
of, that multitude of nations which I have considered to represent
mankind, and to possess the _orbis terrarum_.

When we pass from Greece to Rome, we are met with the common remark, that
Rome produced little that was original, but borrowed from Greece. It is
true; Terence copied from Menander, Virgil from Homer, Hesiod, and
Theocritus; and Cicero professed merely to reproduce the philosophy of
Greece. But, granting its truth ever so far, I do but take it as a proof
of the sort of instinct which has guided the course of Civilization. The
world was to have certain intellectual teachers, and no others; Homer and
Aristotle, with the poets and philosophers who circle round them, were to
be the schoolmasters of all generations, and therefore the Latins, falling
into the law on which the world's education was to be carried on, so added
to the classical library as not to reverse or interfere with what had
already been determined. And there was the more meaning in this
arrangement, when it is considered that Greek was to be forgotten during
many centuries, and the tradition of intellectual training to be conveyed
through Latin; for thus the world was secured against the consequences of
a loss which would have changed the character of its civilization. I think
it very remarkable, too, how soon the Latin writers became text-books in
the boys' schools. Even to this day Shakespeare and Milton are not studied
in our course of education; but the poems of Virgil and Horace, as those
of Homer and the Greek authors in an earlier age, were in schoolboys'
satchels not much more than a hundred years after they were written.

I need not go on to show at length that they have preserved their place in
the system of education in the _orbis terrarum_, and the Greek writers
with them or through them, down to this day. The induction of centuries
has often been made. Even in the lowest state of learning the tradition
was kept up. St. Gregory the Great, whose era, not to say whose influence,
is often considered especially unfavourable to the old literature, was
himself well versed in it, encouraged purity of Latinity in his court, and
is said figuratively by the contemporary historian of his life to have
supported the hall of the Apostolic See upon the columns of the Seven
Liberal Arts. In the ninth century, when the dark age was close at hand,
we still hea