he process must be gradual
of acquiring an inbred monitor to reject the evil and choose the
good. For it is the property of masterpieces that they not only
raise you to

despise low joys, low Gains;
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains:

they are not only as Lamb wrote of the Plays of Shakespeare
'enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing
from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet
and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach you courtesy,
benignity, generosity, humanity'; but they raise your gorge to
defend you from swallowing the fifth-rate, the sham, the
fraudulent. _Abeunt studia in mores._ I cannot, for my part,
conceive a man who has once incorporated the "Phaedo" or the
"Paradiso" or "Lear" in himself as lending himself for a moment
to one or other of the follies plastered in these late stern
times upon the firm and most solid purpose of this nation--the
inanities, let us say, of a Baby-Week. Or, for a more damnable
instance, I think of you and me with Marvell's great Horatian Ode
sunk in our minds, standing to-day by the statue of Charles I
that looks down Whitehall: telling ourselves of 'that memorable
scene' before the Banqueting House, remembering amid old woes all
the glory of our blood and state, recollecting what is due even
to ourselves, standing on the greatest site of our capital, and
turning to see it degraded, as it has been for a week, to a
vulgar raree-show. Gentlemen, I could read you many poor
ill-written letters from mothers whose sons have died for England,
to prove to you we have not deserved _that,_ or the sort of placard
with which London has been plastered,

Dum domus AEneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet.

Great enterprises (as we know) and little minds go ill together.
Someone veiled the statue. That, at least, was well done.

I have not the information--nor do I want it--to make even a
guess who was responsible for this particular outrage. I know the
sort of man well enough to venture that he never had a liberal
education, and, further, that he is probably rather proud of
it. But he may nevertheless own some instinct of primitive
kindliness: and I wish he could know how he afflicts men of
sensitiveness who have sons at the War.

III

Secondly, let us consider what use we can make of even one
selected classic. I refer you back to the work of an old
schoolmaster, quoted in my first lecture:

I believe, if the truth