on
the pains these men of the Middle Ages took to accumulate books
and to keep them. The chained volumes in old libraries, for
example, might give us a text for this as well as start us
speculating why it is that, to this day, the human conscience
incurably declines to include books with other portable property
covered by the Eighth Commandment. Or we might follow several of
the early scholars and humanists in their passionate chasings
across Europe, in and out of obscure monasteries, to recover the
lost MSS of the classics: might tell, for instance, of Pope
Nicholas V, whose birth-name was Tommaso Parentucelli, and how he
rescued the MSS from Constantinople and founded the Vatican
Library: or of Aurispa of Sicily who collected two hundred and
thirty-eight for Florence: or the story of the _editio princeps_
of the Greek text of Homer. Or we might dwell on the awaking of
our literature, and the trend given to it, by men of the Italian
and French renaissance; or on the residence of Erasmus here, in
this University, with its results.

VII

But I have said enough to make it clear that, as we owe so much
of our best to understanding Europe, so the need to understand
Europe lies urgently to-day upon large classes in this country;
and that yet, in the nature of things, these classes can never
enjoy such leisure as our forefathers enjoyed to understand what
I call the soul of Europe, or at least to misunderstand it _upon
acquaintance._

Let me point out further that within the last few months we have
doubled the difficulty at a stroke by sharing the government of
our country with women and admitting them to Parliament. It
beseems a great nation to take great risks: to dare them is at
once a sign and a property of greatness: and for good or ill--but
for limitless good as we trust--our country has quietly made this
enterprise amid the preoccupations of the greatest War in its
annals. Look at it as you will--let other generations judge
it as they will--it stands a monument of our faith in free
self-government that in these most perilous days we gave and took
so high a guerdon of trust in one another.

But clearly it implies that all the women of this country, down
to the small girls entering our elementary schools, must be
taught a great many things their mothers and grandmothers--happy
in their generation--were content not to know[1].

It cannot be denied, I think, that in the long course of this
War, now happily on the