This prophecy was destined to a certain, if not to a speedy, fulfilment. The reforms which he introduced at Rugby were radical, but not revolutionary; thorough, but not subversive. Like his great Master, he felt that his mission was not to destroy, but to fulfil. Accordingly, little, if any, less attention was bestowed upon Latin and Greek, but that attention was directed to higher ends. Those languages were studied by his pupils, not as the end of their being, but as a means of their intellectual discipline and growth,-not as a collection of longs and shorts, of spondees and dactyls, (though these matters were not overlooked,) but as revealing a deeper harmony than has ever found expression in the technicalities and conventionalities of versification, as exhibiting the peculiarities of the Greek and Roman mind, and at the same time those comprehensive laws of mental and moral structure which unite the Briton and the Roman, the Greek and the barbarian, the bond and the free. Accordingly a strange activity was soon manifested in what, up to that time, had been considered the most Boeotian of the public schools. The universities were obliged to confess the wondrous change, and, while they reviled the man, were yet obliged to yield their highest honors to his scholars. And yet there were others of his contemporaries who were greatly his superiors as mere linguists, as merely classical scholars, in the common acceptation of the term. As a philologist, he ranks certainly not in the first, perhaps not very high in the second class. But he possessed in himself, and im

parted to others, something far higher than philology alone can bestow. Hence, every section in Thucydides was made to teach, not Greek syntax merely, but some great lesson in moral and social philosophy. And hence, too, the fond enthusiasm with which he would cling to the stories of Cleobis and Bito, of Croesus and Solon, and to those other tales of simple moral beauty, which adorn the pages of the Father of History. And when these higher elements failed him in an author, he felt that the classic element was gone. It was to him a classic no longer. Hence his earnest condemnation of the later Latin poets, and of the course of those who have introduced them into their classical curricula. Their inspiration he regarded as drawn, not from Delphi and Parnassus, Apollo and the Muses, but from Bacchus and Venus. As the result of this reformation at Rugby, I have good authority for saying, that the pupils of Dr. Arnold are now the leading men in the cause of English educational reform. The same features characterized his religious instruction. In his sermons, he appears far less solicitous to secure the adhesion of his pupils to the Thirty-nine Articles, than to implant in them the seeds of the Christian life,—a thorough and sincere conviction of the great features of religious truth. There is a freshness and vigor in his presentation of the facts and principles of the Christian faith which show how far he prized a Christian life above a mere Christian profession; and, while he maintained a steadfast loyalty and affection to the Church of England, cherished a still higher attachment to the church of Christ.

The Bible was, in fact, to him a classic. But it was a classic of deeper meaning and power in pro-portion as he regarded it as the records of that wisdom which spake as never man spake.

I have thus glanced at some facts in the history of the public schools of England, as illustrating both the use and the abuse of classical study. It would be both useful and pertinent to my subject, did time permit, to illustrate the same principles from the history of education on the continent of Europe, to show how the same exclusiveness that we have noticed in England, at an earlier period, on the continent produced a similar reaction, giving rise to the controversies between the Philanthropists and the Humanists, which have continued even to our own time; resulting in establishing the just claims of the Ancient Classics, and, at the same time, securing all the elements of a more liberal culture, and especially in establishing the claims of the Classics of the vernacular tongues to a prominent place in the continental courses of study.

The claims of the Latin and Greek Classics are so far recognized in our American schools, as to demand, at the present time, no especial advocacy or defence. While, therefore, I am happy to feel that the claims of this department of Classical Culture are so fully admitted, I may be permitted to express the conviction that there is still among us too much of the narrowness and exclusiveness which characterize the English schools. When we speak of Classical Study in this country, we understand by it the study of Latin and Greek, and

Latin and Greek only. The scholar who has devoted long months and years to the study of Chaucer and Spenser, and Shakspeare and Milton, is hardly admitted within the pale of our classical communion. Nor is his standing in this respect improved if he has extended his acquaintance to Schiller and Goethe, to Racine and Molière, to Camoens and Cervantes. It would, of course, be puerile to object to this use of the term classical as a mere technicality. So far it may be quite a justifiable and convenient usage. But it is, I fear, too expressive of a principle not philosophical, and, consequently, having no foundation in the nature of things. My own position is simply this: That the scholar who has faithfully studied and imbibed the spirit of our own poets, orators, and historians, is a classical scholar in the proper and just sense of the term. If to his English Classics he can add the German, his view is, of course, greatly extended, and he becomes a better classical scholar; and if to his German he can add the French, the Italian, and the Spanish, his range of classical scholarship is still wider, and his learning becomes more massive and profound. And if from the moderns he goes back to the ancients, and thus "traces the Muses upward to their spring," he is able to take in the whole compass of human thought and feeling, and to his view the cycle of humanity becomes complete. And it is precisely at this point, as it seems to me, that we are deficient in our American schools. We spend long months, and years even, in acquainting our scholars with the treasures of Cicero and Demos

thenes, and it is right. The path along which we conduct our youth may, in the language of Milton, be indeed "laborious and rugged in its first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospects and melodious sounds on every side that the harp of Orpheus were not more charming." But while we spend so much time to avail ourselves of the riches of the ancient world, why should we be so regardless of what our Burkes and our Erskines, our Websters and our Everetts, have given us in our own vigorous and racy English? The English Classics, so far as my acquaintance extends, are, to a very limited extent, if at all, made a component part of the course of study in our American schools. We have insisted so much upon what is termed practical education, as really to lose sight of some of the most practical features of education. What is a practical education? I will not presume to give an authoritative definition. But let me inquire, is it not too generally regarded as consisting in that discipline and culture which give man power over the material world; which enable him to build railroads, and steamships, and telegraphs? Is it a less practical matter to gain dominion over mind than over matter? Are man's relations to the material world of greater importance than to the spiritual? Does he claim a closer alliance, a more endearing relationship, to the dust from which he sprung, and to which he must soon return, than to the spiritual principle, in which he reflects the image of his Maker? Leaving out of view entirely man's higher relations, and consider