sonings with which modern science deals, still retaining, in many of its steps, great rigour of proof; and as an animating display also of the large and grand vistas of time, succession, and causation, which are open to the speculative powers of man. Moreover these sciences have the further recommendation of giving occasion to pointed and striking applications of some of the more limited sciences which we have noticed as fit elements of our Higher Education. Geology uses as her instruments, among others, the sciences of Mechanics and Hydrostatics, and the various branches of Natural History. And Ethnography, or Comparative Philology, though it cannot be pursued at all without a knowledge of several other languages besides Greek and Latin, many very conveniently and naturally begin from those relations between Greek, Latin, and English, which a classical education forces upon our notice, and from that ready perception of the relations of language which a classical education cultivates.

25 Of the two classes of studies above mentioned, the Permanent and the Progressive Studies, the former are the most essential as parts of Education; and must be mastered before the others are entered on, in order to secure such an intellectual culture as we aim at. A full apprehension of the force of Reason and the beauty of Language are necessary, to connect men with the most gifted and most cultivated portions of their species which have hitherto existed. When they have arrived at such an apprehension, but not till then, they may go on to sympathize with the most gifted and cultured minds of their own time, in the activity of their progressive tendencies. But the former step must necessarily precede the latter. An acquaintance with the past must be a portion of Education, in order that there may be an intelligence as to the present. Intellectual Intellectual progress

cannot be a part of the occupation of life, if intellectual discipline be not included in Education. Attempts at progressive knowledge can have no value or real result, in the minds of those who have not been prepared to understand what is still to do, by understanding what has already been done. It is very possible to introduce a large portion of progressive studies into Education; but they can never properly constitute the whole of it; nor can the education of the youth include the whole intellectual progress of the man, if he is really to share in the progress of his times. A man who really participates in the progress of the sciences, must do so by following their course when the time of education is past. The Progressive Sciences are to be begun towards the end of a Liberal Education. On the other hand, the Permanent Studies, Classical Literature and Solid Reasoning, are fundamental parts of a Liberal Education, and cannot be dispensed with. Modern Science and Philosophy ought to be introduced into education so far as to show their nature and principles; but they do not necessarily make any considerable or definite part of it. The intellectual culture, though it will be incomplete if these are excluded, may still be a culture which connects a man with the past, and prepares him for the present; but an education from which classical literature or mathematical reasoning is omitted, however familiar it may make a man with the terms of modern literature and philosophy, must leave him unprepared to understand the real purport of literature and philosophy, because he has not the intellectual culture which the greatest authors in literature and philosophy have always had.

SECT. 4. Of English Education.

26 The above views are drawn from the Idea of a Liberal Education considered in the most general

manner. They have been to a great extent realized in the Education given in this country as the Higher Education, to those who pass through the usual course of English Schools and Universities; at least so far as the Permanent Studies are concerned. Grammar and Arithmetic at the Schools; Classical Authors and Logic, or Classical Authors and Mathematics, at the Universities, have represented the two classes of Permanent Studies by which the two faculties of Language and Reason are to be educed and unfolded, as the completeness of man's intellectual constitution requires them to be educed and unfolded. In the University of Cambridge, the Classical Authors have always formed a leading part of the subjects of study. The other portion of the Higher Education, by which the Reason is especially cultivated, may be considered as having been Logic in former times, while Disputations in set logical forms, both in the Colleges and in the Public Schools of the University, constituted a large part of the business of a university student; and as being Mathematics in recent and present times; the Disputations being now in a great measure done away, and a proficiency in Mathematics forming a large portion of the knowledge required by the University, as the condition of conferring her Degrees and awarding her Honours.

27 In this general scheme of the subjects with which the intellectual Education of the University of Cambridge is concerned, we find nothing but what is right and conformable to the necessary general idea of the Higher Education of youth, as we have attempted to show on general principles. But the same principles, if they are applied to the detail of such a scheme, will point out some more special rules with regard to the subjects thus employed in a Liberal Education, and the mode of employing them; and we may be thus led to make, respecting the present modes of teaching

among us, and respecting possible changes, some remarks which may not be without a more especial bearing and interest.

28 In the first place, I remark that, since the two kinds of studies I have spoken of, Classical and Mathematical, have their value, primarily, as permanent subjects of thought, connecting us with past generations, and fixing in our minds the stable and universal principles of Language and of Reason, these studies must be pursued in such a way as to imply a regard for this, their permanent character. For instance, with respect to the Classical Authors, the reason why we make them, especially, the subjects of our educational studies is, that having been selected at first as objects of especial admiration on account of the truth of their thoughts and the felicity of their expressions, they have continued to be studied by the successive generations of well-educated men; and thus they connect all such men with one another, by their common familiarity with these subjects of study. Hence we cannot, consistently with the meaning of a Liberal Education, substitute for the Classical Authors of Greece and Rome any other authors; for instance, eminent modern writers of our own or other countries. Even if the genius and skill shown in modern poems and orations were as great as that which appear in Homer or Virgil, Demosthenes or Cicero, the modern works could not supply the place of the ancient ones in Education. No modern works can, in men's minds, take their station in the place of the familiar models of poetry and eloquence which have been recognized as models for two thousand years; which have, for so many generations, called forth and unfolded the ideas of poetry and eloquence, and furnished standard examples and ready illustrations of human powers of thought and expression. The most remarkable examples of poetry and eloquence in modern times have

been the works of educated men, and have themselves shared in the influence of the ancient models. We cannot rightly admire the greatest modern poets and orators, we cannot admire them as they sought to be admired,—if we read them in ignorance of the works of their great predecessors in the ancient world. If we attempt to elevate modern authors into Classics by deposing the ancient classics, we break the classical tradition of thought which alone gives meaning to the term; and which alone gives classical authors their value in education*.

29 Again: the acquaintance with Classical Authors, which a good education requires, is an acquaintance with the works themselves, and not merely with any speculations to which they may have given rise. The educated man must read and understand the great writers of antiquity in their original languages. He must not merely know, in a general manner, the views which they present, of the progress of history, and philosophy, and art, and knowledge: he must know the sentences and expressions in which these views are conveyed, or from which they are deduced.

So far as the Greek and Roman writers form part of a Liberal Education, the study of the text of those writers is the permanent element of Education; whatever interest or merit may belong to antiquarian, or critical, or philosophical speculations, of which those writings furnish the materials. Antiquity and ancient history, ancient philology and criticism, ancient philosophy and metaphysics, may be the subjects of progressive sciences among ourselves, at the present day: for new writers may present, on such subjects, views very different from their predecessors; may even assume the character of discoverers; and may, by their sagacity and

* I have already written to the same effect, English

University Education, p. 32.