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English language due to Greek and Latin might easily be mastered in six months, whereas the little Latin and less Greek" of our ordinary classical education consumes at least as many years. His grammatical argument (p. 364) might pass very well among "good girls," but can scarcely, we suppose, affect the readers of the British Controversialist. In fact, it recalls one of our arguments against the supreme place given to classics among us, viz., that all our grammars, being modelled upon that of the classical tongues, are not only tortuous, torturing, and misleading, but quite incomprehensible to any except scholars who have been drilled and bored with Greek and Latin, and are quite unfit for simple intellects.

In the times with which classical literature deals there were no people; there were at most an aristocracy-sometimes yielding a king, emperor (or dictator), a middle class, and slaves. But a people such as that which now exists in all the countries of modern Europe and North America, and even in the colonies of Britain, did not then exist. Neither tradition nor trace of such a body of citizens is to be found. Hence men who have had their minds filled with the associations acquired from the classics have few or no sympathies with the people; and as they form the large majority of our members of Parliament, they cannot see the claims of the people to reform. They think of states as aristocracies, and of the working classes and masses as slaves and helots, and as revolutionary unless the panis et circenses are kept up; but they seldom or never think of them as really deserving of serious measures for their welfare, happiness, and just treatment. For their unwholesome political influence we think the classics hold by far too prominent a place in the education of the upper classes. The nation for whom Froude, Macaulay, and Hallam wrote is not at all like those for which Thucydides, Tacitus, or Sallust composed their great works; and the public to which the former appeals is quite different in its constitution and character from that to which the latter addressed themselves. These considerations completely nullify the assertions made by G. M. regarding the civil laws and the philosophy of life being taught by the great and gifted of old. They addressed an oligarchy and not a people; all the knowledge they communicated was for a mere fraction of the community, and all the hopes they entertained were concentrated in the small minority of those who formed the upper crust of ancient society.

As in

Two other considerations arise in this connection. classical times there was no theology, or a false mythology holding its place, the teachings of their moral and religious writers are all given on a false foundation. They rest on fables or on lies, or they are built upon an atheistic foundation which is opposed to the true theology of modern ages. It is of the utmost importance that impurities, immoralities, and atheism should be kept out of the youthful mind. Hence we think a general training in classics is wrong, injurious, and injudicious.

Again, the ancients had no science. Science is a birth of the younger time. All their ideas about and explanations of phenomena

are wrong, and the very laws of mind and matter they talk about are absurd and fictitious. In our day science has its place alongside of literature and art as a great power. In as far as regards science, therefore, our classical training is decidedly erroneous.

One of the most eminent professors in Scotland, J. S. Blackie, who occupies the chair of Greek in the University of Edinburgh, has put this question so admirably as between classics and science, that no one could desire more convincing arguments than he gives to show that so long as nature is left so thoroughly unstudied, classics do not hold their proper place in British education. I shall extract from his speech that delivered at the meeting of the University Court of the Edinburgh University in Queen Street Hall, Edinburgh, on the 26th of October. Professor Blackie said, on a motion being made that chemistry or natural history should be made an imperative part of the curriculum of study qualifying for the degree of Master of Arts,

"I have long been of opinion that our curriculum of arts is not in a satisfactory state. It is in a great measure a matter of tradition, arising from the want of a direct look into nature and into life. It is far too rigid and inflexible, and it takes no cognizance of the variety of faculties with which God has endowed His creatures. It praises up certain branches which are of no use except for the highest culture, while it forgets that a great many students are incapable of the highest culture, and that for them something else may suitably be provided. In fact, our curriculum is too monotonous, too rigid, and not sufficiently varied. Of all the subjects that ought to be in the curriculum is that of natural science, including chemistry. Their absence there would make any man stare who came out of a court of nature and reason, and went directly into a university. But we do not come out of a court of reason and nature, and very few of us walk into it by any chance. We come out of a court of routine and habit, and we are pleased with all sorts of absurdities. What I say is this, that if we were à priori coming out of a court of reason, and walking into a modern university, and if we found the grand panorama of the works of God-what we call Nature-altogether neglected, and a great part of the attention of young men confined to the study of the opinions of old Greeks and Romans about the works of God, and to calculations about abstract and bloodless things called triangles, parallelograms, and circles, knowing nothing at all about the glorious epic poem of the creation, which is real life and actionwhich no mathematics in the world could ever pretend to be, we would be perfectly surprised. The sublime Author of the Universe, the Great First Cause, whom Plato and the ancient philosophers worshipped-though some modern scientific men, or pseudo-scientific men, are not inclined to practise anything of that kind of worship-wrote, or rather acted, two great epic poems, the one epic poem on the soul of man, as exhibited in the history of churches and states, and the other the epic poem of nature, written in what we call the works of nature. I cannot regard any education as other than one-sided that systematically neglects one of these great epic poems. I cannot comprehend it. To substitute a parcel of books of the learned men who lived two or three thousand years ago, and containing generally as much nonsense as sense, and of which neither the sense nor the nonsense is understood by the miserable creatures who are studying their sentencesto substitute that, and to tell them not to use their eyes at all, never to teach them the glorious art of observation, never to think of the living picture, of the living epic that surrounds us, and so calculated to excite our constant wonder and our reverential astonishment-a feeling which Plato calls the most wonderful

faculty of the human mind-appears to me to be one of the strangest anomalies in this our British constitution and in our British habit of living. That is my first argument, that the excellence of the subject-namely, the works of Godmakes it a part of all healthy and noble recreation. My second argument is, that in point of popular interest and practical utility there is no subject that can compare with natural science. At all times, especially at the present, when these sciences are studied to a degree not even dreamt of a hundred years ago-living in an age when these things are our watchwords and characteristics--I say, when you consider the popularity these sciences have acquired by their own attractions, and when you consider that many of our academical studies are rather forbidding in their nature-though repulsion too has its advantages-ought you to despise the popular and attractive in your course of study? I say certainly not."

Here is a word from the same speaker regarding the superior claims of classics as a means of training the human faculties, so much insisted on by "Elpisticos" (p. 363). He will see that this practical teacher, whose experience stretches over a professorial career of a quarter of a century, does not fancy that classics possess a monopoly of training power:

"Certain classical scholars, in their extraordinary conceit and insolence, are always telling you that nothing has any training power but Latin and Greek. Sometimes, indeed, they also bring in mathematics by way of compliment. They think that nothing will prepare the mind except discussions about qui quæ quod; if it govern the subjunctive or the indicative mood. Now I don't believe in that. I believe that Latin and Greek have great training powers, though that depends upon the teacher; and it also depends very much on whether you go into the higher elements, for in the lower teaching a great part is mere memory, and a great many of the rules are merely arbitrary, and no one can give you any reason why cum should govern the subjunctive mood. It is not true that the lower classes have such training power as these people always say. I believe they have a very high training power in the hands of wise men; but I can prove to you that natural history has a training power of which these gentlemen have no conception. Like Sir William Hamilton, who was ignorant of mathematics, they do not speak wisely on that subject. These gentlemen, profoundly ignorant of natural history, have no sympathies except with certain books with which they were crammed at Oxford, and cannot be expected to speak wisely of the training power of natural history. There are two things every mind must be turned to in order to acquire scientific habits-one is accurate observation and the other is scientific classification. As to accurate observation, we have a great number of boys in the Greek and Latin classes who do not know how to use their eyes. When they were six years old they might look at these things, but when they are sixteen they do not know how to do it. Anything like living converse with nature is a thing unknown to many of our young men. The other thing-classification-is a great deal more important. In Socrates and in the "Dialogues" of Plato you will find that that branch is dealt with as a most important one, as almost constituting the logic of such things-a logic not to be sneered at in these days even by John Stuart Mill-the logic which enables you to arrive at scientific knowledge by distinguishing the individual from the species and the species from the individual. In fact, that classification is, for certain practical purposes at least, a far more intellectual process than those people think who talk of natural history as a thing to amuse the fingers or exercise the memory."

That meets the arguments of M. and "Elpisticos," I cannot say more; for more than enough is folly. G. C. S. K.

Politics.

IS PUBLIC AGITATION ESSENTIAL TO THE ATTAIN. MENT OF POLITICAL REFORM?

AFFIRMATIVE REPLY.

SOCIETY is very complex in all its arrangements, being composed of innumerable mental capacities, which cannot be knit together so as to form one body capable of being moved into action at the same time. Individuals must therefore be arranged into classes, having the same conceived ideas ere they can make any exertions as a class.— Such are political parties. And when one class wishes to get an end enacted as the law of the land, it must represent its views to or through its representatives to the Government, who sits as the supreme authority above all classes or political grades. Now before Government can do anything in a matter, it must be represented to them that the people require such an enactment as the case may be for the public welfare. But there will always be some portions of a community that cannot agree with other portions on particular points, and the Government should therefore gratify the wishes of the majority with as little loss as may be possible to the minority. Then the interests of the country must be considered, so that the subject of reform, of whatever kind or nature it may be, will conduce to the internal development and prosperity of the state. If the Government, however, refuse to sanction the views of a particular class, or even the whole inhabitants of the kingdom, then the people must have some recourse to coerce the Government. They have therefore to consider by what means will they be most likely to get their wishes accomplished, in consequence of the refusal of the Government to accede to their terms. Will they get their wishes sanctioned by allowing the matter to slumber, or remaining inactive themselves? No. They must be aroused into action-consult their own interests, and produce an agitation among themselves upon which the Government stands, that will force the latter to comply with their views. The people can only expect anything to be done for themselves through their own agency and power. A public agitation of those whom it may concern is the only way by which the people can procure their wrongs redressed, and rights enforced, from the ruling few. It is evident, however, that the sentiments of the people cannot be known on a subject until they appear to take a great interest in them among their

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fellow-men, so as to produce a commotion. No reform can take place unless they come forward boldly and avow their opinions and views. Until they do this a Government will be unable to know whether they are very enthusiastic on a subject or not; but when the people agitate the question, the Government then becomes alive to the sentiments of a nation which they must sooner or later give effect to. No privilege or right can be got from the Government, unless through the demands of the people. And the fact is evident that those who have such rights themselves think very little about conferring them on others. There can be no doubt whatever, Trevelyn" must very well know, we should think, but that it is by the wishes from without that the Commons of Britain are to be guided. The Reform Bill of 1866 was lost just because the pressure from without did not influence those who administered the affairs of the realm. If the pressure had been great, the Government would have been compelled to yield; but, as this was not the case, the Reform Bill was lost. But the people must use, however, all legitimate means to have their rights enforced on what they conceive will be of advantage to themselves, and they require to do so more particularly when their wishes have been refused. The doctrine that a people can get their rights extorted from the Government, or even acceded to with great hesitation when properly represented to them, seems to be exploded. Representatives on their election generally promise reform, which they as often forfeit unless they are given to understand that the constituents are anxious and determined that the promises given be fulfilled. The principle is very common in human nature, that although a person promises to do his best to confer a benefit on a class, he fails to carry it into effect,-not through carelessness or forgetfulness, but simply through an indifferent apathy when he may observe public attention diverted therefrom. The argument of "Trevelyn," that the press can perform all that public agitation can do is rather irrelevant. The press itself is nothing but an echo of the sentiments of the majority of the people; and should the press go against the opinions of the public, it is evident that the press cannot stand. The press necessarily depends as much on the people as does the subject of reform itself. It is clear that the press is the vehicle whereby public agitations are caused to arise, because they simply embody the opinions of their supporters. The press cannot exist and act independently of the people. So far as we have learned, we always observe that the press is the principal agency to raise agitations. It must appear, then, pretty plain that the press cannot effect what public agitations will, but that the one has always been the chief cause of the other. It is therefore a complete impossibility for the press to carry a measure of reform, unless with the concurrence of its supporters; and it is absurd to think that newspaper conductors would write articles on reform unless they were aware that their supporters had the subject at heart. Before this can be properly done they must know the