sition, it is incumbent on him to spend some time and trouble in setting forth the practical advantages of the study he recommends, and in showing how it may be prosecuted to most advantage. It remains to do this, and it shall be done as fully as space will permit and consideration for the reader justify.

I. In the first place, I have already anticipated, in some degree, the argument from the merits of the national literature itself-the argumentum ad pudorem I may call it-which bids us remember that it is a shame to neglect the intellectual treasures we possess, and that to set aside our standard authors in favour of manuals and compendiums, and catechisms, is to teach the mental appetite to leave ambrosial food "and prey on garbage."

Then again the example of the ancients themselves may be urged. Though captive Greece captured in turn her fierce conqueror, and in some degree domesticated her literature and language on the banks of the Tiber, yet the education of young Rome was not the less carried on by the help of native authors. The expressive words of Juvenal tell us how well - thumbed were the Horace and Virgil of the Roman school-boy :—

"quum totus decolor esset Flaccus, et hæreret nigro fuligo

Maroni."

The value of English literature as an instrument of mental training will be more easily seen if people can be brought to admit that the young may be taught to reason and to think, not only by means of technical contrivances, such as Logic and Mathematics, but at least as well by converse with a thoughtful writer, and by the careful study and analysis of the arguments of a great

reasoner.

Important indeed is the use of Geometry in the education of the reasoning powers. But what makes it so effective? It is the rigid and inflexible necessity with which one step is evolved out of another, and immediately follows it. By contemplating this sequence the

mind is insensibly trained to discriminate between the relevant and the irrelevant in argument, and to recognise the proper relation between premises and conclusion, while it is disciplined to the habit of patient and concentrated attention. Now, without any intention of superseding geometry, it may safely be asserted that when, through its agency, some foundation has been laid, and the reasoning powers have been awakened into incipient activity, the process of their development may very well be carried on by means of standard works characterised by great closeness and strength of argument. Such a work, for instance, is "Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants." I mention it for its excellence in this respect, and not because it is in any other respect particularly adapted for an educational textbook. Nowhere can better examples be found of closely riveted chains of reasoning, of sophistries detected and exposed, of the refutation of fallacies dependent for their semblances of truth on ambiguity of language. A chapter or two of such a work, carefully dissected and thoroughly mastered, would do a great deal towards strengthening a pupil's reasoning powers, and would very materially enlighten him as to what reasoning actually is. So again, thought, what more suggestive than that if you want to call forth and stimulate household book, the Essays of Baton, or than some of the prose works of Raleigh and Milton? If, on the other hand, the mind is to be directed to social and political questions, is to be aided in forming opinions on law and government, is to be made wise and prudent by the lessons of the past, it will be found that Clarendon, and Robertson, and Hallam, and Macintosh, and Macaulay are not bad substitutes for Thucydides, Livy, and Tacitus, when the latter cannot be had, and that Burke and Adam Smith are competent to fill up, with fair credit, the hiatus made by the absence of Aristotle and Cicero. But our case seems strongest when we come to consider the use that might be made of the English poets in

the work of education. The culture of the imagination is an important element in the training of the young; its importance, indeed, appears in these days to be rather underrated than otherwise. Some people seem afraid of this faculty, as if it were-when viewed in connexion with the other children of Nous -the spendthrift and prodigal of the family. "Young persons," say the grave and elderly, "are apt to be carried away by their imagination." True; it is not, however, the strength but the irregularity of the imagination that misleads. And, therefore, it is all the more necessary to train and educate it.

This is to be done not merely by ballasting it with solid and sober material, but also by giving it the choicest and purest varieties of that provision on which it delights to feed. Its aberrations and extravagancies will be best corrected by means of homoeopathic treatment. To this end we must have recourse to poetry. In the long succession of our great poets, from the days of Chaucer to our own day, we have exhaustless nutriment adapted not only to invigorate and brighten the imagination, but also to give it a sound and healthy bias, and to store it with noble and elevated creations.

And it is not, let us remember, the imagination only that poetry of the higher kind educates; its influence extends to many of the intellectual and moral faculties; it pours into the soul, with the rich flood of song, the profoundest truths of divine philosophy itself. It is the expression of the purest and most generous emotions of the deep heart of man. It catches the manners living as they rise, and perpetuates the very form and pressure of the time. It mirrors the varied loveliness of nature, and ever and anon throws gleams of light into her infinite mysteries. Not vainly, therefore, did poetry bear so large a part in the education of the world when the world was young. Not vainly was old Homer the text-book for many a generation of the youth of Athens, and helped to form the warriors who defended, and the

statesmen who governod, and the orators who fulmined over Greece. That subtle, busy, questioning, Attic mind, too, owed. the activity of its play, and the brightness of its polish to contact with the highest type of poetry, when year after year the great theatre of Bacchus was vocal with the "mighty lines" of Eschylus, or witnessed the stately tread of the "Sophoclean cothurnus." And whatever Homer and the Dramatists could do for Greece, Shakspere and Spenser and Milton can do for the education of the youth of England. If these, our great national prophets, prophesy to us through a less polished and perfect organ, they are not, at all events, one whit behind the chiefest of the ancients in the sublimity of their sentiments, or the splendour of their imagery. Nay, compare sentiment with sentiment, and image with image, and it will be found, if partiality do not warp the judgment, that our moderns as much excel the ancients in the loftiness of their thoughts, as the latter surpass them in felicity of expression. It is to be suspected, indeed, that the excellence of the medium, in the case of Greek poetry, often, like perfection of taste in dress, gives a false air of beauty and dignity to a sentiment which is really very common-place.

Consider now what must have been accomplished for him who has been. made thoroughly conversant with some of Shakspere's masterpieces, with Hamlet and Lear, with Macbeth and Julius Cæsar. He has been introduced to scenes calculated to awaken some of the strongest and deepest emotions of his soul; he has listened to the almost prophetic voice of "old experience;" he has gazed upon the swift and complicated action of the world's machinery; he has pored over the most graphic and life-like delineations of human nature; character, life, wisdom, feeling,he has been in contact with them all; and surely his spirit must be "duller than the fat weed that rots on Lethe's wharf," if it is not stirred, and taught, and disciplined by the association.

And here it must be urged, that to

develop certain intellectual faculties, to improve the memory, to strengthen the reasoning powers, to cultivate the habit of abstraction, is not all the work that education has to do. Its province is of far wider range, and includes still more exalted aims. Its processes are as much moral as intellectual, embrace within their sphere all the tempers, habits, qualities, tendencies of the man, and are consummated by all possible appliances and influences that can act on every separate element of man's nature.

Now this consideration will enable us more decisively to contend for the educating power of our own English literature. For observe the society into which it introduces us! We are brought by it into contact with minds of the loftiest order. And what does more to form and fashion us than our companionship? Insensibly we become assimilated to those with whom we associate. Just as those minute insects which we may discover in the grass wear the livery of that green herbage on which they batten, so virtue is always passing out of great authors into their readers. Not only the sentiments, but the very soul and spirit are transfused. Thus the study of an elevated literature will silently and little by little take effect on the man's nature, and the various elements of character will grow in correspondence with the influences that act on them. "Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis Quem mulcent auræ, firmat sol, educat

imber."

Catholicity of feeling and breadth of views will, in some measure at all events, result from such influences. The student will learn to appreciate the temper with which great minds approach the consideration of great questions; he will discover that truth is many-sided, that it is not identical or merely co-extensive with individual opinion, and that the world is a good deal wider than his own sect, or party, or class. And such a lesson the middle classes of this country greatly need. They are generally honest in their opinions, but in too many cases they are narrow.

Now

It must be remembered that there is a wide distinction between narrowness and definiteness of view. On this point people are apt to mistake. Those who complain of the narrowness of party views are very often regarded as advoeating laxity and vagueness in matters of opinion. They are stigmatised as latitudinarian in a bad sense. No charge can be more unfair. The true latitudinarian does not disparage clearness and distinctiveness of opinion, but only one-sided dogmatism and overstrained compression of truth. the tendency of earnest middle-class Englishmen is to compress truth, to square and shape it into formulas and to confine it within party limits. The fact scarcely needs illustrating. Take the case of religion. The whole field of it is divided into petty enclosures, overgrown with an iron crop of shibbo leths. Whenever an honest Englishman looks beyond the verge of his own circle and takes a peep into his neighbour's enclosure, he inevitably draws back his head with a grave shake and a subdued muttering, a few words of which, such as "unsound," "dangerous," ," "heterodox," are alone permitted to reach the ear. The same sort of thing exhibits itself with regard to social and political questions. The majority of fairly intelligent every-day people can only look at them from their own confined point of view. They base their opinions on the contracted foundation of the little sphere in which they move, and apply to the interests of an empire the maxims and rules which they draw from the experiences of the market and the shop. To this the use of English literature in education would, in some measure at least, supply a corrective. It would assist in the formation of deeper and broader views in religion and politics. It would do so, not so much because such views are to be found in the works of our standard writers-though this is necessarily true -but because it would strengthen and enlarge the mind's range of vision, and would breathe a loftier and more catholic spirit into the soul. Another and a

kindred result would be increase and extension of the sympathies. Large views help to generate large sympathies; and, by converse with the thoughts and utterances of those who are intellectual leaders of the race, our heart comes to beat in accord with the feelings of universal humanity. We discover that no differences of class, or party, or creed, can destroy the power of genius to charm and to instruct, and that above the smoke and stir, the din and turmoil of man's lower life of care and business and debate, there is a serene and luminous region of truth where all may meet and expatiate in common. A zealous monarchist and Stuart partizan may, while studying the political history of the great Civil War, come bitterly to dislike, and angrily to denounce the Secretary of Cromwell and author of the "Defensio Populi Anglicani ;" but when he makes acquaintance with the rich and luxuriant poetry of "Comus," or when the solemn organ-like melodies of "Paradise Lost" are heard by him, his prejudice is disarmed, he is irresistibly taken captive, and he finds that the great political and ecclesiastical heresiarch and himself have a common heritage, and are citizens of one common city. It is, indeed, a good thing that men should be constrained to admire those with whom, in matters of opinion, they disagree; and high genius joined with high moral tone and purpose can enforce such admiration.

Yet again it may be contended that an education, based on the national literature, would assist in developing a spirit of enlightened patriotism. Englishmen, indeed, are anything but unpatriotic; they love their country, glory in its renown, are willing to die for its safety; but they do not always seem to understand wherein its chief nobility lies. They are fascinated by its historic renown, by its commercial enterprise, by its material resources; they are not sufficiently alive to the measureless importance of an elevated national character. They need to be taught to appreciate thoroughly those moral qualities traditionally regarded as

distinctively English. Their education should be such as to inspire them with a love for manly sincerity, stainless faith, fearless advocacy of truth. These are doubtless in some sense national traits; the germs of them are latent in the unformed nature of the English boy; but they must be drawn forth, and the high, generous, and manly spirit that breathes in English literature is exactly the agency for educing them. Again, the English character is confessedly deficient in refinement. The natural Englishman is almost always coarse; his tendencies are somewhat animal, and his tastes incline to the boisterous and material. Now we have all known, ever since we first learnt our Latin syntax, that acquaintance with the liberal arts softens and refines. Assuredly then among the liberal arts that so humanize, standard literature occupies the first place. If anything will take coarseness and vulgarity out of a soul, it must be refined images and elevated sentiments. As a clown will instinctively tread lightly and feel ashamed of his hob-nailed shoes in a lady's boudoir, so a vulgar mind may, by converse with minds of high culture, be brought to see and deplore the contrast between itself and them, and to make an earnest effort to put off its vulgarity.

A reference to taste and refinement suggests the thought that an early introduction to really great writers would have the effect of improving the prevailing literary taste of future generations. A course of standard authors would be found a powerful corrective of any excessive liking for the feeble, shallow, ephemeral literature that is now so much in vogue. There is, however, yet another argument which I must ask leave to advance on behalf of the cause I plead. Thorough and accurate study of the English language and literature would supply what the great body of fairly educated people are grievously deficient in, viz. power of expression. It has never, I imagine, been ascertained, how large a percentage of the middle class of this country can write

and speak their own mother tongue with fluency and correctness.

This is too delicate and subtle an inquiry for the machinery of the census; but, were such an inquiry possible, the results would not afford much gratification. As a matter of fact, the language is degenerating in the hands of professional writers; hybrid words, awkward and conventional phrases, daring anacoloutha, and extraordinary syntactical licences, are continually manifesting themselves in the current literature of the day. Much more then must we be prepared for maltreatment of the Queen's English among the trading and commercial classes. And we find it plentifully. To be able to tell a plain tale in plain words; to make a statement simply, clearly, concisely; to record the details of business in vigorous business-like terms-is an accomplishment that does not always appear in company with shrewd sense and sound business capacity. Now it would go far to remedy this defect, if the nascent hopes of the commercial classes were carried through a course of the strong nervous racy prose of the seventeenth century. Barrow and South may be voted somewhat dry reading; but the former helped to make Chatham an orator, and the latter can boast of a style, the mixed excellences of which adapt it for the use of the rhetorician on the one hand, and the practical man of business on the other.

It is surely not necessary to seek further arguments in favour of such a reform or modification of existing methods of education as shall more prominently and more effectually enlist in the cause the services of our National Literature. If that literature embody all the excellences for which we give it credit, if it be full of the living power of genius, if it be a rich store-house of thought and argument and imagery, if it breathe a manly, generous, liberal spirit, and be pervaded by a pure and healthy morality, it must, if rightly applied, act powerfully and benignantly on the opening faculties of our English youth.

II. It only remains to consider how it may be rightly applied, or, in other words, effectively taught.

To this end it must, above all things, be thoroughly taught. To run through a standard author in a cursory and superficial way is a mere waste of time and dissipation of mind. And in the study of an English writer there is some danger of being hurried and superficial, because the scholar does not at the outset encounter the same difficulties which he meets with when he enters on the examination of a Greek or Latin book. In the latter case he has, in order to get at the thoughts, to crack the shell of a foreign and unfamiliar language. This compels attention, research, deliberate weighing of words, so that the mind is at once invigorated by necessary effort and trained to habits of thorough and exhaustive inquiry. On the other hand, when the language is vernacular, the mind travels over it so easily and rapidly that the thoughts have scarcely time to imprint themselves on the understanding, and such impression as they do leave is faint and imperfect.

This, then, is the thing to be guarded against. It is an utter mistake to suppose that the study of English Literature, be it poetry or prose, belongs in any sense to the department of "light reading." It would be just as rational to consider gold-digging as simply a form of spade-husbandry. It is possible, of course, to content oneself with merely turning up the surface soil, but he who does so will never get possession of the treasure which lies hid beneath.

I contend, then, that, to be of any use for purposes of education, an English author must be studied as carefully and as deeply as a Greek one, and very much in the same way. It will not, I hope, seem pedantic if I venture to prescribe rules for such a study.

1. Take first the department of language.

This should be critically investigated. There is a notion that English cannot be taught scientifically on account of the want of definiteness and system in Eng