be reduced to the common forms of logic, but it differs in the process according to the subject matter to which it is applied. In this latter point of view, reasoning is divided into two main divisions, exact or demonstrative, and moral or probable. The study of mathematics exercises almost exclusively the former, the study of classics chiefly the latter process, and there is no conceivable subdivision of either process which is not brought into play by the one study or the other. Hence it is that these two studies are pronounced by the University to be correlative and complementary each to each, and neither is to be neglected by one who so far as human weakness permits an approximation to the old Greek ideal-aspires to be

A man four square, withouten flaw ywrought.

If either is to be neglected, probably a person would be better educated, that is, better fitted for the general business of life, by the exclusive pursuit of classical than by the exclusive pursuit of mathematical study. If the latter exercises the reasoning faculty with more intensity of thought, the former exercises it with more variety of process, and besides is less liable to degenerate into the mere mechanical operation which is irreverently designated 'putting a into a mill.' The general kind of reasoning employed in classical study is that which is constantly required for the solution of the manifold problems which every man has to solve during life to the satisfaction of his own conscience and of his fellow-men. Probability,' says Bishop Butler,* is the very guide of life.' The classical student is unceasingly employed in collecting and classifying particular examples, and in applying general grammatical rules. In determining the sense of his author, he has to analyze the structure of each period, to select the most suitable out of many significations for each word, and then to regard the connexion of each clause with the sentence, and of each sentence with the context. He is perpetually arbitrating between conflicting probabilities. It would take many pages to write out at length the inductive syllogisms which have to be proposed and solved in determining the true meaning of a difficult sentence in Thucydides or Tacitus. The facility and rapidity with which an accomplished student does this, ought really to enhance in our eyes the value of his previous training, not lead us to depreciate it, or underrate the difficulties which he is thus enabled to master. Intuitive perception of truth is not a lucky guess, but a masterly condensation of long observation and painful reasoning.

* Analogy of Religion. Introduction.

Besides, the training afforded by classical is more general than that afforded by mathematical studies, inasmuch as both exercise the reason and the memory, but the former alone cultivates the taste, which is the sole guide and governor of the imagination.

But the truth is, no one, whatever be his especial preference, should undervalue either branch of training, or question the high wisdom shown by the University in compelling so far as it can the prosecution of both, and encouraging proficiency in both by the promise of honours and emoluments.

And these honours and emoluments are striven for year by year, with an assiduous devotion which a desire of the material prize could not sustain, were not the candidates animated by a sense of the intrinsic value and universal applicability of the studies in which they are engaged. No foreign University affords any parallel to the unwearied industry and intense application of the 'reading man' of Cambridge-a fact not sufficiently borne in mind by its assailants.

It only remains now for me to notice the fourth class, namely, Professional Education. This, by the present regulations of the University, each man is free to pursue as soon as he has passed through the general course; that is, as soon as he has taken his B.A. degree. In former times, when it was the custom to reside seven years instead of three, Professional Education was carried on within the walls; now, circumstances have in great measure taken it out of the hands of the University. Now, it is deemed to be necessary that Legal and Medical Education should be pursued in the metropolis; and a very small portion of theological learning is supposed to be necessary for the due discharge of clerical duties. Great efforts have been made of late-in obedience to a very general feeling both within and without the University-to organize a more efficient scheme of education in Law and Divinity; with what success remains to be seen. It is discouraging, however, that in the other faculty, namely, Medicine, a succession of eminent professors has failed to attract any large number of students. I have already expressed my opinion that Professional Education ought not to be begun earlier, to the shortening and crippling of the preliminary general education, and I believe that adverse circumstances will prove too strong for the attempt to organize it later. Of theology, it is not my purpose to speak; but with regard to legal and medical training, it appears to me that much might be done towards an efficient system, by connecting the Universities with the Inns of Court on the one hand, and with the London Hospitals, College of Surgeons, &c., on the other.

General and Professional Studies.

305

It is remarkable that the postponement of Professional to General Education now complained of in the Universities was earnestly desired by one whose judgment on such a point ought to command the respect of all time; I mean, by Francis Bacon. Hear what he says:

Amongst so many great foundations of colleges in Europe, I find strange that they are all dedicated to professions, and none left free to arts and sciences at large. For if men judge that learning should be referred to action, they judge well; but in this they fall into the error described in the ancient fable; in which the other parts of the body did suppose the stomach had been idle because it neither performed the office of motion, as the limbs do, nor of sense, as the head doth; but yet, notwithstanding, it is the stomach that digesteth and distributeth to all the rest; so, if any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied. And this I take to be a great cause that hath hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passage. For if you will have a tree bear more fruit than it hath used to do, it is not anything you can do to the boughs, but it is the stirring of the earth and putting new mould about the roots, that must work it.*

Bacon's authority may not have been without influence in bringing about the change which he desired, but it must mainly be ascribed to the silent gradual working of external causes. Changes so wrought are seldom to be repealed by an ordinance of man.

However that may be, I maintain that, as things stand, the University performs thoroughly and well what it professes; namely, to give the best possible preparatory training. To confine our attention to classical study, a moment's thought will show that it is indispensable as a basis of education for each and every profession. Theology deals almost entirely with books written in one or other of these languages. Greek is the language of the Septuagint, the Apocrypha, the NeoPlatonist Alexandrians whom St. Paul studied, and whom the student of St. Paul is bound not to neglect; it is the language of the New Testament itself, of a host of early Fathers, and many ancient liturgies. In Latin there is the Vulgate, there are hymns and rituals, there are innumerable volumes of divinity, canons, decretals, bulls,-in short, all the records of all that was said and done in the Western Church for fifteen centuries.

Again, can the physician pretend to a thorough knowledge of his craft if he be ignorant of the language of Hippocrates and Galen, the language of the men who first flung aside the nostrums of the empiric and the amulets of

* Advancement of Learning, b. ii., p. 68. Ed. 1826.

X

the juggler, and by patient observation and acute thought made medicine a science and surgery an art? In this, as in almost all sciences and arts, the Greeks have a firm logical groundwork and a faultless terminology. Still less can he be ignorant of Latin, which comprises all the medieval records of the craft, all the terms of the materia medica, and in which at this very day he writes his prescriptions.

Nor, again, would any counsel be rightly styled 'learned in the law,' if he could not read the Institutes of Justinian in the original, or were ignorant of the history of that people from whose code, civil and criminal, all the laws of all modern nations are ultimately derived, and whose language still furnishes the whole legal phraseology. It is, I think, no exaggeration to say, that in the constitution of every existing state traces may be found of the ancient Roman power, either derived by tradition from Imperial, or introduced in imitation of Republican, Rome. From the Rome of a later day comes the whole framework of our Ecclesiastical Constitution. From the Romans, too, mediately or immediately, is derived a great portion of the language in which the lawyer has to plead. No lawyer, therefore, who is worthy of the name, can be ignorant of the language, history, and antiquities of that great people, nor by consequence, of that still greater people from whom the Romans borrowed all their arts, nearly all their literature, many of the fashions and habits of their daily life, and even the first beginnings of their legislation. For the Greek dominion over the realms of thought was as undisputed as the Roman over the realms of earth. Almost every field of literature and science the Greeks may claim as their own by the right of prior discovery. Few are the directions in which the modern explorer does not find traces of Greek settlement and occupation. Even when they did not penetrate into the interior, as in the case of Sicily, they at least colonized the coast. Even in mathematical and physical science and in mechanical arts, the rapid extension of which is the boast and glory of modern times, the Greeks took the first steps. In all the forms of literature, in the fine arts, in the moral sciences, modern nations-counting together a population perhaps twenty times more numerous than that of Hellas and its colonies, with their manifold advantages in accumulated knowledge, increased experience and extant models have scarcely equalled and never surpassed the unaided efforts and spontaneous developments of Greek skill and Greek genius. Time and chance, the blind workers-abetted by the no less blind workers, ignorance, barbarism, and bigotry-have too often conspired to involve in one common destruction the temple and the library,

The Dead' Languages.

307 the statue and the picture; and probably the extant remains of Greek literature bear no larger proportion to the whole mass than the ruins of Athens bear to the thick-clustered glories which delighted the eye of Hadrian; still enough remains to prove by an infallible test the right of Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Phidias, and others to rank for ever among the foremost names of time. Who, having seen, can forget, or who, not having seen, does not desire to see, those columns of Phidias, as they stand high above the modern city, alone in their beauty, white against the sky, the despair of the architect and the wonder of the world? And there are other works wrought by the Greeks of old, which shall stand forth conspicuous in undiminished splendour, long after the Parthenon has crumbled into dust.

For nearly two thousand years, from the time of Homer to the age preceding Dante, the Greek and Latin were the only cultivated tongues, the only literatures, of the European world.

The first bright with its own brightness and strong in its own strength, the second beautiful, though with borrowed lustre, were the sun and the moon of the intellectual firmament, and by their light men thought.

Long after the birth of its destined rival, namely, modern literature, the influence of the ancient literature continued paramount and supreme.

Tu se' lo mio maestro e 'l mio autore,

cries Dante to the venerated, almost deified, shade of Virgil; and it would not be easy to point out any author of that and the three following centuries who was not far more indebted to the treasures of antiquity, and a far closer copyist of its models. Afterwards, the imitation becomes less conscious and less obvious; but the debt due to antiquity is not cancelled by non-acknowledgment. Men talk contemptuously of the dead languages,' when, to this day, all the intellect of civilized Europe breathes their spirit and takes their form. Are they dead to us? From the teaching of schoolmen, legists, and churchmen, from the study and imitation of classical authors; from our personal intercourse with France, from the influence of modern romance' literature, the English language has become crowded with classical words, Latin and Latinized Greek, and often recast in a classical mould. No writer who is bound by the laws of the English language can emancipate himself from the fetters of Rome. We must accept the past, which we cannot alter.

Wherever men have surpassed their forefathers, they have done so, not by ignoring the efforts and advances previously