modern languages for the ancient classics. These seemingly conflicting sympathies I harmonize by answering the inquiry, why Latin and Greek should be required, in a way far more satisfactory to me than that followed by the classicists themselves. The ancient classical languages, and especially Greek, are, on account of their very construction and on account of the superiority of their equipment, by far the best media for the study of language, for the acquiring of the science and art of interpretation, for the possession and use of the key to literature.
It seems to me that very insufficient account is customarily made of the difference between the man who has enjoyed and improved this part of a liberal education and the equally intelligent and serious man who is lacking here. The latter can never, try as hard as he may, read a choice piece of literature, of any sort or in any language, as the other readily can. The value of studying Greek, under skilful and judicious teaching, is not set at its highest even when we consider how choice are the stores of Greek literature which are thus opened to the student, if only he can master—a thing possible to only a few professors of Greek in this country—the language so as to move about at all freely in its literature. That value is rather seen at its highest when we consider how in this way a man may be best trained
