of at least one of the classical languages should be an indispensable prerequisite of beginning the university education, because the study of language and literature is an indispensable requirement of beginning such education; and no other languages than Latin and Greek offer anything like the same advantages for the study of language as the medium of the spirit, and for the study of the spirit that moves in such written language as has escaped the envy of time.
It should not be objected to this plan that it will necessarily postpone too long the time at which the secondary education may be finished. For, given men of the highest cultivation to arrange and to teach the studies of the earlier portion of the secondary cultivation, and there will be no difficulty whatever in bringing youth, at the average age of seventeen, to the point where the college or scientific school now receives them. This is none too early for a boy to be as far advanced and as well trained as our students now are at the close of freshman year in the institutions of the highest rank. At least two years within college, and at least three years in the scientific school, will be required for a long time to come in order worthily to complete the secondary education. The aim and method of these years should be precisely the same as the aim and method of the preceding part of the secondary education; the studies, also, should be largely the same.
