for refreshment to those classic authors with whom he had been familiar through life: – his soul would still feel emotion at the force of Tully's eloquence, or melt at Virgil's pastoral strain."[1]
This much is certain from what has been said so far, that the advocates of "practical" studies indulge in a grave delusion when they object to the classical studies. Their usefulness even for a commercial and political career is undeniable, as President Stryker of Hamilton College pointed out in 1901. He said, it should be remembered that the best preparation for a practical and useful life is in the high development of the powers of the mind, and that, commonly, by a culture that is not considered practical. The great parliamentary orators in the days of George III. were remarkable for the intellectual grasp and resource they displayed in the entire world of letters, in the classics, in ancient and modern history. Yet all of them owed their development to a strictly classical training in the schools. And most of them had not only the gift of imagination necessary to great eloquence, but also had so profited by the mental discipline of the classics, that they handled the practical questions upon which they legislated with clearness and decision. The great masters of finance were the classically trained orators, William Pitt and Charles James Fox. Such an education puts no premium upon haste, nor does it discount future power by an immature substitution of learning for training. It is structural towards the whole man, and seeks to issue him, not "besmeared, but bessemered." It considers the capable metal more
- ↑ The Works of Bishop England, vol. V, p. 35.
