not so apt to be muddle-headed, is more likely to discriminate against false sentiment in what he reads, and still more likely to object to metrical bombast or nonsense when it is offered him as poetry. "Coleridge!" said his redoubtable teacher at Christ's Hospital, "the connections of a declamation are not the transitions of poetry. Bad, however, as they are, they are better than apostrophes and 'O thou's,' for at the worst they are something like common sense.' Since the time of Coleridge, the besetting sin of poets has been a lack of precision and good sense. In her fumbling description of A lost chord, Adelaide Procter writes:

It seemed the harmonious echo

From our discordant life.

A boy who has

The echo of a discord is not harmonious. studied the Metamorphoses of Ovid is aware that in literature as in his own experience an echo is true when it closely resembles the original sound. As an able critic notes: "Sentimentality has, in this disguise or that, existed and poisoned English poetry at all times since the sixteenth century. But, for its fellow vice, vagueness, this is otherwise. For vagueness there has indeed been no time so fertile as the first forty years of the nineteenth century." The beginning of the twentieth century is not free from it. Greek poetry in the fifth century before Christ is not vague or sentimental, nor is Homer or Virgil. When he is imbued with the spirit of Greek and Latin verse, our Freshman is in some measure armed against the insidious attacks of bad taste. And that is why the aged Wordsworth advised his nephew: "Remember, first read the ancient classical authors; then come to us; and you will be able to judge for yourself which of us is worth reading."

Finally, the boy who has been drilled in the classics has an immense advantage because he knows something of ancient story of ancient mythology in the wide sense-and is not unacquainted with those living images, divine yet human, in which the ancients embodied their highest conceptions of man, and their noblest religious convictions,

the head and front of their culture. In dealing with English authors, he is not continually checked and baffled by allusions which were intended to be clear, and are so to an educated public. To the boy who is otherwise trained, that is, untrained for the study of English, they are not clear, and may envelop in an atmosphere of uncertainty passage after passage in any substantial author that he happens to take up. Can he appreciate George Eliot in Romola when she likens the shifty Tito Melema to Bacchus, if he is wholly innocent of ancient ideas concerning the slippery and unstable Dionysus? And how can he read Milton if he is unfamiliar, not only with the Bible, but also with Homer and Virgil? For, be it noted that, whatever the reason, a decline of interest in the Scriptures has gone hand in hand with a growing indifference to the literature of Greece and Rome. Indeed, one is reminded that Charles the Great, at a critical juncture for modern civilization, enjoined the study of letters, that is, of Latin, upon his clergy, in order that the study of the Scriptures might not languish in his realm. Would that a modern statesman might arise with equal power to influence our general education, and that shortly no one having the name of a cultivated man might be unable to read at first hand the most sublime of all mysteries, in the Greek of the New Testament! The boy with a classical training has immediate access to the highest ideal of mankind.

In this gamut of advantages we have run from small details to large considerations. We began with the discipline a youth may receive thru Greek and Latin in using the elements of expression; we have come to the benefit he may derive from these subjects in the interpretation of human discourse as a whole, and in the assimilation of humanizing ideas. It is common, of course, to separate the disciplinary function of the classics from the cultural; it is better to assume that no such cleavage exists. One never can draw a sharp line of demarcation between the form of expression and the idea that is exprest, or view the spirit apart from the letter thru which it is revealed. And as long as this is so,.

literary discipline, involving a detailed examination of language, cannot be severed from literary culture.

In fact, these remarks will have been in vain if they have not led up to the notion that all culture is unified, and that its final aim is this: to eliminate the trivial and the false from our ideal of humanity; to abstract from the best sources, however minute or distant, whatever will define and ennoble that ideal; and to transmit an ever more vital image of humanity for daily contemplation by the next and succeeding generations. This is what teachers of the humanities are striving to do whether they know it or not, and whether they deal with Greek and Latin, or with French or German or English. As a teacher of English, inspired with a belief in the unity of culture, I have wished in this presence to support the contention that, as in the history of Europe, so in the development of the individual American, the basic elements of this ideal are most promptly secured thru direct contact with Greek and Latin. When

a foundation has been laid by competent instruction in the elements, we teachers of the modern Christian literatures can proceed with the superstructure.

This paper is primarily addrest to teachers of the classics, secondarily to principals of schools and other men of influence in preparatory education.

To the teachers of the classics one may say: There is at this time great need of mutual recognition and support among all the friends of culture in America; but perhaps the need is greatest as between scholars in the ancient languages and students of the modern vernacular. They depend upon each other in performing their due service to the state; for the teaching of the ancient classics without observing their relation to modern life is only less futile than the study of English when it is dissociated from the accumulated experience of the past. Yet we should not exclude from our ideal organization any person whatsoever who contributes to the enriching and intensifying of human life. And perhaps, all told, the friends of real as opposed to ostensible culture are not so few as we teachers sometimes

imagine. Few or many, if they would but make their cause a common one, they would hold the fort against every assault. The foes of culture, the haters of ideas and ideals are many-how often are they haters of Greek!-and the officious heralds of a shallow and meaningless culture, who abhor the industry without which no cultivation ever was obtained, may be fraudulent and dangerous. They are not and can not be at one in their efforts, however, since they have nothing positive to unite them; but they do succeed in deterring young people who are ignorant of what is good and bad in education from taking up the proper studies at the proper time.

The foe is numerous but unorganized. On what ground can the friends of culture best unite? To what practical effort can we teachers of the humanities most profitably devote our superabundant strength? To the maintenance and advancement of the study of Greek. Let us concentrate our defence where the attack is most frequent. If Greek were eventually to disappear from the curriculum of all the schools, Latin in no long time would follow, and sooner or later the serious study of modern languages and literatures would be discountenanced, too. Every blow that is dealt for Greek is favorable to humane learning in its entirety. If Greek is duly cared for, Latin will take care of itself, and so will English. If the teachers of all these subjects would combine for the rehabilitation of Greek, no enemy could withstand them. The program is simple: all we need do is to have the faith of the Centurion, and advise a small number of promising young men and women every year to begin the study of Greek.

There are, indeed, signs of hope for the future. If I am not deceived, the cause of Greek is now growing stronger in the eastern section of the country; the conservative South has never lost its hold upon the subject; and the great Middle West is imitative in matters of education, so that a renaissance of any sort in New England would ere long be duplicated in those western sections which draw so many of their teachers from the older universities. One thing,

at least, is very significant. Within the last year or two, our teachers of the classics, if I may be allowed to say so, have become noticeably less apologetic in their speech and attitude; they are growing more and more courageous. It would seem that they only need to act as if they were not losing but winning, and to recognize and abet their friends in other subjects. As for some teachers of Latin, they might well manifest at least a higher selfishness, and not be penny-wise. Too many have been merely bent on saving themselves for the moment, instead of rushing to defend the point where the enemy has been most successful. As for the teachers of the modern languages, they should act upon the knowledge they have; they are aware that a firsthand acquaintance with the classics is the indispensable prerequisite to any real insight into Italian, Spanish, English, French, and German.

To the principals of secondary schools one might speak in a different way, and as follows: The arguments in support of Greek and Latin are many and varied; it is impossible to arrange and develop them here. All of them doubtless are contained in Professor Kelsey's collection of papers, by various hands, in the volume entitled Latin and Greek in American Education (published by the Macmillan Company). It is hard to believe that any one could resist the evidence in that volume; but it will do no harm to refer to another book, by that eminent teacher in Russia, Professor Zielinski. His lectures on Our debt to antiquity enable one to see that the present chaos in American education has a parallel in another country.

The special point for every sensible man who has a voice in guiding our secondary education is this: Either the arguments advanced by those who have studied the classics to some purpose are sound and convincing, or they are not. For nine out of ten bright boys and girls, Greek either does what it is said to do, or it does not. leave out of account the rare exception of a brilliant mind that is, so to speak, incapable of learning this language. We hear of such minds, and one is inclined to believe they

We may