seventeenth-century teachers anticipated in principle those reforms in language teaching now so widely known as the Direct Method, or (regardless of the irony of things) the New Method.

The most conspicuous failure of the reformers was their inability to see the humanising power which resides in sound literature. A certain ascetic severity and indifference on principle to the claims of all beauty other than that of the religious life, is, in part, the explanation. But an intensity of religious conviction leading to a narrowness of sympathy was also responsible. In the eyes of the bigot, the loftiest of the ancient writers was but a sin-darkened heathen, whose utterances were often soul-destroying and always suspect. This temper had no more sincere and thoroughgoing exemplar than St Cyran, the virtual founder of the Port-Royal community of men. Going one day into a room where the boys were reading Virgil, he pointed to a picture of the master and said, "Do you see this poet? He is damned, yes, damned; he passed judgment on himself in the very writing of these beautiful lines, because he wrote them in his vanity to please the men of this world; but you, for your part, must sanctify yourselves in learning these verses, since you must learn them to please God, and to enable you to serve the Church." That point of view could not be maintained in a body which included a Pascal, a Lemaître, and an Arnauld.

In pondering the still debated question of Classical Literature v. Modern Studies, it is helpful to remember that two distinguishable ideals have historically directed the mode of employing Latin and Greek as educational instruments. On the one hand are the earlier Italian humanists and their intellectual child, Erasmus; on the other, the later sixteenthcentury humanists and schoolmasters. The first regarded antiquity as a source of light and guidance, whose spirit must be assimilated by the modern world, and in that way made to serve the very different conditions, political, religious, social,

which had come into being since the older civilisation had passed away. These men were captivated by the essentials of the antique life, its urbanity, rationality, intellectual freedom, sympathy, and breadth; they felt the light, colour, and grace with which the ancient literatures made such things live again. Greek and Latin letters were not only treasure-houses of knowledge; they were also the depositaries of "a criticism of life," and this gave them their peculiar educational value.

The ancient tongues had no serious competitors in the vernaculars of the Renaissance in any of these respects. But there was nothing in the mental attitude of the earlier humanists necessarily inimical to whatever advance in knowledge might be achieved; and their training in literary criticism was bound, in the long run, not merely to compel them to recognise modern vernacular literature so soon as it existed, but even to hasten its advent.

In short, the true humanist was not in the nature of things compelled to be a foe to modern studies. Basing himself on the principle that literature is a criticism of life, his own claim to share in the process of education is undeniable; no amount of knowledge respecting what is called "material nature" can compensate for ignorance respecting those various human relationships into which all must enter and for which literature is eminently fitted to be a propaedeutic. The case stands so, whatever intelligible function be assigned to education; it is very obviously so, where that function is conceived of as, above all, moral.

But it would seem that while literary culture is an indispensable element in a truly human education, room must also be found for other disciplines addressed more especially to the ascertainment of truth as it appears in non-human "Nature,” and expressly intended to help the learner to a mastery of his physical surroundings. Indeed, the conception of a profitable instruction to be gained through the ordinary occasions of daily life amidst physical forces as well as in the face of human

volitions is, at bottom, not without kinship to humanism itself, while the advantages of literary culture cannot at all times and in all places be arrogated to one language, however great.

The formation of a curriculum, therefore, becomes a nice adjustment between the legitimate claims of Letters, Science and certain forms of skill affecting the graces and utilities of life, the adjustment itself being determined by the particular ends to be secured in any one case, or class of cases. The seventeenth-century innovators grounded their pleas for modern studies on a variety of propositions; their strongest grounds of objection to the old curriculum, with its monopoly of teaching often only formally literary, were that it failed to appreciate the deep differences between their own time and the ancient world, and by its exclusiveness outraged that very rationality which was the life-blood of humanism.

The declension from the ideals of the earlier devotees of literary culture to those of the later had been the work of the pedants and their allies in the school-rooms, as we may learn from Hoole's account of the "good old waie." Where the humanist asked for literature, the pedant gave rhetoric or grammar, form for matter. It is, of course, true that there could be no appreciation of a literature precedent to knowledge of the language in which it was written, and the keener the eye, or ear, for nicety of form, the greater the appreciation of the literature. But the vice of the school has ever been to over-value form of all kinds, to press it prematurely on pupils, partly in the hope that the form would be clothed later, partly to avoid "losing time" in the present. Thus, ends disappear in means, Grammar and the like studies usurp the place of Letters, even while the value of Letters is proclaimed to justify the usurpation.

As a study of what is peculiarly the work of the human mind, Grammar may claim to be something more than a means, and the claim may be granted, with a reservation in the schoolboy's case. It is not a study which appeals to very many

boys; certainly, its appeal is not universal. The innovators saw the same defect in the curriculum as a whole; they refused to believe that only dunces failed to respond to a literary culture confined to Greek or Latin. The present chapter began with a paragraph or two concerning French pedagogy of the period with which this book deals; it may fittingly end with an allusion to certain French administrative changes of the other day, since these are intended to secure that variety and elasticity without which a curriculum fails to make a general appeal.

The Plan d'Études of 1902 arranges the seven years' secondary school course in two divisions, of four years and three years respectively. The first division is subdivided into two branches. Of these the first, as to curriculum, is mainly, but not exclusively classical, Latin being obligatory, Greek optional; the second branch is chiefly, though not entirely scientific, Latin, however, forming no part of it. Power is reserved to transfer a pupil from one branch to another, if necessary, and the scheme makes such a transfer possible without any serious break in the continuity of studies. The second division, occupying the last three years of the whole course, permits no such interchange between branch and branch. Of these there are four, designated by the first four letters of the alphabet. The A course is constituted by Latin, Greek, and their ancillary studies; B course contains Latin and Science; C course, Latin and Modern Languages; D course, Science and Modern Languages.

When a nation so long nurtured in the classical tradition as France remodels its programmes in this free-handed fashion, the indication seems to be that the struggle of Classics v. Science is drawing to a close. On the lines of the Plan d Études a workable compromise seems feasible between the too great comprehensiveness of the courses devised by the seventeenth-century innovators and the narrowness and inelasticity of the curriculum against which they contended.

PUBLICATIONS REFERRED TO IN

THE TEXT.

This list has been compiled to facilitate reference to the works quoted or referred to at any length in the body of the book. It is not meant to be an exhaustive statement of authorities; such books as the various biographical dictionaries, calendars of State Papers, parliamentary "Journals" and the like 66 "" sources are not included. ·

An Account of Charity Schools in Great Britain and Ireland, etc. Tenth edition. London. Printed and sold by Joseph Downing, 1713. Also the 12th (1713) and 13th (1714) editions. See WILLIS below.

ALLEN, W. O. B., and MCCLURE, E. Two Hundred Years: The History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. London, 1898.

ANCHORAN, J. A. Porta linguarum trilinguis reserata: the Gate of Tongues Unlocked. Second edition. London, 1633. (English version of Comenius's Janua.)

Ditto. Edition of 1637 with a vocabulary by W. Saltonstall. BACON, FRANCIS. The Physical and Metaphysical Works of Lord Bacon (sic). Bohn's Scientific Library. London, 1858. Contains translations of the Novum Organum and the De Augmentis Scientiarum.