Rome, can this sense be developed. I myself have a deep admiration
for Greek literature. I think it one of the brightest flowers of
the human spirit, and I think it well that any boy with a real
literary sense should be brought into contact with it. I do not
think highly of Latin literature. There are very few writers of the
first rank. Virgil is, of course, one; and Horace is a splendid
craftsman, but not a high master of literature. There is hardly any
prose in Latin fit for boys to read. Cicero is diffuse, and often
affords little more than small-talk on abstract topics; Tacitus a
brilliant but affected prosateur, Caesar a dull and uninspiring
author. But to many boys the path to literary appreciation cannot
lie through Latin, or even Greek, because the old language hangs
like a veil between them and the thought within. To some boys the
enkindling of the intellectual soul comes through English
literature, to some through history, to some through a knowledge of
other lands, which can be approached by geography. To some through
art and music; and of these two things we trifle with the latter
and hardly touch upon the former. I cannot see that a knowledge of
the lives, the motives, the performances of artists is in itself a
less valuable instrument of education than a knowledge of the
lives, motives, and performances of writers, even though they be
Greek.

What our teachers fail in--and the most enthusiastic often fail
most hopelessly--is sympathy and imagination. They cannot conceive
that what moves, touches, and inspires themselves may have no
meaning for boys with a different type of mind.

The result of our education can be well reviewed by one who, like
myself, after wrestling, often very sorrowfully, with the problems