originate it. There is certainly a vague and widespread discontent
with our present results; but it is all a negative opinion, a
dissatisfaction with what is being done. The movement must have a
certain positive character before it can take shape. There must
arise a desire and a respect for intellectual things, a certain
mental tone, which is wanting. At present, public opinion only
indicates that the rising generation is not well trained, and that
boys, after going through an elaborate education, seem to be very
little equipped for practical life. There is no complaint that boys
are made unpractical; the feeling rather is that they are turned
out healthy, well-drilled creatures, fond of games, manly,
obedient, but with a considerable aversion to settling down to
work, and with a firm resolve to extract what amusement they can
out of life. All that is, I feel, perfectly true; but there is
little demand on the part of parents that boys should have
intellectual interests or enthusiasms for the things of the mind.
What teachers ought to aim at is to communicate something of this
enthusiasm, by devising a form of education which should appeal to
the simpler forms of intellectual curiosity, instead of starving
boys upon an ideal of inaccessible dignity. I do not for a moment
deny that those who defend the old classical tradition have a high
intellectual ideal. But it is an unpractical ideal, and takes no
account of the plain facts of experience.

The result is that we teachers have forfeited confidence; and we
must somehow or other regain it. We are tolerated, as all ancient
and respectable things are tolerated. We have become a part of the
social order, and we have still the prestige of wealth and dignity.
But what wealthy people ever dream nowadays of building and
endowing colleges on purely literary lines? All the buildings which