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 At the beginning of the century those studies, as pursued in our Schools and Universities, rested on a tradition, dating from the sixteenth century, which had never been effectively challenged, even by those whom it failed to satisfy. And yet the humanities, salutary as their influence had been in the higher education, powerful as they had been in helping to shape individual minds and characters, did not then possess much hold on the literary and intellectual life of the country at large. Even among those who had profited most by them, there were perhaps few who, if they had been called upon to defend the humanistic tradition, could have done so in a manner which we should now regard as adequate. At the present day, on the other hand, the classics share the domain of liberal culture with a large number of other subjects whose importance is universally recognised; controversies have raged around them; but at any rate, wherever classical studies are carried to an advanced point, the students can now give good reasons for their faith. That spirit which the classics embody now animates the higher literature of the country to a greater extent than at any previous time in the history of English letters. Moreover, an intelligent interest in the great masterpieces of ancient literature and art is far more widely diffused than it ever was before in England.

It is worth while to trace, however briefly, the process by which this change has been effected. The latter part of the eighteenth century was the