Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/164

 shall not a father's good sense and paternal compassion rescue his own children from the miseries attaching to this worship of the gods of Greece and Rome?

This ill considered usage props itself a good deal, upon the vulgar adage, thatWhat man has done, man may do. Yes, man in the abstract, may do whatever man in the abstract, has done. But is it true that whatever William or Francis has accomplished, John and Samuel, by sufficient endeavours, may also achieve? Any such supposition we leave to those who have passed their days in a cloister. I presume that none who are conversant with human nature need any refutation to be advanced of theories such as these. In aiding nature we must ever be willing to yield to the plain indication of her intentions; nor are there any more legible or more unalterable than those which declare what each mind is fit for, and what every man may reasonably attempt.

And let it be allowed me, in this place, to remind the zealous advocates of classical learning, as proper for all, that the actual effect of their endeavours so to extend this system of training, is to send forth into society, every year, many who retain through life a vivid resentment of the wrong that has been done them at school, and who, instead of being indifferent spectators of the controversy now agitated, and likely to be still further prosecuted, on this very question, are prompt to join in the outcry against Latin and Greek, in terms of embittered scorn. But these same persons, wisely treated at school, might have ranged themselves on the other side, and have given their useful support to methods which they would readily admit to be proper to some, though not to all: good sense, not prejudiced by unhappy recollections, would secure a vote from such persons in favour of learned institutions. In fact it 1s not uncommon to meet with men of absolutely no education and of limited intelligence who yet anxiously endeavour to