Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/575

Rh pitiful protestations of classical graduates (with their incomparable "mental discipline") that they could not even understand the epoch-making books of these great thinkers.

From this point of view, the English experience with classical studies is especially rich in instruction. Every public influence in that old, aristocratic, tradition-ridden country has favored the ascendency and the perpetuity of dead languages in all grades of education. Whatever benefits could be got from them have been there obtained in abounding measure. Modern knowledge has been hindered and repressed that the classics might have free course and undisputed sway; and yet, as we have before observed, the system worked out such miserable and scandalous results that the state was compelled to look into the subject and do what it could to expose if not to correct the abuses. The Government reports on the condition of education in the universities and great public schools revealed a state of things which will be the wonder of all future ages. Some twenty years ago, Prof. W. P. Atkinson, of Boston, printed a very valuable pamphlet devoted to these English educational reports. We regret to say that it is now out of print, for it would be an invaluable contribution to the discussion now going forward upon this question. As its contents will be new to many, we reprint some passages illustrating the extent to which, even at that time, the classical university education had been practically superseded by forms of culture more suited to the necessities of the times: