place in this and other things at Eton. I don't observe that the "Reform" has done Eton any good. There was a good deal of a sort of prudery and false delicacy, I remember, talked about the note-giving practice. It was nine years after, that, going from Oxford to Eton, I came upon Keate at the corner of his "lane." Off went my hat. "Ah, Denison," he said, "very glad to see you." He had a wonderful faculty of recalling

faces.

THIS

CHAPTER II.

DECAY OF GREEK AND LATIN.

HIS seems to be a convenient place for some enquiry into the causes of the decay of "Greek and Latin," as a primary and principal element of the higher education.

This matter lies very deep. It is, no doubt, a detail; but it is one of those details which are hardly distinguishable from principles.

It lies as deep as the entire revolution of our time, which has degraded everywhere, in England, the Schools and Universities of the Church into places either of no religion at all, or, what is even worse, into places of quasireligion. For good, plausible but unreal, pretentious but untrue, is always a more powerful instrument in the hand of the Tempter, than openly-proclaimed and undisguised evil.

The shallowness of prevailing democracy; the race of the material life; the yielding up the soul to the mastery of "the pride of life;" with the natural and necessary issue of these things, the preference for material above moral and religious considerations; these instruments of power for evil have combined to bring about the revolution. English people, aye, even Church-people, are congratulating themselves upon it. Schools and Uni

versities of the modern type; the science and the art, the scholarship and the criticism of Century XIX., are to do what the Church of CHRIST has failed to do. They are to "regenerate" England. The Church of the past and the present; the Church of "the one Faith," has failed. The Church of the future, the Church of all faiths and no faith, man's Church, not GOD's, is coming to the rescue.

Alas, for the awful punishment and retribution that has come upon this Church and People! Alas, for the vengeance upon neglect, misuse, abuse, of most precious Gifts

of GOD! Alas, for the blindness of Bishops, Priests, People! They could not, they cannot, see that, as respects the Parish School, the nursery of the Parish Church, what they had to do was, as in the case of other Schools and of the Universities, to bring their own care and use of GOD's Gift something nearer to the level of the Gift itself; not to aid in its disparagement and ultimate rejection, upon ground of social or political expediency, or miscalled peace; least of all upon ground of moneygrants by the Civil Power, given only upon conditions destroying the Church character of the school, and the Trust and the Commission of the Parish Priest in the school.

And for all other Schools, and for Universities in England which can, under whatever pretext, be forced under the cognisance of the Legislature and its instruments indifferent to religion; sound and excellent as the Schools and Universities may have been in conception, institution, and foundation, sound and excellent as human things may be; guarded by the founders jealously, with all safeguards judged to be necessary and sufficient for preserving for all time their Church character, devised to the glory of GOD, the good of His Church, the saving of souls; all these having come into contact with the worldliness, and the selfishness, and the rapacity of many generations, and having been poisoned at their source, have finally fallen an easy prey to that indifferentism in religion-the parent of unbelief-which is in every country the natural outcome of the growth and prevalence of the temptation of "the pride of life," and of the democratic principle, the most powerful springs of all public action in England in Century XIX.

Alas, I say, once more for ourselves, and for our children, and tor our children's children! The evil is wider, and deeper, and more enduring than words can tell.

It is curious to note here, that there have been in the last 2,000 years three principal instances of the formal repudiation by the Civil Power of the Trust and of the Commission of the Church in the matter of Education.

JEWISH CHURCH.-I. The instance of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, A.C. 174, 1 Maccabees i. 11—15. CHURCH OF CHRIST.-II. The instance of Julian the Apostate, A.D. 362.

Tillemont, vol. vii., in Article IX. of his Life of Julian, in the Mémoires Hist. Eccles., tells us the whole story. Julian issued an Edict in 362, giving Christian teachers the option of either confining themselves exclusively to religious instruction in churches, and catechetical classes,= sermons and Sunday-schools; or, if they chose to teach secular literature in public schools with state support, then they must refrain from any words or actions which would imply the falsity of the pagan systems and deities referred to in such literature. And to make this scheme work better, he set up School Boards in every town, consisting of the Town Council and certain other notables, who were to elect all the masters, subject to confirmation by the Crown. For edict, see Baronius; see also Appendix. CHURCH OF CHRIST.-III. The instance of the Imperial Government of England in Church and State, A.D. 1840-1870.

I return to the decay of Greek and Latin, as a primary and principal instrument of the higher education.

Up to a late period of English life, definite teaching of Religious Truth as delivered by the Church was the avowed basis, and "Greek and Latin" the primary instrument, of our higher "Education." Both are disappearing.

It will appear in the course of the enquiry, that the causes of the joint disappearance are curiously interwoven and linked together: combining to produce that substitution of English "Instruction" for English "Education," which is a leading, perhaps the leading when all its issues are taken into account, and the most unhappy characteristic of our time.

'Religious liberty," degenerating, as all experience shews inevitably, into "licence," just as "Civil liberty" degenerates inevitably into Democracy, is fast filling the

place of the implicit acceptance of Religious Truth as sealed and delivered by Authority of the Church.

The race of life, in a country where the supply of candidates for all callings, professions, and employments, largely exceeds the demanda, has evolved the habit of assigning the early years of life to the acquiring the knowledge wanted for particular employments, so that bread-winning may begin the sooner; instead of assigning them to studies which in themselves are not, as a rule, productive of income, but are best fitted to exercise and sharpen the mental power; and to enable it to engraft upon itself, so exercised and sharpened, as occasion may afterwards arise, the particular knowledge wanted for a particular calling.

Add to this the truly miserable way in which it has been attempted to teach Greek and Latin, and you have the account, amply sufficient but not satisfactory, of the decay of Greek and Latin.

That it is a great national misfortune it is impossible to doubt; whether we look to the injury done to the mental powers, or to the loss of the principal ingredients of scholarship and taste. A "scholarly" man, even with all our fast-multiplying population, is a much rarer individual in England than he was fifty years ago.

First, then, let me say, that in proportion as there is in any country less care for the "one Faith,"—that is, for Truth exact, and definite, and always the same, as being matter of Divine Revelation and not of human discovery, -there will be always less care, becoming less and less continually, for exact and thorough scholarship. The original records of Revealed Truth are Hebrew and Greek. The earliest and best commentaries upon them are Greek and Latin. What is to become of Theology when the knowledge of Greek and Latin is gone, or, at

The only exception that I know of is that of Holy Orders in the Church of England. A very adequate cause for the deficiency is to be found in the "policy," Ecclesiastical and Civil, of our time.