training of teachers. The public school, thanks to its prestige and its prospects, still gets the pick of the Universities as masters. Yet the teaching in it is certainly not superior-in many cases it is inferior to that in important rate-aided schools, whose masters are compelled to be certified teachers, and have gained in efficiency and in interest in the art of imparting knowledge, by being compelled to think how it should be done. The born teacher may not gain so much, but under such a system there will not be so many flies in the educational ointment; and a few flies may spoil it.

In talking about reform, it is impossible not to mention Compulsory Greek, an institution embittered by an unhappy and fortuitous association with a body known (not very accurately) as the 'country clergy,' but really having more justification than is generally allowed. Not many of its supporters like it, or suppose that it is in itself desirable: its weaknesses have been pointed out so often that they need not be mentioned here. But it is worth while stating why some people, who are neither country clergy nor inveterate conservatives, still support it. Their reason is that without it Greek would be less widely taught to boys who

can really profit by it, and that from a number of secondary schools it would disappear completely. At present it maintains in these schools a struggling existence, because the door of the Universities will only open to a knowledge of it. It is no use saying that we can rely on the virtues of Greek to keep it alive. In a sense they will do so; till civilisation disappears, some people will always discover and cherish its burning and shining light; but unless it has some artificial protection, the pressure of uninformed popular opinion will confine it within the narrowest limits. Doubtless in our big public schools in any circumstances some Greek would be taught. But they, after all, are only part of our school system. All over the country there are old grammar schools reviving and extending, and new secondary day schools coming into existence. An increasing number of the youth of the country is receiving education at these. What hope or chance have the classics at them? Some are in big mercantile centres, some in sleepy cathedral towns. The governors, where there are governors, are chiefly local magnates, the parents are business men and tradesmen. Education has not been their business, and they naturally take what is known as the commonsense point of

view.' "Greek is a dead language; you might as well learn Egyptian, Sanskrit or Hebrew." "Shakespeare got on very well without Greek." "What my boy wants is something which will be of use to him in business." "Why can't he learn modern languages-there are sure to be big openings in Russia after the war." "The modern world depends on science; the Greeks are all very well, but they are out of date now; I want my boy taught science, to compete with the Germans." "The philosophy of Plato, a thinker who knew nothing of the world but a small bright patch round the Eastern Mediterranean, is scarcely worth our attention." What chance has Greek against these antique and familiar methods of begging the question? Read-I do not say the views on education of the man in the street-but the article of Sir H. Johnston in the Nineteenth Century Magazine for July; read the sort of arguments brought forward by some of the speakers, men of great eminence, at the Burlington House Conference; if such misconceptions, to use a very mild word, prevail in trees that are comparatively green, what will be found among the dry timber of business men in Leeds or Bristol or Gloucester, who have never had occasion to think at all deeply about

education? What chance will Greek have with them? Let anyone read the stories of Thring's struggles with the governors of Uppingham or Mr. Cree's Didascalus Patiens, and he will realise what the dangers and difficulties are.

That is why compulsory Greek has been supported, for instance, by a man as liberal and fair-minded as Mr. Warde Fowler, whom no one would accuse of obscurantism or partisanship. He states the case for it as follows: "I seriously doubt if we are well enough educated as a nation, to dispense with protection yet. It is a mere handful of English boys that learn Greek at the present moment, and it is a diminishing quantity, for the public schools, our only equivalent for the German Gymnasium (where Greek is now compulsory), are already beginning to let it go. Yet, in thinking about a vital subject like this, we are apt to take into our view the public schools and the old Universities only, forgetting that by far the greater number of our secondary schools and the majority of English Universities

..do scarcely any business in Greek at all. The average English parent has little respect for Greek now.... I have been reading Morley's Life of Cobden, and I see plainly that that admirable man

Street of Oxford) to recapture the freshness and turn the familiar into the new, and replace apathy by wonder. And unfortunately there is no easy receipt for this. Only a quickening of the imagination can help.

After we have said this, it may seem a bathos to suggest that much would be effected if the use of annotated editions disappeared, or were at any rate restricted. But, in fact, they are the greatest enemies of intelligent reading, for they give us cut and dried answers to all the questions we ought to ask, so that, far from finding the answer for ourselves, we probably do not even ask the question; we simply learn the note. The first climbers on the Matterhorn needed all their strength and wits and mountain-craft to find their way to its summit, and thought it the most difficult ascent of all; the modern tourist, by ropes and ladders and the unmistakeable tracks worn on its rocks, finds it little more than a walk to its summit, and, if he is at fault, an experienced guide puts his feet into the right holds. Something similar has happened to the classics; they have well-worn and clearly-mapped routes, and the days are long past when Renaissance scholars laboriously worked out their meaning. Yet if we are to read them with