e, then the fault is his own. If he
does apply it, what then? Is there any such application, practical and
living?

This is said to be a "practical" age. If I know anything whatever of
history, I maintain that this age is no more "practical" than any other.
All sensible ages are practical. The present age, it is true, possesses
more ingenious and labour-increasing machinery, and, when it is minded
to do what it euphoniously describes as "hustle," it can doubtless
"hustle" with a more deplorable rapidity than in times ancient. But it
is not one whit more "practical." If we ask for a practical application
of literature to life, so did the Greeks and so did the Romans. The
object of their literary study was to fit a man to play his part in
affairs, to know his world, to know both himself and other men, and to
train him for a distinguished social place. They knew that literary
study did this; if it had not, they would have called it a pastime, and
left it to provide for itself as such. A training for the living of a
life--is that object not sufficiently practical for the modern man? Is,
after all, the final cause of society to be simply manufacturing and
underselling, eating, drinking, and sleeping? None of us really believe
that. We cannot glance at our public libraries, our art-galleries and
museums, and seriously assert that society even looks like believing it.
Any one who maintains that there actually and consciously prevails such
a basely materialistic meaning of "practical" is but a poor cynic
maligning the world which tolerates him. When the world calls for a
"practical" outcome of literary study, we mean what the Greeks meant,
and what the Romans meant--some discoverable adaptation of the results
of literary study to the various activities of human life--human life in
its fulness--life of the helpful citizen, life of the partner in social
intercourse, life in the silence of oneself.

Go and fetch in the first respectable-looking man from the street, and
prove to him that literary study tends, as Bacon requires, "to civilize
the life of man"; prove to him that, as Montesquieu requires, it
"increases the excellence of our nature, and makes an understanding
being yet more understanding," and the man--type though he may be of the
modern practical age--will admit your claim and applaud your effort.

* * * * *

Well, literary study, to be worth anything beyond entertainment, ends in
app