s to be said for the greatness of the writers that have
written in modern times. Sir John Herschel remarked long ago that the
human intellect cannot have degenerated, so long as we are able to quote
Newton, Lagrange and Laplace, against Aristotle and Archimedes. I would
not undertake to say that any modern mind has equalled Aristotle in the
_range_ of his intellectual powers; but in point of intensity of grasp
in any one subject, he has many rivals; so that to obtain his equal, we
have only to take two or three first-rate moderns.

If a few fanatics are to go on lauding to the skies the exclusive and
transcendent greatness of the classical writers, we shall probably be
tempted to scrutinize their merits more severely than is usual. Many
things could be said against their sufficiency as instructors in matters
of thought; and many more against the low and barbarous tone of their
_morale_--the inhumanity and brutality of both their principles and
their practice. All this might no doubt be very easily overdone, and
would certainly be so, if undertaken in the style of Professor Price's
panegyric.

The professor's third branch of the argument comes to the real point;
namely, what is there in Greek and Latin that there is not in the modern
tongues? For one thing, says the professor, they are dead; which of
course we allow. Then, being dead, they must be learnt by book and by
rule; they cannot be learnt by ear. Here, however, Professor Blackie
would dissent, and would say that the great improvement of teaching, on
which the salvation of classical study now hangs, is to make it a
teaching by the ear. But, says Professor Price: "A Greek or Latin
sentence is a nut with a strong shell concealing the kernel--a puzzle,
demanding reflection, adaptation of means to end, and labour for its
solution, and the educational value resides in the shell and in the
puzzle". As this strain of remark is not new, there is nothing new to be
said in answer to it. Such puzzling efforts are certainly not the rule
in learning Latin and Greek. Moreover, the very same terms would
describe what may happen equally often in reading difficult authors in
French, German, or Italian. Would not the pupil find puzzles and
difficulties in Dante, or in Goethe? And are there not many puzzling
exercises in deciphering English authors? Besides, what is the great
objection to science, but that it is too puzzling for minds that are
quite competent for the puzzles of Gre