indefinite future;' and he makes his transit from the one
to the other through the education of the present time. The object of
that education is, or ought to be, to provide wise exercise for his
capacities, wise direction for his tendencies, and through this
exercise and this direction to furnish his mind with such knowledge as
may contribute to the usefulness, the beauty, and the nobleness of his
life.

How is this discipline to be secured, this knowledge imparted? Two
rival methods now solicit attention,--the one organised and equipped,
the labour of centuries having been expended in bringing it to its
present state of perfection; the other, more or less chaotic, but
becoming daily less so, and giving signs of enormous power, both as a
source of knowledge and as a means of discipline. These two methods
are the classical and the scientific method. I wish they were not
rivals; it is only bigotry and short-sightedness that make them so;
for assuredly it is possible to give both of them fair play. Though
hardly authorised to express an opinion upon the subject, I
nevertheless hold the opinion that the proper study of a language is
an intellectual discipline of the highest kind. If I except
discussions on the comparative merits of Popery and Protestantism,
English grammar was the most important discipline of my boyhood. The
piercing through the involved and inverted sentences of 'Paradise
Lost'; the linking of the verb to its often distant nominative, of the
relative to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of the
transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it
governed, the study of variations in mood and tense, the
transpositions often necessary to bring out the true grammatical
structure of a sentence--all this was to my young mind a discipline of
the highest value, and a source of unflagging delight. How I rejoiced
when I found a great author tripping, and was fairly able to pin him
to a corner from which there was no escape! As I speak, some of the
sentences which exercised me when a boy rise to my recollection. For
instance, 'He that hath ears to hear, let him hear;' where the 'He'
is left, as it were, floating in mid air without any verb to support
it. I speak thus of English because it was of real value to me. I do
not speak of other languages because their educational value for me
was almost insensible. But knowing the value of English so well, I
should be the last t