shown by the hand which is so
frequently seen uniting scholarship and barbarous taste, science and
journalism. In a very large majority of cases to-day we can observe
how sadly our scholars fall short of the standard of culture which the
efforts of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Winckelmann established; and
this falling short shows itself precisely in the egregious errors
which the men we speak of are exposed to, equally among literary
historians--whether Gervinus or Julian Schmidt--as in any other
company; everywhere, indeed, where men and women converse. It shows
itself most frequently and painfully, however, in pedagogic spheres,
in the literature of public schools. It can be proved that the only
value that these men have in a real educational establishment has not
been mentioned, much less generally recognised for half a century:
their value as preparatory leaders and mystogogues of classical
culture, guided by whose hands alone can the correct road leading to
antiquity be found.

"Every so-called classical education can have but one natural
starting-point--an artistic, earnest, and exact familiarity with the
use of the mother-tongue: this, together with the secret of form,
however, one can seldom attain to of one's own accord, almost
everybody requires those great leaders and tutors and must place
himself in their hands. There is, however, no such thing as a
classical education that could grow without this inferred love of
form. Here, where the power of discerning form and barbarity gradually
awakens, there appear the pinions which bear one to the only real home
of culture--ancient Greece. If with the solitary help of those pinions
we sought to reach those far-distant and diamond-studded walls
encircling the stronghold of Hellenism, we should certainly not get
very far; once more, therefore, we need the same leaders and tutors,
our German classical writers, that we may be borne up, too, by the
wing-strokes of their past endeavours--to the land of yearning, to
Greece.

"Not a suspicion of this possible relationship between our classics
and classical education seems to have pierced the antique walls of
public schools. Philologists seem much more eagerly engaged in
introducing Homer and Sophocles to the young souls of their pupils, in
their own style, calling the result simply by the unchallenged
euphemism: 'classical education.' Let every one's own experience tell
him what he had of Homer and Sophocles at the hand