spicuous position in Church or state. I
think we need what might be called "The Golden Book of Knighthood"--or a
series of text books adapted to elementary and advanced schools--made up
of the lives and deeds (whether attested by "original documents," or
legendary or even fabulous does not matter) of those in all times, and
amongst all peoples, who were the glory of knighthood; the "parfait
gentyl Knyghtes" "without fear and without reproach." Such for example,
to go no farther back than the Christian Era, as St. George and St.
Martin, King Arthur and Launcelot and Galahad, Charles Martel and
Roland, St. Louis, Godfrey de Bouillon and Saladin, the Earl of
Strafford, Montrose and Claverhouse, the Chevalier Bayard, Don John of
Austria, Washington and Robert Lee and George Wyndham. These are but a
few names, remembered at random; there are scores besides, and I think
that they should be held up to honour and emulation throughout the
formative period of youth. After all, they became, during the years when
these qualities were exalted, the personification of the ideals of
honour and chivalry, of compassion and generosity, of service and
self-sacrifice and courtesy, and these, the qualifications of a
gentleman and a man or honour, are, with the religion that fostered
them, and the practice of that religion, the just objective of
education.

Much of all this can even now be taught through a judicious use of the
opportunities offered instructors in English, whether this is through
the graded "readers" of elementary education, or the more extended
courses in colleges and universities. Very frequently these
opportunities are ignored, and will be until we achieve something of a
new orientation in the matter of teaching English.

Now it may be I hold a vain and untenable view of this subject, but I am
willing to confess that I believe the object of teaching English is the
unlocking of the treasures of thought, character and emotion preserved
in the written records of the tongue, and the arousing of a desire to
know and assimilate these treasures on the part of the pupil. I am very
sure that English should not be taught as a thing ending in "ology," not
as an intricate science with all sorts of laws and rules and exceptions;
not as a system whereby the little children of the Ghetto, and the
offspring of Pittsburgh millionaires, and the spectacled infant elect of
Beacon Hill may all be raised to the point where they can write with