Bradshaw who compiled the Railway Guide, was
forced to produce a weekly tale of Latin and Greek verses which would
have made Horace laugh and Sophocles cry. The Rev. Esau Hittall's
"Longs and Shorts about the Calydonian Boar," commemorated in
_Friendship's Garland_, may stand for a sample of the absurdities
which I have in mind; and the supporters of this amazing abuse
assured the world that Greek and Latin versification was an essential
element of a liberal education. It took a good many generations to
deliver England from this absurdity, and there are others like
unto it which still hold their own in the scholastic world. To
sweep these away should be the first object of the educational
reformer; and, when that preliminary step has been taken, the State
will be able to say to every boy who is not mentally deficient:
"This, or this, is the path which Nature intended you to tread.
Follow it with all your heart. We will back you, and help you,
and applaud you, and will not forsake you till the goal is won."

VI

_A PLEA FOR THE INNOCENTS_

My "spiritual home" is not Berlin, nor even Rome, but Jerusalem.
In heart and mind I am there to-day, and have been there ever since
the eternally memorable day on which our army entered it. What I am
writing will see the light on the Feast of the Holy Innocents;[*]
and my thoughts have been running on a prophetic verse which unites
the place and the festival in a picturesque accord:

"Thus saith the Lord, I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in
the midst of Jerusalem:... and the streets of the city shall be
full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof."

The most brilliant Israelite of our times, Lord Beaconsfield, said
of a brilliant Englishman, Dean Stanley, that his leading feature
was his "picturesque sensibility," and that sensibility was never
more happily expressed than when he instituted the service for
children in Westminster Abbey on Innocents' Day--"Childermas Day,"
as our forefathers called it, in the age when holidays were also
holy days, and the Mass was the centre of social as well as of
spiritual life. On this touching feast a vast congregation of boys
and girls assembles in that Abbey Church which has been rightly
called "the most lovable thing in Christendom"; and, as it moves
in "solemn troops and sweet societies" through aisles grey with
the memories of a thousand years, it seems a living prophecy of
a brighter age already at the door.

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