OOMPULSORY GREEK AT THE UNIVERSITIES.
[TO TUE EDITOR OF TEE "SPECTATOR.•']
Snl,—I would not wish to argue with you about Mr. Arthur Benson's letter, but as it is admitted that the public schools have hitherto done great service to the country and to the Empire (would you deny that ?), and as foreign countries are trying to discover our secret and reproduce our results (you will not deny that ?), and as there are in England plenty of newer schools and Universities as yet uncorrupted by stupid and obscurant methods, why not work out the new systems in them, where there is a fair field and no obstruction, before you destroy the strongholds of the old tradition? Let the new prove itself first. If the old is left high and dry, cadet quaestio. We do not fear the issue. I believe that the old endowed public schools and Universities should remain fortresses of the humanities. There is ample opportunity elsewhere for " up-to-date " options. It is disastrous to standardize all under Government., as now proposed at Cambridge. From what I see in my own old school, you are unloading what we had 'without putting anything of value in its place. Better work out experiments on virgin soil and test the new building before you finish pulling down the old. We have serious faults, and much that is said about poor intellectual results is true. But the causes are quite other than you suppose, and the attack on classical studies only calls off attention from the really weak points.—I am, Sir, &c., [Mr. Lnxmoore cannot have been a very close student of the Spectator if he thinks that we have not acknowledged the great service done to the nation by the public schools, and the imperative need for maintaining the humanities as against the utilities and the expediencies. We will never admit, how- ever, that the humanities and the inspiration of the Greek spirit stand or fall with Compulsory Greek at the Universities, or even with a system of forcible feeding in the Greek Grammar for unhappy little boys at our public schools.—En. Spectator.]
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