The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1883-07-12
"THE OLDER ORDER cHANeETH, YIELDING
PLACE TO NEW"

every ulrecuon, ana the civilized races of
the world are becoming one people, even If
highly dscordant and quarrelsome people.
We all of us live more in the present and
less in :hespast than we did thirty years ago,
much less in the pastand much more in the
present than those who preceded us did fifty
years AGO. The world as it is may be a very
PAD and very vulgar world, -insincere,
democratic, disrespectful dangerous, and al
together hopeless. | do not think Ii is; but
with that somewhat comprehensive issue /
have, here and now, nothing to do. How
ever bad and hopeless, it Is nevertheless the
world in which our lot was cast. aud In
which We have had 10 live,-a busting. &C.
tive, nervous world, and one very hard to
keep up with.
"As sREEP AMONG woLvEs.n
The college fitted us for this active, bus
Ting, hard-hitting, many-tongued world,
caring nothing for authority and little for
the past but full of its living thought and liy-
ing issues in dealing with which there was
no man who did not stand in pressing and
constant need of every possible preparation
as respects knowledge and exactitude and
thoroughness-the poor old college prepared
us to play our parts in this world by compel
ing US, directly or indirectly, TO devote the
best part of our school lives to acquiring
confessedly superficial knowledge of two
dead languages.
THE CLASSICS REcEDING.
The classic tongues were far more remote
from our world than they had been from the
world our fathers lived in. They are much
more remote from the world of Today Il an
they were from the world of thirty years ago.
| The human mind outside of the cloisters is
| occupied with other and more pressing
| things. Especially is 1t occupied with a
class of Notwithstanding thoughts
which DO not find their nntriment In the re-
| mote past. They are not in sympathy with
II. Accordingly, the world turns more and
more from the classics to those other and
living sources in which alone it finds what
It seeks Students come to college from the
hearthstones of the modern world. They
are consequently more and more disposed To-
regard the dead languages as mere require
ment to college admission. This reacts up
on the institution.
SCHOLARSHIP AID VENEER.
| recognize fully the benefit to be derived
| from severe training in those mother
tongues, and / think appreciate the pleas
ure those must have who enjoy an easy ia
miliarity with the authors who yet live in
them. No one admires-I am not prepared
70 admit that any one can admire-more
than the subtle, Undesirable fineness both
OF thought and dietion which a thorough
classical education gives to the scholar. Mr..
Gladstone is, as Maeaalay was, a striking
case IN point. As much as anyone | note
and deplore the absence of this literary Tow
er-stamp III the writings and ptterances of
many OF our own authors aud public men.
But its absence thera IS not so deplorable az
that display of ehea. learning which makes
the American oration of thirty and fifty
years ago netional humiliation. Even in
as bedizened with classic tin
sci which 2nke the vanity of the half
taught scholar. We-Eo longer admire that
sort of thing. But among men Of lnz-oyyr.
generation do both admire and envy those
who am told make it daily rule to read a
little OF Homer or Thucydides, of Horace or
Tacitus. l wish / could do the same; and
yet must frankly say should not do it il |
could. Life after all is limited, and be-
long enough to the present to feel satisfied
that could employ that little time each day
both more enjoyabiy and more proitably if /
should devote it to keeping pace with mod
ern thought, as it finds expression even in
the ephemeral pages of the despised review.
Do what he will, no man can keep pace with
that wonderful smodern thought; and if /
must choose-and choose must-I would
rather learn something daily from the living
who are to perish, than daily muse with the
immortal dead.
A LITTLE LATIN A GOOD THING.
Latin I will not stop to contend over. That
is small matter. Not only is it a compare
lively Simple language, but apart from its
literature-for which cannot myself pro-
fess to have any great admiration-it has its
modern uses. Not only is it directly the
mother-tongue of all southwestern Europe,
but it has by common consent been adopted
in all scientific nomenclature. Hence there
are reasons why the educated man should
have at least an elementary knowledge of
Latin. That knowledge also can be acquired
with no great degree of labor. To master
the language would be another mat er: but
in these days few think Of mastering it.
How many students during the last thirty
years have graduated from Harvard who
could read Horace and Taeitus and Juvenal
as we read Goethe and Mommsen and
Heine? If there have been ten, certainly
do not believe there have been a score This
it is to acquire a language. A knowledge of
lis rudiments is a wholly different thing,
and with the knowledge Of the rudiments Of
Latin as requirement for admission to col.
| ege am not here to quarrel. Not so Greek.
THE REsDUUM THEORY.
come to the great impalpable-essence-
that knowledge of Greek grammar, aud
| the having puzzled through the Anabass
| and three books Of the Had, infuses into the
| boys nature the impe- ceptible ,irit of
| Greek literature, which viii appear IN the
| results of his subsequent work, Just as ma
nure spread upon field appears in tie crop
which that field bears. But to produce re-
suits on field, manure must be laboriously
| worked into its SOIL and made part Of it:
| and only when it is so worked in, and does
| become part Of it, will it produce its
result. YoI cannot haul manure up and
| down and across field, cutting the ground
into deep ruts with the wheels of your cart,
While the soil just gets smell Of what is in
the cart, and then expect to get crop. Yet
even that is more than we did, and are do
ing, with Greek. We trundle single wheel
barrow load Of Greek up and down and
across the boys mind; and then we clasp
our hands and cant about subtle fineness
and impalpable but very precious residuum
THE YOUNG ADAMsEs.
My father had four sons. We were all
brought up on strict traditional principles,
the special family experience being carefully
| ignored. We went to the Latin school, and
there wasted the best hours of our youth
over the Greek grammar-hours during
which we might have been talking French
and German-and presently we went to Har-
ward. When we got there we dropped
Greek, and with one voice we have deplored
the irreparable loss we sustained in being
forced to devote to it that time and labor
which otherwise would have produced re-
suits now invaluable. One brother, since
professor at Harvard, whose work here was
not without results, wiser than the rest,
went abroad after graduation, and devoted
two years to there supplying, imperfectly
and with great labor, the more glazing def
ciencies Of his college training. Since then
the postgraduate knowledge thus acquired
has been to him an indispensable tool of his
trade. Sharing in the modern contempt for
superficial learning, he has not wasted his
time over dead languages which he could
not hope thoroughly TO master. Another Of
the four now Fellow of the university,
has certainly made no effort to keep up his
Greek. When, however, his sons came for
ward, a fifth generation to fiji for college,
looking back over his own experience as he
watched them at their studies, his eyes were
opened. Then in language certainly not
lacking 10 picturesque vigor, but rather pro-
fame than either classical or sacred, he ex-
pressed to me his mature judgment OF the
whole thing. While he looked with mex