Educational Reading.

In particular:

Shall we read Byron in our classes, and which of his works?

With regard to the classical authors of antiquity, Greek and Latin, the question what is to be read at college, may be considered as tolerably well settled by long experience, custom and tradition. Even about the succession in which they ought to be read according to their comparative difficulty and the intellectual and moral maturity of the pupils, there is little difference of opinion, and a boy passing from one school to another will scarcely feel a solution of continuity or be disturbed in his course of reading.¹)

It is far from being the same with regard to the moderns. If one or two modern languages now generally have a place in our plan of public teaching, this is a comparatively recent inno- vation, a concession, often made not without grudging, to the practical tendeney of the times. No experience of many centuries, no time-honoured tradition has engendered precedent or stamped on certain standard works the mark of the consensus omnium. Such a result may indeed appear

¹) I take this opportunity to refer to Perthes'„Zur Reform des lateinischen Unterrichts auf Gymnasien und Realschulen. 4. Artilcel. Berlin 1886“, where the author strongly recommends and victoriously vindicates Caesar's„Commentarii de bello Gallico“ as proper reading for our schools(p. 73— 94). His reasons, in so far as they are founded on the subject matter, have a particular weight for those colleges which, without discarding Latin, place modern languages in the foreground and for which, therefore, the history, language and literature of France acquire a higher importance.