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The want of such a body of men is producing among us a sort of literary isolation from the rest of Europe, and is one of the most serious hindrances to our national progress. There are, suppose, hardly any educated Frenchmen or Germans who cannot converse with one another easily. How How many University men are there in Great Britain and Ireland who can hardly make out French, and are totally innocent of German? seems then one of the reforms most demanded, and for which the public should clamour till it is granted, that a degree with honours, what is called in Dublin a moderatorship, should be attainable at any University by a competent knowledge of three modern European languages and their literature. Again, as professional students are allowed a certain selection of subjects at their degrees in art, should it not be allowed them to select a modern language instead of Latin or Greek, or both, and to graduate in philosophy and mathematics and modern languages? The paltry prizes awarded by special examination to proficiency in these languages are quite insufficient to stimulate the study of them. For Danish and Swedish, two very important scientific modes of communication in the present day, there is with us no encouragement at all. These things ought not so to be. In the medical school, the most distinguished of our students leave Ireland immediately after taking their medical degree or licence, to prosecute their studies in Paris, Berlin, or Vienna. It is obvious that such men are at present so pressed with other work, that they cannot acquaint themselves properly with modern languages, and so they lose the first six months of their precious time abroad in learning what they should have brought with them.

But with this exception, I think there can be little fault found with the breadth of programme in the Dublin University. As to the efficiency of the teaching of these manifold subjects, it is admitted even in England that mathematics have been for a long time past in very good hands. That dreadfully tedious old book, "Euclid," which has persuaded so many boys that they had no taste for science because they could not like it, still holds its sway at the opening of the course; but this might have been expected from the very geometrical tastes of the Dublin mathematicians, who make "Euclid" the introduction to a prolonged study of higher geometry, whereas in Cambridge I am informed that as soon as sufficient torture has been inflicted, it is deserted for the study of pure analysis. As to natural science, and English literature, these courses being voluntary, although experimental physics are taken up by all the students who dislike classics, yet the special professors in these subjects are able to instruct all the classes, and so efficient teaching is pretty well secured. Indeed, the most remarkable

men in the University have devoted their energies of late years to these especial chairs. But classics and philosophy require so many teachers, that the body of Tutor Fellows, seventeen in number, teach them along with mathematics. Philosophy has always been an important branch of the Fellowship examination, and is very much studied by Irishmen, who seem to have a peculiar talent for metaphysics. But classical men have only been very lately allowed to obtain fellowships, and consequently we are still greatly in want of men who have made Latin and Greek the object of their special study for years. A short time will remedy this defect under the present system, which gives scientific and literary men about an equal chance of fellowships, and which does not require them to qualify in any subject for which they have no taste. Besides this especial defect, which is rapidly being remedied, all these courses suffer by individual men not being told off to teach one only. The same fellow, especially while a young man, and therefore exactly during the time most precious to him for deepening his knowledge in one favourite pursuit, is obliged to keep constantly teaching even lower classes in two and sometimes in three so different subjects as mathematics, classics, and philosophy. Add lectures in Hebrew and divinity, sermons every month, and constant examinations to be conducted in all these subjects, and you have the intellectual work of a full tutor fellow in Trinity College, Dublin. Besides this, a couple of hours per diem are often spent in corresponding with absent, and looking after resident pupils. When we further consider that by a very questionable relaxation of a wholesome restriction, these men are allowed to marry, and have families to look after, it is indeed a wonder that any tutor's work is done at all efficiently, and yet here are the words of an unprejudiced and competent observer:

Sir J. Shaw Lefevre, in his address on education to the Social Science Congress in 1861, comments on the large number of successful candidates sent up from Trinity College, Dublin, for the India Civil Service. He notices" that almost every one of them had given previous proof of his ability and industry in his education there. . . . . The instances," he adds, " are too frequent and too numerous to be ascribed to chance, or to an accidentally large number of clever young men being simultaneously at Trinity College, Dublin. For my own part, I do not entertain a doubt that the cause of the remarkable success of the Dublin students is to be found in the excellence of the system of instruction pursued there, and in the high intelligence and conscientious exertions of those who are engaged in the tuition. These gentlemen do not limit themselves, as is the case in some places of education, to forcing on a few promising youths to a pitch of high excellence, so as to do credit to their instructors

and the university; but they perform the real duties of instructors of youth, bringing forward more or less, all who are confided to their care, according to their relative talents and capabilities. I have made these remarks with the greatest satisfaction, because I am a total stranger to almost every one engaged in the administration of the University."

But notwithstanding, the state of things described obviously needs reform. It will be absolutely necessary to restrict them to teaching one subject (at least in honours) and if the very moderate funds of the College would admit of it,* a good many more fellowships are required. The vicious example of Cambridge and the public schools induced the authorities within the last twenty years to make Latin and Greek verses as well as prose compulsory at honour examinations in classics. The Irish schools were at first not competent to train boys in this elegant trifling, and much golden time was and is wasted in the University upon the accomplishment by diligent students who would willingly root their attention to acquiring solid knowledge. Within the last few years the men are beginning to write really good verses, and consequently they are now unwilling to give up their painful acquisition. But the tendency of the age will most certainly abolish verse writing as a compulsory part of classics. It is to be hoped that Trinity College, Dublin, which deserves honourable mention as having been the last to adopt this unwholesome practice, will not be the last to abolish it, especially as there are ample special prizes for a proficiency in the subject. But if through the vicious example of Cambridget and the Civil Service examination we have done those things which we ought not to have done, we have not been led by the same example to have left undone those things which we ought to have done. The political and literary history of Greece and Rome, and the study of the great authors from this point of view, the study of comparative grammar, these form an important part of the classical teaching in Dublin. At the fellowship examination about one-third of the marks are given for English essays, and for vivá voce questions on these

* The rents of the College lands and other property do not amount to £35,000 per annum. Fees from students (an income wholly depending on the efficiency of the College) raise the total income to nearly £60,000. This is about the one-tenth of the income of Oxford, as far as we are allowed to ascertain the wealth of its Colleges. I may add, as another contrast, that the whole accounts of receipt and expenditure are exposed, on fixed days each year, for the inspection of all the Fellows.

I say Cambridge rather than Oxford, because the Mathematical University has always been looked upon as a more suitable model for us—why, I know not. I suppose it was an idol of the mathematical don in Dublin.

subjects. So that the system at least, however imperfectly it may be taught, seems to combine the systems of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as far as they differ, and offers the advantages of both. A few years will tell whether this arrangement is likely to bear solid fruit.

It is of course not to be expected that the older Universities will take pattern from the example of Dublin, though the few Cambridge men who have become accidentally acquainted with our system have been heard to say that it was better than their own, and would ultimately there be adopted. If ever adopted, however, it will be adopted as an English discovery, not as an Irish example.

The mention of Cambridge classics suggests another remark. If classical teaching is to hold its place at all in modern education, it must abandon not only verse-writing, but that tedious and very nearly useless quibbling about grammatical subtleties, which has become so fashionable in England. Men spend years upon critical editions, and will not vouchsafe a syllable in explanation of their author; men spend years on grammatical editions in which the style of their author is so dissected and encumbered with grammatical parallels, that his sense, his beauty, his historical or philosophical value is totally and hopelessly obscured. Is not such commenting intolerable? If you want to understand Catullus or Martial, Theocritus or Aristophanes, you must go back to the old Delphin editions, with their miserable text, and the German scholia. These old fellows at least tried to interpret what they undertook to explain. We want then editions not meant for teachers, or other editors, not meant to display the editor's own acuteness or learning, but to make the author easier, and to bring him within the reach of moderate scholars. Let us have such books as Mr. Munro's "Lucretius," itself an epoch in English scholarship, Mr. Conington's "Vergil," and Mr. Paley's Eschylus." There is no more mischievous idol now worshipped by cultivated people, than what is called at Cambridge Fine Scholarship. The fine scholar is to despise all historical knowledge. It is not thought creditable for him to answer his historical paper at a higher examination in classics. He is not to trouble himself about the antiquities, or the philosophy, or the social views of his author. He is to analyse his sentences as sentences critically and grammatically. He is to write faultless verse and prose, consisting altogether of a mosaic, made up of the shattered fragments of remaining Latin and Greek authors. But he is to despise any scholar, however great, who does not fall down and worship his idol. Such a man as Mr. Grote, for example, who has done as much as all the Cambridge men of the present generation together in disseminating classical knowledge through

England, and making us respected abroad-such a man is to be sneered at if he is not a fine scholar. If Cambridge does not soon abandon such nonsense, it will inherit the title once applied to Oxford by a great thinker-" the widow of sound learning."

But there is one peculiarity in the study of classics in the Dublin University which is worth being considered, even as a matter of curiosity. In the last generation, when classics were very little understood in Dublin, there were still seventy valuable scholarships to be obtained by them, and the examiners, both as being Irishmen fond of fluency, and also unable to apply better tests, used to decide these fine prizes by the test called with us "spouting." So perfect were the Irish students in this accomplishment, that they would read out any Latin or Greek book they had studied in the most perfect English without a stumble or a fault. They would doubtless have sometimes shocked a fine scholar by omitting to translate an apparently superfluous av or dn, but still they made themselves at home in the sense, and caught the spirit of their author. I have often heard Tacitus read out like a piece of English history, and the periods of Demosthenes rendered with a passion that was really delightful. Indeed the habit has not died out among us. Though we have learned to apply other and safer tests, though we have come to tolerate the "hemming and hawing" of the modern scholars, when redeemed by a sound knowledge of construction, of composition, and of history, still the old traditions remain, and we prize the men who will storm at us, till we almost imagine ourselves Catiline or Antony. Surely this, too, is an element in really fine scholarship.

But what is far more important, it has been proved by experience that there is no better or sounder training in eloquence than the habit of declaiming in translation the great masterpieces of Attic and of Roman eloquence. Everybody knows how William Pitt was trained in this very way by his father. All the great Irish orators of this and the last generation received the very same treatment, and even now the facility of expression for which Irishmen are remarkable is due, not merely to the natural gifts of the race, but also to the traditional habit in the University of expecting this accomplishment in her classical scholars. If you wish to learn how to shape your own ideas in flowing words, what better practice can you adopt than to render the ideas of other men from another tongue into your own language? It is surely a defect in the English schools and universities that this point is neglected. It is manifestly false to say that it spoils accurate scholarship. The ordinary way of examining with us, is to hear a man read aloud a page from the anthor first, and then to go back over all the points which were