Compulsory Classics in England.

Prof. Huxley of the Eton corporation in his evidence before the Select Committee on Education, Science, and Art of last year, thus pronounced his opinion on the present curricula of public schools: "I do not disguise my conviction that the whole theory on which our present educational system is based, is wrong from top to bottom; that the subjects which are now put down as essential, and on which the most stress is laid, are luxuries, so to speak; and that those which are regarded as comparatively unessential, and as luxurious are essentials. For example, it is perfectly possible under the present scheme for a young man to have the most costly education that this country affords him, and to be totally and absolutely ignorant of English literature, and to be unable to write English decently. As to the conditions of life, the questions of political economy and the like, which are of absolute importance to any one who wants to understand the social world in which he is living, there is not the slightest need that he should ever have mastered the rudiments of them."

There can be little doubt, says the London Athenaeum, that Prof. Huxley in these trenchant criticisms was glancing at Eton. Not that Eton is a sinner above other public schools; but instead of taking the load with its large endowments and prestige, naturally enough it has followed in the wake of Rugby, and other foundations, and in the matter of Latin verse, which we may take as the touch-stone of a reforming, or a non-reforming school, has shown itself the most conservative of them all. The first step to any real reform of studies is the abolition of verse-making, except as an extra in the higher forms. Greek, too, as a compulsory subject is doomed, and all the head masters in England cannot save it. This, we know, is a debatable question, and we should like to argue it out, but here we must be content to dogmatic.