The story has (we say it with regret) apparently received its death-blow, and it is asserted that even the schools of its native canton disown it: but the fatal wound did not come from comparative mythology. The test of shooting an apple or anything else off the head of a son is an idea likely to occur to many persons; it might even happen two or three times; it certainly might be ascribed to their several heroes by two or three different nations who prized archery. The existence of Tell and Gessler must be disproved (as it seems to have been) by historical evidence. If history had not shown the main facts to be the invention of a later time, the incident of the apple, recurrent as it is, would not destroy our faith in Tell. At least let us bury him in peace without calling him 'the last reflexion of the sungod.'* Apollo may have shot arrows, but yet national feeling may invent a heroic archer and call him Tell (or Ulysses) without a single thought of the arrows of the sun. Many instances of what may be called recurrent myths may be gathered from The Golden Bough:' the story of 'Danae' is an example (ii. 237), which reappears in much the same form in Siberia and elsewhere, and is derived with some probability by Mr. Frazer from certain customs regarding the seclusion of girls at puberty from the sight of the sun-customs which seem to exist in all four quarters of the globe and in Australia to We find the story of Meleager's brand in Iceland, not because one story was borrowed from the other or both from a common source, but probably because each is suggested independently by a widely-spread superstition about magic talismans and amulets. When once the truths are grasped, that myths were generally devised to explain customs and ritual, and that races with the same primitive and irrational minds are likely to arrive at somewhat similar customs and ritual, these recurrent myths need not always be a difficulty, even though one version is found in an Aryan race, and the other in the middle of Africa or among Pacific islanders. * 'Chips from a German Workshop,' ii. 223. It must be admitted that many puzzles of this kind still lack an explanation, as Mr. Lang has shown in chapter 18 of Myth, Ritual, and Religion.' ART. ART. IX.-1. Report of the Conference of Head Masters held at Oxford on December 23rd, 1890. 6 2. Correspondence thereon, especially in the Times' newspaper, December 1890 and January 1891. 3. The University Calendars of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, London, the Royal University in Ireland. 4. The Indian Civil Service List; with various other Lists and Appendices. By A. C. Tupp, B.A. Madras, 1880. THE 'Zeitgeist' is walking again. That viewless and blind Imp, which loves the title of the Spirit of the Age, has begun to feel that it has been bottled too long. It has now assumed a form in which it menaces one of the greatest and most distinctive of England's Institutions-the method of teaching pursued hitherto in her great Public Schools and her historic Universities. Let us not for a moment shut our eyes to the importance of the issues at stake, or to the alarming imminence of a Revolution. Since the Conference of the Head Masters of the Public Schools, held at Oxford on the 23rd of last December, has rejected only by a majority of two (thirty-one noes against twenty-nine ayes) the resolution of the Head Master of Harrow'That in the opinion of this Conference it would be a gain to education if Greek were not a compulsory subject in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge,'-it needs no prophet to foretell that the innovators will succeed in carrying their point, unless the English public is fully awakened to an apprehension of the magnitude of the revolution attempted, and the seriousness of the consequences which would flow from its success. If the resolution was so barely defeated in a body of men presumably not revolutionary by temperament, all of them Greek scholars, and some of them Greek scholars of the highest eminence, what chance would the maintenance of the study of Greek have with those who possess no classical training, those who welcome change for its own sake, or those who are under the influence of the Idola that the proper study for lads is the world we live in' (viewed solely, be it observed, from its purely material side), and that the real end of education is breadwinning'? We do not propose now to discuss the fitting objects of study, the right ends of education, or the origin and the appropriate functions of a University. These topics have been treated fully in a former article in this 'Review,' on the occasion when the Senate of Cambridge rejected a proposal similar to that which is now put forward. We fancy that this is not * April, 1873, No. 268, pp. 457-486. Vol. 172.-No. 343. P the the time for an à priori treatment of the subject, and the whole tone of the Conference, as well as the correspondence to which it has given rise, convinces us that such a method of dealing with the question would now be received with impatience, and discredited as reactionary. The argument which we would urge most strenuously is one which the innovators receive with silent contempt, and never make any attempt to answer. To our thinking it is unanswer able. It is that when such a resolution as that of the Head Master of Harrow passes, the study of Greek in England is doomed. We are aware that nothing could be more alien from the desires and intentions of such men as the proposer of the resolution, the Head Masters of Winchester, Rugby, Marlborough, and Clifton, who endorsed its principle, or the Head Master of Eton, who presided over the Conference. But we are convinced that the practical result of the proposed change would be the gradual decrease (almost to the point of extinction) of the study of Greek, not only at the private schools but at the public schools and the Universities. Greek would soon occupy the position now held by Hebrew and Sanscrit, and the time would come when even professed Latinists would be ready to avow that their knowledge of Greek was neither deep nor wide. Such a phenomenon was not rare in the Middle Ages; Græcum est, non potest legi, was the usual comment of the Schoolmen when a Greek expression was encountered in a Latin text. Even now there are French and Italian Latinists whose acquaintance with the literature and language of Greece is very slight; and indeed it may be fairly said that in no country but England has the knowledge of Greek and Latin advanced completely pari passu and with mutual illumination for at least the last two centuries. We are told that no one really fears that Greek will cease to be studied in England,' that Greek can take care of itself.* It is significant that the very contradictory of this proposition was enunciated and maintained in 1873 by one who was and is the highest ornament of recent English scholarship, by one whose own career speaks trumpet-tongued against the deposition of Greek from its place in education. George Grote was not the worse banker and financier for the excellent knowledge of Greek which he acquired at a public school before he entered on the career of a business man; but if public schools had been in his time what it is now proposed to make them, we should never have had the History of Greece or the exposition of the เ * A schoolmaster' writing to the 'Times,' Dec. 31, in support of the resolu tion of Mr. Welldon. philosophy philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. But fortunately for himself, and fortunately for the world, Grote went to the Charterhouse, which was then, as it is still, so benighted and reactionary as to insist on Greek as part of a gentleman's education. It is highly improbable that his parents or teachers would have chosen Greek, had any option been possible, for one who was not intended for a University career, and who as a matter of fact never did go to a University. Fortunately the only option presented to them was whether their son should learn Greek or give up the idea of entering a public school. He it was who declared his conviction in 1873 that it was Latin and Greek which required to be fostered, and that the sciences would he used the very phrase of ‘a schoolmaster'—' take care of themselves.'* At what epoch, we may ask, in a boy's training is this premature and excessive specialization † to begin? And is he to decide for himself a question which must be regarded as highly momentous? If so, the question will be decided against Greek in nine cases out of ten. The boy will turn away from the study of grammar, which to the beginner, however apt, must be distasteful, though to the advanced student it is full of interest, and affords perhaps the very best discipline for the faculties of observation and inference. He will betake himself to his cotyledons and his coelenterata, and his master will have the delightful task of explaining to his pupil (if indeed he has learned Greek himself) what these words mean and why they are employed-or perhaps the teacher will be so emancipated from antiquated prejudices that he will tell his pupil that it really does not matter what the words mean, or how they are spelt; that they are borrowed from a language spoken long ago by a people whose manufactures and commerce were insignificant compared with ours, who had no Stock Exchange, and who therefore cannot be interesting to a boy who has to face the pressure of modern life' and 'the struggling eager crowds which beset every avenue to success.' + The Rev. G. C. Bell of Marlborough, himself an excellent scholar, is reported to have said at the Conference that he was integral part of the higher education in England, and wished to retain it for all the students who could afford the time to work at it.' Is the school-boy to decide whether he can 'afford the time to work at it,' and when is the decision to be made? Our 6 anxious to see Greek an His words were that the sciences would be sure to take care of themselves, While the acquisition of Greek and Latin required to be excited and encouraged by motives less obviously associated with material profit.' This was the expression used by Dr. Baker of Merchant Taylors' at the Conference. sons, we believe, are still to be required to learn Latin; the question, Can you afford time to work at Greek?' will be useful as illustrating the proper use of the Latin interrogative particle, num. Whoever the persons may be who shall be empowered to make this decision for our future legislators (who in England, it may be hoped, will be for the most part gentlemen for some time), for our future landed gentry and nobility, and for the professional classes of the future, no one, we fancy, will be bold enough to deny that the result of the proposed change will be a great falling off in the number of those who will study Greek at our schools. It is idle to meet such an incontrovertible forecast with eulogies on Greek as a matchlessly beautiful language;" as a key to history, literature, and philosophy;' as 'the basis of modern European civilization;' especially when the utterers of these panegyrics conceive themselves to have settled the question by adding that a very high education is possible without it. A very high education is possible without trigonometry or elementary mechanics. It may be granted that only a small minority of passmen gain more of literary culture by reading the Greek masterpieces in the original than they would have acquired by means of translations. But it is equally true that, though the study of mechanics is an admirable discipline for the cultivation of intellectual acuteness and scientific imagination, yet only very few passmen really partake of the mental stimulus which the study of mechanics is adapted to afford. We have met with no reason why Greek should not be regarded as an essential part of a gentleman's education, which could not be urged with at least equal force against elementary mechanics and trigonometry. Let all subjects be optional, or let us have a reason why one subject should be optional rather than another. The truth is, that the rank and file of examinees are not now capable, never were capable, and never will be capable, of attaining to knowledge of Greek, Latin, German, trigonometry, mechanics, or any other branch of study, in the sense in which the term 'knowledge' is understood by real scholars and savants; but that is no reason why they should not reap great and permanent advantage from being induced to pursue these studies to a certain point, which is in many cases as far as their intelligence will allow them to go. Mr. Henderson of Wadham writes (Times,' January 1) that it is difficult to find in Greek literature a passage which would not pluck at least half of the candidates if anything like a creditable, even a respectable, translation were exacted.' Would more than half |