The instructors of youth in England have practically solved the question which divided the teachers of antiquity, for they deliver the youth at once from the grammar-school to the forum. They teach him the dead languages incessantly, up to the age of eighteen, at school: in the universities, mathematics in one university, and logic in the other, divide his time with the composition of Greek prose or Latin verse. But in those branches of study which have a bearing on eloquence, or are likely to improve the style of composition, the main attention of all is still directed to composition in the _dead languages_. They think the art of speaking or writing in English is not to be learned by exercise in that language, but by exercise in another. They hold we are likely to become eloquent in this our English isle, not by translating Cicero into English, but by translating Addison into Latin; to become great poets, not by rendering Horace into the tongue of Gray and Campbell, but by rendering the immortal verses of these into the languages of Pindar or Virgil. Cicero and Mr Pitt were of an opposite opinion. They held that, although the study of the masterpieces of antiquity is the great school of oratory, and the best path to rivalling their beauties, yet this is to be done, not by prosecuting the vain endeavour to emulate, in these days, their perfection in _their tongue_, but by seeking to _transfer it to our own_. Translations from the Greek into Latin formed a large part of the preparatory studies of Cicero,--from Thucydides and Cicero were the favourite occupation at college of Mr Pitt.[24] It may be that these great masters of ancient and modern eloquence were wrong--that their time would have been better employed in composing Greek and Latin verses, in attaining a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin prosody, or becoming masters of all the niceties of Greek or Latin prose composition; but we shall not enter on the great debate. We are content to let education for all classes, in our universities, remain what Mr Locke long ago said it was, the education of schoolmasters;[25] and shall content ourselves with signalising this peculiar system of training as one great cause of the admitted inferiority of modern to ancient eloquence. None can be more thoroughly impressed than we are with the vast importance of these noble establishments, or their effect in elevating the tone of the national mind, and improving the taste of the youth who daily issue from their walls. It is just from a sense of these advantages that we are so desirous to enhance and extend the sphere of their usefulness, and, by keeping them abreast of the age, and prepared to meet its wants, secure for the classes they instruct the lead in the national affairs to which they are entitled.