The next appeal--for all appeals to the Universities have been vain--must be made to those who regulate the curriculums where Literature is made a subject of teaching. Let them rigorously exclude all but the best books. Let them discourage the study of such Epitomes, Manuals, and Histories as are the work of mere irresponsible book makers, and prescribe in its place the study of literary masterpieces. Without excluding the best modern poetry and prose, let most attention--for obvious reasons--be paid to the writings of the older masters. Let them lay special stress on the study of criticism,--of works treating of its principles, of works illustrating the application of its principles to particular writers; and let no work be recognised which is not of classical authority. Translations should, of course, as a rule, be avoided; but in such a subject as the principles of criticism, there is not the smallest reason why those works which are most excellent in other languages, such as the _Treatise on the Sublime_, and some portions of Aristotle’s _Poetic_, such as Lessing’s _Laocoon_, Schiller’s _Letters on Æsthetics_, the best Essays of Sainte-Beuve should not be included.[2] Nor can it be emphasized too strongly that the theory on which all literary teaching should proceed is that its object is not so much to plant as to cultivate, not so much to convey information, which, after all, is but its medium, as to inspire, to refine, to elevate. I cannot but think, too, that the foundations of all this might be laid much earlier than they are, especially in our classical schools, by encouraging, as, according to Coleridge, Dr. Boyer used to do, the study of some of our greater writers, such as Shakespeare and Milton, side by side with that of Homer and Sophocles.