But to pass from what concerns Philology to what concerns Literature. Now in considering this point it is necessary to remember that we are not dealing with the regulations of any subordinate institution or curriculum, with provincial Universities and seminaries, or with schemes of study in which Literature is only one out of many subjects. We are dealing with a Final Honour School at Oxford, with regulations which will inevitably form a precedent and model wherever the study of English literature shall be organized in Great Britain. We are dealing with a school which is to educate those who are to educate the country. Nothing, therefore, could be more disastrous than unsoundness and deficiency in the provisions of such an institution, nothing more deplorable than its giving countenance and authority to error and inadequacy. It is not too much to say that, if this scheme had been designed with the express object of degrading the standard of literary teaching, and of perpetuating all that is worst in present systems, it could hardly have been better adapted for its purpose. Not to dwell upon subordinate defects, it completely severs the study of our own literature from that of the ancient classical literatures. It necessitates no knowledge of any of the Continental literatures. It ignores absolutely the higher criticism. Contracting Literature within the narrowest bounds, its selection of books for special study is worthy of an Army Examination. In the wretched jumble in which Goldsmith’s _Citizen of the World_ jostles Shelley’s _Adonais_ and Burke’s _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_ Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s _Lyrical Ballads_, no attempt is made to discriminate between compositions which are representative, either critically of the work of particular authors, or historically of particular epochs, and works which have no such significance, while many of the most important departments of our prose Literature are unrepresented. Nor is this all. It affords every facility for cramming. It is adapted to test nothing but what may be mechanically acquired and mechanically imparted, what may be poured out from lectures into notebooks, and from notebooks into examination papers. Proceeding on the assumption that a literary education is merely the acquisition of positive knowledge, it neither requires nor encourages, as the prescription of an essay or thesis, or even “taste-paper,” might have done, any of the finer qualities of literary culture, such, for example, as a sense of style, sound judgment, good taste, the touch of the scholar. We can assure these legislators, and we speak from knowledge, that, setting aside the philological portion of this curriculum, which is, so far as it goes, solid enough, an experienced crammer, would, in about three months furnish an astute youth with all that is requisite for graduating in this school.