THERE is not the slightest necessity for schoolmen's staring at one another when it is proposed to let boys once more look through magic casements at the classic myths of Greece and Rome. These masters of knowledge can depend upon it that their pedagogic systems are wrong if they set themselves up against the primitive feelings of mystery and fear. There is yet too strong a trace in the blood to forsake the gods and heroes that have satisfied instincts, very human and commendable, for many generations. No goblin nor witch needs to be cast out when the blood flows red; it is merely an indication of abundant life drawn from the strength and courage that marked an heroic age. If a boy's talents be anything but mediocre, they will naturally turn to this age to satisfy a longing. It is small wonder that the young Keats should stay up all night reading Chapman's Homer, or should translate the Æneid into English "just for fun." These glimpses were pure serene to a poet who afterwards caught in such a rare way their classic beauty; and the gods surely loved him for it, for they decreed that he should die young. The charm of the myths of Greek and Roman literature is enduring, because they embody both truth and beauty--sometimes held to be one and the same. Nothing but a perverted taste, that is fed on the prosaic processes of material achievements or the artificial standards of a moral system, could fail to find pleasure and inspiration in them. Their appeal is artistic, to the sense of beauty. Their truth is a deification of the longings of the human heart as it seeks for comfort and protection in a world whose mysterious events can hardly be fathomed. And their gods and heroes embody the great virtues that marked a classic people as much as they did the beauty of their intellectual achievements--the virtues of courage, patience, honour, loyalty, contentment. A normal disposition will take satisfaction in this interpretation of truth and beauty. Not only will its possessor be satisfied, but he will be ennobled by the very presence of these qualities before his keen senses. The world will seem to him more than a place in which he is to toil and spin day after day; his soul will dwell apart on a mountain where not all mortals can ever climb, a mountain crowded with culture. He can temporarily leave the common crofts, seek his solace and confession, and be all the better to ply again his allotted task. He will learn of one spot where the greed and brutality of industrial progress cannot set its heel and leave the print of what is practical and ugly.