With all that has been said or written against making classical studies the most important element in a liberal education, or rather against retaining them in their time-honoured position, nothing has as yet been suggested to take their place. For after all, it is not simply in order to learn two languages that we devote so large a share of our time to the study of Greek and Latin; it is in order to learn to understand the old world on which our modern world is founded; it is in order to think the old thoughts, which are the feeders of our own intellectual life, that we become in our youth the pupils of Greeks and Romans. In order to know what we are, we have to learn how we have come to be what we are. Our very languages form an unbroken chain between us and Cicero and Aristotle, and in order to use many of our words intelligently, we must know the soil from which they sprang, and the atmosphere in which they grew up and developed. I enjoyed my work at school very much, and I seem to have passed rapidly from class to class. I frequently received prizes both in money and in books, but I see a warning attached to some of them that I ought not to be conceited, which probably meant no more than that I should not show when I was pleased with my successes. At least I do not know what I could have been conceited about. What I feel about my learning at school is that it was entirely passive. I acquired knowledge such as it was presented to me. I did not doubt whatever my teachers taught me, I did not, as far as I can recollect, work up any subject by myself. I find only one paper of mine of that early time, and, curiously enough, it was on mythology; but it contains no inkling of comparative mythology, but simply a chronological arrangement of the sources from which we draw our knowledge of Greek mythology. I see also from some old papers, that I began to write poetry, and that twice or thrice I was chosen at great festivities to recite poems written by myself. In the year 1839 three hundred years had passed since Luther preached at Leipzig in the Church of St. Nicolai, and the tercentenary of this event was celebrated all over Germany. My poem was selected for recitation at a large meeting of the friends of our school and the notables of the town, and I had to recite it, not without fear and trembling. I was then but sixteen years of age. In the next year, 1840, Leipzig celebrated the invention of printing in 1440. It was on this occasion that Mendelssohn wrote his famous _Hymn of Praise_. I formed part of the chorus, and I well remember the magnificent effect which the music produced in the Church of St. Thomas. Again a poem of mine was selected, and I had to recite it at a large gathering in the Nicolai-Schule on July 18, 1840.