[63] Thus, a critic might argue that the present ills of Ireland arise
not only from general idleness and want of thrift, but from melancholy
ignorance of all scientific principles of agriculture, and from a total
misappreciation of the conditions of trading; for here, if anywhere,
honesty is the best policy; but it is not obvious to the ignorant,
especially if they be astute. These evils might be diminished by
diffusing agricultural and commercial schools through the country, not
by granting university degrees for a smattering in arts.
[64] In his Lexicon, sub voc. _Plato_.
[65] All foreigners, on the contrary, seem to love official dress,
whether military or not. I was once in Genoa during a regatta, when a
crew of visitors from Spezia or Livorno used to walk about the streets
in boating costume, with their oars over their shoulders, to the
admiration of the Genoese. Imagine the Oxford eight, the day before the
University race, sauntering along Piccadilly in this style! I recommend
this case to the theorists who maintain that human nature is the same
at all times and places.
[66] The description by Libanius of the rhetor’s duty, to receive
the lad from his parents, to advise him, and even to punish him for
idleness, to acquaint the parents periodically of his progress, etc.,
reminds us perfectly of the duties of a college tutor. But this was
clearly a voluntary task, and generally undertaken not merely from duty
towards the lad, but from a desire to be popular and to secure a large
following.
[67] Χορός, θίασος, σύνοδος (religious), συνουσία, ποίμνιον, ἀγέλη.
I see that Sievers, in his life of Libanius, understands ἄρχων and
χορός of a council of professors; but this is surely incorrect. He was
probably misled by finding so much power attributed to a mere student.
[68] Called by the Romans _sagatio_, and hence probably soldiers’
horse-play, as _sagum_ is a soldier’s cloak.
[69] Libanius, i. 17.
[70] ii. and iii. are published; iv. is to follow.
[71] It is said that the exiled iconoclasts, driven out to Bulgaria,
were the spiritual parents of the Hussites and other early reformers
in Bohemia. From this new centre Protestantism spread across Europe.
So that the Scottish Puritan, and, for that matter, the New England
Puritan, derives his uncompromising earnestness from the remote source
which produced both Stoicism and the most vigorous early Christianity.
INDEX.
Abacus, 56
Academy, the (of Plato), 121
Accent, bad, 13
Æschines cited, 26
Æsop, 20
Age for beginning education, 15
Alcibiades, 15, 59
Alexandria, 50, 138
America, 79
Ἀμφωτίδες, 29
Anaxagoras, 47
Andromache, 8
Anytus, 88
Apollodorus, 59
Ἀπόῤῥαξις, 18
Ἄρχων of students, 130
Archytas’s rattle, 13
Aristophanes cited, 17, 34, 38, 53, 59, 83
Aristotle cited, 57, 61, 62, 110
---- his school, 122
Arithmetic, 54-56
Ἀσκωλιάζειν, 16
Astragali, 17, 19
Astyanax, 8
Athens, a university town, 82
---- modern university of, 119
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