The professor is not insensible to the reproach that the vaunted classical education has been a failure, as compared with these splendid promises. He says, however, that though many have failed to become classical scholars in the full sense of the word, "it does not follow that they have gained nothing from their study of Greek and Latin; just the contrary is the truth". The "contrary" must mean that they have gained something; which something is stated to be "the extent to which the faculties of the boy have been developed, the quantity of impalpable but not less real attainments he has achieved, and his general readiness for life, and for action as a man". But it is becoming more and more difficult to induce people to spend a long course of youthful years upon a confessedly _impalpable_ result. We might give up a few months to a speculative and doubtful good, but we need palpable consequences to show for our years spent on classics. Next comes the admission that the teaching is often bad. But why should the teaching be so bad, and what is the hope of making it better? Then we are told that science by itself leaves the largest and most important portion of the youths' nature absolutely undeveloped. But, in the first place, it is not proposed to reduce the school and college curriculum to science alone; and, in the next place, who can say what are the "impalpable" results of science? [WORTH OF THE CLASSICAL WRITERS.] The second branch of the argument relates to the greatness of the classical writers. Undoubtedly the Greek and Roman worlds produced some very great writers, and a good many not great. But the greatness of Herodotus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plato, and Aristotle can be exhibited in a modern rendering; while no small portion of the poetical excellence of Homer and the Dramatists can be made apparent without toiling at the original tongues. The value of the languages then resolves itself, as has been often remarked, into a _residuum_. Something also is to be said for the greatness of the writers that have written in modern times. Sir John Herschel remarked long ago that the human intellect cannot have degenerated, so long as we are able to quote Newton, Lagrange and Laplace, against Aristotle and Archimedes. I would not undertake to say that any modern mind has equalled Aristotle in the _range_ of his intellectual powers; but in point of intensity of grasp in any one subject, he has many rivals; so that to obtain his equal, we have only to take two or three first-rate moderns.