“Many children are whipped into Latin, and made to spend many of their precious hours uneasily on it, who, after they are once gone from school, are never to have more to do with it as long as they live. Can there be any thing more ridiculous, than that a father should waste his own money, and his son's time, in setting him to learn the Roman language, when at the same time he designs him for a trade, wherein he, having no use of Latin, fails not to forget that little which he brought from school, and which it is ten to one he abhors, from the ill usage it procured him? Could it be believed, unless we had every where amongst us examples of it, that a child should be forced to learn the rudiments of a language, which he is never to use in the course of life that he is designed for, and neglect all the while,” &c.—_Locke on Education, p. 289._ “The themes are written in Latin, a language foreign to their country, and long since dead every where—a language which your son, 'tis a thousand to one, shall never have occasion to make a speech in, as long as he lives, after he comes to be a man—a language, wherein the manner of expressing one's self is so far different from ours, that to be perfect in that would very little improve the purity and facility of his English style.”—_Idem, p. 308._ “A young Englishman goes to school at six or seven years old; and remains in a course of education till twenty-three or twenty-four years of age. _In all this time his sole and exclusive occupation is learning Latin and Greek;_ he has scarcely a notion that there is any other kind of excellence, unless he goes to the University of Cambridge, and then _classical studies occupy him about ten years_, and divide him with mathematics for four or five more.”—_Edinburgh Review, Vol. XV. p. 45._ In a letter prefixed to the Port Royal Latin Grammar, is the following complaint. “The grammar which is in use in all our schools, has been, it is true, compiled by a learned man—but is so prolix, that _boys can scarcely learn it in four years_.” The friends of classical learning in Great Britain assume, that the illustrious men whose education has been completed at either of the universities, and who reflect honor on the nation, have owed their celebrity and the development of their talents to those great establishments. The Edinburgh Review repudiates this idea as destitute of truth. “It is in vain to say we have produced great men _under this system_. We have produced great men under all systems. _Every Englishman must pass half his life in learning Latin and Greek—and classical learning is supposed to have produced the talents_, WHICH IT HAS NOT BEEN ABLE TO EXTINGUISH.”—_Edinburgh Review, No. XXIX, p. 50._ Having offered some of the arguments against the prevailing system of classical education, it is but fair to exhibit some of those of its advocates.