The study of the ancient classics continues still the chief business, since the German philologists conceive that they constitute the only and indispensable gymnastics of the mind. This is another ground by which these schools have come into open feud with the Realist tendency of the age--why the Gymnasia have dreaded an encroachment on their rights through the rapid growth and influence of Real-schools; because they feared that the public would come to see in their effects, that there was another mode of awaking the spirit to an internal activity than by the study of the dead languages. It is not to be denied that through the study of the ancients the spirit is awakened; the sense of the noble and the great is inspired; that the poetical feeling is excited,--the taste purified, and the reason strengthened; that the mind is accustomed to a logical activity, and especially to self-reflection. But the schoolmen go too far with this. They are orthodox, and are contented that the future learned should here find their necessary nourishment. They will, in general, acknowledge no other learning or education than that of the Gymnasium, and torment every one with it who, as a future tradesman, can manage his affairs perfectly without this knowledge, and can bring by it little or nothing out of the school into his own trade. Yet at present the Gymnasia strive so far to meet the acknowledged necessities of the time, that they have adopted some of the educational subjects of the Real-schools, as mathematics, and the natural sciences in the fullest sense of the word. The subjects of tuition, with the exception of the predominant teaching of the ancient languages, are in general those of the other schools; that is, of the Folk's-schools, in a higher degree. The relation to the state is the same as that which we have already made ourselves acquainted with in the Folk's-schools; and we will now only explain a few more of the peculiarities of the Gymnasia.