most salient feature in the intellectual development of this century has been the progress of science. And this century is the first since the revival of learning in which a serious challenge has been thrown down to the defenders of the humanistic tradition. But I think it will be found that the position of humanism in this country at the close of the century is much stronger than it was at the beginning.
In the earlier part of the century, the classics still held a virtual monopoly, so far as literary studies were concerned, in the public schools and Universities. And they had no cause to be ashamed of their record. The culture which they supplied, while limited in the sphere of its operation, had long been an efficient and vital influence, not only in forming men of letters and learning, but in training men who afterwards gained distinction in public life and in various active careers. There can be no better proof that such a discipline has penetrated the mind, and has been assimilated, than if, in the crises of life, a man recurs to the great thoughts and images of the literature in which he has been trained, and finds there what braces and fortifies him, a comfort, an inspiration, an utterance for his deeper feelings. Robert Wood, in his "Essay on the Original Genius of Homer" (1769), relates a story which will illustrate what I mean. In 1762, at the end of the Seven Years' War, Wood, being then an Under-Secretary of State, took the preliminary articles of the Treaty of Paris to the
