difficult to retrace. The humanities, if they cannot prevent such a movement, can do something to temper and counteract it; because they appeal to permanent things, to the instinct for beauty in human nature, and to the emotions; and in any one who is at all susceptible to their influence they develope a literary conscience. Nor is this all. Their power in the higher education will affect the quality of the literary teaching lower down. Every one can see how vitally important it is for us, in this country and at this moment, to maintain, in our general education, a proper balance of subjects, and to secure that, while scientific and technical studies have full scope, a due efficacy shall be given also to the studies of literature and history.
We have no Academy of Letters in England, and, for my part, I am with those who hope that we never shall have one. But no doubt we must desire to have what Mr Matthew Arnold called "a public force of correct literary opinion, possessing within certain limits a clear sense of what is right and wrong, sound and unsound." In concluding this lecture, I would venture to say that such a force of correct literary opinion is just what an intelligent humanism should contribute to supply; not, as an Academy does, in a public or corporate form, but through the influence and example of individuals. Humanism can do that, if it is loyal to its best self; if it avoids a needless excess of technicality in the treatment of literature; if it cultivates sanity of judgment, and is careful that the exercise of
