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may be—an endless change and development that never ceases, although we may not be able to mark it every day. That conception is entirely wanting in the antique world; and therefore it is not too much to ask that that idea should be imparted to youth before we give so much time to study the state of society in which it is wholly wanting. I won't detain you with any discussion in this place on the morals and metaphysics of the ancients. I suspect that they knew as much of the mental sciences as we do now—neither much more nor much less; and, without speaking disrespectfully of them, we may say this, that no two of them had the same opinion on the same subject. Then we are dosed with the antiquities of the ancients. Every man is expected to know how many Archons there were at Athens, though he does not know how many Lords of the Treasury there are in London; he must know all the forms of their courts, though he knows hardly the names of our own. He must be dosed with their laws and institutions—things excessively repulsive to the young mind—things only valuable for comparing with our own institutions, of which he is kept profoundly ignorant.
Then another thing, not a little irritating, is Ancient Geography. A large portion of time is spent in studying divisions of countries that have long ceased to exist, or have any practical bearing on the world. Of course, if you are to study the language of the ancients, these things must be learned; but is it not melancholy to think how much modern geography is sacrificed to this knowledge? There is nothing in which young men are more deficient than in geography. I shall just mention a few things within my own knowledge. Take, for instance, Australia. It is very rare to find a person who knows where the colonies of Australia are. The island of Java is said to have been given up by Lord Castlereagh at the Treaty of Vienna to the Dutch because he could not find it in the map, and was ashamed to confess his ignorance. I remember a very eminent member of the House of Commons indeed—I will not mention his name—who made a speech in which it was quite manifest to me that he
