liberal education. And the educational value of good literature is all the greater in our day, because the progress of knowledge more and more enforces early specialization. Good literature tends to preserve the breadth and variety of intellectual interests. It also tends to cultivate the sympathies; it exerts a humanizing influence by the clear and beautiful expression of noble thoughts and sentiments; by the contemplation of great actions and great characters; by following the varied development of human life, not only as an evolution governed by certain laws, but also as a drama full of interests which intimately concern us. Moreover, as has well been said, if literature be viewed as one of the fine arts, it is found to be the most altruistic of them all, since it can educate a sensibility for other forms of beauty besides its own. The genius of a Buskin can quicken our feeling for masterpieces of architecture, sculpture and painting. Even a very limited study of literature, if it be only of the right quality, may provide permanent springs of refreshment for those whose principal studies and occupations are other than literary. We may recall here some weighty words written by one of the very greatest of modern men of science. "If I had to live my life again" said Charles Darwin, "I would have made it a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week. . . . The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature." The same lesson is enforced by John Stuart Mill, in that remarkable passage of his 'Autobiography' where he describes how, while still a youth, he became aware of a serious defect, a great lacuna, in that severe intellectual training which, for him, had commenced in childhood. It was a training from which the influences of imaginative literature had been rigidly excluded. He turned to that literature for mental relief, and found what he wanted in the poetry of Wordsworth. "I had now learned by experience"—this is his comment—"that the passive susceptibilities needed to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to be nourished and enriched as well as guided." Nor is it merely to the happiness and mental well-being of the individual that literature can minister. By rendering his intelligence more flexible, by deepening his humanity, by increasing his power of comprehending others, by fostering worthy ideals, it will add something to his capacity for cooperating with his fellows in every station of life and in every phase of action; it will make him a better citizen, and not only a more sympathetic, but also a more efficient member of society.
One of the urgent problems of the higher education in our day is how to secure an adequate measure of literary culture to those students whose primary concern is with scientific and technical pursuits. Some of the younger English universities, which give degrees in science, con
