10.] [Footnote 1917: Notwithstanding recent censures of classical studies as a useless waste of time, there can be no doubt that they give the highest finish to intellectual culture.

The ancient classics contain the most consummate models of literary art; and the greatest writers have been their most diligent students.

Classical culture was the instrument with which Erasmus and the Reformers purified Europe.

It distinguished the great patriots of the seventeenth century; and it has ever since characterised our greatest statesmen.

"I know not how it is," says an English writer, "but their commerce with the ancients appears to me to produce, in those who constantly practise it, a steadying and composing effect upon their judgment, not of literary works only, but of men and events in general.