THE PETERITE V o l. X I .V
NOVEMBER, 1953
No. 334
EDITORIAL It was with great concern that we learned at the beginning of this term of the illness which had overtaken Mr. Burgess : few afflictions can arouse more fear than those which attack the eyes, and for a man of Mr. Burgess' scholarly interests the illness must have been even harder to bear. It was re-assuring to have cheerful and courageous letters from him, and we offer him our sincere sympathy and hope for a rapid and complete recovery. Mr. Burgess, as Senior Classics Master, teaches a subject which is the furthest removed from the vocational. Whatever rewards the study of Classics offers, the learning, acquired perhaps through many years, will be put to no practical use. A classical education, unlike many others, exists as an end in itself : its purpose is to make its follower aware of the resources and principles of his own language through the hard and precise labour of translation, to strengthen and discipline his mind, and by intimately acquainting him with works of nobility and greatness, to give him an enduring standard of values which will enable him to reject the specious and inferior. We hear more and more demands for "useful" education—knowledge of facts with a measurable value in cash—, or for education more related to the present day, but we cannot believe that the value of a classical training is one that the modern civilised world can entirely forgo. The hideous tyrannies whose growth the twentieth century has unhappily witnessed turned their backs on the ideals and traditions of Greece and Rome; Western Liberalism is the heir of that tradition, with its teaching of dignity, freedom, and democracy, and to preserve it undistorted is the work of classical scholars. The most notable event of last term was, of course, the Coronation of our Queen. A holiday for the School began after Matins on Sunday and lasted for the three days following, and many boys and staff were able to go to London to see the procession and listen to the service; others saw or heard the ceremony in their own homes. At no time before has a coronation been so much a part of the life
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