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throughout life— the study of a modern language offers an àdvantage which ought not to be undervalued. Few are they who, having learned Greek and Latin at college, will, in after-life, continue an intimate intellectual intercourse with the ancients, read the works of those authors of whom they have read only passages at school, much less those they know only by name. I do not deny the immense profit they may have derived from their classical studies; I only mean to say, they are not likely to turn to any serious advantage their acquired knowledge of Greek and Latin, to continue by way of self-education what has been begun at school— for all school-learning and school-education is but a beginning— to see the seed that has been sown, grow and bring forth fruit, stifled as it is by the thorns and brambles of life. For their life, its occupations and its cares will turn their thoughts into a very different channel, far away from the flowery fields of ancient Hellas and Italy.*)

Few, on the other hand, are those who, having learned French or English sufficiently to read these languages without too much difficulty, will not, in their hours of leisure, take ſup some French or English book, were it only to while away their time; if their taste and judg- ment have been cultivated while they were taught French and English, they will prefer the really excellent authors to the trash which, of course, abounds in these two literatures as well as in our own. They will thus, simply by reading for recreation and amusement, really con- tinue and complete the work of the school as self-education.

But for many, if not for most, there will be more direct inducements and incitements to do so. What merchant but will have to keep up and cultivate his French and his English in his international dealings? The man of science will not wait for a translation in order to know the works of his foreign fellow-labourers. Every-one may read the news-papers, the reviews which appear beyond our frontiers, and thus keep in contact with intellectual life abroad. The traveller will doubly enjoy and doubly profit by his visiting a country whose language he under- stands. What would not a Hellenist give for being, once in his life, allowed to listen to De- mosthenes in the agora, to walk with Plato in the shades of the academy, or to attend the performance of a tragedy of Sophocles or Euripides in the theatre of Athens? Well, this pleasure beyond price you may have with regard to modern orators, doctors and poets, if you understand their language. I therefore say that the knowledge of a modern language, provided the manner of studying it has been such as to cultivate and educate the mind, is more likely to continue and complete this education through life, than the knowledge of a dead language.

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³) Jean Pauls observation(Levana§ 147)„Nur Männer von Sinn, von Kraft, von Ausbildung durch höhere und mehre Studien als Sprachstudien, nur Sonntagskinder, wie Goethe, Herder haben den Geist des Alterthums gesehen; die Montagskinder erblickten dafür den Sprachschatz und die Blumenlesen“ may be even more pertinently applied to our own time than to his.