use; it is now seldom made a medium. There is
occasionally a course delivered in English, Italian, or French,--in
Berlin often in one of the Sclavonic languages. Modern Literature and
Philology are by no means extensively cultivated. Lectures on the
Provencal, the Langue d'Oil, the Old-German, the Cyrillic, are not
uncommon, though but poorly attended. The study of the modern languages
themselves must be pursued with private teachers. A knowledge of these,
as well as a thorough preparatory training in Latin and Greek, is
presupposed. Modern History, on the contrary, has of late years become
an important branch of study. The "Period of Revolutions" is fully
treated every semester, and always draws crowds of students. The spirit
that animates them is the unity of the Fatherland. Classical studies,
though not holding the same undisputed ascendency as in former times,
are yet very actively pursued, embracing Greek and Roman history and
antiquities, comments on classical authors, lectures, critical and
minute in the extreme, where every line is made the subject of
microscopic investigation, and different readings are weighed and
compared, with often an unlimited amount of abuse of editors who have
differed in opinion from the lecturer. The German philologers are not
remarkable for mildness when speaking of each other; and many a one,
as Haupt in Berlin, will enrich his vocabulary with ever-varying,
new-coined epithets to characterize the ridiculousness, tameness, and
stupidity of emendations proposed, and that, too, when speaking of such
men as Orelli and Kirchner, his own colleagues in the profession. A
laugh raised at the expense of a brother is enough to justify the
severest slash. Comparative Philology, which owes its existence
and progress to the labors of German scholars, and whose first
representative, Bopp, is still living and teaching in Berlin, is more
and more pursued of late. Sanscrit is now taught universally; and
lectures are delivered on the affinities of the Indo-Germanic languages
with each other and with the mother-tongue of all. A perceptible
movement is being felt to introduce this study into the preparatory
departments. Such a change would result in a complete revolution of the
methods formerly employed in elementary classical tuition. The higher
laws of affinity, as applied to the Romanic languages, are also daily
more a matter of investigation. Diez and Delius, in Bonn, are at the
head of this movement.