nt has put the great educational establishments upon their
mettle, and induced them to consider whether a smattering of Greek
obtained in twenty years, and forgotten in the twenty-first, is, after
all, the highest form of intellectual culture. The head-masters of
Harrow, Winchester and Marlbro' have come at last to the sage
conclusion that twelve years of age is quite early enough to begin
Greek, and that for a good many boys that tongue is a superfluity. The
simple truth is that not one boy in ten understands Greek. Unhappily
this act of tardy justice (and mercy) can have no retrospective
effect. Think of the generations of unhappy children who have been
tortured by that infernal language, and of the imprisonment in summer
days of which it has been the cause. Who can give us back our lost
time and liberties infringed? I don't wish to revive ancient customs
of a vindictive nature, but I should like to see the Greek grammar
burnt by the common hangman in every school yard.

Payn's indignant language might be reinforced by quoting De Quincey's
description of the second Lord Shaftesbury, a man whose intellect was
developed by classical studies alone, and who was practised daily in
talking in Latin until he became "the most absolute and
undistinguishing pedant that perhaps literature has to show. No
thought, however beautiful, no image, however magnificent, could
conciliate his praise as long as it was clothed in English, but
present him with the most trivial commonplaces in Greek, and he
unaffectedly fancied them divine." Hence he ridiculed Milton, Dryden,
Locke, and Shakespeare. How much time and money have been spent in
colleges to produce this pedantic perversion of the mind, to create
that love of the ignorance of antiquity and indifference to modern
enlightenment which are so common among the college-educated classes.

DEAD LANGUAGES VANISHING.--In the eighty higher grammar schools in
Germany which are entitled to grant certificates of the proficiency
requisite in order that military service may be reduced from three
years to one, French and English are the only foreign languages
taught, Latin being excluded.

HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.--Women in Russia have for the last
twenty-three years been permitted to obtain university degrees, and
now they are permitted to enter the medical profession. Sweden and
Norway have followed the example, so has Italy and even Portugal. De
Castro, the Portuguese prime minister, s