ggle for supremacy with English and
Spanish, Greek finally established its claims, after the break-up of the
British Empire and the recapture of Constantinople by the Graeco-Russian
Empire. Gradually, or rather with the rapidity characteristic of all
modern progress, its usage descended from strata to strata till it
reached the lowest layers of society, and from the middle of the
twenty-second century there was not a little child between the Loire and
the River Amour who could not express itself with ease in the language
of Demosthenes. Here and there a few isolated villages in the hollows of
the mountains still persisted, in spite of the protests of their
schoolmasters, to mangle the old dialect formerly called French, German,
or Italian, but the sound of this gibberish in the towns would have
raised a hearty laugh.

All contemporary documents agree in bearing witness to the rapidity, the
depth, and the universality of the change which took place in the
customs, ideas, and needs, and in all the forms of social life, thus
reduced to a common level from one pole to the other, as a result of
this unification of language. It seemed as if the course of civilisation
had been hitherto confined within high banks and that now, when for the
first time all the banks had burst, it readily spread over the whole
globe. It was no longer millions but thousands of millions that the
least newly discovered improvement in industry brought in to its
inventor; for henceforth there was no barrier to stop in its star-like
radiation the expansion of any idea, no matter where it originated. For
the same reason it was no longer by hundreds but by thousands, that were
reckoned the editions of any book, which appealed but moderately to the
public taste, or the performance of a play which was ever so little
applauded. The rivalry between authors had therefore risen to its
fullest diapason. Their fancy, moreover, could find full scope, for the
first effect of this deluge of universalised neo-Hellenism had been to
overwhelm for ever all the pretended literatures of our rude ancestors.
They became unintelligible, even to the very titles of what they were
pleased to call their classical masterpieces, even to the barbarous
names of Shakespeare, Goethe, and Hugo, who are now forgotten, and whose
rugged verses are deciphered with such difficulty by our scholars. To
plagiarise these folks whom hardly anyone could henceforth read, was to
render them service