er of use of it._" If it were
the custom to speak Latin, it would be the custom to speak it badly; and
a master of the language would have to conform to the evil usages around
him. Our present state of ignorance has the charm of being silent,
except when old-fashioned gentlemen in the House of Commons quote poetry
which they cannot pronounce to hearers who cannot understand it.

NOTE.--An English orator quoted from Cicero the sentence "Non
intelligunt homines quam magnum vectigal sit parsimonia." He made the
second vowel in _vectigal_ short, and the House laughed at him; he
tried again and pronounced it with the long sound of the English _i_,
on which the critical body he addressed was perfectly satisfied. But
if a Roman had been present it is probable that, of the two, the short
English _i_ would have astonished his ears the less, for our short _i_
does bear some resemblance to the southern _i_ whereas our long i
resembles no single letter in any alphabet of the Latin family of
languages. We are scrupulously careful to avoid what we call false
quantities, we are quite utterly and ignorantly unscrupulous about
false sounds. One of the best instances is the well-known "veni, vidi,
vici," which we pronounce very much as if it had been written _vinai_,
_vaidai_, _vaisai_, in Italian letters.

LETTER IV.

TO A STUDENT OF LITERATURE.

Studies, whatever they may be, always considered, by some a waste of
time--The classical languages--The higher mathematics--The
accomplishments--Indirect uses of different studies--Influence of
music--Studies indirectly useful to authors--What induced Mr. Roscoe
to write the lives of Lorenzo de' Medici and Leo X.

Whatever you study, some one will consider that particular study a
foolish waste of time.

If you were to abandon successively every subject of intellectual labor
which had, in its turn, been condemned by some adviser as useless, the
result would be simple intellectual nakedness. The classical languages,
to begin with, have long been considered useless by the majority of
practical people--and pray, what to shopkeepers, doctors, attorneys,
artists, can be the use of the higher mathematics? And if these studies,
which have been conventionally classed as serious studies, are
considered unnecessary notwithstanding the tremendous authority of
custom, how much the more are those studies exposed to a like contempt
which belong to the category of