ressed it, and yet it is very generally prevalent even
amongst the most thoughtful people, especially if modern science has had
any conspicuous influence in the formation of their minds. Tho truth is,
as Sydney Smith observed many years ago, that there is a confusion of
language in the use of the word "ancient." We say "the ancients," as if
they were older and more experienced men than we are, whereas the age
and experience are entirely on our side. They were the clever children,
"and we only are the white-bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have
treasured up, and are prepared to profit by, all the experience which
human life can supply." The sense of our larger experience, as it grows
in us and becomes more distinctly conscious, produces a corresponding
decline in our feelings of reverence for classic times. The past has
bequeathed to us its results, and we have incorporated them into our own
edifice, but we have used them rather as materials than as models.

In your practical desire to retain in education only what is likely to
be used, you are willing to preserve Latin. M. Jules Simon says that
Latin ought to be studied only to be read. On this point permit me to
offer an observation. The one thing I regret about Latin is that we have
ceased to speak it. The natural method, and by far the most rapid and
sure method of learning a language, is to begin by acquiring words in
order to use them to ask for what we want; after that we acquire other
words for narration and the expression of our sentiments. By far the
shortest way to learn to read a language is to begin by speaking it. The
colloquial tongue is the basis of the literary tongue. This is so true
that with all the pains and trouble you give to the Latin education of
your pupils, you cannot teach them as much Latin, for reading only, in
the course of ten years, as a living foreigner will give them of his own
language in ten months. I seriously believe that if your object is to
make boys read Latin easily, you begin at the wrong end. It is
deplorable that the learned should ever have allowed Latin to become a
dead language, since in permitting this they have enormously increased
the difficulty of acquiring it, even for the purposes of scholarship.

No foreigner who knows the French people will disapprove of the novel
desire to know the modern languages, which has been one of the most
unexpected consequences of the war. Their extreme ignorance of the
literature of