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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



actly the opposite way, there has been 

 no more conspicuous instance of incal- 

 culable waywardness in mental opera- 

 tions than was here furnished by the 

 Chief-Justice of England. He might as 

 well have broken into a eulogy of Na- 

 poleon Bonaparte before the Peace So- 

 ciety as to have named John Bright in 

 Yale College in connection with dead- 

 language studies. He was expected to 

 applaud the ancient classical scholar- 

 ship as the supreme incomparable means 

 of bringing the human mind up to its 

 highest power ; and he did this by quot- 

 ing a man as the most commanding 

 orator of England who knew nothing 

 about ancient scholarship, and who has 

 achieved his distinction entirely by the 

 study of the English classics. He came 

 to eulogize the dead languages, arid gave 

 super-eminence to a man who knew 

 nothing of either, and had devoted him- 

 self exclusively to the mastery of his 

 vernacular speech. Lord Coleridge rep- 

 resented the intellectual accomplish- 

 ments that give the highest advantage in 

 the bar and the senate as fourfold. The 

 highest education is exemplified by (1) 

 "the man who can state anything best " ; 

 (2), " who can pursue an argument more 

 closely " ; (3), " who can give the rich- 

 est and most felicitous illustrations " ; 

 and (4), " who can command some 

 beauty of diction " ; and he then pointed 

 to the man of all England who possesses 

 the traits in the highest degree, and 

 who is confessedly only a smatterer in 

 Latin and Greek. He commended clas- 

 sical education, but he referred to an- 

 other education, not classical, which 

 yields still higher results. Certainly, 

 if the Yale boys turn this memorable 

 occasion to its highest uses, they will 

 be incited to tread in the path followed 

 by the most distinguished orator of Eng- 

 land, and, wasting little time upon the 

 dead languages, will concentrate their 

 main efforts in gaining a skillful and 

 powerful control of the living lan- 

 guage in which all their work is to be 

 done. 



The case of John Bright turns the 

 tables upon the classicists. His example, 

 like that of many other of our strongest 

 men, proves the advantage of not squan- 

 dering mental force over a wide field 

 of lingual study. If the native speech, 

 as an instrument of expression, is to be 

 perfected, it must become an object 

 of systematic, undivided cultivation. 

 This is a dictate of common sense, and 

 has been long understood. We dissi- 

 pate our energies upon foreign tongues, 

 and it is still as true as it was in the 

 time of Dryden, that " the properties 

 and delicacies of the English are known 

 to few." The mediaevals studied Latin 

 because they had to make use of it. 

 All learning was in Latin, and the lan- 

 guage had to be acquired for practical 

 purposes. Melanchthon, in 1528, made 

 a report on churches and schools which 

 became the basis in Saxony of a re- 

 formed education independent of Rome, 

 and the example was followed in other 

 German states. In this report it is 

 recommended that "the children be 

 taught Latin only, not German, Greek, 

 or Hebrew. Plurality of tongues does 

 them more harm than good.' 1 '' In the 

 very nature of the case, our craze for 

 foreign languages, living and dead, must 

 be at the expense of a perfected Eng- 

 lish. It has been well said that " the 

 idea of training upon a foreign language 

 had grown up in modern times. The 

 Greeks did not train upon Persian or 

 Scythian ; they knew no language but 

 their own." This is not only a fact ot 

 profound significance, but it is a crush- 

 ing answer to the modern polyglot su- 

 perstition. Everybody is recommended 

 to study Greek because the language is 

 so beautiful and perfect. Obviously the 

 true lesson is that the Greeks made it 

 so because they were shut up in it, and 

 could give their whole power to its im- 

 provement. Granting the unapproach- 

 able perfection of Greek literature, and 

 that the Greeks surpassed the world in 

 philosophical acuteness, the invincible 

 fact remains that they expended no ef- 



