562 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



comparatively few young men who entered any of these professions had 

 had any systematic training. Owing, however, to the enormous expan- 

 sion of commerce and manufactures the public began to insist that edu- 

 cational institutions shall make a wisely directed effort towards enabling 

 young people to meet these demands with an adequate preparation. 

 Education was no longer to be confined to the few; it must be so 

 broadened and extended as to include all who wish to prepare them- 

 selves to meet the multifarious claims of the present age. Shortly 

 before his death, Lord Salisbury said : " We do not sufficiently cultivate 

 a systematic knowledge of foreign contemporaneous languages." And 

 further : " If I were capable of prescribing the course that ought to be 

 pursued, I should say that those who have to make their living by com- 

 merce in any of its stages, from the highest to the lowest, ought to 

 know French and German, and possibly Spanish, before they think of 

 Latin and Greek." Such words as these uttered by a man who had 

 been educated in the conservative atmosphere of Eton and Oxford are 

 highly significant. They not only reflect the prevailing spirit of the 

 latter years of the nineteenth century, but do credit to the insight and 

 freedom from prejudice of the speaker personally. In fact, it may be 

 said of most of the leading English statesmen that in their public 

 capacity they have always been responsive to the demands of their time, 

 notwithstanding the circumstance that most of them were educated 

 under conditions that were essentially medieval. The prominent place 

 occupied until recently by the ancient languages is a heritage of pre- 

 ceding centuries. For more than a thousand years the former was the 

 only language taught in the schools of Europe outside of the domain 

 of the Greek church. It was, however, not the language of pagan but 

 of christian Eome. The renascence added the Greek, which had be- 

 come a forgotten tongue; but it directed especial attention to the 

 great pagan writers, above all to Cicero. This change in pedagogical 

 material was logical, since it was the substitution of a literature that 

 had a value in itself for one that was hardly more than an auxiliary to 

 the church, and a language that was a highly cultivated medium for the 

 expression of thought, for one that had been developed along narrow 

 lines. There was no other language and no literature that so well 

 served its purpose. Although the church did not look with favor on 

 this innovation, it continued to make progress to such an extent that 

 the ecclesiastical writers were almost wholly extruded from the schools. 

 Cicero was the model to which all authors who strove to attain to 

 elegance of diction endeavored to conform as nearly as they could. Not 

 only was Latin taught in the higher schools and universities, but the 

 lectures in the continental universities were delivered in this tongue. 

 No other language was used by the German professors until near the 

 close of the seventeenth century, where it continued to be employed to 

 some extent within the memory of men now living. In Germany until 



