180 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Four Iiuntlred and sixty-second meeting. 



March 8, 1859. — Monthly Meeting. 



The Academy met at the house of Dr. N. L. Frothingham. 



The President in the chair. 



The Corresponding Secretary read a letter from Mr. G. P. 

 Bond, in acknowledgment of one from himself communicating 

 the resolutions passed by the Academy on the occasion of his 

 father's decease ; and one from Mr. W. W. Goodwin, accept- 

 ing fellowship. 



Professor C. C. Felton made the following communication 

 on Greek Pronunciation : — 



" In the fourth volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy, 

 published in 1818, there is an elaborate paper on the Modern Greek 

 Language, by the late John Pickering of Boston. The materials for 

 this learned contribution were partly gathered from conversations with 

 a well-educated Greek, a native of Navarino, — the sandy Pylos of old 

 Nestor, — Mr. Ciclitira,* the mate of a Greek ship then lying in the 

 harbor of Boston. This gentleman had received a fair school educa- 

 tion in his youth : he could read Homer well ; and the letter addressed 

 by him to Mr. Pickering does credit to his acquirements, both in chi- 

 rography and style. It is an interesting illustration of the effects of 

 what the Greek patriots have done, in the latter half of the last cen- 

 tury and the opening of the present, to improve the intellectual condi- 

 tion of their oppressed countrymen. Mr. Pickering, with characteristic 

 zeal for knowledge, seized this opportunity to investigate the actual 

 condition of the Modern Greek language. By comparing the present 

 pronunciation of the spoken language with the statements of the old 

 grammarians, he came to the conclusion that it is, in all essential par- 

 ticulars, nearly identical with that which prevailed in the period imme- 

 diately following the Christian era. 



" Since Mr. Pickering's time, the Modern Greek has been more 

 studied, and it is now understood by a larger circle of scholars. But 

 to him belongs the honor of having, earliest among the scholars of our 

 day, given the subject a thorough investigation, and of having published 



