or ARTS AND SCIENCES. 221 



courts of justice, the pulpit, the professor's chair, and in the educated 

 society of Athens, is pure Greek, though greatly modified, and this 

 has been especially called the Neo-EXXrjviKrj, or New-Hellenic. The 

 process above alluded to has not essentially changed the character of 

 the language : even the broken dialects of the Eomaic spoken by the 

 rudest and most ignorant mountaineers were substantially Greek, and 

 those forms of the Romaic found in the Klephtic poems are marked 

 by poetical beauties of no common order. The New-Hellenic, as 

 now employed by writers and speakers, has already proved itself 

 adequate to every form of literary composition, whether in poetry 

 or prose. The works of Soutsos, Rangabes, Orphanides, and others, 

 have shown that it is capable of all the varieties of rhythmical com- 

 bination exhibited by any other modern language. They all depend 

 upon accent, as in the other modern languages. 



" The greatest change, perhaps, is in the application of the language 

 in adapting it to the modern cast of thought'; in doing which, it has 

 been found necessary to make out of ancient elements new words, 

 which, though not classical, are easily understood by the classical 

 scholar, or by using classical words with secondary or analogical 

 meanings. This process I propose to illustrate by a few examples 

 taken from recent books, journals, advertisements, public notices, and 

 from the signs of the shops in the streets of Athens. 



" There is still a struggle, in some cases, between the common and 

 the classical. The traveller who steps into a shop, wishing to buy an 

 umbrella, and asks for a aKidbeiov, may be told that the shopkeeper 

 has no such article, though he sees the very thing in the window ; 

 and when he points it out, the seller exclaims, 'O/xTrpeXXa ! o/x7rpeXXa ! 

 If, wishing a flannel under-waistcoat, he asks classically for a xf'Twi/toi^, 

 he is likely enough to hear of fanella. Asking for a cup of vSwp, it 

 will be given to him under the name of vepo. And so on. 



Some of the signs are as follows : — 



'YTToSTy/iaTOTToioy, Shoemaker. 



KaTacTTTjiia Evpa>TTaiKa)v ^ope/iar<oi', S/iop (ov establishment) for Eu- 

 ropean clothing. 



Ta\(iKTOTra)\e7oi/, 6 lldv, Mlllc-shop, the Pan. 



^aixnavla rrjs Trpcorr/f TToiorrjTos, Champagne of the first quality. 

 (Spelled on the sign, however, TnoVjjro?, which has the same pronuncia- 

 tion, but would mean drhikability, — a mistake perhaps made on pur- 

 pose.) 



