562 THE POPULAR SCIENCH 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 Rome. 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 
