Life now-a-days goes at a gallop; and the way in which this affects
literature is to make it extremely superficial and slovenly.




ON THE STUDY OF LATIN.


The abolition of Latin as the universal language of learned men,
together with the rise of that provincialism which attaches to
national literatures, has been a real misfortune for the cause of
knowledge in Europe. For it was chiefly through the medium of the
Latin language that a learned public existed in Europe at all--a
public to which every book as it came out directly appealed. The
number of minds in the whole of Europe that are capable of thinking
and judging is small, as it is; but when the audience is broken up and
severed by differences of language, the good these minds can do is
very much weakened. This is a great disadvantage; but a second and
worse one will follow, namely, that the ancient languages will cease
to be taught at all. The neglect of them is rapidly gaining ground
both in France and Germany.

If it should really come to this, then farewell, humanity! farewell,
noble taste and high thinking! The age of barbarism will return, in
spite of railways, telegraphs and balloons. We shall thus in the end
lose one more advantage possessed by all our ancestors. For Latin is
not only a key to the knowledge of Roman antiquity; its also directly
opens up to us the Middle Age in every country in Europe, and modern