Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Chapter VIII
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best elements of each. It is a language that grows
wherever it is planted, by virtue of its fitness to the
human mind and its ample fulfilment of the
requirements of thought and feeling; while the stilted Latin
lias withered everywhere, even on its native soil.
The common plea for the study of the dead
languages—that it affords fine mental discipline and
elucidates English—is merely an after-thought: a modern
invention for propping up the remnants of an old
barbarism. Everybody knows, and none better than
those who ply this poor apology the most vigorously,
that Latin was not originally introduced into our
universities for any such purpose, but that its study
is merely a remnant of the monkish effort to spread
the spiritual dominion of Rome by making the
language of old Rome and of the Church the universal
medium of intellectual intercourse; an effort which,
in the dark ages, was successful, on account of the
great advantage of having any common medium of
communication between the learned few, then so
widely and sparsely diffused over the world. As
the Birmingham manufacturers of shoe-buckles and
gilt buttons made a loud clamour, and even petitioned
princes and parliaments in favour of retaining the
fashions which kept up the demand for their
commodities ; so, in like manner, it is quite natural, and
perhaps excusable, that men who have spent their
best clays in the study of the classics, and earn
their livelihood by teaching them, should argue until
they at last convince themselves that the educational
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