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 GREEK AS INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. 247 be blamed for this. The marble of Pentelicon is not at fault when, in later periods, no Venus of Melos, no Hermes of Praxiteles could be formed of it. The Greek of the schools is looked upon as a dead language ; the method of teaching as well as the purpose for which it is taught are of no account for practical life. Those leaving school, except such as choose philology as a profession, forget what they have learned more rapidly than they have learned it, and thus it seems to be of no consequence to the teachers whether the Greek is pronounced in one way or another. A custom handed down for three hundred and sixty-five years is followed, and thus the necessity is removed of imparting to the lan- guage the sound of a living, undoubted Greek idiom. The French, English, and Russian peda- gogues think in the same manner as the German philologists, therefore the Greek language is learned in the respective countries according to the modern high German, French, English, and Russian pronunciation, and forgotten again. The fate of the Greek language in the schools seems therefore to be sealed, unless a better mode of instruction is introduced. A language