Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/568

562 comparatively few young men who entered any of these professions had had any systematic training. Owing, however, to the enormous expansion of commerce and manufactures the public began to insist that educational 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 themselves 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 commerce 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 preceding 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 become 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