e question as
between the ancient and the modern languages. There is a wider enquiry
as to the place of languages as a whole. In pursuing this enquiry, we
may begin with certain things that are obvious and incontestable.

In the first place, it is apparent that if a man is sent to hold
intercourse with the people of a foreign nation, he must be able to
understand and to speak the language of that nation. Our India civil
servants are on that ground required to master the Hindoo spoken
dialects.

[PLACE OF LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION.]

In the next place, if a certain range of information that you find
indispensable is locked up in a foreign language, you are obliged to
learn the language. If, in course of time, all this information is
transferred to our native tongue, the necessity apparently ceases. These
two extreme suppositions will be allowed at once. There may, however,
be an indefinite number of intermediate stages. The information may be
partially translated; and it will then be a question whether the trouble
of learning the language should be incurred for the sake of the
untranslated part. Or, it may be wholly translated: but, conscious of
the necessary defects even of good translations, if the subject-matter
be supremely important, some people will think it worth while to learn
the language in order to obtain the knowledge in its greatest purity and
precision. This is a situation that admits of no certain rule. Our
clergy are expected to know the original languages of the Bible,
notwithstanding the abundance of translations; many of which must be far
superior in worth and authority to the judgment of a merely ordinary
proficient in Hebrew and in Greek.

It is now generally conceded that the classical languages are no longer
the exclusive depository of any kind of valuable information, as they
were two or three centuries ago. Yet they are still continued in the
schools as if they possessed their original function unabated. We do not
speak in them, nor listen to them spoken, nor write in them, nor read in
them, for obtaining information. Why then are they kept up? Many reasons
are given, as we know. There is an endeavour to show that even in their
original function, they are not quite effete. Certain professions are
said to rely upon them for some points of information not fully
communicated by the medium of English. Such is the rather indirect
example of the clergy with Greek. So, it is said that Law is not
thorou