were made a subject of special research, it is likely that a
sufficiently rich phrase-book might be constructed from the plays. If
this plan were pursued throughout Europe (always adopting the Roman
pronunciation) all educated men would possess a common tongue which
might be enriched to suit modern requirements without any serious
departure from classical construction. The want of such a system as this
was painfully felt at the council of the Vatican, where the assembled
prelates discovered that their Latin was of no practical use, although
the Roman Catholic clergy employ Latin more habitually than any other
body of men in the world. That a modern may be taught to think in Latin,
is proved by the early education of Montaigne, and I may mention a much
more recent instance. My brother-in-law told me that, in the spring of
1871, a friend of his had come to stay with him accompanied by his
little son, a boy seven years old. This child spoke Latin with the
utmost fluency, and he spoke nothing else. What I am going to suggest is
a Utopian dream, but let us suppose that a hundred fathers could be
found in Europe, all of this way of thinking, all resolved to submit to
some inconvenience in order that their sons might speak Latin as a
living language. A small island might be rented near the coast of Italy,
and in that island Latin alone might be permitted. Just as the
successive governments of France maintain the establishments of Sevres
and the Gobelins to keep the manufactures of porcelain and tapestry up
to a recognized high standard of excellence, so this Latin island might
be maintained to give more vivacity to scholarship. If there were but
one little corner of ground on the wide earth where pure Latin was
constantly spoken, our knowledge of the classic writers would become far
more sympathetically intimate. After living in the Latin island we
should think in Latin as we read, and read without translating.

But this is dreaming. It is too certain that on returning from the Latin
island into the atmosphere of modern colleges an evil change would come
over our young Latinists like that which came upon the young Montaigne
when his father sent him to the college of Guienne, "at that time the
best and most flourishing in France." Montaigne tells us that,
notwithstanding all his father's precautions, the place "was a college
still." "My Latin," he adds, "_immediately grew corrupt, and by
discontinuance I have since lost all mann