other nations has been the cause of enormous evils.
Notwithstanding her central position, France has been a very isolated
country intellectually, much more isolated than England, more isolated
even than Transylvania, where foreign literatures are familiar to the
cultivated classes. This isolation has produced very lamentable effects,
not only on the national culture but most especially on the national
character. No modern nation, however important, can safely remain in
ignorance of its contemporaries. The Frenchman was like a gentleman shut
up within his own park-wall, having no intercourse with his neighbors,
and reading nothing but the history of his own ancestors--for the Romans
were your ancestors, intellectually. It is only by the study of living
languages, and their continual use, that we can learn our true place in
the world. A Frenchman was studying Hebrew; I ventured to suggest that
German might possibly be more useful. To this he answered, _that there
was no literature in German_. "_Vous avez Goethe, vous avez Schiller, et
vous avez Lessing, mais en dehors de ces trois noms il n'y a rien._"
This meant simply that my student of Hebrew measured German literature
by his own knowledge of it. Three names had reached him, only names, and
only three of them. As to the men who were unknown to him he had decided
that they did not exist. Certainly if there are many Frenchmen in this
condition, it is time that they learned a little German.

LETTER VIII.

TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES.

Standard of attainment in living languages higher than in ancient
ones--Difficulty of maintaining high pretensions--Prevalent illusion
about the facility of modern languages--Easy to speak them badly--Some
propositions based upon experience--Expectations and disappointments.

Had your main purpose in the education of yourself (I do not say
self-education, for you wisely accept all help from others) been the
attainment of classical scholarship, I might have observed that as the
received standard in that kind of learning is not a very elevated one,
you might reasonably hope to reach it with a certain calculable quantity
of effort. The classical student has only to contend against other
students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated
himself. They have learned Latin and Greek from grammars and
dictionaries as he is learning them, and the only natural advantages
which any of his predecessors may have possess