at has been done before by Spaniards and
Dutchmen--what is at this very moment being done by Germans, namely, to
reform their corrupt spelling--may be achieved even by Englishmen and
Americans.

I have expressed my belief that the time will come when not only the
various alphabets and systems of spelling, but many of the languages
themselves which are now spoken in Europe, to say nothing of the rest of
the world, will have to be improved away from the face of the earth and
abolished. Knowing that nothing rouses the ire of a Welshman or a Gael so
much as to assert the expediency, nay, necessity, of suppressing the
teaching of their languages at school, it seems madness to hint that it
would be a blessing to every child born in Holland, in Portugal, or in
Denmark--nay, in Sweden and even in Russia--if, instead of learning a
language which is for life a barrier between them and the rest of mankind,
they were at once to learn one of the great historical languages which
confer intellectual and social fellowship with the whole world. If, as a
first step in the right direction, four languages only, namely, English,
French, German, Italian (or possibly Spanish) were taught at school, the
saving of time--and what is more precious than time?--would be infinitely
greater than what has been effected by railways and telegraphs. But I know
that no name in any of the doomed languages would be too strong to
stigmatize such folly. We should be told that a Japanese only could
conceive such an idea; that for a people deliberately to give up its
language was a thing never heard of before; that a nation would cease to
be a nation if it changed its language; that it would, in fact, commit
"the happy despatch," _a la Japonaise_. All this may be true, but I hold
that language is meant to be an instrument of communication, and that in
the struggle for life, the most efficient instrument of communication must
certainly carry the day, as long as natural selection, or, as we formerly
called it, reason, rules the world.

The following figures may be of use in forming an opinion as to the fates
of the great languages of Europe:(68)--

Portuguese is spoken in
Portugal, by 3,980,000
Brazil, by 10,000,000
Total: 13,980,000
Italian, by 27,524,238
French, in France, Belgium, Switzerland, etc., by 40,188,000
Spanish, in
Spain, by 16,301,000
South America, by 27,408,082
Total: 43,709,082
Russian, by 51,370,000
German, by 55,789,000
En