d at school now, that Greek is being
pushed out. In future, it will be a University subject solely. That is a
great pity, for although there are fine translations of the Greek
authors in English, these are not so much read as they ought to be.
Greek itself would be much easier to learn if editors would write fewer
and shorter notes.[15]

[15] Penalties of a really deterrent kind might at least be laid
upon those gentlemen who write _more than three_ pages of notes
to one of the author's text:

O that the Kaiser showing sense for once
Would loose his fury on each learned dunce,
And visit with his summary proceedings
The rogues who tease us with their _variant readings_.

FRENCH LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM.

I am always delighted to see French books on the shelves of a rural
library. I notice Dowden's _French Literature_ in many a Highland
bookcase; and I am sure it will please that erudite and most excellent
professor to know he has hundreds of students who never saw his face.
Everybody should learn the French language: I don't know a better
intellectual investment. French is rich in precisely those qualities
that English lacks. It is not necessary, for proof of that statement, to
read Gautier, Bourget, or Hugo. A daily paper from Paris supplies all
the proof required.

I freely admit that the French newspaper seems, on first acquaintance,
to be a wonderful and puzzling affair. It is never dull or tiresome, or
glum. You may have your dearest susceptibilities wounded by it, but you
won't fall asleep as you read its columns. Humour trickles from
paragraph to paragraph; wit coruscates in the accounts of the most
ordinary police cases; and abundant of dexterous literary workmanship is
to be found in the leading articles. In spite of such admirable
qualities, there is an element of frivolity, a lack of seriousness (I
speak of the typical Boulevard sheet) that is at first rather shocking
to a British reader. He finds grave subjects treated with a fineness of
touch and a lucidity of reasoning at once charming and full of
edification: but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's
pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the
writer at once stops his instructive reasoning; he goes off the main
line and careers bounding down some devious side-path of entertaining
nonsense. Our home papers are almost uniformly staid; they are written
conscientiou