Thus it is quite easy to believe that the paramount language of commerce will impose itself upon at least the business population of the whole world. As the substitution of modern languages for the dead languages is advocated solely on utilitarian grounds, which practically means that it is advocated because to know a couple or more foreign languages is useful in trade; and as no one has ever seriously pretended that French, German or any other modern language can compare with Greek and Latin as intellectual gymnastics and as training in the precise expression of one's thoughts; it may be assumed that, on the ground of competitive usefulness, the latter will not need to be dispensed with. Whether the study of them will be abandoned on the ground that the time they require can be better employed in some study other than that of languages is another and more difficult question, the resolution of which depends upon the view we take of the literary tendencies probably existing after another century. If we believe that our descendants will have effected so many improvements in the shape of labour-saving contrivances as to afford a large increase of leisure for everyone, as compared with what the present time enjoys, we shall probably expect the languages which enshrine the greatest literature of the world to remain a subject of study. If we believe in the growing intellectuality of man, we shall be strengthened in the same expectation. If, on the other hand, we think that the progress of our race will exhibit itself in the shape of greedy utilitarianism and of idiotic and self-destructive immorality, we shall naturally conclude that no one will be fool enough to trouble himself with Homer or the Oresteian trilogy, the laments of Sappho or the philosophy of Plato. Seeing what great men have taken this somewhat despondent view of the future, it would perhaps be immodest to express any other opinion on the subject. In any event, we may safely believe that whatever languages are taught will not be handled in the manner now current. Mr Andrew Lang has, in more than one place, described his own "floundering" into Homer--a plunge certainly attended with the happiest results. A method of teaching alien languages which founds itself upon an imitation of the natural picking-up of the mother tongue by babies has been suggested, perhaps without sufficient consideration of the vast expenditure of time necessary to the process, and certainly without sufficient allowance for the fact that it would be impossible to afford the same incessant practice which enables children to learn the language of their fathers and mothers so easily. But there is no reason why we should perpetuate the discouraging preponderance of grammatical and etymological study which caused the late H. D. Traill to say of certain professors that "They heard with a smile of the flowers of style For they recognised nothing but roots!"