This process of grammatical vivisection may be painful in the eyes of classical scholars, yet even they must see how great a difference there is in the quality of knowledge imparted by our Greek and Latin grammars, and by comparative grammar. I do not deny that at first children must learn Greek and Latin mechanically, but it is not right that they should remain satisfied with mere paradigms and technical terms, without knowing the real nature and origin of so-called infinitives, gerunds, and supines. Every child will learn the construction of the accusative with the infinitive, but I well remember my utter amazement when I first was taught to say _Miror te ad me nihil scribere_, “I am surprised that you write nothing to me.” How easy would it have been to explain that _scribere_ was originally a locative of a verbal noun, and that there was nothing strange or irrational in saying, “I wonder at thee in the act of not writing to me.” This first step once taken, everything else followed by slow degrees, but even in phrases like _Spero te mihi ignoscere_, we can still see the first steps which led from “I hope or I desire thee, toward the act of forgiving me,” to “I trust thee to forgive me.” It is the object of the comparative philologist to gather up the scattered fragments, to arrange them and fit them, and thus to show that language is something rational, human, intelligible, the very embodiment of the mind of man in its growth from the lowest to the highest stage, and with capabilities for further growth far beyond what we can at present conceive or imagine. As to writing Greek and Latin verse, I do not maintain that a knowledge of Comparative Philology will help us much. It is simply an art that must be acquired by practice, if in these our busy days it is still worth acquiring. A good memory will no doubt enable us to say at a moment’s notice whether certain syllables are long or short. But is it not far more interesting to know why certain vowels are long and others short, than to be able to string longs and shorts together in imitation of Greek and Latin hexameters? Now in many cases the reason why certain vowels are long or short, can be supplied by Comparative Philology alone. We may learn from Latin grammar that the _i_ in _fîdus_, trusty, and in _fîdo_, I trust, is long, and that it is short in _fides_, trust, and _perfidus_, faithless; but as all these words are derived from the same root, why should some have a long, others a short vowel? A comparison of Sanskrit at once supplies an answer. Certain derivatives, not only in Latin but in Sanskrit and Greek too, require what is called +Guṇa+ of the radical vowel. In _fîdus_ and _fîdo_, the _i_ is really a diphthong, and represents a more ancient _ei_ or _oi_, the former appearing in Greek πείθω, the latter in Latin _foedus_, a truce.