inferred that there is no insuperable difficulty in that of a modern tongue; yet where is the Englishman, except Swinburne, who in reading a French poem knows good technical workmanship when he sees it? [Sidenote: Conventionalism of French Ignorance.] [Sidenote: A proposed English Academy.] French ignorance of English literature would be amazing if it were not the result of a conventionalism. It is conventionally “ignorance” in France not to have heard of Milton; it is not ignorance never to have heard of Spenser. A Frenchman is ignorant if the name of Byron is not familiar to him, but he need not know even the names of Shelley and Keats. He is not required, by the conventionalism of his own country, to know anything whatever of living English genius. A London newspaper amused itself with sketching a possible Academy for England, and named some eminent Englishmen as qualified to be members. The names included Browning, Ruskin, Arnold, Lecky, and other first-rate men. On this, certain Parisian journalists were infinitely amused. Their sense of the ludicrous was irresistibly tickled when they saw that individuals like these, whom nobody had ever heard of, could be proposed as equivalents for the forty French immortals. [Sidenote: Rarity of Conversational Accomplishment in Foreign Tongues.] [Sidenote: The Foreigner in Society.] Independently of learning, modern languages are supposed to be useful for conversation. They are, however, very rarely studied or practised to the degree necessary for that use. The foreigner may be able to order his dinner at his hotel and ascertain when the train starts, but in cultivated society he only pretends to be able to follow what is said. His impressions about the talk that is going on around him are a succession of misunderstandings. He sits silent and smiling, and he endeavours to look as if he were not outside and in the dark; but he _is_ in the dark, or, worse still, surrounded by deceptive glimpses. It would be better if French or English were like Chinese for him. [Sidenote: The Future.] [Sidenote: Abandonment of Latin and Greek.] [Sidenote: An _élite_.] [Sidenote: Modern Languages.] [Sidenote: Men remain on their own Level.] [Sidenote: Languages do not elevate the Mind.] [Sidenote: Mean Use made of Languages.]