The future towards which we are rapidly tending may already be seen in the distance. Latin and Greek will be given up for ordinary schoolboys, both in England and France, but the study of them will be maintained by a small _élite_. This _élite_ will have a better chance of existence in England, where superiorities of all kinds are not only tolerated but respected, than it can have in France, where the modern instincts all tend to the formation of an immensely numerous, half-educated middle class. When the classical literatures shall be pursued, as the fine arts are now, by their own elect, and not imposed on every incapable schoolboy, they will be better studied and better loved. Now, with regard to modern languages I have no illusions left. You cannot convert a Philistine into a lover of good literature by teaching him a foreign tongue. If he did not love it in his own language, he is not likely to take to it in another. Every man has his own intellectual level, and on that level he will remain, whatever language you teach him. To make a Frenchman appreciate Milton or Spenser, it is not enough to teach him English; you would have to endow him with the poetic sense, with the faculty that delights in accompanying a poet’s mind--in a word, with all the poetic gifts except invention. Neither are all men fit to read noble prose. Minds incapable of sustained attention read newspaper paragraphs in English, and in French they would still read newspaper paragraphs. What I mean is that languages do not elevate the mind, they merely extend the range of its ordinary action. Teach a French gossip English and she will gossip in two languages, she will not perceive the futility of gossiping. This explains the poor and mean use that is constantly made of modern languages by many who have acquired them, and the remarkable unanimity with which such people avoid every great author, and even all intelligent intercourse with foreigners, reading nothing and hearing nothing that is worth remembering. [Sidenote: Hollow Pretensions.] [Sidenote: Smallness of the Studious Class.] [Sidenote: Idleness of the unintellectual.] [Sidenote: Libraries in French Houses.] [Sidenote: Expenditure on Books in England.]