Of recent years there have been signs of a strong reaction. Largely owing to the ability and zeal of Professor Psichari, a son-in-law of the late M. Renan, the Atticising tendency is not nearly so prevalent as it was twenty years ago, and a considerable native literature is now making its appearance not only in poetry (in which it has always been strong) but also in novels, dramas, journals, newspapers, and even in the publication of grammars. This literature is no longer confined, as it used to be, with few exceptions, to the Ionian Islands (where Salomos of Zanté and Valaoritis of Leucas sang) and Crete (where Cornaro, of Venetian extraction, produced his great epic _Erotokritos_, which procured for him the title of the “Homer of the People”). Even Constantinople is beginning to breathe the new spirit; and there is reason to hope that a compromise between the two extremes may yet be effected, by which the nation may realise its essential unity amid diversity, remaining true to its illustrious ancestry, without ignoring or suppressing the other elements--Roman, Byzantine, Turkish--which have contributed to its development. Its scholars are beginning to see that the idea of classical Greek ever becoming a universal language for men of culture is a vain dream, and that a nation’s speech, like its life, must undergo continual modification. Such modification, though it may appear to the pedant to be corruption, is evolution to the philosopher and man of sense. The history of the Russian and Czech languages, which have adapted themselves to literary purposes with such success during the last two hundred years, encourages the hope that the language now spoken by the common people of Greece may go through a similar process of development, borrowing from the ancient Greek what it requires in order to meet the needs of science and philosophy, while holding its ground as the essential basis of the national speech.[11] Akin to this controversy is the question as to the proper pronunciation of Greek. So different is the pronunciation now current among the Greeks from that which is in vogue in this country that, even without any difference in vocabulary or grammar, a Western scholar trained in the Erasmian system would find the greatest difficulty in understanding or making himself [Illustration: THE STADION AT ATHENS The line of sight is in the direction of the axis of the Stadion. The hills sloping right and left show the line of the seats for spectators. The stones projecting from the side of the hill to the left are part of the masonry which faced the eastern limb of the Stadion on its southern side. In the foreground is the modern bridge over the Ilissus leading to the Stadion.]