To us the language question in Gaul is interesting from another point of view too. The Romans did the world a great service by keeping their language uniform. This they did chiefly by means of their law, which was understood throughout the Roman world, and by means of their professors, who, like the Panegyrists in Gaul during the fourth century A.D., handed down a language which remained for centuries very similar to that of Cicero. But a time came when this attempt failed. When Christian teaching became strong and widespread, it was found that to the bulk of the people the polished rhetoric of the schools had become strange. In order to touch the understanding of their flock, the bishops were constrained (with sore travail, for at heart they were proud of their pagan education) to discard the style of speech in which they had been trained, and to come closer to the idiom of the masses. So in South Africa it has been officially recognized that the language of Holland has become strange to the school-child, and that in order to reach his intelligence we must use the offspring of Holland Dutch, Afrikaans—moulded, since 1652, to a vastly different climate, scenery, and national character. How this attempt is to be made, and what its danger is in the direction of formlessness—these are questions for which something may be gleaned from a consideration of the Latin of the Fathers. Art is needed and scientific interest. For lack of these the vivid language of Tertullian and the early Fathers degenerated later into formlessness. And our problem to-day is to watch over the form that is taking shape, make clear its scientific basis, and beautify it by spreading an interest in Art. Finally, the Gauls witnessed the breaking up of governments and its consequent disorders. They were faced, as we are, by the problem of ‘Bolshevism’, though in their case it merely took the shape of the marauding Vargi and the Bagaudae. The influence of a disordered society on education was felt then as now. With us there are some who, like Avitus of Vienne, _in malis ferventibus_, despair of any end to the troubles which throng around them, while the wiser sort will rather urge with the author of the _De Providentia Dei_ that, despite disappointments, ‘Invictum deceat studiis servare vigorem’. * * * * * This study has been based, as far as possible, directly on original authorities, who have been neglected largely because they fall in a period which the pedant has called ‘unclassical’ and which is yet not definitely ‘modern’. I have found many statements in modern books relating to this period which need modification or correcting, and I feel sure that this essay has merely touched a field that deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. * * * * *