[Footnote D: "We learn languages," says Luther, "much better by way of mouth at home, in the street, than out of books. Letters are dead words; the utterances of the mouth, are living words, which in writing can never stand forth so distinct and excellent, as the soul of man bodies them forth through the mouth. Tell me where was there ever a language, which men could learn to speak with correctness and propriety by the rules of grammar. Yet let none think or conclude from all this, that I would reject the grammars altogether."] Milton, to whom, next to Shakespeare our tongue owes most, and who spent much time in compiling an English Dictionary, writes in one of his Italian Letters: "Whoever in a state, knows how to form wisely the manners and men and to rule them at home and in war, by excellent institutions, him in the first place above all others I should esteem worthy of honor. But next to him, the man who strives in maxims and rules the method and habit of speaking and writing derived from a good age of the nation, and as it were to fortify the same round with a kind of wall, the daring to overleap which a law only short of that of Romulus should be used to prevent. Should we choose to compare the two in respect to utility, it is the former alone that can make the social existence of the citizens just and holy, but it is the latter that makes it splendid and beautiful, which is the next thing to be desired. The one, as I believe, supplies a noble courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy invading the territory; the other takes to himself the task of extirpating and defeating by means of a learned detective police of ears, and a light-infantry of good authors, that barbarism which makes large inroads upon the minds of men and is a destructive intestine enemy to genius. Nor is it to be considered of small importance what language, pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary degree of propriety in speaking it--a matter which oftener than once was the salvation of Athens. Nay, as it is Plato's opinion, that, by a change in the manner and habit of dress, serious commotions and mutations are portended in a commonwealth, I, for my part, would rather believe that the fall of that city, and low and obscure condition, followed on the general vitiation of its usage in the matter of speech. For let the words of a country be in part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by wear, and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare but by no light indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent, idly-yawning race, with minds already prepared for any amount of servility? On the other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any state, did not flourish in at least a middling degree as long as its liking and care for its language lasted."