And so Greek studies resumed their place as the noblest part of a liberal education. We got to know and appreciate Greek letters deeply and thoroughly as no Roman had ever known them; we got to analyse and understand Greek logic and philosophy and what is still more subtle, the delicacies of Greek art. We began to add to the treasures unearthed for us by the Renaissance, by probing for buried temples in Greece, and searching the sands of Egypt for new texts. The culture of the nineteenth century may fairly be called a culture that owes its greatness largely to a thorough appreciation of the unique excellence of classical Greek work. Never was I more impressed with this fact than in visiting, three or four years ago, a little collection of old Greek fragments gathered from private owners, and exhibited by the Burlington Art Club in London. They were small things, bronze statuettes, busts, ornaments, vases, but no intelligent man could avoid the strong and instant conviction that all was essentially patrician art in the highest sense. There was not a plebeian note in the whole exhibition. These things being so, it seemed to men brought up as I have been, that the supremacy of Greek studies, especially for the education of the rising generation, was a fact that no man could contest. Yet, strange to say, within the last twenty years, and possibly due to the reaction of American influences upon Europe, the tide has turned and the great flow of Greek studies is being succeeded by an ebb. Higher education--formerly and indeed in the truest sense always--an aristocratic privilege, is now to be the right of the democracy, which has no time for it, and all of us, poor and rich, workers for our bread and those whose bread is provided, are to pursue the same ends, and attain the same cultivation. Need I add that the domain of modern science is so enlarged as to demand a high place in the instruction of those who will presently earn their living by some of its applications? Thus the program has been enlarged and diversified beyond the capacity of any learner, and we begin to think what can best be sacrificed in order to save the rest. The advocates of modern science naturally set themselves against what they are pleased to call the dead languages, and so, as Greek seemed more remote to them, because of its strange alphabet, they have so far prevailed as to get rid, from a vast number of schools, of the study of that language. Even in the universities of Europe there is an irresistible tendency to make it a voluntary subject of study. The innovators, most of whom are ignorant in any proper sense both of Greek and Latin, still profess a great respect for Latin and loudly assert its importance even in modern education. But do not be deceived. The day will come shortly when the same attack will be directed against the second “dead language,” as they call it, and we shall be expected to throw out another member of our spiritual family to the wolves.