living foreigner will give them of his own you wisely accept all help from others) been language in ten months. I seriously believe the attainment of classical scholarship, I that if your object is to make boys read Latin might have observed that as the received easily, you begin at the wrong end. It is de-standard in that kind of learning is not a very plorable that the learned should ever have elevated one, you might reasonably hope to allowed Latin to become a dead language, since in permitting this they have enormously increased the difficulty of acquiring it, even for the purposes of scholarship.

reach it with a certain calculable quantity of effort. The classical student has only to contend against other students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated himNo foreigner who knows the French people self. They have learned Latin and Greek will disapprove of the novel desire to know from grammars and dictionaries as he is learnthe modern languages, which has been one ing them, and the only natural advantages of the most unexpected consequences of the which any of his predecessors may have poswar. Their extreme ignorance of the litera- sessed are superiorities of memory which may ture of other nations has been the cause of be compensated by his greater perseverance, enormous evils. Notwithstanding her cen- or superiorities of sympathy to which he tral position, France has been a very iso- may "level up" by that acquired and arlated country intellectually, much more iso- tificial interest which comes from protracted lated than England, more isolated even than application. But the student of modern lanTransylvania, where foreign literatures are fa-guages has to contend against advantages of miliar to the cultivated classes. This isola- situation, as the gardeners of an inhospitable tion has produced very lamentable effects, climate contend against the natural sunshine not only on the national culture but most of the south. How easy it is to have a fruitespecially on the national character. No mod-ful date-tree in Arabia, how difficult in Engern nation, however important, can safely remain in ignorance of its contemporaries. The Frenchman was like a gentleman shut up within his own park-wall, having no intercourse with his neighbors, and reading nothing but the history of his own ancestors-for the Romans were your ancestors, intellectually. It is only by the study of living languages, and their continual use, that we can learn our true place in the world. A French-eign city is his Oxford. And this is probably man was studying Hebrew; I ventured to suggest that German might possibly be more useful. To this he answered, that there was no literature in German. "Vous avez Goethe, rous avez Schiller, et vous avez Lessing, mais en dehors de ces trois noms il n'y a rien." This meant simply that my student of Hebrew measured German literature by his own knowledge of it. Three names had reached him, only names, and only three of them. As to the men who were unknown to him he had decided that they did not exist. Certainly if there are many Frenchmen in this condition, it is time that they learned a little German.

LETTER VIII.

TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES.

Standard of attainment in living languages higher than in ancient ones-Difficulty of maintaining high pretensions -Prevalent illusion about the facility of modern languages-Easy to speak them badly-Some propositions based upon experience-Expectations and disappoint

ments.

land! How easy for the Florentine to speak Italian, how difficult for us! The modern linguist can never fence himself behind that stately unquestionableness which shields the classical scholar.. His knowledge may at any time be put to the severest of all tests, to a test incomparably more severe than the strictest university examination. The first native that he meets is his examiner, the first for

one reason why accomplishment in modern languages has been rather a matter of utility than of dignity, for it is difficult to keep up great pretensions in the face of a multitude of critics. What would the most learnedlooking gown avail, if a malicious foreigner were laughing at us?

But there is a deep satisfaction in the severity of the test. An honest and courageous student likes to be clearly aware of the exact value of his acquisitions. He takes his French to Paris and has it tested there as we take our plate to the silversmith, and after that he knows, or may know, quite accurately what it is worth. He has not the dignity of scholarship, he is not held to be a learned man, but he has acquired something which may be of daily use to him in society, or in commerce, or in literature; and there are thousands of educated natives who can accurately estimate his attainment and help him to a higher perfection. All this is deeply satisfying to a lover of intellectual realities. The modern linguist is always on firm ground, and in

HAD your main purpose in the education broad daylight. He may impede his own of yourself (I do not say self-education, for progress by the illusions of solitary self-con

ceit, but the atmosphere outside is not fav- us by the circumstances of our lives or the orable to such illusions. It is well for him necessities of our organization we are there

that the temptations to charlatanism are so few, that the risks of exposure are so frequent.

life, is the foolishness of the two common vanity which first deludes itself with childish expectations, and then tortures itself with late regret for failure which might have been easily foreseen.

fore to abandon the study to every language but the mother tongue. It may be of use to us to know several languages imperfectly, if Still there are illusions, and the commonest only we confess the hopelessness of absolute of them is that a modern language may be attainment. That which is truly, and deeply, very easily mastered. There is a popular and seriously an injury to our intellectual idea that French is easy, that Italian is easy, that German is more difficult, yet by no means insuperably difficult. It is believed that when an Englishman has spent all the best years of his youth in attempting to learn Latin and Greek, he may acquire one or two modern languages with little effort during a brief residence on the Continent. It is certainly true that we may learn any number of foreign languages so as to speak them badly, but it surely cannot be easy to speak them well. It may be inferred that this is not easy because the accomplishment is so rare. The inducements are common, the accomplishment is rare. Thousands of English people have very strong reasons for learning French, thousands of French people could improve their position by learning English; but rare indeed are the men and women who know both languages thoroughly.

The following propositions, based on much observation of a kind wholly unprejudiced, and tested by a not inconsiderable experience, will be found, I believe, unassailable.

1. Whenever a foreign language is perfectly acquired there are peculiar family conditions. The person has either married a person of the other nation, or is of mixed blood.

2. When a foreign language has been acquired (there are instances of this) in quite absolute perfection, there is almost always some loss in the native tongue. Either the native tongue is not spoken correctly, or it is not spoken with perfect ease.

3. A man sometimes speaks two languages correctly, his father's and his mother's, or his own and his wife's, but never three.

4. Children can speak several languages exactly like natives, but in succession, never simultaneously. They forget the first in acquiring the second, and so on.

5. A language cannot be learned by an adult without five years' residence in the country where it is spoken, and without habits of close observation a residence of twenty years is insufficient.

This is not encouraging, but it is the truth. Happily, a knowledge which falls far short of mastery may be of much practical use in the common affairs of life, and may even afford some initiation into foreign literatures. I do not argue that because perfection is denied of

LETTER IX.

TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES

Cases known to the Author-Opinion of an English linguist

Family conditions-An Englishman who lived forty years in France--Influence of children-An Italian in FranceDisplacement of one language by another English lady married to a Frenchman-An Italian in Garibaldi's armyCorruption of languages by the uneducated when they learn more than one-Neapolitan servant of an English gentleman-A Scotch servant-woman-The author's eldest boy-Substitution of one language for another-In mature life we lose facility-The resisting power of adultsSeen in international marriages-Case of a retired English officer-Two Germans in France--Germans in LondonThe innocence of the ear-Imperfect attainment of little intellectual use-Too many languages attempted in education-Polyglot waiters--Indirect benefits.

My five propositions about learning modern languages appear from your answer to have rather surprised you, and you ask for some instances in illustration. I am aware that my last letter was dogmatic, so let me begin by begging your pardon for its dogmatism. The present communication may steer clear of that rock of offence, for it shall confine itself to an account of cases that I have known.

One of the most accomplished of English linguists remarked to me that after much observation of the labors of others, and a fair estimate of his own, he had come to the rather discouraging conclusion that it was not possible to learn a foreign language. He did not take account of the one exceptional class of cases where the family conditions make the use of two languages habitual. The most favorable family conditions are not in themselves sufficient to ensure the acquisition of a language, but wherever an instance of perfect acquisition is to be found, these family conditions are always found along with it. My friend W., an English artist living in Paris, speaks French with quite absolute accuracy as to grammar and choice of expression, and with accuracy of pronuncia tion so nearly absolute that the best French

losing English by continental residence, but people not accustomed to reading and writing often forget the mother tongue in a few years, even when the foreign one which has displaced it is still in a state of imperfection. Madame L. is an English lady who married a Frenchman; neither her husband nor her

ears can detect nothing wrong but the pro- stance of a man speaking two languages in nunciation of the letter "r.” He has lived their perfection, but I learned since then that in France for the space of forty years, but it his French had displaced his Italian, and so may be doubted whether in forty years he completely that he was quite unable to speak could have mastered the language as he has Italian correctly, and made use of French indone if he had not married a native. French variably when in Italy. The risk of this dishas been his home language for 30 years and placement is always greatest in cases where more, and the perfect ease and naturalness the native tongue is not kept up by means of of his diction are due to the powerful home literature. Byron and Shelley, or our conteminfluences, especially to the influence of chil-porary Charles Lever, would run little risk of dren. A child is born that speaks the foreign tongue from the first inarticulate beginnings. It makes its own child language, and the father as he hears it is born over again in the foreign land by tender paternal sympathy. Gradually the sweet child-talk gives place to the perfect tongue and the father follows it by insensible gradations, himself the most children speak English, and as her relatives docile of pupils, led onward rather than in- live in one of our most distant colonies, she structed by the winning and playful little has been separated from them for many master, incomparably the best of masters. years. Isolated thus from English society, The process here is nature's own inimitable process. Every new child that is born to a man so situated carries him through a repetition of that marvellous course of teaching. The language grows in his brain from the first rudiments the real natural rudiments, not the hard rudiments of the grammarian-just as plants grow naturally from their seeds. It has not been built by human processes of piecing together, but has developed itself like a living creature. This way of learning a language possesses over the dictionary process exactly the kind of superiority which a living man, developed naturally from the fœtus, possesses over the clastic anatomical man-model of the ingenious doctor Auzoux. The doctor's models are remarkably perfect in construction, they have all the organs, but they have not life.

living in a part of France rarely visited by her countrymen, never reading English, and writing it little and at long intervals, she speaks it now with much difficulty and diffidence. Her French is not grammatical, though she has lived for many years with people who speak grammatically; but then her French is fluent and alive, truly her own living language now, whilst English is, if not wholly forgotten, dead almost as our Latin is dead. She and I always speak French together when we meet, because it is easier for her than English, and a more natural expression. I have known some other cases of displacement of the native tongue, and have lately had the opportunity of watching a case of such displacement during its progress. A sergeant in the Italian army deserted to join Garibaldi in the campaign of 1870. On the When, however, this natural process of conclusion of peace it was impossible for him growth is allowed to go forward without to return to Italy, so he settled in France and watchful care, it is likely to displace the married there. I found some work for him, mother tongue. It is sometimes affirmed and for some months saw him frequently. that the impressions of childhood are never Up to the date of his marriage he spoke no effaced, that the mother tongue is never for- language but Italian, which he could read gotten. It may be that it is never wholly and write correctly, but after his marriage forgotten, except in the case of young chil- the process of displacement of the native dren, but it may become so imperfect as to be tongue began immediately by the corruption practically of little use. I knew an Italian of it. He did not keep his Italian safely by who came to France as a young man and itself, putting the French in a place of its own learned his profession there. He was after- as he gradually acquired it, but he mixed the wards naturalized, married a French lady, two inextricably together. Imagine the case had several children, pursued a very success- of a man who, having a bottle half full of ful career in Paris, and became ultimately wine, gets some beer given him and pours it French Ambassador at the court of Victor immediately into the wine-bottle. The beer Emmanuel. His French was so perfect that will never be pure beer, but it will effectually it was quite impossible for any one to detect spoil the wine. This process is not so much the usual Italian accents. I used to count one of displacement as of corruption. it him as a remarkable and almost solitary in- takes place readily in uncultivated minds,

with my urgent entreaties, to preserve the boy's native language; but the substitution took place too rapidly, and was beyond control. He began by an unwillingness to use English words whenever he could use Provençal instead, and in a remarkably short time this unwillingness was succeeded by inability. The native language was as com

taken out of its case: nothing remained, nothing, not one word, not any echo of an accent. And as a violinist may put a new instrument into the case from which he has removed the old one, so the new language occupied the whole space which had been occupied by English. When I saw the child again, there was no means of communication between us.

with feeble separating powers. Another ex-two ladies in the house who spoke English ample of this was a Neapolitan servant of an well, and did all in their power, in compliance English gentleman, who mixed his Italian twice, first with French and afterwards with English, producing a compound intelligible to nobody but himself, if indeed he himself understood it. At the time I knew him, the man had no means of communication with his species. When his master told him to do anything, he made a guess at what was likely to be for the moment his master's most prob-pletely taken out of his brain as a violin is able want, and sometimes hit the mark, but more generally missed it. The man's name was Alberino, and I remember on one occasion profiting by a mistaken guess of his. After a visit to Alberino's master, my servant brought forth a magnificent basket of trout, which surprised me, as nothing had been said about them. However, we ate them, and only discovered afterwards that the present was due to an illusion of Alberino's. His master had never told him to give me the trout, but he had interpreted some other order in that sense. When you asked him for mustard, he would first touch the salt, and then the pepper, etc., looking at you inquiringly till you nodded assent. Any attempt at conversation with Alberino was sure to lead to a perfect comedy of misunderstandings. He never had the remotest idea of what his interlocutor was talking about; but he pretended to catch your meaning, and answered at haphazard. He had a habit of talking aloud to himself, "but in a tongue no man could understand."

It is a law that cultivated people can keep languages apart, and in their purity, better than persons who have not habits of intellectual analysis. When I lived in Scotland three languages were spoken in my house all day long, and a housemaid came to us from the Lowlands who spoke nothing but Lowland Scotch. She used to ask what was the French for this thing or that, and then what was the Gaelic for it. Having been answered, she invariably asked the further question which of the three words, French, Gaelic, or English, was the right word. She remained, to the last, entirely incapable of conceiving how all the three could be right. Had she learned another language, it must have been by substitution for her own. This is exactly the natural process which takes place in the brains of children who are transferred from one country to another. My eldest boy spoke English in childhood as well as any other English child of his age. He was taken to the south of France, and in three months he replaced his English with Provençal, which he learned from the servants about him. There were

After that, he was removed to the north of France, and the same process began again. As Provençal had pushed out English, so French began to push out Provençal. The process was wonderfully rapid. The child heard people speak French, and he began to speak French like them without any formal teaching. He spoke the language as he breathed the air. In a few weeks he did not retain the least remnant of his Provençal; it was gone after his English into the limbo of the utterly forgotten.

Novelists have occasionally made use of cases similar to this, but they speak of the forgotten language as being forgotten in the manner that Scott forgot the manuscript of "Waverley," which he found afterwards in the drawers of an old writing-desk when he was seeking for fishing-tackle. They assume (conveniently for the purposes of their art) that the first language we learn is never really lost, but may be as it were under certain circumstances mislaid, to be found again at some future period. Now, although something of this kind may be possible when the first language has been spoken in rather advanced boyhood, I am convinced that in childhood a considerable number of languages might succeed each other without leaving any trace whatever. I might have remarked that in addition to English, Provençal, and French. my boy had understood Gaelic in his infancy, at least to some extent, though he did not speak it. The languages in his case succeeded each other without any cost of effort, and without any appreciable effect on health. The pronunciation of each language was quite faultless so far as foreign accent went; the child had the defects of children, but of children born in the different countries where he live.

shores.

As we grow older this facility of acquisition | and he did not know one single verb, literally gradually leaves us. M. Philarète Chasles not one. His pronunciation was so foreign as says that it is quite impossible for any adult to be very nearly unintelligible, and he hesilearn German: an adult may learn German tated so much that it was painful to have to as Dr. Arnold did for purposes of erudition, listen to him. I could mention a celebrated for which it is enough to know a language as German, who has lived in or near Paris for we know Latin, but this is not mastery. You the last twenty years, and who can neither. have met with many foreign residents in Eng-speak nor write the language with any apland, who after staying in the country for proach to accuracy. Another German, who many years can barely make themselves in- settled in France as a master of languages, telligible, and must certainly be incapable of wrote French tolerably, but spoke it intolerappreciating those beauties of our literature ably. There are Germans in London, who which are dependent upon arrangements of have lived there long enough to have families Sound. The resisting power of the adult brain and make fortunes, yet who continue to reis quite as remarkable as the assimilating power peat the ordinary German faults of pronunciof the immature brain. A child hears a sound, ation, the same faults which they committed and repeats it with perfect accuracy; a man years ago, when first they landed on our hears a sound, and by way of imitation utters something altogether different, being nevertheless persuaded that it is at least a close and satisfactory approximation. Children imitate well, but adults badly, and the acquisition of languages depends mainly on imitation. The resisting power of adults is often seen very remarkably in international marriages. In those classes of society where there is not Let me observe, in conclusion, that almuch culture, or leisure or disposition for cult- though to know a foreign language perfectly are, the one will not learn the other's lan-is a most valuable aid to the intellectual life, I guage from opportunity or from affection, have never known an instance of very imperbut only under absolute necessity. It seems as if two people living always together would gain each other's languages as a matter of course, but the fact is that they do not. French people who marry foreigners do not usually acquire the foreign language if the pair remain in France; English people under similar conditions make the attempt more frequently, but they rest contented with imperfect attainment.

The child hears and repeats the true sound, the adult misleads himself by the spelling. Seldom indeed can the adult recover the innocence of the ear. It is like the innocence of the eye, which has to be recovered before we can paint from nature, and which belongs only to infancy and to art.

fect attainment which seemed to enrich the student intellectually. Until you can really feel the refinements of a language, your mental culture can get little help or furtherance from it of any kind, nothing but an interminable series of misunderstandings. I think that in the education of our boys too many languages are attempted, and that their minds would profit more by the perfect acquisition of a single language in addition to the native If the power of resistance is so great in tongue. This, of course, is looking at the people who being wedded together for life matter simply from the intellectual point of have peculiarly strong inducements for learn-view. There may be practical reasons for ing each other's languages, it need surprise knowing several languages imperfectly. It us little to find a like power of resistance in may be of use to many men in commercial cases where motives of affection are alto- situations to know a little of several langether absent. Englishmen who go to France guages, even a few words and phrases are as adults, and settle there, frequently remain valuable to a traveller, but all intellectual lafor many years in a state of half-knowledge | bor of the higher kind requires much more which, though it may carry them through than that. It is of use to society that there the little difficulties of life at railway stations should be polyglot waiters who can tell us and restaurants, is for any intellectual pur- when the train starts in four or five lanpose of no conceivable utility. I knew a re- guages; but the polyglot waiters themselves tired English officer, a bachelor, who for are not intellectually advanced by their acmany years had lived in Paris without any complishment; for, after all, the facts of the intention of returning to England. His railway time-table are always the same small. French just barely carried him through the facts, in however many languages they small transactions of his daily life, but was may be announced. True culture ought to so limited and so incorrect that he could strengthen the faculty of thinking, and to not maintain a conversation. His vocabulary provide the material upon which that noble was very meagre; his genders were all wrong, | faculty may operate. An accomplishment