Oxford and Cambridge Favor Modern Languages.

It may be of interest to students in American colleges to know that exertions are now being made in England at the universities to place the modern languages on an equal footing with Latin and Greek.

On January 10, by the invitation of the college authorities, a sitting was held at Cambridge of the Seventh Congress of the National Society of French Professors residing in Engiand. M. Waddington, the French Ambassador, presided. In his address, M. Waddington said that last year the society had met at Oxford by invitation of that university. He hoped the language which the society represented would soon be placed on a par with the classics. The modern school had not yet taken the position it deserved, and Moliere and Goethe should be studied by the side of Euripides and Sophocles.

Mr. Taylor, Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, followed him. "A crisis in the history of English education is once more upon us," he said, "in that classicism education is once more attacked, and the affirmation strongly made that the interests of practical life must no longer be neglected in our educational system. Englishmen must be prepared at school to compete in commerce and in business with their foreign rivals, and for this purpose they will have to renounce in part that training in Latin and Greek which former generations of Englishmen have received. The assertion is made more peremptorily, more impatiently than ever before. Let us give up the preposterous doctrine that Latin must be learned in order to learn French, and let us teach French in order to teach Latin. In so doing we do not sacrifice literature to mere business, for the modern languages have literatures as well as the ancient. There exists a French literature which comprises books, poetry, devotion, philosophy, science, history, politics-a literature not less but more extensive and various than Greek and Roman literatures themselves. This literature indisputably excites the same sort of emotions and exerts the same influence as classical literature. It elevates the mind, stimulates the imagination and forms the taste; in short, there is absolutely no good effect produced by the classical literature which is not also in some degree produced by this literature."

The position of the classicists is untenable when they deny the possibility of substituting in education modern languages for the ancient. The modern literatures are literatures. It is useless to claim the title of humanities exclusively for the classics. Men are not asked to give up culture for business, but for the sake of business. They are asked to impart culture by a new method, and the complaint is that this new method is of the second rate, while the first method is of the first rate.

Professor Taylor's address was received with the greatest enthusiasm. All seemed to feel that the day had arrived when the monopoly of Greek and Latin sway was dying out in the old universities.

The crisis from this day will strongly turn at the universities in favor of the equality of modern languages, and may possibly affect American colleges as well.