Birmingham state herald., 1895-12-11
I.ANeuAeEs AT COLLEGE.

Hon. Hilary 4. Herbert believes in the old college curriculum which gave large space to the study of Greek and Latin, those dead languages which are still made to do service in disciplining the mind of the school boy. In his report as secretary of the navy he says:
 No Latin or Greek is taught at the naval academy. The study of these lan- guages experience has shown so educates one in the niceties of our own language as to supply in large part al least the want of thorough study of English but this does not seem to be true of the study Of modern languages. A careful consld- eration of the curriculum in use at the naval academy convinced the depart ment that the study of our own language there should be more thorough By my direction, therefore the course in English has been enlarged This, of course, could not be done except at the expense of oth- CT studies, but it will probably be admit led by all that absolute purity of style in written communications is for every officer a matter of prime importance. It is not enough that a large majority of graduates should be able to write the very purest English. No cadet should be given a diploma who is deficient in this regard"
 It is very well to have our own lan- guage taught thoroughly but it is not certain that so much time should be given to the dead languages. It is fact hardly to be denied that of our college graduates very few except those who follow a technical career or who expect to become teachers retain any knowledge of Greek or Latin beyond a few years after graduation. Their knowledge of the dead vocabularies is of no positive value, except to enable them readily to define words of Latin or Greek origin. The old argument that vast amount of wisdom is locked up in the writings of the ancients is refuted by the fact that we have translations of the old writers and can arrive at their wisdom second hand as readily as we arrive at the wisdom of the Hebrew prophets through King James translation. It ap- pears to involve vast amount of un- necessary work to arrive at result that can be reached much more easily, and after we have arrived at the wisdom of the ancients have we really learned any more than we could have learned in less time through our own writers? Cicero could tell us no more about Julius Caesar than we learn from the philosophic his tory by Louis Napoleon. Aristotle is ig- norant compared to Calico or Herschel. Herodtas knew less about interior Africa
 than our Bohemian Stanley. Virgils
 "Aeneid" is not superior to Miltons Paradise Lost" Socrates was an idiot compared to Huxley or Tyndall Pliny
 knew less about geology than Prof. Flu gene Smith of our state university And as for the feeble beginnings made by the philosophers of the school of Athens in getting at the protoplasm it was childs play when weighed against the reasoning and results of Darwin and Spencer
 We do not mean to say that Greek and
 Latin should be>discarded. They give employment to the professors and occupy
 the time of the students. They enable us to understand the technical terms Of science and the names of tooth powders.
 Perhaps they give some gymnastic train
 ing to the brain just as the riding Of the
 bicycle gives some training to the legs, but beyond that it is difficult to say what practical value the protracted study of the dead languages can be to the average
 young American who expects to make his living by hard work.
 Clearly the proper course is to give one year only to the dead languages. enough
 to learn the construction and to acquire
 
 maining time not needed for the sciences to the modern languages with which we are more immediately concerned. Ger man is very valuable to our young men, as the German merchants are largely in-
 terested in commerce all over the world, especially in the cotton business in our gulf cities. The French language should
 be thoroughly studied because it is the language most largely spoken in the best society all over the world. It is the lan- guage of courts, and is used generally by consuls and merchants everywhere outside of the pale of the English inf1u- ence. But most important of all to us of the south is the Spanish language Spanish Is the language of the West In- dies, of Mexico, Central and South Amer ica. With those countries we are having a large and growing intercourse and our trade promises to grow enormously in that direction. Young men who can speak Spanish get ready employment with the British, French and German | merchants, who deal so extensively with those countries. We learn that there is
 now a great demand for commercial trav- elers who can speak Spanish even by the merchants of the United States
 In view of the greater intercourse that
 would follow the building of the Nicara- qua canal it would seem that it is of prime importance that our southern col ieges should give especial attention to the study of the Spanish language. The con struction of the language and it's vocabu- | lary so closely resembles the Latin of which 1t is foster-son, that its study | ch ;,,,,
 In course is concluded. In our opinion it | IS pressing necessity that Spanish should be taught at our state university and we hope that the trustees will so
 order at their next meeting.
 SAID PASHA.
 The flight of Said Pasha. president of | the Turkish council of state, to the sheI- A Irif is.l, l.,..