The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-02-17
"MODERN GREECE."
Address by Professor GoodelI of Yale at
 Willision Seminary. Eo ct MoSa Tsah 16

"MODERN GREECE"
 Address by Professor Goodell of Yale at Willision Seminary.
 East Hampton, Mass, Feb. 16. An address was delivered here this evening to the students of Williston seminary by Prof. Thomas Dwight Goodell of Yale university, on Modern l Greece. He said that the Greeks al- ways speak of Europe as not including I Greece. Gradually one realizes that | Greek is living tongue, spoken by 1 several millions of people, though not quite as Pericles spoke it. One day on the steam tram coming from Phale- ron I heard a group of people talking l of the high prices for meat in a way that many an American householder would appreciate. Their word for the l commodity was the one which has | been in unbroken use for at least twen- | ty-fve hundred years This mixed | people have preserved, under all trans formation, much of the ancient tongue.
 The Greek element in the race has l displayed an extraordinary power of resistance and of assimilation. The l Greek language is not one but two; the l two differ from each other as much as | English and the broadest Scotch; and l the line between them is not geograph- | ical but horizontal, not only dividing l the upper and the lower classes to some extent, but dividing the daily l speech of the same individual into an upper and a lower stratum. Most
 books are printed in an archaic litera- | ry form that closely approaches, in the l look of it, to the language of Xeno-
 phon. The so-called higher style,
 widely and freely as it Is spoken, is restricted to public occasions, and has to be learned by every Greek-I will not say as we learn Latin--but as an Italian, say, of Dante's time learned
 Latin. You may know this archaic
 styles ever so well, you will be quite
 unable to understand an ordinary con versation unless you have also learned the popular dialect This state of things produces some curious contrasts.
 The newspapers, for instance-except comic sheets-are printed in a far more
 elegant form than you hear spoken in
 cultivated society. Imagine our news
 papers printed in the language of
 Shakespeare and the Bible! Fancy
 our politicians making harangues in the
 same style, and every body looking on
 that as the normal manner for every
 thing but private conversation, comic papers and poetry. The Greeks them
 selves do not find the ancient authors
 easy More and more the popular
 grammatical structure is admitted to the newspapers and to literature, while
 education is enlarging the vocabulary
 of the people
 The general outlook of Athens is a
 great surprise It is so shockingly
 new! There is scarcely habitation or public building that has reached the
 age of three score. What one finds is a modern city of one hundred and twenty-five thousand inhabitants, : though it doesn't look it, built wholly of marble and stuccoed limestone.
 The outskirts of the city are as raw as
 any little western town at the end of
 the railway. There is no theater
 worth attending; scarcely any music is
 to be heard in public, if we except the
 excellent military band that plays eve ry day in front of the palace and often
 in the square few rods away; there is
 no picture gallery; no church contains
 a painting of the slightest artistic val
 ue. And yet, with the exception of
 Rome, I doubt if any city exerts a stronger charm upon the travelling
 American possessed of a fair degree of , education, and of appreciation of natu- , ral beauty. In spite of middle ages
 and modern science, we are the spiritu- , al children of old Hellas, and from the | foJ r1d ttra I,a olr r.
 the home of our ancient mother with
 much of the same feeling that draws Americans to England. The cradle ot our civilization Is in Greece: not only the professional Hellenst finds inspi-
 ration and instruction there; whoever concerns himself with the history o1
 literature, of art or of thought, finds
 there what the Hebrew and the Chris. tian religious sentiment finds in Pales- tine.
 It would be hard to find another , town so small with society so cultured so cosmopolitan and so polyglot. IT
 the latter particular the palace is fair. | ly representative. The king is Danish ' the Protestant services in his palace chapel are in German; the queen i.
 Russian, the crown princess is tht
 German emperor's sister; their com
 mon family language is English; O
 course they all speak French ant
 Greek. At any gathering of moderat' size one hears at least four languages . nine was the number spoken in ou
 party on certain archaeological excur
 sion. The Greek law forbids the ex , portation of antiquities, unless the. \ are useless for Greek museums; ant 7 the formalities for getting your ordina
 ry specimens passed are rather trou , blesome. Unquestionably great dea of smuggling is done, both by traveller
 and by Greek dealers. All the larg a museums of Europe and America ar