way with the calm of one who asks little of his
fellow-men save a kind word as he passes, and a
God speed as he goes?" I knew perfectly that,
with any other beast for my "mount," I could
not view the scene of life with the same bland
composure. A horse that started, that tripped,
that shied, reared, kicked, cromed his neck, or
even shook himself, as certain of these beasts
do, would have kept me in a paroxysm of
anxiety and uneasiness, the least adapted of all
moods for thoughtfulness and reflection. Like
an ill-assorted union, it would have given no
time save for squabble and recrimination. But
Blondel almost seemed to understand my
mission, and lent himself to its accomplishment.
There was none of the obtrusive selfishness of
an ordinary horse in his ways. He neither
asked you to remark the glossiness of his skin,
nor the graceful curve of his neck; he did not
passage nor curvet. Superior to the petty arts
by which vulgar natures present themselves to
notice, he felt that destiny had given him a duty,
and he did it.

Thus thinking, I returned once more to the
spirit which had first sent me forth to ramble,
to wander through the world, spectator, not
actor; to be with my fellow-men in sympathy,
but not in action; to sorrow and rejoice as
they did, but, if possible, to understand life as
a drama, in which, so long as I was the mere
audience, I could never be painfully afflicted or
seriously injured by the catastrophe: a wonderful
philosophy, but of which, up to the present,
I could not boast any pre-eminent success.

        WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK.

IT is by no means an uncommon thing, on the
contrary it is so common as to approximate to a
nuisance, to hear people bitterly complaining of
the attention which is paid in this country to
the cultivation of Latin and Greek. They say
if their sons are to be sent to school and loaded
with impositions and progged with a stick, let
it be for something which will profit them, if
they survive, in after life. Let them be loaded
with impositions for French, and progged with
a stick for German, and murdered for nothing at
all. At any rate, don't make their lives a burden
for Latin, and their souls weary for Greek.
Now with respect to Latin, we have nothing to
say, except that we never heard of its doing any
great harm; and, being the most difficult
language in point of construction, and the most
like the German so far of any with which we are
acquainted, it might be supposed to be not a
bad starting-point for the acquisition of other
languages; however, let it go; our business is
with Greek; Greek is still a spoken language,
Greek is becoming every day more and more like
the Greek that boys learn at school; and but
lately there was a dinner at the London Tavern
at which all the speeches were made in Greek, and
such Greek as any scholar with one day's study
of a Modern Greek Grammar might read with
considerable ease. It must not be imagined that
the gentlemen who dined at that well-known
tavern had fallen victims to strong wine and
were trying to outvie each other in extravagance
by making speeches in the tongues which they
had learnt at school. No, they were all as
sober as people usually are, after a dinner at the
London Tavern. They were an assemblage of
gentlemen who have increased and multiplied
amongst us, particularly in London, Manchester,
and Liverpool, whose names constantly figure in
the columns of our newspapers as mingling in
our commerce, inhabiting our most fashionable
quarters, frequenting our operas, and adding
lustre to our Bankruptcy Courts; in fact, they
were Greek merchants. They had met together
to celebrate an auspicious event in their modern
history—the establishment of a newspaper in
their own language, which is to be amongst their
people (ó?o????î?) what the Times (ó X?ó?o?) is
amongst Englishmen. It is called the British
Star (ó ?????????ò? ’?????), for what reason
we cannot say; whether because it is to
enlighten us, or because its rays will diverge from
Britain and shed light upon Greeks in all parts
of the world, did not transpire.

But, whatever be the origin of its title,
its establishment is a proof that the Greeks
have not yet relinquished their national
language, and that the teaching of the ancient
tongue at our schools and universities might,
with advantage, be combined with that of the
modern. And what would make this easier,
is the fact that at the court of Athens, and
amongst all educated Greeks—witness
Tricoupi's 'E???????' ????á??????—every effort is
made to assimilate the modern to the ancient
Greek. We do not mean in those abstruse
points which require an acquaintance with
Parson's Preface, and Bos on Ellipses, dissertations
on ?? with the optative mood, essays upon the
use of ???? with the indicative mood and all
sorts of critical jargon, but in the words themselves
that they may be all formed according to
the rules of Greek analogy, introducing as little
as possible foreign elements. The constructions
have been altered for good and simplified
amazingly, so that there is no language so easy—if
you have had a public school education—of
acquisition as the modern Greek. And this is the
language which our Greek merchants, as we
know personally, make a point of speaking
amongst one another; a proficiency in it is
therefore, with persons engaged in commercial
pursuits, a matter of some moment. It is true
that most Greek merchants speak French, but it
is always worth while to be able to converse with
a man in his mother tongue. In Germany we
believe all Greek scholars are acquainted both
with the modern constructions and the modern
pronunciation, and there is no reason on earth
why not only English scholars but English boys
at school should not be equally well instructed;
nothing would be easier than to combine the
modern pronunciation with the ancient mode of
construction and inflexion. A boy would then
see the use of the accents which now appear to
him invented by the enemy simply to try his
temper. We ourselves recollect the confusion