am sorry that some of your readers are indignant about
what I said of the knowledge of Latin in Scotland. But I also said there were a few exceptions ; and I admit that Timor mortis conturbat me of Dunbar's Lament could hardly be bettered in any other language. The quotations to which Mr. Wynne refers remind me of Tennyson's
CS . the past will always win
A glory from its being past."
It is Mr. Wynne's opinion that without Latin and Greek no Eurepean is educated. In that case, I must say that the Scots are a nation of ignorant barbarians.
We are all agreed that the literature of Greece and Rome is precious. But so is that of many other countries and we can't learn every language. It is as if a man learned to be a bricklayer, and then a carpenter, a plumber, a slater, &c., &c. By that time he would have gone to his last home. I sent my son to one of the best of the Edinburgh public schools. After two years I discovered that his progress in Latin was on a par with my . own. I therefore saw the rector and told him that in my youth I had been taught Latin for six years and had learned nothing. " Ah, yes," replied the rector, in the style that Mr. Churchill has made familiar, " it is astonishing how many years a boy can learn Latin and how little he
knows.at the end of it."—Yours faithfully, J. G. GI1.CHRIST. Kane, Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire. .
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