56 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. tunity to earn the praise and the thanks of com- ing generations, and has left this to the French Government, which has now, recognizing his- torical truth, decided to introduce the living Greek pronunciation into all the schools of the French republic. This petition of German residents to the Em- peror is not in harmony with the dignity of the science of philology. Since the German philol- ogists are convinced that the Erasmian pronun- ciation is wrong, they must not teach it any longer. Schools which pretend to give scientific instruction should not teach something which confessedly is unscientific and false. As a rule they do not do so ; they do not teach other liv- ing languages with an invented pronunciation. In regard to really dead languages, such as Hebrew and Latin, all schools in the world, with the exception of some English, follow a pronun- ciation which is based on tradition: for Hebrew, through the Portuguese Jews; for Latin, through the Italians. Only with Greek, schools make an exception. As to Greek, the existence of a pronunciation, the correctness of which can be traced through exactly twenty-six hundred years, should be the greatest inducement to bring the school instruction in close relation to
