PROPER PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. 73 occurred in the year 1453. Few people then paid any attention how Greek was pronounced in that Turkish province called Greece, which had changed masters so many times, having been under the Romans, Franks, Venetians., and the Turks. Greek was considered then a dead language, like the Latin and Hebrew, and the savants from that time on adopted unhesitatingly the Erasmian pronunciation as the correct one. But the Greek Revolution of 1821, which ended in the establishment of the present Greek kingdom in 1830, put a new aspect on the exist- ing state of things. It was almost a revelation ! Old Hellas rose from her ashes like the phoenix of mythology, with Athens for her capital, with her cities called Pirseus, Sparta, Corinth, and Pylos, as of old, with her Marathon and Salamis, with her Acropolis and its immortal Parthenon. The Greek language was preserved from gen- eration to generation in that extreme corner of Southern Europe chiefly through the Greek church. The Turks, fortunately for the Greeks, left public worship free, and the reading of the New Testament and the liturgies of St. Basil and of St. John Chrysostom were heard every
