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Will you not help us to make a stand even now against the encroachments
of realism in the pronunciation of Latin? My evening paper has been full
of it lately. Why, Sir, it is well known that the Britons understood the
Romans, and the Romans the Britons, and if the Romans had said their
repetition in the absurd foreign fashion that a few modern-side pedants
advocate, is it likely that the Britons would have understood them, much
less that they would have had so much respect for them as to admit their
garrisons, and their Mayors, and their Corporations, and what not for
four or five hundred years? And if our early ancestors had spoken Latin
in this eminently unmanly un-English fashion, why should we naturally
and instinctively pronounce it in our own way now, as if there were no
natural piety linking the chapters of our rough island story together?
The Cambridge Augustan Johnnies (Dr. SANDYS at least, being a Johnian,
may excuse the term) set great store upon the fact that all over the
Continent the language is pronounced in the foreign manner. Why, Sir, it
is well known that the Norse tongue in Iceland, being icerlated, has
remained nearly unchanged since its introduction in the ninth century.
And England is an island; therefore the Latin tongue, introduced by the
Roman colonists, must have remained unchanged also. For my own part, I
own I have no patience with this degradation of the hallowed traditions
of our school-days to the level of languages which can be got up in
_Ollendorff_ and fluently pattered by couriers and waiters. "Wenny,
weedy, weaky." Good gracious! Is that the language of a conquering,
masterful race? The matter does not admit of serious argument.
Yours, wondering what next, ONE OF THE OLD SCHOOL.
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THE LAST OF THE GO-HE-CANS.--The _Times_ for November 1, in giving a
list of the Masters of Foxhounds, mentioned the Rev. E. M. REYNOLDS as
"the only clergyman who can append M.F.H. to his name." Of course this
does not mean that no other clergyman "can" do so, or the Clergy would
indeed be an uneducated set, but that the Rev. E. M. REYNOLDS is the
only successor of the Rev. JACK RUSSELL who has the right to append
M.F.H. to his name. How often does his pack meet? Is it _Reynolds's
Weekly_? If the hounds are a trifle mixed, it may be known as
_Reynolds's Miscellany_.
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Captain STOKES, who peremptorily ordered Mr. O'BRIEN off to prison,
seems to be the sort of a man that CHARLES DICKENS described as a
"Harbitrary Gent." Quite a despotic Turk. As the Nationalists call the
Castle Officials "Bashi-Bazouks," let them allude to the gallant Captain
and Magistrate as "STOKES BEY."
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[Illustration: International Punch.]
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.--Should difficulties ever arrive at this
peaceable solution--(so likely!--ahem!--but always a Bright Dream)--then
there could not be a name of better omen for a representative of British
Interests than "LYON PLAYFAIR."
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Trafalgar Square may be "the finest site in the world," but the Mob in
it isn't.
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