The special fitness of modern languages in a girl’s education does not appear on the surface, and it requires more than a superficial, conversational knowledge to reap the fruit of their study.  The social, and at present the commercial values are obvious to every one, and of these the commercial value is growing very loud in its assertions, and appears very exacting in its demands.  For this the quack methods promise the short and easy way, and perhaps they are sufficient for it.  A knowledge sufficient for business correspondence is not what belongs to a liberal education; it has a very limited range, hard, plain, brief communications, supported on cast-iron frames, inelastic forms and crudest courtesies, a mere formula for each particular case, and a small vocabulary suited to the dealings of every branch of business.  We know the parallel forms of correspondence in English, which give a means of communication but not properly a language.  Even the social values of languages are less than they used to be, as the finer art of conversation has declined.  A little goes a long way; the rush of the motor has cut it short; there is not time to exchange more than a few commonplaces, and for these a very limited number of words is enough.

But let our girls give themselves time, or let time be allowed them, to give a year or two to the real study of languages, not in the threadbare phrases of the tourist and motorist, nor to mere drawing-room small talk; not with “matriculation standard” as an object, but to read the best that has been written, and try to speak according to the best that can be said now, and to write according to the standard of what is really excellent to-day; then the study of modern languages is lifted quite on to another plane.  The particular advantage of this plane is that there is a view from it, wider in proportion to the number of languages known and to the grasp that is acquired of each, and the particular educational gift to be found there is width of sympathy and understanding.  Defective sympathies, national and racial prejudices thrive upon a lower level.  The elect of all nations understand one another, and are strangely alike; the lower we go down in the various grades of each nation the more is the divergency accentuated between one and another.  Corresponding to this is mutual understanding through language; the better we possess the language of any nation the closer touch we can acquire with all that is theirs, with their best.

A superficial knowledge of languages rather accentuates than removes limitations, multiplies mistakes and embitters them.  With a half-knowledge we misunderstand each other’s ideals, we lose the point of the best things that are said, we fail to catch the aroma of the spices and the spirit of the living word; in fact, we are mere tourists in each other’s mental world, and what word could better express the attitude of mind of one who is a stranger, but not a pilgrim,