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Westport Times, Volume II, Issue 277, 20 June 1868, Page 5

Sir J. Simpson, in the course of a lecture at Granton, near Edinburgh, urged the necessity of a change in the mode of education in schools, in reference to modern and ancient languages. Was it, he asked, a fact that no man could speak good English, as had been averred by Mr Tring, (whose arguments he took as a specimen of the whole), unless he had a knowledge of Greek and Latin 1 Why, perhaps the most accomplished orator of the

present day knew very little Lattin, and he believed, no Greek—he referred to John Bright; and Mr Cobden knew neither Latin nor Greek, but there were few better speakers of English. The only language he learned was French. The greatest orators America had produced—Mr Clay and Andrew Douglas—were totally without classical education. And it is said no one could write good English unless they had received a classical education —that would excommunicate from authorship all the ladies ; and he was I told by a gentleman well acquainted with magazine literature, that half the articles in our magazines were written by those belonging to the female sex; and what were they to say of Miss Muloek, Mrs Beecher Stowe, Miss Bronte, Miss Martir.eau, Mrs Somerville, and many others ? Or, calculated by money—a thoroughly English mode of calculation—there was one notorious example of a lady receiving £B,OOO for a novel, which was far more than Sir Walter Scott ever got. Then, turning to the male sex, he spoke of Hugh Miller, Burns, im d even Sir Walter Scott, who, although he knew a little Latin, knew so little Greek that he was called the Greek dunce. When it happened that the man was a good writer, it was said it was because he had learned Greek and Latin. It did not follow that that was a consequence, though it might be a coincidence. He had been told that Mr Bright modelled his style on the English translation of the Bible ; and a Scotch critic, of great powers had told him that Macaulay'o style was built upon the same model. Sir James went on to say that In the English Bible 97 out of every lOC words were old Saxon. Shakapeara used 15 foreign words in evez'y .100, and Milton 14. If, therefore this was a proper argument, it would, bring us back to the study of other languages—to the study of old Anglo-Saxon, to which very little attention was paid until the importance of it wa3 set forth by German and Danish writers. It is now taught in Oxford, and a professor of that language was about to be established in Cambridge.