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would otherwise have remained dark. The history of a language and literature is in some measure an epitome of the history of a people. We miss all these points of interest in your artificial language, and we shall, therefore, refuse to study it, and hereby commit it to the devil."

This is a particularly humiliating type of answer to receive, because it implies that one is an ass. In truth the man who should invent an artificial language and invite the world to study it for itself would be a fool, and a very swell-headed fool at that. It seems in vain to point this out to persons who use the above argument: or to explain to them that they would be aided in their study of languages that do repay study by the introduction of an easy international language, because many commentaries, etc., would become accessible to them, which are not so now, or only at the expense of deciphering some difficult language in which the commentary is written, the commentary itself being in no sense literature, and its form a matter of complete indifference.

Back comes the old answer in one form or another, every variation tainted with the heresy that the language is to be studied as a language for itself.

Perhaps the least tedious way of giving an idea of this kind of opposition, and the way in which it may be met, is to give some extracts from a scholar's letter, and the writer's answer. The letter is fairly typical.

"MY DEAR———,

"Many thanks for your long letter on Esperanto. According to the books, Esperanto can be learnt quickly by anyone. This means that they will forget it quite as rapidly. for what is easily acquired is soon forgotten...In my humble opinion, an Englishman who knows French and German would do much better to devote any extra time at his disposal to the study of his own language, which, I repeat, is one of the most delicate mediums of communication now in existence. It has taken