In classics we appear to have reached the position where ‘the best translator is he who knows that all translation is impossible’. With regard to classical culture and classical education, there is an uneasy feeling that somehow the ‘legacy of Greece and the legacy of Rome’ cut less ice than they used to do. Their influence becomes more and more isolated and more and more of a strain to justify, as against modern commercial tendencies in the schools. And as the whole position of the classics does rest finally upon translation, in its broadest sense, into our own modes of thought, it seems that the fatalism into which most of the sincerest classicists are forced to-day is aptly expressed in the paradox quoted above.

In his article on ‘Latin for To-day’ Mr. Coates has used several sentences about the Direct Method which show that he does not understand its principles or practice. This is a matter of public concern, for such statements can mislead the reader and so hinder the good teaching of Latin. They cannot therefore be allowed to go unrefuted.

There is some special quality inherent in primitive art which arouses our curiosity about the personality, the aims, and the methods of its creators. The outline of the reindeer roughly incised on a rock, the crude figure of a man carved out in stone, which betoken the difficult achievement of a race low in the scale of civilization, often excite in us keener interest and speculation than the more facile perfection of the masterpieces of a later age.

A cycling holiday is necessarily one of limited baggage, but this was not the only reason why I took Catullus in my pocket to Rotorua. I enjoy reading a well-known book in new surroundings. I once read the Greek Gospel of Saint John on the Christchurch-Dunedin Express and filled its simple pages, like a medieval manuscript, with pictures of white beach and headland, smooth plains of wheat and snow-capped hills, from that incomparable stretch of railway that runs down the coast of New Zealand's South Island. So did the beauty of the North Island lakeland illuminate a well-thumbed Catullus. How wrong to read our poets always in the study! We have lost them when they remind us only of grammar and philology, German tomes and prosody. We discover them anew when we can fill their lines with new associations and colour them with a colour sometimes all our own. With my eyes full of scenes from a day's wandering, guideless and off the beaten track, where Maori legends cluster thick about lakes, hot pools, and dark green woods, I read Catullus.

Martial leant back in his chair and looked out through the open window at the fair country that lay before him. It was a noble land, this Spain that he had left so lightly all those years ago. Had he ever realized half how beautiful it was? But no good thinking of that now. Rome had drawn him as a magnet draws the iron; and, if Valeria herself had been unable to hold him, what could you expect of any landscape, however lovely? Perhaps he knew better now; but he would never have believed it, without the experience. But without doubt it was good to be home again. After all the rubs and rebuffs of life at Rome, spiced though they had been by some rare successes, there was a warm comfort in finding oneself an honoured person, with an assured position, which had not to be maintained by constant self-assertion. There had been the civic welcome on the day of his arrival and now followed the more personal and intimate renewals of acquaintance. Was he not waiting at this very moment to see Valeria for the first time since that old parting? Martial flattered himself that he was no sentimentalist, but his heart beat faster than it need have done at the thought of seeing her again.

One of the privileges which the Athenians prized very highly was parrhesia—the right of free speech. From the foundation of the democracy until the dangers of uncensored speech in the Pelopon-nesian War made some restraint advisable this privilege remained unimpaired, and it is an important part of their political, if not of their social, system. The recognition of this right of free speech should mean that no grievance need remain unspoken, and that politicians could be well informed about the state of public opinion.

I wandered down the High St. of our little town and noticed with particular interest the shop signs, brass plates, and commercial notices which met my eyes in every direction. I was interested because I wanted to see how greatly even the exterior of our everyday surroundings, so to speak, are dominated by the connexion of our language with Latin and Greek. I was not concerned with the more obvious words—dentist, oculist, doctor—but with those which had a story to tell.