244 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. generated descendants of Pericles, Socrates, and Phidias. Still, these degenerated descendants have the undeniable fortune to speak a language which Pericles, Socrates, and Phidias would have understood. An unbroken chain continues from generation to generation, and back again, from the Greeks of the nineteenth century to those of Pericles, Socrates, and Phidias. It is a customary assertion that the modern Greek is a barbarous mixture of a good deal of Slavonic, Albanese, Turkish, and Italian, and of a little corrupt Greek. As we have seen, this is just as untrue as the assertion that the Greek is a defunct language. Naturally, such incorrect views are held among the ignorant. However, as I know from experience, such ignorance is found also among the otherwise educated classes who have studied the Greek language while at college. It is remarkable how the very Greek language, from which every other European lan- guage has drawn so freely, has been calumni- ated in such a manner. Aside from the Greek as published in news- papers and books, which some are pleased to designate as an artificial old Greek in a new Greek garb, the living and really spoken lan- guage of both the higher and the lower classes,
