An Account of Schools for Living Oriental Languages Established in Europe

THE MATERIALS f or an account of schools of living Oriental languages in Europe are not abundant, and not easily disengaged from others relating to similar movements and undertakings, such as the pursuit of Orientalistic studies in the spirit of philology or exegesis, with emphasis upon the classical languages;2 or the rigidly classical preparation of men for the work of printing Oriental liturgies and carrying them to the East with missionary enterprises or the efforts of individuals who followed similar objects, with more or less interest in the spoken idioms, but without producing schools.4 It is not always possible to learn from the records of early efforts, or of the early stages of existing institutions, whether they might properly be called schools of living Oriental languages. To earn that name a school must, I take it, teach languages actually in use in the Orient,5 and teach them so that they may be of use. In some of the Oriental departments the classical idiom shades off by many stages into the vernacular, and all have to be studied, as with Arabic in all Arabic-speaking lands. In other departments there

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