The history of the English pronunciation of Latin is curious. In Chaucer it was after the Roman fashion, in Spencer the English A appears, and the change begins to make itself felt under the succession of Queen Elizabeth. It is most probable that this was encouraged by the leaders of education, in order more thoroughly to break with Rome. The effect was, that after learning Greek and Latin for twenty years, a lad could hardly speak a sentence, because he had never been taught to converse in the absurdly called Dead Languages, and if he did speak, not a soul but an Englishman could understand him. The English pronunciation of Latin vowels, happens to be the very worst in the world, because we have an O and an A which belongs peculiarly to English, and which destroys all the charms of those grand-sounding vowels.
Years after I was laughed at at Oxford, public opinion took a turn, and Roman pronunciation of Latin was adopted in many of the best schools. I was anxious to see them drop their absurd mispronunciation of Greek, but all the authorities whom I consulted on the subject, declared to me that schoolmasters had quite enough to do with learning Italianized Latin, and could not be expected to trouble themselves with learning Athenianized Greek. I had another most quixotic idea, which was truly breaking one's head against a windmill. I wanted the public to pronounce Yob for Job, Yericho for Jericho, Yakoob for Jacob, and Yerusalem for Jerusalem. The writers of the Anglican version, must certainly have intended this, and it is inconceivable how the whole English public dropped the cognate German pronunciation of J, and took to that of France and Italy.
At last the dreary time passed away, and a happy family meeting was promised. My father brought my mother and sister from Pisa to Wiesbaden in Germany, and we boys, as we were still called, were invited over to spend the Long Vacation. We were also to escort Mrs. D'Aguilar, who with two of her daughters were determined to see the Rhine. One of the girls was Emily, who died soon. The other was Eliza, who married a clergyman of the name of Pope, and whose son, Lieutenant Pope of the 24th Queen's, died gallantly at Isandula; though surrounded by numbers, he kept firing his revolver and wounding his enemies, till he received a mortal wound by an assegai in the breast. This was on January 22nd, 1879. In the end of 1875 he came to Folkestone, to take leave of my wife and me, who were going out to India. We both liked him very much.
In those days travellers took the steamer from London Bridge, dropped quietly down the Thames, and, gaining varied information about the places on both sides of it, dined as usual on a boiled leg of mutton and caper sauce, and roast ribs of beef with horse-radish, and slept as best they could in the close boxes called berths or on deck; if the steamer was in decent order, and there was not too much head wind, they could be in the Scheldt next morning.
Our little party passed a day at Antwerp, which looked beautiful from the river. The Cathedral tower and the tall roofs and tapering spires of the churches around it made a matchless group. We visited the fortifications, which have lately done such good work, and we had an indigestion of Rubens, who appeared so gross and so fleshy after the Italian school. Mrs. D'Aguilar was dreadfully scandalized, when, coming suddenly into a room, she found her two nephews at romps with a pretty little soubrette, whose short petticoats enabled her to deliver the sharpest possible kicks, while she employed her hands in vigorously defending her jolly red cheeks. The poor lady threw up her hands and her eyes to heaven when she came suddenly upon this little scene, and she was even more shocked when she found that her escort had passed the Sunday evening in the theatre.
From Antwerp we travelled to Bruges, examined the belfry, heard the chimes, and then went on to Cologne. A marvellous old picturesque place it was, with its combination of old churches, crumbling walls, gabled houses, and the narrowest and worst-paved streets we had ever seen. The old Cathedral in those days was not finished, and threatened never to be finished. Still there was the grand solitary tower, with the mystical-looking old crane on the top, and a regular garden growing out of the chinks and crannies of the stonework. Coleridge's saying about Cologne, was still emphatically true in those days, and all travellers had recourse to "Jean Marie Farina Gegenüber." What a change there is now, with that hideous Gothic railway bridge, and its sham battlements, and loopholes to defend nothing, with its hideous cast-iron turret over the centre of the church, where the old architect had intended a light stone lantern-tower, with the ridiculous terrace surrounding the building, and with the hideous finials with which the modern German architects have disfigured the grand old building!
At Cologne we took the steamer and ran up the river. A far more sensible proceeding than that of these days, when tourists take the railway, and consequently can see only one side of the view. The river craft was comfortable, the meals were plentiful, the Piesporter was a sound and unadulterated wine, and married remarkably well with Knaster tobacco, smoked in long pipes with painted china bowls. The crowd, too, was good-tempered, and seemed to enjoy its holiday. Bonn, somehow or other, always managed to show at least one very pretty girl, with blue porcelain eyes and gingerbread-coloured hair. Then came the Castle Crag of Drachenfels and the charming Siebengebirge, which in those days were not spoiled by factory chimneys. We landed at Mainz, and from there drove over to the old Fontes Mattiace, called in modern day Wiesbaden.
It has been said that to enjoy the Rhine one must go to it from England, not the other way from Switzerland; and travellers' opinions are very much divided about it, some considering it extremely grand, and others simply pretty. I was curious to see what its effect upon me would be after visiting the four quarters of the globe; so, in May, 1872, I dropped down the river from Basle to the mouth. The southern and the northern two-thirds were uninteresting, but I found the middle as pretty as ever, and, in fact, I enjoyed the beautiful and interesting river more than when I had seen it as a boy.