Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/252

2 so CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. Such a style of Maximilianesque was created. I have seen, in Munich, houses built after this plan. An architect — it was Semper, if I am not mistaken — when asked to take a part in this creation of the so-called Maximilian's style, an- swered that such a thing could not be made to order, that a style of building is the consequence of the history, the culture, life, and doings of a great period of a people. If such be the case with a style of architecture, how much more must it be the case in regard to language ? The history of this style of Maximilian's is, that it has no history. This short history is also that of the attempts to create a new world lan- guage. While a universal language, sufficient to sat- isfy the intellectual want of every people and of every time, can be as little imagined as the equality of all mankind, still such a uniformity is possible in a restricted part of human society, viz., in that aristocracy formed by art and science. It is not the masses who need such a universal language, but the men of science. Since Latin is no longer used as an interna- tional scientific language, the want of such a language makes itself more and more felt as science extends. I do not know if any, and