I am, guys. This is Lundianian Live.

Germanicus is here. The Cinturns are here. It is a corker of a night out there.

Nor'easter, we're sweeping over America. And we're witnessing America in the 21st century from our very happy

roost here, warm in our wine bar by the Thames, 92 AD. Germanicus, I've discovered something

reading serially about the 17th century in England, the English Civil War period, that the most learned of men

could communicate with the French and the Spanish and the Dutch and the Italian, especially

the Italian, not because they had good languages that when they went abroad,

but because all the educated men and many of the educated courtly women

were fluent in Latin and Greek and Hebrew.

And all of a sudden I made a connection while I'm reading this.

A man named Downing graduates the first class of Harvard College, 1838,

is 1638, I believe.

And he is instructed when at Harvard for the three terms he's there.

They put it together the Puritans because they mean to move the capital of the Massachusetts

Bay Colony to Cambridge. That doesn't work out. So they name it Cambridge to give it the

aura of an educated place. The first class and every class subsequent to that must only conduct

its business in Latin. During the day and in the dorms at night, only Latin.

George Downing, the protagonist of a story, he finds that greatly useful when many years later, as a spy and agent for Oliver Cromwell, he confers with the French prime minister, who is a cardinal, a Mazarin.

Mazarin has no English.

Downing has no French.

So they conduct their business, dividing up the empire between the Puritans and the French.

They're going to make an alliance against the Spanish, against the Habsburgs.

...