Like being in a fine country on a misty day...

If it should really come to this, then farewell, humanity! farewell, noble taste and high thinking! The age of barbarism will return, in spite of railways, telegraphs and balloons. We shall thus in the end lose one more advantage possessed by all our ancestors. For Latin is not only a key to the knowledge of Roman antiquity; it also directly opens up to us the Middle Age in every country in Europe, and modern times as well, down to about the year 1750.
...
To be entirely ignorant of the Latin language is like being in a fine country on a misty day. The horizon is extremely limited. Nothing can be seen clearly except that which is quite close; a few steps beyond, everything is buried in obscurity. But the Latinist has a wide view, embracing modern times, the Middle Age and Antiquity; and his mental horizon is still further enlarged if he studies Greek or even Sanscrit.

If a man knows no Latin, he belongs to the vulgar, even though he be a great virtuoso on the electrical machine and have the base of hydrofluoric acid in his crucible.

http://www.merriampark.com/schopen.htm

I wonder what he would think today, especially in the United States where you'd be lucky to find it even offered at a university.

That being said, I agree with him completely. If it were up to me, I would make Latin part of the general curriculum in junior high/high school. Learning it has a multitude of benefits. Reading better, writing better, logic skills, improved critical thinking skills, ability to learn another language easier etc...

I can still remember "Bob Smith" and the Wordsmith series which was shown to us in my middle-school. It was a brilliant show in which words were dissected into their various cognates.