years ago that the four societies then existing in the Lake District and West Cumberland should be united for general purposes, while each society should retain its individuality. After many preliminary difficulties were overcome, the union was effected, and since that time each society has grown stronger, four new societies have been formed, and the total number of members increased from a few hundred to nearly 1,200.

The objects to be attained by this association of societies are as follows:-1. Increased strength to be derived from mutual help, encouragement, and a spirit of honest emulation. 2. The union affords greater facilities towards publishing transactions and securing the services of eminent lecturers. 3. An annual meeting of the associated societies affords an opportunity for the discussion of principles of working and promotes the general life. 4. The annual meeting being held in a fresh town each year helps to keep the country alive to the Association work, and encourages the formation of new societies.

The constitution of the Cumberland Association is as follows:-The president to be a man of local note and high culture, and to serve for a period not greater than two years.* The Presidents of individual societies to be vice-presidents of the Association. The council of the Association to consist of two delegates from each society, chosen annually. The treasurer and secretary (honorary) to be one and the same person, and fully acquainted with the county in all its aspects.

The working of the Association is carried on thus: The Association secretary keeps a record of all papers and lectures brought before the individual societies. Before the commencement of each winter session he communicates with all the local secretaries, and from his knowledge of available intellectual stores in the county, helps each in the drawing up of the winter programme in whatever direction help may be specially needed. It is his duty also to help forward the establishment of local classes where such are possible. At a council meeting held in the autumn some public lecturer is decided upon who shall go the round of the associated societies during the winter, and a grant is made towards his expenses from the Association funds (of which anon), the rest being made up by each society served.

The annual meeting takes place at Easter or in May, and lasts two or three days. The Association President delivers his annual address, reports from the several societies are read and discussed, original papers are read, lectures given by one or more eminent men, and field excursions made.

At the close of each winter session the local secretaries send into the Association secretary any papers which have been selected by the local committees as worthy of publication. If the Association council approve these papers they are published in the Transactions at the Asso

*The Lord Bishop of Carlisle acted as president for two years, and I. Fletcher, M.P., F.R.S., is now in his second year of presidency.

ciation expense. The funds of the Association are gathered thus: Each society pays an annual capitation grant of 6d. per head on all its members. There is also a class of Association members, residing at a distance from, and not belonging to, any local society, who pay an annual subscription of 58., and are virtually considered members of all the societies, and have the privileges of such. The Transactions are sold to the societies and Association members at the price of 18., the public being charged 2s. 6d. Some of the societies purchase copies to the full number of their members, and present them, others take only a limited number of copies (determined by the local society committee) and resell to those of their members who care to possess them. In this way the greater part of an edition of 800 copies of the Annual Transactions is disposed of. Authors are allowed extra copies of their own papers at a moderate charge, and when all expenses are met, a fair balance is left to carry on to the next year.

It should be noted that of the eight societies in Cumberland, now associated, the local annual subscriptions of members in each society is generally 58.; in one case, however, it is 3s. 6d., and in another 2s. 6d. Is it a rule of the Association that members going from one society to another to afford help in the carrying out of the various programmes, should have their expenses paid by the society helped. Such is the general constitution and mode of working of the Cumberland Association, which has undoubtedly succeeded in its aim, so far as the keeping up of existing societies and the formation of new ones is concerned. The "Annual Transactions," too, include many papers of local value, and some of general interest, while among the eminent men who have kindly come forward to lend their services at the Annual Meetings, are the Astronomer Royal, the Bishop of Carlisle, Prof. Shairp, Prof. Wm. Knight, and I. Fletcher, M.P., F.R.S. At present, however, the Association is but in its infancy, and may be considered more or less of an experiment, yet that some such method of union is desirable amongst local societies in the various counties or districts of England few will deny. Time will show how the system may be improved and varied to suit special circum stances, but I cannot but think that the plan of association to carry out larger objects of the societies, and the annual meeting of the associated societies in successive towns of a county, must economise labour and promote the healthy culture of the county in which the work is carried on. Amongst the difficulties presenting themselves in the early days of the association, the following occurred. For several previous years a Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archæological Society had flourished, and it was feared that the new County Association would clash with its existence. The Antiquarians thought it best not to amalgamate with the associated society, its constitution being in many points different from theirs, but it was resolved that whenever papers, bearing on local antiquarian or archæological subjects were read before any of the associated societies, these papers should be offered by the Association council to the Antiquarian and Archæological Society for publication in

L. M.-I.-10.

their Transactions if deemed worthy. Moreover, some of the officers of the Association are active members of the Archæological Society, and so far from there being any antagonism, the two decidedly help one another forward in the general work of gleaning local knowledge and 'diffusing culture.

As hon. secretary of the Cumberland Association, I should feel very grateful for any hints or suggestions from the readers of NATUR. What is wanted in every county is more culture, and that carried on in a natural way, and with a true love of nature in all her aspects. J. CLIFTON WARD, in Nature.

ON A RADICAL REFORM IN THE METHOD OF TEACHING THE CLASSICAL LANGUAGES.

THE old feud between the Humanists and Realists has broken out in a new form Greek, it appears, is to be extruded from the universities; at least that academical platform is to be shaken from under its feet, and that badge of privilege is to be torn from its breast, which for many years have given it a secure position in the palæstra where the youth of Great Britain have been trained to the highest functions of intellectual manhood. Not a few persons-even those who have no particular interest in or sympathy with Hellenic learning-will look on this changed position of the most aristocratic of traditional scholastic studies with unaffected sorrow; nevertheless, they will say, the thing must be done; times are changed, and we most change with them; the most reputable respectabilities, when their day comes, must die, and the claims of the past, however venerable, must yield to the urgent demands of the present.

To understand this matter properly, we must see clearly that it is not Greek merely, as Greek, that is called before the bar of public opinion, but Greek as the highest form of classical culture; Greek as the gold of which Latin is the silver and the copper currency. The real question is, can, not Greek simply, but Greek and Latin as an intimately related and closely interlacing whole, stand in the same relation to the culture of the eighteenth century that they did to the culture of the sixteenth century? and the answer is plainly enough that they cannot. New circumstances have arisen, new tasks are to be performed, new tools are to be provided, new training is necessary. Whoever denies this is blind both before and behind; great changes cannot take place in society without corresponding changes taking place in the three great organs of social life, the State, the Church, and the School. In the sixteenth century Latin was the only key to knowledge, while Greek, with the disadvantage of a narrower range of currency, held the proud position of

the supreme court of appeal in all important matters of theology, philosophy, literature, and science. Latin in the days of Calvin and George Buchanan was as necessary to the exercise of any intellectual influence among educated men, as English is to a Skye crofter, if he would do business in any market outside his native village, or as French is to a Russian diplomatist, if he would make his voice heard with effect at Berlin or Constantinople. And this diminished influence of the classical languages, as against the rich growth and influence of modern culture, is asserting itself more and more every day, and will continue to assert itself. In the face of this fact, the inculcators of classical lore at school and college must in the nature of things abate their demands considerably; and, if they wish to make this abatement less serious, they must by all means in the first place change their tactics, and improve their drill. In other words, whatever loss in certain directions may fall to the higher English culture from the extrusion or subordination of one or both of the classical languages from school or college, may be reduced to its minimum by a dexterous change of front and an improved practical drill. That such a tactical reform in the method of teaching the classical languages is both necessary and practicable, and with a view to impending dangers imperiously urgent, it is the object of the following remarks shortly to set forth.

Everybody complains of the length of time occupied in the study or pretended study of the classical languages, and of the monopoly of cerebral exercitation claimed by classical teachers; not a few persons also complain that with all this sway of grammatical discipline the languages are actually not learned, or learned so ineffectually as to be readily forgotten. These complaints are just; and the cause of the unprofitable consumption of time complained of is, to a considerable extent demonstrably, the prevalence of false and perverse methods of teaching. It is a well-known fact that a young man of common abilities, placed in the colloquial atmosphere of some German school or family, will acquire a greater familiarity with the German language in six months than is commonly acquired of Greek, according to our usual scholastic method, in as many years. How is this? Simply because the young man resident in the country, breathing the atmosphere, and submitted continuously to the action of the strange sounds which he wishes to appropriate, learns the foreign language according to the method of Nature; while your classical teacher in one of our great English schools sets that method flatly at defiance, and substitutes for it artificial methods of his own, which have no germ of healthy vitality in them, and from which no vigorous growth, luxuriant blossom, or rich fruitage can proceed. Let us analyze the method of Nature, and see wherein it consists. It consists in the constant repetition of certain sounds in direct connection with certain interesting objects, and in the direct motion of the mind and the tongue on the materials thus supplied by the constant exercise of the ear and the eye, Observe here particularly, also, that the organs primarily

employed by Nature in the acquisition of language are the ear and the tongue; and that the eye and the mind respond to or accompany the action of those organs, in connection with interesting objects full of life and color, and not with uninteresting subjects it may be, or indifferent, certainly not always interesting subjects in grey books. Now contrast this with some salient points of our scholastic practice. Would it be believed?—we do not appeal to the ear in many cases at all; but we teach raw boys to commit to memory rules about how the ear ought to be used, and then allow them systematically to violate these rules whenever they open their mouths the teachers themselves showing the example, by habitually disowning their own principles in the very act of their inculcation. Worse than this, a painful process is regularly gone through, according to old and orthodox practice, of writing verses, or concatenating strings of words that sound like verses, not by the witness of the ear-which is the special guide in all rhythmical composition-but in accordance with a rule inculcated with the harsh assiduity of continuous intellectual toil, but whose existence is altogether ignored except on the dead leaves of a sheet of paper. The perversity of this method is only equalled by the loss of time which its operation causes, To say bonus and bene, habitually, and then be compelled to write verses on the principle that we ought to say bonus and bene, while we still go on saying bōnus and bène, is a method of proceeding to inculcate the elements of human utterance of which the most rude savage is too intelligent to comprehend the absurdity. And if Latin vocolization is treated in this unwholesome fashion by drill-masters of Latin verse, Greek accents have fared even worse. From an imaginary difficulty in pronouncing Greek words, with both accent and quantity observed, our classical teachers have taken the liberty of transferring the whole system of Latin accentuation, inherited through the Roman Church, to Greek words which we know were and are accented on a totally different principle; and in this way, after ten years devoted to minute study of Greek books, an accomplished Oxonian or Cantabrigian Hellenist has rendered himself, or rather been systematically made, utterly incapable of speaking a single sentence of intelligible Greek to any Greek-speaking person whom in his Mcditerranean travels, or nearer home in London or Liverpool, he may chance to encounter. And here again, to crown the absurdity with a proportionate loss of brain and time, the unfortunate young Hellenist is to torture his memory with abstract rules about a system of intonation doomed to remain for ever as dead in the real experience of the learner as a brown mummy in the British Museum! So much for the ear, to whose perverse witness of course the tongue must correspond in such wise that in our scholastic practice it is seldom or never exercised except in connection with a dead book, apart altogether from the direct interest and the vivid impression of immediately surrounding objects. The direct action of the mind also on the object, through the direct instrumentality of the tongue, is altogether left out of view. Your classical scholar never thinks in the language