which he pretends to understand; that which he ought to have commenced with as an inseparable element in the method of Nature, after ten years' study he will not even attempt. He can neither readily understand what is spoken to him in the language which he knows, nor can he utter his thoughts readily when he is called on to speak. He can neither think nor hear nor speak in the language which he professes to understand. All his linguistic knowledge lies stored up in the shape of grammatical rules apart, to be consulted slowly, when need may be, like a lawyer's books, not ready for action like the swift steel of an expert swordsman.

In opposition to this strange tissue of absurdities, and perversities, in which our indoctrinators of the classical tongues have entangled themselves, we must recur at once to the natural method, commencing not with abstract rules and paradigms, but with living practice from which the rules are to be abstracted and the paradigms gradually built up. The essential elements of this reform are a speaking teacher, with a correct elocution, and a collection of interesting objects on which the thinking and speaking faculty of the learner shall be regularly and continuously exercised. And let no man say that this is learning language like a parrot and not like a man. A certain exercise of the parrot faculty there must necessarily be in all learners of languages according to all methods; but a parrot, at all events, being an unreasoning animal, is exempted from the absurdity of repeating sounds which are in direct contradiction to the rules about sounds which in theory it acknowledges. There is not the slightest necessity for the ignoring of the rule, because you commence with thinking and speaking the thing which the rule inculcates. And as for the paradigms, they will be learned limb by limb in the train of a vivid practice more easily and more expeditiously, and not less accurately, than separately or with an inferior amount of practice. When I commence my Latin lesson by saying to a boy, Videês splendidum solem? to which he replies, thinking and speaking from the first in Latin, Video splendidum solem, I teach him that m in Latin is the sign of the objective case, and that active verbs govern the objective, as scientifically and much more effectively than if I had made him first con up the system of complete rules and paradigms, and then, after six months, set him to spell out his rules and paradigms wholesale out of a dead book. A good system of teaching according to the method of Nature implies a graduated series of rules and paradigms, increasing regularly in difficulty and complexity, as practice becomes more expert. But in all cases the practice should precede the rule. The use of language is an art in the first start, as in its highest culmination; a science like law and architecture, only in a second and subsidiary way, for the sake of giving a firmer grasp, and securing a more consistent application of the materials which a rich and various practice supplies.

Observe now how the method here indicated will work in practice. I demand for the fair operation of the natural method two hours a day

of direct teaching at least, and as many additional hours, say two or three more, as the learner can spare; and with a pupil willing to learn —for this must be assumed as the typical case under all methods—I guarantee that he shall learn as much Greek in six months, as under the ordinary scholastic method he may often learn in six years. At all events I guarantee to turn the learner out with double the amount of available Greek in half the time. Well, the first of these two hours is to be spent in a deft linguistic fence in the conversational method, with direct reference to interesting surrounding objects, such as objects of natural history, art, and archæology, pictures, drawings, &c., and if the weather permit the hour might be spent in the fields, with a living description of trees, plants, birds, running rivers, wimpling brooks, farmhouses, old castles, and modern mansions, all in situ, as the botanists say. After this exercise, say in the forenoon, an afternoon hour is to be devoted to reading and analysing such books as to the age and character of the generality of the pupils might be most acceptable; and along with this might be taken regularly a short sentence of Greek to be turned into English on the spot, written down and kept in a book for the sake of formal accuracy, and as an easy introduction to longer exercises in writing and composition. For accuracy of course is always to be aimed at in every department of good teaching; only it is contrary to nature to smother all fluency in a punctilious anxiety to be accurate; and, to use a homely illustration, we must have our nails first and then pare them.

Now note some consequences which will naturally flow from the carrying out of this method.

(1.) If the main thing to be attended to in the first place is the substitution of well-exercised living functions for the knowledge of dead rules and the conning of dead books, the learners must congregate under one teacher only in such numbers as admit of their being daily put through individual drill; and this cannot be, in my opinion, to any purpose if there are more than a score or five-and-twenty in a class. The success of the exercise depends altogether on the frequency with which certain sounds in interesting connection with certain objects are repeated, not merely in the presence of, but by the living organs of the learner; and therefore we may assuredly say that the crowding together of some hundred or two hundred young men of all degrees of age and preparation into one class-room for an hour or two a day, as a palæstra for learning the Greek language, is one of the most prominent, if not the most radical of the reasons, why, as Sydney Smith said, Greek never yet marched in great force beyond the Tweed. This is a method of teaching Greek which can boast of only one virtue, viz., cheapness; a virtue for which the Scottish people for the last two centuries in all scholastic and academical matters have always shown a very nice taste and a very subtle appreciation.

(2.) Note especially how admirably the method of teaching Greek by conversational descriptions of objects, while it immensely increases

the vocabulary of the learner, and expedites the amount of necessary repetition, tends to break down that wall of partition which has been artificially piled up betwixt classical scholars and the devotees of the physical sciences. As a matter of fact, at least seven-tenths of the technical phraseology used in natural history, anatomy, and medicine are pure Greek; and how useful must it be for any student of the language of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Hippocrates, and Dioscorides, to whatever other object his philological studies may be tending, to be able in the course of his linguistic progress to get a firm hold of that universal language of science, without some inkling of which technical language will always be more or less misty, and the exercise of memory on the vocabulary of natural science more or less painful. I need scarcely add that Archæology also, the fair sister-science of Philology, will come in for her righteous share of attention in the schools, the moment that the descriptive method gives to objects their natural prominence in a scientific course of linguistic training.

(3.) I have made no distinction in these remarks between living and dead languages, a difference which some teachers imagine to be of vital importance in the method of teaching. But this is a mistake. The conversational method is the most natural, and therefore the best, in both cases; only some persons in learning modern languages colloquially have no further object in view than to bandy light prattle deftly at a railway station or a dinner table, as the ned may be; whereas to the scholar who studies Greek in order to make himself familiar with Christian theology in its early stages, or with Hellenic philosophy in its best models, conversation in the Greek tongue is a means to an end; always, however, the best means, at once the most expeditious and the most effective, and infinitely more natural, rational, and easy, than forcing a series of painfully constrained syllables into the compass of six iambi, contrary to the witness in many cases of the composer's ear. What the conversational method achieves, with signal success beyond all other methods, is familiarity; and without this familiarity a certain strangeness and a feeling of exertion will always attach to the use of a foreign language, which will cause it to be learned with pain and forgotten with ease. Another difference between living and dead languages, so far as the teaching is concerned, lies in the fact that in the former the speaker is always found ready at our call, while in the latter he requires to be produced by training; that is, he must teach himself, of course, before he attempts to teach others; but in this there can be no practical difficulty to the accomplished scholar, as walking upon the plain ground of common colloquy must always be a much easier achievement than dancing upon the tight-rope of artificial meters; and, as Greek, though a dead language in one sense, is a living language in another, any person or company of persons who wished to acquire fluency in modern Greek expression, merely for the purpose of holding converse with the living Greeks on commercial, political and social matters generally, might hire the services of a living Greek for the pur

pose, and learn the language of Plato precisely as he learns that of Goethe or Molière. And there cannot be any doubt that it would be a wise thing in our merchants and our Government to have a regular training-school of modern Greek attached to the universities, the commercial guilds, or the foreign office; it is impossible to say how much commercial transactions and diplomatic difficulties might be smoothed if John Bull would condescend to come down from his dignified throne of dumb classicality, and speak in a fraternal way to the numerous Greeks with whom he may come in contact in Alexandria, Cairo, Beyrout, Smyrna, Cyprus, and other corners of the Mediterranean, where the Union Jack flaunts with most recognized respect, and the national Shibboleth " All right" most frequently answers to his call.

(4.) With regard to Greek specially it should be noted further that the colloquial style is, beyond all others, the national style; the style of Plato, of Lucian and of Aristophanes. To commence with colloquy in this language is to render ear and tongue familiar from the very beginning with the style of the most perfect masters in the classical use of that most perfect of languages.

(5.) In applying the principles of educational method here laid down to our present school and university system, two important modifications would be required. In the first place, no young person during his school career should be expected in the regular routine of the school to learn more languages than one, besides his mother-tongue, and this one might either be Latin or Greek amongst the ancient, French or German amongst the modern; a restriction which seems necessary, on the one hand, to make room for other and equally important subjects at present too often neglected or unduly subordinated in our schools; and on the other, to give to the learner that sense of progress and power over a strange instrument which he never acquires while painfully footing his way through half-a-dozen unfamiliar paths, rough with stones below, and bristling with thorns on both sides. I have known schools of no mean repute, in which boys are taught a little Latin, a little Greek, a little French, and a little German, all at the same time (to make a respectable show perhaps to the public!) and which generally ends in a great deal of nothing. The ancient Romans contented themselves with two languages, Greek and their mother-tongue, but they knew both thoroughly, and used them with efficiency; we modern Romans pretend to learn half-a-dozen, and know how to use none. In the second place, considering the double relationship of this country to a rich store of inherited ancient learning on the one hand, and a large environment of existing European and Asiatic influences on the other, it should be provided in our general university scheme, that no person shall receive a poll degree without showing a fair proficiency in two foreign languages, one ancient and one modern, with free option. Under such a scheme as this, and with a radically reformed system of linguistic indoctrination, I have not the slightest fear that Greek would continue to hold up its head above all other languages, ancient or modern, proudly, like Aga

memnon among the chiefs. In fact it would be no appreciable loss to the highest culture of this country if two-thirds of those who now pass through a compulsory grammatical drill in two dead languages, entered the stage of actual life without the knowledge of a single Greek letter: while the remaining third, who did study Greek according to the natural method, would know it at once free from the narrow formalism that too often cleaves to the present system, and accompanied with a kindly intimacy, a human reality, and a vivid appreciation, to which the scholastically-trained Hellenist, according to our perverse practice, will naturally remain a stranger. JOHN STUART BLACKIE, in Contemporary Review.

[P. S.-It may be as well to observe for the sake of objectors, that nothing contained in this paper is intended in the slightest degree to discourage any of those highest exercises in Latin and Greek composition, whether prose or verse, to which honors are justly given in our universities. On the contrary, thes excercises will be facilitated in no small degree by the rich materials which a well-graduated practice of ear and tongue in connection with interesting objects will supply. The whole drift of these remarks is simply to say, that familiarity with any language as a living dexterity of ear and tongue, in the order of nature, always precedes the scientific anatomy of that language in grammar and comparative philology, and must always do so in any art of teaching which shall do the greatest amount of efficient work in the least possible time. It must also be borne in mind, what has been too generally forgotten, that all men who learn Greek and Latin are not destined to be philologers; and it is unwise to submit to a curiously minute philological training large classes of students who desire only the human culture, the aesthetical polish, and the healthy discipline which a familiar acquaintance with a foreign language is so well calculated to afford.

J. S. B.]

ON THE WORTH OF A CLASSICAL EDUCATION.

What is the worth of a classical education? Why should boys spend so many years on the study of the Greek and Latin languages? What results are obtained to compensate for so much time, labour, and expense consumed on such an occupation? Is it mere routine, or is it the recognition of solid and sufficient advantages derived from it, which makes so many generations of Englishmen persist in bestowing this training on their sons?

These are questions of the highest moment, and they were very distinctly raised by the appointment of a Royal Commission to report on the education imparted by our public schools. Much has been said in the way of reply in the Report of the Commissioners and elsewhere, but the subject is far from being exhausted. It will easily bear a few more words; all the more so because a clear and succinct answer, such an answer as England in the nineteenth century is entitled to demand, has not, as far as I know, been given to this inquiry. The question is still heard on every side, "What is the use of making a boy waste so many years on Greek and Latin ?" and it is anything but easy to refer a