embody the results of those analyses, in the briefest forms of expression, as rules. These rules, committed to memory, become the working tools of the scholar and the man of business, when the analytic processes by which they were reached may have been wholly forgotten. Our opinions, then, in the matter of arithmetic, have settled, I think, quite near to the line of medial truth. The practice, in too many places, I fear, follows the rules rather than the analysis.

In the study of grammar we have an opposite error, in which analysis, as opposed to synthesis, or the composition of the language, receives the principal attention, while the composition is almost wholly neglected. Learning a language is much like learning watch-work. The apprentice would make but poor progress in learning his trade, if he were to spend all his time in taking watches to pieces. He must practise putting the parts together, as well as separating them. So in acquiring a knowledge of language, the pupil should give daily attention to the construction of sentences and paragraphs, as well as to the analysis or parsing of them.

Again, in the study of grammar, the technical and the practical are often found at wide extremes; the mere forms of the science occupying the attention of classes, while its practical uses are wholly ignored. Many children in school are compelled to learn for

mulas of analysis and parsing, and rules of syntax, which they repeat with great readiness, and often apply very correctly at recitation, but which they fail to apply in their ordinary conversation, simply because the teacher does not assist them to see the connection between the grammar of the school-book and the language of every-day life. Indeed, many of our teachers who pride themselves upon their knowledge of technical grammar do not conduct a single recitation in "the art of speaking the English language correctly," without making half a score of blunders in the very exercise intended to teach the proprieties of speech.

With a knowledge of this fact, that the study of scientific grammar does not necessarily lead to a correct use of the language, some intelligent persons advocate the abandonment of the study as a science, and insist that grammar should be taught solely by right example on the part of teachers and parents, and by the correction of children's errors of speech whenever noticed. Here again the truth lies in that better medium which combines the two methods; giving us the scientific principles of the language and their practical application together. It is true, however, as I have had occasion to urge elsewhere, that children in the family and the school should be instructed in the practical method, by "correction and example," long before they are able to comprehend

the scientific principles on which that practice is based.

We notice again, in the manner of conducting recitations, the extremes of mere memorizing, without question or explanation, and that miserably loose method without method, which ignores memorizing as useless, but substitutes nothing better in its stead. The disadvantages of merely committing the words of a text-book to memory, and reciting them without any idea of their meaning, are sufficiently obvious. I am surprised and mortified to notice that so much of this style of reciting is still found in our schools. Teachers, apparently intelligent, allow a whole recitation to pass, in geography, for instance, the pupils repeating the memorized answers to formal questions, without deriving any well-defined ideas of latitude or longitude, tropics or meridians, from the language they have committed. So of other lessons.

Then, in the other extreme, we have an avowed disbelief in the great value of memory in the process of education; and lessons are attempted on the principle of rejecting the words of an author, and catching at the shadow of his ideas, to be embodied in the pupil's own language. As if young children, even when they fully comprehend the ideas of the lesson, could be expected to find better words and sentences than the author's to express those ideas! And if they do not clearly understand the author at the time

of studying the lesson, the attempt to give an abstract of his statements or to improve upon his language will certainly become "confusion worse confounded." I have heard many such attempts at recitation, where scholars in their classes have made but a wretched jumbling together of the words of the text-book and their own poorer substitutes; while, according to my interpretation, they had but a beggarly comprehension of either the author's language or their own. The teacher, perhaps, with a broader charity, would kindly suggest that they "probably had the idea, but did not know how to express it!" Better would it be for children to fix in their memories some "form of sound words," which might by and by become pregnant with living ideas, than to have no ideas now, and no language that can ever cover an idea. This is true, certainly, of all those definitions in grammar and geography, and those statements of philosophical laws and principles, found in the higher text-books. But I would not advocate this practice of committing rules or sentences without understanding them, when it can be avoided. While children are learning their lessons, if possible let them be fully instructed in the meaning of the author; and, receiving the true idea, let them fix it in their memories in its appropriate form of expression. For the purpose of training the memory to larger capacity and accuracy, as well as for reasons before intimated, I would have children

at school learn a portion of their lessons in the exact words of the author; laying up his facts in their proper order, and embodying his principles in the best form of words for future use. With a different purpose, as an exercise in the analysis of thought and the construction of language, I would have the pupils, as they advance in their mental training, attempt the statement of the author's ideas in other language, as much better and briefer than his own as they can command. And the different methods might well be employed upon different studies at the same time. Thus I would avoid the extreme use of either method, and secure the advantages of both.

Allied to this subject, and liable to similar extremes of opinion and practice, is the matter of simplicity and difficulty in a child's studies. Take for illustration the exercise of reading. One's impression, in visiting almost any of our schools, is that the pupils learning to read are nearly all too far advanced in the series of readers. This is very often true, but not always to the extent imagined. Children should not be compelled to continue reading in books which they have already well mastered. The school examiner condemning a pupil to remain in his old class, because the next higher book has some difficulties for him, should remember that a boy cannot learn to swim without going into the water. And sometimes, in fact, it helps him to get in where he can hardly