schools, and in their repose they bid you rest. They ask you to forget now that you are a worker in school or college, and invite you to climb their sides, and

"List to Nature's teachings."

These ceaseless brooks have a music that will still your weary nerves; these woods and glens have hidden recesses which shall invite you to forget the intricate labyrinths of educational science and philosophy, which you have been exploring so faithfully. These mountain paths invite your feet to climb where you will forget the human errings in the dim glories. These panoramas of landscape, waterscape, and cloudscape will tempt the thoughts and imaginations of the heart away from the dull communings with the finite into the diviner sympathies and longings of the infinite. You will verily wish that you had wings instead of feet, and, if not angels now, as some may have already suggested, you may long to be somewhat angelic, and possibly become somewhat angelistic in these mountain excursions.

You may have been troubled about what you should wear at this great meeting of the Institute, and if you have listened to our instructions you have undoubtedly come clad in the proper apparel which befits a mountaineer with his mantle and his staff. One garment I forgot to bid you put off, in my wise forethought as to what you should put on. Put off the school-master and the school-marm's mantle, and put on the garb of a frolicking child just let loose from the restraints of an old beldam. Throw social restraints and conventionalities to the wind: they are not in fashion among these mountains. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Webster will laugh your city airs to scorn. Climb their sides and stand on their summits, and you will forget whether silks or calicoes are the richer dresses. A seventy-mile breeze on the summit of Washington will show you what a magnificent hair-dresser presides on the tip-top of these mountains.

Another object of our gathering, not second to, but co-ordinate with that of communing with these sublime revelations of God in nature, is the duty of conferring with one another with reference to that which relates to the growth and well

being of the profession of which we are constituents; and at the close of another year's work, with its rich lessons of experience and wisdom fresh in our thoughts, we may well afford to place on record the results of our judgments on the important questions of the hour, ere our impressions have faded in the brighter and more joyful experiences of these vacation days, so favorable to forgetfulness on the part of pupils, and maybe sometimes of teachers also.

""T is greatly wise to talk with our past hours,

And ask them what report they 've borne to heaven,
And how they might have borne more welcome news.
Their answers form what men, experience call."

To this task, then, not laborious but pleasant, we invite you during these few days of our sojourn here together. Our programme, as you see, sandwiches mountains of lofty climbing with mountains of eloquent and learned discussions. The only trouble that may arise grows out of the fact that you may be strongly tempted to forsake the hills for the enjoyment of these quiet scenes in the valleys. If so, let me warn you that this programme, like the hotel bill of fare, was not printed for you to attempt to master the whole of the feast. We shall enjoy your presence, but shall not account it a personal or a professional slight if you occasionally fail to answer "Present" at the morning or evening roll-call. Lift up your eyes unto the hills from whence come health and saving power in these vacation days, and in their shadows get comfort, blessing, and an inspiration which shall follow you, as the shadow of a great rock, through all your future.

Welcome, then, fellow-teachers, to this glorious restingplace among the granite hills of New Hampshire, in this Switzerland of our beloved land! Welcome, ye men and women, of all school names and denominations, from East, West, North, and South! You are no longer sober marms and dignified masters of college, high school, grammar or primary school. No longer as school officers is your brief authority wielded here. Grades of service, reduced salaries, length of school year or day, mischievous boys and roguish girls, begone! This is our freedom day and place, our jubilee of glad congratulations and social rejoicings. Grumblers to

the rear, and hale, hearty, noble, good fellows, men and women, to the front! Accept our cordial welcome, thrice welcome, and draw unfailing health, renewed courage, and sublime hope from these days and scenes!

President Bicknell continued with an address on some of the vital topics for discussion before the Institute, a summary of which will be found in the addresses of the volume.

President Bicknell, by vote of the Institute, named the following persons to serve on committees:

On Nominations. -D. B. Hagar, Mass.; G. T. Fletcher, Me.; H. T. Fuller, Vt.; S. S Greene, R. I.; D. P. Corbin, Conn.; W. D. Henkle, Ohio; S. J. Cummings, N. H.

Resolutions.-W. A. Mowry, R. I.; M. C. Fernald, Me.; John Kneeland, Mass.; I. N. Carleton, Conn.; H. Orcutt, N. H.; C. J. Alger, Vt.; M. A. Newell, Md.

Necrology.-C. Northend, Conn.; A. P. Stone, Mass.; C. C. Rounds, Me.; M. Lyon, R. I.; J S. Cilley, Vt.; C. A. Downs, N. H.; Z. Richards, Washington, D. C.

Journal of Education.-D. N. Camp, Conn.; A. G. Boyden, Mass.; Thomas Tash, Me.; A. P. Kelsey, N. H.; J. D. Bartley, Vt.; John Hancock, Ohio.

Teachers and Teachers' Places.-W. J. Corthell, Me.; Isaac Walker, N. H.; Edward Conant, Vt.; Jona. Kimball, Mass.; S. S. Greene, R. I.; H. E. Sawyer, Conn.

On Honorary Members. - M. Lyon, R. I; Ariel Parish, Ct. ; A. B. Magoun, Mass.; J. H. Hanson, Me.; J. S. Spaulding, Vt.; A. C. Perkins, N. H.; N. A. Calkins, N. Y.

THE REFORMATION IN THE TEACHING OF THE ANCIENT

AND MODERN LANGUAGES.

This subject was opened in an address by L. Sauveur, LL. D, of New York. See Addresses.

DISCUSSION.

Prof. S. S. Greene, of Brown University, Providence, opened the discussion as follows:

I am in sympathy with a great many points which have been presented by Dr. Sauveur in his able address. The exponents of this system intend to represent to us that language is an instrument by which our thoughts are to be represented and the thoughts of others are to be received. The all-important question then arises, How shall this instrument be best acquired, and best employed? In seeking this consummation, we should always bear in mind two important questions, viz., Are we going to learn a language for present practical use? or, Are we going to study it as a philosophy, i. e., to become acquainted with its litera. ture and its forms and modes of combining words? There is a very great difference between these two uses of a language, and consequently in the ways they should be learned. In the first instance, it is very similar to the way you learned to lisp the names of common objects in your own mother tongue; language to you then became an unconscious instrument by which your thoughts were communicated; but a very different affair it was when you first began to read, then it became a study. So it is with a foreign language: if we desire to speak it fluently and to communicate readily with foreigners, the most natural way to attain this end would be for us to become, as it were, little children again, and learn its forms and modes of representing thought, through the ear, or by its pronunciation. I am sure that for this purpose the present general system of teaching language is very deficient, and that many of our so-called linguistic scholars are not able to express their commonest wants in a foreign language. I may mention here what my friend, Dr. Sears, once gave as his experience; although he knew enough of German to be able to read a few paragraphs, on visiting Germany, he was obliged to make known his wants at the café by pointing to the desired object. But in a short time, through hearing the language all about him, and being goaded

on by pressing wants, he very soon mastered the language, being able not only to speak it fluently, but to think or even dream in German.

But we cannot be moved by such pressing incentives when studying the ancient languages. We know that fluency in speaking them is unattainable. Even the learned Dr.

Sauveur himself would not be able to converse with Cicero and Demosthenes were they to rise up before him, and I doubt if any of us wish to reach that degree of proficiency in studying Greek or Latin.

The distinction is simply this: If you wish to learn a language so as to speak it fluently, you must learn it by associating thought with its audible signs, and your oral expressions must flow as unwittingly as the purple current in your veins. I formerly considered that to learn a language it was sufficient to become acquainted with its words; but I have since discovered that that is only half learning a language. You must learn its idioms, learn properly to combine the words, and to pronounce them in combination with the true native accent to be able to converse in a language and eventually think in it, and I greatly doubt if this object can ever be obtained by any amount of translating of English into German from a book. But there is another phase of this subject: there are those who wish to study a language for the training it gives the mind, for its peculiar structure, its forms and modes of combining words; in other words, to study it as a philosophy for its literature, and thus to acquire the thoughts contained therein. For such this modern method is not adapted; for it would take a lifetime to learn to speak the various languages fluently; all we desire in most cases is a knowledge of the structure of the language and its literature.

M. GRANT DANIELL ON THE NATURAL METHOD.

In the very short time that is allotted me in this discussion, I propose to state as briefly as I can a few reasons for the opinion which I hold very strongly that the so-called HenessSauveur method of teaching languages is far from being the best method to apply in ordinary circumstances, and that its