one particular Rule, but fail when they are set to work in broader fields. The object should not be to cover a great deal of ground and to get through the book as soon as possible, but to get a firm grasp of first principles, and to combine accuracy with the habit of thinking. Non multa, sed multum should be the motto, and the exercises may very well suffice for two years, and may be continued into the stage when the pupil has begun to construe some author.

8. Aim at the Future.-Yet, while accuracy should be rated very high, perfect and machine-like accuracy should not be exacted at the cost of real progress and interest,

The teacher should remember, when he finds a boy, at the age of eleven or twelve, making an occasional mistake about a gender, that this boy will continue Latin, probably, till the age of sixteen, and, in many cases, till nineteen, or longer. Five or seven years of future practice ought, therefore, to be taken into account when the teacher considers the object he wishes to attain and the means of attaining it. We are to work for the future, not for the present. The race is to be a long one; and we are to set our minds not on getting over the first hundred yards as rapidly as possible, but on reaching a goal that lies a long way off, the attainment of which will require sustained interest as well as steady labor. A mistake about gender is not so serious a fault as a mistake of judgment. It concerns not the Reason, but the Memory. If these mistakes do not gradually disappear, we may naturally suspect that the pupil is either singularly deficient in memory, or is not giving his mind to the work; and, in that case, some special drill or animadversion may be needed. But if progress in accuracy is perceptible, we need not be uneasy because it is not instantaneous. A year or two more may perfect "the Genders."

9. Latin Poetry.-Latin Elegiac verse is so much simpler in its construction than Latin Prose, that it is probably advisable to introduce children to Ovid as their first Author.

But, if this is to be done, some little preparation is required, to teach them a few of the differences between the thought and language of poetry and prose. The best plan is to construe twenty lines aloud with them, pointing out these differences, as you meet examples of them; showing, for example, the terseness of verse, its aversion to adverbs, to conjunctions, to pronouns, and the means by which it dispenses with these parts of speech, thence proceeding to the picturesqueness of poetry, its use of epithets, and of what are called "figures of speech," its love of inversions and varieties, and the like. How much of this preliminary teaching should be given must depend upon the age and disposition of the pupils.

On this point Preceptor's experiences may be of use. "When I was a boy," he says, "I remember spending more than ten minutes over 'Arma virumque cano,' because I had never found 'cano,' in my experience of prose exercises, used to mean 'sing of,' and my poor diction

ary of those days happened not to give this meaning. My teacher, by way of meeting my difficulties, quoted, in a sonorous voice, from Dryden, 'Arms and the man I sing,' and asked me what was the difficulty in this? To which I responded, with all the conceit of boyhood and ignorance, 'It is not English. You can say, "I sing a song," but you cannot say, "I sing arms." Although my answer was, in point of fact, indefensible, and, in spirit, priggish, it expressed the truth, so far as my experience went. had never read Dryden's Arms and the man I sing,' nor Cowper's 'I sing the sofa'; and I still think that it would have been better for me, if my teacher could have taken me with him, step by step, on my first excursion into poetic realms, thereby saving me much fruitless wandering and many painful experiences of the brambles of metaphor, the quagmires of hyperbole, and the intricacies of poetic diction."

6

Preceptor is probably right in thinking that an introductory lesson of this kind would be of great benefit to most pupils. No doubt, we must avoid telling boys too much, and leaving them too little to find out for themselves. We are not to keep children always in leadingstrings, making them helpless and dependent on the teacher. this mischief could hardly result from one or two such introductory lessons as have been described above. And they might, in many cases, set a too literal boy on the right lines of thought, releasing him from clouds of perplexity, and enabling him to appreciate and enjoy as beauties many things that ordinary boys are apt to consider as hateful pitfalls spitefully inserted in their works by the great classical authors for the express purpose of bringing English boys to grief.

10. Cæsar is a somewhat difficult author; and short extracts from Phaderus, Livy, and even Cicero, may well be used first. But the subject-matter of Cæsar, his freedom from allusions, his pedestrian, matter-of-fact style, the limited compass of his history and range of his thoughts, all combine to make him a better author for young boys (to be studied in an entire book) than Livy or Cicero, or (with deference to those who differ) than Nepos. In any case, when the teacher comes to Cæsar, he may do much that is not done at present to make that author easier. And here, as Cæsar is largely read by beginners, and as the object of this book is to afford practical suggestions to teachers, I shall offer no apology for presenting some rather detailed remarks by Preceptor as to the method by which a book of Cæsar may be made at once more instructive and more easy than it is at present.

"Select," he says, "from the book to be studied, fifteen or twenty of the most difficult of the long sentences, exhibiting most prominently the ordinary complications that perplex boys-abundant conjunctions, the idioms of Oratio Obliqua, sentences subordinate to others which are themselves in turn subordinate, ambiguous pronouns, and the like. Do not show these sentences to your pupils as yet; but take them to pieces, and show them the pieces separately. Then, by

degrees, put the pieces together, and make the boys help you in building up the complete sentence. Take, for example, the following complicated passage:

"Interim legatis tribunisque militum convocatis, et quae ex Voluseno cognosset, et quae fieri vellet, ostendit; monuitque-ut rei militaris ratio, maxime ut maritimae res postularent, ut quae celerem atque instabilem motum haberent-ad nutum et ad tempus omnes res ab iis administrarentur.'

"Beginning with the first part of the sentence, you write down on the blackboard in English, and make the pupils turn into Latin.

A. 1.-This (news) he had ascertained from Volusenus, and these (orders) he wished to be executed.

Haec ex Voluseno cognoverat et haec fieri voluit.

66 Then, pointing out that 'et' means 'both,' as well as 'and,' and that the Indicatives in A. 1 will be changed into Subjunctives when the sentence is made to depend upon a new Verb, in the construction of a dependent question, you bid them translate:

A. 2. He showed them both what (news) he had ascertained from Volusenus, and also what (orders) he wished to be executed.

Et quae ex Voluseno cognosset et quae fieri vellet ostendit.

"To this we wish to prefix the statement that—

A. 3. Meanwhile he called together the lieutenant-generals and tribunes of the soldiers.

Interim legatos tribunosque militum convocavit.

"This we shall do by turning the Verb in A. 3 into an Ablative Absolute, although the English will remain unchanged:

A. 4. Meanwhile he called together...... and showed them both executed.

......

Interim, legatis tribunisque militum convocatis, et quae. ostendit.

.....

"Here be careful to point out that the italicized 'and' in English does not represent the first 'et'in the Latin; the 'and' represents the Ablative Absolute; the word 'both' represents the first 'et.'

"The first part of the sentence being now completed, we proceed to the second part, and bid the pupils turn into Latin:

B. 1.-Every order was obeyed by them as soon as given. ("Here we must tell them that the Latin idiom is 'administrare rem ad nutum et ad tempus,' i.e. to perform a service at the nod (of the commander) and at the moment of the command.)

"This is accordingly rendered:

B. 1.-Omnes res ab iis ad nutum et ad tempus administratae sunt. "Next:

B. 2. He warned them to obey every order (or that every order should be obeyed by them) as soon as given.

Monuit ut omnes res ab iis ad nutum et ad tempus administrarentur. "To this we will now add the reason for the order, and say that:

B. 3.-Military operations (lit. the method of military action) (and) especially operations by sea require this.

Id rei militaris ratio, maxime id maritimae res postulant.

"But to this statement about 'operations by sea' we wish to append our reason why the statement 'specially' applies to them, viz. :

B. 4.-Their movements are quick and uncertain (lit. they have a motion quick and uncertain).

Celerem atque instabilem motum habent.

66 Appending B. 4 to B. 3, we might insert the conjunction 'quia,' because; but we prefer the idiomatic 'ut quae,' as being such as': B. 5.-Military operations, especially operations by sea, require this, because their movements are quick and uncertain.

Id rei militaris ratio, maxime id maritimæ res postulant, ut quae celerem atque instabilem motum habeant.

"The next question is, Where shall we insert this 'reason' for the warning to obey orders at once. We might have added it at the end: 'Monuit ut administrarenturquia id rei militaris-haberent.' But we prefer (1) to insert it in a parenthesis, in order to leave the warning itself to occupy an emphatic place at the end; and (2) we will insert it not as a reason given by us, but as a reason given by the speaker and as part of his words, striking out 'id,' and substituting the conjunction 'ut,' as or since.

B. 6. He warned them- -as was required by all military operations, and more especially by naval operations, in which the movements were swift and uncertain-that every order must be executed by them at a moment's notice.

Monuit-ut rei militaris ratio, maxime ut res maritimae postularent, ut quae celerem atque instabilem motum haberent—(ut) ad nutum et ad tempus omnes res ab iis administrarentur.

"We merely add that the 'ut' before ad nutum,' which should regularly follow 'monuit,' may be somewhat irregularly dropped, the verb 'administrarentur' remaining in the Subjunctive as expressing a command in Oratio Obliqua. Nothing now remains but to connect A and B, by adding 'que'to 'monuit': 'Interim . ostendit, monuitque-administrarentur'; and the sentence is now complete." If boys were thus practiced in building up sentences by adding (in the different shapes employed by the best Authors) causes, circumstances, obstacles, qualifications, amplifications, and the like, it seems probable that the synthetic process would be a useful supplement to the analytic process now commonly in use, and that our pupils would thus learn to write Latin Prose more easily, as well as to construe more intelligently.

11. Virgil is a difficult author even for men, and still more for boys. Yet, on the whole, it is advisable to teach Virgil to boys, because it is so much better worth studying and remembering than the easier poetry of Ovid.

The Eclogues are wholly unsuitable for all boys; and the Georgics are less interesting to most boys than the Æneid. As a preparation for the Eneid the pupil should read Dryden's translation or Mr. Church's Stories from Virgil, so that he may gain some notion of the plot. The teacher should then take two or three lessons, of not less than twenty lines each, aloud with his pupils, ascertaining their difficulties and meeting them as they arise, and gradually familiarizing them with Virgil's peculiarities of style.

As soon as the boy has mastered the construing of some fifty or sixty lines, he should commit them to memory; and the construing must then be carefully revised. Very soon the pupil will be able to prepare his lesson with little help; but for some time to come it will be well that the teacher, in setting the next lesson, should ask a few questions and give a hint or two bearing upon the difficulties of the

morrow.

The repetition by heart should be continued throughout the book; and, if the pupil has a good memory, it will be very useful to make him not only read the whole of Dryden's Eneid, but also commit to memory Dryden's version of that particular book which is under study. Thus the pupil's English vocabulary will be amplified, his grasp of English idiom will be strengthened (and there is no better author than Dryden as a corrective for boys, at the age when they are liable to be first infected by the Graecisms, archaisms, and other affectations now prevalent in modern English poetry); and he will not only be able to construe with much more force and spirit, but also to enjoy much more the literary beauty of Virgil.

12. Repetition.-As to repetition, it is too much to expect, of course, that a child should learn by heart all the Virgil that he construes; but, if he has a good memory, it will be well that he should learn one book, which should be constantly referred to, and constantly revised for two or three years. Then he may learn another in the same way. About two books of Virgil are perhaps as much as can be expected to be always kept up by a boy of good memory. The Second and the Sixth are, in the Author's judgment, best worthy of this close study and permanent retention.

The same principle should be applied to the learning of other repetition lessons in Latin, and also in other languages. Not much is gained by the repetition of a vast number of new passages which the pupil knows he need not recall, or, at all events, need only recall for some forthcoming examination. But let him understand that, whatever he learns, he will have to repeat years hence, and will enjoy and repeat with pleasure tens of years hence, and he will then insensibly adapt the effort of memory to these requirements.

Boys have a power of carrying a great mass in their memories for a short time, and then shaking it all off, so as to leave no trace of its existence; and, if they learn in this spirit, their power of forgetting is