NEW

LANGUAGE LESSONS:

AN ELEMENTARY

GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION.

BY WILLIAM SWINTON,

99.66

HARPER'S LANGUAGE SERIES, BIBLE WORD-BOOK," ETC

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE.

THE present text-book is a new-modelling and rewriting of Swinton's Language Lessons. It has grown out of a double motive -first, the desire of better fitting it to fill its place as the intermediate book of Harper's "New Language Series;" and, next, the conviction that an elementary manual might be made, which, combining the essentials of English Grammar and Composition, should find especial welcome in ungraded schools.

The remarkable favor with which the Language Lessons was received has suggested the propriety of retaining, in the new book, at least the spirit of the old. In that work the author's theory was set forth in the following words:

"This book is an attempt to bring the subject of language home to children at the age when knowledge is acquired in an objective way, by practice and habit, rather than by the study of rules and definitions. In pursuance of this plan, the traditional presentation of grammar in a bristling array of classifications, nomenclatures, and paradigms has been wholly discarded. The pupil is brought in contact with the living language itself: he is made to deal with speech, to turn it over in a variety of ways, to handle sentences; so that he is not kept back from the exercise - so profitable and interesting-of using language till he has mastered the anatomy of the grammarian. Whatever of technical grammar is here given is evolved from work previously done by the scholar."