you mean; for neither Greene nor Brown, not to mention any more recent authors, have ever whispered the secret to him.

Now, at last, does the reader see the drift of the parable with which I prefaced this twice told tale which others, as well as myself, have, at various times and in various ways, tried to pour into unheeding ears?

How do our grammar-mongers manage at the very outset of their instructions?

They deal out long rigmaroles, solemn verbiage about gender, as if, in English, there could be any difficulty about the matter; about person, as if nouns used as subjects or objects to a verb, could be of any person but the third. When case has to be brought in, there is a strange confusion between abstract grammatical relations common to all languages and case-forms, which, with the exception of 's, have disappeared from the English

noun.

The adnoun and pronoun are treated with equally needless prolixity, too often accompanied by inconsistent definitions and illogical classifications.

These faults culminate in the verb, which, by many grammarians, is defined in words that either contain a superfluous idea or else apply equally to the noun. The definitions of modes and tenses are inconsistent with that of the verb or with each other. The names of the tenses do not describe their nature; some even are ridiculous misnomers. In conclusion, we have a clumsy caricature of Latin paradigms, altogether uncalled for in a conjugation carried on solely by auxiliary verbs.

I speak that whereof I can affirm; for was I not born an "outer barbarian ", and do I not remember that, as soon as I knew what shall and will, do and did, may and might mean, and had mastered the verbs to have and to be, I could ring through all the forms of any verb in the most canonical fashion, without having to look at those pages of conjugations which so needlessly swell the bulk of grammars, to the exclusion of really valuable matter?

When we get to syntax, the case is still worse. Instead of telling, in a common-sense way, that what inflected languages, like Latin, indicate by certain changes of termination called cases, is in English determined by the place of the noun in the sentence. We are gravely bid to put a noun in the objective case after every transitive verb or preposition, as if it were in our power, by any manipulation of ours, to effect any change upon

it. We are informed, in the same way, that a noun in apposition or predicate is in the same case as the noun to which it relates. Now case must mean either form or simply relation. If the former, the rule has no meaning, since in English there is no change of form; if the latter, it is false, since the appositional or predicative relation is not the same as the subjective or objective. The only instance in which the rule applies is that of the personal pronoun, which has retained some case-inflections.

The most obvious relation that of subject or object to a verb, is pedantically referred to rule so and so, as if a simple statement of so simple a matter were not sufficient to secure ready acceptance.

Listen to the parsing of a common sentence, according to the canonical pattern, in a well-appointed grammar-class, under a teacher of the orthodox school. What a farrago of truisms, platitudes, repetitions, based on this or that text-book, whilst the points of real, living interest, the true characteristics of the sentence, wherein its force or beauty consists, are slurred over or altogether passed by!

What wonder is it that grammar, thus taught, is nothing but a mechanical feat of memory in the unthinking many,—a vexation of the spirit to the thinking few? Is not this akin to hiding the outline of some graceful figure under the uncouth and ill-fitting garb devised by a barbarous age? But not only must our bigger boys and girls be subjected to that mind-extinguishing process, and that made a bore and a torment, which, put off to a fitter period and managed more rationally, would have been a source both of mental development and delight; but, forsooth! their little brothers and sisters must be provided with "elementary grammars" of their own, in which, after a few pages of delightful child-like talk, craftily intended to lure on the little victims, all the grim realities of the big grammar are let loose upon them,— all the technicalities, abstractions, definitions and rules, like masked batteries, open fire upon them! And writers of genius, worthy of better things, must still condescend to put forth such books, at the call of a depraved taste; and reviewers must make them the subject of carefully worded eulogistic notices! As if it had not been again and again shown to the world by our master-minds and best educators (dear reader, I pray thee, do not suspect me of ranking myself among such), that, even supposing the American exposition of English grammar to be, in all respects, self-consistent and logical, its abstractions are not fit for

the age of the patients to whom the nauseous doses are administered; that drill in language is the proper foundation on which, at a later period, the science of special and general grammar should be erected; that nothing is wanted at first but a practical acquaintance with the very few and slight changes which certain words, under certain relations, undergo.

But it is with grammars as with quack medicines: the wiser few shake their heads and stand aloof; the crowd rush on and buy. Thus is error perpetuated, and our American mode of teaching-not language,-not even true grammar, but a conventional code of grammatical rules, a caricature of Latin and Greek grammars,—is made a by-word and a laughing-stock to the scientific educators of Germany, France, and of England herself.

T. E. S.

EXTRACTS FROM AN EVERY-DAY BOOK.

BY W. H. VENABLE.

I. Men, hard to persuade, when won to a cause support it most zealously; they are like Anthracite coal, which ignites with difficulty, but when once got to burning makes the hottest of fires.

II. The eagle supports himself in the lower atmosphere the more easily for having flown to the rare, sunward regions far above the surface of the earth: so the plain of common morality is kept without difficulty by those who are accustomed to ascend to the serene height of religion.

III. In burning delicate china ware, the utmost care is taken to regulate the temperature of the oven, as too much or too little heat ruins the ware. A like circumspection ought to be used in the disciplining of sensitive children, little girls in particular, since too much or too little severity, may injure them.

IV. Repression is sometimes better than robust expansion, and produces nobler results. A rose is but a crowded cluster of repressed common leaves.

V. Culture may produce new and good qualities at the expense of others that are desirable. Wild fruits lose an exquisite flavor and aroma by the means that cause them to become large and fine-looking.

VI. Bacon says in the third book of the Advancement of Learning, that he is convinced that the opinion that the earth has a diurnal motion, " is most false." He was as well convinced of the truth of other facts that modern science has proven false. And yet Bacon was very wise, deeply learned, and far in advance of his times in the general correctness of his views. Implicit faith can not be put in any man.

VII. The ripe novel-reader most enjoys those passages which the green one is likely to omit.

VIII. Thierry calls history, narration; Volney, science of dead facts; M. Guyzot, analysis; Michelet, resurrection.

IX. On Mr. H-'s place I saw a vine the aggregate length of which, including all the branches, is five hundred feet. What a growth for a single seed in a single season! But the vine is only a squash plant.

X. Every occupation gives origin to peculiar similes. A farmer speaking of his neighbor's embarrassed circumstances and inability to extricate himself from surrounding difficulties, compared him to a toad under a harrow.

ORGANIZING UNGRADED SCHOOLS.

Very much time and labor are lost in school, for the want of proper organization and classification. In district and ungraded schools, many teachers are compelled to work at such a disadvantage, that it is not too much to say that half their labor is thrown away. One of our county supervisors recently told of a school of thirty-four pupils, in which were thirty-two classes, all to be heard daily by one teacher! It matters little how competent and skillful the teacher is, if that number of recitations and exercises must be attended to: for the best of labor is thrown away when spread over so much surface, or rather when it is so divided and subdivided that there can not be devoted to any one class or exercise time enough for the instruction to make a distinct impression.

In graded schools, the grades themselves simplify very much the work of organization; and this work is generally done by the head of the school, whose experience aids him in a proper classification of the pupils and in mapping out the work in each

particular grade. But in ungraded schools, or, as most of the schools in Maine are called, district schools, the case is quite different. The teacher may be a beginner in the business, or, if not so, may never have been allowed to grade a school properly; for such is actually the case in a large part of our common schools. When pupils have a great variety of books, and each is anxious to begin where the study was dropped in the school of the previous season; when parents assume to dictate what and where their pupils shall study; and when committees have not the backbone to interfere and sustain the teacher in doing what plain common sense and the circumstances of the case seem to point out as the proper course to be pursued, then certainly the teacher is embarrassed and not allowed to follow the dictates of his own judgment. "Teach the school as it is, or leave,” is practically what is said to nine-tenths of our common-school teachers when they enter the school upon the first day of the term. Were it not for the bread and butter question, we incline to think that many would take the latter horn of the dilemma and seek other and more congenial pursuits.

But the work of organization should be done, difficult as it is; for this wasteful expenditure of time and labor, with the consequent deprivation of children of the education which they need but do not get, but which they might have without any extra expense, is positively sinful. That it is no easy task, few will claim; but that it can be done, greatly to the advantage of the school and the teacher, none should deny.

Let us look at the work square in the face, as the saying is, and see what we have to do; and then devise means for doing it in the best way possible. We have a district school of from say twenty to sixty pupils. And so far as the number is concerned, the case will not be greatly different, whether the smaller or the larger number is the actual one; for no teacher of a school of twenty pupils should allow those pupils to recite in classes of one or two each, unless it shall happen that, throughout that number, there is very wide difference in age or proficiency,-a contingency which, we venture to say, will not happen in one school in a hundred, at any rate not to an extent that will justify such small classes. The pupils should be brought together as much as possible, even in a small school, that more time may be given to the recitation, and that the scholars may have the benefit of sympathy in class work and instruction.

But let us suppose that our school consists of the larger num