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mencement in grammatical training. Next, as regards Inflexion. The lists of words brought forward in exemplifying gender and number make some impression, and contribute to our readiness in remembering the words when they are wanted. Teachers do well not to make a point of burdening the routine memory with the strings of words adduced in these subjects; there is more likelihood of a lasting result being obtained by the spontaneous and unavoidable dwelling upon them for the exemplification of the rules, and this too is favourable to the recovery of the individual names for use in composition.

Inflexion is the chief burden of the Latin Grammar; there, it is the sole means of distinguishing the Parts of Speech. Hence Latin Grammar is much easier—more a work of memory and less a work of reason—than English Grammar. Had Latin been our native tongue, and English one of the dead languages, the proposal to make the foreign Grammar precede our own would have been denounced as monstrous.

The age for commencing Grammar.

Many persons are beginning to see the mistake of commencing Grammar with children of eight or nine years of age. Experience must have impressed teachers with the futility of the attempt. Simplifications of various kinds have been tried. Easy ways of presenting the subject have been suggested to commence with; the difficulties being postponed. Unfortunately for such attempts, the difficulties lie at the threshold, and cannot be evaded without rendering the entire subject a nullity.

The Parts of Speech cannot be understood at all unless they are understood fully.

When a pupil can be made to understand that a Sentence is made up of a Subject and a Predicate, that the predicate may be completed by an Object, and that subject, object and predicate may be qualified by secondary words, a beginning may be made in Grammar. It is further to be desired that the logical notions of Individual, General and Abstract, should be understood by the pupil; for all these are essential to an intelligent grasp of the Noun and the Adjective. A certain amount of subtlety is needed to discern the meaning of words of relation, by which grammarians describe Pronouns, Prepositions and Conjunctions; and this subtlety supposes the pupil to have attained a certain age.

The suggestion is often made, and is probably acted on by some teachers, to teach grammar without book; on the assumption that the difficulties are not inherent in the subject, but come into being when it is reduced to form and put into the pupils' hands in print. There must be some fallacy here. What is printed is only what is proper to be said by word of mouth; and if the teacher can express himself more clearly than the best existing book, his words should be written down and take the place of the book. No matter what may be the peculiar felicity of the teacher's method, it may be given in print to be imitated by others, and so introduce a better class of books; the reform that proposes to do away with books entirely, thus ending in the preparation of another book.

Perhaps the teacher will reply that he does not propose anything absolutely original, but merely to select

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such points as the pupils can understand, being guided by his natural tact and judgment as to what he finds to succeed. Even so, it is quite possible to embody this selection in a permanent form; and what is good for one class is likely to answer for other classes at the same stage. Again, it may be said that the children are not of an age to imbibe the doctrines from a printed book, but can understand them when conveyed with the living voice. There is much truth in this, but it does not go the length of superseding the book, which will still have a value as a means of recalling what the teacher has said, and as the basis of preparation to answer questions thereon. If a class is to be taught purely viva voce, its progress must needs be very slow; the proceeding belongs to the infantile stages, when slowness is not an objection.

To teach Grammar without a printed text, is like teaching Religion without a manual or catechism; either the teacher still uses the catechism, without the print, or he makes a catechism for himself. There can be no teaching except on a definite plan and sequence, and good, instead of harm, arises from putting the plan in print. The grammar teacher, working without books, either tacitly uses some actual grammar, or else works upon a crude, untested, irresponsible grammar of his own shaping.

Taking English Grammar as a whole, easy parts and difficult together, I venture to think that it cannot be effectively taught to the mass before ten years of age. To smooth over the asperities, and to pick out what happens to be simple, in order to adapt it to an earlier age, is not to teach the subject in its proper character, but as a

mongrel compound, half-understood and quite inadequate for the ends of grammar. It is the worst economy to anticipate the mind's natural aptitude for any subject ; and the aptitude for Grammar in its true sense does not exist at eight or nine years of age. I have already expressed the opinion that it is more difficult than Arithmetic, and is probably on a par with the beginnings of Algebra and Geometry. Commenced at a ripe age, not only is the tedium of the acquisition vastly reduced, but the advantages are realized in a way that is impossible when it is entered on too soon.

This postponement is open to one and only one real objection, so far as I am aware. It leaves a gap in the teaching that there is some difficulty in filling up. If the teacher is to exclude grammar, he must exclude English exercises entirely, and make the whole of his teaching, as far as concerns the reading part, consist of knowledge lessons, in which region also he often incurs the evil of attempting matters too high for the pupils at the time. There would seem to be an absolute necessity for contriving lessons in English, whether amounting to grammar or not. The difficulties of grammar are the difficulties of all science-generalities couched in technical language; and there is a possible preparation of the concrete and the empirical here as in other sciences.

This brings us back to what has been said already as to the province of the teacher in regard to expression as distinct from the thought or meaning; namely, exercising the pupils in equivalent forms, while at the same time adding to their stock of vocables by practice in synonyms. Whether or not this be a direct preparation for grammar, it is a preparation for the end of

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grammar-the power of composition—and would not be lost even if the regular or technical grammar were never reached.

The more special preparation for the formal study of the grammar would be, for one thing, to exemplify the division of a sentence into its subject and predicate, without the use of these formidable words. Apropos of a sentence of information about something-'the fox is a very crafty animal'-it is easy to ask what the saying is about? The fox. What is said about the fox? It is a very crafty animal. To this might be added exercises in the names of objects, so as to bring out the difference between individuals and classes, and to show how the class noun comes, and how it is narrowed by an adjective into a smaller class. These logical distinctions might be started on the eve of entering grammar, say a few months in advance. They are a small contribution to genuine logic, and it is only. through them that grammar can be cited as the means of a logical training. Provided with such a discipline, the pupil can make an effective beginning with the Parts of Speech, by grappling with the Noun, its definition and its kinds; while the other logical notions that lie ahead may be left till they come up. I will instance further the important distinction between co-ordination and subordination, without which the relative pronouns and the conjunctions are dark where they ought to be in a blaze of light.

Two years before the age of grammar, the lesson in English might be isolated in the reading. This is the only way to give it a clear locus standi in education. Putting a grammar question or two during an informa