showing the necessity of education reform, has, with a philanthropy and a superiority of talent, which have raised his name among the highest and the most revered, laid out a complete system of national education, the practicability of which is based on the combined interests and powers of the government and the people. If this system be adopted, it will infallibly raise, not only the social position of the educator, but the moral and intellectual character of the British nation.

On the Continent, in France especially, although the profession is not much better remunerated than in England, professors, like all scientific and literary men, enjoy the consideration which their talents, learning, and services may claim. They move in the first circles; the career of honours and fortune is opened to them; capacity and knowledge obtain for them places of trust and elevated positions in society. Many of the university professors have held, and many still hold, a distinguished rank among the representatives, ambassadors, and ministers of state. We have not heard that professors of British universities or scientific and literary men, however high they stand in the learned world, have, as such, obtained any of those public offices to which every lordling has access, however destitute of information and intellect.

SECT. VII.-FRENCH TEACHERS IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

It is especially in reference to the learning of French in schools, that the degradation of the profession and the consequent incompetency of its members are pernicious to learners. Every foreign adventurer can, with some probability of success, offer himself as a teacher of his own language, if his terms be low and his promises high. People who cannot find employment at home, speculating on the prevailing taste for the study of foreign languages, go abroad to teach their native idiom, without any preparation. We are told by Goldsmith that, having gone to Holland with an intention of teaching English to the natives, it was only on arriving in that country he discovered that the knowledge of Dutch, of which he was completely ignorant, was indispensable for effecting his object. Many persons forget not only, like Goldsmith, to learn the language of their future pupils, but also, very frequently, their own.

The situation of French teacher in seminaries for either boys or girls, is often filled by persons who seek it as a relief from

distress, and who, incapable of rising at home above inferior occupations, are, for the most part, utterly unacquainted with the genius and elegancies of their native idiom, or by young foreigners who, on landing in this country, are glad to assume the office, however low the salary, because it at once secures them a livelihood and procures them the means of learning English. But, so soon as they have acquired a smattering of the language, they seek a more independent and more lucrative occupation, or they return home to avail themselves, behind the counter of some mercer in Paris, of the advantages which they expect from this new acquisition. Thus, is a succession of inexperienced and incompetent teachers kept up in those establishments.

These foreigners, under the many difficulties incident to their peculiar position, try their first experiments in teaching on the unfortunate children confided to their care. Not being well acquainted with the language of their pupils, they cannot, with any profit to them, or satisfaction to themselves, carry on the work of instruction. Their broken English is an incessant cause of merriment and inattention on the part of young people, often prejudiced against them and naturally more inclined to indulge in sport, than to make the effort necessary for understanding them. Not only are they unable to convey much serious information, but their inexperience and the little moral authority with which they are invested, do not even permit them to maintain a proper discipline among their pupils.

This department of instruction is equally defective when it falls into the hands of English persons, especially females. The culpable carelessness of parents in this respect, causes them easily to misplace their confidence. They are usually satisfied about the competency of any teacher who tells them he has studied under a foreigner of repute, or has been on the continent; although he may have received only a dozen lessons from that foreigner, or have been abroad only six or eight weeks; although even he may be so ignorant of the language as to be but a day in advance of his pupil and be obliged to prepare every lesson before giving it. This sort of imposition is practised to a surprising extent in this country; and yet it can scarcely be otherwise in a social constitution so favourable to quackery. Advertisements and puffs reign paramount here; and the English have the reputation of being the most easily gulled people in Europe. Every thing is matter of speculation in this mercantile community; and objects of education being considered as articles of

trade, are the more readily brought down to the lowest price, as their nature seldom admits of a prompt exhibition; the purchaser-the parent-is unwilling to pay much for things which he is compelled to take upon trust, and often is as unable to estimate their quality as the consumer-the child-is careless of their acquisition. Second-hand French will continue to supply the market abundantly, as long as there is a demand for cheap intellectual commodities.

Women may be very good educators, but they certainly are, in general, very bad instructors. The piety and affections which fill their hearts, beget that earnest solicitude for the well-being of childhood, which is the best promoter of moral training; but the superficial knowledge, which, in the present anomalous state of national education, society has allotted to them as their share of instruction, does not usually permit them to impart solid information to their young charge. It would, perhaps, be difficult to find a woman really well informed, who has been educated exclusively by female teachers. Women, with few exceptions, cannot properly direct the intellectual faculties of children, because they rarely study the constitution of the human mind; nor can they teach the principles of language, because they know but little of the laws which govern the relations between words and ideas. Their scanty stock of knowledge does not permit them to confer on their pupils the intellectual benefits of the comparative course, which demands, on the part of the instructor, extensive and deep information. They may, however, by the adoption of the natural process, most effectually teach a young child how to speak a foreign language, provided they can speak it themselves, and reside in the family. Their communicative dispositions and unbounded sympathy for infancy, guide them admirably in administering to their first need of language.

The inmates of convents, and all monastic seminaries which enforce upon them seclusion from the world, constitute another class of inefficient teachers of living languages; for, even granting that monks, nuns, or other recluses may have, at one time, been acquainted with the living languages which they pretend to teach, they must rapidly forget them for want of opportunities of practising them. The words, the phraseology, and the idioms of a language, together with its pronunciation and accent, should occasionally strike the ear in order to be reproduced by the tongue in its genuine purity. Foreigners themselves require to visit at times their native land, to refresh their memory and their early

impressions of language. A person who has been a long time abroad, habitually speaking the language of the country where he resides, and who has ceased to hear his vernacular tongue, or, what is worse, who has been accustomed to hear it spoken incorrectly by his pupils or other persons, is not likely to preserve it uncontaminated and retain a command of it. Illustrations of this fact will be found in the last Section of Book XI.

In the greater number of classical academies, living languages fare worse, if possible, than in convents; because in such establishments they are only of secondary consideration, and are often even looked upon as interfering with the business of the school. Those who teach them have a difficult part to play; for the heads of such establishments are generally little versed in those languages; and, from a natural feeling of pride, they do not encourage a branch of instruction which, we are to understand, they have not thought it worth their while to acquire themselves. School-boys being thus led to believe that the living languages are mere accomplishments of a secondary order, pay but little attention to them. They learn the lessons allotted by the foreign teacher, after they have toiled through their Latin and Greek studies, on which alone the head-master insists. The foreign living language, thus looked upon as a work of supererogation and as an encroachment on their few moments of recreation, cannot meet with their sympathy; and what is learned with distaste, is necessarily learned badly. This evil cannot be easily remedied when the Principal is unacquainted with the foreign language ; because, being unable then to judge of the progress of the learners, or of the abilities of their teacher, he has no control over this department of instruction in his school.

Until modern languages are, in every respect, on a perfect equality with the ancient, in academical institutions, they will never be properly taught in those establishments by foreign teachers, whatever be their skill and information. We do not hesitate to declare again that, as long as instruction and the instructor do not stand higher in public estimation than they learners will always be placed in the dilemma of studying foreign living languages either from their own countrymen incapable of speaking them, or from foreigners ignorant of the art of teaching and destitute of literary acquirements. (10.)

do

now,

CHAPTER III.

METHOD.

SECT. I.-ON THE PRESENT NEED OF A METHOD OF LEARNING LANGUAGES.

WE have, in the introductory book, laid down the general principles on which should be founded a rational system of education; we will now, confining our attention to the particular object of this essay, briefly examine what ought to be the leading characteristics of a method of learning languages; and particularly take into consideration the most efficient means of shortening the period of classical studies without prejudice to the learners. "It is," says Burnouf, "by improving the methods of teaching, that we shall really, as desired by everybody, shorten the study of Latin." More objects of instruction may enter in the scholastic course, when less time is given to each. "He who shortens the road to knowledge lengthens life."

Hitherto, the process of acquiring either the ancient or the modern languages, resting not on philosophical principles, but on mere tradition and routine, has been subject to fluctuation, and often marked by the strangest innovations. The mode of acquiring every department of the study has, at different times and in different countries, undergone modifications which form, at the present day, a confused mass of heterogeneous processes. This confusion must be removed by the introduction of a system in strict conformity with the nature of the subject, the laws of the mental constitution, and the exigencies of modern society.

It is particularly in the study of the principal languages of modern Europe that the want of a rational and universal method is much felt. These languages embrace so many different objects, and are learned under so many different circumstances—at home or abroad, by infants or adults, for reading or conversation, under the direction of native or foreign teachers,

*Petite Grammaire Latine. Pref.