who are less advanced in age and standing, it extends indefinitely the benefit of public instruction. No system should assume an exclusive form; it should, on the contrary, vary with the ages, capacities, and wants of the learners. A method, to be truly rational and useful, must bring the objects of study within the grasp of the meanest capacity; it should ensure the proficiency, if not of all, at least of a large portion of students. The invariable uniformity of the ordinary scholastic method, and its total disregard of the diversified circumstances of learners, are partly the causes of its ill success. Under its baneful influence, the great majority of boys pass through the classical course, without gaining an adequate knowledge of ancient literature.

The work of self-tuition, recommended above, and monitoriał teaching, will greatly facilitate the adaptation of a method to public schools; because, in the first case, the improvement of learners, not depending on the professor so much as on themselves, will always advance according to their respective application and industry; and, in the second, the diligent students, instead of being kept back by the indolence or dulness of their class-fellows, will not only enable these to keep pace with them, but be afforded a new means of improvement; for, by teaching what they know, they will know it better. The professor's task being thus lightened, he will be the better enabled to attend to what exclusively devolves on him, and to what may be beneficial to all his pupils in class. His business will chiefly consist, as it ought, in showing them how to think and how to learn, rather than in hearing or teaching them; this is the assistance most required by learners, and most suitable in public instruction.

4. A good Method is in accordance with Nature.

The natural process by which the vernacular idiom is acquired demonstrates what can be done by self-instruction, and presents the best model for our imitation in devising a method of learning languages. Without premeditated design on his part to learn, or on that of his parents to teach him the language, a young child unconsciously gains the power of understanding it when spoken. From the moment his perceptive faculties are in full activity, prompted by curiosity, he notices the looks, the tones, the gestures, which accompany the phraseology addressed to him, and, aided by sympathy, he readily apprehends the idea

conveyed by the language of action. Once in possession of the idea, he instinctively associates it with the phraseology, the representative character of which becomes obvious to him by repetition. Thus he gradually masters the import of words, and finally understands the articulate language independently of the natural signs.

As the child, afterwards, wishes to express his particular wants and feelings, he instinctively repeats the expressions he has heard but mostly modifies them conformably to others which are familiar to him; he adapts to different words, the order, verbal inflections, and grammatical concord, which he has heard used on similar occasions. If, for example, he hears the following phrases: I like a good child; John will eat the cakes; he will, according as the case requires, repeat these phrases verbatim, or modify them one by the other, and form similar ones which he never heard before; he will alter them somewhat as follows: I like a good cake; I will eat good cakes; John eats cakes; John will like the cake, &c. When he repeats the expressions which he has heard, he speaks by imitation; when he alters them, he speaks by analogy. The one exercises his memory, the other his judgment. Such imitations and analogies, the first manifestations of his dawning reason, permit him always to suit his language to his social wants; analogy, especially, enables him to multiply his expressions in proportion to his increasing stock of ideas. It is from imitation and analogy that custom derives its authority in language.

Curiosity, sympathy, and perception, are sufficient to enable a young child to understand what is said-imitation and analogy to enable him to speak. The same result would be obtained in a foreign language, if these various faculties could be made to act a prominent part in the learning of it, but this cannot always be done completely; two of these faculties-sympathy and perception are more especially suited to the social condition of infancy, and are not generally available in acquiring a foreign language after this period. However, our mental constitution provides for this deficiency, because their place is efficiently supplied by imagination and conception, which act respectively in the absence of persons and things as sympathy and perception do in their presence. With regard to the other three faculties, curiosity, imitation, and analogy,-they are active and efficient at every period of life, and ought, consequently, to be resorted to in a rational method.

Although circumstances do not always permit the complete adaptation of the method of nature to the study of a foreign language, the fundamental principles on which it rests should always be kept in view, namely, example and practice. By these principles the child is easily and successfully led from the ideas to the signs, from the phraseology to the words, from the facts of language to the rules of grammar. By them also he may be led in a foreign, as in the native tongue, from hearing to speaking, and from reading to writing.

The practical process of nature must also be taken as a guide in tracing the path which, through a gradual conquest of difficulties, may lead to the full possession of a language, that is, the power of thinking in it. It cannot be said to be known, unless its expressions directly and instantaneously awake the ideas which they represent, or flow from the lips as the offspring of thought.

The object of language is to associate signs with ideas, expressions with impressions. To know it is to possess the double power of conceiving ideas on hearing or seeing their signs, and reproducing these same signs orally or in writing, on conceiving the corresponding ideas. These two elements of language are alternately cause and effect, and exercise a reciprocal action on each other. Their close association in the mind being indispensable to the complete knowledge of a foreign language, the method should direct the practice towards the accomplishment of this object. The more closely we imitate nature in the acquisition of a foreign language, the more readily shall we think in that language.

5. A good Method comprises Analysis and Synthesis.

The complete knowledge of a language consists in the power of using it readily in all its forms and in every way in which it is required. This power depends on example more than on precept, on practice more than on theory. None of these great principles, however, should be neglected; a good method employs them all in turn. As example and practice present materials for decomposition and classification, so precept and theory assist in recomposing the elements into their syntactical combinations and in generalising the facts of language. In the study of the arts, decomposition and recomposition, classification and generalisation, are the ground-work of creation.

We call analysis the method which rests on example and practice, and leads by induction to the principles under which the facts of language may be classed; and synthesis, the method which makes precept and theory the starting point from which to arrive, by deduction, at the forms of expression.

Analysis, the method of nature, presents a whole, subdivides it into its parts, and from particulars infers a general truth; synthesis, the method of philosophy, sets out from general truths to reproduce the particulars, and deduces all the consequences which flow from given principles. The analytical method brings the learner in immediate contact with the objects of study; it presents to him models for decomposition and imitation. The synthetical method disregards example and imitation; it turns the attention of the learner to principles and rules, in order to lead him, by an indirect course, to the objects of study.

In the acquisition of a foreign language, translation into the native tongue, the learning of words from the connected discourse-either in hearing or reading, the study of the foreign writers, the expressing of ideas by analogy with the standard phraseology, and the discovery of grammatical principles by induction from the language, are examples of the analytical process. The learning of words, definitions, and rules of grammar, as an introduction to the study of a foreign language, and the writing of grammatical exercises, are examples of the synthetical process. The former is not only the more direct process of the two, it is also the more expeditious and the more efficient, as is proved by the manner in which nature teaches the vernacular tongue, contrasted with that in which a foreign language is usually taught in schools. The reason of the inefficiency of synthesis is, that a knowledge of principles implying a knowledge of the particulars on which they are founded, principles and all abstract notions are difficult of comprehension and application to him who is unacquainted with those particulars.

By analysis we discover truths; by synthesis we transmit them to others: hence the former is called the method of invention, and the latter the method of doctrine. Analysis, consistently with the generation of ideas and the process of nature, makes the learner pass from the known to the unknown; it leads him, by inductive reasoning, to the object of study, and is both interesting and improving, as it keeps the mind actively engaged. Synthesis, on the contrary, which imposes truths and sets out with abstractions, presents little interest, and few means

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of mental activity in the first stages of instruction. But, although it yields to analysis in efficiency, for all practical purposes, it should not be entirely rejected; it is necessary for completing the work commenced by analysis. These two processes are a mutual assistance and proof to each other. In a rational method we should follow the natural course of mental investigation; we should proceed from facts up to principles, and then from principles down to consequences; we should begin with analysis and conclude with synthesis.

6. A good Method is both Practical and Comparative.

A good method should not only facilitate the acquisition of knowledge, but should also improve the mental capabilities of the learner. Useful, then, as a second language may be, either to extend his circle of communication, or to multiply his sources of information, it will assume a much greater importance, if its study be made subservient to a more profound knowledge of the native tongue, to the formation of taste, and the cultivation of the intellectual powers.

The benefits derived from a foreign language, considered as a vehicle for receiving and communicating ideas, are consequent on a knowledge of it, and commensurate with the wealth of its literature, with the advancement in science of the nation to which it belongs, and with the number of persons who use it habitually. But the other benefits—improvement in the native tongue and intellectual discipline—which arise from the very exercises by which the foreign language is learned, are only incidental, and depend not so much on the language as on the method pursued in its acquisition.

There are two distinct modes of proceeding in learning a foreign language; the one is the practical or natural process, the other the comparative or artificial. The former is the more rapid and the more successful for merely acquiring the use of a language; but the latter, although a slow mode of proceeding, is the only means by which the incidental benefits can be secured.

It is by practice that the language, either spoken or written, may be rendered familiar to learners, and that its materials-the words and phraseology-may be acquired, recollected, and applied. By practice, also, is effected in the mind the immediate association of signs and ideas, which holds an important place in a good