Merely "fair" results in a subject of a formal kind be it grammar or logic or mathematics, are of little practical value, disciplinary or other. - In conclusion, let the teacher, or the man of science who does not always fully appreciate grammar, consider for a moment the mental processes a boy is putting himself through when he parses a sentence, and he will see that there is in intelligent and accurate parsing a true discipline of the understanding. Take one of the simplest exercises-the parsing of "shall have seen." The boy first selects the word to which the others are auxiliary, referring it to a class in respect of the function it discharges in the sentence-a process first of analysis and then of deductive reasoning; he refers the auxiliary portions to their proper "time," an act of discrimination among possible times or tenses; he relates the whole to its antecedent subject and its sequent object, which involves a perception of relations among separate thoughts and symbols of thoughts. Each successive word attacked is, in truth, a separate problem; and it is this characteristic which gives a subject of school instruction disciplinary value. Realize this and you cannot fail to realize at the same time the importance of the exercise and the necessity for exactness. Analysis of sentences is a repetition of the same kind of intellectual process in relation to the clauses of a complex sentence as that which we apply to words alone in ordinary parsing. On this special branch of grammatical teaching known as analysis of sentences, I have not time here to do more than repeat what I have already said: It should be restricted within narrow limits; and secondly, the terms applied to words should also be applied to clauses, viz., noun, adnoun or adjective, adverb &c. In dealing with grammatical teaching I have been restricting myself to the upper primary school which begins at the age of 11. If pupils continue at school during the strictly secondary period of instruction, 14 to 17 or 18, the formal grammatical studies find their completion in the elements of comparative philology. By this time both boys and girls have some knowledge of two or three languages, and whether it be Romance or Teutonic or Classical philology which we teach, we are exercising the young scholar in scientific work-work as scientific in all its aspects as physics-more scientific in the large sense than chemistry or zoology. No man is a competent linguistic teacher in a secondary school who has not made a study of the comparative science of language. But bear in mind that the teaching of comparative philology and the genesis of English is not instruction in the English language, but a teaching of the science of language as illustrated by the particular case of English—a most interesting study, but a science like any other science. About the age of 16, boys and girls who have had a good foundation laid, begin to reason actively, and are not only fit for inductive and deductive scientific studies, but, if these are kept within due limits, they are attracted by them. Here, as everywhere else, all depends on the teacher, on his fulness of knowledge and on his method. Text-books and rules, got up and applied deductively, reduce even the elements of com parative grammar, naturally so fresh and stimulating, to the dreariness and aridity which characterized all our teaching in the past, and afflict very much of it now. The desire to attain to a measurable result in acquisition is ruinous. What we should aim at is a natural and pleasing activity of intelligence in the direction and on the lines of the various subjects we teach. Let us have quality, and quantity will take care of itself. This, I think, is certain, that if we fail to arouse intellectual interest and a voluntary and happy mental activity in connexion with the subjects we teach, either we are, as educators, entirely on the wrong track, or our pupils are hopelessly stupid. I am well aware that there are some things boys must learn, whether they can be led to take a living interest in them or not. Out of this compulsory learning arises a certain discipline and training of the commonplace, boy in submission to conventionality and external rule, which lead to the formation of a safe habit of mind and help to make him a respectable law-abiding citizen when he grows up-a result not to be despised. I fully recognise this; but my business in these lectures is to speak of education in its true living sense, as an inner movement of mind from ignorance to knowledge, and, were I dealing with moral education I would add, from anarchy of feeling to ordered character. LECTURE VI. LANGUAGE AS LITERATURE. THE third claim which language makes as a subject of instruction in the school is that as literature it gives culture. Here, as in preceding lectures, we speak of our native tongue alone. As substance of thought, language instructs and fills the mind of youth with the words of wisdom, with the material of knowledge, and guides it to the meaning and motives of a rational existence, and while doing all this, it at the same time trains the intelligence: as a formal study, it further disciplines the intelligence, and gives vigour and discriminative force to intellectual operations in all the relations of the human mind to things, and therefore to the conduct of life; as literature, in which aspect we would now regard it, language cultivates, by opening the mind to a perception of the beautiful in form and the ideal in thought and action. It does this by bringing the prosaic truths of goodness and duty into the sphere of the idea, and so evoking and directing those aspirations, native to every human breast, which find their highest expression in spiritual realities. L. L. 6 In an excellent paper by Mr Courthope-Bowen I find the following remark:-" If we were to inquire in any hundred English schools, taken at random, whether literature formed a part of the regular school course, I think we should get positive, very positive, answers in the affirmative from at least ninety-nine. And yet I am prepared to maintain that at least ninety-eight of the ninety-nine answers would be wrong." I believe Mr Bowen to be right, and I say the same of Scottish schools. The question, What is literature as distinguished from the straightforward, logical, and lucid expression of thought? is, like the question "What is poetry?", one excessively difficult to answer. One thing is certain that literary expression is not merely grammatical and logical and fit expression, but "beautiful" expression. Thus far all may agree, and we may amble out of the difficulty on that uncertain and bright-winged Pegasus, the Beautiful, leaving each man to attach to the word his own more or less vague conceptions, but always definite feelings. The Revival of letters, as we know, restored to men the perception and enjoyment of the beautiful in language; and we do not misjudge the apostles of the Revival if we say that in their conviction the most beautiful language always embodied the highest thoughts and the deepest realities of life. Barbarisms in Latin or Greek meant barbarisms and crudities in thought. The inevitable result of this view was that men strove after eloquence and elegance of expression, and style governed. Now to cultivate style for style's sake is the pharisaism of the intellect. The great masters of style, |