THE QUAGMIRE DRAINED.

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flourishing Lunatic Asylum. Not a day passes in which dogs and calves are not jumbled in beautiful confusion and perfect indifference as to which, by you and your companions. Many of these things you know quite as well as I do, if you would but stick to what you know. It is not true that you are ignorant. You have already a considerable amount of real, solid knowledge under your feet, on which you can stand firmly, and advance firmly, without sticking in the mud, or tumbling into ditches!

In this way that most important point may be established in a boy's mind that he does know something, and can gain positive knowledge. He can be made to feel in himself that his mind can deal with work; that it is not all quagmire, floating, unstable, treacherous, unsavoury stench, hateful in his nostrils, and useless. It is impossible to overrate the importance of giving confidence. Very much of what is called idleness, and inattention, is only utter bewilderment, produced by the unsystematic way in which the swarm of novelties has been thrust on the beginner; and the unsystematic way in which technical Terms, Tense, Mood, Case, &c. which he does not know the meaning of, have been crammed into him; and the unsystematic way in which rules, which are pure Chinese to him, have been substituted for

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RIGIDITY OF WORDS.

teaching; and the unsystematic way in which praise and blame, alike unintelligible, have been poured over him; till drenched, eyes and nose full, blinking and dazed, he is left the fortunate owner of a few answers by rote to the more familiar questions as the reward for hours of disgust and toil.

As a further corrective to this drenching process, a boy ought never to be permitted to answer any question but the one he is asked.

E.g. if a boy says vicerunt, and the master asks, What did you say? the boy must be made to answer vicerunt, and not allowed to correct it to vicerunt. This necessitates too, that a master should be very careful what he does ask, and should keep watch upon himself as well as over his pupils.

The inflexible rigidity of words when once written should be impressed on learners. This it is which make mistakes lunatic. Whilst on the other hand, the almost infinite variety of ways in which thought can be clothed in words without greatly altering the sense tends to make a beginner confound the two, and play tricks with the words, which when once put out are inflexible. Because the translation may be very different in construction and yet right, they assume that the original words may be turned topsy-turvy with impunity.

THE NO ANSWER AT ALL.

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This is a very dangerous snare.

No beginner

ought ever to be allowed to give a rendering however good, unless he has first given the literal version, and kept to the grammatical shape of the original, however un-English it may be. And no master ought ever to be deluded into giving the boys better words, until he is sure that they know the exact sense and the literal rendering. Otherwise all the wild vagaries of guessing, and snoring, and lunatic mistakes, are simply bred, and cultivated as a natural growth from such planting.

In like manner, for it is part of the same aimless straggling, no commoner fault occurs than the no answer at all, e.g. the master asks "What case is tempora?" The ordinary boy as likely as not says, "it is a noun." Very true, but that is no answer. It cannot be too sternly impressed on boys that there are only two kinds of answers, a right answer, and a wrong answer. The no-answer plague is always breaking out, and furnishes a very good test of the kind of teaching that is going on. Yet it is very difficult even for a good teacher to get rid of it, unless there is much vigilance on all sides, and careful explanation of why things are wrong, and what is being aimed at. As long as hazy ideas of knowledge, and accumulation, and the shop full, rule the world, so long it is vain to expect boys or teachers to escape from these epidemics. Probably,

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ELABORATE ANARCHY.

much of this will appear childish, much unpractical, to readers, who would infinitely prefer a finer and more intellectual brain-spun web. They will say to themselves, This is nonsense, these things do not occur, or rarely; and if they do, a few days will stamp them out. What bad teachers are supposed, and what absurdly bad pupils! Thirty years of practical experience of all kinds enable one to lay down that this is not childish, absurd, or overdrawn, but very sober, everyday fact. Every day is increasing instead of diminishing the evil. If the teachers are bad, and the pupils are bad, what will they be fifty, or a hundred years hence, when the present elaborate anarchy has matured its weeds? Thirty years ago every one did what was right in his own eyes, there was wrong-doing on all sides, but nothing was fixed. There was possibility of reform. Since then Jupiter has sent us down a Pandora, and missed Hope out of her box; now we sin by law, and boast as we rattle our chains.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PRACTICE OF TEACHING.

Run the Goose down.

THE questions hitherto discussed have belonged pretty equally to teacher and taught; and pertain to the outward form and manner of working. But there are a number of things also belonging to the form of the work which exclusively belong in the first instance to the masters and teachers and only reach the taught through them.

A Teacher, as has been mentioned earlier, ought to make a definite scheme in his own mind, and enter it in his private memorandum book; according to which he works day by day, and keeps to the path, never losing sight of the track. If this is not done he will wander at random at the beck of every new difficulty, and rush off anywhere as the mistakes of the day blindly occur, and attract his attention. And his class will rush off in