tended further into the rules of composition, both as regards harmony and musical form, and that the pupil should be required to compose melodies, and harmonize them. They would be worthless to others. but the attempt to write them would greatly increase the scholar's enjoyment of music.

The most extensive and important group of the historical sciences is included under the name of languages. Logically this follows the study of labor and of art; we must know things before we can talk about them; and, logically, language precedes law; we must communicate our ideas before we can enforce them. But, practically, the study of language begins at the hour of birth; and when the child enters school he already talks fluently. The first point of instruction in school will naturally be to teach him to read and write the language which he has learned to speak. And, since we are talking of those who use alphabetic writing, the first step in this process naturally should be to teach the child to analyze his spoken words into their phonetic elements. This ought indeed to have been done at home; nothing will so surely and so rapidly teach a child the correct enunciation of words, as teaching it, in its earliest efforts at speech, to enunciate, as an infantile amusement, the separate elements of spoken language. But, as this is not usually done at home, it devolves upon the teacher, as the first labor when the child enters school. As the pupil learns to distinguish the elements of speech, and to form them distinctly, separate from words, he should be taught the alphabetic signs which represent them; not giving them the names by which they are commonly designated, but, at first, teaching them as the symbols of the sounds. For instance, the word aitch should not be taught to the child until he is perfectly familiar with the fact that the character h signifies a roughness of breathing, while the mouth is in the position for sounding any vowel. Unfortunately, our English alphabet contains but twenty-six letters, three of which, c, q, and x, are superfluous; leaving only twenty-three symbols by which to represent forty or more sounds. Moreover, in our ordinary spelling, we are not content with being thus obliged to represent at least seventeen sounds by symbols already appropriated to some other sound; we also represent a single sound by many different symbols, and our language, instead of being alphabetic, is, in the ordinary orthography, logographic. A child cannot, therefore, be taught to read ordinary English printing in any natural and easy way. A tough constitution resists a great deal of hardship and abuse; and a vigorous intellect frequently survives the labor of learning to spell in the ordinary mode. A man who has lived through a course of bad

diet, and inattention to the laws of health, is apt to regard attention to such matters as a mark of effeminacy; and, in like manner, those whose love of literature has not been absolutely quenched, and whose power to see truth has not been wholly blinded, by the ordinary mode of learning to read, suppose that there is no urgent need for improvements; but whoever will reflect upon the absurdities of English orthography, and upon the gravity with which those absurdities are usually introduced to the child as reasonable things, must perceive that such instruction has an injurious effect upon the child's mental powers, and upon his love of truth. The child may survive it, as he survived the compression of swathing-bands, drenching with herb teas, and drugging with cordials; nay, the injurious effect may, in the case of a very vigorous mind, be infinitesimal; but it is always pernicious, and, in the case cf persons of small intellectual ability, disastrous.

The attempt to change the printed forms of the English language, for the ordinary purposes of books and newspapers, may be impracticable; and it may not even be desirable that such attempts should succeed; but the use of phonetic books for the purpose of teaching children to read, is both practicable and in the highest degree useful. So soon as the child has learned to read fluently in phonotype, it may take up common print, and read it easily from the general resemblance of the words on one page to those on the other; as has been proved experimentally in thousands of cases. The child thus taught to read common print, has its orthography more firmly fixed in his inemory, because he perceives more clearly its oddities and anomalies. Bad spelling usually arises from an attempt to spell phonetically with the common alphabet; but this would be less likely to be done by one who had been accustomed to associate the idea of phonetic value only with a different alphabet. The use of a phonotype, for teaching a child to read, has also the advantage of giving unceasing instruction in accuracy of enunciation, and no other method has been so successful in removing from a school provincialisms and vulgarities of pronunciation. For fixing the orthography of words in the memory, no practice is more useful than that of writing from dictation; but this means, of course, cannot be applied at a very early age. If we had phonotype in common use, it would be well to have the child taught to write at the same time that he is taught to read; but, with our present "heterotypy" (as it has been facetiously called), we must be content to begin writing at the time of transition from phonotypy, when the progress in reading will of course be much more rapid than in writing.

The approach to ordinary orthography, through phonetic type, leads very naturally to etymological considerations, which will be of interest and value to a child several years before he is ready for questions of syntax. Words themselves must be understood before they can be intelligently classified. When a word is introduced to the child, in its orthographic dress, and he laughs, as well he may, at the oddity of its costume, we may tell him of its gradual growth into its present form, and show him how the silent, or the mispronounced, letters in it are the record of its ancient pronunciation, or of its deri vation, or of an early error in its supposed derivation. This will lead us to explain to the pupil the conventional element in language; that usage is the right and rule of speaking; and then we may go further back, and show how much is really natural in the origin of language, and how the meaning of words sometimes sprang from an imitation of sounds, from the musical expression of speech, and from instinctive attempts at expression through the position of the organs of speech. A child of six years old will recognize the nasal element in the meaning of such words as snail, snake, snap, snare, snarl, sneak, sneer, sneeze, snicker, sniff, snipe, snivel, snooze, suore, snort, snout, snub, snuff, snuffle, and see how easily the word nose can be introduced into the definition of each. Then it will be interested to know that the Latins also called the nose nasus.

The forms, even, of the individual letters may be made the occasion of pleasant lessons in the origin of written language, the probable development of Shemitic alphabets from phonetic hieroglyphics, and of the European alphabets from those of Phoenicia. If such instructions do not awaken a scholarly turn of mind, and lead to literary taste, they will at least relieve the dryness of the spelling-book, and give the child some glimpse of the numerous and subtle ties which bind us with all the generations which have preceded us.

The use of language is to be acquired at first by imitation. The study of books on grammar and composition does not belong to the early years of life, and it is a complete inversion of the natural method to give a child abstract themes for composition before he is old enough to think on such themes of his own accord. In the like manner, it is not in the true course of nature to teach a child to declaim before he can comprehend the pieces selected for declamation. The most instructive reading for a person of any age is that whose tone of thought is above his average thought, and yet not beyond his grasp; and the best exercise for a child, in learning to think and to express his thought, is to commit to memory such poetry

or prose as is worth being treasured up forever in remembrance, but which is not entirely above his comprehension. Let him also, with the book before him, extemporaneously, turn good verse into good prose, and repeat the process so frequently as to be able to do it without hesitation. Before the child can write well he can dictate a narrative of some real event in his own experience; and, as soon as he can write, he should be accustomed to writing, at first narrative, afterward gradually coming to more abstract forms of composition, but always upon subjects with which he is familiar.

When foreign tongues are taught, and every liberally educated person should at least have a sufficient acquaintance with them to develop his philological tastes, if he have any, the method of nature, it seems to us, requires a blending of several modes of study. The pronunciation should be a matter of first importance; the student deciding, in the case of a dead language, on some fixed principles, and, in the case of a living language, getting as nearly as possible to actual present usage of the best speakers. Next comes the translating, and finally the grammar. The interval of time between these is not of importance; but it is of importance, in the study of any language, to read more than the small portion which you may daily analyze critically with grammar and dictionary. Let neither mode of study be neglected; a portion in one book being thoroughly studied each day; while, in some other book, several pages are rapidly and imperfectly read. The words and constructions of most frequent occurrence will thus become familiar by repetition, and to the discipline of the exact critical study of sentences will be added that appreciation of the general spirit of a language which can be attained only from a more rapid and extensive reading of its best writers. Thus, in music, also, the best culture is gained when the pupil is daily drilled to extreme accuracy in the practice of select pieces, and also daily exercised in reading at sight several pages of new music In the order of nature the child hears language and music long before it has the power to analyze and study them; and, in the order of study, it is better to have reading precede, in some degree at least, a critical and thorough study.

When translating from a foreign tongue into our own, there are two extremes in method, both of which are admirable, while the mean between them is worthless. In the study of a language you have two objects in view,—one to learn that language, and the other to gain from the study a strength and facility in the use of your own. Now, in learning the foreign tongue, one cannot translate too lit erally, keeping to the order and construction of the original; while,

for the purpose of culture in the use of the vernacular, and indeed for understanding, in the carlier stages of study, the real thoughts of the author, one cannot be too careful to translate into the most appropriate and idiomatic English. We would, therefore, habitually accustom the student to a double rendering, first literally, then idiomatically; and in the literal rendering allow even etymological fidelity to the prefixes and parts of a compound word. Thus the proverb, Unkraut vergeht nicht, may have the double rendering, An un-plant thoroughly-goes not; that is, Weeds never die out. The habit of literal rendering may be dropped as soon as the student has acquired the power of reading and understanding the foreign language without: a mental transposition into the vernacular idiom; but the habit of correct rendering into easy and idiomatic English must be cultivated carefully as long as the study of the language is pursued; the first is for a temporary use; the second for a permanent possession. Next to the ability to act well must be placed the ability to speak well,and indeed, so interwoven are the functions of the human being, that. the ability to express thought increases the ability to think, and the power to think increases the power to act. The common opinion, that the development of one power is at the expense of another, arises from the fact that the developed power is usually one that was by: natural gift predominant; and the power that has dwindled, at first naturally feeble, has not had sufficient exercise to keep it of its original strength.

The brief limits to which we are compelled to compress these papers force us to give them a fragmentary character, and to leave each branch of the subject but partially developed; hoping that the connection and unity of the parts will be apparent to the reader who carries in his mind the general principles announced in our first article; and that such readers may find here hints that shall lead them, in the course of their own thoughts, to new confirmations of the general truth and utility of these views, and to new applications of them to special points in education.

The fourth general group of studies, included in our great division of history, we have designated in our tabular view by the word law. Man is not content with thinking and expressing his thoughts, with subduing outward nature to his needs, and making it subservient to his purposes; he also seeks to govern his fellow-men. The child is born subject to his parents, and the family government has always been a type, perhaps suggesting and leading to the government of tribes and nations. At all events, there are no men to be found without some traces of government, and, in all civilized countries,