SHOULD LATIN OR SOME MODERN LANGUAGE COME FIRST? 239 
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00 much about it. So much is obvious, familiar fact, that the things he 
s to learn are inconspicuous to him. As in review lessons, he rehearses 
hine-tenths that he knows, to get one-tenth that he doesn’t know. That 
sort of study is not invigorating. 
The Latin has highest disciplinary value at this stage. It requires 
memory and carefulness. The pupil knows, and the teacher knows, as 
accurately as in spelling or arithmetic, whether the lesson is learned or 
aot. The sum of knowledge of the subject which the pupil should have 
at any time is an exact quantity. Diligence is encouraged by manifest 
advance. The pupil gives close attention to forms and rules because he 
finds them useful ; without them he cannot make Latin yield up its 
meaning. All this means accuracy in work. 
Tt is a further advantage, in giving the foundational knowledge of gen- 
aral grammar, that we have English at hand for use in illustration and 
30m parison. 
Indeed, more light may be thrown upon English, the origin of its 
idioms and derivation of its words, by its use in teaching Latin, than in 
teaching English directly. When later, with riper mind, the pupil re- 
surns to examine the grammarless tongue, he will be prepared to detect 
‘n this composite language the remnants of earlier inflectional systems, 
and to consider in the light of their history and the usage of another 
people, those forms of speech over which the writers of school grammars 
forever dispute. 
But why not use a modern language to teach general grammar ? 
Because, although French and German exhibit the subject more fully 
shan English, they are, at nearly every point mentioned, inferior to Latin 
for this purpose. But the early introduction of a modern language is 
advocated on other grounds than those adduced in support of an early 
beginning in Latin, and chiefly by those persons who contend for what 
‘hey call a conversational or natural method of teaching. 
We must object to their claim; first, because the end they aim at—a 
sonversational command of the language—is impracticable. The condi- 
tions of success are impossible in school. To accomplish anything worth 
while in this direction, the pupil should, by foreign residence, be placed 
where the language he is studying is the only one he hears. Conversation 
in the classroom serves only to enliven the work. 
Conversational command of the foreign tongues, while an admirable 
accomplishment for those whose tastes, abilities, and circumstances enable 
them to acquire it readily, has for Americans no practical value. Except 
among newly arrived immigrants, they rarely find an occasion when 
English will not serve their purpose best. 
If it were possible to so isolate an American boy from English sur- 
coundings, and give him such use of foreign tongues that at length he 
should speak several. we should thereby make him the peer of a continental