502 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



original constructive work is next to impossible. And if, as so 

 often happens through the training given, the critical faculty of 

 the pupil is developed in advance of the constructive ability, and 

 of the power to use language with ease and accuracy, the result is 

 fatal to progress in composition. The first rude efforts fall so far 

 short of the polish demanded by the critical spirit that the sense 

 of discouragement is overmastering. 



There is still another view of the case that makes for the same 

 distrust of promiscuous criticism. The errors of the early com- 

 positions are soon naturally and spontaneously outgrown through 

 the constant effort at clearness of expression, and through the 

 rapidly increased power over language gained by this continuous 

 practice. In this way the mastery of language came incidentally, 

 and we avoided the stiff awkwardness of the conventional com- 

 position. 



In the study of English we did what we could to awaken the 

 literary sense to. some degree in all our pupils. We knew that 

 each one came into the world with definite mental limitations. 

 The literary sense, like any other form of the artistic faculty, 

 seems, with rare exceptions, to require several generations of cult- 

 ure in a scholarly atmosphere before it attains to a fine discrimina- 

 tion. But we could at least make a real beginning. We could 

 find out the present state of their taste, and carry forward their 

 development by guiding their course of reading. Advantage was 

 taken of events to bring before them some special poem, or some 

 Impassioned prose composition, having relation to the event in 

 question. We could thus awaken a susceptibility of the soul, 

 that through repeated impressions would develop into an instinct- 

 ive sense of the beauty of true literary art-forms. 



This was our aim, and quite subsidiary to this was the acqui- 

 sition of knowledge about literature. The history, bibliography, 

 and philosophy of English literature must come later instead of 

 usurping the first place, as is commonly the case in schools. 



In language. Prof. Campbell prepared an exercise which proved 

 of great value. He selected about three hundred of the most pro- 

 ductive roots of English words, and gave them one by one to the 

 class. They traced these roots back to the various languages en- 

 tering into the English tongue, and thus acquired a broader view 

 of the origin and relations of English words. The study thus 

 bestowed upon the vernacular was further valuable as furnishing 

 a basis for the study of other languages. 



When the student in Latin, French, or German finds that a 

 large number of the new words he is learning have the roots with 

 which he is familiar in his mother-tongue, the difficulties of his 

 work are greatly diminished. 



Mental and moral philosophy were taken up objectively and 



