Liberal Education. 269 



in teaching the rules of prosody, as well as by the 

 cumbrous and inefficient method in which they 

 conduct classical instruction in general, and par- 

 ticularly by their habit of beginning at the wrong 

 end. We learn French and German with ease, 

 because we begin with concrete examples. In 

 studying Latin and Greek, on the other hand, we 

 begin with abstract rules, and are not seldom com- 

 pelled to memorize what we cannot understand. 

 Hence the difficulties under which we labour are 

 so great that, by the time they are conquered, 

 we have too often neither leisure nor interest left 

 for other studies. By this process the mind is in 

 many cases stupefied rather than quickened ; and 

 the system, far from producing liberally educated 

 men, fails even to produce good classical scholars. 

 We believe that the only efficient way to learn 

 foreign languages, ancient or modern, is to learn 

 them as we learn our own in childhood. We can- 

 not indeed have Greek and Roman nurses, but 

 we can at least have the living phenomena of 

 language presented to our minds, instead of the 

 dead formulas of grammar. If this natural method 

 were to be duly inaugurated, we believe that 

 Greek and Latin might be thoroughly learned in 

 one third of the time now spent in learning them 

 superficially. We should again have excellent 



