EDITOR'S TABLE. 



z6^ 



betrayed an evident dislike for the domestic 

 turkeys, the one before mentioned showing 

 a warm regard for the rooster, which was 

 evidently reciprocated. When this one be- 

 came fully grown, the children traded it off 

 to a neighboring boy who resided about 

 three miles distant in the woods, but on the 

 following day the turkey appeared at its old 



home and immediately sought out its friend 

 the rooster. It was returned to the neigh- 

 bor, who finally found it impossible to keep 

 his new possession, and so the bargain had 

 to be annulled, and rooster and turkey were 

 allowed to peacefully enjoy each other's 

 companionship. E. M. S. 



SramoriBLD, Missottbi, October 22, 1888. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



DEAD-LANGUAGE STUDIES NECESSA- 

 RILY A FAILURE. 



"TTTE last month cited conclusive 

 VV testimony that, as a matter of 

 fact, classical studies are a general and 

 notorious failure ; we now propose to 

 look a little into the catu«8 of that fail- 

 ure. The partisans of the system have 

 a ready reason for so much of it as they 

 have not the assurance to deny. They 

 admit that the dead languages may 

 partially fail because they are poorly 

 taught. 



It is significant that this complaint 

 of bad classical teaching has been made 

 for hundreds of years. The indictments 

 of the system on this score by eminent 

 men would fill a big book. But why, 

 then, have not the sorely-needed re- 

 forms been carried out? The subject is 

 surely important enough, and has been 

 prominent enough to enforce attention 

 to it. It has occupied the scholarly 

 talent of generations; yet, where the 

 system has been tried longest, the best 

 minds have still cried out against the 

 unbroken experience of failure, not- 

 withstanding all attempts to reform 

 the bad practices. Two hundred years 

 ago, the mode of studying the dead 

 languages was sharply condemned by 

 John Milton, who thus wrote : " We 

 do amiss to spend seven or eight years 

 in scraping together so much miserable 

 Greek and Latin as might be learned 

 otherwise easily and delightfully in one 

 year." Milton believed in reform, and 

 had the most sanguine hope from a bet- 

 ter system, which would do more even 

 for dunces than the prevailing method 



could do for brighter minds, and he gives 

 to his expectation the following quaint 

 and vigorous expression : " I doubt not 

 that ye shall have more ado to drive 

 our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks 

 and stubs, from the infinite desire of 

 such a happy nurture, than we have 

 now to hale and drag our hopefullest 

 and choicest wits to that asinine feast 

 of sow-thistles and brambles which is 

 commonly set before them as the food 

 and entertainment of their tenderest 

 and most docible age." And, after a 

 couple of centuries of progress, what 

 is the outcome ? We still hear every- 

 where that the dead languages fail, be- 

 cause they are taught by obsolete and 

 irrational methods, and it is stoutly 

 claimed that all we need is their refor- 

 mation. 



But what mystery is there about 

 these languages that their study should 

 prove the great chronic scandalous fail- 

 ure of higher education, age after age? 

 There can be no reason in their consti- 

 tution or peculiarities that should neces- 

 sitate any such result. There has been 

 a thousand times more practice in teach- 

 ing them than in teaching any other 

 languages ; the work of learning them 

 is of the same kind as that of learning 

 other languages, and they are said, 

 moreover, to be the most perfect forms 

 of speech, and in that respect would 

 seem to have advantages over other 

 languages. There is nothing exception- 

 al in the processes of their study. The 

 meanings and relations of words have 

 simply to be acquired, so tliat they can 

 be used for the expression of thought. 



