JULY— SEPT. 1857.] The Study of Living Languages. 22o 
the day, he will inevitably acquire a false pronunciation, unless he 
is so thoroughly established in a correct pronunciation that there 
is no danger of his losing it and then indeed abundant exercise of 
his tongue, when alone, will be of the utmost use, but this at first 
is ruinous. 
Suppose a child were shown the form of a letter and then as 
soon as he had a rough icfea of it should go on writing repetitions 
of it without a standard before him, any body can tell what would 
be the consequence ; at the end of a month he would be thoroughly 
confirmed in writing such abetter as had never been seen before ; 
and if he had occasionally the standard put before him, the conse- 
quence would be thut nine-tenths of his time would be passed in 
learning to recede further from the original, and the other tenth in 
trying to get rid of the habit of writing wrong and to bring himself 
back to what was correct. 
The same is the case with the student of languages, and in ge- 
neral they are thus constantly employed in partially learning and 
then unlearning, and the consequence is that even where an ap- 
proach is made to a correct use of the language nine-tenths of the 
time em.ployed is needlessly lost. 
A third point is to learn one thing at a time. 
If a num.ber of things are pressing upon the attention at once, it 
is impossible that a distinct and permanent impression can be re- 
ceived by any mind whatever its powers. Let us consider a person 
learning a language in the way so commonly followed. He is 
grappling with a sentence of many words. Here he has at once to 
consider the character, the meaning of many new words, the pro- 
nunciation of them all, the inflexions of the nouns and verbs, the 
syntax, the mode of expression, &c. The consequence is, his at- 
tention is so overwhelmed and distracted that his mind is incapa- 
ble of receiving a clear impression on any one point. No wonder 
that so little progress is made, that the knowledge acquired is so im- 
perfect and incorrect, and that the student is so constantly discou- 
raged. Often his progress is one continued efi'ort to bear up against 
the most depressing feeling that he can never master the difficulties, 
as a man wears himself out sometimes in trying to carry a load be- 
