JULY — SEPT. 1857.] The Study of Living Languages, 237 
sible, the attention may be concentrated on one thing at a time. 
When a hundred words have been acquired, all the use possible 
should be made of them as the vehicle for conveying instruction 
in other respects before the attention is encumbered by new words, 
in order that when new words are taken in hand the student may 
have his attention in a great measure released from the pressure of 
the elementary points of grammar, peculiar style of expression, &c. 
It is also most essential that these sentences should consist of 
only two or three words, ne-v^r more than the latter. It is asto- 
nishing how very little new matter overloads the attention of a be- 
ginner, and the \ftfnost care is necessary that no more should ever 
be placed before hinff at a time than that he can receive a distinct 
impression of it. A sentence of four or five words is quite too 
much at first, and nothing is gained by attempting more than the 
student is equal to. Comparatively speaking, a very considerable 
time must be given to the first set of sentences, for there is a great 
deal to be learnt by them. 
It is evident that they involve almost all the pronunciation, the 
inflexions of the nouns and verbs, the mode of combining the 
different parts of speech, the exercise of the organs of speech and 
that of the ear on the sound of the language, &c. 
The first progress of a student in a new language, at least in- 
one entirely dissimilar to his native tongue, is indeed astonishing- 
ly slow, and it is of no use attempting to push him on faster than 
he can go. We constantly meet with what are called, easy books 
for beginners, but probably there is not one published in any lan- 
guage that is a hundredth part easy enough or that does not seem 
to suppose a progress at first a hundred times more rapid than any 
student makes. 
The sentences must of course be translated into English, but it 
is essential that they should not be written originally in EnpHsh 
and then translated into the foreign language. 
We do not want to teach a man to speak English sentences in 
foreign words, but to use the foreign expressions. 
The second set of words consisting of 150 may perhaps contain 
ten sentences for each word, or 1,500 in all. 
t 
