BULLETIN OF DENISON UNIVERSITY. 
167 
comes to it. Now I have no hesitation in saying that this is a burden 
which the average student can not bear, and which the brightest and 
most faithful student quickly gives up the attempt to bear. Even 
when all doubtful syllables are evasively classed with the short, the 
burden is still too great for any memory not phenomenal. To re- 
member that a is long in Mars and short in pars, long in actum but 
short in factum, long in sperans but short in sperantis and probably 
sperandum ; that u is long in diico and short in duxi, while e is short in 
rego but long in rexi ; that i is short in ingero but long in infero \ to 
remember and readily use these and similar facts, apparently unclassi- 
fiable and inconsistent, is a most trying task to the young man who 
knows that he has only a part of one life-time to spend on Latin. 
Sooner or later he abandons the hopeless task (as his teacher has prob- 
ably done before him); and his pronunciation of Latin words, except 
when he is reading a text with all quantities marked for him, is a 
piece of mere guess-v’^ork. I believe that this is not an exaggerated 
description of the Roman method as usually taught by good teachers 
to bright boys ; and whether this endless guessing is likely to have a 
wholesome effect on the mind in its formative stage, seems to me to be 
a question worthy of serious consideration. As to this method as 
taught by the average teacher to average boys, the results are so gro- 
tesque as to be quite beyond my powers of description. 
In scientific class-rooms, too, strikingly incorrect ways of pro- 
nouncing technical terms are prevalent. I am convinced that also 
this is due in large measure to false notions concerning the proper 
province of the reformed method of pronouncing Latin. Let me repeat 
that this method should be used, if at all, only in the Latin class-work, 
and that there is nof a shadow of authority or reason for using it in 
the case of scientific terms, law phrases, or the other classes of words 
mentioned above. For all these there is only one correct way — the 
English. As some of the best school grammars have in late years 
ceased to give full rules for the English method, it may not be amiss 
