neat preface to his Latin Primer as early contact with the language in mass," if true, as he rightly insists, for the teaching of Latin, is so much more practicable, in the study of the modern languages.

By reading I mean here not mere grammar sentences (for these must be used to help the earliest learning of the forms), but selections of fit and attractive literature, with suitable helps. In urging this reading as early as possible, without waiting for any elaborate study of grammar, I am glad to quote the explicit authority of Professor WHITNEY, in the preface to his German Grammar, which he declares to be meant to lead "at the earliest possible moment to the reading of German authors." On another point too, not generally conceded, I am happy to find his opinion no less explicit. I believe, with him, that all writing of exercises, even the simplest sentences, into French or German should be postponed until after some intelligent progress has been made in the reading, and the grammar itself comes to be reviewed. Such exercises, at first so strange and difficult, because they reverse the natural process of acquisition, become then intelligent and helpful. Meantime, I should look to the reading, and not to these, to confirm the knowledge of grammatical forms. I know by oft-tried experience that by this method a book, for example, like OTTO's French or German Grammar, may be gone through first in outline with the reading lessons only, and then thoroughly reviewed, with the exercises and with added lessons from a Reader, in less time than it can be gone through once in the more usual mode of writing the exercises into French or German from the beginning. The difference in the intelligence and interest of the work is still greater. I beg leave to emphasize this opinion with all the weight due to Prof. WHITNEY'S eminent authority, added to my own humble yet not insignificant experience. The same principle, I believe, holds true for Latin and Greek also. It needs, however, to be especially insisted upon in the modern languages, where rapidity of progress at first is so much more important.

I find myself once more discussing elementary questions. My apology has been made already. When the elements of French and German are satisfactorily taught in the schools we may omit the consideration of such questions in our higher institutions.

In other important respects too, in view of their different practical relations, the instruction in the modern languages must be modified. While the general method and discipline will be the same, a different kind of scholarship from that in the ancient languages is required, and this must be borne in mind in the teaching. As modern languages French and German stand in a far closer relation to us than Latin and Greek. Their use is a more practical one, and a greater practical facility in the use of them is required. Their literature and their science stand in immediate relation to ourselves. Thus the literary element becomes more important. There must be more reading, and all that gives facility and rapidity in reading must be more insisted upon. This also requires, especially with our narrower limit of time, a proportional abridgment of purely grammatical and philological study. For this discipline in its best and largest results we must still look, without regret, to the ancient languages. Yet in the modern languages, on the other hand, we may find a literary culture which only few students can

hope to attain from Greek or Latin. The teacher in either case must study to find the golden mean; and while he will place the emphasis of his instruction according to the requirement of his own subject, he will not forego those exercises which belong to the largest discipline in every direction. Language and literature can not be dissociated: each can be studied only in the light of the other; and while they may enter in different proportions as elements in the study of different languages, their close dependence can never allow the neglect of either. The teacher of modern languages must aim at greater breadth of reading and larger practical skill in the use of the languages; but these can not be attained if thoroughness of disciplinary study be neglected.

Again, while we can not teach our pupils to speak French or German, we should not forget that they may afterward have occasion to learn to speak; and our instruction should be so fashioned as to make this task for them as easy as possible. Hence every thing that belongs to the education of the tongue and of the ear-the twin organs of speechshould be most carefully and constantly attended to. The pronunciation should be made not only accurate, but easy and natural, and the ear should be trained by constant exercises in dictation, reading, and recitation until the sense shall be equally clear in the spoken as in the printed sentence. The power acquired by these exercises gives to language a living significance which nothing else can give. The ear, not the eye, is the natural organ of language; and the more we bring language into relation with the ear the more do we enlist all the principles and processes of nature to aid its acquisition and to increase its interest. Even where speech is not had in view this general principle should be regarded. It deserves, I think, more consideration than it has received, even in the study of the ancient languages; for the modern languages it is of prime importance. Even with our present narrow limit of time such exercises should engage no small part of our class-room work. At first difficult, they soon become interesting; and the new sense which they develop adds interest and facility to all the other studies.

To write with ease and idiomatic correctness a foreign language requires, like speaking, conditions which we can not furnish; but here, in even greater degree, a firm foundation may be laid. Facility at last can be based only upon discipline at first. No teacher needs to be reminded of the value of written exercises at every stage of the instruction.

So much as to how the modern languages may be taught. A more important as well as a more difficult question is, who shall teach them? This question, though it may be a delicate one, can not, in good faith, be avoided. Some prevailing opinions on this subject need, I think, careful revision.

Nativity alone does not, of course, constitute qualification. How far is it essentially even a recommendation?

Unquestionably the first requisite in a teacher of any language is a competent knowledge of the language to be taught. The second, which is hardly less important, is a competent knowledge of English. By this knowledge we mean here not merely the ability to read, write, and speak English, however perfectly, but, more than that, the power and the habit of using English as

the natural speech, even in the actual presence of the foreign idiom and through all the trials of the class-room. That is to say, the teacher must be in full sympathy always with the modes of thought and expression which are native to the pupil. He must occupy his stand-point of idiom; he must comprehend his difficulties, and be able to explain them from his point of view, in relation to his linguistic consciousness. This he can do, if a foreigner, only so far as he identifies himself absolutely with the English language, making it, for the time being, his mother-tongue and his own a foreign language. With those not born to English speech this is a rare accomplishment, which requires not only great familiarity with English, but that rarer discipline which gives the power of complete abstraction and intellectual self-control; for no relation is more intimate or more powerful than that which holds the natural mind under the dominion of the native idiom, a relation the more intimate and the more powerful because so profoundly unconscious. The difficulty with many foreign teachers-let me say, for example, German teachers of German, however accomplished as Germans-is often that they can not divest themselves of the instinct that German is the mother-tongue and English the foreign language to be taught. For them German is subjective, English is objective. Thus they will unconsciously regard German from the German, not from the English stand-point, or, tempted from the one to the other, they will lose themselves and mislead their pupils in the confusion of a double point of view. So in the text-books of such authors one might sometimes imagine they were meant to teach English rather than German. Explanations will be directed, unconsciously, to difficulties in the English idiom, while difficulties in German will pass unnoticed and unexplained; and at other times the form of the statement will show that the writer has the German in his mind and the English outside of it. Such books reverse for us the natural order of thought and of acquisition. Such a teacher in the classroom is a foreigner to his pupils, and they are foreigners to him. There can be no full intellectual sympathy. He can not understand their difficulties, nor explain them as they need to have them explained; nor can he realize, often, why they do not see what is so clear, because so wholly instinctive, to him. Such books and such teaching not only increase the difficulty of learning, but breed confusion of method and of thought. Let us insist that French and German, as much as Latin and Greek, are for us foreign languages, and must be taught as such, with objective reference to English as the only subjective mother-tongue. Confessing this, we shall perhaps admit the consequence that birth implies only an added caution in the selection of our text-books and of our teachers. Nay, rather, if I could, I would have the German to teach French and the Frenchman to teach German; for then at least each will be teaching a language which he has himself learned by objective study, and by experience he will understand the wants of those who must learn it likewise. This experience will compensate for much of mere practical skill in the language. But, rather than either, I would have both French and German taught by our own American scholars, so far as these can be found with requisite qualifications. Such scholars are becoming rapidly more numerous in our country. It is, we believe, only through their influence that the de

partment of modern languages can be elevated to its proper rank and dignity in the course of higher education. I state this conviction because I believe it due to my subject, not without the profoundest respect for those French or German authors and teachers who constitute the numerous and brilliant exceptions.

The evil here mentioned is greatly aggravated by a fact to which, though not belonging to the department of higher education, I must here briefly allude, because of its very great importance, and because the higher education itself suffers so much from its consequences-I mean the habit, especially in the public schools of our larger cities, of teaching German to American and German children in the same classes. The habit is fatal to all right method. No system of instruction can be devised which in the same class shall meet the wants of both classes of pupils. In truth, wholly different methods and materials are needed for the two, and the effort to find an impossible compromise is necessarily injurious to both-most injurious, if the teacher be a German, to the American pupil. It is fatal also to that complete indentification of the teacher with either class of pupils which has been above described. I have myself witnessed such recitations in a few instances, with results corresponding to this opinion. I should be glad to believe that the larger experience of others could justify any different conclusion.

The same evil, which we can hardly believe to be here overstated, shows itself also in some of our elementary or public-school text-books. The publishers--some of them keenly conscious of the absurdity, yet under the inexorable demands of trade-seek in vain to meet the impossibility of furnishing one book which shall meet the double want. It can not be done. The book that is good for one class is of necessity bad for the other, and the effort to compromise prevents the production of the best books for either. The remedy is to be found, I think, in the exclusion of German as a vernacular study from our public schools altogether. Let us recognize the fact, and insist upon it as a duty at once professional and patriotic, that English alone is the mother-tongue of this nation, and that if any persons, of whatever nativity, would study in our schools any other language, they must study it as a foreign language, by books and methods. adapted to the English mind. If our German fellow-citizens ask more, let them furnish what they need in their own homes or through private tuition. If the phrase "German in the public schools" means any thing more than this, it means a prophecy.fraught with evil to our nation. We can not recognize two national languages; we can not, as a nation, educate two distinct nationalities. This matter belongs properly, it is true, to the public schools, but it affects also the higher instruction. If it is an evil, we should here recognize it as such. The higher institutions of learning stand in close and ever closer relations to the public schools. It is chiefly to them that the schools must look for the influence of wise example, and for the possession of wise and competent teachers in every branch of knowledge.

This discussion has already been too far extended; it has embraced more than I meant to say, yet, after all, less than the subject demands. With each year the modern languages grow in importance to our schools

and to our nation. They can not long halt below the high place they are entitled to occupy in our educational system. With them English too, itself the greatest of the modern languages, and with a value to us which no other can rival, will, we hope, soon make good its claim to the highest instruction in every institution of higher education. The two topics are intimately connected; they are well worthy of the continued consideration of this department of the National Association.

My subject, as named by myself, was "The Method and Discipline of the Modern Languages in the Higher Education." The committee, with a wise reference to that brevity which they enjoined and which I have violated, changed this title to "The Position of Modern Languages." The one view of course covers the other. Yet if I might, in conclusion, define in a few words more strictly the position which I would claim for the modern languages, I should say: Side by side with the ancient languages, as with every other department of liberal and scientific culture; to be taught by the ablest teachers and by the wisest methods, with reference at once to scientific scholarship and to practical use; to be recognized by diplomas and degrees appropriate to their character, yet not by substitution for Latin or Greek in the degrees of arts; beyond, this, however, to be fully admitted into our schemes of elective study; and to be elevated from the merely tutorial position which they have so often occupied to a rank and dignity in our higher institutions of learning commensurate with their disciplinary value, with the literary importance, and with their intimate relations to our own language, history, and nation.

Second Day's Proceedings.

TUESDAY, JULY 11, 1876.′′

The Department met at 1 P. M. DR. BOWMAN of Kentucky was requested to act as presiding officer. After the appointment of a Committee to nominate officers for the next year, the regular exercises of the Department were opened by a brief address from Prof. HENRY E. SHEPHERD, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Baltimore, in which he discussed the terms Anglo-Saxon and Early English or English, and maintained that the use of the word English to designate all phases of our language, both before and after the Norman Conquest, is erroneous and misleading. He asserted that the use of the compound adjective, Anglo-Saxon, is supported by the best authority, that of the people themselves, and their rulers; and cited examples from Anglo-Saxon charters, and royal proclamations, including those of King Alfred, to make good this statement.