Greek into stiff and inelegant English, will incline them to turn good English into equally stiff and inelegant Latin. With the senior pupils, construing prose and verse should be made an occasion for instruction in style and poetical language: they should be shewn how much more exact and verbally true are the expressions of ancient than of modern authors-how eloquent, with simple words-how like men who had thoughts impatient for words, not words starving for thoughts. They might be taught how much more nearly Bacon and our older writers resembled them in weight, if not in fluency, than those of the present day-that the quaint diction they admire on old monuments and other records of the age, when there were a thousand men who thought to one who wrote, arose from this that words were not, in those days, "laid up in stereotype;" each author could pick the word, the very word, he wanted, without being tempted by custom to take a string of others with it. We might shew them that what Sir J. Mackintosh said of laws is perfectly true of words, "they are not made, they grow." Words of ancient growth have, with minutest fibres, clung to, and be. come, to our minds, inseparable from, a hundred sentiments, that have each stood the test of time: some have found a foremost place in holy writ, as neighbour, charity, brother; other words have become linked to the memory by being just distinguishable by veneration, as of some Old Mortality, on the half-sunken, grey tombstone-sacred to the memory of who departed this life.

Words of late growth speak to the head, but not the heart; they have too much the air of business and demonstration, not like those of an "old man eloquent," full of years, and weight, and wisdom, with as much persuasion as argument, more of the Nestor than Ulysses. Thoughts and feelings are too subtle for new words, and are only conveyed by those which touch the chord of those feelings, or awake associations connected with those thoughts, that virtually say, Think of this object, or of the impression you received at such a time, and you will conceive my meaning.

The most valuable instruction that I ever knew or experienced has been conveyed at those peculiar opportunities which a lesson in construing presents. Then the mind, by the most exact illustrations, may be opened to the perception of the beauties of literature. A pupil who had been used to construe in a dull heavy way, without observation or taste of any kind, I have known wholly changed in the space of a month by good instruction in two plays of Eschylus. His tutor pointed out parallels in modern literature, and explained where the poet was master of his words, -where language was too weak for the "vivida vis animi," the creative energy of his thoughts,where, even when he had fallen in his bold attempts, you could yet discern the "disjecta membra poeta" as plainly as you can discern ideal grandeur in the mutilated remains of the sculptured TheThe language he was taught was not the

seus.

flowery, but the simple, the weighty, the appropriate; such as I believe Horace intended in these lines:

"In verbis etiam tenuis cautusque serendis

Hoc amet, hoc spernat

Dixeris egregiè notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum:"

that is, an elevated style may be produced by nice arrangements if you only exercise taste in your choice of words, and do not scatter them, like seed, at random, but plant each carefully; for he tells us afterwards there is nothing touching in great pompous words. Eschylus has a fine passage, of which two lines have been quoted by Gray from the Agamemnon, line 185, as a motto to his Ode to Adversity. I shall not repeat them, for if my reader is a scholar he will remember them; if not, he will find them difficult to translate. The following verses from Job xxxiii. 14-16, if not an exact translation, are nearly equivalent:

For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.

In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed;

Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.

This style seems to me to exemplify Horace's meaning, and to supply a useful hint for translating many of the finest parts of classical literature. Coleridge says, most truly, that deep study of Scripture will prevent any man's style from

being vulgar; indeed, no man can have the least pretension to refinement of taste till he duly appreciates the venerable simplicity of this garb of truth and truthful feeling, which I can compare to nothing else but the decent drapery which, while it veils, reveals the natural grace and symmetry of the sculptured form, whereas flowery language seems like the finery of the day, that rather supplants than aids the comeliness of nature. As the Greek authors owed much of their language to Homer, so I believe do the English to the Bible. Its vocabulary will, of course, require extension, but, like a Thesaurus, rich in examples universally known, it fixes the standard, and keeps up the purity of our intellectual coin, and that not least by preserving the use of sensible objects and words of the first intention, without which we might "refine away language to mere abstractions."

On construing into English, there are some good remarks in an article on the system of Rugby school in the Quarterly Journal of Education; but when we are told that "boys are to be taught to translate Homer in words almost exclusively Saxon; the Tragedians in words principally Saxon, but mixed with many of French or foreign origin, like the language of Shakspeare; Herodotus in the style and language of the Chroniclers; Thucydides in that of Hooker and Bacon; while Demosthenes, Cicero, Cæsar, and Tacitus, require a style completely modern"-when all this is recommended for boys, I should say, for "boys"

read "men." This, though not true, has truth in it. Probably it does not mean what it seems to express, that we should go so far as to enlighten the present generation in language more intelligible to the past.

Written translation into English is not sufficiently practised in schools. I have seen this exercise produce very good effects in giving power and command in English composition. Care is required on the part of the master to prevent translation from being too vague to be a test of accurate scholarship, or too literal and pedantic for the idiomatic freedom of genuine English.

ON MENTAL TRAINING AND SCHOOL DISCIPLINE.

"The advantages of the rising generation are really very great," is the common remark: "when we were young there were not half the nice, easy entertaining books for children that there are now; every subject is treated so simply, and all information collected with so little trouble to the student, that education has become really delightful." So also, in these days of invention, we might add, jellies, and essences, and every nutritious quality have been extracted from different kinds of meat, so that one would think a man might make a meal in an incredibly short space of time: still experience shews that we can neither carry a month's provision in our waistcoat pocket, nor grow fat any faster than our ancestors. In short, there is no Royal Road, only the old beaten track.