able. But these are spheres of work for the few, not for the many. The toilers therein should work from love, not perforce. Even here, Greek, German, English, other tongues, compete to train the attention so highly prized.

Latin trains the judgment. True, and so do science and English literature the same, with this difference in favor of the latter, that the judgment has a broader sphere for its exercise. What is judgment? The faculty of forming correct opinions, arriving at just conclusions. What is its work in Latin? It is mainly busied with the relations of words and the expression of ideas, and those not one's own. What is its work in science? Substantially the same as in life, too varied and complex for adequate description. One principle, the secret of our 19thcentury progress, is settled. Lord Bacon caught glimpses of it, and became famous. It is this: to judge without data is rash, unprofitable, dangerous. To judge wisely, one must have facts, and be trained to use them. Observation, experiment, the greatest care, the wisest discrimination, are needed to guide the impetuous mind. The start made, the course and destiny of thought are determined. Latin trains the judgment, but the facts of Latin are not those the judgment needs and uses in the principal situations of life. Hence, one may judge wisely within the classics and unwisely without; for proof of which consider the vagaries of alchemy and astrology, the superstitions, the metaphysical nonsense, against which classical training afforded no protection. We talk at times too thoughtlessly of training the judgment in the study of Latin, as though training in one direction, however valuable, was training in all, however numerous. Faraday said that "no intellectual fault was more common than deficiency of judgment," and ascribed it to a lack of scientific culture. Herbert Spencer says that "no acquaintance with the meanings of words can give the power of forming correct inferences respecting causes and effects." This is true, at least, until the study of words becomes a science that deals with many tongues. The philologist, I have always supposed, infers causes and effects from the plastic nature of words. Latin aids him, no doubt, in common with other languages, although the prosperity of his science dates from the discovery of the wealth of Sanscrit.

Yet Professors Müller and Whitney hope it will not be presumed that they can either write or read, much less speak, the majority of the languages about which they so wisely and elegantly discourse. The common-sense view is this, that whatever excellence there may be in the training of the judgment which Latin affords, this excellence is conspicuous in life only when facts are to be dealt with kindred to those of the study in which the training. was obtained.

Latin helps us in English grammar. Well, we need help badly enough, and doubtless get some. But does not this argument look rather grim, when we consider that the English language became strong and developed a literature without the aid of grammarians; that English grammar was an after-thought, modelled in nomenclature and rules after Latin grammar, but having little else in common with it? Does not it admit that there is less sense in our technical English grammar than in Latin, or that our mode of teaching English is defective, or that something is "rotten in Denmark," when we resort to a dead language to help us in a living one, and that our mother-tongue? The simple fact is, that if the faithful teacher compares English usages with Latin, pointing out the few agreements and the numerous differences, the pupil's knowledge of English grammar is incidentally improved, and might be in the study of any foreign tongue. But this incidental help does not alter the fact that the straightforward, face-to-face way of studying English is the most profitable as well as the most economical. How much of the help which Latin is supposed to render English grammar may be due, after all, to the greater maturity of the pupil, when he enters upon Latin, I will not attempt to discuss.

Latin unlocks the meaning of many English words that come from it. But when we add words to our vocabulary, we are guided by usage first, and investigate hidden meanings afterwards. It is a pleasurable surprise, after using a word a score of years, to peep into it and see how admirably its inner sense justi fies its use. A moment's reflection fourteen years ago might have revealed to me the inner sense of the word discreet. I did not indulge that reflection, however, until a few days ago. I appeal to every classical student, if he does not use hundreds of words to whose inner chambers he has the key, but has never used it?

It is pleasant to unlock these words; but that a course of study in Latin, however profitable, is essential to a correct use of them, I deny. If essential, a knowledge of Greek and Anglo-Saxon is essential too. If essential, it is a waste of time to use any of the numerous works that treat of word-analysis. If essential, our dictionaries and books of synonymes lose in value. If essential, we have unsolved problems in a host of able men who have written in innocence of Latin.

The technical terms of science and philosophy are furnished by Latin. Yes, and by Greek also. But who most urge the diminished prominence of Latin in our common schools? Scientific men themselves.

Translation of Latin is an excellent exercise in English composition, it is urged. Well, a good idea ought to be dressed well, and he who carefully makes garments becomes a good tailor in time. The tendency of Latin to latinize our English must not be forgotten. If we counteract this tendency and secure idiomatic English, it is because we give sound instruction in the English language, to which instruction as much as to Latin belongs the credit. After all, is it not more reasonable, if we seek to learn pure English idiom, to go where it is rather than where it is not? Of the time devoted to translation, only a small fraction falls to composition. Whatever value we attach to this composition, it must be borne in mind that mere imitation does not ensure excellence. One cannot become a Milton by simply studyng Milton. The body, and not the raiment, is the essence of good writing. There is little worth unless one has something to say. Now, independent thought is the lack of our schools. Pupils have faith in books, less in themselves. Something must be done to diminish this unbounded reverence for authority, and to awaken the trains of thought, so that in theme and recitation pupils will dare to say their souls are their own. The thoughts, once in possession, may then be dressed, a process which their comeliness very much simplifies.

Latin furnishes its pupils with models in the graces of diction and style. Nevertheless, the hard fact is, that the presences most familiar to our young people are not these, but interminable paradigms. They are so absorbed in the details of construction that only a few ascend to the plane where grace and beauty and

strength have their abode. English, I claim, is equally rich in models that are not so toilsomely approached. They are, therefore, in those cases in which pupils can attend school only one or two years, more keenly enjoyed and more potent for culture. In brief, fifty per cent, often more and seldom less, of those who enter the high school where Latin is compulsory, do not study it long enough to realize its chief advantages. Enlarging on the beauties of the classics to pupils in their accidence, is too often like showing the glories of the morning to a blind man. In the study of the English classics, pupils often abandon the trash literature that competed with Latin for their time.

Upon these and kindred views I base my creed. I believe in a happier blending of scientific with classical training, increasing the former and modifying the latter. I have implicit faith in the genius of the English language, and its eminent fitness for the highest culture, and would, therefore, prescribe its masterpieces for the study of all. A lover of Latin, I yet find nothing inconsistent with that love in my conviction that its praises have been too extravagantly sung. I would not so overestimate it as to make its study compulsory in the high school, neither would I so undervalue it as to banish it from the course. I simply plead for that option which, as a student, I never enjoyed, and which, as a teacher, I have seldom been permitted to grant.

STORIES.

THERE are two questions that have been posers for the learned world for centuries, where stories came from, and where pins go to. The latter question has at last been solved by some anonymous genius. After a domestic or fashionable life of greater or less length, he assures us that, bent with age, and disappointed by the obstacles they have had to encounter, they return to dust, and become terra-pins.

This theory, according, as it does, with every day's experience, and no other plausible theory seeming possible, is not likely to be controverted, and we may take it as final.

But the origin of stories is still waiting for a discoverer, no navigator of the Dead Sea of the past having as yet been able to

reach it. Thus the stories of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Dante, Chaucer, and the plots of Shakespeare's plays and of Milton's great epic, are traced by commentators and antiquarians till they are lost in the Milesian fables of a remote antiquity. This takes us back, according to the veracious legendary history of Ireland (about whose modern history Froude and Father Burke cannot exactly agree), some 1,300 years before the Christian era, when that rather imaginative king, Milesius, reigned in Spain, and became the founder of a new school in architecture, known in France as "castles in Spain," in England and America as "air castles," an order which has not been entirely superseded to the present day. Still, the question returns, Where did those fables come from? We may suppose they were found, covered with dust, in the archives of some of the aforesaid "air castles." All right, so far. But how came they there? Echo answers, how?

Now we have a theory, or hypothesis rather, to propose, which may be taken for what it is worth, and adopted or rejected without offence by any one interested in this investigation. We are confident, at any rate, that it will not be found of less value than many a learned speculation that we wot of.

It is this that they all originated in the nursery, constituting the very elements of all subsequent mental training. It is not to be supposed that all the stories that have started in the nursery have come down to us. The Darwinian theory of natural selection and development has undoubtedly been operative here. Many, no doubt, have died, after an ephemeral existence in some quiet home, having served the single purpose of keeping a child still long enough for him to drop asleep. Being destitute of the essential characteristics of a good story, they have died from mere inanition. Others have lived, but have never been developed by the hand of genius. Others, still, though but slightly developed, have been made classic by Mother Goose, the child's Shakespeare. Thus, -

"Jack and Jill

Went up the hill

To draw a pail of water;

Jack fell down

And broke his crown,

And Jill came tumbling after."