observation and simplified by science. Successive recapitulations should take in more and more of what is abnormal, until a fairly comprehensive view of the whole field is obtained. The suggestions of whatever new texts are read should, of course, be utilised in preparing the mind for irregularities and exceptions; but it is no longer perilous to study the grammar apart. Each course of grammar deepens the impression made by those which precede it, and at the same time extends the pupil's mental horizon, the successive courses being superimposed on one another like a number of concentric circles with ever widening diameters.
I have said nothing about the writing of Latin, because it is obvious at the present day that reading should be accompanied by writing from the first, and, what is even more important, that the sentences to be translated into Latin should be based on the subject matter and vocabulary of the Reader. Learning a language is largely an imitative process, and we must not expect our beginners to make bricks without straw, any more than we expect pupils at a more advanced age to compose in the style of Cicero or Livy without giving them plenty of models to work upon. It is more important to insist here on the importance of training the organs of speech and hearing even in learning a “dead language” like Latin. For a dead language is still a language, and cannot be properly grasped unless it has some contact with living lip and living ear. Let the pupil then become accustomed from the first to reading Latin aloud, and to reading it with intelligence and expression. It is a habit which does not come of itself; but to teach it goes a long way towards making the language live again, and acts as a most valuable support to the memory. Let anyone try learning a little modern Greek, and he will appreciate the difference between remembering the accents by ear and remembering them by the eye alone. So, too, in regard to forms and vocabulary. What we have to familiarise our pupils with is
