Page:The education of the farmer.djvu/42

India, it preaches the Gospel on all the coasts of Africa, and Australia is receiving in it her first laws. On all the five continents it is the language that grows and conquers, the language of the future, the language of the world. Grimm speaks thus:—' None of the modern languages has, through the very loss and decay of all phonetic laws, and through the dropping of nearly all inflections, acquired greater force and vigour than English, and from the fulness of those vague and indefinite sounds, which may be learned, but can never be taught, it has derived a power of expression such as has never been at the command of any human tongue. Begotten by a surprising union of the two noblest languages of Europe, the one Teutonic, the other Eomanic, it received that wonderfully happy temper and thorough breeding, where the Teutonic supplied the material strength, the Romanic the suppleness and freedom of expression. Nay, the English language, -which has borne, not as it wei'e by mere chance, the greatest Poet of modern times, great in his very contrast with ancient classical poetry — I speak of course of Shakspeare — this English language may truly be called a world-language, and seems, like England herself, but in a still higher degree, destined to rule over all the corners of the earth. In wealth, wisdom, and strict economy, none of the living languages can vie with it.^[1]

By what means then should the English language be taught? The grammars commonly in use are feeble adaptations of the old Latin grammar, mere dilutions of Lindley Murray, which only confuse and vulgarise the subject, loading the memory with a pedantic enumeration of technical rules, unsuited to the genius of the English language. Something has been done towards providing the middle classes with really English grammars by Dr. Latham, by Mr. Thring, and by Mr. M'Leod.

Should Farmers learn Latin?

But the right way of teaching English depends on the answer to another question, namely, whether there is any use in teaching Latin where it cannot be taught thoroughly—I mean so as to be remembered and used with facility through life.

Great changes have taken place in the public mind on this subject. In old times Latin was supposed to be the introduction to all learning above that of reading, writing, and ciphering. Grammar-schools taught the classic s almost exclusively. Against this the English mind, especially in the middle classes, rebelled. Attempts were made to compel an alteration in the old methods of grammar schools and universities, and to exchange classics for metaphysics at one time, and for physical science at another. These attempts having failed, other institutions sprung up by the side of the old ones. The London University and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge established the claims of physical science to a share at least in the formation of the English mind.

But the older institutions had life in them yet; and the original stocks, after a little pruning, have proved strong enough to throw

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1. 'Max Müller On the Languages of the Seat of War in the East,' p. 64.