to the small attention paid to it in the preparatory schools. Professor A. S. Hill, in Harper's Magazine, June, 1885, says that he has read from four to five thousand compositions written in the examination room, upon subjects drawn from books which the candidates were required to read before presenting themselves, and that at a generous estimate not more than one hundred were creditable either to writer or teacher.' He goes on to say that instructors in English in American colleges have to spend much time and strength in teaching the A B C of their mother tongue to young men of twenty.

Not over a month ago Professor Demmon of our own university told me that university students knew almost nothing of English Grammar, and that they could not read understandingly Whitney's "Essentials." President Porter, in his American Colleges, joins in the universal complaint as follows:-"The neglect of such culture (elementary English) in too many of the so called classical schools of this country is inexcusable."

Professor Hunt, of Princeton, adds his voice: Applicants are annually appearing from our "best schools," who, in the press of classical and mathematical work, have scarcely opened the pages of an English Grammar; who know next to nothing of American history, and who, after all their preparatory language study, are unable to construct a correct and forcible English paragraph.

Mr. Fitch, in his Lectures on Teaching; Mr. Hales, in his Essays on a Liberal Education, catch up the strain in reference to the preparatory schools of England.

Would that the Father of English Poetry, who two hundred years before Bacon translated his essays into Latin to preserve them, entrusted the rich products of his genius to his native speech,would that he were living to gather up these voices in a noble Complaint to the Mother-tongue, that her children in the nineteenth century are disinherited, and are losing their faith in the rich AngloSaxon blood.

Along with this awakening to the necessity of better instruction in English comes a similar interest in the Natural Sciences and Modern Languages. Wherever our sympathies may be, the facts are before us that the Natural Sciences and Modern Languages, pre-eminent among them the English, are pressing for recognition along beside the Classics and Mathematics, as studies of equal disciplinary, culture value. For myself, I am frank to say that for the boy and girl who do not intend to go to college, and our high

schools are largely made up of such,-my sympathies are entirely in favor of this modern movement. The world is to be about these youth with its manifold forms of life and beauty, a joy forever. Sad pity is it if they are sent forth, as the writer was, without one hour's instruction in Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany, or Physiology. Their native language is to be their sole instrument of power, but in case of the select few who go to the universities, the vernacular seems to be anything but a powerful instrument.

We urge, therefore, by way of farther introduction to our topic, that in behalf of the large body of our youth, the English course should be made the strongest course in the High School, and as a means of strengthening it we suggest among other revisions the introduction of an elementary course in Anglo-Saxon. objection be raised that the school curriculum is already overcrowded, let us roughly outline our ideal English Course. It should contain as much of Natural Science as the Scientific Course; its mathematics should consist of a review of Arithmetic and an elementary course in Algebra and Geometry; a year and a half, or at the outside limit two years, being devoted to Mathematics. Its literary and linguistic instruction should be confined mainly to English and American literature and history. General History, of course, should find a place, and possibly the latter half of the Junior year might profitably be devoted to the study of great masterpieces from other languages, in translation. The English speaking student should know that the great masterpieces of all nations lie open to him through his own vernacular. We live in the age of translation, and "What is really best in any book is translatable," says Emerson," any real insight, or broad human sentiment." A scholar in many languages, he speaks these encouraging words to the High School boy and girl: "I rarely read any Latin, Greek, German, Italian, sometimes not a French book in the original, which I can procure in a good version. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven."

Such a course would give time for nearly four years of steady work upon English, and should enable every student to become a tolerably good English scholar. In the ninth grade English Grammar might be dropped, to be reviewed later in the course; and the entire year be devoted to Anglo-Saxon, appropriate exercises in word study, and English composition based upon such exercises as Abbott's "How to Write Clearly." The Anglo-Saxon would prove

difficult, no doubt, but not a whit more so than the first year of Latin. Sweet's Primer, supplemented by judicious help from the instructor could certainly be mastered in this grade as easily as Jones's "Beginning Latin Book."

For years we have felt that the simplest means of understanding the relations of words in sentences is through a synthetic language like the Latin. In the sentence, "And thus the son the fervent sire addressed," our English leaves us in the dark as to whether the son addressed the sire, or the sire the son. A glance at the Latin sentence would make the meaning clear, but the same is true of the Anglo-Saxon; it is an inflected language, and we no longer need to leave the mother-tongue to gain the well recognized advantage of a synthetic language in teaching Grammar. It is a fair question also whether such a course as has been outlined would not furnish a discipline quite equal to that of the elementary studyof any foreign language. The nouns of the Anglo-Saxon, with five cases and four declensions; the rich inflection of its pronouns, personal, demonstrative, and interrogative; its adjectives declined in three genders and two numbers, definite and indefinite like the German; its verbs in six conjugations, governing sometimes the accusative case, again the genitive, the dative, the instrumental, the accusative and genitive, or the accusative and dative; its set of rules for the Subjunctive Mode, "rivalling," as Professor March puts it "those of the Latin and Greek as apparatus for mental gymnastics,”—what more does one need for disciplinary, linguistic study! Moreover, at every step of the way the knowledge gained is to throw light upon English Grammar and the critical study of English Literature in the last two years of the course. English, a mixed language as to its vocabulary, is in no sense borrowed or mixed as to its grammar, and no scholarly knowledge of its grammar can possibly be acquired except through the Anglo-Saxon. And yet the remark is not uncommon that English is to be taken as you find it, and its constructions to be explained by a careful exercise of the judgment. This careful exercise of the judgment tells one person one thing and another just the opposite, giving rise to endless discussions over points which can be determined only by reference to the historical development of the language. Inquiry was recently made of the publishers of Sweet's Primer in regard to the interest in Old and Middle English in the secondary schools of the East. The writer was referred to a teacher in New York said to be deeply interested in English

and thoroughly acquainted with the work in the schools. Informa-tion came that the New York high schools are entire strangers to Anglo Saxon, and that there is no intention of introducing the subject! The most interesting of the reasons given was, that "The light thrown by Anglo-Saxon on present usages, idioms, constructions, and meanings of words appear as faint as those rays cast upon our earth by some distant planet." If those who have been set as lights upon a hill are guilty of such statements, surely the discussion of our topic is timely for whether Anglo-Saxon be taught directly in the secondary schools or not, there is manifest need of familiarity with it on the part of all those who are teaching English.

Let us exercise our judgments on a few forms in Middle and Mod-ern English. In Chaucer's "Knightes Tale," Creon, moved to pity by the lamentation of the women of Thebes, was sad at heart.

"Him thoughte that his herte wolde breke."

Upon the following page, describing Creon's attack upon Thebes to revenge their wrongs, we have,

"Til that he cam to Thebes, and alighte

Faire in a feeld, ther as he thoughte fighte."

The judgment brought to bear upon the forms, he and him, both apparently subjects of the same verb, "thoughte," might conclude that Chaucer used the nominative and objective indiscriminately as subject. But even the student of Sweet's Primer remembers the two verbs, thencan and thyncan, to think and to appear, the one taking a subject in the nominative, the other used impersonally with the dative. In line forty-seven of the Prologue [Morris's text,. Prologue and Knightes Tale], the Knight is praised as "Ful worthy in his lord-es werre," the es giving rise to the apostrophe and s, the so called sign of the possessive case in Modern English. But the young squire is described as hoping to stand in his lady's grace, by the phrase "in his lady grace" (Prologue 1. 88), and the genial host of the Tabard, seeking a mild oath, swears "by my fader soule (Prol. 1.781). The judgment has no room for exercise in explanation of these forms, but our student of the Anglo Saxon Primer comes to our relief with his declension of feminine nouns, and a few mascu lines in r, none of them taking an s in the genitive. Examples, both in syntax and etymology, might be given without number, as we all know; and I suppose Chaucer is taught in most of our High Schools..

Let us turn to modern English, however, and see how faint are the rays cast by our distant planet.' In the grammar we use at the Normal School, in many respects an excellent book, we read that the participle may be used as principal word in a prepositional phrase, or may be the principal word in a phrase used as subject or object. In the sentences, "We receive good by doing good," and "Your writing that letter so neatly secured the position," doing and writing are called participles; but the student who has gone but a little way in the study of Historical English Grammar, will tell you that participles are always verbal adjectives referring to some substantive in the sentence, and that the forms in ing in the foregoing sentences are verbal nouns, or gerunds, or infinitives in ing. Under the treatment of the subjunctive mood, in which reasons are required for its use, the following sentence is given: "Govern well thy appetite lest sin surprise thee." The only light the student gets upon the form, surprise, is that " if, though, lest, unless, etc., are usually spoken of as signs of the subjunctive mode;" or the author seems to get rid of the subjunctive mode entirely by saying that it may be treated as an infinitive completing an omitted auxiliary. The primer students of AngloSaxon, however, remember that after verbs of commanding, desiring, etc., the subjunctive is used to express purpose; and he does not hesitate to call this by its proper name, a subjunctive of purpose after a verb of commanding, or exhortation. In the short sentence, "The older he grew the wiser he became," the judgment plays about the word the, and finally satisfies itself by saying that the article seems to be used adverbially here. But the primer-student casts a dim ray of light. upon the construction by declining for us the old demonstrative proHe finds the form, the (A. S. thý), to be an instrumental dative, corresponding to the Latin ablative of degree of difference, eo magis, quo melius.

noun.

In "The brass is a forging," our distant planet casts its little beam upon our metallic subject and lights up the whole sentence. The letter a is seen to be a contraction for the preposition in or on. It has lost its n and finally disappears entirely in such constructions as, "the house is building." In the opening lines of Julius Cæsar:

"What! know you not,

Being mechanical, you ought not walk,"

the ought not walk " calls up the history of the English infinitive. Why is the to omitted here? How did to become the so-called sign of the infinitive? Why do we spell the first syllables of woman and