or λaμmpós ó nλcos, which I make him re- | wisely begin, and with books we end.” peat, and feel when he repeats it that This observation from a classical it is identical in English with "The teacher in our great English schools sun shines," or "The shining sun." I then say to him, ópās ròv λaμярòν

"Do you see the bright sun?" and make him say in reply, ópw ròv žλv тòv λаμжрóν. This you may say is mere parrot work, and very cheap. All language learning is to a great extent mere intelligent parrot work; but the point here is to bring out from an intelligent learner the question, "Why did you say hos with a final s in the first sentence, and when you appealed to me if I saw the bright luminary you were talking about, you gave the word a final n? We don't do that in English." "No, not generally," I would reply; "but we say I and me, he and him, she and her; and that exactly for the same reason. In the one case, with a final s, the object is the agent, and in the other case, with final n, I am the agent, and the object is the object; and this example shows in practical working the whole mystery of the rule in the Latin grammar," A verb signifying actively governs the accusative; and in this fashion, from step to step, and from step to rule, a wise teacher, with practice always preceding, can give a practical command of the whole range of grammatical forms, as consecutively as step after step leads to the top of the house in climbing a ladder. After the mystery of the accusative case, the immediate object of verbal action has been explained, a secondary object may come in, as in dòc tý bíbλov tỷ adeλo

may seem natural enough; but it is nothing the less false. The words which we read in old Greek and Latin books are no doubt dead symbols, but they are symbols of sound, and to feel their force fully we must give them voice. If they are not alive now as living organs of national expression, we must make them alive; we cannot read them with mutual intelligence without making them alive; a Ciceronian sentence will lose all its grand swell and stately dignity if not pronounced; and if they must be spoken, all the arguments in favor of the conversational method in the case of living languages apply equally to the dead. By speaking them they become more intimately a part of ourselves; we handle them as a workman handles his tools, and shake hands with them as friend shakes hand with friend. In studying Hebrew or Sanscrit, if I could find no man to speak to, I would speak to myself; as indeed I did when studying Latin at Aberdeen some seventy years ago as a raw lad. No man spoke to me in Latin, not even the learned Dr. Melvin in learned Marischal College; but I declaimed Cicero to myself in my own room, and hurled forth his eloquent denunciations against conspiracy and treason with as much point and precision as if I had a very Catiline bodily before me. To this excellent habit of self-instruction in rhetoric I attribute, in no small degree, the complete mastery of that tongue of lawyers and rulers which I achieved at an early period of my life; and though in later years I breathed more the atmosphere of Plato than of Cicero, I may safely say that, though I might have lost hold of Latin, Latin never lost hold of me.

"Give the book to your brother," and the dative case receives its sanction and its explanation in a chain of grammatical sequences open to the meanest capacity. But some one may perhaps interpose here, and say, "All this prominence given to living dialogue is very well in the case of living On writing and composition, in aplanguages, which are studied for the propriating a foreign language, a single sake of pleasant intercourse with the sentence will suffice. It is always an living, but in the case of dead lan- admirable correction of the looseness guages, where we have neither a Cicero that is apt to be tolerated in the purely nor a Demosthenes to hear speaking, conversational style, and claims its or to speak to, we learn for the sake of place as the natural complement of reading books, and with books we grammar, just as reading does in refer

ence to observation; only it must | distinguished writers of what we call never be allowed to forget that, like modern Greek; Greek; though, properly reading, it is the servant and not the speaking, it has no more right to be master of the living soul, the living called modern Greek than the English eye, the living ear, and the living of the present day has to be called tongue. modern English. It is merely the living Greek language of the living Greek people, as English is the living English language of the living English people. It is a fashion of treating the noblest language which our schools have transmitted to us equally contrary to the principles of scientific philology, the comity of nations, and the maxims of plain common sense. The true way to make young Englishmen and Scotsmen familiar with Greek would be to send them to the land where it is spoken, to Athens, where, in converse with the politicians, literary and commercial men of that beautiful metropolis, a lad of common diligence will acquire a firmer hold of the language of Plato and the Apostle Paul in five months, than our dainty scholars often do in as many years; and this is a consummation which I piously hope that the members of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, by the proposed creation of an annual travelling fellowship, at no distant period may see their way to realize.

With regard to Greek, I have a special remark to make that I hope may at no distant period bear some notable, practical fruit. Greek is commonly spoken of as a dead language. This is a gross mistake. It never was, and, under the historical influences by which it has been transmitted to our times, never could have been, a dead language. As a living language it has a right to be treated as Italian, French, and German are, according to the historical tradition of its own orthoepy and the living practice of the living members of the people who speak it. But John Bull has not chosen to treat the Greeks like gentlemen; he supposes them not to exist, and treats their language as a choice classical delicacy, to be boiled up for native British nurture, with the seasoning of the English academical soup. Latin also, the majestic organ of the masculine character of the Romans, he has long treated in this way, though now under the influence of a learned classical philologer, the late Professor Monro of Cambridge, he is There is only one other point, of no beginning to be more than half small importance in the teaching of ashamed of this barbarism. But if his languages, on which, in conclusion, I Anglified Romānos for Romawnos, and feel myself called on to say a word — his regina, with English long "i," viz., the practical bearing on school for regeena, were an unpardonable education of the science of philology, offence against the laws, not only of or the philosophy of language, in its Latin, but of European and Asiatic present advanced state. A knowledge vocalization, his treatment of Greek is of the general laws of comparative doubly bad; for it not only perverts the philology will enable the teacher of whole vocalic genius of that noble languages to bring to the aid of the tongue, but it treats the accent, though mere memory, so dominant in the acstanding before him in every word of quisition of language, four powerful every Greek book which he uses, as allies dramatic construction, intellecnon-existent, and without ceremony tual deduction, imaginative association, says ¿yaboç instead of ¿yatós, according and historical descent. That the draboth to the markings of the Alexan-matic or imitative element has worked drian grammarians two hundred and powerfully in the formation of human fifty years before Christ, and the prac- speech will be plain enough from the tice of the whole Greek people from inspection of any dictionary; such Demosthenes and Plato, through that words as hash, smash, and dash, could long series of Byzantine writers to never have been invented to signify Koraes, Rangabe, Bikelas, and other their contraries, the outflow of smooth

and fluid and gentle forces. Closely | is suddenly undermined by a gush of allied to the vocal expression of out- violent rain from the south-west, and ward forces is the expression of in- falls down, shattered, into the glen; ward feelings by the same medium; there it remains, broken into countless there is evidently a certain dramatic splinters, and washed by many floods propriety in the words groan and howl, for long years, till at last it is borne and roar and wheeze, as vocalizing the down by the winter waters to the seainward feelings whose presence they shore, and there, after many summers' indicate. Then when expressions of bleaching, is gathered up by a few the simplest form are created in this rambling schoolgirls as smooth white fashion, the teacher can show how a pebbles. This is exactly what takes fair family of kindred sounds will grow place with language. Partly from the from them as naturally as the branches seductive force of music, partly from from the stem, the leaves from the whim, and partly from pure carelessbranches, and the blossom from the ness and loose haste, the fibre is taken buds of the tree. The student under out of the wood; and so, from the old such teaching will soon learn to make Greek avyov, which survives in the Enwords for himself; to know before-glish egg, you have the softened ovum hand what a word should be, that in Latin, the vocalized dov in classical according to the familiar laws of the Greek, and the German Ey. In the language aptly expresses a certain same way, the Greek Tarp, and the modification of meaning in the root; German Vater, and the English father, and in this way he will recognize in pass by a regular process of attrition what, to an unexercised learner would into the Gaelic athar, pronounced aur. be a new word, merely an old familiar I have only one other observation term in a new attitude or with a new to make on the utility of a knowledge dress. So much for intellectual deduc- of philological science in the practical tion. But association also has its teaching of languages, and it is this. grand field in the formation of a rich Whatever disadvantages, in the way vocabulary, as any one may see in the of natural growth and self-expansion, comparison which lies at the root of all mixed languages may lie under as comwords transferred from their primary pared with language of a homogeneous physical to their secondary intellectual type, like the primrose that gems the significance; as in Greek ovviкa, I sent meadow, or the birch that graces the together, karaλaμbávw, I take you down, glen, there is one point of superiority and ènìoraμai, I stand upon it, all natu- which belongs to a mixed language rally take words from the sphere of specially as such, and with which, in casual perception to express an anal- this respect, no most perfect, purely ogous holding or taking of the thing by original language can compete. Wheran intelligent action of mind. Then, ever the speaker of a mixed language as to historical descent, the well-trained goes, he cannot avoid finding part of student will have no difficulty in sceing his own familiar stock in the new how an elder in an old Jewish tribe acquaintance. Now English is in a (Judges viii. 14) in the course of ages notable degree a mixed language in gradually became a Presbyterian min- this sense, being made up, as everyister in the Scottish Church, and how body knows, of Norman-French — that the Tónоs or kind old grandfather of is, Gallicized Latin—and Anglo-Saxon, an old Greek family was in the course or Teutonic, with no scanty enlargeof ages transformed into the tyran-ments taken directly from pure Latin nical head called pope of the Christian and pure Greek. It is extremely diffiChurch in Rome. Another illustration cult for an Englishman to speak, even of the historical significance of language may be taken from the physical world. That nose of white quartz which looks out from the granite cairn

in common colloquy, a single sentence without using some word of a purely Latin physiognomy; and in the higher sphere of scientific knowledge and lit

erary culture it is absolutely impossible | cover some three or four columns of a for an educated man to avoid using big folio dictionary, I would give him a terms which, to a linguistically trained week for the search of all the ologies, ear, are as like to any form of Teutonic cracies, isms, and archies that he could speech as the temple of Theseus or the come across, and then I should submit Parthenon in Athens is to Durham or them to a public dissection, and behold Peterborough Cathedral. In practice with pleasure how the young philologer the accomplished handler of our mixed would stare. What an array! Theoltongue will find it to his advantage to ogy, demonology, anthropology, apolmake a twofold use of Greek: (1) in ogy, philology, amphibology, geology, giving to the speakers of our tongue a archæology, tautology, theism, atheism, perfect mastery of that higher platform polytheism, baptism, schism, chrism, of the language which, for many pur- archæism, logic, rhetoric, grammar, poses, they cannot avoid using; (2) in geography, chemistry, oxygen, hydrogiving instruction in Greek to a people gen, hydropathy, mathematics, physics, who can easily be made to understand therapeutic, antiseptic, diagnosis, bronthat, in learning the language of Plato chitis, rheumatism, gastric, pharmacy, and St. Paul, they are only restoring to homœopathy, endemic, nomadic, police, an esteemed classical friend the com- politician, church, ecclesiastic, syplete grace of the vesture of which the nod, oligarchy, aristocracy, monarchy, vulgar English tongue had only known bishop, archbishop, patriarch, monasto appropriate a part. In reference to tery, monk, deacon, presbyter, arthe first point I would have no hesita- chitecture, mausoleum, necropolis, tion in saying that, in every English necromancy, maniac, astronomy, gasschool above the very lowest platform the learner should be made perfectly familiar with the Greek letters, a matter of the easiest acquisition, in such fashion as to be able, with the help of a dictionary, to find out the significance of all the "lang-nebbit words" with which our scientific terminology abounds. And in addition to this, where inclination and leisure on the side of the teacher combine, it might be of great service in a country like Scotland, of Bible-reading Christians, to introduce the habit of learning a verse of the New Testament once a week in the original language.

If this small amount of rudimentary Greek were made a necessary constituent of an accomplished English training, the apt scholar would learn with satisfaction that, though a little learning, as the poet has it, is a dangerous thing in the hands of full-grown fools, it may be a very useful thing in the hands of persons, whether young or old, who know how to use it. Then as to the other point-viz., how Greek is to be used in making a young Englishman familiar at the first start, with the conviction that he already knows as much of that noble tongue as would

tronomy, orthodox, heterodox, heretic, cathedral, idolatry, mariolatry, pope, demon, devil, dynasty, demagogue, dimity, diabetes, diaphragm, dithyramb, dactyl. Here are already more than half a hundred Anglicized Greek words kicked out at random from a chance memory, which when he hears well may the Hellenic tyro exclaim: "Greek they say is a difficult language, but only, as I plainly see now, to those who are too dull, through a thin disguise, to greet an old friend in his true dress and his native attitude."

From The Fortnightly Review.

A NOTE ON IBSEN'S "LITTLE EYOLF.” THERE seems to be some prospect of the production of Ibsen's latest play on the London stage a fact which is, perhaps, not surprising, although it will appeal differently to different minds. "Little Eyolf" is, from one point of view, quite as worthy of study as either "Hedda Gabler" or "The Master Builder," while, from strictly dramatic standpoint, it will probably be found to be no less effective, as presented, at all events, by Mrs.

the

Charrington and Miss Robins. Never- | He was a struggling scholar once, theless, it has certain features which brought up with Asta Allmers, whom we do not usually associate with the he had always supposed to be his halfIbsenite drama. It has a more or less sister, the child of the second wife of happy dénouement; it contains at least his father. It turns out that Asta is one stage situation, a piece of tech- nothing of the kind, and that her father nique which the author generally man-is unknown; a fact which sufficiently ages to avoid; while of the principal accounts for the coldness with which personages, Asta Allmers, who is de- her mother had been treated, and signed according to the usual lines of the advanced, the intelligent, the homedestroying Scandinavian young woman, has apparently certain searchings of heart half-way through the play which lead her to abandon her enterprise, and retire into convenient obscurity with Engineer Borgheim. Indeed, there appears to have been a decisive moment in the construction of this drama when Ibsen's usually resolute heart failed him. The conclusion is not such as we are naturally led to expect from the characteristics of the personages, nor such as we usually associate with the curiously pessimistic work of this writer. Elements of possible tragedy abound, but they are not permitted to develop themselves in their logical or rational course. The hand of destiny is stayed when it had only done half its work, and, to our surprise, fugitive gleams of sunshine begin to irradiate the Scandinavian landscape.

which had frequently been noticed by the man who supposed himself to be her half-brother. Between these two, as their natures developed, there was a Platonic affection, which here and there showed signs of ripening into something more dangerous — ignored, however, on both sides, owing to the peculiar relations of their home life. At the beginning of the play, Asta has discovered in some letters of her dead mother the real truth of her origin, but the hero is unaware of it until the end of the second act, and, although he finds something more than a vague charm in her companionship, he deludes himself with the idea that it is only brotherly affection. Her pet nickname in the old days had been Eyolf, because all the names in the family began with vowels, and because she ought to have been a boy. The struggling student has gained ease and luxury by a marriage with Rita, who had brought him "the green forests and the gold," to which perpetual allusion is made in the play. When a boy is born to the pair, he naturally receives the name of Eyolf, in order to perpetuate a sort of family tradition. Unfortunately little Eyolf, at a very early stage of his life, tumbles off a table and becomes a hopeless cripple. Neither father nor mother are wholly guiltless in the matter of this accident, for the child had been left to look after itself, owing to preoccupations which are not obscurely hinted at in the course of the play.

In the Norwegian home, close to one of the fjords, with a small town nestHing below the cliffs and a little pier running into the sea, Mrs. Allmers is found unpacking the travelling bag of her husband, Alfred Allmers, who has just returned the night before from a holiday in the hills. They have been married ten years, this pair, although it can hardly be said that their union has been productive of much domestic happiness. The man is a dreamer, a visionary, one of those half-baked masculine creations which appear over and over again in Ibsen's plays; a fantastic being, deficient in will, deficient also in Mrs. Allmers is, in fact, not at all the ordinary manliness, hungering for he kind of woman whom a feeble, irresknows not what, dissatisfied for reasons olute, unheroic creature like Alfred he can scarcely understand, shifting ought to have married. She is a beaufrom one extreme of conduct and as-tiful, full-blooded, sensuous woman, piration to another at the bidding of passionately attached to her husband, his changing sentiments and emotions. passionately jealous of any thing or