In contrast with this the presence of an altar or nursery shrine, though not a plaything, gives a different tone to play—a tone of joy and heavenliness that go down into the soul and take root there to grow into something lasting and beautiful. There are flowers to be brought, and lights, and small processions, and evening recollection with quietness of devotion, with security in the sense of heavenly protection, with the realization of the "great cloud of witnesses" who are around to make play safe and holy, and there is through it all the gracious call to things higher, to be strong, to be unselfish, to be self-controlled, to be worthy of these protectors and friends in heaven.

There is another side also to the question of nursery play, and that is what may be called the play-values of the things provided. Mechanical toys are wonderful, but beyond an artificial interest which comes mostly from the elders, there is very little lasting delight in them for children. They belong to the system of over-indulgence and over-stimulation which measures the value of things by their price. Their worst fault is that they do all there is to be done, while the child looks on and has nothing to do. The train or motor rushes round and round, the doll struts about and bleats "papa," "mama," the Teddy-bear growls and dances, and the owner has but to wind them up, which is very poor amusement. Probably they are better after they have been over-wound and the mechanical part has given way, and they have come to the hard use that belongs to their proper position as playthings. If a distinction may be drawn between toys and playthings, toys are of very little play-value, they stand for fancy play, to be fiddled with; while playthings stand as symbols of real life, the harder and more primitive side of life taking the highest rank, and all that they do is really done by the child. This is the real play-value. Even things that are not playthings at all, sticks and stones and shells, have this possibility in them. Things which have been found have a history of their own, which gives them precedence over what comes from a shop; but the highest value of all belongs to the things which children have made entirely themselves—bows and arrows, catapults, clay marbles, though imperfectly round, home-made boats and kites. The play-value grows in direct proportion to the amount of personal share which children have in the making and in the use of their playthings. And in this we ought cordially to agree with them.

After the nursery age, in the school or school-room, play divides into two lines—organized games, of which we hear a great deal in school at present, and home play. They are not at all the same thing. Both have something in their favour. So much has been written of late about the value of organized games, how they bring out unselfishness, prompt and unquestioning obedience, playing for one's side and not for oneself, etc., that it seems as if all has been said better than it could be said again, except perhaps to point out that there is little relaxation in the battle of life for children who do their best at books indoors and at games out of doors—so that in self-defence a good many choose an "elective course" between the two lines of advantages that school offers, and do not attempt to serve two masters; they will do well at books or games, but not at both. If the interest in games is keen, they require a great deal of will-energy, as well as physical activity, a great deal of self-control and subordination of personal interest to the good of the whole. In return for these requirements they give a great deal, this or that, more or less, according to the character of the game; they give physical control of movement, quickness of eye and hand, promptitude in decision, observance of right moments, command of temper, and many other things. In fact, for some games the only adverse criticism to offer is that they are more of a discipline than real play, and that certainly for younger children who have no other form of recreation than play, something more restful to the mind and less definite in purpose is desirable.

For these during playtime some semblance of solitude is exceedingly desirable at school where the great want is to be sometimes alone. It is good for them not to be always under the pressure of competition—going along a made road to a definite end—but to have their little moments of even comparative solitude, little times of silence and complete freedom, if they cannot be by themselves. Hoops and skipping-ropes without races or counted competitions will give this, with the possibility of a moment or two to do nothing but live and breathe and rejoice in air and sunshine. Without these moments of rest the conditions of life at present and the constitutions for which the new word "nervy" has had to be invented, will give us tempers and temperaments incapable of repose and solitude. A child alone in a swing, kicking itself backwards and forwards, is at rest; alone in its little garden it has complete rest of mind with the joy of seeing its own plants grow; alone in a field picking wild flowers it is as near to the heart of primitive existence as it is possible to be. Although these joys of solitude are only attainable in their perfection by children at home, yet if their value is understood, those who have charge of them at school can do something to give them breathing spaces free from the pressure of corporate life, and will probably find them much calmer and more manageable than if they have nothing but organized play.

There are plenty of indoor occupations too for little girls which may give the same taste of solitude and silence, approaching to those simpler forms of home play which have no definite aim, no beginning and ending, no rules. The fighting instinct is very near the surface in ambitious and energetic children, and in the play-grounds it asserts itself all the more in reaction after indoor discipline, then excitement grows, and the weaker suffer, and the stronger are exasperated by friction. If unselfish, they feel the effort to control themselves; if selfish, they exhaust themselves and others in the battle to impose their own will. In these moods solitude and silence, with a hoop or skipping-rope, are a saving system, and restore calmness of mind. All that is wanted is freedom, fresh air, and spontaneous movement. This is more evident in the case of younger children, but if it can be obtained for elder girls it is just as great a relief. They have usually acquired more self-control, and the need does not assert itself so loudly, but it is perhaps all the greater; and in whatever way it can best be ministered to, it will repay attention and the provision that may be made for it.

One word may be merely suggested for consideration concerning games in girls' schools, and that is the comparative value of them as to physical development. The influence of the game in vogue in each country will always be felt, but it is worth attention that some games, as hockey, conduce to all the attitudes and movements which are least to be desired, and that others, as basket-ball, on the contrary tend—if played with strict regard to rules—to attitudes which are in themselves beautiful and tending to grace of movement. This word belongs to our side of the question, not that of the children. It belongs to our side also to see that hoops are large, and driven with a stick, not a hook, for the sake of straight backs, which are so easily bent crooked in driving a small hoop with a hook.

In connexion with movement comes the question of dancing. Dancing comes, officially, under the heading of lessons, most earnest lessons if the professor has profound convictions of its significance. But dancing belongs afterwards to the playtime of life. We have outlived the grim puritanical prejudice which condemned it as wrong, and it is generally agreed that there is almost a natural need for dancing as the expression of something very deep in human nature, which seems to be demonstrated by its appearance in one form or another, amongst all races of mankind. There is something in co-ordinated rhythmical movement, in the grace of steps, in the buoyancy of beautiful dancing which seems to make it a very perfect exercise for children and young people. But there are dances and dances, steps and steps, and about the really beautiful there is always a touch of the severe, and a hint of the ideal. Without these, dancing drops at once to the level of the commonplace and below it. In general, dances which embody some characteristics of a national life have more beauty than cosmopolitan dances, but they are only seen in their perfection when performed by dancers of the race to whom their spirit belongs, or by the class for whom they are intended: which is meant as a suggestion that little girls should not dance the hornpipe.

In conclusion, the question of play, and playtime and recreation is absorbing more and more attention in grown-up life. We have heard it said over and over again of late years that we tire a nation at play, and that "the athletic craze" has gone beyond all bounds. Many facts are brought forward in support of this criticism from schools, from newspapers, from general surveys of our national life at present. And those who study more closely the Catholic body say that we too are sharing in this extreme, and that the Catholic body though small in number is more responsible and more deserving of reproof if it falls from its ideals, for it has ideals. It is only Catholic girls who concern us here, but our girls among other girls, and Catholic women among other women have the privilege as well as the duty of upholding what is highest. We belong by right to the graver side of the human race, for those who know must be in an emergency graver, less reckless on the one hand, less panic-stricken on the other, than those who do not know. We can never be entirely "at play." And if some of us should be for a time carried away by the current, and momentarily completely "at play," it must be in a wave of reaction from the long grinding of endurance under the penal times. Cardinal Newman's reminiscences of the life and ways of "the Roman Catholics" in his youth showy the temper of mind against which our present excess of play is a reaction.

"A few adherents of the Old Religion, moving silently and sorrowfully about, as memorials of what had been. 'The Roman Catholics'—not a sect, not even an interest, as men conceived of it—not a body, however small, representative of the Great Communion abroad, but a mere handful of individuals, who might be counted, like the pebbles and detritus of the great deluge, and who, forsooth, merely happened to retain a creed which, in its day indeed, was the profession of a Church. Here a set of poor Irishmen, coining and going at harvest time, or a colony of them lodged in a miserable quarter of the vast metropolis. There, perhaps, an elderly person, seen walking in the streets, grave and solitary, and strange, though noble in bearing, and said to be of good family, and 'a Roman Catholic.' An old-fashioned house of gloomy appearance, closed in with high walls, with an iron gate, and yews, and the report attaching to it that 'Roman Catholics' lived there; but who they were, or what they did, or what was meant by calling them Roman Catholics, no one could tell, though it had an unpleasant sound, and told of form and superstition. And then, perhaps, as we went to and fro, looking with a boy's curious eyes through the great city, we might come to-day upon some Moravian chapel, or Quaker's meeting-house, and to-morrow on a chapel of the 'Roman Catholics': but nothing was to be gathered from it, except that there were lights burning there, and some boys in white, swinging censers: and what it all meant could only be learned from books, from Protestant histories and sermons; but they did not report well of the 'Roman Catholics,' but, on the contrary, deposed that they had once had power and had abused it. ... Such were the Catholics in England, found in corners, and alleys, and cellars, and the housetops, or in the recesses of the country; cut off from the populous world around them, and dimly seen, as if through a mist or in twilight, as ghosts flitting to and fro, by the high Protestants, the lords of the earth." ("The Second Spring.")

This it is from which we are keeping holiday; but for us it can be only a half holiday, the sifting process is always at work, the opposition of the world to the Church only sleeps for a moment, and there are many who tell us that the signs of the times point to new forms of older conflicts likely to recur, and that we may have to go, as they went on the day of Waterloo, straight from the dance to the battlefield.



CHAPTER VII.

MATHEMATICS, NATURAL SCIENCE, AND NATURE STUDY.

"The Arab told me that the stone (To give it in the language of the dream) Was "Euclid's Elements"; and "This," said he, "Is something of more worth"; and at the word Stretched forth the shell, so beautiful in shape, In colour so resplendent, with command That I should hold it to my ear. I did so, And heard that instant in an unknown tongue, Which yet I understood, articulate sounds, A loud prophetic blast of harmony." WORDSWORTH, "The Prelude," Bk. V.

Mathematics, natural science, and nature study may be conveniently grouped together, because in a study of educational aims, in so far as they concern Catholic girls, there is not much that is distinctive which practically affects these branches; during the years of school life they stand, more or less, on common ground with others. More advanced studies of natural science open up burning questions, and as to these, it is the last counsel of wisdom for girls leaving school or school-room to remember that they have no right to have any opinion at all. It is well to make them understand that after years of specialized study the really great men of science, in very gentle tones and with careful utterance, give to the world their formed opinions, keeping them ever open to readjustment as the results of fresh observations come in year after year, and new discoveries call for correction and rearrangement of what has been previously taught. It is also well that they should know that by the time the newest theory reaches the school-room and textbook it may be already antiquated and perhaps superseded in the observatory and laboratory, so that in scientific matters the school-room must always be a little "behind the times." And likewise that when scientific teaching has to be brought within the compass of a text-book for young students, it is mere baby talk, as much like the original theory as a toy engine is like an express locomotive. From which they may conclude that it is wiser to be listeners or to ask deferential questions than to have light-hearted opinions of their own on burning questions such as we sometimes hear: "Do you believe in evolution?—I do." "No, I don't, I think there is very little evidence for it." And that if they are introduced to a man of science it is better not to ask his opinion about the latest skeleton that has been discovered, or let him see that they are alarmed lest there might be something wrong with our pedigree after all, or with the book of Genesis. One would be glad, however, that they should know the names and something of the works and reputation of the Catholic men of science, as Ampere, Pasteur, and Wassmann, etc., I Who have been or are European authorities in special aches of study, so that they may at least be ready with an answer to the frequent assertion that "Catholics have done nothing for science."

But in connexion with these three subjects, not as to the teaching of them but as to their place in the education of girls, some points regarding education in general are worth considering:—

1. Mathematics in the curriculum of girls' schools has been the subject of much debate. Cool and colourless as mathematics are in themselves, they have produced in discussion a good deal of heat, being put forward to bear the brunt of the controversy as to whether girls were equal to boys in understanding and capable of following the same course of study, and to enter into competition with them in all departments of learning. Even taking into consideration many brilliant achievements and an immense amount of creditable, and even distinguished work, the answer of those who have no personal bias in the matter for the sake of a Cause—is generally that they are not. Facts would seem to speak for themselves if only on the ground that the strain of equal studies is too great for the weaker physical organization. Girls are willing workers, exceedingly intense when their heart is set upon success; but their staying power is not equal to their eagerness, and the demands made upon them sometimes leave a mortgage on their mental and physical estate which cannot be paid off in the course of a whole lifetime. In support of this, reference may be made to the [1 Appendix to "Final Report of the Commissioners (Irish Intermediate Education)," Pt. I, 1899.] report of a commission of Dublin physicians on the effects of the Intermediate Education system in Ireland, which has broken down many more girls than boys.

Apart from the question of over-pressure it is generally recognized—let it be said again, by those who have not a position to defend or a theory to advance in the matter—that the aptitude of girls for mathematical work is generally less than that of boys, and unless one has some particular view or plan at stake in the matter there is no grievance in recognizing this. There is more to be gained in recognizing diversities of gifts than in striving to establish a level of uniformity, and life is richer, not poorer for the setting forth of varied types of excellence. Competition destroys cooperation, and in striving to prove ability to reach an equal standard in competition, the wider and more lasting interests which are at stake may be lost sight of, and in the end sacrificed to limited temporary success.

The success of girls in the field of mathematics is, in general, temporary and limited, it means much less in their after life than in that of boys. For the few whose calling in life is teaching, mathematics have some after use; for those, still fewer, who take a real interest in them, they keep a place in later life; but for the many into whose life-work they do not enter, beyond the mental discipline which is sometimes evaded, very little remains. The end of school means for them the end of mathematical study, and the Complete forgetfulness in which the whole subject is soon buried gives the impression that too much may have been sacrificed to it. From the point of view of practical value it proves of little use, and as mental discipline something of more permanent worth might have taken its place to strengthen the reasoning powers. The mathematical teacher of girls has generally to seek consolation in very rare success for much habitual disappointment.

The whole controversy about equality in education involves less bitterness to Catholics than to others, for this reason, that we have less difficulty than those of other persuasions in accepting a fundamental difference of ideals for girls and boys. Our ideals of family life, of spheres of action which co-operate and complete each other, without interference or competition, our masculine and feminine types of holiness amongst canonized saints, give a calmer outlook upon the questions involved in the discussion. The Church puts equality and inequality upon such a different footing that the result is harmony without clash of interests, and if in some countries we are drawn into the arena now, and forced into competition, the very slackness of interest which is sometimes complained of is an indirect testimony to the truth that we know of better things. And as those who know of better things are more injured by following the less good than those who know them not, so our Catholic girls seem to be either more indifferent about their work or more damaged by the spirit of competition if they enter into it, than those who consider it from a different plane.

2. Natural science has of late years assumed a title to which it has no claim, and calls itself simply "Science"—presumably "for short," but to the great confusion of young minds, or rather with the effect of contracting their range of vision within very narrow limits, as if theology and Biblical study, and mental and moral, and historical and political science, had no place of mention in the rational order where things are studied in their causes.

Inquiry was made in several schools where natural science was taught according to the syllabuses of the Board of Education. The question was asked, "What is science?"—and without exception the answers indicated that science was understood to mean the study of the phenomena of the physical world in their causes. The name "Science" used by itself has been the cause of this, and has led to the usual consequences of the assumption of unauthorized titles.

Things had been working up in England during the last few years towards this misconception in the schools. On the one hand there was the great impetus given to physical research and experimental science in recent years, so that its discoveries absorbed more and more attention, and this filtered down to the school books.

On the other hand, especially since the South African war, there had been a great stir in reaction against mere lessons from books, and it was seen that we wanted more personal initiative and thought, and resourcefulness, and self-reliance, and many other qualities which our education had not tended to develop. It was seen that we were unpractical in our Instruction, that minds passed under the discipline of school and came out again, still slovenly, unobservant, unscientific in temper, impatient, flippant, inaccurate, tending to guess and to jump at conclusions, to generalize hastily, etc. It was observed that many unskilful hands came out of the schools, clumsy ringers, wanting in neatness, untidy in work, inept in measuring and weighing, incapable of handling things intelligently. There had come an awakening from the dreams of 1870, when we felt so certain that all England was to be made good and happy through books. A remedy was sought in natural science, and the next educational wave which was to roll over us began to rise. It was thought that the temper of the really scientific man, so patient in research, so accurate and conscientious, so slow to dogmatize, so deferential to others, might be fostered by experimental science in the schools, acquiring "knowledge at first hand," making experiments, looking with great respect at balances, weighing and measuring, and giving an account of results. So laboratories were fitted up at great expense, and teachers with university degrees in science were sought after. The height of the tide seemed to be reached in 1904 and 1905—to judge by the tone of Regulations for the Curricula of Secondary Schools issued by the Board of Education—for in these years it is most insistent and exacting for girls as well as boys, as to time and scope of the syllabus in this branch. Then disillusion seems to have set in and the tide began to ebb. It appeared that the results were small and poor in proportion to expectation and to the outlay on laboratories. The desirable qualities did not seem to develop as had been hoped, the temper of mind fostered was not entirely what had been desired. The conscientious accuracy that was to come of measuring a millimetre and weighing a milligramme was disappointing, and also the fluent readiness to give an account of observations made, the desired accuracy of expression, the caution in drawing inferences. The links between this teaching and after life did not seem to be satisfactorily established. The Board of Education showed the first signs of a change of outlook by the readjustment in the curriculum giving an alternative syllabus for girls, and the latitude in this direction is widening by degrees. It begins to be whispered that even in some boys' schools the laboratory is only used under compulsion or by exceptional students, and the wave seems likely to go down as rapidly as it rose.

Probably for girls the strongest argument against experimental science taught in laboratories is that it has so little connexion with after life. As a discipline the remedy did not go deeply enough into the realities of life to reach the mental defects of girls; it was artificial, and they laid it aside as a part of school life when they went home. Latitude is now given by the Board of Education for "an approved course in a combination of the following subjects: needlework, cooking, laundry-work, housekeeping, and household hygiene for girls over fifteen years of age, to be substituted partially or wholly for science and for mathematics other than arithmetic." Comparing this with the regulations of five or six years ago when the only alternative for girls was a "biological subject" instead of physics, and elementary hygiene as a substitute for chemistry, it would seem as if the Board of Education had had reason to be dissatisfied with the "science" teaching for girls, and was determined to seek a more practical system.

This practical aspect of things is penetrating into every department, and when it is combined with some study of first principles nothing better can be desired. For instance, in the teaching of geography, of botany, etc., there is a growing inclination to follow the line of reality, the middle course between the book alone and the laboratory alone, so that these subjects gather living interest from their many points of contact with human life, and give more play to the powers of children. As the text-book of geography is more and more superseded by the use of the atlas alone, and the botanical chart by the children's own drawings, and by the beautiful illustrations in books prepared especially for them, the way is opened before them to worlds of beauty and wonder which they may have for their own possession by the use of their eyes and ears and thoughts and reasonings.

3. But better than all new apparatus and books of delight is the informal study of the world around us which has grown up by the side of organized teaching of natural science. The name of "nature study" is the least attractive point about it; the reality escapes from all conventionalities of instruction, and looks and listens and learns without the rules and boundaries which belong to real lessons. Its range is not restricted within formal limits; it is neither botany, nor natural history, nor physics; neither instruction on light nor heat nor sound, but it wanders on a voyage of discovery into all these domains. And in so far as it does this, it appeals very strongly to children. Children usually delight in flowers and dislike botany, are fond of animals and rather indifferent to natural history. Life is what awakens their interest; they love the living thing as a whole and do not care much for analysis or classification; these interests grow up later.

The object of informal nature study is to put children directly in touch with the beautiful and wonderful things which are within their reach. Its lesson-book is everywhere, its time is every time, its spirit is wonder and delight. This is for the children. Those who teach it have to look beyond, and it is not so easy to teach as it is to learn. It cannot, properly speaking, be learned by teachers out of books, though books can do a great deal. But a long-used quiet habit of observation gives it life and the stored-up sweetness of years—"the old is better." The most charming books on nature study necessarily give a second-hand tone to the teaching. But the point of it all is knowledge at first-hand; yet, for children knowledge at first-hand is so limited that some one to refer to, and some one to guide them is a necessity, some one who will say at the right moment "look" and "listen," and who has looked and listened for years. Perhaps the requirement of knowledge at firsthand for children has sometimes been pushed a little too far, with a deadening effect, for the progress of such knowledge is very slow and laborious. How little we should know if we only admitted first-hand knowledge, but the stories of wonder from those who have seen urge us on to see for ourselves; and so we swing backwards and forwards, from the world outside to the books, to find out more, from the books to the world outside to see for ourselves. And a good teacher, who is an evergreen learner, goes backwards and forwards, too, sharing the work and heightening the delight. All the stages come in turn, over and over again, observation, experiment, inquiry from others whether orally or in books, and in this subject books abound more fascinating than fairy tales, and their latest charm is that they are laying aside the pose of a fairy tale and tell the simple truth.

The love of nature, awakened early, is a great estate with which to endow a child, but it needs education, that the proprietor of the estate may know how to manage it, and not—with the manners of a parvenu—miss either the inner spirit or the outward behaviour belonging to the property. This right manner and spirit of possession is what the informal "nature study" aims at; it is a point of view. Now the point of view as to the outside world means a great deal in life. Countrymen do not love nature as townsmen love it. Their affection is deeper but less emotional, like old friendships, undemonstrative but everlasting. Countrymen see without looking, and say very little about it. Townsmen in the country look long and say what they have seen, but they miss many things. A farmer stands stolidly among the graces of his frisky lambs and seems to miss their meaning, but this is because the manners cultivated in his calling do not allow the expression of feeling. It is all in his soul somewhere, deeply at home, but impossible to utter. The townsman looks eagerly, expresses a great deal, expresses it well, but misses the spirit from want of a background to his picture. One must know the whole round of the year in the country to catch the spirit of any season and perceive whence it comes and whither it goes.

On the other hand, the countryman in town thinks that there is no beauty of the world left for him to see, because the spirit there is a spirit of the hour and not of the season, and natural beauty has to be caught in evanescent appearances—a florist's window full of orchids in place of his woodlands—and his mind is too slow to catch these. This too quick or too slow habit of seeing belongs to minds as well as to callings; and when children are learning to look around them at the world outside, it has to be taken into account. Some will see without looking and be satisfied slowly to drink in impressions, and they are really glad to learn to express what they see. Others, the quick, so-called "clever" children, look, and judge, and comment, and overshoot the mark many times before they really see. These may learn patience in waiting for their garden seeds, and quietness from watching birds and beasts, and deliberation, to a certain extent, from their constant mistakes. To have the care of plants may teach them a good deal of watchfulness and patience; it is of greater value to a child to have grown one perfect flower than to have pulled many to pieces to examine their structure. And the care of animals may teach a great deal more if it learns to keep the balance between silly idolatry of pets and cruel negligence—the hot and cold extremes of selfishness.

Little gardens of their own are perhaps the best gifts which can be given to children. To work in them stores up not only health but joy. Every flower in their garden stands for so much happiness, and with that happiness an instinct for home life and simple pleasures will strike deep roots. From growing the humblest annual out of a seed-packet to grafting roses there is work for every age, and even in the dead season of the year the interest of a garden never dies.

In new countries gardens take new aspects. A literal version of a garden party in the Transvaal suggests possibilities of emancipation from the conventionalities which weary the older forms of entertainment with us. Its object was not to play in a garden, but to plant one. Guests came from afar, each one bringing a contribution of plants. The afternoon was spent in laying out the beds and planting the offerings, in hard, honest, dirty work. And all the guests went home feeling that they had really lived a day that was worth living, for a garden had been made, in the rough, it is true; but even in the rough in such a new country a garden is a great possession.

The outcome of these considerations is that the love of nature is a great source of happiness for children, happiness of the best kind in taking possession of a world that seems to be in many ways designed especially for them. It brings their minds to a place where many ways meet; to the confines of science, for they want to know the reasons of things; to the confines of art, for what they can understand they will strive to interpret and express; to the confines of worship, for a child's soul, hushed in wonder, is very near to God.



CHAPTER VIII.

ENGLISH.

"If Chaucer, as has been said, is Spring, it is a modern, premature Spring, followed by an interval of doubtful weather. Sidney is the very Spring—the later May. And in prose he is the authentic, only Spring. It is a prose full of young joy, and young power, and young inexperience, and young melancholy, which is the wilfulness of joy; . . .

"Sidney's prose is treasureable, not only for its absolute merits, but as the bud from which English prose, that gorgeous and varied flower, has unfolded."—FRANCIS THOMPSON, "The Prose of Poets."

The study of one's own language is the very heart of a modern education; to the study of English, therefore, belongs a central place in the education of English-speaking girls. It has two functions: one is to become the instrument by which almost all the other subjects are apprehended; the other, more characteristically its own, is to give that particular tone to the mind which distinguishes it from others. This is a function that is always in process of further development; for the mind of a nation elaborates its language, and the language gives tone to the mind of the new generation. The influences at work upon the English language at present are very complex, and play on it with great force, so that the changes are startling in their rapidity. English is not only the language of a nation or of a race, not even of an empire; and the inflowing elements affirm this. We have kindred beyond the empire, and their speech is more and more impressing ours, forging from the common stock, which they had from us, whole armouries full of expressive words, words with edge and point and keen directness which never miss the mark. Some are unquestionably an acquisition, those which come from States where the language is honoured and studied with a carefulness that puts to shame all except our very best. They have kept some gracious and rare expressions, now quaint to our ear, preserved out of Elizabethan English in the current speech of to-day. These have a fragrance of the olden time, but we cannot absorb them again into our own spoken language. Then they have their incisive modern expressions so perfectly adapted for their end that they are irresistible even to those who cling by tradition to the more stable element in English. These also come from States in which language is conscious of itself and looks carefully to literary use, and they do us good rather than harm. Other importations from younger States are too evidently unauthorized to be in any way beautiful, and are blamed on both sides of the ocean as debasing the coinage. But these, too, are making their way, so cheap and convenient are they, and so expressive.

It is needful in educating children to remember that this strong inflowing current must be taken into account, and also to remember that it does not belong to them. They must first be trained in the use of the more lasting elements of English; later on they may use their discretion in catching the new words which are afloat in the air, but the foundations must be laid otherwise. It takes the bloom off the freshness of young writers if they are determined to exhibit the last new words that are in, or out of season. New words have a doubtful position at first. They float here and there like thistle-down, and their future depends upon where they settle. But until they are established and accepted they are out of place for children's use. They are contrary to the perfect manner for children. We ask that their English should be simple and unaffected, not that it should glitter with the newest importations, brilliant as they may be. It is from the more permanent element in the language that they will acquire what they ought to have, the characteristic traits of thought and manner which belong to it. It is not too much to look for such things in children's writing and speaking. The first shoots and leaves may come up early though the full growth and flower may be long waited for. These characteristics are often better put into words by foreign critics than by ourselves, for we are inclined to take them as a whole and to take them for granted; hence the trouble experienced by educated foreigners in catching the characteristics of English style, and their surprise in finding that we have no authentic guides to English composition, fend that the court of final appeal is only the standard Of the best use. The words of a German critic on a Collection of English portraits in Berlin are very happily pointed and might be as aptly applied to writing as to painting.

"English, utterly English! Nothing on God's earth could be more English than this whole collection. The personality of the artist (it happened that he was an Irishman), the countenances of the subjects, their dress, the discreetly suggestive backgrounds, all have the characteristic touch of British culture, very refined, very high-bred, very quiet, very much clarified, very confident, very neat, very well-appointed, a little dreamy and just a little wearisome—the precise qualities which at the same time impress and annoy us in the English."

This is exactly what might be said of Pater's writing, but that is full-grown English. Pater is not a model for children, they would find him more than "just a little wearisome." If anyone could put into words what Sir Joshua Reynolds' portraits of children express, that would be exactly what we want for the model of their English. They can write and they can speak in a beautiful way of their own if they are allowed a little liberty to grow wild, and trained a little to climb. Their charm is candour, as it is the charm of Sir Joshua's portraits, with a quiet confidence that all is well in the world they know, and that everyone is kind; this gives the look of trustful innocence and unconcern. Their writing and talking have this charm, as long as nothing has happened to make them conscious of themselves. But these first blossoms drop off, and there is generally an intermediate stage in which they can neither speak nor write, but keep their thoughts close, and will not give themselves away. Only when that stage is past do they really and with full consciousness seek to express themselves, and pay some attention to the self-expression of others. This third stage has its May-day, when the things which have become hackneyed to our minds from long use come to them with the full force of revelations, and they astonish us by their exuberant delight. But they have a right to their May-day and it ought not to be cut short; the sun will go down of itself, and then June will come in its own time and ripen the green wood, and after that will come pruning time, in another season, and then the phase of severity and fastidiousness, and after that—if they continue to write—they will be truly themselves.

In every stage we have our duty to do, encouraging and pruning by turns, and, as in everything else, we must begin with ourselves and go on with ourselves that there may be always something living to give, and some growth; for in this we need never cease to grow, in knowledge, in taste, and in critical power. The means are not far to seek; if we really care about these things, the means are everywhere, in reading the best things, in taking notes, in criticising independently and comparing with the best criticism, in forming our own views and yet keeping a willingness to modify them, in an attitude of mind that is always learning, always striving, always raising its standard, never impatient but permanently dissatisfied.

We have three spheres of action in the use of the language—there is English to speak, English to write, And the wide field of English to read, and there are vital interests bound up in each for the after life of children. As they speak, so will be the tone of their intercourse; as they write, so will be the standard of their habits of thought; and as they read so will be the atmosphere of their life, and the preparation of their judgment for those critical moments of choice which are the pivots upon which its whole action moves.

If practice alone would develop it to perfection, speaking ought to be easy to learn, but it does not prove so, and especially when children are together in schools the weeds grow faster than the crop, and the crop is apt to be thin. The language of the majority holds its own; children among children can express with a very small vocabulary what they want to say to each other, whereas an only child who lives with its elders has usually a larger vocabulary than it can manage, which makes the sayings of only children quaint and almost weird, as the perfection of the instrument persuades us that there is a full-grown thought within it, and a child's fancy suddenly laughs at us from under the disguise.

There is general lamentation at present because the art of conversation has fallen to a very low ebb; there is, in particular, much complaint of the conversation of girls whose education is supposed to have been careful. The subjects they care to talk of are found to be few and poor, their power of expressing themselves very imperfect, the scanty words at their command worked to death in supplying for all kinds of things to which they are not appropriate. We know that we have a great deal of minted gold in the English language, but little of it finds its way into our general conversation, most of our intercourse is carried on with small change, a good deal of it even in coppers, and the worst trouble of all is that so few seem to care or to regret it. Perhaps the young generation will do so later in life, but unless something is done for them during the years of their education it does not seem probable, except in the case of the few who are driven by their professional work to think of it, or drawn to it by some influence that compels them to exert themselves in earnest.

Listening to the conversation of girls whose thoughts and language are still in a fluid state, say from the age of 17 to 25, gives a great deal of matter for thought to those who are interested in education, and this point of language is of particular interest. There are the new catch-words of each year; they had probably a great piquancy in the mouth of the originator but they very soon become flat by repetition, then they grow jaded, are more and more neglected and pass away altogether. From their rising to their setting the arc is very short—about five years seems to be the limit of their existence, and no one regrets them. We do not seem to be in a happy vein of development at present as to the use of words, and these short-lived catch-words are generally poor in quality. Our girl talkers are neither rich nor independent in their language, they lay themselves under obligations to anyone who will furnish a new catch-word, and especially to boys from whom they take rather than accept contributions of a different kind. It is an old-fashioned regret that girls should copy boys instead of developing themselves independently in language and manners; but though old-fashioned, it will never cease to be true that what was made to be beautiful on its own line is dwarfed and crippled by straining it into imitation of something else which it can never be.

What can be done for the girls to give them first more independence in their language and then more power to express themselves? Probably the best cure, food and tonic in one, is reading; a taste for the best reading alters the whole condition of mental life, and without being directly attacked the defects in conversation will correct themselves. But we could do more than is often done for the younger children, not by talking directly about these things, but by being a little harder to please, and giving when it is possible the cordial commendation which makes them feel that what they have done was worth working for.

Recitation and reading aloud, besides all their other uses, have this use that they accustom children to the sound of their own voices uttering beautiful words, which takes away the odd shyness which some of them feel in going beyond their usual round of expressions and extending their vocabulary. We owe it to our language as well as to each individual child to make recitation and reading aloud as beautiful as possible. Perhaps one of the causes of our conversational slovenliness is the neglect of these; critics of an older generation have not ceased to lament their decay, but it seems as if better times were coming again, and that as the fundamentals of breathing and voice-production are taught, we shall increase the scope of the power acquired and give it more importance. There is a great deal underlying all this, beyond the acquirement of voice and pronunciation. If recitation is cultivated there is an inducement to learn by heart; this in its turn ministers to the love of reading and to the formation of literary taste, and enriches the whole life of the mind. There is an indirect but far-reaching gain of self-possession, from the need for outward composure and inward concentration of mind in reciting before others. But it is a matter of importance to choose recitations so that nothing should be learnt which must be thrown away, nothing which is not worth remembering for life. It is a pity to make children acquire what they will soon despise when they might learn something that they will grow up to and prize as long as they live. There are beautiful things that they can understand, if something is wanted for to-day, which have at the same time a life that will never be outgrown. There are poems with two aspects, one of which is acceptable to a child and the other to the grown-up mind; these, one is glad to find in anthologies for children. But there are many poems about children of which the interest is so subtle as to be quite unsuitable for their collection. Such a poem is "We are seven." Children can be taught to say it, even with feeling, but their own genuine impression of it seems to be that the little girl was rather weak in intellect for eight years old, or a little perverse. Whereas Browning's "An incident of the French camp" appeals to them by pride of courage as it does to us by pathos. It may not be a gem, poetically speaking, but it lives. As children grow older it is only fair to allow them some choice in what they learn and recite, to give room for their taste to follow its own bent; there are a few things which it is well that every one should know by heart, but beyond these the field is practically without limits.

Perfect recitation or reading aloud is very rare and difficult to acquire. For a few years there was a tendency to over-emphasis in both, and, in recitation, to teach gesture, for which as a nation we are singularly inapt. This is happily disappearing, simplicity and restraint are regaining their own, at least in the best teaching for girls. As to reading aloud to children it begins to be recognized that it should not be too explicit, nor too emphatic, nor too pointed; that it must leave something for the natural grace of the listener's intelligence to supply and to feel. There is a didactic tone in reading which says, "you are most unintelligent, but listen to ME and there may yet be hope that you will understand." This leaves the "poor creatures" of the class still unmoved and unenlightened; "the child is not awakened," while the more sensitive minds are irritated; they can feel it as an impertinence without quite knowing why they are hurt. It is a question of manners and consideration which is perceptible to them, for they like what is best—sympathy and suggestiveness rather than hammering in. They can help each other by their simple insight into these things when they read aloud, and if a reading lesson in class is conducted as an exercise in criticism it is full of interest. The frank good-nature and gravity of twelve-year-old critics makes their operations quite painless, and they are accepted with equal good humour and gravity, no one wasting any emotion and a great deal of good sense being exchanged.

Conversation, as conversation, is hard to teach, we can only lead the way and lay down a few principles which keep it in the right path. These commonplaces of warning, as old as civilization itself, belong to manners and to fundamental unselfishness, but obvious as they are they have to be said and to be repeated and enforced until they become matters of course. Not to seem bored, not to interrupt, not to contradict, not to make personal remarks, not to talk of oneself (some one was naive enough to say "then what is there to talk of"), not to get heated and not to look cold, not to do all the talking and not to be silent, not to advance if the ground seems uncertain, and to be sensitively attentive to what jars—all these and other things are troublesome to obtain, but exceedingly necessary. And even observing them all we may be just as far from conversation as before; how often among English people, through shyness or otherwise, it simply faints from inanition. We can at least teach that a first essential is to have something to say, and that the best preparation of mind is thought and reading and observation, to be interested in many things, and to give enough personal application to a few things as to have something worth saying about them.

By testing in writing every step of an educational course a great deal of command over all acquired materials may be secured. As our girls grow older, essay-writing becomes the most powerful means for fashioning their minds and bringing out their individual characteristics.

It is customary now to begin with oral composition,—quite rightly, for one difficulty at a time is enough. But when children have to write for themselves the most natural beginning is by letters. A great difference in thought and power is observable in their first attempts, but in the main the structure of their letters is similar, like the houses and the moonfaced persons which they draw in the same symbolic way. Perhaps both are accepted conventions to which they conform—handed down through generations of the nursery tradition—though students of children are inclined to believe that these symbolical drawings represent their real mind in the representation of material things. Their communications move in little bounds, a succession of happy thoughts, the kind of things which birds in conversation might impart to one another, turning their heads quickly from side to side and catching sight of many things unrelated amongst themselves. It is a pity that this manner is often allowed to last too long, for in these stages of mental training it is better to be on the stretch to reach the full stature of one's age rather than to linger behind it, and early promise in composition means a great deal.

To write of the things which belong to one's age in a manner that is fully up to their worth or even a little beyond it, is better than to strain after something to say in a subject that is beyond the mental grasp. The first thing to learn is how to write pleasantly about the most simple and ordinary things. But a common fault in children's writing is to wait for an event, "something to write about," and to dispose of it in three or four sentences like telegrams.

The influences which determine these early steps are, first, the natural habit of mind, for thoughtful children see most interesting and strange things in their surroundings; secondly, the tone of their ordinary conversation, but especially a disposition that is unselfish and affectionate. Warm-hearted children who are gifted with sympathy have an intuition of what will give pleasure, and that is one of the great secrets of letter-writing. But the letters they write will always depend in a great measure on the letters they receive, and a family gift for letter-writing is generally the outcome of a happy home-life in which all the members are of interest to each other and their doings of importance.

What sympathy gives to letter-writing, imagination gives to the first essays of children in longer compositions. Imagination puts them in sympathy with all the world, with things as well as persons, as affection keeps them in touch with every detail of the home world. But its work is not so simple. Home affection is true and is a law to itself; if it is present it holds all the little child's world in a right proportion, because all heavenly affection is bound up with it. But the awakening and the rapid development of imagination as girls grow up needs a great deal of guidance and training. Fancy may overgrow itself, and take an undue predominance, so that life is tuned to the pitch of imagination and not imagination to the pitch of life. It is hardly possible and hardly to be desired that it should never overflow the limits of perfect moderation; if it is to be controlled, there must be something to control, in pruning there must be some strong shoots to cut back, and in toning down there must be some over-gaudy colours to subdue. It is better that there should be too much life than too little, and better that criticism should find something vigorous enough to lay hold of, rather than something which cannot be felt at all. This is the time to teach children to begin their essays without preamble, by something that they really want to say, and to finish them leaving something still unsaid that they would like to have expressed, so as not to pour out to the last drop their mind or their fancy on any subject. This discipline of promptitude in beginning and restraint at the end will tell for good upon the quality of their writing.

But the work of the imagination may also betray something unreal and morbid—this is a more serious fault and means trouble coming. It generally points to a want of focus in the mind; because self predominates in the affections feeling and interest are self-centred. Then the whole development of mind comes to a disappointing check—the mental power remains on the level of unstable sixteen years old, and the selfish side develops either emotionally or frivolously—according to taste, faster than it can be controlled.

There are cross-roads at about sixteen in a girl's life. After two or three troublesome years she is going to make her choice, not always consciously and deliberately, but those who are alive to what is going on may expect to hear about this time her speech from the throne, announcing what the direction of her life is going to be. It is not necessarily the choice of a vocation in life, that belongs to an order of things that has neither day nor hour determined for it, but it is when the mental outlook takes a direction of its own, literary, or artistic, or philosophical, or worldly, or turning towards home; it may sometimes be the moment of decisive vocation to leave all things for God, or, as has so often happened in the lives of the Saints, the time when a child's first desire, forgotten for a while, asserts itself again. In any case it is generally a period of new awakenings, and if things are as they ought to be, generally a time of deep happiness—the ideal hour in the day of our early youth. All this is faithfully rendered in the essays of that time; we unsuspectingly give ourselves away.

After this, for those who are going to write at all, comes the "viewy" stage, and this is full of interest. We are so dogmatic, so defiant, so secure in our persuasions. It is impossible to believe that they will ever alter. Yet who has lived through this phase of abounding activity and has not found that, at first with the shock of disappointment, and afterwards without regret, a memorial cross had to be set by our wayside, here and there, marking the place of rest for our most enthusiastic convictions. In the end one comes to be glad of it, for if it means anything it means a growth in the truth.

The criticism of essays is one of the choice opportunities which education offers, for then the contact of mind with mind is so close that truth can be told under form of criticism, which as exhortation would have been less easily accepted. It is evident that increasing freedom must be allowed as the years go on, and that girls have a right to their own taste and manner—and within the limits of their knowledge to form their own opinions; but it is in this period of their development that they are most sensitive to the mental influence of those who are training them, and their quick responsiveness to the best is a constant stimulus to go on for their sakes, discovering and tasting and training one's discernment in what is most excellent.

From this point we may pass to what is first in the order of things—but first and last in this department of an English education—and that is reading, with the great field of literature before us, and the duty of making the precious inheritance all that it ought to be to this young generation of ours—heiresses to all its best.

English literature will be to children as they grow up, what we have made it to them in the beginning. There will always be the exceptional few, privileged ones, who seem to have received the key to it as a personal gift. They will find their way without us, but if we have the honour of rendering them service we may do a great deal even for them in showing where the best things lie, and the way to make them one's own. But the greater number have to be taken through the first steps with much thought and discernment, for taste in literature is not always easy to develop, and may be spoiled by bad management at the beginning. We are not very teachable as a nation in this matter—our young taste is wayward, and sometimes contradictory, it will not give account of itself, very likely it cannot. We have inarticulate convictions that this is right, and suits us, and something else is wrong as far as our taste is concerned, and that we have rights to like what we like and condemn what we do not like, and we have gone a considerable way along the road before we can stop and look about us and see the reason of our choice. English literature itself fosters this independent spirit of criticism by its extraordinary abundance, its own wide liberty of spirit, its surpassing truthfulness. Our greatest poets and our truest do not sing to an audience but to their Maker and to His world, and let anyone who can understand it catch the song, and sing it after them. No doubt many have fallen from the truth and piped an artificial tune, and they have had their following. But love for the real and true is very deep and in the end it prevails, and as far as we can obtain it with children it must prevail.

Their first acquaintance with beautiful things is best established by reading aloud to them, and this need not be limited entirely to what they can understand at the time. Even if we read something that is beyond them, they have listened to the cadences, they have heard the song without the words, the words will come to them later. If there is good ground for the seed to fall upon, and we sow good seed, it will come up with its thirtyfold or more, as seed sown in the mind seems always to come up, whether it be good or bad, and even if it has lain dormant for years. There are good moments laid up in store for the future when the words, which have been familiar for years, suddenly awake to life, and their meaning, full-grown, at the moment when we need it, or at the moment when we are able to understand its value, dawns upon the mind. Then we are grateful to those who invested these revenues for us though we knew it not. We are not grateful to those who give us the less good though pleasant and easy to enjoy. A little severity and fastidiousness render us better service. And this is especially true for girls, since for them it is above all important that there should be a touch of the severe in their taste, and that they should be a little exacting, for if they once let themselves go to what is too light-heartedly popular they do not know where to draw the line and they go very far, with great loss to themselves and others.

One of the beautiful things of to-day in England is the wealth of children's literature. It is a peculiar grace of our time that we are all trying to give the best to the children, and this is most of all remarkable in the books published for them. We had rather a silly moment in which we kept them babies too long and thought that rhymes without reason would please them, and another moment when we were just a little morbid about them; but now we have struck a very happy vein, free from all morbidness, very innocent and very happy, abounding in life and in no way unfitting for the experiences that have to be lived through afterwards. No one thinks it waste of time to write and illustrate books for children, and to do their very best in both, and the result of historical research and the most critical care of texts is put within the children's reach with a real understanding of what they can care for. A true appreciation of the English classics must result from this, and the mere reading of what is choice is an early safeguard against the less good.

Reading, without commentary, is what is best accepted; we are beginning to come back to this belief. It is agreed almost generally that there has been too much comment and especially too much analysis in our teaching of literature, and that the majesty or the loveliness of our great writers' works have not been allowed to speak for themselves. We have not trusted them enough, and we have not trusted the children so much as they deserved. The little boy who said he could understand if only they would not explain has become historical, and his word of warning, though it may not have sounded quite respectful, has been taken into account. We have now fewer of the literary Baedeker's guides who stopped us at particular points, to look back for the view, and gave the history and date of the work with its surrounding circumstances, and the meaning of every word, while they took away the soul of the poem, and robbed us of our whole impression. We realize now that by reading and reading again, until they have mastered the music, and the meaning dawns of itself, children gain more than the best annotations can give them; these will be wanted later on, but in the beginning they set the attitude of mind completely wrong for early literary study in which reverence and receptiveness and delight are of more account than criticism. The memory of these things is so much to us in after life, and if the living forms of beautiful poems have been torn to pieces to show us the structure within, and the matter has been shaken out into ungainly paraphrase and pursued with relentless analysis until it has given up the last secret of its meaning, the remembrance of this destructive process will remain and the spirit will never be the same again. The best hope for beautiful memories is in perfect reading aloud, with that reverence of mind and reticence of feeling which keeps itself in the background, not imposing a marked per-Bonal interpretation, but holding up the poem with enough support to make it speak for itself and no more. There is a vexed question about the reading allowed to girls which cannot be entirely passed over. It is a point on which authorities differ widely among themselves, according to the standard of their family, the whole early training which has given their mind a particular bent, the quality of their own taste and their degree of sensitiveness and insight, the views which they hold about the character of girls, their ideas of the world and the probable future surroundings of those whom they advise, as well as many other considerations. It is quite impossible to arrive at a uniform standard, or at particular precepts or at lists of books or authors which should or should not be allowed. Even if these could be drawn up, it would be more and more difficult to enforce them or to keep the rules abreast of the requirements of each publishing season. In reading, as in conduct, each one must bear more and more of their own personal responsibility, and unless the law is within themselves there is no possibility of enforcing it.

The present Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, when rector of St. John's Seminary, Wonersh, used to lay down the following rules for his students, and on condition of their adhering to these rules he allowed them great freedom in their reading, but if they were disregarded, it was understood that the rector took no responsibility about the books they read:—

1. "Be perfectly conscientious, and if you find a book is doing you harm stop reading it at once. If you know you cannot stop you must be most careful not to read anything you don't know about."

2. "Be perfectly frank with your confessor and other superiors. Don't keep anything hidden from them."

3. "Don't recommend books to others which, although they may do no harm to you, might do harm to them."

These rules are very short but they call for a great deal of self-control, frankness, and discretion. They set up an inward standard for the conscience, and, if honestly followed, they answer in practice any difficulty that is likely to arise as to choice of reading. [1—In the Appendix will be found a pastoral letter by Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster, then Bishop of Southwark, bearing on this subject and full of instruction for all who have to deal with it.]

But the application of these rules presupposes a degree of judgment and self-restraint which are hardly to be found in girls of school-room years, and before they can adjust themselves to the relative standard and use the curb for themselves, it is necessary to set before them some fixed rules by which to judge. While life is young and character plastic and personal valuations still in formation, the difficulty is to know what is harmful. "How am I to know," such a one may ask, "whether what seems harmful to me may not be really a gain, giving me a richer life, a greater expansion of spirit, a more independent and human character? May not this effect which I take to be harm, be no more than necessary growing pains; may it not be bringing me into truer relation with life as it is, and as a whole?"

There will always be on one side timid and mediocre minds, satisfied to shut themselves up and safeguard what they already have; and on the other more daring and able spirits who are tempted beyond the line of safety in a thirst for discovery and adventure, and are thus swept out beyond their own immature control. Books that foster the spirit of rebellion, of doubt and discontent concerning the essentials and inevitable elements of human life, that tend to sap the sense of personal responsibility, and to disparage the cardinal virtues and the duty of self-restraint as against impulse, are emphatically bad. They are particularly bad for girls with their impressionable minds and tendency to imitation, and inclination to be led on by the glamour of the old temptation; "Your eyes shall be opened; you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."

To follow a doubt or a lie or a by-way of conduct with the curiosity to see what comes of it in the end, is to prepare their own minds for similar lines of thought and action, and in the crises of life, when they have to choose for themselves, often unadvised and without time to deliberate, they are more likely to fall by the doubt or the lie or the spirit of revolt which has become familiar to them in thought and sympathy.



CHAPTER IX.

MODERN LANGUAGES.

"All nations have their message from on high, Each the messiah of some central thought, For the fulfilment and delight of Man: One has to teach that Labour is divine; Another Freedom and another Mind; And all, that God is open-eyed and just, The happy centre and calm heart of all." JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

We cannot have a perfect knowledge even of our own language without some acquaintance with more than one other, either classical or modern. This is especially true of English because it has drawn its strength and wealth from so many sources, and absorbed them into itself. But this value is usually taken indirectly, by the way, and the understanding of it only comes to us after years as an appreciable good. It is, however, recognized that no education corresponding to the needs of our own time can be perfected or even adequately completed in one language alone. Not only do the actual conditions of life make it imperative to have more than one tongue at our command from the rapid extension of facilities for travelling, and increased intercourse with other nations; but in proportion to the cooling down of our extreme ardour for experimental science in the school-room we are returning to recognize in language a means of education more adapted to prepare children for life, by fitting them for intercourse with their fellow-creatures and giving them some appreciative understanding of the works of man's mind. Thus languages, and especially modern languages, are assuming more and more importance in the education of children, not only with us, but in most other countries of Europe. In some of them the methods are distinctly in advance of ours.

Much has been written of late years in the course of educational discussions as to the value of classical studies in education. As the best authorities are not yet in agreement among themselves it would be obviously out of place to add anything here on the subject. But the controversy principally belongs to classics in boys' schools; as to the study of Latin by girls, and in particular to its position in Catholic schools, there is perhaps something yet to be said.

In non-Catholic schools for girls Latin has not, even now, a great hold. It is studied for certain examinations, but except for the few students whose life takes a professional turn it scarcely outlives the school-room. Girl students at universities cannot compete on equal terms with men in a classical course, and the fact is very generally acknowledged by their choosing another. Except in the rarest instances—let us not be afraid to own it—our Latin is that of amateurs, brilliant amateurs perhaps, but unmistakable. Latin, for girls, is a source of delight, a beautiful enrichment of their mental life, most precious in itself and in its influence, but it is not a living power, nor a familiar instrument, nor a great discipline; it is deficient in hardness and closeness of grain, so that it cannot take polish; it is apt to betray by unexpected transgressions the want of that long, detailed, severe training which alone can make classical scholarship. It is usually a little tremulous, not quite sure of itself, and indeed its best adornment is generally the sobriety induced by an overshadowing sense of paternal correction and solicitude always present to check rashness and desultoriness, and make it at least "gang warily" with a finger on its lip; and their attainments in Latin are, at the best, receptively rather than actively of value.

In Catholic girls' schools, however, the elements of Latin are almost necessity. It is wanting in courtesy, it is almost uncouth for us to grow up without any knowledge of the language of Holy Church. It is almost impossible for educated Catholics to have right taste in devotion, the "love and relish" of the most excellent things, without some knowledge of our great liturgical prayers and hymns in the original. We never can really know them if we only hear them halting and plunging and splashing through translations, wasting their strength in many words as they must unavoidably do in English, and at best only reaching an approximation to the sense. The use of them in the original is discipline and devotion in one, and it strengthens the Catholic historical hold on the past, with a sense of nearness, when we dwell with some understanding on the very words which have been sung in the Church subsisting in all ages and teaching all nations. This is our birthright, but it is not truly ours unless we can in some degree make use of what we own.

It has often been pointed out that even to the most uneducated amongst our people Latin is never a dead language to Catholics, and that the familiar prayers at Mass and public devotions make them at home in the furthest countries of the earth as soon as they are within the church doors. So far as this, it is a universal language for us, and even if it went no further than the world-wide home feeling of the poor in our churches it would make us grateful for every word of Latin that has a familiar sound to them, and this alone might make us anxious to teach Catholic children at school, for the use of prayer and devotion, as much Latin as they can learn even if they never touch a classic.

Our attitude towards the study of modern languages has had its high and low tides within the last century. We have had our submissive and our obstinate moods; at present we are rather well and affably disposed. French used to be acknowledged without a rival as the universal language; it was a necessity, and in general the older generation learned it carefully and spoke it well. At that time Italian was learned from taste and German was exceptional. Queen Victoria's German marriage and all the close connexion that followed from it pressed the study of German to the front; the influence of Carlyle told in the same direction, and the study of Italian declined. Then in our enthusiasm for physical sciences for a time we read more German, but not German of the best quality, and in another line we were influenced by German literary criticism. Now, the balance of things has altered again. For scholarship and criticism German is in great request; in commercial education it is being outrun by Spanish; for the intercourse of ordinary life Germans are learning English much more eagerly than we are learning German. We have had a fit of—let us call it—shyness, but we are trying to do better. We recognize that these fits of shyness are not altogether to our credit, not wholly reasonable, and that we are not incapable of learning foreign languages well. We know the story of the little boy reprimanded by the magistrate for his folly in running away from home because he was obliged to learn French, and his haughty reply that if foreigners wished to speak to him they might learn his language. But our children have outgrown him, as to his declaration if not as to his want of diligence, and we are in general reforming our methods of teaching so much that it will soon be inexcusable not to speak one or two languages well, besides our own.

The question of pronunciation and accent has been haunted by curious prejudices. An English accent in a foreign tongue has been for some speakers a refuge for their shyness, and for others a stronghold of their patriotism. The first of these feared that they would not be truly themselves unless their personality could take shelter beneath an accent that was unmistakably from England, and the others felt that it was like hauling down the British flag to renounce the long-drawn English "A-o-o." And, curiously, at the other extreme, the slightest tinge of an English accent is rather liked in Paris, perhaps only among those touched with Anglomania. But now we ought to be able to acquire whatever accent we choose, even when living far away from every instructor, having the gramophone to repeat to us untiringly the true Spanish "manana" and the French "ennui." And the study of phonetics, so much developed within the last few years, makes it unpardonable for teachers of modern languages to let the old English faults prevail.

We have had our succession of methods too. The old method of learning French, with a bonne in the nursery first, and then a severely academic governess or tutor, produced French of unsurpassed quality-But it belonged to home education, it required a great deal of leisure, it did not adapt itself to school curricula in which each child, to use the expressive American phrase, "carries" so many subjects that the hours and minutes for each have to be jealously counted out. There have been a series of methods succeeding one another which can scarcely be called more than quack methods of learning languages, claiming to be the natural method, the maternal method, the only rational method, etc. Educational advertisements of these have been magnificent in their promise, but opinions are not entirely at one as to the results.

The conclusions which suggest themselves after seeing several of these methods at work are:—

1. That good teachers can make use of almost any method with excellent results but that they generally evolve one of their own.

2. That if the teachers and the children take a great deal of trouble the progress will be very remarkable, whatever method is employed, and that without this both the classical and the "natural" methods can accomplish very little.

3. That teachers with fixed ideas about children and about methods arrest development.

4. That the self-instruction courses which "work out at a penny a lesson" (the lesson lasts ten minutes and is especially recommended for use in trams), and the gramophone with the most elaborate records, still bear witness to the old doctrine that there is no royal road to the learning of languages, and that it is not cheap in the end. In proportion to the value we set upon perfect acquirement of them will be our willingness to spend much labour upon foundations. By this road we arrive again at the fundamentals of an educator's calling, love and labour.

The value to the mind of acquiring languages is so great that all our trouble is repaid. It is not utilitarian value: what is merely for usefulness can be easily acquired, it has very little beauty. It is not for the sake of that commonplace usefulness that we should care to spend trouble upon permanent foundations in any tongue. The mind is satisfied only by the genius of the language, its choicest forms, its characteristic movement, and, most of all, the possession of its literature from within, that is to say of the spirit as it speaks to its own, and in which the language is most completely itself.

The special fitness of modern languages in a girl's education does not appear on the surface, and it requires more than a superficial, conversational knowledge to reap the fruit of their study. The social, and at present the commercial values are obvious to every one, and of these the commercial value is growing very loud in its assertions, and appears very exacting in its demands. For this the quack methods promise the short and easy way, and perhaps they are sufficient for it. A knowledge sufficient for business correspondence is not what belongs to a liberal education; it has a very limited range, hard, plain, brief communications, supported on cast-iron frames, inelastic forms and crudest courtesies, a mere formula for each particular case, and a small vocabulary suited to the dealings of every branch of business. We know the parallel forms of correspondence in English, which give a means of communication but not properly a language. Even the social values of languages are less than they used to be, as the finer art of conversation has declined. A little goes a long way; the rush of the motor has cut it short; there is not time to exchange more than a few commonplaces, and for these a very limited number of words is enough.

But let our girls give themselves time, or let time be allowed them, to give a year or two to the real study of languages, not in the threadbare phrases of the tourist and motorist, nor to mere drawing-room small talk; not with "matriculation standard" as an object, but to read the best that has been written, and try to speak according to the best that can be said now, and to write according to the standard of what is really excellent to-day; then the study of modern languages is lifted quite on to another plane. The particular advantage of this plane is that there is a view from it, wider in proportion to the number of languages known and to the grasp that is acquired of each, and the particular educational gift to be found there is width of sympathy and understanding. Defective sympathies, national and racial prejudices thrive upon a lower level. The elect of all nations understand one another, and are strangely alike; the lower we go down in the various grades of each nation the more is the divergency accentuated between one and another. Corresponding to this is mutual understanding through language; the better we possess the language of any nation the closer touch we can acquire with all that is theirs, with their best.

A superficial knowledge of languages rather accentuates than removes limitations, multiplies mistakes and embitters them. With a half-knowledge we misunderstand each other's ideals, we lose the point of the best things that are said, we fail to catch the aroma of the spices and the spirit of the living word; in fact, we are mere tourists in each other's mental world, and what word could better express the attitude of mind of one who is a stranger, but not a pilgrim, a tramp of a rather more civilized kind, having neither ties nor sympathies nor obligations, nothing to give, and more inclined to take than to receive. To create ties, sympathies, and obligations in the mental life, is a grace belonging to the study of languages, and makes it possible to give and receive hospitality on the best terms with the minds of those of other nations than our own. This is particularly a gift for the education of girls, since all graces of hospitality ought to be peculiarly theirs. To lift them above prejudices, to make them love other beauties than those of their own mental kindred, to afford them a wider possibility of giving happiness to others, and of making themselves at home in many countries, is to give them a power over the conditions of life which reaches very far into their own mental well-being and that of others, and makes them in the best meaning of the word cosmopolitan.

The choice of languages to be learnt must depend upon many considerations, but the widest good for English girls, though not the most easy to attain, is to give them perfect French. German is easier to learn from its kinship with our own language, but its grammar is of less educational value than French, and it does not help as French does to the acquirement of the most attractive of other European languages.

As a second language, however, and for a great deal that is not otherwise attainable, German is in general the best that can be chosen. Italian and Spanish have their special claims, but at present in England their appeal is not to the many. German gives the feeling of kindred minds near to us, ourselves yet not ourselves; with primitive Teutonic strength and directness, with a sweet freshness of spring in its more delicate poetry, and both of these elements blended at times in an atmosphere as of German forests in June. In some writers the flicker of French brilliancy illumines the depth of these Teutonic woods, producing a German which, in spite of the condemnation of the Emperor, we should like to write ourselves if the choice were offered to us.