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we do not share his opinion, nor greatly respect it. But he must consider that it is one thing to torture a man in order to make him lie, and another to question him in order to show that he is lying, or that he is forgetful, or stupid, or that he is prejudiced and incapable of seeing or describing without colouring what he sees and describes. The accuracy of a witness, his opportunities of observation, and his capacity of telling what he has seen, without confounding it with what he has conjectured, are as important as his sincerity. "The difficulty of inducing witnesses to restrain, within moderate limits, the intermixture of their inferences with the narrative of their perceptions, is well known to experienced cross-examiners." Experience seems to have proved that a cross-examination is the most effectual method of distinguishing the inferences, and the perceptions, as well as of testing the veracity of the witness. That may be a false opinion, nevertheless, and if a writer of Mr. Trollope's ability holds a different view, which is founded upon thought and knowledge, it is very desirable that he should express it; but he is bound to know about the matter first, and then he is bound to express himself rationally. He must show where the present test fails, and he must be prepared to substitute another. When he contents himself with saying that cross-examination "is opposed to truth and civilisation," he expresses so coarse and summary a conclusion, of an intricate question, in language so silly and unmeaning, that he does not deserve to be answered with gravity or respect.

We have probably said enough about an author who is so familiar to our readers. His name will not stand among the highest in his own department of literature; but some at least of his books deserve to live. Writers of fiction may be divided roughly into two classes, Cervantes being the unquestioned leader of the one, and Le Sage, though not so unapproachable in his greatness, being the leader of the other. Mr. Trollope is of the house of Le Sage. Incomparably inferior to the great master in power and genius, he yet resembles him in this, that he represents ordinary characters, and paints real life as it is, only omitting the poetry. The highest object of imaginative literature he neither attains nor aims at. His novels will not raise our minds very far above the weary trivialities of common life; but although they contain nothing very great or elevated, they are simple, natural, and moral, and if we can be amused with a picture of common life as all people with any healthy curiosity of mind must be he paints it for us, of the present generation, with an almost unrivalled delicacy and discernment. No novels are more pleasant than the best of Mr. Trollope's.

ART. V.-Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster. By D'ARCY W. THOMPSON. Edinburgh, 1864.

THIS Volume is the work of an accomplished scholar, and of a man of original mind and feeling. It will be suggestive, and in some respects instructive, to those who take a special interest in education; and it will amuse and delight the larger class of readers who have more taste for human nature than for abstract discussions. The author is evidently not a mere classical scholar: still less is he a mere grammarian, although a great deal of his book is occupied with grammatical questions. He heartily enjoys the great writers of antiquity, and looks at them with his own eyes and from his own point of view. But he appears to be as thorough a student of the modern as of the ancient languages and literatures. He is altogether free from the pedantry and prejudices of the ordinary classical student or teacher. His faults are indeed all the other way. He is almost too free from conventional and traditional views of things, and too partial to what many will call his own crotchets. We should think, indeed, that his brethren, in our schools and Universities, would find more in his theories to arouse than to convince them; but whatever else they may think of him, they will never call him dull or commonplace. Freshness of feeling and vigour of mind are the primary conditions of writing a good style, but fine scholarship is a great aid to the acquisition of that accomplishment. Mr. Thompson claims for himself the possession of one qualification for the task of writing a good grammar: "The directness and plainness of speech that characterize my countrymen." We heartily wish that a large proportion of his countrymen could write with the singular force and accuracy which we recognise in this volume, and which appear to be the result as much of a careful linguistic training, as of strong natural endowments. A critic may indeed question the taste as well as the judgment displayed in occasional passages of the book, but he will attribute these defects (if they are so to be regarded) rather to the oddities of a humorist and "sentimentalist" (in the better sense of the word), than to inadequate power or ignorance of the true effect of words. There are other passages in the book of great beauty and pathos, the effect of which is enhanced by the careful but unforced simplicity with which they are expressed. Even the most unfavourable critic of Mr. Thompson's manner and opinions will often envy him the happy force and invariable liveliness of his language.

The title of the book is by no means sufficient to indicate the

nature of its contents. It is rather suggestive of that kind of work in which the author relies more on a literary faculty for writing about everything in general and himself in particular, than on the interest and importance of his subject. Such books have no doubt their value; they are said to be the favourite food of a large class of readers, while they are excessively distasteful to an ungenial minority. To glorify one's-self in print is at least a more venial offence than to do so in conversation. In the former case you cannot bore your neighbour, except with his own consent. It is undeniable, also, that some of the pleasantest works, both of ancient and modern literature, consist, in a great degree, of personal revelations. In no other works are we brought into such immediate contact with real qualities of human nature and real modes of human experience. But even if all such writers were equally sincere, there is a great difference in the original value of the nature and experience which they reveal. Thus the admirers of Horace and Montaigne may be forgiven if they are less partial to the self-communings of those who write about themselves because they have no ideas beyond their own unremarkable pursuits. But whatever may have been suggested to us by the title of the Day Dreams, we were happy to find that it was not to be included in this category. Mr. Thompson does indeed found his remarks on his own personal experience; he tells us a great deal of what he has gone through, of what he is doing, and of what he hopes or wishes yet to do. He allows us to see into his own heart and mind; and he secures our personal sympathy, more even than our assent to his opinions. But he does all this without being offensive. And the reason why he succeeds where other clever men fail, is that, notwithstanding the personal form which his book has assumed, he is not primarily interested in himself, or in any ideal of himself, which he wants the public to admire. He does not care to be taken for a man of more learning, or genius, or fashion, or knowledge of the world, than he really is. He writes in the first person because it is through his own experience that his convictions have come to him, and because it is the most direct way of bringing those convictions to bear on others. He has a doctrine to enforce, which has been first enforced upon himself by the labours, the mistakes, the success, the aspirations of his own life. He shows us everywhere that he cares more for his calling than for himself, and that he thinks of himself chiefly as an instrument for furthering and elevating the work to which he has devoted his life.

What, then, is the purpose which gives 'consistency to this medley of personal memories and experience, of humour and

In no

sentiment, of ingenious philological speculation and literary criticism, which comes before us under the title of Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster? The author hints to us in his happily chosen motto, that his book is meant to be "not a dream, but a blessing." If from nothing else, yet from his fine and touching dedication, we should gather that it was written under the influence of serious feeling, and with the hope of effecting some worthy object. That object may be briefly described as the elevation of his own profession. We do not mean solely or chiefly its elevation in social estimation; although he has expressed without bitterness, but with proper pride, his sense of the vulgar prejudices which unfortunately have not yet ceased to disgrace the public opinion of Scotland in this matter. position of life is it more important to employ a gentleman and a man of superior culture than in that of a teacher of boys who are expected themselves to become gentlemen and men of educated minds; nor is it possible for a community to secure the hearty and willing services of such men so long as their professional position is a drawback, and not, as in all other cases of professional position, an advantage to them. But although he touches this in passing, it is not the burden which Mr. Thompson feels intolerable, and which he wants to get rid of. He seems long to have felt that there is something radically wrong in all our elementary teaching; that it is a dreary and monotonous routine, wearisome and unprofitable alike to teacher and taught. He dwells in a vein of genial discontent on his own experience in both capacities. It is not with the subject but with the method of instruction that he finds fault. He upholds the advantages of linguistic training and of high classical culture in the education of the mind; and he fully realizes the pleasure as well as the profit which attend the more advanced stages of a classical education. But he is oppressed by the sense of the long uninteresting road which leads to these stages; he sees that only a few of those who start upon it proceed to their journey's end, and that they reach it fatigued rather than refreshed, and perhaps weakened rather than invigorated. He fancies that this road can be made shorter, easier, more attractive; and he desires for the sake both of master and pupils that the elementary teaching of the ancient languages may become a refined and intellectual exercise to the former, and their acquisition a natural and delightful process to the latter.

Before expressing our assent to or dissent from these sanguine views, we shall quote a passage in which Mr. Thompson expresses them in his own language :

"And all the while, we should be endeavouring to deceive our little fellows, by concealing from them the real amount of their increasing

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stores. So long as we abstained from using a pedantic and dull grammar, we should easily deceive, in this respect, a number of their parents, who would be firmly persuaded that their children were learning nothing. For in the minds of many people, education is inseparably connected with the idea of difficulty and tediousness. They imagine that a great deal must be accomplishing, when painful efforts are being made. They find a grim satisfaction in the feeling of obstruction. So, when you row a boat against the stream, you hear the water ruckling at the prow, and you feel virtue go out of you at every sweep of the oar; and the boat is almost stationary. But, when you row with the current, you hear no noise of rippling; you scarcely feel your oar; and the boat is gliding like a swan.

"Some such method as that above-and remember, a vivâ voce method can, at the best, be drawn in but faintest outline upon paperwould lead boys to catch with rapidity sentences of great length, so long as the construction were not involved. They would almost insensibly be brought to think in Latin; that is to say, it would very soon sound as ridiculous in their ears, to put ille after amo as to put he after I love; and this intuitive perception of the grammar of a language, as connected with its musical sound, is one of the first requisites for a subsequent thorough knowledge of, and capacity of easy handling the same. And the process for acquiring this intuitive perception is not so difficult as it is usually thought to be. It is, in fact, not a very high mental process. It is acquired by postilions abroad and foreign waiters here, without great difficulty or delay. But although it is not a highly intellectual acquisition, it is a wonderfully useful one, to serve as a foundation for a really intellectual structure. And I am convinced that some such process should be employed with a novice in Latin, and in any language he may be approaching; and that it is a positive cruelty to pin him wholly down for a year to monotonous lessons of memory, or to worry him too soon with formal rules for parsing."

We think the main value of Mr. Thompson's book, apart from its literary interest, is, that he has raised this question. He is contending against a real evil, and his position and experience render him an important witness both as to the evil and its remedy. Some reform is undoubtedly needed, chiefly for this reason, that a large number of boys never acquire the elements of Latin and Greek thoroughly, while they find no time for learning anything else. We wish to see a change in both of these points, and Mr. Thompson's book will be very useful if it direct attention to the subject. Still his evidence and his suggestions must, we think, be received with considerable qualifications. We think that he exaggerates the sense of dreariness which boys experience in grappling with the difficulties of Latin and Greek as they are usually taught. No one indeed looks back on the struggle with those difficulties as among the bright memories of his school-days. Yet we doubt if any boy is conscious of that sense of barren and wasted labour which a