tences with the key word left for the end, so that when, after a comfortable ambling through the intermediate words and phrases he at last utters it, he has the thought complete, well rounded, guarded before and after. His sentence is like himself, comfortable, leisurely, but logical and complete.

The Frenchman, on the contrary, rushes headlong to his verbal fate. Not seeing the end from the beginning, he utters the words that come to him, as fast as possible. When he reaches the end, he has said it all, it is true, but without the substantial, sure, and rounded comfortableness of the German. For that very reason he is more brilliant, more surprising. He has no time in his verbal "joy-riding" for inflections, so he has cast them nearly all away, and as he rushes on to an undetermined end he drops epigrams like fireworks to dazzle and delight us. His work and his sentence are expressions of himself. These are merely patent illustrations of the association of a people's grammar with its psychology.

Training in Logic.

But grammar has its own direct uses to the student advanced enough properly to pursue the subject. Chief among these is his training in logic. When properly studied, it leads to the analysis of thought itself. In this it goes far beyond the language lesson as described in the preceding chapter. In grammar, the sentence, which in the language lesson was recognized as a whole, by appearance and manifest function, is recognized by structure as well. The fallible judgment of the language lesson becomes infallible. The thought also, of which the sentence is the complete expression, is evidenced by structure. The beautiful and complete wedding of two ideas into a new unit, a thought, is a

revelation of perfect logic, of the greatest value to a maturing mind. This once grasped, his own speech rests upon a new and firm foundation of law. The vague gives place to the exact, and his growth in language power keeps pace with his natural growth of body and soul.

"Consider for a moment what grammar is. It is the most elementary part of logic. It is the beginning of the analysis of the thinking process. The principles and rules of grammar are the means by which the forms of language are made to correspond with the universal forms of thought. The distinctions between the various parts of speech, between the cases of nouns, the moods and tenses of verbs, the functions of participles, are distinctions in thought, not merely in words. Single nouns and verbs express objects and events, many of which can be cognized by the senses; but the modes of putting nouns and verbs together express the relations of objects and events, which can be cognized only by the intellect; and each different mode corresponds to a different relation. The structure of every sentence is a lesson in logic."-JOHN STUART MILL.

Training in Appreciation. -The study of grammar also opens the eyes of the student to many of the excellencies of admired authors. Through his knowledge of the structure of language and of its laws he is able to see to what extent and how the art of literary expression is based upon science. For example, style is often dependent upon an author's habitual use of certain grammatical forms. To Irving's use of the long, loose, compound sentence is due, in part at least, the charming ease of his narrative; while Victor Hugo produced his peculiar, forceful staccato effect by employing succes

sively short, almost sharp, simple sentences. Studying grammar from this point of view quickens the student's literary appreciation and makes him a more intelligent reader.

The teaching of grammar should make manifest these various functions of the subject, higher as well as lower, and should thus make it a broadening and enriching study, and not merely a series of exercises upon arbitrary or traditional conventionalities.

CHAPTER VII

ENGLISH GRAMMAR

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION

Grammar for Children. In discussing method in teaching grammar it is important to distinguish between methods profitable for adult minds and those suitable for the young and immature. Abstruse discussions of grammatical theory and the making of fine distinctions, especially of definition and nomenclature, are utterly futile in teaching children. Whether the word “ when used to join a dependent clause to its principal clause is a conjunctive adverb or an adverbial conjunction is of no moment to a child. The important thing for him to know is function. "When" thus used performs the office of a conjunction in that it joins clauses. It also imparts an adverbial sense to the dependent clause. The duality of function is all a child needs to know.

Treats of Function. A grammar for children, that is, for the grammar school, at first should treat chiefly of function. As children advance in maturity the study of structure should follow as explaining both the functions of words and of their various combinations and also the laws of grammar.

Grammar is of necessity an abstract study. The thing studied, the word as a part of a sentence, is at least twice removed from the object or the idea that it

represents and which alone appeals naturally to a child. In the sentence, "Reading maketh a full man," reading is to be studied grammatically as a verbal noun derived from the verb read, and as the subject of the sentence. To the child reading is an act. The word reading

as the name of the act is once removed, from the act. Reading as a noun is twice removed while reading as the subject of the sentence is still further removed. It is not easy for an adult always to grasp the difficulty that this abstraction presents to a mind still wholly busied with enlarging its knowledge of the material world. Hence grammars for children should advance very slowly into this unknown world of metaphysics. The function of a word in expressing an idea is the phase of its metaphysics first comprehensible to a child. In elementary grammars this should always be kept to the fore.

Definitions. From this point of view many grammars begin at the wrong end. The definition, which commonly is the starting-point in each topic, should be the end. In pure science the definition is the conclusion of observation and generalization. It is the sum of the essential knowledge of a subject stated in the most succinct form. A full, complete definition is the end of knowledge. It can be comprehended only by those who know exactly the meanings of all the terms used in it. The scientific definition of the Chambered Nautilus, Tetrabranchiate Cephalopod, to the scientist is full of meaning. It places the animal exactly among all the animals of the world. But to the child who knows the meaning of neither tetrabranchiate nor cephalopod, it is sheer nonsense.

Yet a child can know many inter