OPINION IN MATTERS OF CONTROVERSY.

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master cannot teach private prayer, but he can at least see that there is opportunity for it.

These observations of mine only touch the surface of this most important subject, and do not point the way to any efficient religious education. In fact, I believe that education to piety, as far as it lies in human hands, must consist almost entirely in the influence of the pious superior over his inferiors.*

In conclusion, I wish to say a word on the education of opinion. Helps lays great stress on preparing the way to moderation and open-mindedness, by teaching boys that all good men are not of the same way of thinking. It is indeed a miserable error to lead a young person to suppose that his small ideas are a measure of the universe, and that all who do not accept his formularies are less enlightened than himself. If a young man is so brought up, he either carries intellectual blinkers all his life, or, what is far more probable, he finds that something he has been taught is false, and forthwith begins to doubt everything. On the other hand, it is a necessity with the young to believe, and we could not, even if we would, bring a youth into such a state of mind as to regard everything about which there is any variety of opinion, as an open question. But he may

* What is education? It is that which is imbibed from the moral atmosphere which a child breathes. It is the involuntary and unconscious language of its parents and of all those by whom it is surrounded, and not their set speeches and set lectures. It is the words which the young hear fall from their seniors when the speakers are off their guard and it is by these unconscious expressions that the child interprets the hearts of its parents. That is education.'-Drummond's Speeches in Parliament,

be taught reverence and humility; he may be taught to reflect how infinitely greater the facts of the universe must be than our poor thoughts about them, and how inadequate are words to express even our imperfect thoughts. Then he will not suppose that all truth has been taught him in his formularies, nor that he understands even all the truth of which those formularies are the imperfect expression.*

* In what I have said on this subject, the incompleteness which is noticeable enough in the preceding essays, has found an appropriate climax. I see too that, if anyone would take the trouble, the little I have said might easily be misinterpreted. I am well aware, however, that if the young mind will not readily assimilate sharply defining religious formulæ, still less will it feel at home among the 'immensities and 'veracities.' The great educating force of Christianity I believe to be due to this, that it is not a set of abstractions or vague generalities, but that in it God reveals Himself to us in a Divine Man, and raises us through our devotion to Him. I hold therefore that religious teaching for the young should neither be vague nor abstract. Mr. Froude, in commenting on the use made of hagiology in the Church of Rome, has shown that we lose much by not following the Bible method of instruction. (See Short Studies: Lives of the Saints and Representative Men.)

APPENDIX.

CLASS MATCHES.

WITH young classes I have tried the Jesuits' plan of matches, and have found it answer exceedingly well. The top boy and the second pick up sides (in schoolboy phrase), the second boy having first choice. The same sides may be kept till the superiority of one of them is clearly established, when it becomes necessary to pick up again. The matches, if not too frequent, prove an excellent break to the monotony of school-work. A subject well suited for them (as Franklin pointed out) is spelling. The boys are told that on a certain day there will be a match in the spelling of some particular class of wordssay words of one syllable, or the preterites of verbs. For the match the sides are arranged in lines opposite one another; the dux of one side questions the dux of the other, the second boy the second, and so forth. The match may be conducted vivâ voce, or, better still, by papers previously written. Each boy has to bring on paper a list of the right sort of words. Suppose six is the number required, he will write a column with a few to spare, as some of his words may be disallowed by the umpire, i.e. the master. The master takes the first boy's list, and asks the top boy on the opposite side to spell the words. When he fails, the owner of the list has to correct him, and gets a mark for doing so. Should the owner of the list himself make a mistake, his opponent scores even if he is wrong

also. When the master has gone through all the lists in this way, he adds up the marks, and announces which side has won. The method has the great merit of stimulating the lower end of the form as well as the top; for it usually happens that the match is really decided by the lower boys, who make the most mistakes. Of course the details and the subjects of such matches admit of almost endless variation.

DOCTRINALE ALEXANDRI DE VILLA DEI.

This celebrated grammar was written by a Franciscan of Brittany, about the middle of the thirteenth century. It is in leonine verses. To the verses is attached a commentary, which is by no means superfluous. The book begins thus:

Scribere clericulis paro Doctrinale novellis,
Pluraque doctorum sociabo scripta meorum.
Jamque legent pueri pro nugis Maximiani
Quæ veteres sociis nolebant pandere caris.

[Maximianus, says the commentary, was a scriptor fabularum.]

Presens huic operi sit gratia Pneumatis almi:
Me juvat: et faciat complere quod utile fiat.
Si pueri primo nequeunt attendere plene,

Hic tamen attendat, qui doctoris est vice fungens,
Atque legens pueris laica lingua reserabit,
Et pueris etiam pars maxima plana patebit.
Voces in primis, quas per casus variabis,
Ut levius potero, te declinare docebo.

If Alexander kept his promise, he certainly had no faculty for making things easy. Take, e.g. his notion of teaching the singular of the first declension :

Rectis as, es, a, dat declinatio prima,

Atque per am propria quædam ponuntur hebræa;

APPENDIX.

Dans æ diphthongon genitivis atque dativis.
Am servat quartus, tamen an aut en reperimus,
Cum rectus fit in as vel in es, vel cum dat a Græcus.
Rectus in a Græci facit an quarto breviari.
Quintus in a dabitur, post es tamen e reperitur.
A sextus, tamen es quandoque per e dare debes
Am recti repetes, quinto sextum sociando.

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I read this wonderful grammar (not much of it, however) with great satisfaction. Our researches sometimes bring a feeling of despondency, and we think that knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. But here is some evidence to the contrary. Part of the knowledge given by Alexander about the first declension has, happily, never come even to most teachers of the present day; and, however unsatisfactory may be our condition with regard to wisdom, we certainly are in advance of those masters who used the 'Doctrinale.'

LILY'S GRAMMAR.

In some respects further simplification has since been effected as, e.g. in the matter of genders. The 'Short Introduction of Grammar,' commonly called the 'King's Book,' and afterwards Lily's Grammar,' made this startling assertion :-- Genders of nounes be seven: the masculine, the feminine, the neuter, the commune of two, the commune of three, the doubtfull, and the epicene.' The ingenious authors seem not to have discovered any Latin substantive which they were able tergeminis tollere honoribus; so they take rather unfair advantage of the fact that adjectives in ≈ do not vary in the nominative, and give this example of the common of three- The commune of three is declined with hic, hæc, and hoc: as hic, hæc, and hoc, Felix, Happy.' In justice to the old book, I must say, however, that some of the later simplifications were so managed as to be doubtful improvements. Lily's Grammar