the manufacturing industry of different nations. The superiority of British manufactures in several articles of trade, may be adverted to; but, whilst the instructor thus excites in the breast of his young hearers legitimate feelings of national pride, he must sedulously caution them against any unjust depreciation or contempt of other nations. Finally, every subject may, by the force of association, come within the scope of these conversations. The more extensive the information, and the higher the moral and intellectual character of the instructor, the more beneficial will these lessons be to young people.

The few suggestions which have been offered in this specimen of a conversation on objects will, we hope, be deemed sufficient as a guide for applying to any object this scheme of intellectual training and practical instruction. We have only hinted at the various topics which directly arise from the different modes of considering an object, and have left to the skill and discretion of the instructor the numberless subjects, moral or intellectual, which may branch out of each question, because the advantage of digressions entirely depends on circumstances which he can best appreciate. Every teacher may diverge from the course laid down here, or dilate on such subjects as he feels himself most competent to treat, and on such also as he finds that his pupils desire or require to be informed upon.

Among the works which contain useful hints on some of the subjects adverted to in these conversations, we would particularly notice Pestalozzi's "Manuel des Mères," Dr. Mayo's "Lessons on Objects," C. Knight's "Exercises for the Senses," Richard Dawes's "Suggestive Hints towards Improved Secular Instruction."

(19) p. 310.

PHONETICAL SLIPS FOR TEACHING TO READ.

In the following alphabetical classification regard has been had to the syllabical combinations of the English language, consistently with the typographical arrangement which may facilitate the contact of the letters of the different columns, so as to form various syllables and words.

The strips of letters in this Table, or others formed of larger letters and similarly arranged, can be cut vertically, and pasted on slips of wood or paste-board of just sufficient breadth to allow the letters of the different columns to form syllables by their juxta-position. See Text, Book iv., p. 310, for the manner of using these slips.

(20) p. 415.

ON THE INEFFICIENCY OF ETYMOLOGY AS AN AUXILIARY TO THE STUDY OF THE NATIVE TONGUE,

"The derivation of words is not always an index to their true signification. Artery means literally air vessel, yet it circulates blood; physiology is derived from two Greek words, phusis, nature, and logos, discourse; yet, in English, it is used to designate only the doctrine of animal and vegetable functions. In teaching etymology, therefore, we must often guard the student against the errors into which it would lead him; so that the difficulty of understanding his native tongue is, to that extent, increased by his studies in Greek and Latin...... It makes no difference in the possibility of comprehending the meaning of a word, whether the sound was invented by the English themselves, or borrowed by them from the Greeks or Romans. In learning the meaning of Greek words, the student must connect the thing signified directly with the expression, because he has no etymology to render the Greek intelligible. But if he can comprehend Greek by merely connecting the idea with the word, why may he not learn to understand English by a similar process?"-G. COMBE, Lectures on Popular Education.

"It is never from an attention to etymology, which would frequently mislead us, but from custom, the only infallible guide in this matter, that the meanings of words in present use must be learned."-CAMPBELL, Philosophy of Rhetoric.

"For my own part, I am strongly inclined to think that the instances are few indeed (if there are, in truth, any instances,) in which etymology furnishes effectual aids to guide us, either in writing with propriety the dialect of our own times, or in fixing the exact signification of ambiguous terms, or in drawing the line between expressions which seem to be nearly equivalent. In all such cases, nothing can, in my opinion, be safely trusted to, but that habit of accurate and vigilant induction, which, by the study of the most approved models of writing and of thinking, elicits gradually and insensibly the precise notions which our best authors have annexed to their phraseology......

One thing I can state as a fact confirmed by my own observation, so far as it has reached; that I have hardly met with an individual, habitually addicted to etymological studies, who wrote his own language with ease and elegance."-Dugald Stewart, Philosophical Essays.

"Words in the course of time change their meanings, as well as their spellings and pronunciations, and we do not look to etymology for their present meanings. If I should call a man a knave and a villain, he would hardly be satisfied with my telling him that one of the words originally signified only a lad or servant, and the other an under ploughman, or the inhabitant of a village. It is by their present usage only that the meaning of words is to be determined."-B. FRANKLIN, Works, vol. ii. p. 363.

"Il est si rare que l'étymologie d'un mot coincide avec sa véritable acception, qu'on ne peut justifier ces sortes de recherches par le prétexte de mieux fixer par là le sens des mots. Les écrivains qui savent le plus de langues sont ceux qui commettent le plus d'impropriétés. Trop occupés de l'ancienne énergie d'un terme, ils oublient sa valeur actuelle et négligent les nuances qui font la grâce et la force du discours."—RIVAROL, De l'Universalité de la Langue Française.

"En passant d'une langue à une autre, les mots changent, pour ainsi dire, de patrie; leur ancienne figure, leur première signification s'altère et se décompose: ce serait donc à tort qu'on voudrait tirer de leur origine des inductions positives; c'est un guide qu'on peut consulter, mais qu'on ne doit pas toujours suivre." - FR. GUIZOT, Dictionnaire universel des

Synonymes.

(21) Vol. ii., p. 97.

ON INTERLINEAL TRANSLATION.

"But, if such a man cannot be got, who speaks good Latin, and, being able to instruct your son in all these parts of knowledge, will undertake it by this method, the next best is to have him taught as near this way as may be, which is by taking some easy and pleasant book, such as 'Æsop's Fables,' and writing the