Browning; more to Hood than to Tennyson; as much to Mrs. Barbauld as to Shelley; and to Anna Jameson as much as to Mrs. Browning. As an editor, Mr. Cleveland is conscientious and faithful. His work is done carefully and well, and we have no doubt that the present volume will prove, as it well deserves to be, even more widely useful and acceptable than was the original work.

5

MR. SILBER, already favorably known by his "Progressive Greek Lessons," has prepared a brief Latin course for beginners, which contains an epitome of Latin Grammar, followed by reading exercises, notes, and references to standard Latin grammars, together with a vocabulary and exercises in Latin prose composition. So much is comprised in so little space, that at first the course appears superficial. It is not superficial, however, though somewhat too precise and detailed. It will be more useful for cramming purposes, previous to examinations, than as a book for beginners. The Reader resembles others of its kind, being based upon Jacobs'. The notes are good, formed after the excellent model set by Dr. Owen in his Greek Commentaries. They certainly approach the happy medium--few translations of passages, but many references to the Grammar. This course is a good one for the student, good to make him think. It is one of the best that we have seen for the use of those taking up the study at an advanced age.

6

SOME time ago a friend urged Mr. Boyd to annotate some of the older English Prose Classics for use in schools. Yielding to this suggestion, he has published Bacon's Essays, with critical and explanatory notes. The general plan of the work is excellent, but the execution is very defective. There is too much padding about it. Reviews of Bacon's Essays, by five authors, and critical estimates of his ability by six others, are prefixed. The student should have been permitted to form an estimate for himself. The notes themselves are voluminous, and in many cases of no value whatever. The greater number might have been omitted with profit, and had the book been half its size it would have been twice as useful. The volume seems to have been manufactured on the principle which obtains among druggists: unless the bulk is large and the price high, people will not take the medicine.

A Correction. In the advertisement of the "Northern Monthly," in our December number, the price for three copies to one club was said to be $7. It should have been $7.50.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

Messrs. Hurd & Houghton: ITALIAN JOURNEYS. By W. D. HOWELLS. $2.00.-FOUR YEARS AMONG THE SPANISH AMERICANS. By F. HASSAUREK. $2.00.

Messrs. Harper & Bros.: THE HUGUENOTS. By SAMUEL SMILES. THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. By SARAH TYTLER. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE 19TH CENTURY. BY ALBERT BARNES. Mr. M. W. Dodd: ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA. By the author of "The Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family." $1.75.-THE CLIFFORD HOUSEHOLD. By J. F. MOORE. $1.25.-THE LITTLE Fox; OR, THE STORY OF MCCLINTOCK'S ARCTIC EXPEDITION. Written for the young. $1.00.

(*) A LATIN READER. By WM. B. SILBER, A. M. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. 12mo, Pp. 226.

LORD BACON'S ESSAYS. BY JAMES BOYD. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co.

THE NEW YORK TEACHER,

AND

AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY.

MARCH, 1868.

1

DEMORALIZING INFLUENCES IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM.

THE

a

HE sense of being invested with authority is apt to be accompanied by a feeling of self-satisfaction; hence, as the world is finding out, unchecked authority is dangerous. Having authority to do a deed, a man is likely to consult his own judgment finally as to the rightfulness of the deed; and the premises of his judgment are wont to be made up too much from his own feeling and too little from justice. The Golden Rule is a law that operates in communities of equals, where each can exercise force upon the others, rather than in communities where there is individual or class rule. The principle of justice that is in man develops into character under the chastening influences of a force from others that represses his tendencies to injustice and welcomes his tendencies to do what is just. Apply these principles to the conditions of the school-room. The teacher, says Mr. Abbott, must sustain in the school the position of a monarch. He does so in fact. Parents, commissioners, boards of education, the community, serve as a check only in extreme cases. And when a case is brought before them, the teacher is, save in rare instances, formally protected and adjudged innocent.

The assumption, conscious or unconscious, that what the teacher purposes is to be carried out, whether questioned or unquestioned by the pupils, is an example of egotism or a warning against it, which will either be imitated and will develop in the characters of the pupils, or else will be regarded by them with contempt. The latter condition is, especially, a fruitful source of disorder. Let a teacher lose the respect of his pupils, and his authority will be laughed at, save where he can excite fear. Thus the law of force becomes the law of the school. A teacher, in whom this sort of egotism is developed in considerable degree, will quite likely be observed to be boastful of his faculty of seeing in a good many places at once. The abuse of power has divested him of opportunity to trust to pupil honor. Pupils are the mice and he is

the cat. If pupil honor remain, it will manifest itself as in the mouse toward its fellow mice. But pupil honor under such influences is quite likely to wane before the practice of pupil artifice. We might enumerate many other phases of demoralization which will ensue from this sort of abuse of power alone.

Had a man
Vengeance,

Scenes are enacted in many school-rooms which are of extremely demoralizing influence. Let us relate a few facts. A man-teacher of a large school of little boys, seized one of the number, the other day, and pulled him upon a table, face downward, and thrashed him, while the eyes of all the children were staring at the act. The deed was done with the unreasoning, sudden, and violent fierceness of vengeance. Had one boy done it to another boy, it would have brought the doer to a severe ordeal of lecturing and punishment. Had a big boy done it to the little boy, the doer would have been called a bully. done it in the street, he would have been called a brute. bullying, brutality, was the example. One day, a lady came to us to ask if we would teach her two boys privately. They had been attending the public school, she said, and she had taken them away because they complained that the teacher, a man, was accustomed "to strike the boys' heads together." We were disposed to be incredulous until a fact came to light in another school. A young lady, who had just entered upon her work there as a teacher in the primary department, came home filled with indignation, and related the following. The principal, a man, was sitting at a desk writing. A glass partition separated the room from another, in which was a large class of small boys. Some of these boys moved from their seats about the floor. The teacher saw them through the partition, and sprang into the room. He seized two of the boys and "knocked their heads together, and then flung one of them hard against the wall." "He did it angrily," she added. Now, what must be the effect of such scenes upon the staring school? Want of selfcontrol, absence of deliberation, lack of good judgment, anger, malice, brutality, are among the elements of the example set,—an example set by one the pupil is taught to look up to as a superior being, a model in all things to one, almost, who cannot sin. Either the pupil will learn to do likewise, or will be so disgusted that he will learn little or nothing from such a teacher.

To enumerate other examples is unnecessary. Demoralizing influences are at work in many of our schools. Not in marked degrees in all. There are teachers who are characterized by calm, deliberate action— action which, though authoritative, is not arbitrary. From such we could learn. And there are teachers who would be thus, but are not. The existence of these demoralizing influences suggests the question of how they should be eliminated. The general answer is, Let the teacher's

authority be put more under check. How? is the special inquiry. We reply, let parents, commissioners, boards, the community, yes, and let teachers too, recognize the principle that absolute authority in the individual is not trustworthy. Let more attention be given to reports from pupils of scenes similar to those we have related, and let no report pass without occasioning strict inquiry; and if the report be found to be true, let the teacher be formally convicted of it and exposed. Exposure is the great cure-all. Abuses grow where complaint is suppressed. Let teachers feel, in their sphere of duty among the young and weak, over whom they are set to rule, the force which men feel in their daily contact with men the force of equal power in others demanding the acting out of the Golden Rule.

WE

GRAMMATICAL NOTES.

VII.-Genders.

E have been examining a number of authors on English Grammar, including the most recent, in reference to the subject of gender. With a single exception, we find their idea of gender to be false, and their definitions to be correspondingly incorrect.

Some would have it that gender is a "distinction,"-"the distinction of nouns in reference to the sex of their objects," says one. Says another, "a grammatical distinction in nouns expressing the natural distinction of sex. Says a third, "a distinction of nouns in regard to sex:" a fourth, "the distinction of objects in regard to sex :" a fifth, "the distinction of sex." And then we have three, or perhaps four, of these distinctions;" so that John, a word of the masculine gender, would be a word of the masculine "distinction;" hat, a word of the neuter "distinction ;" and so on. As one of our ablest writers* on English Grammar justly remarks, "This definition, if closely examined, will be found to involve not only a total misconception of the meaning of the term gender, as employed by the old grammarians, but an absurd (not to say ridiculous) assertion, whatever we may understand by the word gender. Of what could it be asserted with propriety, that it is the distinction of sex? If we could find such a thing, what business has it among the terms of grammar? From this absurd definition, what could be expected to follow, but confusion and inconsistency in every matter of detail founded upon it?"

* Mulligan: Gram. Structure of Eng. Language.

Others call gender a "property,"-" that property which distinguishes objects with regard to sex;" "that property which distinguishes objects as male or female;" "that property of the noun which distinguishes it in reference to sex." As with those who call gender a distinction, so with these there is an uncertainty whether gender distinguishes objects or distinguishes words. There can be no question, however, that "whatever gender may be, whilst it is recognized as a term of grammar, it has reference to words, not to objects." But this is not all. If gender is a property, and there are two or more genders, there are two or more properties; so that a noun of the masculine gender is of the masculine "property;" one of the feminine gender is of the feminine "property. This is sufficient to show that gender is not a property any more than a distinction.

Goold Brown and others prefer to call genders "modifications," "modifications that distinguish objects in regard to sex." A more absurd definition could hardly be framed. Frazee, in language peculiarly lucid, says, "Gender is a modification of names to distinguish the sexes!" Josephine may be said to be a modification of the name Joseph, as Henrietta is of Henry. But Josephine and Henrietta are not the genders of Joseph and Henry. Nor do these authors mean to imply that they are. It may be asked, What, then, do they mean? If John is a noun of the masculine gender, and a gender is a modification, what are we to understand by John's being of the masculine "modification?" To us, we confess, the expression, like the definition itself, conveys no meaning at all appropriate to the subject.

Genders are neither distinctions, properties, nor modifications. They are simply the classes into which nouns and pronouns are divided with reference to the sex which the objects denoted by them have, or are regarded as having. The gender (Fr. genre, Lat. genus) of a noun, then, is the class to which that noun belongs, considered with reference to the sex of the object or objects named by it.

But how many genders are there? If gender meant sex, as Dr. Pinneo says it does, there could evidently be but two genders. And yet Dr. Pinneo gives us four. Another author gives us three; but very absurdly adds, "Strictly speaking, as there are but two sexes, nouns have but two genders; but for the sake of practical convenience, we apply to them three genders, by calling that a gender which is no gender." Reasoning after the same fashion, we might say, "Strictly speaking, as there are but two sexes, there are but two classes of animals, males and females; but for the sake of practical convenience, we say there are three classes, calling that a class which is no class." But gender is not sex; nor does the number of the sexes necessarily limit the genders to a corresponding number. Strictly speaking, there are as many genders as there are