forms the basis of our language, and furnishes a large proportion of its most expressive terms, it yet is represented in but a minority of the contents of a modern English dictionary. We have from the Hebrew the verb cover; from the Arabic, the ultimate root of carve and grave, a root from which cherub, a carved or graven figure, is derived. We are in these latter days importing many new words, and have many of earlier adoption, from the French and the German. Quandary is the French qu'en dirai, "what shall I say of it?" There is reason to apprehend that our common utterance of surprise or grief, oh dear, is a corruption of the irreverent French exclamation, Oh Dieu. Loafer, which has been recently naturalized, is the German laufer, from laufen, to run, a man who runs about from place to place because he has nothing to do, an idler.

We trust that we shall be excused for the miscellaneousness of the examples we have given, and they certainly have been numerous enough for a single Article. We pass then to what in the sermons of the elder divines was termed the "improvement."

We would urge, as a deduction from what has been said, the prime importance, in education, of the study of other languages than our own. We need not dwell on the worth of the French and the German. The latter, with the influx of German immigrants, is of such essential service in business and in social intercourse, and the former is so needed in European travel, to which so many look forward with a hope more and more likely to be realized with every year, that no added motives to their study can be required. We would therefore confine ourselves to the classical languages. We grant that few who study them are likely to acquire the capacity of reading them with perfect ease. Yet they are of the highest importance as studies in grammar, as giving a better knowledge than can be otherwise attained of language in general, and thus of one's own language. Just as he who compares the bones of two or more animals, learns more of the anatomy of either of them than he could acquire by spending thrice the time on one alone, so does he who can compare two or more languages understand the grammar of his own as no student of but one language can possibly understand it. mastery is thus obtained over language as the instrument of

thought, which gives one ease and courage in speaking and writing his own language. There is a certain stiffness and awkwardness, an adherence to narrow rules, a lack of enterprise in word and phrase, by which it is always easy to detect even a writer of worthily established reputation who knows the English alone. In this point of view, by no means the least part of the benefit from the study of the ancient languages is derived from conversance with the sources of a very large proportion of our words in current use; for while we are indebted chiefly to the Anglo-Saxon for particles, auxiliaries and qualifying terms, we have drawn from the classical tongues, and most of all from the Latin, much more copiously for the nouns in most frequent use, for the terms appertaining to special departments of knowledge, for the adjectives denoting specific qualities, and for the verbs that imply speech and action. For these reasons the Latin, at least, ought to be studied by every person who means to have a serviceable education.

Is it asked how time is to be found for Latin in the brief term of school-life, to which so large a number of young persons, particularly boys destined for business, are limited? We would answer that time may be made for it by omitting much. that is utterly useless. In geography and history a great deal is learned that is forgotten as soon as it is recited,—catalogues of obscure names, details of insignificant battles, series of unimportant dates. The memory was formerly packed with a large amount of material which might be spared now that good reference-books are so abundant. In some schools time is wasted in the study of definitions, often less intelligible than the words defined.* But the greatest waste is in English grammar. No person ought ever to look into an English Grammar till after studying French, Latin, or both, and then it should be into a book containing not one-fourth of the material commonly crowded into a school - treatise. Indeed, what is called English grammar is, most of it, fictitious, kept up for the benefit of the book-trade. It consists of the forced application to the English of peculiarities borrowed from other

* A case in point may be found in Johnson's definition of network,—“ Anything reticulated or decussated, with interstices between the intersections."

tongues, and the shams are appreciated, and the truth perceived by those who have studied other languages.

Then too, the Latin may be studied much more easily and profitably than by the old mode of learning all the forms, rules, exceptions and anomalies, in a series of lessons to be committed by rote from the text-book. We would, indeed, have the whole of the Latin grammar acquired; but the syntax, the irregularities and the rare forms are more effectively learned in reading Latin than in studying the grammar; for in the former mode they are learned in connection with their occurrence, are therefore understood, are emphasized by example, and adhere to the memory. Let the pupil learn the regular paradigms of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, and then let him commence reading easy Latin, paying close attention to the construction of every word and the syntax of every sentence. Thus let the principles and the details of the grammar force themselves upon his attention and into his memory, while he is acquiring the vocabulary of the language. We have repeatedly tried and fully tested this method in teaching Hebrew, which from its unlikeness to any other language with which the learner has been acquainted presents peculiar difficulties. After teaching the pupil the sounds of the letters and the force of the vowelpoints, and making him learn the paradigm of the regular verb, we have set him to reading the first chapter of Deuteronomy, analyzing every word as he went along, directing his attention to the principles of the grammar in their bearing on each word, and to every anomaly of structure as it came to view, so that all that could be learned concerning or taught by each single sentence or clause was fully understood before he was suffered to pass on to the next. By the time that one chapter has been read, the pupil has obtained a much better knowledge of the grammar than if he had recited the whole word-for-word. We are confident that this method applied to the Latin will so simplify and expedite the study, as to bring a very serviceable course of Latin reading within the ordinary term of schoolattendance, without displacing anything that ought to be retained. Moreover, the young person, initiated into this noble tongue without the arid study of mere words that have to be relearned over and over again before they will stay learned, will love it,

will take a lively interest in its structure, and will acquire for his own diction or written style something of its marvellous terseness, directness, and energy; while its multiform relations to his native tongue will constantly excite and reward his curiosity, and will open to him in almost every English sentence depths of meaning which the merely English reader does not begin to sound.

Let no one scorn the Latin as an element in general culture, because it is a dead tongue. Because dead, it is all the more living,-not, like a modern language, dying daily, in perpetual decay and renovation, but endowed with an unchanging vitality, -living in a power of expression which no other language has approached,-living in poets, orators, and historians that will never be obsolete till the civilization of which they have been essential factors shall become effete,-living in the numberless fresh scions that spring from it as fast as there are new ideas to be embodied, new departments of science to receive their nomenclature, new processes and products of art to be put into speech and writing.

One word more. We would speak of the study of language and of individual words as emphatically a religious study. The old controversy as to the formal origin of language, whether human or divine, is as worthless as it is indeterminable; for if human, it is none the less divine,-what God effects through the powers with which he has endowed man is no less his work than the heavens and the earth are. But we are constantly impressed by the vestiges of the Divine Providence in the structure of language. The Eternal Spirit, always working with and in man, has sowed language full of His own perfect wisdom, in words fraught with "doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness." The devout naturalist, astronomer, physiologist, feels that he is constantly tracing out the thoughts of God in the universe. This is equally the work of the philologist, only on the higher plane of the spiritual

creation.

ARTICLE VIII-A REMINISCENCE OF THE STACKPOLE

HOUSE.

ONE who has watched for half a century, with any degree of care, what has gone on about him, will easily be persuaded, that no tale compacted of the imagination can equal the simple realities of life. Not only, according to the old proverb, is "truth stranger than fiction," but it is vastly more entertaining. It is possessed of far deeper sources of interest. An ideal landscape may be in the very highest style of the painter's art-may have all the elements of interest which it is possible for a picture to have: but it can never equal the glories of the real landscape when the light of the summer sun is falling softly upon it, and all the subtle forces of nature are at play, in and around it. And so, day by day and year by year, little histories are unfolded, of individual and family life, which the novelist in the highest flights of his fancy would never exactly have conceived. Sometimes these experiences are gay and joyous, and sometimes they are intensely sad But they are such as are woven perpetually, and rolled off from the busy loom of life.

We propose in these pages to give a fragment of veritable human history-not one of those rambling and shadowy stories, "founded on fact," but fact and reality itself—a chapter from the living joys and sorrows of a generation now almost entirely passed off the stage. And yet we will withhold the names of the actors,-not that there would be any particular harm in freely using them.

All who have been familiarly acquainted with Boston during the years of the present century, will remember well the "Old Stackpole House," as it has long been called, standing on Devonshire street, midway between Milk and Water streets. This antique structure is now no more. The costly and splendid Post Office building has risen over the spot where it stood. Five years ago, when the work of destruction was to begin in that part of the city, preparatory to the widening of Devon