tain it with the corruscations of wit, or the bursts of eloquence, these are not, and ought not to be the ends or the objects of education. Instruction should have a higher aim. The mind should be prepared for active exertion by the cultivation of each of its respective powers; and this is to be done not by the exercise of memory alone. Every faculty must have its appropriate exertion, its proper task; and the judicious selection and arrangement of the subjects by which the mental powers are respectively to be improved, constitutes one of the most important as well as one of the most difficult labors of education. The powers of perception, attention, comparison, abstraction, association and analysis, must each and all be exercised, while the memory is employed in treasuring up the materials upon which their activity is to be employed; and fancy and imagination must be taught with callow wing, to prepare for that flight for which their well-fledged pinions will be impatient.

With this view of the ends of education, we cannot but confess, that it is of less importance that knowledge of any particular kind should be treasured in the minds of the young, than that the faculty of acquisition should be increased, and its capacity enlarged. We are not to inquire so particularly how much is remembered, as what has been the effect of that which has been learnt. How few can recollect the course of diet which was pursued in early life, and which has given to the nerves and muscles their healthful play and action. How few can recall the particular sports of youth, which have given pliancy to their limbs, the glow of health to their cheeks, animation to their spirits, firmness to their steps, and sent the vital current in joyous circuit through the system. And yet these effects still remain. So it is with the rational powers, the memory may have been strengthened, the powers of perception and discrimination may have been quickened, the attention roused, the judgment ripened, the reasoning powers improved, and the whole mind enlarged, and cultivated, and refined by the subjects on which they have respectively been exercised, while the subjects themselves, which have imparted this healthful glow, have long since dwindled like the receding points of a perspective, or faded into the gloom of oblivion.

If these views are correct, we are certainly in no error in claiming for the science of Grammar the highest regard of the practical educationist, because it offers so wide a field for intel

lectual culture. The powers of analysis and comparison may find a noble field of exertion in the exact sciences rhetoric may offer to the imagination a broad arena for exertion-the memory may be employed in storing the treasures of history and natural science, while the science of Grammar affords a central point around which all the faculties of man's noblest nature may associate and cooperate, "in joyous dance harmo

nious knit."

Independently of the exercise which this science affords to the powers of the mind, and its value as a guide to the proper understanding of language, the philosophical study of speech affords some insight into the character of a people. Thus the Greeks, a people distinguished alike by their polish and their voluptuousness, possessed a language suited to their character, full of grace, of delicacy, and of sweetness. The Romans, a nation born to command, had a language noble, nervous and august. Their descendents, the Italians, have remitted the senatorial dignity of their progenitors, and their character is as perceptible in their language as in their manners. The language of the Spaniard is full of that stately dignity and haughtiness which constitutes the characteristics of the people, while the gay and sprightly Frenchman, distinguished by conversational vivacity and ease, pours forth his thoughts in a brisk and lively current adapted to his manners and his nature. The Englishman, on the contrary, who is by nature blunt, thoughtful and of few words, speaks a language remarkable for brevity, conciseness and sententiousness. But this view of language, although intimately connected with Grammar, and, indeed, forming one of its highest departments, is not embraced in the mere elements of education; and it is mentioned only to show, that the science is by no means exhausted by the cursory view which is taken of it in the early stages of preparatory learning.

With these views of the importance of Grammar in general, as a science, it is deeply to be regretted that there are any to be found who are willing to depreciate it. We are told by some that correctness of expression is but to be obtained by the study of the standard models, rather than by grammatical rule. But let me ask what is grammatical rule, other than certain deductions from the usage of standard authority? If we allow that there is any force in the objection, it will prove too much. Rules are necessary in all things, in order to preserve that con

sistency without which, the highest efforts of intellectual power become vague and unsatisfactory. The rules of Grammar are all drawn from the usage of those whose writings have adorned the literature of their country, and shone as the lights. of their age. In order that a language may become fixed, or acquire any degree of permanency, it is absolutely necessary that some forms of expression should be established and deviations from them rejected; and it is thus that grammatical rule is formed. And it certainly cannot be unimportant to know what these forms are which have come into favor, and the reasons for the rejection of those which have been condemned. It certainly is no proof of intellectual independence, blindly to follow any authority, how sure soever we may be that the authority will prove a safe guide.

The English language is of a peculiar character. Its heterogeneous composition has given rise to the assertion that it has no rules peculiarly its own, and that it should be untrammelled by rule. It is true that the influx of a thousand different streams, imbued with the character of the fountains from which they sprang, and impregnated with the flavor of their natural soil, has caused some difficulty in the task of assimilation. The attempt, therefore, to introduce the rules of ancient classic authority would be like extending its form on the bed of Procrustes, and adjusting its dimensions to the surface on which it is extended. But although the language cannot claim that intricate relation of mode, of tense, and of case, which distinguished the vernacular of Hesiod and Homer, of Virgil and Cicero, it will be found that it has established certain usages, or rules, call them which you will, a departure from which would grate as discordantly on the ears of the Yorkshire ploughman, or the "Sucker" of the western wilderness, as the Bavian and Mævian verses on the well-tuned ears of the Augustan age, or the want of purity, propriety and elegance on the polished Athenian.

And, indeed, it may safely be asserted, that any language without a Grammar peculiarly its own, how copious and harmonious soever it may be, is but a little elevated above those instinctive sounds uttered by the brute creation, which, although perhaps well understood by themselves, seldom convey to others a distinct or intelligible meaning. It is true that a language may be spoken, and perhaps correctly spoken, without a knowledge of its grammar; but the beauties of style, the

elegances of diction, the graces of thought, the correctness and the symmetry of imagery are seldom attained by those who have not toiled in the drudgery of grammar.

To the orator or rhetorician, a knowledge of grammar is indispensable as a nomenclature of his own art. The methods of inversion and transposition, by which a thought is expanded, simplified, or illustrated would be utterly unintelligible if not technically described; and it may here be asserted that those grammars afford little benefit to the student or the orator, whose authors have contented themselves with an analysis of the language, however perfect, and etymologically correct, without some regular synthesis, by which the parts may be arranged and fitted together according to some known and acknowledged pattern. The author of the Diversions of Purley, has labored diligently, and, it must be confessed, successfully in the department of etymology. He has traced to their source many of those apparently insignificant words which are, in fact, the hinges of discourse, which show the relation of the several words and members of a sentence; and by a reference to their original import in the respective languages from which they were derived, he has thrown much light upon the darkness in which they were formerly shrouded. But the attempt of him, and all of his followers to reduce all the words of a language to two or three classes, the noun, the adjective, and the verb, is like the endeavor to destroy the present nomenclature of the tools of the artisan, by referring them all to the six mechanical powers. What would the young mechanic say to the philosopher who should question the propriety of calling his familiar tools, the saw, the chisel, and the plane, by those names by which he has long known them, and insist upon the restoration of the name by which the mode of their operation is known? Strange would be the confusion in the workshop by a willing compliance with the suggestion. Each tool, to which soever of the mechanical powers it is referrible, has a name peculiar to itself, and by which it is recognised as it is wanted. The gimblet, for instance, although it unites the advantages afforded by three of the mechanical powers, namely, the lever, the screw, and the inclined plane, would seldom be at hand, if called for by the original nomenclature. The mechanic might say to the philosopher, Sir, your names may serve your purpose the best, but mine are more intelligible to me. In the same manner the grammarian may say to the philologist, —

Sir, you may trace the language, or the words of which it is composed, through all their channels, to their source; you may follow up their derivation until you refer them all to interjectional sounds, the language of mere animal emotion; but you thereby throw no light on my art; - you afford no facilities in the proper arrangement of words in a sentence; and I must adhere to that subdivision, or classification of my words which will enable me to form rules by which the language may be spoken, and written "with propriety." Take, for instance, the adverb, which Tooke and some of his most clamorous followers have stigmatized as a convenient "sink," into which all troublesome words are thrown, and which they have rejected as a distinct part of speech, because the words belonging to this class were, in their origin, verbs, or nouns, &c. How should we assign them their appropriate place in a sentence, without allowing them a syntax of their own? And yet the mere school-boy who is at all conversant with the proper construction of sentences, knows that there is no word in the language which requires a more rigid syntax than this. It is true that the syntax of the adverb borders very closely on the rules of rhetoric; but it is also true that one of the plainest as well as one of the most important rules of Grammar requires that the adverb should be placed as near as possible to the word which it is designed to limit or qualify.

In illustration of what I have now asserted, I adduce a short extract from Blair's Rhetoric, a work of standard authority, familiar to all my hearers: "In the position of adverbs, which are used to qualify the signification of something which either precedes or follows them, a good deal of nicety is to be observed. By greatness,' says Addison, I do not only mean the bulk of any single object, but the largeness of a whole view.' Here the place of the adverb only makes it limit the verb mean. 'I do not only mean.' The question may then be asked, What does he more than mean? Had it been placed after bulk, still it would have been wrong; for it might then be asked, What is meant beside the bulk? Is it the color or any other property? Its proper place is after the word object. By greatness I do not mean the bulk of any single object only;' for then, when it is asked, What does he inean more than the bulk of a single object? the answer comes out precisely as the author intends, the largeness of a whole view.' " Theism,' says Lord Shaftsbury, can only be op