be marked in every word they say, for here is a shrewd piece of national appreciation by the best qualified of all Englishmen. Bates is of a fine bull-dog courage and devotion. Though he admits "we have no great cause to desire the approach of day," he stoutly maintains, as regards the responsibility of the King, "I do not desire he should answer for me; and yet I determine to fight lustily for him." Williams uses the prerogative of the average Englishman to grumble. The King had said he would not be ransomed "to make us fight cheerfully; but when our throats are cut he may be ransomed, and we ne'er the wiser." He has thought seriously of his situation. "I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? But he readily yields up his opinion to what appears to him sound reasoning. After the disguised king's remonstrance he concedes, "'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill is upon his own head, the king is not to answer it." Fluellen's character, apart from the humours of it, finds its key notes in a couple of sayings: "It is the greatest admiration in the universal world, when the true and aunchient prerogatifes and laws of the wars is not kept," and, "I need not be ashamed of your Majesty, praised be God, so long as your Majesty is an honest man." Pistol and Nym and Bardolph, for the main purpose of the play, represent the evil scum which is inevitably to be found in every army, and serve to bring out the stern justice and discipline of the King.

The trio of Falstaff's followers, however, are not only to be regarded as typical specimens of the army which invaded France, they must also be considered as seriously typical of the peculiar society in which the young prince had moved, and as Shakespeare's caricatures of contemporary manners. Pistol is an example of the hangers-on of the Rose, the Swan, and the Curtain, who snapped up the bombast of extravagant tragedies; Nym is a type of the swaggering tavern haunters, who thought to grace their conversation with the inanities of current slang. Shakespeare had announced his intention, in the epilogue to Part II. of " Henry IV.," of making the comic interest of Henry V. centre round Falstaff. Fortunately, he afterwards saw that it would be cruel to expect the old man to make mirth any more. The result was the wonderful pathos of Falstaff's death, told by a coarse, ignorant, disreputable, but still womanly woman. Dame Quickly-one of the most wonderful of Shakespeare's creations in low life is full of Christian charity. She makes no doubt that the old knight is in "Arthur's bosom." She resents the suggestion that he "cried out on women," and when overborne by testimony, explains that his expressions were "rheumatic," and only applied to the Babylonian woman. That Shakespeare holds Henry entirely right in the conduct which killed Falstaff's heart only makes the pathos more sincere. Probably it is with genuine intention that Shakespeare leaves Pistol alone survivingPistol, the least deserving of all that unsavoury

company. Bardolph, for whom we feel a sympathy begotten of that thought of his master, "Would I were with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or hell;" Nym, who at least had ten times more valour than Pistol; were hung: the Boy, a lively, likeable young rascal, had his throat cut with the rest of the lackeys: Hostess Quickly, blundering, kindly, disreputable Quickly, dies in hospital. Only Pistol survives. It may be noted, in passing, that Shakespeare has called for our interest in the Boy, and shown him going lightly and unsuspecting to his fate, to make us understand the sudden fury which prompted the murder of all the French prisoners.

There are still two scenes which call for comment - the conspiracy scene and Henry's wooing. The dangerous plot against the King's life, on the eve of so perilous an enterprise, heightens our interest in him, especially when we see his magnanimity in pardoning the man who had railed on him, and find him, in his execution of the conspirators, simply retorting their own cruel counsel upon themselves. Henry V. crushes conspiracy so that it never revives, because he acted openly, honourably, and with a high hand. His father found conspiracy a many-headed hydra, which could never be slain, because his courses were subtle, secret and deceitful. In the wooing scene the King, as Dr. Johnson has observed, has "neither the vivacity of Hal nor the grandeur of Henry." But Shakespeare chose the lower tone with full deliberation. "To have heightened the tone and made Henry a Romeo, or, on the other hand, to have made the scene wildly mirthful, and the king a Hal, would have been to distract the attention of the audience from the main interest of the play, and confuse the simple lines of Henry's character. The view of Henry which the poet wished to leave with them was that of the soldierking. It was not to be confounded with any other presentation of him rivalling this in interest."

The conclusion of the piece, as I have said, may be taken as prophetic rather than historical. Was it mere coincidence that Shakespeare put the prayer for union between the two kingdoms, so soon falsified by events, in the mouth of the hateful Isabeau of Bavaria ?

There are, of course, many excellent editions of the play. Professor Moore-Smith's, in the Warwick Series, has a valuable literary as well as grammatical and historical commentary. The main points of the story and characterisation are well brought out in Mr. Quiller-Couch's "Historical Tales from Shakespeare." But the best commentary on a play is the stage. No one who has the opportunity should miss to see Mr. Benson's representation.

ONE hearty laugh together will bring enemies into closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle with a bad feeling only pins our attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind: whereas, if we act as if from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds its tent like an Arab and silently steals away.-William James.

PREVENTION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE IN SCHOOLS.

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By C E. BADDELEY, M.D.(Lond.)

I.

Y bringing together a number of young and susceptible individuals within a more or less confined space, schools afford a fertile field for the spread of various forms of disease, especially those which are popularly known as infectious in character.

As education is by law compulsory in this country, the great majority of children have to attend school in some form, and a moral obligation is thus thrown upon school managers, as far as may lie in their power, to safeguard the health of the children attending their school. This applies especially to communicable or infectious disease, since, should a child contract a disease of this nature at school, it not infrequently happens that it communicates the disease to the other members of the family, thus entailing much expense and hardship on the parents.

The Public Elementary Schools are under the supervision of the Board of Education, which to a certain extent prescribes to the Board of Management the construction, sanitary arrangements, and other details for each school, as well as the maximum number of scholars to be accommodated, curriculum, times of attendance, &c. Private schools are under no such supervision, but this in no way lessens the responsibility of the proprietors.

The object of these articles is not to describe large and elaborate sanitary and hygienic constructural details, which, however important to the health of the school population, are quite out of reach of many school managers, but rather to indicate some comparatively simple precautions which, if intelligently used, are of the utmost value in preventing the spread of these diseases. To make full use of these precautions a clear understanding of the essential nature of the various infectious diseases and their modes of propagation is necessary. Even in the most perfectly constructed and carefully managed school, there is the constant risk of cases of infectious disease being introduced, the more so when, as is generally the case, a proportion of the scholars attend daily; and the prompt recognition of such a case, and its removal from the school, is the only way of preventing the spread of the disease.

Definite recognition of the nature of the disease in its early stage is often exceedingly difficult even for an expert, but there are many obvious symptoms which are sufficiently suspicious to justify a schoolmaster, who desires to keep his school free from disease, in excluding a scholar exhibiting any of them from school until definite diagnosis of the nature of the case can be made.

a

INFECTIOUS DISEASE.

By the term "infectious disease" is meant every abnormal condition of an individual which is capable of being reproduced with similar symptoms in another susceptible individual by association or other means. This definition will include the diseases popularly known as "contagious," and also a number of other conditions which until recently have not generally been regarded as regarded as infectious, such as consumption and pneumonia. The communication of these diseases seems to demand the transference of some material particle from the diseased to the healthy, and in many this is known to be the case, but in others so subtle is the nature of the infective particle that its detection has not been yet effected; but even in these there is good reason to believe that this want of knowledge is due rather to our defective powers of observation than to the absence of an infectious particle. It is only

within comparatively recent years that the infective organisms, which are now known to be the cause of a number of different diseases, have been discovered, yet so successful has been the study of bacteriology that already a great deal is known of their life history, and it is only reasonable to suppose that this knowledge will rapidly extend.

The value of this knowledge of the life history of infective organisms, from the point of view of prevention of the spread of disease, is very great. The specific nature of the diseases themselves has been long recognised, and now the specific characters of the organisms which are the cause of disease are becoming recognisable, and the peculiarities of the life history of a specific pathogenic organism are often found to explain. peculiarities in the propagation and incidence of the specific disease which it causes, which were formerly shrouded in mystery. Although it may not be strictly capable of proof, it may be permissible to assume that for each specific disease there is a specific infective organism. As to the origin of these infective organisms it would be unprofitable to speculate here; it is sufficient to state that most of the evidence points to their being derived from antecedent cases of specific disease, and that there is very little of their being derived from organisms hitherto innocuous. Infectious disease, therefore, depending upon the introduction of an infective organism from without, is theoretically preventable.

INFECTIVE ORGANISMS.

Many of the organisms which are known to be the cause of disease belong to the great family Fission Fungi, or bacteria. This family belongs to the vegetable kingdom, and its members are the lowest form of organised life known to science. Bacteria are all minute unicellular bodies, consisting of a minute particle of the substance known as protoplasm, and containing within a smaller condensed part called the nucleus. They are so

minute that very many thousands can be conveyed on the point of an ordinary needle, and their structure and mode of life can only be studied under the highest powers of the microscope; but so successful have recent researches been that many hundreds of distinct species are known. They are of various sizes and shapes, but each species maintains its general characteristics through a large number of generations. They all multiply by division; that is to say, that the cell which constitutes an individual becomes constricted and divides into two parts, each of which eventually presents the special characteristics of the original cell. Many of them also reproduce their species by means of spores. In certain circumstances the contents, or part of the contents, of one of the cells become altered in character, perhaps surrounded by a special envelope. The parent cell perishes but the spore remains, and in favourable circumstances casts off its envelope, and becomes a cell like its parent. The practical importance of this mode of reproduction is that the spore is much more tenacious of life than the original bacterium. Each of these organisms is possessed of the characteristic function of life, that it is able to select from its surroundings certain elements, and assimilate them to its own substance and use. They can thus only maintain their vitality and reproduce their species under certain conditions of temperature, moisture, and food supply. These conditions are so important to a proper understanding of their propagation and diffusion that it is necessary to set them down in some detail.

All bacteria require for their growth moisture, certain chemical substances as foods, and a certain degree of heat (from 15° to 60° C.). Some require air, some will grow with or without it, and some will only grow when air is excluded. All bacteria are killed in a liquid medium by a temperature of boiling water, and also by certain chemical substances which are called antiseptics or germicides. Sunlight destroys certain species of bacteria. In a dry state bacteria do not seem to be able to maintain their vitality for long, except in the form of spores. Spores also possess greater power than bacteria of resisting both heat and germicides. At low temperatures bacteria do not multiply, but even very great cold does not destroy their vitality.

In the process of their growth bacteria produce certain chemical changes in the medium in which they live. Bacteria which produce disease live and multiply in the fluids of the body of the individual they affect, and are called parasitic. They produce in the individual the chemical products of their growth. Some of these products are of a highly poisonous nature, and are called toxins. These toxins are absorbed into the blood of the individual affected, and produce the symptoms of the special disease with which the organism producing them is associated. Some of these parasitic bacteria can also live and multiply outside the animal body, in decomposing animal

or vegetable matter. They are then said to have a saprophytic as well as a parasitic existence. When an individual is invaded by parasitic bacteria some escape from the body with the various excretions, and are so disseminated.

These bacteria, upon being introduced in an appropriate manner into the body of another susceptible individual, are capable of producing the symptoms of the special disease with which they are associated. By no means all bacteria are disease producing or pathogenic. Many, indeed, perform important and beneficent parts in the economy of nature. Bacteria are so minute in size that they may be transported some distance through the atmosphere with moisture or dust. Nevertheless, like all other material particles, they are subject to the force of gravity and other physical laws, and by appropriate means their access to a particular spot can be prevented. By such measures their access to surgical wounds is prevented, and the success of modern antiseptic surgery promises more than a possibility of the exclusion of the specific organisms of infectious disease from the human body.

The conditions under which a specific organism is said to be proved to be the cause of a specific disease are four, called Koch's postulates:

That the organism shall always be found associated with the disease.

That the organism shall be cultivated in a medium outside the body.

That the organism from such a cultivation introduced into an individual shall reproduce the disease.

That the specific organism shall be recoverable from the individual so affected.

Organisms belonging to the family of Bacteria are known to be the cause of diphtheria, plague, influenza, typhoid fever, cholera, erysipelas, and blood poisoning or septicemia, pneumonia, and consumption (tuberculosis), as well as several other less common diseases. Although the organisms have as yet not been definitely

identified, there is much evidence that bacteria also cause scarlet fever and German measles, and various forms of tonsilitis, and inflamed sore throat, measles, whooping cough, mumps, typhus fever, and epidemic meningitis.

Organisms of this class also play an important. part in all localised and inflammatory diseases with suppuration, such as ophthalmia, cold in the head, suppuration in the ear, boils, and pustules, &c. The organisms which cause chicken pox, small pox, and the vaccination pustule have not yet been identified. Some few diseases, of which the most important is ringworm, are caused by organisms belonging to the true fungi. Itch is caused by an animal parasite, the Acarus scabiei, which burrows in the skin of the affected individual. Thus it will be seen that almost all the more common infectious diseases of school life may be ascribed to infective organisms of bacterial nature.

ON THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN A SWEDISH SCHOOL.

By DANIEL ELFSTRAND, Phil. Cand., Teacher of Modern Languages in the Municipal School of Gefle, Sweden.

T is more than eleven years since I made my first attempt at teaching English on the principles laid down by modern reformers represented by the Scandinavian Society "Quousque Tandem and "l'Association Phonétique Internationale." I set to work with a strong belief in the soundness of those principles, and, let it be said at once, my eleven years' experiences have thoroughly confirmed that belief.

It seems in these days, with their lively interest and great activity in the development of modern language teaching, that the results of individual efforts in applying principles for and against which so much has been said and written may be of some interest to teachers whose own language is concerned. So, acting upon an English friend's suggestion, I have taken the bold step of laying before English colleagues a short account of my personal experiences and conclusions.

For a better appreciation of my work it will be well to premise a few remarks by way of introduction.

My experiences are for the most part drawn from the Municipal School of Gefle, a commercial and technical establishment based on a completed elementary school course.

The average age of beginners is about 13 years. The school is divided into four forms, each supposed to require one year in ordinary circumstances. The school year comprises 35 weeks for the two lower forms, 31 for the two upper ones. Among the subjects taught, English holds a prominent place, being the chief foreign language, with a weekly allowance of 8 hours in the first form, 7 in the second, 4 in each of the third and fourth forms.

This seems a large amount of time, but considering the scantiness of previous linguistic training in the mother tongue-the only language taught in our elementary schools-a smaller allow ance would be altogether insufficient; and it will not be surprising to learn that a not inconsiderable portion of the time, in the first class at any rate, has to be devoted to general grammatical training.

My first two years' experience was gained in the public school of the place, where three years' thorough preliminary training in Swedish and German constitutes a very different sort of foundation for the study of English, which begins in the fourth school year on the modern side.

On the

It may perhaps also be worth mentioning that my efforts throughout have been absolutely untrammelled either by school codes, or examinations, or by personal interferences of any kind. contrary, at the public school I received much support from my senior in the subject, and I cannot call the regulation laid down in the Public School Code-" Class IV. Practice in pronunciation and reading; accidence in connection with

extempore translation from Swedish and English; vocables "a serious obstacle to the master's freedom, at least it was never held up to me as a warning. Besides, with two-thirds of the official rule I was in perfect sympathy, and it was not difficult to come to an arrangement about the remaining third.1

PHONETIC TRAINING.-PRONUNCIATION.

When I began teaching modern languages in school, it was something like an axiom taught me by conclusive experience, not always of a cheering kind, that the only rational and effective method of approaching the study of a modern foreign language lay through a preliminary training in phonetics, theoretical and practical; and, if subsequent practical tests have had any modifying influence on that view, it has certainly been in the direction of confirming it. It was therefore very gratifying to be associated with a headmaster and a senior modern-language master who, far from showing a hostile front to the "phonetic movement," from the very first willingly granted me carte blanche to found my teaching on a phonetic basis.

Thus my starting-point always was, and still is, the sound, the paramount importance of which, as the physical condition of speech, I try to make very clear to my pupils, and this point of view is ever afterwards kept steadily in the foreground, in order to prevent relapses into the "belief in the letter," a belief that is certainly more injurious to modern language teaching than most teachers have yet realised. Accordingly, the very first hour is devoted to a practical examination and analysis of some of the sounds of the vernacular, which naturally leads me to a short description of the organs of speech and their most important functions, aided by diagrams and an artificial larynx. The fundamental difference between voiced and voiceless consonants is thoroughly demonstrated and brought home to the pupils by constant practice in producing the voiced-and, vice versa, voicelessrepresentatives of those consonants which lack them in the vernacular.

After taking our bearings in this way, we approach the foreign sounds one by one, slowly and systematically, and always with the help of a phonetic notation-that of Dr. Henry Sweet, slightly modified to meet Swedish needs.

It has been found convenient to start with the "front vowels," exemplified by such series as big, beg, bag; bid, bed, bad, as being the easiest for Swedish children; and from this starting point we work our way gradually through all intermediate steps to the opposite pole, the "back vowels." The examples are, with very few exceptions, taken from the simple texts that form the essential material for the next step to be taken in our methodical advance. After the vowels have been gone through, the consonants are approached, the explosives being taken first.

This method of teaching the sounds one by one, embodied in isolated words as examples, has

1 A few years later the rule was considerably modified to meet modern views

proved so fruitful of results that I unhesitatingly prefer it to starting with whole groups of words or sentences. Through the former a more intense concentration on each separate sound is rendered possible, the pupil's mind is not bewildered by the difficult task of grappling with a whole set of foreign sounds, and a suitable transition to the reading or uttering of connected specimens of language is thus established.

After a considerable amount of practice of the kind described has been got through, we pass on to the phonetic texts, to which a period of nine or ten weeks, representing some seventy or eighty hours, is given. This allowance has, on the whole, been found sufficient to lay the foundation of what, according to English judges, may be called a good pronunciation. To attain this end the power of imitation must of course be made the most of, and hence the training of the pupil's ear must be an important part of the teacher's task. From the first, therefore, what is to be read by the pupils is first read by me, not once, but over and over again, if this is needed.

Yet it is a fact that in many cases imitation alone does not suffice, and then no better means can be devised than the application of what phonetics has taught about the organic formation of sounds. A colleague of mine, with some twenty years' longer experience, having of late years given the phonetic method a fair trial, frankly declares: "With the old method I succeeded in arriving at a good result with only a few gifted pupils, whereas now, with the phonetic method, the same result is attainable with all." And for my part, I do not hesitate to say that with the help of the modern science of phonetics a practical as well as theoretical command of difficult sounds, which in former days defied years of strenuous efforts on the part of both teachers and learners, can be brought about in a few hours. But perhaps there is no more convincing proof of the value of phonetics than that which may be gained by testing it in teaching a foreigner one's own language.

To return to my class-work-after a piece of text has been thoroughly worked through, writing from dictation on the blackboard comes in as a final test of the pupils' capacity of distinguishing the foreign sounds and of handling the phonetic symbols.

As regards the much talked-of difficulty of transition from phonetic to ordinary spelling and the risk the latter is supposed to run of being hopelessly spoilt, my experience does not bear out these fears. The same texts that the children are already quite familiar with in their phonetic form are now presented to them in their traditional costume, piece after piece; they read them without any difficulty because they know them almost by heart, and they have to prepare so-and-so many lines at home for the special purpose of writing them from dictation in the class. For some time onwards we concentrate our attention chiefly on the spelling. The task now set before the children of inferring from the sound to its represen

tation is considerably simplified, the necessary phonetic training having been completed, and the worst effect of cross-association being thus avoided.

The question whether the phonetic method necessarily involves the use of a phonetic transcription can, as far as English is concerned, according to my experience, only be answered in the affirmative. When the relation between sound and symbol has been so utterly destroyed, as is the case in modern English, it follows as a matter of course that the orthography can have no other effect on the beginner than that of multiplying the difficulties in his way and encumbering his progress, thus frustrating the object of a reasonable orthography.

In concluding this part of my paper, I cannot help adding that at the present day I even find it hard to realise how so many teachers have come to neglect and look down upon a practical mastery of speech sounds, the actual bearers of the means of communication they are concerned with. In all likelihood, however, this strange phenomenon is to be explained as one of the results of centuries of dealing with dead languages exclusively, where the sound counts for nothing or next to nothing, a view which must of necessity prove fatal to modern language teaching. The advocates of the à outrance training-of-the-mind theory within the linguistic department have apparently overlooked the fact that a training which leaves out of view one of the essential characteristics of its medium is, eo ipso, doomed to, at any rate partial, failure.

Nor can I explain the so often-heard arguments against "phonetics in schools" otherwise than as the outcome of ignorance. It is not true that what is needed of phonetics is harder than most other school subjects. It is not true that it is abstract. It is, on the contrary, as concrete as any other subject, or even more so, it being the simplest thing in the world, in many instances, to illustrate its teachings in the most palpable way with the help of the organs of speech themselves, which is indeed often just as easy as it would be to make anyone call forth the right note from a piano simply by saying, "Put your finger on this key and press it down." I cannot for a minute take into account the opinion of those who argue that, because there are hard and dark points in this science, as in all others for that matter, it is unsuitable as a school subject; for if that principle were strictly upheld, how many, and what, subjects would be deemed suitable for schools? Or ought not even the simplest elements of what we impart in school to repose ultimately on a scientific basis?

But it may seem out of place for a foreigner to try to demonstrate the value of phonetics to a public who have among them a phonetician of the unique rank of Dr. Henry Sweet, whose works on general phonetics, and more especially on English phonetics, have rendered the student of English invaluable services, and made English one of the most fruitful and gratifying branches of pure philological study.