PART I. HUMANITIES.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE GENERALLY—READING, WRITING, GRAMMAR, COMPOSITION.
By Dorothea Beale.
I propose to treat in order of the different subjects of our school curriculum. The first of these is language generally.
Reading.As a branch of formal instruction, we begin with reading. A more aggravating subject of dispute can hardly be found than that which relates to the teaching of reading. The pure Fröbellian will have none of it before the child is seven years old, and occasionally children do come to school unable to read, but with the senses awakened to all sorts of other relations except that of articulate sounds to written forms. In spite of the reproaches of those who build the sepulchres of the prophets, we teach reading when a child seems ready for it, and maintain that the principles of Fröbel are best carried out when we improve on his methods, and adapt ourselves to new circumstances; we urge that the children from intellectual homes are different from the class of children with whom he had most to do.
When begun.I would not press reading upon infants, nor require the close and continuous attention that reading implies, but as soon as the appetite for any special kind of knowledge is shown, we may conclude, on Fröbellian principles, that the child is fit for it. Our order is: (1) drawing, (2) writing, (3) reading.
First lessons.The kindergarten child has learned to draw lines, straight and curved, developing into simple objects and curious patterns—rude picture-writing, it may be called. We lead on to writing in some such way as this.
Alphabet.“How did men at first send silent messages to one another when they were far off? If you wanted a doll, you might draw a picture of one and send it to mother on your birthday. A man might make a picture of a fish, and send it to a fisherman with a piece of money, and the fisherman would understand; or one might want to sell a sheep, and send a picture to his neighbour; this would be easier than sending the sheep. In fact, the first letter of the alphabet is a rude picture of the head of an ox,
. People were not particular, as we see on old monuments, which way the letter stood, and so we have it sometimes topsy-turvy, sometimes sideways,
; this is like a Greek alpha,
,
. Beth in Hebrew was a dwelling, two tents
, Gimel
, the camel’s head and long neck. Delta
, a door. Kappa Κ, a bird with its wings out. Rho Ρ, a man’s head. But with pictures only it is hard to make sentences; e.g., if you wanted to say, “I have found some water,” you might draw
, but you would have to find some way of showing whether you meant ‘I have’ or ‘I want’; and if somebody sent you the picture of a man walking, you might not know whether you were expected to come or to go. It is hard to represent verbs by pictures, though it is so easy in speaking.”
Some pictures of Egyptian hieroglyphics and explanations will here be found to interest children much—-part of their drawing lesson might be to copy a hieroglyph alphabet. Then we might enlarge on the need for words to tell people what to do. Baby says “mamma,” “doll,” “puss,” but it wants also to say “come,” “give,” “go,” and this cannot be pictured, so people seem to have tried to represent sounds by drawing a picture of the mouth making the different sounds.
I suppose the first sound most babies make is a sort of mumbling, and if they open their mouths we get a sound like ma; now in all languages ma stands for mother, with some slight alterations. What is M like? Is it not much like a mouth shut up? and suppose you add a round shape to represent an open mouth you would get something like picture-writing ma. You might put the two side by side, a picture of a woman and ma—the Egyptians often had the two signs. The next easy sound is pa, and this stands in all languages that I know, for father. How could this be written? If you say ap you will notice a movement of the lips, which open with a sort of bursting sound. We may represent that movement by a stroke and put a round after it to stand for the open mouth P. There is another sound very like P, but not quite so sharply said. We hear it in ab. We can make the stroke as before, and put the loop lower down, to show that ba is a quieter sound than pa—so shorthand writers make a long stroke for the b and a short one for p (│b ╷p) and put no loop.
Thus we get three lip letters, but we can shut up the mouth in the middle—half shut it and we get n, which is half m. The breath will have to come of course through the nose. We can move the tongue suddenly from the teeth and get d as in ad, and write a stroke as before, but put a loop representing the open mouth behind it; the sound nearest to it which we hear in at would have the loop at the top,
, as we had in pa, but in our alphabet the loop has disappeared and we have only t. In shorthand we write a long horizontal stroke for d and a short one for t. Thus we have three dentals.
We may also shut up the throat and let the breath go through the nose, as in sing, or we may make the sudden movement quite in the throat. We could take the bird shape but think of the two strokes as if pointing down the throat in Κ, and for the softer sound only one pointer Γ, this was the Greek G. We make it rounder at the bottom now. For the first of the throat sounds we have no single letter, but we write an n to show it is a nose letter, and a g to show the shutting up is to be done in the throat.
So now you see we have got nine letters—three made with the lips, three with the tongue near the middle of the mouth, three in the throat. Three are made by sending the breath through the nose, three are made by a sudden opening and sending the breath through it with force, and three by sending the breath more gently. The names given to these different sorts of letters I may now give and the shorthand signs:—[6]
| Nasals. | Hard. | Soft. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lip letters | m |  | p | ╷ | b | │ |
| Tooth letters | n |  | t | ╴ | d | ─ |
| Throat letters | ng |  | k | ‿ | g | ∪ |
[6] I give the characters of the script, which is much simpler for children than Pitman’s.
Reading books published by A. Chrysogon Beale (Sonnenschein) are perhaps the best for beginners. There are coloured pictures of the mouth; the deaf alphabet is given, and the words which are not written phonetically are gradually introduced. Sonnenschein’s books are also good, and Miss Soames’ Introduction to Phonetics.
Thus the child could be taught to observe the movements for articulation, be interested in early writings, and prepared to look intelligently at ancient monuments.
In teaching, the sounds of the letters will be given of course, not their names, and the alphabet will be from the first classified, and a basis laid for philological study. A shorthand alphabet will be learned side by side without trouble, and besides this, the pronunciation will be improved—all this without any over-pressure or giving any instructions unsuited for a small child.
In a later lesson the meaning of an aspirate should be explained, and added to each of the mutes; we then get four varieties under the heads of labial, dental and guttural. The sibilants, which are in some respects aspirates, may be classified, and the feeble lip aspirate in when (written in old English hwen) should be noticed. The relation of palatals l and r, and the different kinds of palatals, may be dwelt on.
I give a comprehensive table, founded on one in Professor Key’s volume on the alphabet. The three horizontal planes give gutturals, dentals and labials. The front plane the sharp mutes, the back the flat mutes; the right plane the sharp aspirates, the left the flat aspirates; the sibilants are classed as dental aspirates and the nasals appended.
Other classifications are noticed in the paper on [Spelling Reform].
The classification of vowels is more difficult, and it may be pointed out how easily these pass into one another. How difficult it is too for English people to sustain a pure vowel, o, without passing into u, a into ai. The vocal triangle as given in Brachet’s dictionary, adapted from Helmholtz and Brücke, is perhaps most easily understood.
For those who do not use the alphabet of the maître phonétique, tables such as those of Larousse should be always at hand to hang on the wall, when French lessons are given. These tables enable one to draw attention to sounds which English people do not discriminate, or which offer special difficulty, e.g., ê, è, é, ais, ai, ou, u, eu, e; to the feebly nasalised vowels as in French pain, pronounced Anglice, pang; to the formation of the sound constantly changed by English people into ou, when a vowel follows, e.g., loui for lui; to the proper pronunciation of moi, mwa, not mwau; to the addition of a syllable, as in deer for di+r; to the attractive power of labial consonants, making impossible inpossible, and so on. Systematic teaching saves much time.
For older pupils it is an instructive and amusing exercise to work out the combinations of two vowels to produce a multitude of mixed or diphthongal forms; such an exercise will do much to teach delicate discrimination of sounds, and it is important early to cultivate the ear and the vocal organs. I append the diphthong table—to read it proceed from one vowel to another, following the arrow head.
Interchange of letters.The classification of letters is of the greatest importance as the basis of linguistic study, and so the matter should early be made interesting and intelligible, not only for the sake of pronunciation, but as accounting for, and simplifying a great many rules of grammar, and enabling pupils to acquire quickly a large vocabulary, when they begin foreign tongues, by observing such laws as are expounded by Grimm and Vernier, and thus helping them later to recognise that there is such a thing as a science of language, something more than a wearisome list of empirical rules and unreasonable exceptions. Thus reading, if taught as it should be, conforms to the psychological principles (1) that we should develop the powers of observation, (2) let the child do or make something, (3) show the uses of what is produced, (4) plant some root principles which may grow up and bear fruit in later studies, (5) associate the different studies with one another. The reason why teaching is often so dull, is that teachers do not take a large view of the field of instruction, but work like day-labourers, and adopt that fatal maxim, you should “throw it all off, out of school hours”. “I am a gentleman after four o’clock,” said a schoolmaster! Now I should like those who are going to teach the alphabet to read Max Müller’s Science of Thought in their leisure hours. It is too ponderous a volume to buy—660 pages—but it should be in the Teachers’ Library. There is a most interesting chapter on the origin of roots, which he traces to imperatives. I need hardly say that the two volumes of Lectures on Language should be familiar to all, and that the teacher should work out roots for herself after the model of “Mar”. She must not, however, bury the important things under a mass of erudition; the larger her store the more should she be able to select by the discursive faculty (I ask pardon of Herbart) what is most illustrative of her subject for the special class: it is very important to know what not to say.
Melville Bell’s Visible Speech is very instructive reading, and all should be familiar with Le Mestr.: Fonetiq of Paul Passy. I abstain from recommending some of the very learned books “made in Germany”. These are not suited to persons of limited leisure, but are rather for the Grammarian who said:—
Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,
Painful or easy,
Even to the crumbs, I’d fain eat up the feast,
Ay, nor feel queasy.
If reading is begun early, taught in the way suggested, and the sounds insisted on, to the exclusion of the absurd spelling, which pretends to produce cat from see ay tee, children seem to get on slowly at first, but the progress is rapid, when they have once mastered the signs, i.e., as rapid as is possible with our cacography.
In an excursus I have insisted on the great importance of reformed spelling. It is difficult to get people to agree, but any system, Soames’ or Pitman’s or Bell’s, would be better than our present chaos. If Government would give liberty to those who teach a phonetic system, things would improve, and children would easily read ordinary characters afterwards. All who write shorthand must spell phonetically.
Voice production.Not only right articulation needs attention, but what is called voice production. The health of many a delicate girl may be greatly strengthened by habituating her to breathe as she ought, and the whole class of what are called clergymen’s throats are in great measure, if not entirely due to the improper use of the organs of speech. There will be little difficulty later, if we, from the beginning, make children stand and breathe rightly, speak and read with due attention to stops and emphasis, and to those subtle changes of voice on which expression depends so much.
Children should never be allowed to learn a poem without preparation, or to memorise it by gabbling it over; as well might we expect them to become musicians by rattling off pieces unstudied, without regard to time and accent. At first, the poems to be learned should be repeated viva voce by the teacher to the little ones. Later, a special study should be made of anything set to a class, and it should be learned by the mind, not the ear. In France and Germany a poem is not set until it has been discussed and explained, points of importance insisted on, special beauties, etc.
A reading class should not be one in which each girl has to listen to the bad reading of another. I know no manual so good for the teacher, and for elder pupils, as Professor Meiklejohn’s Expressive Reading. There are some good remarks in a brief paper by Mr. Birrell in Barnett’s Teaching and Organisation, and I may draw attention to page 131 of Spenser’s chapters on Teaching, for all these books should be in the Teachers’ Library.
From the first, children should learn poetry by heart—poetry suited to their understanding. A child was heard to drone forth:—
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The lowing herd doth to the moon complain.
The reflections of the poet were utterly uninteresting to him; he did not perceive the absurdity of cows ascending a tower.
I cannot sufficiently deprecate the setting of melodramatic pieces chosen not for their intrinsic beauty, but to show the power of execution—to borrow a musical term. The pieces learned need not be all poetry. Some of Hans Andersen’s Mährchen are excellent. Scenes in which several can take part help to give animation.
Learning by heart.Throughout their school life children should continue to store their memory, during the years in which it is easy to learn, with masterpieces in prose and poetry; because learning by heart was formerly overdone it is much neglected now. These early acquisitions are a treasure all one’s life. Familiarity with really good writers is the first thing necessary for writing well; it is good to let children write from memory passages learned instead of giving dictation.
Recitation.Looking at the higher aspects, I can hardly exaggerate the importance of getting children to speak with the understanding and right expression; for this teachers must make them enter into the meaning of the writer, realising the imagery, the feelings, the thoughts; this calls out right emotion, and thus elocution becomes of no small value as a part of moral training. Plato dwells much on the influence for good or evil upon the actor who realises the character he represents, and as Aristotle has said that through the drama one may purify the soul, so we may help our pupils to feel all the grand music of our great poets, and to enter with fuller sympathy into the teaching of the sacred scriptures of the world.
There is an excellent article in the volume of Special Reports issued by the Education Office by Mr. Dale of Merton College, from which I give extracts.
“Before the reading of Geibel’s poem on Frederick Barbarossa (the story of the sleeping kaiser who wakes to grasp the sceptre once more) a scholar was bidden to relate the fairy tale of the sleeping princess.
“The analysis of the piece into sections was given, each with a brief title indicating its subject-matter, and the exposition of their relation to one another, showing it had a distinct purpose and value.”
Oral composition.The practice of composition may begin systematically in quite early years. Mr. Dale has given an interesting account of the way in which children are taught orally, and one who attended a Ferien-Kursus at Jena has explained the matter fully to me. First, the teacher always insisted upon answers to questions being complete sentences. I quote once more from Mr. Dale, but the whole article should be read.
“The first division of the subject in the German code is ‘exercises in speaking’; and the careful and admirable training in oral expression is worthy of special attention. It is of frequent occurrence to hear a boy when called upon for an answer speak with but little hesitation for two or three minutes, using grammatical and connected language, and displaying a vocabulary which might have been supposed to be too wide for any but adults. This result is the working, primarily, of a principle which has always lain deep in the German conception of teaching, and which has been reinforced by the influence of Herbart and his followers, that in every lesson the child should take an active part. It is given as a precept to every seminar student, ‘Let the teacher speak little, the children much’.
“The teaching of composition is one of the most valuable parts of the work done in the German schools. It is begun at a very early age and practised steadily throughout the course.
“The composition is conducted by word of mouth. ‘Who,’ asks the teacher, ‘can give me a sentence to begin the first section?’ One is suggested, and criticised. ‘Can any one else give me a better?’ The others then suggest, if necessary with a little help, their variants, and finally one version is accepted. In the case of the youngest children this is written on the blackboard. The same process is pursued with each section till the piece is finished. With the older boys the blackboard is not used, save for the titles indicating the outline of each section. The class then writes it out from memory.
“The fundamental presupposition of this method is the inability of young pupils to compose and think out a series of ideas without much assistance, even though the subject be a familiar one. Their thoughts need concentration and guidance, and this help is given them by the working out of the matter in class. Yet individual liberty of expression is by no means sacrificed. The sentences are the children’s own, and for the purpose of good composition the oral method is invaluable. It proceeds on the sound principle that a child should be taught to test style by the ear and not by the eye alone. It makes short work of a lumbering period.
“On the other hand, the activity and interest of every scholar are kept up by the desire to improve on his fellows, and to have his own version accepted. Constant practice, moreover, is gained in the art of finding synonyms, and it affords an admirable opportunity of instruction in grammar and orthography. Indeed, the practising school at Jena, following a suggestion of Professor Ziller, removes grammatical explanations altogether from the reading piece, and transfers them to the child’s own composition, an expedient which avoids the fault of defacing the beauty and unity of a poem by picking it to pieces for the sake of illustration.”
Sometimes a picture is used to form a subject of conversation, questioning and explanation. Thus is the valuable power of oral composition formed, a good vocabulary obtained, taste cultivated, and that respect for the mother tongue which is so sadly wanting in many English people. Children gain a facility in writing which no dissection into different clauses, enlargements of predicates, etc., can give. Rules are introduced with the reasons for such rules, and only at last a grammar is placed in the pupil’s hands—even as a Euclid is given when it is all known. I have heard a small kindergarten boy stand up and give in a clear and quiet way quite a long story which he had studied. The habit of accurate expression will thus be formed and the thought become clear, for it is language alone which gives form and body to thought—gives it “a local habitation to a name”.
In the higher schools, Mr. Dale writes, the practice of oral composition is continued (p. 573):—
“The practice of oral paraphrase which we saw existing in the elementary schools here reaches its climax. The scholars are bidden to prepare a scene or passage of some author, or to read up some period of literary history at home. The next morning, before the lesson begins, one of them is called upon to give a summary of what he has read, a sort of short essay by word of mouth—lasting three or four minutes, and sometimes even longer. The correctness both of style and matter, with which this difficult task is performed, needs to be heard in order to be fully appreciated at its true value. It combines many of the advantages gained from a debating society with those of an essay. It cultivates readiness of speech and thought, while, like an essay, by enabling the teacher to gauge the points on which interest has centred, it lends him a proper starting-place for his lecture.”
This oral composition tells very advantageously upon the written work, and could be introduced more generally into English schools; but from quite early years children should be accustomed to write answers to questions upon their lessons, or to tell something that they know. Later, subjects may be given to be thought out or a résumé given of a lesson; and lastly the pupils of the higher class required to read up a subject, and write upon it, or compose an essay.
Grammar taught inductively.As regards the formal teaching of English grammar, I shall say but little. I may instead refer my readers to the long and interesting paper by Dr. Abbott in the volume edited by Mr. Barnett, and to his book, How to Tell the Parts of Speech. The system he recommends will form a good foundation for the acquisition of foreign tongues. Pupils are led to make their own definitions, and in part their own grammar. A class thus taught French by our present Mistress of Method were astonished and delighted to find they knew already the chief rules of their French grammar, when at length it was placed in their hands. It is impossible and unnecessary to insist upon all grammatical forms being obtained inductively; life is too short to carry it out in all its details, and so the tabulation and learning of various paradigms becomes necessary; but pupils should learn to form them. I am sure there is much less use in the old-fashioned parsing exercises than is generally supposed; parsing becomes mechanical; nine-tenths of what they have to write children know, and need not think about, and when sentences are given to parse, certain words only should be underlined for parsing. I first questioned its usefulness when I found at school that one who was so dull, that we used to regard her as somewhat of an idiot, always came to the top when we took places for parsing. What the French call analyse logique—classifying all words and phrases according to their function in the sentence—is valuable.
Logical and grammatical analysis.Mr. Blakiston in his School Management endorses this view, and recommends the teaching of logical even before grammatical parsing. Mr. Fearon in School Inspection writes: “What is wanted is to get as quickly as possible a notion of the structure of the sentence, and the logical relation of its parts. The teaching of English should be based on the analysis of sentences. Some may think the teaching of English grammar by means of logical analysis more difficult than the old method. I am perfectly convinced from observation and experience, both as a teacher and as an inspector, that this is not the case. They are not more difficult than the terms which it is necessary to use in teaching grammar on the old system. The great point is to make children have an intelligent understanding of the real things which underlie them and which they represent.”
Professor Woodward (Monographs on Education) writes: “There is need of preparatory drill in forms and language study, to bring a child to the intelligent study of construction, but this done, the analytical method of sentence-study commends itself. Intelligence is called into play, for the pupil is no longer studying words as words, but as the expression of thought; memory is subordinate and reason to the front—nouns, verbs, etc., are in some languages stamped with distinguishing marks, and can be recognised by their forms, but in English the power of any word and its influence in the sentence are rarely dependent on its form; the part of speech cannot be determined at sight, but by its connection and dependency.”
The analysis of sentences is of course very important in the study of foreign languages. Hosts of rules about conjunctions, governing moods, etc., can be discarded if once children can recognise a dependent sentence. Various models of analysis are given in all good grammars. Here is a form which has many recommendations as showing clearly the structure of a complex sentence:—
| Sentence. | Dependent. | Principal. | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The man | - | - | subject of 5 | ||||||
| 2 | who | subj. of 3 | - | adjective | ||||||
| 3 | wrote | pred. of 2 | extension of 1 | |||||||
| 4 | that letter | obj. of 3 | ||||||||
| 5 | said | predicate of 1 | ||||||||
| 6 | that | conj. | ||||||||
| 7 | he | subj. of 8 | - | substantive | object of 5 | |||||
| 8 | would return | pred. of 7 | ||||||||
| 9 | but | conj. | ||||||||
| 10 | he | subj. of 11 | ||||||||
| 11 | did not | pred. of 10 | ||||||||
Another matter which should have great attention is the use of tenses. There is nothing perhaps so difficult for foreigners to acquire as the power of discriminating tenses. Owing to the want of the present and future imperfect in French verbs, many children get an idea that imperfect means past, and few know until they learn Greek that “I have written” is a present tense. Such a table as this can be used to contrast languages:—
| Indefinite. | Imperfect. | Perfect. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Present | I write | am writing | have written |
| Past | Wrote | was writing | had written |
| Future | Shall write | shall be writing | shall have written |
The authors of the Parallel Grammar Series have sought to reduce the time occupied in learning grammar. In one book the general rules only need be given, and the variations from these rules appear in other grammars. Thus the tiresome repetitions in each grammar of the letters of the alphabet—the definitions of the parts of speech of many rules regarding concords—could appear once for all.
Let me in conclusion quote a portion of the resolutions concerning the teaching of English passed by the Conference called by the Committee of Ten.[7]
[7] Report of the Committee of Ten on secondary studies, 1892, Washington.
“The main direct object of the teaching of English in schools is (1) to enable the pupil to understand the expressed thoughts of others and to give expression to thoughts of his own; and (2) to cultivate a taste for reading, to give the pupil some acquaintance with good literature, and to furnish him with the means of extending that acquaintance. Incidentally, other ends may be subserved, but such subsidiary interests should never be allowed to encroach on the two main purposes. Though it may be necessary to consider these separately, in practice they should never be dissociated in the mind of the teacher, and their mutual dependence should be kept constantly present to the mind of the pupils.
“If the pupil is to secure control of the language as an instrument for the expression of his thoughts, it is necessary (1) that during the period of life when imitation is the chief motive principle in education, he should be kept so far as possible away from the influence of bad models and under the influence of good models, and (2) that every thought which he expresses, whether orally or on paper, should be regarded as a proper subject for criticism as to language. Thus every lesson should become a part of the pupil’s training in English. There can be no more appropriate moment for a brief lesson in expression than the moment when the pupil has something which he is trying to express.
“In addition to this incidental training, appropriate special instruction in English should form a part of the curriculum from the beginning. This special instruction may be considered under three heads: A. Language and composition. During the first two years at school, children (under eight) may acquire some fluency of expression by reproducing orally in their own words stories told them by their teachers, and by inventing stories about objects and pictures.
“In the third school year children should begin to compose in writing; they should copy and write from dictation and from memory short and easy passages of prose and verse.
“The subjects assigned should gradually increase in difficulty. (The paraphrasing of poetry is not to be commended.) Pains should be taken to improve the child’s vocabulary by suggesting to him, for the expression of his thoughts, better words than those he may himself have chosen. He should also be trained to perceive the larger divisions of thought which are conventionally indicated by paragraphs. The teacher should bear in mind the necessity of correctness in the formation of sentences and paragraphs.
“Compositions and all other written exercises should receive careful and appropriate criticism, and the staff of instructors should be large enough to protect every teacher from an excess of this peculiarly exacting and fatiguing work.
“B. Formal or systematic grammar. Not earlier than twelve years of age the study of formal grammar, with drill in fundamental analysis, may be taken up. It should not be pursued as a separate study longer than is necessary to familiarise the pupil with the main principles. Probably a single year will be sufficient. Subsequently, although grammatical analysis may properly accompany reading and the study of composition, it should not be regarded as a separate subject in the curriculum. The teaching of formal grammar should aim principally to enable the pupil (1) to recognise the parts of speech, and (2) to analyse sentences both as to structure and as to syntax. Routine parsing should be avoided.
“With regard to the study of formal grammar the Conference wishes to lay stress on three points: (1) a student may be taught to speak and write good English without receiving any special instruction in formal grammar; (2) the study of formal grammar is valuable as training in thought, but has only an indirect bearing on the art of writing and speaking; and (3) the teaching of formal grammar should be as far as possible incidental, and should be brought into close connection with the pupil’s work in reading and composition. These principles explain the considerable reduction recommended by the Conference in the amount of time allowed to this study.
“The best results in the teaching of English in high schools cannot be secured without the aid given by the study of some other language. Latin and German are especially suited to this end.
“Every teacher, whatever his department, should feel responsible for the use of good English by his pupils.”
One would like to say much on the study of language generally, and not only of its mere formal elements—of the “fossil poetry” to be found in figures of speech; of the metaphors which express the same thought in different languages. I give the names of some useful books, but there are many other good grammars.
| Name of Work. | Author. | Pages. | Price. | Publishers. | Remarks. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lectures on Language | M. Müller | 1100 | Longmans | Indispensable. | ||||
| Lectures on Science of Thought | M. Müller | 660 | Longmans | Full of interest. | ||||
| Philology | Peile | 100 | 1s. | Macmillan | Excellent. May be used as a class-book for children. | |||
| Etymological Dictionary | Skeat | 7s. 6d. | Clarendon Press | Very necessary for language teachers. | ||||
| Etymological Dictionary | Brachet | Clarendon Press | Introduction specially good. Required by all who teach French. | |||||
| English Past and Present | Nesfield | 450 | 3s. 6d. | Macmillan | Very good for upper classes. | |||
| English Grammar | Hyde Clarke | 150 | 1s. | Crosby | Suggestive for the teacher. Contains much that is interesting. | |||
| Comparative Philology | Sayce | 400 | Trübner | |||||
| Primer of Phonetics | Sweet | 120 | 1s. 6d. | Clarendon Press | ||||
| Visible Speech | Bell | 80 | 2s. | Volta Press, Washington | The large book costs about four dollars. | |||
| Ecriture phonétique | - | Passy | 1s. 6d. | Firmin Didot | Clear and easy. | |||
| Les sons du français | ||||||||
| Phonétique des deutschen | Victor | 5s. 6d. | Heelbronn | Somewhat difficult. | ||||
| Introduction to Phonetics | Soames | 280 | 3s. 6d. | Sonnenschein | A very useful introduction, adapted to English, French and German. | |||
| Expressive Reading | Meiklejohn | 360 | Holden | Very good. Contains a suitable selection. | ||||
| Plea for Reformed Spelling | Pitman | Pitman | ||||||
| Spelling Reform | Gladstone | Pitman | ||||||
| How to Teach Reading | Stanley Hall | 40 | 1s. | Heath | ||||
Amongst English grammars I may mention those by Morris and Mason, various books by Dr. Abbott, and the Parallel Grammar Series. There are good grammars, too numerous to mention, suitable for school use.
CLASSICAL STUDIES.
By W. H. D. Rouse, M.A., formerly Fellow of Christ’s College in Cambridge, and a Master at Rugby School.
Aim of a girl’s education.It were idle to expect that classics can be studied with the same thoroughness in girls’ schools as in boys’. Girls’ schools have grown up with other traditions; music and drawing and modern languages have so long been the staple of a girl’s education, that it is perhaps too late now to make any radical change. Nor is it clear that even if possible, it would be well to substitute classics for these subjects. If the object of girls’ education be, as many think, not so much to turn out finished scholars as to give an intelligent and sympathetic interest in life, this can be better achieved by grafting classics upon the existing curriculum, than by ousting other studies for the sake of these. Nevertheless, there will be many whose aim it is to give themselves to teaching as a profession, and some who are scholars born, and willing to spend their life in research and study. A good school must provide for these; and we have to consider how to combine the interests of both classes. The result will naturally be a compromise: the average pupil getting less than the average boy gets, while the few specialists will need to make up for lost time, and to compress their work into a shorter period than is usually given to it. The object of teaching will be the same in any case: a mastery of the matter perfect as far as it goes; and at the outset, the methods will be much the same.
Importance of Latin in all schemes of higher education.It is scarcely necessary to insist on the value of Latin for every educated man or woman. It is not only valuable as a thorough training of the mind, in close reasoning and unremitting attention; nor only as opening to the student a literature of great interest: it is actually useful in a practical way. It is the key to all the Romance languages; Latin once mastered, French and Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are brought within easy reach. Almost all that has then to be learnt is the grammar of these languages; for the body of the words is already familiar. Certainly much study and practice will be needed before these languages can be spoken; but is it nothing to be able to read? Men who are preparing for the Civil Service in India learn Sanskrit; not because the Government is interested in the training of their minds, but because this is the key to the spoken dialects of India. As this dead language is practically useful in learning Hindi or Bengali, so Latin is practically useful in learning Italian or French. Then again, the grammatical drill is much more rigid and effective in teaching Latin than in teaching French, Italian, or even German. The relation of action to object, the subordination of thought to thought, the dependence of an oblique statement, all become clear to the mind in English or French when they have been made clear to the eye by Latin. Nor must we forget that without Latin no one can really understand English, especially the English of such writers as Milton and Bacon. And besides these advantages, Latin has a direct use in several professions, which are now or may yet be open to women: in medicine, in the law, in letters; and even in business a knowledge of it, as already pointed out, will enable any one to become fit for foreign correspondence with far less difficulty than otherwise.
We will assume, then, that Latin will be begun even in girls’ schools early enough (say at thirteen or fourteen) to get through the grammar, without undue pressure, by the time the specialist will wish to begin Greek. There may be at that time a certain amount of work yet to get through which a boy of the same age would have done; but this will have to be done more quickly, that is all. It must not be slurred or neglected, certainly; but the student will probably find that the work progresses at a rather quicker rate than might be expected, because the mind is already better trained and stored than is usual at that stage of the study.
The right method of teaching a language.The right method of teaching a language may be put in a nutshell: grammar, reading, writing and conversation should go side by side. For convenience, and because of the importance of the subjects, grammar and exercises in composition will naturally have special times assigned to them; but they should never be left out of sight. No construing lesson ought to be done without some grammatical drill, or without a few sentences of conversation, which is in fact composition in brief. (1) Grammar.The importance of grammar can hardly be overestimated; and the first thing the learner must understand is that the skeleton of the language, the inflections, have to be known by heart. A knowledge of cognate languages may help, and comparative tables of forms may help both intelligence and memory, but in the end it all comes to the same thing: however the pupil may have learnt them, he must be prepared to say off his declensions and conjugations from memory in the usual tabular form. There are, in this slipshod age, those who affect to despise precise knowledge, such as geographical names and facts, historical dates, and the paradigms of a grammar. To “learn by reading” not sufficient.“Learn by reading” is their motto in language; a most false and pernicious principle, as I can testify from sad experience. It has been my lot to learn one or two languages sufficiently well to enable me to read in them, and I grieve to relate that in these I shirked the drudgery of the grammar. The result is that although a certain amount of grammar has soaked in, I cannot yet read without a manual by my side. The most such a method can do is to give the general sense of a sentence; but it often fails to do even that, inasmuch as the general sense of a sentence is made up of the precise sense of its parts. Exactness in understanding is not to be had without paying the price, and the price is an exact knowledge of grammar. The rottenness of this system is shown when it comes to writing; and the productions of these empirics might well make Quintilian stare and gasp. Thus, however the grammar may be taught to begin with, the class should always have handy some book containing just the facts of the language, arranged in the usual fashion, and not encumbered with exercises. They will need this in the end, and they may as well have it at the beginning. The most useful books of the kind are Kennedy’s Revised Latin Primer (or Postgate’s New Latin Primer, which is in some respects better, notably in the marking of quantities) and Abbott and Mansfield’s Greek Grammar. If no book of exercises is used, it is hardly necessary to say that these books cannot be learnt straight through from cover to cover. Indeed, the very first pages of both are unintelligible to beginners. In that case the teacher must himself select what is to be learnt; and the tables which follow ([pp. 87-8]) are meant to assist in this.
(2) Reading to be begun as soon as possible.As soon as the pupil is able to understand a simple sentence, he should begin to use some reading book. One of the most satisfactory Latin readers I have had to do with is Abbott’s Dux Latinus; some of the books err in not being simple enough in the structure of the sentences. Equally good and more easy to work with are the cheap Single Term Readers of Messrs. Rivington. The sooner the pupil can be put on to a genuine classical author, the better. Eutropius, Nepos or Phædrus is better suited for beginners than Cæsar; Cæsar will come next. Stories from Ovid may follow, and some of Cicero’s lucid and interesting narrative; the best selection is that of Walford (Clarendon Press). Virgil may be well begun in Allcroft’s Story of Æneas (Blackie). Once the pupil has attained this stage, further selection should be easy; only, be it said, too many notes spoil the scholar.
The student will be able sooner to tackle an author in Greek than in Latin, because of the greater simplicity of the language. In a very short time he ought to pass on to the excellent Clarendon Press Easy Selections from Xenophon, or some adaptation of stories from Herodotus, or parts of Lucian. He may then take one of the Rugby Scenes from Greek Plays (Rivingtons), and the easier parts of Thucydides, as edited in Rivington’s Middle Form Greek Readers.
Construing.In the construing lesson, the teacher will of course try to give each pupil a small portion to translate; and with a class of twenty-five this can easily be done in three quarters of an hour, leaving time for questions. He will then go through the passage himself, asking a question or two now and then to rivet their attention; and then one and another should be called upon to decline or conjugate as many of the words (regular as well as irregular) as can be got into the time. It is needless to insist that constant practice is necessary in grammar and parsing. In this manner the accidence will be kept fresh in the mind, and at last (it is to be hoped) firmly impressed upon it. But one most important aid to learning is so often neglected, that it will be necessary to speak about it rather fully. (3) Conversation.This is conversation. First let me say that nothing is meant resembling the method of Gouin. What may be the merits of that method in the case of French or German, it is needless to ask here; but I am confident that a syntax and accidence so elaborate as those of Greek could not possibly be taught by that method in any reasonable time, and I do not believe they could be so taught at all. Simple conversation can be begun as soon as the pupil begins to read. We will suppose the reading book contains the sentence, Post triduum Cæsar equitatum ad Labienum misit. How to be used.The teacher will ask, Quid fecit Cæsar? and the pupil must be made to answer, at first by prompting if necessary, Misit equitatum Cæsar. The next question may be, Ad quem misit equitatum? the reply, Ad Labienum misit equitatum Cæsar. Other questions may be got out of this short sentence; such as Quis misit? quid? quando? The class should be made to give always a complete sentence in reply. At first they may have the book open before them; but so soon as they are used to the sound of the words, they should be made to shut the book and answer from memory. Five minutes at the end of a lesson is not much to give, and it is surprising how this kind of thing quickens interest and memory. Its great advantages.The pupils find the advantage when they sit down to write their exercises, for now the words and constructions come quickly into the mind. Moreover, they will find that they have learnt unconsciously the difference in emphasis which position makes; for it will be observed that in the simple answers given above, the words which answer the question, and are therefore the most important, come first in the answer. The teacher should ring the changes on his reading exercise in this way, until after a term or two he will be able to begin talking to them on other subjects: such as the weather, the pictures on the walls, the pupils’ dress, their inky fingers, anything that occurs to him. He must take every opportunity of dropping in the accusative and infinitive, a phrase of purpose or consequence, or the like; and thus, without much trouble, these bugbears will be got rid of. If a pupil can answer no more than Nescio quid dicas, it is something that he uses the subjunctive in a dependent question.
But it will be asked, where are the teachers to be found who can do this? A difficulty met.The answer is, that it is perfectly easy to learn, and only needs practice. The teacher will have his own book open before him, and need not go beyond its words till he has gained confidence; then by degrees he will do it more and more easily, and in a while talking will come quite naturally to him. In more discursive conversations, it is true, some preparation will be necessary, but it is quite worth the while. There are one or two little books that teachers will find useful,[8] but they will best make their own collections. A few hours’ reading will give an ample store of colloquialisms from Plato, Aristophanes and Lucian, from Plautus, Terence, and Cicero’s letters. It is not a bad plan to compile lists of colloquial sentences, say a hundred, and make every pupil learn them by heart.
[8] Sprechen Sie Attisch? Ioannides: Koch, Leipzig, 1889. Sprechen Sie Lateinisch? Id. Sargent, Greek Prose Composition. Blackie, Gr. Conversation.
A practical test.It may be worth while saying that the writer has tested this method, and found it practicable with young and old. Moreover it has been applied, within his knowledge, to the teaching of Russian, a language hardly less difficult than Greek; and it is found possible, by combining conversation, reading, writing and learning by heart, to teach even obtuse persons how to read an ordinary novel or newspaper, to write a social or official letter, and to converse on ordinary topics, in three months, although before they began this course they knew not even the Russian alphabet.
(4) Composition.For Latin composition the teacher can hardly do better than begin with Abbott’s Via Latina; for Greek, Ritchie’s Practical Greek Method is to be recommended, though not so unreservedly. What books are best to follow up with may be seen from the lists given below. But after all, it is not books that teach, so much as the teacher; and he had better fix on the subjects that are to be taught at each stage, and select or make the exercises necessary to teach them.
Every exercise will of course be corrected, and the pupil should never pass on without having written out a correct translation of the exercise himself. Practical hints for teaching it.If it is practicable, the best thing is for him to be told his mistakes, and then to rewrite the exercise, doing it again and again until it is right. But if time permits not this, the teacher may do a good deal to encourage self-help by going round the class whilst they are writing, and underlining all mistakes, which the pupils are then to correct, if they can. As soon as possible, pieces of continuous prose should be done as well as sentences; and this can be begun quite early, in fact after a couple of terms’ work. The same plan of underlining mistakes may be followed with these; but it will be found advantageous, as the work increases in difficulty, to give more and more often fair copies of the teacher’s, or by some other competent person. In all composition it is useful to dictate the fair copy, and then to give a few minutes for the class to learn it. The class should then be called up, the copy taken away, and the English should be translated viva voce. Of course any reasonable translation will be accepted; it is not meant that only the very words of the copy given will do. Let the old pieces be done over now and again at sight; and the results cannot fail to be good.
Type-sentences to be learnt by heart.Most of the exercise books have explanations prefixed to each exercise, with examples. All such examples, or at least one of each construction, should be learnt by heart. The same should be done with the syntax rules of any grammar which may be in use. These should all be so well drilled into the pupils, that when a rule is given, or a heading, or (for beginners) the English meaning, the pupils should be able to reel off the example without hesitation. A certain portion of syntax, or of the exercise book, or both, should be set for each stage; and the classes which are studying that part of the subject must learn these, and keep up the old work. The reading book will give plenty of opportunity to ask for these quotations, and it should constantly be done. The oftener the pupil repeats his example of the instrumental ablative, or whatever it may be, the better he will know it; and he cannot know it too well. The pupil should be tested and kept up to the mark by regular grammar papers, at least twice a term.
Unseen translation.Unseen translation should be commenced as early as possible, and form part of the regular work. Beginners can try some unprepared piece out of their reading book, which they must do on paper, and without help, except that they will use the vocabulary. As soon as the pupils are far enough on to use a dictionary, some special book of unseens should be taken, such as Jerram’s Anglice Reddenda. The use of helps can be gradually discontinued, until the pupil is weaned from them altogether. This can be done by forbidding dictionaries, and giving the meanings of the more unfamiliar words, fewer and fewer by degrees.
Repetition.As soon as the pupil has begun to read a verse author, repetition should be begun, and never afterwards discontinued. Verse is easier to learn, so with verse we begin; but pieces of prose for learning should be set later. It is useful to make the repetition a part of the terminal examination, and to have every word of it written out. A Greek play and a book of Virgil should be chosen (say the Medea, or the Œdipus Tyrannus, and the IVth or VIth Æneid), together with the Heroides of Ovid, and if time allows, one of the speeches against Catiline and a Philippic of Demosthenes. These can be divided into portions, a portion for each form or class, and it should be understood that this has to be learnt during the term and kept up afterwards. The examination will simply consist in writing out all the portion learnt during the term, and all the old work, if any. As the work will always be the same, the older pupils will soon get to know it perfectly. The system here recommended has been used in one great school for perhaps a quarter of a century, and the results have been excellent.
Methods of work more advanced.We will now suppose that the accidence and syntax are fairly well known, and that the pupil is ready to read a book of Virgil or a speech of Cicero, Euripides or Demosthenes, without serious difficulty. The methods followed will not change; they will merely be applied more widely. The grammar will need to be kept fresh by the same means as before, and the study will be made more intelligent by use of the comparative and historical methods;[9] construing will be done in the same order, but some style will be expected; composition will be worked by means of correction and fair copies, but the pieces chosen will be harder, and here, too, style will be more attended to; conversation will by this time have become easy and interesting, and will cover a wider range of ideas. What is to be aimed at.The aims of the teacher at this stage must be to teach self-reliance, and to direct the student more and more to illustrative reading. It is advisable at this stage to do part of the work without the aid of notes. The class is reading, we will suppose, a book of Horace’s Odes, and one of Cicero’s speeches. He should have a complete text of Horace, and the proper volume of Cicero’s works (or the whole), with no notes at all; from this he should prepare the work for the first time of doing. Difficulties he must make out as best he can, with the aid of grammar and dictionary, some dictionary of antiquities (Rich for beginners, Smith’s large one for older students), Gow’s Companion and the pictorial Atlas of Antiquities. What is to be aimed at.For revision, he should be given notes dictated by the teacher, or some edition with printed notes in it. The class work should be done with the utmost care and exactness, and parts of the author committed to memory: side by side with this should go more discursive reading, especially for the older students. They should be encouraged (and at last expected) to read more of the author by themselves, and to bring difficulties to the teacher, who ought now and again to test their progress. Thus the curriculum of the latter part of the school work will consist of a portion of all the chief authors to be read in school, and as much more as possible of the same authors read out of school.
[9] Lindsay’s Short Historical Latin Grammar. For Greek there is none such as yet, but notes may be given from Giles’ Manual, or King and Cookson (see [lists] below).
Illustrative works.The pupil should also be directed to illustrative works which will serve to quicken his interest in any author. The excellent series of Ancient Classics for English Readers contains an account of each author, with extracts translated; and well do I remember my interest in the Xenophon of this series, when quite a boy. Passages might be read to the class from some book of travels; On the Track of the Ten Thousand, if Xenophon be the author; Travels or Explorations in Egypt, if Herodotus; and so forth. The reader of Cicero could not fail to be interested in Boissier’s Cicero and his Friends; the Latin poets are well illustrated by Sellar’s Roman Poets of the Republic and of the Augustan Age. Symonds’ Greek Poets, Mahaffy’s literary and historical books, Champagny’s Les Césars, Girard’s Education Athénienne are only a few out of many books which make the old days live again, and add to the literary appreciation of a learner.
Translations.The elder pupils in their private reading must be taught the proper use of translations. It is not to be expected that they will do without them entirely; but they should have access to the best, in a school library or elsewhere, under some direction at first and afterwards at discretion. If they are clearly shown that it is their interest to use them only where their own honest efforts have failed, or as models in the case of books they have already done, most of them will be sensible enough not to abuse their liberty. The pupil will gain much, too, by reading some of the old translations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From North’s Plutarch, Hobbes’ Thucydides, Holland’s Livy, and other such, the learner will gain a new idea of what the English language can do, much to the advantage of his style. Nor is there the same danger in giving pupils these books as in allowing them the free use of modern translations. They reproduce the spirit rather than the letter, and are of little use as “cribs”.
Style.When the pupil has learnt how to write correct Latin or Greek, it will be time to pay some attention to style. The pieces chosen should at first be definitely historical, oratorical, philosophical, or dialogue, according to the author being at the time studied; in the last stage, these should be given one after the other, unless any weak point needs strengthening. Lectures and demonstrations.It is useful now and again to give lectures and demonstrations in composition to a class. Each will be provided with a copy of the English, and the teacher then will get to the heart of it, state its thoughts in the sequence and subordination as simply as possible, and finally translate it bit by bit, using the blackboard to record each step. Questions may be asked or anticipated, and the various renderings suggested should be weighed and discussed. In this manner the beginner sees how a trained mind works, and is helped to guide his own. Good examples of the method may be seen in Sidgwick’s Lectures on Greek Prose Composition, Postgate’s Sermo Latinus, and Sargent’s Primers.
Verse-writing.So far nothing has been said of verse composition. Much obloquy has been poured on this of late years; and it may be admitted that formerly too much time was given to it. But in spite of all that objectors can say, there is no manner of doubt that verse-writing is a practice of very great value. No one really pretends that it can make poets (the common sneer); all that is claimed for it is, that it is valuable as a mental gymnastic and in training the literary sense. Prose-writing can teach the power of words, but only verse their subtler associations; prose teaches the effect of position upon emphasis, but verse makes clear that there is such a thing as literary form. Most people never realise the rhythm of a piece of prose; its more striking faults may offend or its merits unconsciously please, but why these please or offend it would be beyond their power to say. Its value.But the dullest boy or girl who has learnt how to piece together an elegiac couplet, understands that this particular kind of composition is regulated by definite bounds, and cast in a form, the variations of which are limited. His ear becomes attuned more or less to rhythm, and this first step may be used to lead him on to the comprehension of literary form in other kinds. I do not say that he will never learn the lesson without writing verses, but that this is the easiest way to teach it; and I would apply the same principle to English or any other language. Some incidental advantages follow at the same time; not the least that the pupil understands the metre of the poets he reads. He will not learn this equally well by scanning. To have full effect the act of scanning must be unconscious; that is, the reader must take in words, meaning and rhythm at the same time without effort. So far as my experience goes, those who have not learnt how to write verses never read poetry in this way, but the scanning (if done) is done by a conscious effort, which draws off the mind from the poetry. Let the class, then, as soon as they begin to read a verse author, do a term’s work or two on elementary exercises in metre (I will not say verse-writing) from Penrose’s Latin Elegiac Verse Composition. The time will not be wasted, as has been shown, even if no more is done. Those who wish to go further in Latin verse cannot do without a skilled teacher, for no books exist which can help him much. Demonstrations on the blackboard can teach a great deal at this stage; but nothing can be done by the pupil without learning a great deal of Latin verse by heart. Greek verse is easier to compose than Latin, and may be begun quite late. Nearly all the elementary books on Greek verse are useless without a teacher, and need constant supervision and help; perhaps I may be pardoned for mentioning a little book called Damon, since this is the only one wherein the learner is led on by steps graduated close one after the other. Pupils may go straight from this book to the rendering of pieces of English verse, but both Sidgwick’s and Sargent’s books on Greek verse will always be found useful.
Pronunciation of Latin and Greek.It is necessary now to say something about the pronunciation of Latin and Greek. The reformed pronunciation is strongly to be recommended. This is simply set forth in a pamphlet published by the Cambridge University Press,[10] and for Latin is practically that given in the first pages of the Latin Primer. The sole advantage of pronouncing Latin and Greek words as if they were English, is that the learner need learn nothing new. But this is far outweighed by the disadvantages; and after all, the pupil has begun to learn French or German, and so is not struck dumb at being called upon to pronounce i as ee. The main disadvantages are these: (1) Confusion of s, c, and t, as Ceres with Seres, cedit with sedit; (2) Confusion of quantity, mensīs (abl. pl.) with mensĭs (gen. sing.), mālum (“evil”) with mălum (“apple”); (3) Difficulty of pronunciation in many words, especially in Greek, as παύω when the first syllable is made to rhyme with law; (4) Loss of much beauty in the sound of the languages.
[10] The Reformed Pronunciation of Greek and Latin: Arnold and Conway. 1895. IS.
The accent in Greek.In one point, however, I differ from the authors of this pamphlet—that is, on the question of Greek accentuation. It is generally agreed that the Greek accents must be learnt, and rightly so, for many interesting linguistic points turn on them; but it is also the invariable practice not to try to pronounce them. To be taught as far as practicable.But there is really no reason why most of them should not be pronounced. The Greek accent, as is well known, was a musical intonation; the acute[11] denoting a rise in the tone, the circumflex a rise followed by a fall, i.e., a kind of drawl. The circumflex can always be pronounced with ease; so can the acute, when final; so can the great majority of internal accents. It is just as easy to say ἐλΕΙποντο as ἐλειΠΟΝτο. The only cases of real difficulty are words like φέρηται, άνθρωπος, where a long vowel follows an accented syllable. These might be waived for beginners, but these are few compared to the rest; and even to pronounce the accent and quantity in these is not very difficult, especially with the reformed pronunciation. This plan has been tried, and found to work fairly, with young boys from twelve to sixteen.
[11] The grave on finals, when written for acute, is practically the same.
Value of old English translations.There is a means by which the classical teacher may be greatly helped, and that is if the general course of studies in the school be so arranged, that good English translations of the classics form a fair proportion of the English authors read. Many of these translations are themselves English classics, such as Chapman’s and Pope’s Homer, North’s Plutarch, Dryden’s Virgil and Juvenal. Others there are in plenty, no less excellent than these, if less known—Phaer’s Virgil, Holland’s versions of Livy, Suetonius, Plutarch’s Morals, and many other works; Hobbes’ Thucydides, Barnard’s Terence, Echard’s Plautus—indeed there is hardly a classical author of repute who did not find a worthy translator in the Elizabethan age. A few of these are accessible in cheap reprints,[12] and if there were a demand for any of them a reprint would appear at once. By reading these the children will become familiar with the subject-matter of classical authors before they have to translate them; and they will also have made acquaintance with some fine works of literature, many of which (such as North) are interesting from association with Shakspere. When Roman or Greek history comes in the regular historical cycle, some of these books might well be read along with them.
[12] Messrs. Dent & Co., in the Temple Classics, have brought out Chapman, and intend to include North and others.
Models and illustrations.The last thing to be mentioned is the use of models and illustrations. There is almost no limit to the number of such things that can be had; the real limit is the depth of the teacher’s purse. But the schools ought to provide these things for use; it is too much to expect that teachers should spend their sparings and savings in educational plant. Any money spent in this way is amply repaid by the interest added to the work. Classical teachers ought to have at their disposal lantern slides illustrating classical life and history, wall pictures and maps, photographs and models. Slides may be hired from the Hellenic Society, or bought through the Teachers’ Guild;[13] for wall pictures there are two excellent series, those of Cybulski and Launitz. Of photographs there are thousands. The wise teacher will travel and collect them; but for those who will not, one or two addresses of photographers are given below,[14] with the names of some useful works. The pictures can be kept in the school library, and hung up for the term when they will be useful. For the photographs, frames with movable backs are most to be recommended, as the pictures can then be changed at will. The teacher should talk about them, and question his class, and (as already suggested) they may form a topic of Latin or Greek conversation. It is astonishing how much children will learn from these things. In addition, it is highly desirable that each pupil should have his pictorial atlases as he has an atlas of geography.
[13] There is a large collection in the Guild Museum, Gower Street, London. Here also models may be seen.
Recapitulation.The writer has now pointed out what, in his opinion, is the place which Latin and Greek should take in a girl’s education, and the methods best calculated to teach them. If in these there is not much that is new, they are at all events such as experience has proved to be sound. One or two points may be indicated which are apt to be weak in girl students, and must therefore be specially guarded against. Weak points to be strengthened.They are apt to be shaky in grammar, and they seem to have less mental self-reliance than boys. As regards those who learn late, they must go over the same ground; for no teacher and no book, no not if angels wrote it, can point out a royal road to learning. These late-learners bring to the task a mind already more or less trained, and so they will get on faster; but let them beware of trying to get on too fast. They must make up their minds that grammar has to be learnt, and work at it with a will. If they have already done half of the drudgery by learning Latin, as here recommended, their task will be not easy indeed, but not beyond their powers; and even if both Latin and Greek are begun late, they need not even then despair. I have known several, both men and women, who have begun late and ended with success, even with distinction; although it must be admitted that these were persons of exceptional powers. But it is of the utmost importance that the most capable teachers should have charge of the late-learners. The greater the difficulty, the greater need for a teacher who has his subjects at the ends of his fingers, who can see a short-cut, and is able to judge how much of the preliminary work can safely be shortened, or even omitted for the time. When skill in the teacher meets with will in the taught, between them they may remove mountains.
SUGGESTED SCHEME OF WORK IN SIX PARTS.
LATIN.
| Grammar. | Composition. |
| 1. Parts of speech and elements: regular nouns and adjectives: est, sunt, and how to form 3rd sing. and pl. pres. indic. first conjugation, given the infinitive present. | 1. Simplest sentences: statement, question and answer. |
| 2. Commonest pronouns: present indic. of sum, and how to form 3rd sing. and pl. of all four conjugations, given the infinitive present. | 2. Cases of agent and instrument, time and place: quam with nom. and acc., abl. of comparison: a few common prolate verbs: simplest relative sentences and cum temporal. |
| 3. Pronouns and cardinal numerals: active of the four conjugations: sum: meanings and case of a few common prepositions. | 3. Ablative absolute, and a few more case usages: accusative with infinitive: use of se, suus, ipse: double questions: factitives in active, prolate verbs: relative sentences, with a hint of finals: commands and prohibitions: causal, concessive and temporal sentences. |
| 4. Ordinal numerals: passive of the four conjugations: a few common irregular verbs. | 4. Quisquam, quisque, quivis, etc. (meaning): chief case usages: factitives: common verbs with dative: dependent questions: accusative with infinitive, tenses distinguished: simple finals, pos. and negative: simple consecutives: verbs of hindering and fearing. |
| 5 and 6. Deponents, impersonals, irregular verbs: fill up gaps (add e.g., the rest of the numerals). | 5. Utor and other verbs with various cases: all case usages: gerund and gerundive: some impersonal verbs: final and consecutive sentences: conditions begun. |
| 6. Quisquam, etc., use and idioms: participles: nunquam, etc., causal, concessive, temporal and other conjunctions: conditions: obliqua. |
GREEK.
| Grammar. | Composition. |
| 1. Regular nouns and adjectives: article: εστιν and εισιν: how to form 3rd sing. and pl. pres. indic. of verbs in -ω given the infinitive present. | 1. Concords (including that of neuter plural): article in direct predication: simplest sentences, statement, question and answer: simplest meanings of cases: meanings of απο, εις, εν, εξ, μετα (gen.), συν. |
| 2. Some irregular nouns: cardinal numerals: comparison of adjectives: commoner pronouns: ειμι, with active of λυω. General rules for accent in its dependence on quantity. | 2. Article with demonstrative and with adjectives of position: αυτος: simplest meaning of the tenses: accusative with infinitive: some further particles of question and emphasis. |
| 3. Numerals: ειμι, λυω: a few irregular nouns. Accent of nouns and verbs (general rules). | 3. Genitive absolute: agent and instrument and other case usage: infinitive with verbs of command or request: commands, prohibitions, wishes (opt.): ἱνα and its sequence: double questions and further formulæ. |
| 4. Contracted verbs: parts of a few irregular verbs: accent of nouns and verbs (special rules) and contracted syllables. | 4. ὁπως with fut. indic. ὡστε: all final constructions: verbs of fearing: δια, νατα, μετα, παρα, προς, ὑπο. |
| 5. Verbs in -μι: οιδα φημι: parts of commoner irregular verbs. | 5. Accusative and nominative with infinitives: use of participles with certain verbs: consecutive and temporal constructions: simple indirect statement and question: the conditions begun. |
| 6. Irregular nouns and verbs: fill gaps. Revise with Goodwin’s Grammar. | 6. The cases, tenses, participles and prepositions: idioms, such as καιπερ ἁτε ὡς: conditions: all rules of obliqua. |
BOOKS.[15]
[15] V is added to those which have vocabularies; K means key.
The writer wishes it to be understood that this is not an exhaustive list. These books he has either tested by use, or has good grounds in the experience of others for the judgment given of them; but there are many others of the same kind, and there is often little to choose between them. The publishers whose books are given below are: Camb. Univ. Press, Clarendon Press, Blackie, Dent, Grevel, Isbister, Longmans, Macmillan, Murray, Rivingtons, Seeley, Trübner.
LATIN: GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION.
Public School Lat. Primer (or Postgate’s New Lat. Primer, in some respects a more useful book) should be kept at hand, if only for reference and revision. Abbott, Via Latina (v), 3/6; excellent. Morris, Elementa Latina, with Tripertita as an exercise book, followed by Mansfield’s Lat. Exercise Book; a good series for very beginners, but the exercises need supplementing. Allen, Rudimenta Latina (v) 2/6; belongs to a complete series, the other books being an Elementary Latin Grammar, 2/6, a First (v), 2/6, and a Second Latin Exercise Book (v), 3/6. The last named is an excellent book for teachers, who may learn much from it, but I have found it dull and difficult for the learner. Ritchie, First Steps in Lat. (v), 1/6; also one of a series, with Ex. in Lat. Prose Comp. (v), 2/6, and Easy Continuous Lat. Prose, 2/6,[16] Latin Clause Construction, 1/6, a First Lat. Verse Book (v), 2/-, and a Reader Fabulæ Faciles (v), 2/6, with Imitative Lat. Ex. (v), 1/6, based upon it. These are good books, and I prefer them to Allen’s after using both series: the explanations are clearer, and there are more sentences. Macmillan’s Latin Course (v), two parts, 3/6 and 4/6; good. It has an advantage in the large number of exercises. England, Exx. in Latin, Syntax and Idiom (v k), 2/6; a companion to Roby’s School Latin Grammar. Rooper and Herring, Primary Lat. Exx. (v), 3/6; specially adapted to the Revised Lat. Primer. North and Hillard, Lat. Prose Comp. (v), for the middle forms, 3/6; carefully arranged and progressive from phrases and sentences to continuous prose. Champneys and Randall, Easy English Pieces for Translation into Latin Prose, 1st and 2nd series, each 1/6; excellent, and can be used with a sentence book as soon as the elements are mastered. More advanced Grammars: W. M. Lindsay, Short Historical Lat. Gr., 4/6; excellent. This is mainly philological. H. J. Roby, School Lat. Gr., 5/-; good. Not philological.
[16] See below, [Champneys].
For Idiom and Construction in the higher stages:—
Bradley, Arnold’s Lat. Prose Comp. (v), 5/-, and Aids to Writing Latin Prose, 5/-, with full explanations; the former has sentences, the latter continuous prose. Abbott, Lat. Prose through Eng. Idiom, 2/6; is a most useful little book for committing to memory. This should be used with one or two forms or sets in addition to the stock books. Jerram, Latine Reddenda, 1/6; useful collection of miscellaneous sentences. Books of chosen English: Holden, Foliorum Centuriæ, 8/-, for Gr. and Lat. prose; the standard collection. Wilkins’ Manual of Lat. Prose Comp., 4/6. Sargent and Dallin, Materials and Models for Lat. Pr. Comp. (k), 6/6; with references for each piece to portions of Latin authors on similar subjects; a useful book. Potts, Passages for Transl. into Lat. Prose (k), 2/6. Nettleship, Passages for Transl. into Lat. Prose, with a valuable introduction. Postgate: see [below].
Most useful for teachers, advanced students, or private students:—
J. Y. Sargent, Lat. Prose Primer (v), 2/6; most of the pieces are carefully analysed, and the steps by which the sense is mastered and then translated are shown in detail. It is a companion to Sargent’s Easy Passages for Transl. into Lat. (k), 2/6. Potts, Hints towards Lat. Pr., 3/-; perhaps the most useful of all manuals on Latin prose style. Postgate, Sermo Latinus (k), 2/6; interesting and instructive. Ramsay, Lat. Pr. Versions, with the English, 5/-; excellent models. Meissner’s Lat. Phrase Book, 3/6; phrases and quotations classified and indexed; a most useful book. Roby’s Lat. Gr., two vols., 9/- and 10/6; indispensable. W. M. Lindsay, Lat. Language, 21/-; indispensable to those who study Latin from the comparative standpoint. His Short Historical Lat. Gr. will, however, be sufficient for less advanced students.
VERSE.
Manuals by Penrose (elegiacs); Morice (same, more advanced), and Lupton (lyrics): Holden, Foliorum Silvula (the best anthology).
READERS.
There are numbers of elementary readers, and there is really little to choose between them. The most useful set seems to the writer to be Rivington’s Single Term Latin Readers, 8d. to 1/4 each. With notes, exercises and vocabularies. These are sets of three books for each of six terms, each book containing enough for a term’s work, and each set having the same standard. Others in common use are: Morice, Loculi, 2/-; Abbott, Dux Latinus, 2/-, adapted to Via Latina; Ritchie, Fabulæ Faciles; Bennett’s Easy Lat. Stories, Hardy’s Lat. Reader, etc. Teachers and private students may learn much from Abbott’s Latin Gate.
GREEK: GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION.
Abbott and Mansfield, Primer of Gr. Gr., 2/6, or with Syntax, 3/6; is perhaps the most convenient as a collection of facts. A Primer of Gr. Ex., 3/6, has been compiled to go with it. Ritchie’s elementary exercise books can be recommended. Ritchie and Moore, Practical Gr. Method for Beginners (v k), 3/6. Ritchie, First Steps in Gr. (v), 2/-; exercises need to be supplemented. Jackson, First Steps to Greek Prose Comp. (v k), and Second Steps (v k), 1/6 and 3/6; are useful exercise books. Macmillan’s Greek course: Easy Ex. in Gr. Accidence (v), 2/-; Easy Ex. in Gr. Syntax (v), 2/6; Second Gr. Exercise Book (v), 2/6; companions to Rutherford’s Greek Grammar. They are almost exclusively exercises, and very full. Jerram, Graece Reddenda (v), 2/6; a collection of miscellaneous sentences. Sidgwick’s First Gr. Writer (v k), 3/6; easy continuous prose, may be used along with any book of sentences. Following this comes his excellent Gr. Prose Comp. (v k), 5/-, and then the pupil will be able to dispense with crutches. Both have clear and useful introductions. Arnold’s Gr. Pr. Comp. (v k), 3/6, ed. by Abbott, has useful exercises in idiom.
More advanced, and to be used as soon as the accidence is mastered, is Goodwin’s Gr. Gr., 6/-, new ed., excellent; or his School Gr. Gr., 3/6. To the advanced student Goodwin’s Gr. Moods and Tenses, second ed., 14/-, is indispensable. Much may be learnt from the Gr. Gram. of Goodwin, 6/-; Rutherford, 3/6; and Sonnenschein. Collections of chosen English: Holden, Foliorum Centuriæ; Wilkins, Manual of Gr. Prose Comp., 5/-; Sargent and Dallin, Materials and Models for Gr. Prose Comp. How to tackle a piece of English, see Sidgwick’s Lectures on Gr. Prose Comp., and Lectures on the Teaching of Composition, 4/6. Sargent’s Gr. Prose Primer (v k), 3/6, is stimulating.
VERSE.
Damon: A Manual of Gr. Iambic Verse (v k), by Williams and Rouse, 2/6. Holden’s Foliorum Silvula (the best anthology). Help may be obtained from the Greek verse books of Sidgwick and Morice (v k), (v), Sargent (v), and Kynaston (v), 4/6.
READERS.
Rivington’s Single Term Readers (v), like his Latin readers, 9d. each; recommended. Heatley, Græcula (v k), 1/6, for beginners. Sidgwick, First Gr. Reading Book (v), 2/6: 100 easy stories, with some grammar. Rushbrooke, First Gr. Reader (v), 2/6; Bell’s Second Gr. Reader, 3/-; Murray’s Fourth (specimens of dialects), 4/6, and Abbott’s Fifth (Homer and the dramatists), 4/6. Macmillan’s Gr. Reader, stories and legends, 3/-. Mayor, First Gr. Reader, 4/6. The student had better pass on as soon as possible to some such book as the following: Xenophon, Easy Selections, Philpotts and Jerram. Herodotus, Battle of Marathon in Attic Prose. Herodotus, Tales from, Atticised, Farnell, 1/6. Arrian: Selections, Walpole, 1/6. Lucian: Extracts, Bond and Walpole, 1/6. The next step will be to selections from the Attic Orators: Rivington’s Middle Form Greek Readers, 1/6 each; Plato’s Crito or Apology; Sidgwick’s Scenes from Greek Plays.
GREEK AND LATIN: UNSEEN TRANSLATION.
Jerram, Anglice Reddenda, three series, 2/6, 3/-, 3/-. Reid, Transl. at Sight, 2/6 each part. Spratt and Pretor, Transl. at Sight (k); an extremely good selection of difficult passages.
Models: Jebb, Jackson and Currie’s Translations, and Fox and Bromley, Models and Exx. in Unseen Translation.
ANTIQUITIES.
Gow, Companion to School Classics; indispensable. Schreiber, Atlas of Class. Antiq., 21/-. Anderson, Atlas to Homer, 21/-. Rouse, Atlas of Gr. and Rom. Portraits, 1/6 each part. Macmillan’s Manuals of Antiq., 5/- each. Murray, Handb. of Gr. Archæology, 18/-. J. Harrison, Mythol. and Monuments of Early Athens. Middleton, Remains of Ancient Rome. Lanciani, Ruins of Ancient Rome and other works. Schneider, Das Alte Rom. (Pictorial atlas with maps; excellent.)
COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM.
P. Giles, Manual of Phil.; the best handy manual. Henry, Comp. Gram. of Gr. and Lat. King and Cookson, Introd. to the Comp. Gram. of Gr. and Lat., 5/6. Lindsay, Short Hist. Lat. Gram., 5/6. More advanced: Brugmann, Compar. Gram. of the Indo-Germ. Languages (translated). The standard work. King and Cookson, Principles of Sound and Inflexion, 18/-. Lindsay, Lat. Language, 21/-. Prellwitz, Etymolog. Wörterb. der griech. Sprache; good. Wharton, Etyma Græca and Etyma Latina. Thompson, Gr. and Lat. Palæography, 3/6.
ILLUSTRATIVE PICTURES AND MODELS.
Cybulski, Tabulæ quibus antiquitates Græcæ et Latinæ illustrantur (Köhler, Leipzig). Wall pictures, coloured, 4/- or 5/- each. An excellent series. Launitz, Wandtafeln zur Veranschaulichung antiker Lebens und antiker Kunst. Through Deighton Bell, Cambridge. Casts: Brucciani, Covent Garden (catalogue).
Models: Inquire at Museum of Teachers’ Guild, Gower St., London.
Slides: the same. Field, Cat. of Lantern Slides for Fyffe’s History of Greece, 6d. Roman catalogue preparing. Catalogue of the slides in the Loan Collection of the Hellenic Society.
Photographs, etc.: Catalogue of English Photographic Company, S. C. Atchley, Place de la Constitution, Athens. A very full and cheap collection. Mr. Atchley is well known to the writer, and strangers need have no hesitation in writing and sending money direct. Photographs are sold by German School at Athens.
The following Greek photographers have good collections: Rhomaïdes Frères, Rue de Niké, 24; Constantin Athanasiou, Rue d’Hermès, 6. Catalogues. The Levant: Bonfils & Co., Beyrout, Syria; and local photographers at Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem and Cairo. Purchases should be made through some one on the spot. Italy: Sommer e Figlio, Largo Vittoria, Napoli: photographs and models. Collezione Brogi, and the Stabilimento Fotografico Moscioni have large choice. Museums. London: Stereoscopic Company, Clarke & Sons, Mansell & Co. Berlin: the Museum publishes a few (catalogue). Paris: Girardon, 15 Rue Bonaparte. Munich: Bruckmann, Verlagsanstalt für Kunst (see [below]).
Publications. Denkmäler der Griech. und Röm. Skulptur: Brunn & Bruckmann, Munich. Magnificent plates. Griechische und Römische Porträts: Arndt & Bruckmann, Munich. Einzelverkauf: photographs of sculpture (Bruckmann), separately about 6d. each. Classical Sculpture Gallery: Grevel & Co. 12/- a year. Cheap reproductions of all the chief works of sculpture, ancient and modern. Bilder zur Mythologie und Geschichte der Griechen und Römern. Hoppe-Graeser, Vienna.
MODERN LANGUAGES.
By Dorothea Beale.
First a few words on the order in which languages should be taught. I do not think that we should make a change for the better as regards girls’ education, were we to substitute Latin for French, placing that subject first in order of time. It seems to me best to begin with French, a language etymologically related to our own, and having a simple grammatical structure.
Order of language teaching.Secondly I prefer to take German, the grammar of which approaches more nearly to the classical models, whilst the inflections are easier to learn than the French; its etymology too not only throws much light on our own, but is more transparent, which makes it a medium, perhaps as valuable as Greek, far more valuable than Latin, for showing the refinements of language, the poetry and philosophy fossilised in speech. Thus those only take up the classical languages who have some linguistic power. Girls who are unable to master the difficulties of the grammar will never encounter them, and as the languages gradually increase in difficulty, we can better fit the means of education to the power of the pupil. The classics form, it is true, a key to modern tongues, but on the other hand modern tongues lead up to Latin and Greek, and I believe this order is equally logical and answers better with girls; it is something to open to them the literature of France and Germany, something to teach them languages, so that they shall find the study (as they generally do) one of interest. At any rate there are four stages at which we can leave behind those unable to continue their march, and who, if we tried to bring them further, would form only a crowd of stragglers. Those who have a good knowledge of one or two modern languages will have no great difficulty in taking up Latin or Greek say at fourteen or fifteen. They will have a large etymological store, which will make it easy to acquire the vocabulary, and they will have to study only the differentia of the grammars of the different languages—may we not rather say dialects?—of the Indo-European stock.
Nearly all syntax rules will be already known, and a Latin Grammar in which the principles are brought out, may take the place of one written for young boys in whom the grammatical faculty is rudimentary—in which dogmatic rules only abound; dogma should as far as possible yield to principles, which are intelligible and interesting to elder girls, and this will help them over the necessarily considerable labour of learning the inflections. Perhaps few will attain the minute exhaustive scholarship of which some minds are capable, but many will read with keen enjoyment; some girls who have begun late have taken high places in university examinations.
Much has been recently written on the subject of modern languages; in the books edited by Mr. Barnett and Dr. Spenser, just published, to which I have frequently referred, are excellent papers. I shall therefore make my remarks on the subject very brief. In the first is an excellent paper by Mr. Storr, and Dr. Spenser has written a paper of about fifty pages, giving a full account of the modern system of teaching.
It is time that some reform took place. The Oxford Local Examiners of 1896 reported the French as phenomenally bad. In 1897 nearly half the seniors failed. I have tabulated the answers to the few questions set by me to pupils entering over twelve, and I find, taking some two hundred, that not one in ten knows the regular verbs, and scarcely any write very simple sentences without egregious faults.
Only oral teaching at first.The first teaching in modern languages should certainly be oral. In the kindergarten, French and German songs and simple sentences may be taught in the lowest forms. Supposing that children begin about seven or eight, it seems better they should not see written French at first. If they have learned the alphabet, as I have suggested in a former paper, they will take some interest in the new sounds of French and might read from a phonetic transcription.
Phonetic alphabet.There are good papers in the (August and September, 1897) Journal of Education on this subject by Mr. Ware, Mr. Kirkman and Mons. Passy, which I commend to my readers. I give a few extracts. Mr. Ware writes: “In Germany, every teacher has to render himself capable of teaching pronunciation, and results prove that he succeeds. In various German training colleges, there are courses of lectures on phonetics applied to the study of foreign languages. It was owing to the success attending the introduction of phonetics in the French teaching in certain German schools that I was finally induced to try them in the earliest stages of French teaching at Bradford. The results have exceeded my expectations.”
This is confirmed by Mr. Bearder of Nottingham. He writes: “Though I have not used the method in such a thorough and systematic manner as he has done at Bradford, still the results are such as to convince me that I am entitled to support Mr. Ware in his refutation of one argument, letting alone others, which the opponents of phonetic teaching continually bring forward, that time is wasted in learning the two modes of spelling”.
If it is not possible to get the reading taught phonetically, using the international alphabet, the use of the tables of Larousse will be a great help. In any case pieces which are learned by heart, dialogues, etc., should be repeated in the class after the French teacher, before the children see the book. Common errors.Few English people have ever learned to distinguish the sounds of the final syllable in the imperfect and passé défini or the future and the conditional or the gradual opening of the sounds as we pass through e, é, è, ê. Very few pronounce u properly when it precedes another vowel—lui is pronounced looee. Very few observe that a labial nasal before another labial is changed into a dental nasal, thus not impossible but inpossible, and nearly all say leer for lee + r. Children are taught to read so unsystematically, that if they are told these things they forget them, and waste time in repeating easy sounds, instead of working at the hard ones. Children should not be set to learn verbs, etc., without having first repeated them and practised the sounds with their teachers. When they do begin to read, the sound-table should be hanging up, and should be referred to, that they may correct their errors themselves. These pronouncing lessons should go on in a room alone, so that children may speak together in imitating the teacher; then she should single out individuals for different sounds; but the whole class should never sit round, as is the custom in some schools, and hear each of their companions read in succession a piece of French with true British accent. If they listen, their time is worse than wasted; if they do not, they get habits of inattention. The attention must not be wearied, and if two or three sounds are acquired each week, the whole will very soon be mastered, and time saved for the repetition of poetry, for viva voce composition, etc.
Translation.When children begin to read, we should spare them as much stupefying dictionary work as possible, but it is not well to let them learn the vocabularies of the book without comment, and they should be led from their past knowledge to discover the meaning, and as far as may be, get at the root meaning of unknown words, and see the underlying figure. Thorough work is much quicker in the end. Pascal’s father left his son with a Latin book, and no dictionary, to find out the translation. This may be a counsel of perfection suited only to a Pascal, but there are not many words of which children could not discover the meaning. Much more translation from French into English should be got through than is usual; children ought soon to be able to read at sight. Time need not be wasted by hearing all that has been prepared, but each could be called on to translate one sentence, and then translation go on at sight.
Vocabulary.The pupil should have a small note-book in which each new word is entered. This book should be divided into three columns: the first will contain the word in its general form; the second the root of the word with its etymological meaning, if known, or any cognate by which it may be remembered; the third column, the primary and principal secondary meanings. Every noun should have the article before it; these should be learned and repeated before the next translation lesson. The teacher may also give groups of words, derivatives of the root, and by this means a copious vocabulary will be in a short time acquired—the words once grasped will not be forgotten. The enthusiastic teacher will probably have to put a check on his zeal, for if he is led off too far into etymologies, he will get through no translation. After a little the pupil should begin to prepare alone, and to make his own word-book; every translation should begin with the inspection of this book by the teacher and by the hearing of the words.
Exercises.Since the acquisition of correct habits is the main thing in learning languages, we should before all things prevent the acquisition of wrong ones, by letting pupils speak, and write exercises before their ear and eye have been trained. They should not be allowed to speak a language carelessly, to “pick it up,” as the phrase is, incorrectly. A most pernicious practice is it to set girls to speak a foreign tongue together. The evil habits acquired cannot possibly be undone in subsequent study. I knew a master of languages who refused to give lessons to those obliged to speak thus. He could not, he said, in a few hours a week, correct the bad French learned during the remainder. Learning bad French, however, is one of the least evils connected with this practice. Anything deserving the name of conversation is banished where it is strictly enforced, and so the mind is dwarfed and stunted, and when girls leave school, they are often found unable to talk except upon trivial subjects, and unable to express themselves like rational beings in any language.
I quote from the rules of the maître phonétique:—
Re-translation.“Le maître fera étudier les phrases les plus uselles, des textes suivis, dialogues, descriptions et récits, aussi faciles, aussi naturels et aussi intéressants que possible. Il enseignera d’abord la grammaire inductivement, comme généralisation des faits observés: une étude plus systématique sera réservée pour la fin.”
The translation book must be made the basis of teaching, and the ear familiarised with the correct form by the learning of good French, the rules as far as possible being found inductively. Thus the children will observe the changes in mon frère, ma mère, mes frères et mes sœurs, and be able to make a table. Life is too short to find out all grammar, and so we shall eventually have recourse to collections of grammatical forms, but this need not be done until a good deal has been discovered by means of sentences formed for the purpose.
Easy passages should be translated into English and back into French according to Ascham’s method. This should precede the writing of exercises, which may, however, be read at sight in class. Children should repeat verbs interrogatively and negatively with pronouns in their places, so that the ear may be trained before the rule is discovered. Fassnacht’s books are good. Mrs. Bell’s books too are useful for children to learn instead of ordinary dialogues. It is impossible for them to speak in a natural way, when they are merely giving abstract sentences, but they can hold short conversations with one another in an animated way, and these can be taught viva voce in daily lessons.
Composition.Monotony should be avoided, and occasionally instead of setting an exercise, it is well for the teacher to relate a short story, and let the children repeat what they can, or write what they can remember; but in all these things we must avoid as much as possible wasting their time by making them listen to one another’s mistakes.
Exercises may be written and a grammar used later, but if the teacher economises time, there will remain enough in each lesson to prepare pupils for the writing of the next exercise and to warn them of mistakes they would otherwise be likely to make. I need not repeat here what I have said under the head of [corrections] and [time saving] (see [p. 28], introduction).
Philology.Finally as regards grammatical rules. There are doubtless many forms which must be learned, and rules which we must treat as arbitrary, because we can see no reason for them, but the more reasons we can show, the more interesting will language become, and the easier to learn. Thus children are glad to discover that the terminations are not mysterious letters for which there is no reason, but the remnants of pronouns put on at the end—that in the French future we get the same as the English, “I have to write,” only “have” comes after, and in the conditional, “I had”. They need not then learn these tenses, only notice the abbreviations. The survival of the t in a-t-il and many other things will enliven the grammar lesson. Peile’s delightful Manual of Philology and D’Arcy Thomson’s Day-dreams of a Schoolmaster are suggestive, but of course the more a teacher knows of philology, the more interesting she can make her lessons, and one versed in the subject should be found in every school.
Rationale of rules.The never-ending rules for the past participle may be at once disposed of by just showing children that the participle being an adjective must agree with the word it belongs to. If I say, “I have written a letter,” of course “written” belongs to letter and therefore it must agree. We need not make them think about whether it is subject or complement. The only curious thing they have to notice, is that it does not agree when the word it belongs to comes after “have”. Is it because the thought of the act of writing is more present to the mind when we say, “I have written a letter,” and we do not think of the letter as written, whereas when the letter is objectified to our gaze, being represented by a pronoun, we think of it rather as a letter written?
The learning of a third language will present less difficulties. If the language is German we can, by a few simple etymological laws, get command of a copious vocabulary in a short time. The declensions offer some difficulty at the outset, chiefly on account of the adjectives. But the phonetic change is made in order to avoid the repetition of the harsh sound s, m, r, and therefore when this occurs in a preceding pronominal adjective, it is dropped or softened in the second adjective; thus the ear guides, and we have not to think about the forms; one has only to notice that in the oblique cases it is weakened to n, and in the plural it is always n.
The order of words offers difficulties too, and we have a complicated construction. We have to fix our attention on the functions of words, as we did not in a simpler language, for a whole row of words goes to make up an adjective, and dependent sentences are constantly taking the place of simple words. Insight there must be to see what are dependent sentences, and then the whole paraphernalia of rules about certain conjunctions which require the verb to be sent to the end vanish too and we move freely.
Another difficulty is the different uses of prepositions. In English we go “through” the street, in German “on”. We go “through” a town, the Germans “over”. Let the difference of the conception be realised, and the prepositions will come right.
Literature.It is a great pleasure to those approaching maturity to study a language made for metaphysics. We cannot read German without finding everywhere fossil poetry and philosophy, and the rolling periods and the grand verse stir our soul like a trumpet, and we know that we hear the voice of an heroic people, who speak a language and think thoughts akin to our own.
Latin does not attract perhaps in the same way; the military precision of the Latin classics has its charm. I feel strongly that Latin should, however, properly come after German, specially for girls. There is a pestilential atmosphere in the Campania, and one needs to have one’s moral fibre braced by the poetry of the Hebrews and of England and Germany, if one would remain unaffected by writings saturated with heathen thought.
Those who are able to spare time and strength for Greek, and love poetry in all its forms, will delight indeed in the “Wine of Hellas,” and with the enthusiasm which they will bring to a new study they will surmount in a short time obstacles which would have delayed them for months, when they had less knowledge of co-ordinate forms, less taste, less insight, less joy in wrestling with problems and searching into mysteries. If there is not time nor talent nor inclination for all, then I would say prefer Greek to Latin.
The chief thing for the teacher to do is so to teach that the pupil shall enjoy the work. I do not mean that the pupil should be spared hard work and drudgery, or be always expecting to find honey on Hymettus; but do we not all know that the labour of making our way over rotten glaciers and up stony moraines is forgotten when we stand on the crest, and that all the way we go, we think of the joy set before us, when we shall attain to some lofty peak, whence we can see the outstretched heavens and the sunlit earth? For this we must throw ourselves in each language upon literature—the forms of grammar will be the ladder whereby we mount.
And then we shall return to our own native poets and thinkers, with minds enriched by foreign travel, and Milton will be the interpreter of the poetry of the world—of ancient and modern times, Spenser of the mediæval romances, Chaucer of the world of nature, Wordsworth and Coleridge of spiritual philosophy, and we shall feel that we must be worthy of so great an inheritance, and not trample under our feet the pearls, the precious jewels of speech.
Do I seem unpractical? It is just these ideas that are practical, which we must get our children to see and to feel, and then the burden of earnest, thoughtful labour will seem light, and our English tongue will not be degraded by slovenly pronunciation or the use of vulgar and inappropriate words.
SPELLING REFORM.
By Dorothea Beale.
Let me earnestly beg of teachers not to put aside the question of spelling reform as of little moment, but to do their utmost to bring it about.
Can it be to educators of little moment that learning to read, instead of introducing children to an orderly system, reveals chaos, and interferes with the tendency upon which all science is founded to expect law and order. As Professor Max Müller writes «Every thing that children have to learn in reading and spelling is irrational; one rule contradicts the other, and each statement has to be accepted simply on authority, and with a complete disregard of those rational instincts, which lie dormant in the child, and ought to be awakened by every kind of healthy exercise».
I find it difficult to express my strong sense of the immense importance of this reform on grounds educational, economic, patriotic. Not only does our cacography oppose an enormous obstacle to intellectual progress during the most important years of mental development, and thus squander brain power on useless work, it is also a waste of money which is expended by the upper classes in forcing on the children of the poorer a waste of time and—a sort of useless prison-labour.
Dr Gladstone calculates that the average board-school child spends more than 2000 hours in acquiring the arts of reading and spelling, and that the waste of money is over £ 1000000. This was 20 years ago; with increased grants, the loss of money must be far more now. He also calculates the waste of capital in printing unnecessary letters at nearly 20 per cent. This is only one of the many arguments for reform, which he puts most clearly and forcibly.
Most of the richer children have an indefinite amount of leisure in childhood, and they forget how long it took to learn to read, but children in elementary schools groan under a pedantic tyranny, which imposes wearisome and useless labours upon those who might otherwise in their short school time gain such facility in reading, that it would be a pleasure ever after, and the time which is now wasted on spelling, would be available for much beside: Germans have time to acquire foreign tongues, but Englishmen and Frenchmen have not time to acquire them in addition to their own spelling; either language from its simple structure might become a world-wide tongue, and there would be no need of Volapuk.
I quote from Professor Max Müller’s article.
«According to a Liverpool Schoolmaster of great experience it takes from 6 to 7 years to learn the arts of reading and spelling with a fair amount of intelligence. I. e. about 2.000 hours. A Glasgow schoolmaster writes, «I have taught poor children to read the Sermon on the Mount after a course of exercises extending over no more than 6 hours», and a father writes, «My boy who is a few months more than 4 will read any phonetic book ... and how long do you think it took me to impart to him this power? Why something less than 8 hours, and that was in snatches of five minutes at a time; his next brother a boy of 6 has had a phonetic education, what is the consequence? Reading in the first stage was so delightful that he taught himself to read. My eldest boy 11 years old, at a first-rate school has carried off the prize for orthography». Mr. Ellis, who did so much for education writes, «With the phonetic system the Primer is mastered within 3 months at most; careful experiments have established 1) that pupils may be taught to read books in phonetic print in from 10 to 40 hours, and that when they have attained fluency in reading ordinary print, the pronunciation is much improved, the interest in study kept alive, and a logical training of enduring value given ... and they acquire the art of ordinary spelling more readily than those instructed on the old method.»»
Let those who think I exaggerate, look into Miss Soames’s introduction to Phonetics, and they will marvel how a foreigner can ever learn to read and write English—she gives the 34 ways in which we write the indefinite ‘a’ sound in aloud—the 26 for representing ‘or’; the 18 for giving ‘sh’ the 20 representing ‘n’, 18 for ‘k’, and so on—Pagliardini enumerates the 44 ways in which ‘oo’ is written and 36 for the sound ‘ee’; those who have tried to teach foreigners know how hopeless it all seems.
Pagliardini tells of a work published 1861 on French spelling, which gives 163 ingenious rules and occupies 285 pages. It is asserted that 2 lessons a week for 3 years will suffice. How much better writes Pagliardini would these precious hours be spent in studying noble thoughts in books, the history of nations, the mathematical sciences, or the laws by which God governs the universe, or if confined to words, then how much more interesting and intellectual would be their decomposition into their elements, showing their affinity with words in other languages. What a fund of poetry might be found in the metaphors of which words are the abbreviated forms. All this, now unopened to his view for lack of time, would be revealed.
This may be paralleled by the spelling book of the Meiklejohn series. ‘Spelling with sidelights from history.’ It contains 150 pages, gives many rules, and concludes with one thousand of the most difficult words selected from examination papers.
M. Pitman has done good service in printing and circulating for a very small sum various tracts, and I hope my readers will get some, specially the paper by Prof. Max Müller. Alas, reforms are slow when the opinion of many unthinking persons has to be formed, before they can be carried. It needed a pope to reform the calendar.
The Westminster Review for Sept. 1897 has an article on spelling reform, urging its great importance, if English is to be a world-wide language. The impossibility of getting a new alphabet adopted at least for a long time is urged as a reason for pressing minor reforms, the chief being the omission of all useless letters. Thus we should leve out awl thos perplexing vowels in lev recev decev belev; and thes changes mit posibly be carid with sum slit efort at wuns, if sum popular orthor wood requir his book too be printed foneticaly.
Some defend our spelling for philological reasons, but it is unanimously condemned by philologists; I name those best known in England—Professor Max Müller pronounces it a national misfortune, and has written an article against it—Professor Sayce and Skeat, Ellis and Sweet, Dr Murray, editor of the Etymological Dictionary, condemn it, and amongst linguists, Pagliardini, and scientists, Dr Gladstone.
But the chief reason, that we should press forward this movement is, that only thus does it seem possible to avert the catastrophe foreshadowed in an article on the Queen’s English in the Review of Reviews for June 1897. Dialectic varieties are arising in the English-speaking Colonies, which, if unchecked by phonetic symbols corresponding with speech, will develop into different languages. The longer we delay, the greater will be the difficulty of agreeing on a common notation—at present the differences of opinion between us and our colonies, and even between us and our American cousins are slight, but those who have heard the English of the States spoken by the children of German immigrants, will recognise the danger.
Miss Soames before her death published reading books in phonetic type, and spent much time and money in promoting the teaching of English reading on this system, and in introducing to the notice of English people the alphabet of the Association Phonétique Internationale, 11, Rue de Fontenay, Bourg la Reine (Seine).
Such an alphabet would be better than one suitable for English only, but if Pitman’s is the only one generally available, it is better to use that for elementary schools, and remember the maxim ‘le mieux est l’ennemi du bien’—For teaching the right pronunciation of foreign languages, le Maître Phonétique is very valuable.
Melville Bell’s Visible Speech is a physiological alphabet of marvellous ingenuity—but perhaps too elaborate for general use, and the conclusions at which he arrives are not always endorsed by the chief authorities. All students of phonetics will learn much from reading it.—English visible speech, in 12 lessons 50 cents, Volta bureau Washington, gives the essentials of the system—the large work costs 4 dollars.
Great efforts are being made in France to introduce an international phonetic alphabet.
If all could agree on one alphabet, it would be possible for a foreigner to read at sight any foreign language. It is true there would be certain niceties of pronunciation to be taught Viva Voce, but the pronunciation would be very nearly correct at once.
I subjoin a few specimens of writing and the alphabet from ‘lə mɛːtr fɔnetik’ (Le Maître Phonétique).
The French alphabet is very simple. The consonants are as in English except
| - | ɲ | for the palatal n as in signe. | |
| ʃ | for ch as in champ—Ex. shut. | ||
| ʒ | for ʒʰ as in je—Ex. pleasure. |
The vowels are
| - | ɑ | pâte | - | ɛ | tête | - | i | ni | - | o | côte | - | u | tout | |||||
| a | patte | e | dé | j | yeux | ɔ | tort | y | tu |
| - | œ | seul | - | w | oui | - | nasalises | ||||
| ø | peu | ɥ | huile | ː | lengthens | ||||||
| ə | de | ||||||||||
The complete international [alphabet] which is subjoined requires more signs but this suffices in French.
French.—kɑ̃tquand ynune fwafois ɔ̃on lilit kuramɑ̃couramment l ekrityːrl’écriture fɔnetikphonétique iil syfisuffit dde kɛlkəzquelques œːrheures purpour aprɑ̃ːdrapprendre aà liːrlire l ekrityːrl’écriture ɔrdinɛːr.ordinaire.
In English we want θ ð for th in thick & then, ɕ for ch in hue, ŋ for the guttural nasal, ʌ for but, a vowel not quite the same as seul, æ for at—
English.—nau ðə pɔint ai wɔnt tu get æt iz hweðəɹ ðe seːm deskripʃən kæn bi givn.
(now the point I want to get at is whether the same description can be given.)
German.—vɛn viːr uns in unserm lɑndə rɑif dɑfyːr hɑltn di ɑlgəmɑinə høːərə bilduŋ ɑusʃlisːliɕ auf di mɔdɛrnə kultuːr tsu gryndn.
(Wenn wir uns in unserm Lande reif dafür halten die algemeine höhere Bildung auschliesslich auf die moderne Cultur zu gründen.)
COMPLETE ALPHABET
| Laryn- gales | Guttu- rales | Vé- laires | Palatales d’arrière | Palatales d’avant | Linguales | Labiales | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C O N S O N N E S | - | Plosives | ʔ | q G | k g | c ɟ | t d | p b | ||||||||||||||
| Nasales | ŋ̊ ŋ̌ | ɲ̊ ɲ̌ | n̥ n̬ | m̥ m̬ | ||||||||||||||||||
| Latérales | ɫ̥ ɫ̬ | ʎ̥ ʎ̬ | ɭ̥ ɭ̬ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Roulées | Q̥ Q̬ | R̥ R̬ | r r̬ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Fricatives | h | H h̬ | ʁ̥ ᴚ̬ | (ʍ w) x g | (ɥ̊ ɥ̌) ɕ j | ɹ̥ ɹ̬, θ ð, ʃ ʒ, s z | f vF ʋ ʍ wɥ̊ ɥ | |||||||||||||||
| V O Y E L L E S | - | Fermées | u | ɯ | ü | ï | y | i | (u ü y) | |||||||||||||
| Mi-fermées | o | v | ö | ë | ø | e | (o ö ø) | |||||||||||||||
| Mi-ouvertes | ɔ | ʌ | ɔ̈ | ä | œ | ɛ | (ɔ ɔ̈ œ) | |||||||||||||||
| Ouvertes | ɑ | a | ||||||||||||||||||||
Phonetic alphabet as [illustration]
HISTORY AS AN EDUCATIONAL SUBJECT.
By Dorothea Beale.
Definition.The second subdivision of Part I. is of great educational value. “History,” writes Dr. Harris, “reveals the higher self of man as organised in institutions. For the first time man comes to know his substantial self, when he comes to study history. His little self beholds his colossal self.” The Man “writ large” of Plato.
Enlarges sympathies.“History,” writes Dr. Martineau, “enlarges the sympathies, opening fresh continents of character to mental survey, throwing human tones upon the ear in language unheard before; it acts upon the judgments of conscience like foreign travel upon those of perception; it imparts a breadth of view unattainable within a narrow circle. The smaller the scale of the personal lot, the more precious and needful are the friendships of history.
“The ground plot of a man’s own destiny may be closely shut in, but if he can find his way through vanished cities, hear the pleading of justice, visit the battlefields where the infant life of nations has been baptised in blood; if he can steal into the prisons, where lonely martyrs have waited their deaths; if he can walk in the garden or the porch, where the lovers of wisdom discourse; if the experiences of his own country consecrate the very soil—he consciously belongs to a grander life. Hence the advantage which human studies possess over every form of science, the sympathy with man over the knowledge of nature. They are an enlargement of moral experience, and call into continual exercise the sense of right and wrong.
“In watching the drama of history, the soul may be purified by ‘pity and fear’. ‘Here we find examples for judgment, examples of patient suffering, that touch the springs of pity; of selfishness and cruelty that gnaw the heart with honest indignation, of heroic faithfulness that flings across the soul a breeze of resolution, of saintly love that diffuses the very atmosphere of heaven.’”[17]
[17] Hours of Thought. Martineau.
Supplements the teachings of science.In history as in science we learn facts that we may trace laws, and history corrects by a larger outlook the erroneous judgments deduced from a limited experience. History too seems specially useful as a complement to the teaching of science. In physics we find inexorable law. Admiration and fear may be excited, but we look on the inevitable; we pass no moral judgment. History and biography show us the Divine government adapting itself, so to speak, to the necessities of man, an education of men and of man, we study a mystery which attracts and baffles us; we are able to predict our world’s path in space and time, unable in reference to those larger regions beyond our “little systems”—regions, however, in which we must believe the same laws, physical and moral, to be working.
Gives an outlook beyond time.History corrects the judgment of the world; in its pages we look only at dead men, and we call him happy, not who has been successful, but him who has left the world better because he has lived, and so history reverses the pernicious teaching which puts before the young success as the main object of life, and shows us the difference between noble and pitiful ambitions. The heroes of history are those who endured hardness and lived and died for others, a Heracles, a Theseus, a St. Louis, a Gustavus, a Washington. The villains are those who lived for self, in ease and splendour, and self-indulgence. We find in these, and still more in those in whom the lights and shades are less strongly marked, encouragements and warnings for our own life, and help in interpreting the lives of those around us. How tawdry looks the field of the cloth of gold in the light of a later century! How silly seem those courtiers who carried their “manors on their backs”! “He is worth so much” has a different meaning for the dead and for the living; the dead have not, they are. Each noble life has left the world richer in spiritual energy, in the power of self-sacrifice, in great ideals, in true riches; there is a treasury of saints, not of a transferable righteousness, but of a transforming, a transfiguring. We can see that no noble life has been lived in vain. “In the sight of the unwise they seem to perish, yet is their hope full of immortality;” the corn which falls into the ground and dies bears much fruit.
Reveals progress through the ages.Lastly if we include in this study not only the history of men and of societies, but of the intellectual and moral life of man as a whole, not his descent but his ascent, history forms a subject of surpassing interest and energising hope. We find there enacted upon the largest theatre the daily recurring drama of the contest of light with darkness. We learn how man’s eyes have been gradually opened to the wonders of the visible universe, and his soul lifted into the regions of the invisible, his intellectual conceptions enlarged, his higher being developed, and his desires purified; history which discourages, as we look at a narrow tract, strengthens our faith in a Divine order of progress, as we take in the larger regions of time; the waves seem often to recede, while the tide advances, the stars seem to retrograde, but it is because our little world oscillates in space; and so our faith is strengthened, and our hope increased, and we learn not patriotism merely, but we catch something of that enthusiasm of humanity, which shone with unclouded brightness in the Son of Man.
Cultivates the judgment.Another use of history, rightly taught, is to train in habits of justice and truthfulness, though it is too often written to serve party ends. It is not easy to be just. The hearts of the young are naturally drawn out to those who suffer. If the Eikon Basilike was not true, we are inclined to say it must have been true, as we look upon Vandyke’s picture, see the calm face of the martyr, or read the verses:—
He nothing common did nor mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But bowed his kingly head
Down as upon a bed.
Stirs right enthusiasm for heroic men.We must, however, not let our sympathy with suffering blind us to the fact that Charles failed in his duty as a king—that had he been successful in what he attempted, England must have suffered from the evils under which France subsequently groaned. We must point out that it was his incurable deceit which brought him at last to the scaffold. But neither, on the other hand, must we ignore the fact that Cromwell trampled on the rights of men, that his was a lawless Government too. We would not, however, have that sham impartiality which paints all men of one colour and height, which is incapable of conceiving a hero, and contemplates crime with calmness, remarking there are always two sides to a quarrel. Need I say that throughout, the teacher must stir noble enthusiasms, a worthy emulation, admiration for true manliness, for virtue, rouse sympathy for the oppressed, zeal for right—show that the history of each nation is that nation’s Bible—the Book which tells of the Heavenly Father’s care for it, as manifested in the incidents of its life? If addressing higher classes, the teacher will point out, as opportunity offers, that each had a work to do in the world, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, as Miss Wedgwood has shown so well in the Moral Ideal.[18]
[18] Moral Ideal, by Julia Wedgwood. Trübner.
Shows the disintegrating power of unrighteousness.The young must learn, too, that the great principle is found everywhere, that what we sow we must reap in the moral as well as the physical world—that the selfish neglect of the poor brought about the Black Death and gaol fevers, that the selfishness, rapacity and immoral greed fostered by England’s unjust claims on France, brought its own punishment; this was seen when the Hundred Years’ War ended in the internecine strife of the fifteenth century, and led to the extermination of a selfish aristocracy. So too the degradation of the higher classes, say in the eighteenth century in France, which led them to regard the lower classes as scarcely human, brought about the fearful retaliation of the Revolution. Or again the wealth of Spain, filling the nation with pride and haughtiness, was actually her ruin; by persistently destroying or expelling, by war or persecution, all the nobler spirits, the nation was degraded in a few centuries. Of course these latter lessons will be more suited to a higher class, but something of it may be taught early.
Questions of right and wrong will ever be arising. What ought to have been done under such circumstances? Is rebellion ever justifiable? and when? What forms of government are best? is there an absolute best? We shall see how short-sighted is crime when we come to the murder of Cæsar, of Henry III., Henry IV., William the Silent. The teacher will not omit to look at the historical clock, when asking whether acts were right or wrong. We must do justice to devotion, while pointing out errors and crimes; we must be warned by seeing that wrong deeds are often done by those who mean well; we must learn that though error and ignorance is evil, and we must fight against both, yet that good often comes of the honest working out even of mistaken opinions; that through illusions we gain the vision of truth.
Teaches by experience.The many experiments of the past show us too that evils which exist in a community cannot be cured by merely changing a form of government, or getting rid of this man or that man by violence; to do this is only to sow dragon’s teeth. A nation is made up of individuals, and only by individual virtue can salvation come; so people now seek to bring about the well-being of nations by education rather than by revolution, because freedom without sense to use it is an evil, and a nation that is truly free will deserve and obtain free institutions. As Mazzini says:—
Teaches the solidarity of man“We must convince men that they are all sons of one sole God, and bound to fulfil and execute one sole law here on earth; that each of them is bound to live not for himself, but for others; rights can only exist as a consequence of duties fulfilled, and we must begin with fulfilling duties in order to achieve rights. We can obtain our rights only by deserving them through our own spirit of love and sacrifice. If we seek our rights in the name of duties, we shall obtain them. If we seek them in the name of egotism, or any theory of happiness and well-being propounded by the teachers of materialism, we shall never achieve other than a momentary triumph, to be followed by utter confusion.”
One may point out the gradual progress which, with occasional recessions, has, we trust, been made. One may stir in the young patriotism, and an enthusiasm of humanity, and make them feel a desire to do what they can to amend the evils of their own time.
and the duty of each to the community.Lessons of political economy seem to me more important for girls than the legislative contests of constitutional history. They cannot enter into these with the keen interest of boys, who may themselves one day be lawgivers. All should be taught that a selfish, wasteful citizen is a disgrace, a sort of moral caterpillar—learn that selfishness, sensuality, falsehood, under whatever disguises, are detestable, whilst a self-devoted life is a heritage for ever. We should especially recognise the faults of our own nation in past times, and in the present too; we should desire the elevation of the degraded classes, and each should feel that his life and example has at least some power, that each of us is responsible to men as well as to God, that it is by noble enthusiasms, by self-devotion, by giving up one to another that human society is possible.
History, like geography, can be approached two ways:—
Methods of approaching the subject.1. We may take the map of the world, indicate its leading features and its political divisions.
2. We may take a small tract, realise by description the form and beauty, the flora and fauna, the temperature, the snowy peaks, the rushing rivers, the silent stars, think it all out, until we feel at home in the land, work up through details of topography to clear conceptions.
In teaching history, I think we ought to take some kind of time-map, mark out in it a few of the most prominent recorded facts, tell something of the heroes, after whose names tracts of time have been called, trace out a few of the leading empires, give landmarks.
With juniors.Then we may, after showing the position of a certain period in the world-chart, work it up in detail. The way in which each period should be treated will depend much on the age of the class. With young ones, the teaching will be more narrative and biography; the memory and imagination will be chiefly called into play. Some outline or short history should be read by the child, the most prominent events, etc., should be entered in a special historical map. The chronological, as well as the geographical atlas, should always be at hand. The teacher should go quickly round the class, asking each child a few questions, just to ascertain whether the work has been properly prepared, then she should fill up herself such parts as will come home to the class. For young classes, though some passages from good histories may be read, the teacher must be prepared to give a great deal viva voce. Little children do not take in so well what is written for older people, the words are not adapted to them, nor the mode of expression. Besides, the teacher’s eye is occupied, she does not see whether she is holding the attention of her class. True, her words may not be quite well chosen, but she will be able to make the narrative more life-like to those whose minds she knows. But she must on no account try to learn it up. If she would relate well, she must conjure up the scene before her own mind, carefully paint in the details, and then describe her own vision, watching the children to see if they, too, take it in.
But all must not be told; as far as may be, children should be led to anticipate. Thus in a narrative of a campaign, generally so dry and unprofitable, the children should be led to consider what were the aims, what would be the best way of carrying out operations, what posts would be occupied, which leader chosen, how the money would be raised, etc. They will take great delight in finding out these things, and not easily forget what they have discovered; it will accustom them to read in an intelligent way, so they will be able to predict to some extent what people are likely to do.
With senior classes.The elder classes should read some large history, if possible some original authority, and thus learn to read for themselves, to examine the statements set before them, and to sift evidence. The characters of Richard II. and Richard III., of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth, of the Stuarts and Cromwell, of Laud and Bacon, will form good exercises in the discussion of probabilities, and teach caution and moderation in the judgments of daily life. For elder classes, too, we may make great use, not only of Shakspere, but of the best historical novels. For the teaching of higher classes I may point to the following papers and add also a chapter on [time-maps].
TEACHING MODERN HISTORY TO SENIOR CLASSES.
By Alice Andrews.
Girls,
Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal’d;
Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,
The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite
And slander, die.
The Princess.
Introductory.In teaching history our aim should be not to miss the “spirit” of the period we are taking. We have to inquire what forces are at work moulding the character of the nation, and to estimate the results they produce. We have to find the place our period holds in building up the national history. Each period has a heritage from the past, each hands on its legacy for the future—of warning from failure or from a success which is more disastrous than failure—of encouragement from victories, not necessarily of the battlefield, and which perhaps were won at the cost of noble lives willingly, even joyfully, offered.
There have been periods of ignoble wars, such as the Hundred Years’ War, when Englishmen were brutalised by murder and rapine, ruining a people too deeply sunk in misery to defend themselves. And retribution overtook the nation as it overtakes the individual. Our own Wars of the Roses were the fruit of the unjust wars in France. There have been periods of ignoble peace, when “peace with dishonour” might have been England’s motto, when foreign troops were subsidised to protect the shores that Englishmen were too craven-hearted to defend themselves, when enthusiasm was ridiculed as “mock patriotism,” and political reformers were nicknamed “boy patriots”. Corruption was reduced to a system, and Walpole believed that every man had his price. The Church was paralysed by spiritual deadness.
Individual men stand out as warnings or examples. Richard II. appears first as full of noble impulses, a born leader of men, but his crime determines his life. To rid himself of the man who knows his crime, he banishes Norfolk for life; the other, who suspects it, he banishes for a term of years, and this is reduced at the intercession of old Gaunt. Either the punishment was, or was not, just. If just, it ought not to have been reduced on petition; if unjust, it ought never to have been inflicted. Henceforward Richard rapidly deteriorates: he seizes Gaunt’s lands in spite of his promise to the absent Bolingbroke, in spite of the warning of his uncle York:—
Take Hereford’s rights away and take from Time
His charters and his customary rights...
You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,
And prick my tender conscience to those thoughts
Which honour and allegiance cannot think.
Richard has himself set the example of disregard of others’ rights, and makes it possible for Bolingbroke to return in the name of justice and raise the country against the king.
Previous knowledge.The teacher of history in the older classes ought to be able to assume a correct knowledge of the most important facts and dates at least in English history. These are very easily learnt in childhood and most difficult to acquire by older girls. Those who have been trained on the historical chart are acquainted with the main characteristic of each century, and the principal events in it, and have no difficulty in grouping fresh knowledge round central well-known facts, just as the geographical student can fill in with increasing completeness a map from memory. Comparatively few are trained in any knowledge of foreign history, and I have known not a few grown-up girls find the greatest difficulty in mastering the leading names and events in French and other European history. In this respect other nations are beyond us. Foreign girls, both French and German, are trained to connect the history of their own country with the general course of events, and know the facts of European history as a whole. The absence of this knowledge in English girls makes the study of foreign policy unnecessarily difficult to them.
Continuity of history.In outline history, paint with a thick brush. “One can’t see the wood for the trees in it” might too often be the criticism of the pupil on a lesson. The conscientious teacher tries to omit nothing, the consequence in the pupil’s mind is blind confusion. The principle of selection rules here if anywhere. We must aim at avoiding the defect which Lord Acton denounces as “the want of an energetic understanding of the sequence and real significance of events, which ... is ruin to a student of history. It is playing at study (he continues) to see nothing but the unmeaning and unsuggestive surface as we generally do.” We want instead to trace in broad outline the continuity of history—for instance, look at the Wars of the Roses in this light. How do they stand in relation to constitutional development? While the nobles were at war, the commons were gaining victories, bloodless it is true, but more lasting than any gained on battlefields. It was a time of immense constitutional development. And yet these victories were practically worthless for the moment. What advantage was it to the victim of the “overmighty subject” that the Statute Book provided for his rights and liberties? The “Paston Letters” give a vivid picture of the impotence of the ordinary subject to get the law enforced. What the country needed was strong government, not political privileges. “Constitutional development had outrun administrative order,” had outrun, that is to say, the general point of development reached by the nation at large, and the Tudors came in, so to speak, on the programme of strong government. The Tudor rule represented the two great principles of orderly administration and even-handed government. It needed a dictatorship to accomplish the task. The task was completed at the Armada, and the country took back the trust at the accession of the Stuarts. That the Stuarts failed to recognise this, was the cause of the long constitutional struggle that culminated in the Civil War. Once more constitutional development proceeds, but now the nation is keeping pace with it.
Topical or sectional arrangement.The subject of sectional as opposed to chronological teaching seems to belong here, for upon it depends the very essence of clearness in teaching. If pupils have before them the time-map, or chronological chart, already referred to, the teacher can with greater freedom treat the subjects sectionally, for before the eye of the pupil are grouped all the parallel events in each square representing some definite space of time. To teach chronologically may seem more accurate perhaps, but really too often produces hopeless confusion in the mind of the pupil—the thread is lost in taking up many different subjects, e.g., in Elizabeth’s reign, I would take as separate sections her relations with Scotland, necessitating a review of Scotch affairs generally, and the series of plots for releasing Queen Mary; Elizabeth’s policy with regard to (a) the Anglican Church; (b) Roman Catholics; (c) Protestant Nonconformists; her Irish policy; her foreign policy illustrated by her “courtships”; the domestic history of the reign and so on. The different sections touch sometimes, but it only adds to the interest to illustrate the new section from one already known. So in the Seven Years’ War, I would not follow the course of events for each separate year on the Continent and in America and in India, but I would take the whole course of the war in Europe, explaining why it was not only justifiable but a stroke of genius in Pitt, to do what he had himself denounced in the “Hanover-troop minister,” and by utilising foreign troops for England’s war on the Continent, set her free to follow her true interests in the colonies, and I would trace as separate sections the laying of the foundations of her world-empire in India and in Canada.
Syllabus of lessons.This method of teaching presupposes that a scheme has been drawn out for the course. If possible the scheme should be given to the class in the form of a syllabus of the lessons. If printing is too expensive, it is worth while to cyclostyle copies oneself. The value the class attaches to them is sufficient reward for the trouble, and they become a model to the girls on which to arrange their own study of history in post-school days. Examples of such a syllabus for [English history] and [French history] lessons will be found at the end of the paper.
Illustrations: (a) Historical atlas.The historical map ought to be the inseparable accompaniment of the history lesson, and in this respect there is nearly everything to be wished for. Good wall maps with bold colouring in which the outlines of different territories can be seen from a distance, and in which the names are clearly printed in English, have yet to be found. To use a modern map in doing French outlines or other continental history is most misleading, and yet too often this is all the teacher has at hand. There is Sprüner of course, but even if the school can afford these expensive maps, they are not very satisfactory for the ordinary class; the colouring is not distinct, and the map is so overcrowded with names that it is difficult to find at a glance the places one wants. They are rather for private and minute study than for class work. The publisher’s explanation is that there is not a sufficient demand to make it worth while to bring out historical maps, an incidental illustration of how little attention is given in English schools to continental history, while a class map of the Roman Empire can be found everywhere. At present the teacher is forced to make her own maps. If she is happy enough to have old pupils with a talent for map-drawing, she can gradually make a collection of maps enlarged from those in good histories; the maps in Kitchin’s History of France are invaluable for this purpose, but Kitchin provides nothing for the periods of the Italian expeditions, and these have to be adapted from Sprüner.
Gardiner’s Student’s Atlas provides what is necessary for the pupil in the English history class; there is a small cheap German atlas for general history (Putzger, 2 marks), but it is not very satisfactory for the ordinary English schoolgirl, the difference in the names is puzzling. What is wanted is a student’s atlas for continental, especially French history, at a reasonable price.
But even given the atlas, it remains for the teacher to find an unfailing receipt by which to ensure its use.
(b) BlackboardNot the least part of the value of a syllabus in the hands of a pupil, is the saving of time it makes in the lesson, otherwise the blackboard must be used for unfamiliar names and words. The merest glance through a pupil’s rough notes of French history will be a sufficient proof of this.
(c) First-hand acquaintance with authorities.Besides the text-book, which every pupil should possess, no teacher of older girls will be satisfied unless they read at least passages from the authorities on the period. The difficulty is to provide a sufficient number of copies for a large class, or any copies at all, beyond those possessed by the teacher or the school: this difficulty, however, may be met. There are always girls who are glad to have good books suggested for Christmas or birthday presents, and who begin a really nice library of their own in this way. But a class-library can be formed without much trouble. The nucleus of a class-library being made by the necessary books for one year’s work, the girls can be asked to leave a similar legacy for their successors. A list of books wanted, with their prices, can be prepared, and it will be found that several will combine to give really expensive books, and in this way the class can command the use of sets of Stubbs, Froude, Gardiner, Ranke, Lecky, etc., besides smaller books like the Great Statesmen Series.
Since it is impossible for girls with their limited time to read the whole of the big histories, the teacher will find it a valuable practice to dictate the numbers of the pages (in one or more volumes) bearing upon her lesson, which the girls should read. They are thus trained to use authorities, and this is being recognised more and more as of the first importance. There was a time when girls depended entirely upon their notes, and the misspelling of names of historians showed that their knowledge of great writers was second-hand. But when they get a first-hand acquaintance with historians like Froude, Gardiner, Seeley, Ranke, Lecky, they are insensibly being trained to be satisfied with nothing but the best.
(d) Contemporary writings: chronicles.The period should be studied by the teacher, and to a certain extent by the pupil, in contemporary writers. Chronicles are delightful reading. Who that has once learnt to know Saint Louis of France in the pages of his faithful seneschal, can fail to breathe the very atmosphere of the time? De Joinville shows him what a later preacher called him, “the most loyal spirit of his age”. Again no weighty dissertations on the small account in which human life was held in the Middle Ages would be so convincing as the incidental contemptuous remarks of the courtier-chronicler Froissart. The exquisite courtesy to a De Ribeaumont was quite compatible with the halters for the six citizens of Calais. And to take one more illustration quite late on in the centuries—what a gulf separates ante-Reform times from our own! How expressive of the haughty landed aristocrat are these words of the Duchess of Buckingham after condescending to listen to the Wesleyan preaching: “I thank your ladyship for the information concerning the Methodist preachers. Their doctrines are most repulsive and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavouring to level all ranks and to do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth. This is highly offensive, and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at variance with high birth and good breeding.”
Full lists of contemporary writers will be found in Traill’s volumes on Social England, which as “a record of the progress of the people in Religion, Laws, Learning, Arts, Industry, Commerce, Science, Literature and Manners, from the earliest times to the present day,” meets perhaps the greatest want of the ordinary teacher, to whom no one general history of social progress was before accessible.
(e) Historical pictures.As illustrations there are also historical portraits, contemporary pictures of historic scenes, and pictures of costumes. Most schools now subscribe to the “Art for Schools Association,” and can make a very good portrait gallery of their own. The splendid collection of historical costumes designed by Mr. Lewis Wingfield for the Healtheries can still be seen, I believe, and a few of them have been reproduced by him in a book with descriptive letterpress. Exhibitions, like the Tudor and Stuart, are most valuable to the realisation of history, and visits to historical buildings are within the possibilities of most, and add great zest to many a holiday both for teachers and girls. It is impossible to forget the circumstances of the Dauphin’s coronation at Rheims, after staying where Joan of Arc stayed and standing in the cathedral, where she witnessed the fulfilment of her mission.
(f) Historical poems, Shakspere’s plays, historical novels.Passages from historical poems or from a Shakspere play often add to the interest of a lesson; as the challenge-scene from Richard II., the trial-scene from Henry VIII., Milton’s sonnet on the massacre in Piedmont, Spenser’s Gloriana and the false Duessa for Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots. And in quite modern history Mrs. Hamilton King’s Disciples, Swinburne’s Songs before Sunrise, Mrs. Browning’s Peace of Villafranca, all give expression to the passionate longing for freedom of Italy.
Perhaps nothing makes history more real than a good historical novel. Bulwer-Lytton’s Last of the Barons makes the figure of Warwick as lifelike as that of any minister of our own day. Edward IV., Clarence, Richard III. have each their individuality, and so has that shadowy prince who was killed at Tewkesbury, while Isabella Neville stands out for ever distinct from her gentle, timid sister Anne.
John Inglesant gives the very spirit of the Charles I. period—cavaliers and ladies coquetting with the classics in the learned Oxford halls, the devotion, even to the death, of the Jesuit-trained John Inglesant, and the midnight apparition of the murdered Strafford to the king, for whom he had laid down his life.
It is quite worth while to put up a list of historical novels bearing on their period, for older as well as for younger classes.
Home-work: (a) Viva-voces.How are we to test the work done by the pupils? Lord Acton quotes from Sir W. Hamilton: “I must regard the main duty of a professor to consist, not simply in communicating information, but in doing this in such a manner and with such an accompaniment of subsidiary means, that the information he conveys may be the occasion of awakening his pupils to a vigorous and varied exertion of their faculties”.
By means of viva-voce questions and paper work, the class should be tested between each lecture. The object of the teacher is to find out with as little expenditure of time as possible, that the work set has been thoroughly done. I know no better means of doing this than by what are called written viva-voces. The teacher prepares two sets of questions called respectively A and B. The alternate girls write the answers to the A and B questions in small exercise books which they keep for the purpose. They rule two margins, the left-hand for the number of the question, the right-hand margin is used by the corrector. Ten minutes can test an hour’s lesson. The books are changed so that the Bs correct the work of the As, and have to attend to the answers of the questions they did not do. The teacher repeats aloud the answer to each question. Each corrector signs her name and puts the mark obtained. The teacher, when she looks through the books afterwards, can thus bring home any careless correction to the right person, and anything like favouritism in correcting is prevented. This viva-voce work ensures accurate knowledge of facts, and I have known girls find it sufficiently useful, to continue the same system among themselves after they have gone up to the university.
(b) Essay-writing.The most valuable exercise for the pupil is the writing of essays. These may begin on a subject already dealt with in class (care being taken that the essay is not a reproduction of notes of the lesson), but the pupil will soon be trained to read and think out for herself subjects which she has not previously heard discussed. She will learn experimentally what Lord Acton calls, “those shining precepts which are the registered property of every school, that is to say, learn as much by writing as by reading; be not content with the best books, seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites; keep men and things apart; guard against the prestige of great names; see that your judgments are your own and do not shrink from disagreement; no trusting without testing; be more severe to ideas than to actions; do not overlook the strength of the bad cause or the weakness of the good”.
The giving back of the essays ought to be a very valuable lesson. Happy passages should be read aloud, weak passages criticised, each paper estimated as a whole, and the pupil ought to leave the class, feeling that if the work were to be done again, she at least understands the general drift of the subject and could treat it more adequately than before.
I venture to illustrate my meaning, the subject set being a discussion of the policy of Francis I. in his relations with Charles V. The essay should show that Francis I., like his predecessors in the Italian expeditions, Charles VIII. and Louis XII., failed to realise in what direction lay the true interests of France, with regard to the new problem of balance of power. By entering into personal rivalry with Charles and striving for territorial conquest in Italy, Francis lost the opportunity which should have belonged to France, of controlling the European situation. If he had only been content with securing gateways into Italy and making alliances with the northern Italians and German Protestant princes against Imperial encroachments, he would have gained the casting vote in European affairs and have held the key to the problem, which it was not permitted to France, till the time of Richelieu, to solve.
Post-school work.A word or two as to the way in which the teacher can help her old pupils to read history. There are a fortunate few who pass on to the universities. An increasing number can attend University Extension lectures and become members of a local Students’ Association. But it is those who are not within reach of any local organisation, who are glad of a little help. To these, when they first leave school, an old girls’ Reading Society is generally welcome. The regular reading it requires is a training in methodical arrangement of time, and schemes of reading, with plenty of choice, are a help to those who have hitherto had all their intellectual work arranged for them. Teachers have sometimes found it possible to take up parties to the Summer Extension meetings. Parents are willing to let their daughters go with responsible guardians, and the preparatory reading is a great interest, besides the stimulus that the lectures themselves give to subsequent work at home.
Conclusion.The educational value of historical study does not belong to this paper, but I end by quoting three passages, which are full of encouragement to the teacher of history. They are referred to by Lord Acton in his famous lecture at Cambridge.
“The study of modern history is, next to theology itself and only next in so far as theology rests on a divine revelation, the most thoroughly religious training that the mind can receive.” (Bishop Stubbs.)
“History is full of indirect but very effective moral teaching. It is not only, as Bolingbroke called it, philosophy teaching by examples, but it is morality teaching by examples. It is essentially the study which best helps the student to conceive large thoughts. It is impossible to overvalue the moral teaching of history.” (Sir J. Fitch.)
“The object (in history teaching) is to lead the student to ... take interest in history not as a mere narrative, but as a chain of causes and effects, still unwinding itself before our eyes and full of momentous consequences to himself and his descendants, an unremitting conflict between good and evil powers, of which every act done by any one of us, insignificant as we are, forms one of the incidents, a conflict in which even the smallest of us cannot escape from taking part, in which whoever does not help the right side is helping the wrong.” (Mill. Inaugural Address.)
SPECIMEN SYLLABUS OF ENGLISH HISTORY.
Foreign Policy of Elizabeth.
Introductory.—Keynote of the period; dynastic alliances. Power of House of Hapsburg built up on political marriages, even England threatened with absorption by the Hapsburgs, as a consequence of Mary Tudor’s marriage to Philip, and though Mary’s death made “a great rent in the Hapsburg net, in which England was enmeshed” (Seeley), yet Philip long struggled to re-establish the Hapsburg dominion in England, and this, according to the fashion of the time, by marriage. “Courtships of Queen Elizabeth” begin January, 1559; Philip offers his hand to Elizabeth: “The more I reflect on this business, the more clearly I see that all will turn on the husband which this woman will choose” (De Feria). Other suitors in Hapsburg interest, Philibert of Savoy, Archdukes Ferdinand and Charles—Elizabeth encourages Hapsburg suitors—could thus keep English Catholics in hand in spite of innovations, and get better terms from France in Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis, April, 1559, France believing her supported by Spain. But England’s safety from Hapsburgs largely due to her danger from Valois. The Valois had secured Scotland, and claimed England through marriage of Mary and Francis. For Philip to overthrow Elizabeth would mean to clear the way for Mary of Scots: it was not till he could come as Mary’s heir, that he openly made war on England.
Period I. The Scotch Period, 1558-1567.
(i.) 1558-1564, in which a Basis is laid for the Union of England and Scotland.
England and Scotland both under queens; both had to choose between a power based upon the wishes of the nation, and a power supported by foreign help. Elizabeth chose a national position: “took a course visibly full of danger, a course in which success was only possible by courage and heroic endurance, but in which success, if it came, might be splendid, and might raise the nation itself to greatness”. Mary, on the contrary, brought her subjects under a foreign yoke. Since Mary of Guise’s regency was a High Catholic rule, the Reformation in Scotland took the form of a national movement, and the national party turned towards England for help. “The first achievement of Elizabethan policy lay in this, that she called out a great Reformation party in England and Scotland at once, and thus laid the foundation of the union of England and Scotland.” Elizabeth’s self-justification in helping subjects against their sovereign: that she was maintaining national independence against a foreign power. Arran becomes Elizabeth’s suitor in Protestant interest. January, 1560—Treaty of Berwick—importance. Elizabeth “put herself at the head of the national religious movement in Scotland”; “in consideration of the attempt to annex Scotland to the French crown, she promised to aid the Scotch to drive out the foreign invaders”. Success of Elizabeth’s policy; French troops recalled. July—Treaty of Edinburgh ends the government of Scotland by the French; December—death of Francis II. severs the union of French and Scotch crowns. 1561—Return of Mary to Scotland; she refuses to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, and sets to work to build up an Anglo-Scotch party in the interest of the Counter-Reformation.
(ii.) 1565-1567, in which the Danger is of the Union of England and Scotland under Mary against Elizabeth.
1565—Marriage of Mary and Darnley—importance: Mary puts herself definitely at the head of the Catholic party in England. 1567—Murder of Darnley; marriage with Bothwell; Lochleven; battle of Langside; collapse of Counter-Reformation in Great Britain; prospect in James of a solution for England of both problems of succession and religion.
Period II. The French Period, 1567-1585.
Danger lest France or Spain, or both, make war on England to release Mary and secure the Catholic succession, but hands of both tied at home, and Elizabeth’s efforts directed to keeping them so. To that end, sends help to Huguenots in Wars of Religion, and to the revolted Netherlands.
France alarmed by victory of Lepanto (1571), makes advances to England. Courtship of Anjou, 1570-72, and of Alençon, 1572-84. “Matters were indeed in a critical position for England; the Ridolfi plot was brewing, the English Catholic nobles in a ferment, and the Pope, Philip, the League and the Guises ready to turn their whole power to the destruction of Elizabeth.” 1572—Treaty of Blois, pledging Charles IX. and Elizabeth to give informal aid to the revolted Netherlands. The St. Bartholomew; marriage negotiations interrupted. 1574—Don John, Governor of the Netherlands, grasps the necessity of the overthrow of Elizabeth as a preliminary to reducing the Netherlands, and aims at himself marrying the Queen of Scots and securing England. “The true remedy for the evil condition of the Netherlands ... is that England should be in the power of a person devoted and well affectioned to your Majesty’s service.” 1575—The Netherlands offer sovereignty of Holland and Zealand to Elizabeth; she declines. 1578—Flemish appeal to Alençon to lead them; he accepts in reliance on England; Elizabeth’s policy is that Alençon shall be under English, not French, patronage, and she poses before Europe as his affianced bride. 1579 and 1581—He visits England for supplies. 1582—Alençon invested with sovereignty of the Netherlands; Elizabeth’s connection emphasised by presence of Leicester and Sir P. Sidney. 1584—Alençon expelled from Netherlands; his death. “Elizabeth had begun her long marriage juggle in 1559 in hourly danger of being overwhelmed and crushed by her own Catholic subjects in union with one or other of her great continental neighbours. She ended it in 1583, triumphant all along the line, with both her rivals crippled and distracted, whilst she really held the balance of peace and war of Europe in her hands.”
Period III. The Spanish Period, 1585-1603.
(i.) To 1596, when England, France and the Netherlands fight Spain either Separately or in a Concert which is secret.
Counter-Reformation in France represented by the League, the anti-dynastic party; Pact de Joinville between Philip and the League, after murder of William of Orange, for extirpation of heresy in France and the Netherlands; importance of 1585 in English policy; Alençon gone, Elizabeth must act openly if Netherlands are to be saved. Only military movement as yet helping Scotch in 1561. With 1585 begins what is meant by the “Elizabethan Age”. Pause to estimate Elizabeth’s policy. Froude finds no clue but inconsistency—really a consistent inconsistency. Seeley’s estimate: “There are emergencies in which a persistent abstinence from action, a kind of resolute irresolution, is the only sound policy.... Everything at her accession was in a sort of suspense. Whether the nation was Catholic or Protestant, by what title she herself reigned, who would be her own successor, and whom she should marry—all was undefined.” Elizabeth really understood popular government; she gave her people twenty-six years of peace, in which they learnt to know themselves and what they wanted. 1585—Siege of Antwerp; Netherlands in extremity; offer sovereignty to Elizabeth; she refuses; Philip tries intimidation by wholesale arrest of British sailors; war inevitable. Leicester’s expedition; his blunders; fall of Antwerp; Zutphen; Elizabeth also lets loose her “Knight of the Ocean”; Drake’s expeditions, 1577, 1585, 1587; execution of Mary Queen of Scots. “The execution of Mary Stuart in the greatest degree, and the campaign of Leicester in a secondary degree, together with the adventurous voyages of Drake, brought on the open war between Elizabeth and Philip.” 1588—Armada; causes of failure: (a) superiority of English ships and English sailors; (b) English guns heavier and better served; (c) unfavourable winds causing delay and then destruction; (d) unfitness of Parma for command. “But all said and done, the victory was one of men and tactics more than materials.” “The Armada was not defeated by a storm, but at Gravelines, on Monday, 29th July; and the enterprise was defeated when Parma failed to bring up his flotilla.” Results of Armada: (a) gave England a new position in Europe; (b) secured her from danger of future invasion, and consequently (c) enabled Elizabeth to turn her attention to the divisions that weakened the English Church; (d) gave the nation leisure for the struggle between Crown and Parliament, which only ended with William III. 1589—Elizabeth’s Counter-Armada; Drake’s advice, “better cheap” than awaiting renewed attack. Spain’s power broken, the religious question is fought out on a new battle-ground; succession struggle in France; League helped by Spain against Henry of Navarre; Arques; Ivry. 1591—English forces under Essex to help Henry of Navarre. 1595—Henry publishes declaration of war against Spain.
(ii.) 1596-1598. France, England and Netherlands united in a Formal Coalition of one Catholic and two Protestant Powers against the Counter-Reformation.
1596—Elizabeth makes a formal alliance offensive and defensive with Henry IV. and the States against Spain, and sends expedition under Howard and Essex against Cadiz; the “Trafalgar of the Elizabethan War” (Laughton). 1597—Essex and Raleigh make the “Island voyage” against Spain.
(iii.) 1598-1603. Coalition Dissolved. Philip III. against Elizabeth and Netherlands.
1598—Henry IV. deserts his allies and makes peace with Spain in Treaty of Vervins. Philip III. continues war against Elizabeth in order to use Ireland—in revolt—as basis of operations for the Counter-Reformation against England. Danger from Ireland increased by treason of Essex. 1602—Spanish expedition lands in Ireland; joins Tyrone against Kinsale; defeated by Mountjoy. 1603—Elizabeth increasingly hostile towards Spain till her death.
Results of Elizabeth’s Policy.
1. She gave England twenty-six years of peace, in spite of the distracted state of things abroad, and by this means (a) the religious question, (b) the succession question, were settled without civil war.
2. By creating a new mental atmosphere, she gave England a new national temper, which found expression in a national poetry. Shakspere’s “jubilant patriotism”:—
“This England never did, nor never shall
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror....
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them; nought shall make us rue,
If England to herself do rest but true.”
—K. John.
“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle ...
This precious stone set in the silver sea ...
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land.”
—K. Richard II.
And the passionate devotion to Elizabeth as the embodiment of the national greatness:—
“She shall be loved and feared; her own shall bless her:
In her days every man shall eat in safety
Under his own vine, what he plants, and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.”
—K. Henry VIII.
Elizabeth the Gloriana of Spenser.
3. She saved England from absorption by Spain or France, and from fear of future invasion.
4. She created the monarchy of Great Britain by laying the basis of union between England and Scotland.
5. She made England insular, but counterbalanced the disadvantages of insularity by encouraging maritime expansion.
SYLLABUS OF LESSON ON RICHELIEU.
| 1610. Louis XIII. | |
| Difficulties of Regent Mary de Medici. “The day of Kings is past, that of Grandees and Princes has arrived.” Her Spanish policy. Concini. | |
| 1614. | States-General, last of old Régime. Louis assumes government. Fall of Concini. Rise of De Luynes. Queen Mother becomes centre of disaffection. Guise. Bouillon. Mayenne. Epernon. Huguenots. |
| 1622. | Peace of Montpellier. Huguenots have only Rochelle and Montauban. |
| 1624. | Entrance into power of Richelieu. |
| RICHELIEU. | Born a leader of men. Genius of conception, force of will. Ideal, absolutism. Obstacle, feudal nobility; destroys their political vitality by increasing power of monarchy. 1. Substitutes Intendants for great Governors of Provinces. 2. Destroys feudal strongholds. 3. Brings nobles under the law; duelling, Montmorency; peculation, Marshal de Marillac; conspiracy, Cinq Mars. 4. States-General never meet. 5. Parlements restricted to judicial duties. 6. Heavy taxation. Cultivates three powerful alliances: 1. Men of letters; 2. Favour of commons; 3. Love of national glory. |
| Foreign | Policy. To substitute influence of France in Europe for Austro-Spanish power. Founder of an “occidental” policy. Two things necessary: 1. Balance of power; 2. Mutual religious toleration. Difficulties at home: 1. Spanish sympathies of Anne of Austria; 2. Huguenot struggles for independence. |
| Periods | of Richelieu’s Rule. |
| I. | The Valtelline Period, 1624-26. Richelieu enters European politics. Importance of Valtelline as connecting link between Austro-Spanish dominions. Seized in defiance of Treaty. Interference of Richelieu. Huguenot revolt. T. Montpellier pacifying them while he concludes Valtelline question in T. Monzon. |
| II. | Period of La Rochelle, 1626-28. Richelieu crushes all opposition at home to clear his way for decisive interference abroad. “La conspiration des Dames.” Vendome in Brittany. 1627. Buckingham’s expedition to Rhé. 1629. Fall of La Rochelle and Montauban. |
| III. | Period of absolute supremacy at home, 1629-35. Re-enters European politics, but only as a secondary power, in Thirty Years’ War. France acts again in Italy. Succession in Mantua and Montferrat. Valtelline question reopened, and again settled in favour of France. Day of Dupes, 11th Nov., 1630. T. of Cherasco, 1631. Intrigues of Gaston of Orleans with enemy. Richelieu acts with Gustavus Adolphus, the “Protestant Crusader”. Interests of France move to Lorraine border. Death of Gustavus indirect advantage to France. Richelieu’s terms with Bernard of Weimar. 1635. France declares war against Spain. |
| IV. | Period of France’s supremacy in Europe, 1635-43. 1636. Recovery of Corbie from Spanish. 1638. B. Rheinfeld. Fall of Brisach. 1639. Death of Bernard of Weimar. “Turning point of the contest,” from a useful ally was becoming a dangerous rival. Richelieu secures Alsace. Conspiracy of Cinq Mars. |
| 1642. | Death of Richelieu. Rise of Mazarin. |
LIST OF BOOKS.
The following lists have been drawn up with the help of several teachers of history, and are intended for the practical work of the school. They aim at giving the chief authorities for each period, besides other books dealing with special subjects. Where possible, the publisher and price have been given. Those who want more exhaustive lists and desire original authorities can find them in the syllabuses of the University Extension Lectures.
The historical stories have been chosen from lists furnished by pupils.
Text-books.
Gardiner. Student’s History. Longmans. 4/- a volume.
Vol. i., to 1509; vol. ii., 1509-1689; vol. iii., 1689-1885.
J. F. Bright. History of England. Longmans.
Vol. i., “Mediæval Monarchy,” 449-1485 (4/6); vol. ii., “Personal Monarchy,” 1485-1688 (5/-); vol. iii., “Constitutional Monarchy,” 1689-1837 (7/6).
Ransome. An Advanced History of England. Rivingtons. 7/6.
Acland and Ransome. Analysis of English History. Longmans. 6/-.
D. Beale. Text-book of English and General History. Bell & Daldy. 2/6.
Taswell-Langmead. Constitutional History. Stevens & Hayes. 15/-.
D. Beale. Student’s Chronological Maps (Charts). Bell & Daldy. 3/6.
Gardiner. Student’s Historical Atlas. Longmans. 5/-.
F. W. Putzger. Historischer Schul-Atlas. Bielefeld and Leipzig. Verlag von Velhagen und Klasing. 2 marks.
Period 1066-1272—
Stubbs. Constitutional History. Frowde. Clarendon Press. 12/- each volume.
Vol. i., to 1215; vol. ii., 1215-1399.
J. R. Green. History of the English People, vol. i. Macmillan. 16/-.
— The Making of England. Macmillan. 16/-.
— The Conquest of England. Macmillan. 18/-.
Freeman. History of the Norman Conquest. Macmillan. 36/-.
Lingard. History of England, vols. i. and ii. Duffy. Set of 10 vols. £1 10/-.
Kate Norgate. England under the Angevin Kings. 2 vols. Macmillan. £1 12/-.
Mrs. J. R. Green. Henry II. (Twelve English Statesmen). Macmillan. 2/6.
O. H. Richardson. National Movement under Henry III. Macmillan. 6/6.
Stubbs. Early Plantagenets (Epochs). Longmans. 2/6.
Cox. Crusades (Epochs). Longmans. 2/6.
Traill. Social England, vol. i. Cassell. 15/-.
Thorold Rogers. History of Agriculture and Prices, vols. i. and ii. Clarendon Press. £2 2/-.
Hunt. English Church in the Middle Ages. Longmans. 2/6.
Stubbs. Introductions to (a) Gesta Henrici II.: Benet of Peterbro; (b) Roger of Hoveden (for foreign policy) (Rolls Series).
| W. H. Hutton. | - | St. Thomas of Canterbury. David Nutt. 1/-. | |
| Misrule of Henry III. David Nutt. 1/-. | |||
| Simon de Montfort. David Nutt. 1/-. |
In English History from Contemporary Writers Series.
De Joinville. Saint Louis. Chronicle (translated by James Hutton). Sampson Low. 2/6.
Period 1272-1399—
Stubbs. Constitutional History, vol. ii. Clarendon Press. 12/-.
Green. History of the English People, vol. i. Macmillan. 16/-.
Lingard. History of England, vols. ii. and iii. Duffy. 10 vols. £1 10/-.
Author of “The Greatest of the Plantagenets.” Life and Reign of Edward I. Seeley Jackson. 6/-.
Tout. Edward I. (Twelve English Statesmen). Macmillan. 2/6.
Longman. Life and Times of Edward III. Longmans. 2 vols. 28/-.
Traill. Social England, vol. ii. Cassell. 15/-.
Burton. History of Scotland. Blackwood. 8 vols. £3 3/-.
Oman. Art of War (Hundred Years’ War). Fisher Unwin. 17/6.
Wakeman. History of the Church of England. Rivingtons. 6/-.
Stubbs. Early Plantagenets (Epochs). Longmans. 2/6.
Poole. Wycliffe and Early Movements for Reform. Longmans. 2/6.
Freeman. Historical Essays. 1st series, Essay on Edward I. Macmillan. 10/6.
Jusserand. English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages. Fisher Unwin. 7/6.
Ashley. Economic History. Longmans. Part i., 5/-; part ii., 10/6.
Shakspere. Play of Richard II.
Froissart. Chronicles.
Chaucer. Canterbury Tales.
Langland. Piers Plowman.
Period 1399-1485—
Stubbs. Constitutional History, vol. iii. Clarendon Press. 12/-.
Green. History of the English People, vols. i. and ii. Macmillan. 16/- each vol.
Lingard. History of England, vols. iii. and iv. Duffy & Sons. 10 vols. £1 10/-.
Ramsay. Lancaster and York. Clarendon Press. £1 16/-.
Wylie. England under Henry IV. Longmans. 4 vols. 10/6, 15/-, 15/-, £1 1/-.
Church. Henry V. (Men of Action Series). Macmillan. 2/6.
Gairdner. Richard III. Longmans (out of print). 10/-.
Oman. Warwick (Men of Action Series). Macmillan. 2/6.
Stubbs. Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History. Clarendon Press. 8/6.
Seebohm. Oxford Reformers. Longmans. 14/-.
Traill. Social England, vol. ii. Cassell. 15/-.
Gairdner. Lancaster and York (Epochs). Longmans. 2/6.
James Gairdner. Paston Letters. Constable. 16/-.
Fortescue. Governance of England (edited Plummer). Clarendon Press. 12/6.
Shakspere. Plays: Henry IV., Henry V., Henry VI.
Tudor Period, 1485-1603—
York Powell and Tout. Text-book, History of England (Henry VIII. to William III.). Longmans. 2/6.
Lingard. History of England, vols. iv., v., vi. Duffy & Sons. 10 vols. £1 10/-.
Green. History of the English People, vol. ii. Macmillan. 16/-.
Froude. History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Armada. Longmans. 12 vols. 3/6 each.
Hallam. History of England (Constitutional). Murray. 7/6.
Busch. England under the Tudors. Innes & Co. 16/-.
Gairdner. Henry VII. (English Statesmen Series). Macmillan. 2/6.
Bacon. Henry VII. (edited Lumby). Cambridge University Press. 2/-.
Brewer. Reign of Henry VIII. Murray. 2 vols. 15/- each.
Beesley. Queen Elizabeth. Macmillan. 2/6.
Creighton. Elizabeth. Boussod. £2 8/-.
— Age of Elizabeth (Epochs). Longmans. 2/6.
— Wolsey (Twelve English Statesmen). Macmillan. 2/6.
Ranke. History of England, vol. ... endon Press. 6 vols. £3 3/-.
Traill. Social England, vols. ii. and iii. Cassell. 15/- each volume.
Stubbs. Lectures on Medieval and Modern History. Clarendon Press. 8/6.
Macaulay. Essays (Burleigh). Longmans. 2/6.
Seeley. Growth of British Policy. Cambridge University Press. 2 vols. 12/-.
Seebohm. Oxford Reformers. Longmans. 14/-.
Wakeman. History of the Church of England. Rivingtons. 6/-.
Burnet. History of the Reformation. Clarendon Press. 7 vols. £1 10/-.
Aubrey Moore. History of the Reformation. Kegan Paul. 16/-.
Froude. English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century. Longmans. 6/-.
Hume. Courtships of Queen Elizabeth. Fisher Unwin. 12/-.
— The Year after the Armada. Fisher Unwin. 12/-.
— Walter Raleigh. Fisher Unwin. 5/-.
— Philip II. (Foreign Statesmen). Macmillan. 2/6.
Cunningham. English Industry and Commerce. Pitt Press. Vol. i., 13/4; vol. ii., 15/-.
H. Hall. Society in the Elizabethan Age. Sonnenschein. 10/6.
Berville. The Story of the Chevalier Bayard (Chronicle). Friswell. 2/6.
Stuarts and Commonwealth, 1603-1660—
Cordery and Philpotts. King and Commonwealth (text-book). Seeley. 5/-.
Gardiner. History of England, 1603-1642. Longmans. 10 vols. 6/- each.
— History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649. Longmans. 4 vols. 6/- each.
Lingard. History of England, vols. vii. and viii. Duffy & Sons. 10 vols. £1 10/-.
Green. History of the English People, vol. iii. Macmillan. 16/-.
Ranke. History of England, vols. i., ii., iii. Clarendon Press. 6 vols. £3 3/-.
Hallam. Constitutional History. Murray. 7/6.
Guizot. History of the English Revolution. Bohn. 3/6.
— Life of Oliver Cromwell. Bentley. 6/-.
Frederic Harrison. Cromwell (Twelve English Statesmen). Macmillan. 2/6.
Traill. Social England, vol. iv. Cassell. 17/-.
Sanford. Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion. John Parker. 16/-.
Forster. Sir John Eliot. Longmans (out of print).
— Grand Remonstrance. Murray. 12/-.
Church. Bacon (English Men of Letters). Macmillan. 1/-.
Carlyle. Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches. Chapman & Hall. 2/6.
W. H. Hutton. William Laud (Leaders of Religion Series). Methuen. 3/6.
Ottley. Lancelot Andrewes (Leaders of Religion Series). Methuen. 3/6.
Lady Verney. Memoirs of the Verney Family. Longmans. 2 vols., 42/-; vol. iii., 21/-.
The Later Stuarts, 1660-1714—
Hale. Fall of the Stuarts (Epochs). Longmans. 2/6.
Morris. Age of Anne. Longmans. 2/6.
Lingard. History of England, vols. ix., x. (ends 1689). Duffy. 10 vols. £1 10/-.
Ranke. History of England, vols. iii., iv., v. (use for foreign policy). Clarendon Press. £3 3/-.
Macaulay. History of England. Longmans. 5/-.
Hallam. Constitutional History. Murray. 7/6.
Lecky. History of England in the 18th Century. Longmans. 7 vols. 6/- each.
Green. History of the English People, vols. iii. and iv. Macmillan. 16/- a vol.
Traill. William III. (Twelve English Statesmen). Macmillan. 2/6.
Stanhope. Reign of Queen Anne. Murray. 16/-.
Wyon. History of Great Britain during the Reign of Queen Anne. Chapman & Hall (out of print). 2 vols. £1 12/-.
Leslie Stephen. Swift (Men of Letters Series). Macmillan. 1/-.
Swift. Conduct of the Allies. Various.
Hassall. Bolingbroke (Statesmen Series). W. H. Allen. 2/6.
Macaulay. Essays (Temple). Longmans. 2/6.
Evelyn. Diary (Chandos Classics). Warne. 1/6.
Traill. Social England, vol. iv. Cassell. 17/-.
Burnet. History of His Own Times. Clarendon Press. 9/6.
Anson. Law and Custom of the Constitution. Clarendon Press. Vol. i., 12/6; vol. ii., 14/-.
Hodder. Shaftesbury. Cassell. 3/6.
Hanoverian Period, 1714-1815—
Skottowe. Our Hanoverian Kings. Sampson Low. 3/6.
Lecky. History of England in the 18th Century. Longmans. 7 vols. 6/- each.
Stanhope. History of England (to 1783). Murray. 9 vols. 5/- each.
Green. History of the English People, vol. iv. Macmillan. 16/-.
Erskine May. Constitutional History (from George III.). Longmans. 3 vols. 18/-.
Hallam. Constitutional History. Murray. 7/6.
Ranke. History of England, vol. v. Clarendon Press. £3 3/-.
Seeley. Expansion of England. Macmillan. 4/6.
Traill. Social England, vol. v. Cassell. 17/-.
Morley. Walpole (Twelve English Statesmen). Macmillan. 2/6.
Macaulay. Essays (Clive, Hastings). Longmans. 2/6.
Morley. Chatham (Twelve English Statesmen). Macmillan. 2/6.
Not yet published.
Rosebery. Pitt (Twelve English Statesmen). Macmillan. 2/6.
Montagu Burrows. British Foreign Policy. Blackwood. 6/-.
Mahan. Influence of Sea Power on History. Sampson Low. 15/-.
Burke. Thoughts on the Present Discontents. Clarendon Press. 4/6.
— Reflections on the French Revolution. Clarendon Press. 5/-.
Also cheaper editions.
Carlyle. French Revolution. Chapman & Hall. 2 vols. 2/6 a vol.
Also cheaper issues.
Thos. Wright. Caricature History of the Georges. Hotten. 6/6.
LIST OF HISTORICAL NOVELS AND TALES AND POEMS
Illustrating the Period 1066 to 1815.
Period 1066-1272—
Kingsley. Hereward the Wake (Last Struggle of the English). Macmillan. 3/6.
Lytton. Harold. Routledge. 2/-.
M. M. Blake. Siege of Norwich Castle (Struggle of the English). Seeley. 5/-.
Henty. Wulff the Saxon (written for boys). Blackie. 6/-.
— Winning his Spurs (written for boys) (Crusades). S. Low. 2/6.
Macfarlane. Camp of Refuge (Hereward). Constable. 3/6.
Sir W. Scott. Count Robert of Paris (First Crusade). Black. 1/6.
— The Betrothed (Henry II.). Black. 1/6.
— The Talisman (Richard and Saladin). Black. 1/6.
— Ivanhoe (Richard Cœur de Lion). Black. 1/6.
C. M. Yonge. The Constable’s Tower (King John). National Society. 3/-.
— The Prince and the Page (Edward I.). Macmillan. 3/6.
— The Little Duke (Richard the Fearless of Normandy). Macmillan. 2/6.
These are children’s books.
G. P. R. James. Philip Augustus (Struggle with King John). Warne. -/6.
Tennyson. Harold: a drama.
— Becket: a drama.
Period 1272-1399—
Jane Porter. The Scottish Chiefs (1296-1314). Routledge. 2/-.
Grace Aguilar. The Days of Bruce. Nisbet. 2/-.
Mary Peard. Prentice Hugh (Edward I.). National Society. 3/6.
M. Everett Green. The Lord of Dynevor (Edward I. Wales). Nelson. 2/6.
Sir W. Scott. Castle Dangerous (1306). Black. 1/6.
Henty. In Freedom’s Cause (William Wallace). Blackie. 6/-.
C. M. Yonge. The Lances of Lynwood (Black Prince in Spain). Macmillan. 2/6.
Henty. St. George for England (Crecy, Poitiers). Blackie. 5/-.
Conan Doyle. The White Company (Black Prince in France). Smith & Elder. 6/-.
E. Mitchell. The Golden Horseshoes (Chivalry. Edward III.). Masters. 5/-.
Everett Green. In the Days of Chivalry (Black Prince). Nelson & Sons. 5/-.
Henty. A March on London (Wat Tyler). Blackie. 5/-.
— The Lion of St. Mark (Venice). Blackie. 6/-.
Lytton. Rienzi (Last Tribune, 1354). Routledge. 3/6.
Sir W. Scott. Lord of the Isles (Bruce).
Period 1399-1485—
James. Agincourt (1415). Warne. -/6.
Henty. At Agincourt. Blackie. 6/-.
Mark Twain. Joan of Arc (serious). Chatto & Windus. 6/-.
Author of “Schönberg Cotta Family”. Joan the Maid. Nelson. 4/-.
Andrew Lang. The Monk of Fife (Joan of Arc). Longmans. 3/6.
Mrs. Oliphant. Joan of Arc. Putnam. 5/-.
Sir W. Scott. The Fair Maid of Perth (Murder of Rothsay). Black. 1/6.
C. M. Yonge. The Caged Lion (James I. of Scotland). Macmillan. 3/6.
Miss Wilbraham. For and Against (Wars of the Roses) (out of print).
C. M. Yonge. Grisly Grisell (Wars of the Roses). Macmillan. 3/6.
Lady G. Fullerton. A Stormy Life (Margaret of Anjou). Burns & Oates. 6/-.
C. M. Yonge. Two Penniless Princesses. Macmillan. 3/6.
Sir W. Scott. Anne of Geierstein (Margaret of Anjou). Black. 1/6.
Lytton. Last of the Barons (Warwick the King Maker). Routledge. 3/6.
H. Ainsworth. The Star Chamber (Henry VII.). Various.
Author of “The Spanish Brothers”. Crushed yet Conquering (John Huss). Religious Tract Society. 6/-.
Sir W. Scott. Quentin Durward (Louis XI. and the Scottish Guard). Black. 1/6.
G. P. R. James. Mary of Burgundy (1477). Warne. -/6.
Period 1485-1603—
Harrison Ainsworth. The Star Chamber. Routledge. 2/-.
Everett Green. Evil May Day (1517). Nelson. 2/6.
— The Church and the King (Dissolution of the Monasteries). Nelson. 5/-.
A. Manning. The Household of Sir Thomas More (Diary of Margaret Roper). Hall. 2/6.
Harrison Ainsworth. Windsor Castle (Henry VIII.). Routledge. 2/-.
C. M. Yonge. The Armourer’s Prentices (Divorce). Macmillan. 3/6.
Mark Twain. The Prince and the Pauper (Edward VI.). Chatto. 3/6.
Stanley Weyman. Francis Cludde (Mary Tudor). Cassell. 6/-.
Harrison Ainsworth. Tower of London (Lady J. Grey). Routledge. 2/-.
Kingsley. Westward Ho! (Elizabeth’s Seadogs). Macmillan. 2/6.
Sir W. Scott. The Monastery (Murray’s Regency). Black. 1/6.
— The Abbot (Loch Leven). Black. 1/6.
— Kenilworth (Amy Robsart). Black. 1/6.
Whyte Melville. The Queen’s Maries (Mary of Scots). Longmans. 1/6.
Eliza Pollard. A Gentleman of England (Sir P. Sidney). Addison. 5/-.
C. M. Yonge. Unknown to History (Mary of Scots in Captivity). Macmillan. 3/6.
Everett Green. Loyal Hearts and True (Queen Elizabeth). Nelson. 5/-.
Henty. Under Drake’s Flag. Blackie. 6/-.
— St. Bartholomew’s Eve. Blackie. 6/-.
Robert Leighton. Under the Foeman’s Flag (Armada). Melrose. 3/6.
Mrs. Marshall. Penshurst Castle (Sir P. Sidney). Seeley. 5/-.
Hon. E. Lawless. With Essex in Ireland. Smith, Elder. 6/-.
— Maelcho (Irish Rising of 1579). Smith, Elder. 6/-.
Kingsley. Plays and Puritans (Essays). Macmillan. 3/6.
Reed. Sir Ludar (Ireland. Queen Elizabeth). Sampson Low. 2/6.
Charles Reade. The Cloister and the Hearth (for Picture of Middle Ages. Erasmus). Chatto. 3/6.
Mrs. Charles. The Schönberg Cotta Family (Luther). Nelson. 3/6.
Author of “Mdlle. Mori”. In the Olden Time (Peasant War in Germany, 1525). Longmans. 2/6.
C. M. Yonge. The Dove in the Eagle’s Nest (Maximilian). Macmillan. 3/6.
G. Eliot. Romola (Savonarola). Blackwood. 3/6.
Yeats. The Honour of Savelli (Cæsar Borgia). Sampson Low. 2/6.
Grace Aguilar. Vale of Cedars (Ferdinand and Isabella). Groombridge. 5/-.
Gordon Stables. Westward with Columbus. Blackie. 5/-.
Author of “Dark Year of Dundee”. The Spanish Brothers (Persecutions). Nelson. 4/-.
Henty. By Pike and Dyke (Netherlands). Blackie. 6/-.
— By England’s Aid (Netherlands). Blackie. 6/-.
Liefde. The Beggars (Netherlands). Hodder. 3/6.
Everett Green. Shut In (Siege of Antwerp, 1585). Nelson. 5/-.
Stanley Weyman. The House of the Wolf (St. Bartholomew). Longmans. 3/6.
C. M. Yonge. The Chaplet of Pearls (St. Bartholomew). Macmillan. 3/6.
Stanley Weyman. A Gentleman of France (Henry III. and the League). Longmans. 6/-.
James. Henry of Guise (the States of Blois. League Times). Routledge. 2/-.
Sir W. Scott. Marmion (a tale of Flodden Field).
— The Lady of the Lake (James V. and Douglas).
— The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1557).
Tennyson. Columbus: a poem.
— Queen Mary: a drama.
— The Revenge: a Ballad of the Fleet.
Period 1603-1660—
Sir Walter Scott. The Fortunes of Nigel (Court of James I.). Black. 1/6.
— A Legend of Montrose (Montrose and Argyle, 1645). Black. 1/6.
— Woodstock (Cavaliers and Roundheads). Black. 1/6.
Harrison Ainsworth. Guy Fawkes. Routledge. 2/-.
Shorthouse. John Inglesant (perfect Picture of Court of Charles I.). Macmillan. 3/6.
Whyte Melville. Holmby House (Cavaliers and Roundheads). Longmans. 1/6.
Edna Lyall. To Right the Wrong (Cavaliers and Roundheads). Hurst & Blackett. 6/-.
A. J. Church. With the King at Oxford (Charles I.). Seeley. 5/-.
J. S. Fletcher. When Charles the First was King. Bentley. 3 vols. 31/6.
Author of “The Schönberg Cotta Family”. The Draytons and the Davenants (Civil Wars). Nelson & Sons. 3/6.
Wilkie Collins. Hide and Seek (Civil Wars). Chatto. 3/6.
George Macdonald. St. George and St. Michael (Civil Wars. Siege of Raglan Castle). Kegan Paul. 3/6.
Rev. A. D. Crake. Fairleigh Hall (Civil Wars). Mowbray. 2/6.
M. and E. Lee. Rosamond Fane (Escape of Duke of York). Griffith & Farran. 3/6.
Anna Glyn. A Pearl of the Realm (Civil Wars. Nonsuch Palace). Hutchinson. 6/-.
Emma Marshall. A Haunt of Ancient Peace (Little Gidding). Seeley. 5/-.
Edited by Canon Carter. Nicholas Ferrar (not a story; account of Little Gidding). Longmans. 6/-.
— Brave Dame Mary (Siege of Corfe Castle). S.P.C.K. 2/-.
C. M. Yonge. Under the Storm (Cavaliers and Roundheads). National Society. 3/6.
Miss Holt. Ashcliffe Hall (Cavaliers and Roundheads). Silver & Co. 3/6.
Harrison Ainsworth. Boscobel. Routledge. 2/-.
Emma Marshall. The White King’s Daughter (Charles I.). Seeley. 3/6.
Emma Marshall. Under Salisbury’s Spire (George Herbert). Seeley. 5/-.
Marryat. The Children of the New Forest (Cavalier story for children). Routledge. 2/-.
Author of “The Schönberg Cotta Family”. On Both Sides of the Sea (Commonwealth and Restoration). Nelson. 5/-.
D. G. McChesney. Miriam Cromwell’s Royalist. Blackwood & Son. 6/-.
Miss Manning. Mary Powell (Diary of Milton’s Wife). Hall. 2/6.
Field. Ethne (Cromwell in Ireland). Wells, Gardner. 6/-.
Alfred de Vigny. Cinq Mars (in French. Richelieu). Calmann Levy. 2 vols. 8 francs.
G. P. R. James. Richelieu. Warne. -/6.
Stanley Weyman. Under the Red Robe (Richelieu). Methuen. 6/-.
— My Lady Rotha (Thirty Years’ War). Innes. 6/-.
Henty. The Lion of the North (Gustavus Adolphus). Blackie. 6/-.
Sir W. Scott. Rokeby (Marston Moor).
Browning. Strafford.
Period 1660-1714—
Sir Walter Scott. Old Mortality (Lauderdale and Claverhouse). Black. 1/6.
— Peveril of the Peak (Popish Plot). Black. 1/6.
— The Bride of Lammermoor (1700). Black. 1/6.
— The Black Dwarf (Jacobites). Black. 1/6.
Austin Clare. The Carved Cartoon (Plague and Great Fire). S.P.C.K. 3/-.
Henty. When London Burned. (Plague and Great Fire). Blackie. 5/-.
Harrison Ainsworth. Old St. Paul’s. (Plague and Great Fire). Routledge. 2/-.
Miss Manning. Cherry and Violet (Plague and Great Fire). Nimmo. 6/-.
Anthony Hope. Simon Dale (Treaties of Dover). Methuen & Co. 6/-.
Edna Lyall. In the Golden Days (Algernon Sidney). Hurst & Blackett. 6/-.
Emma Marshall. Winchester Meads (Bishop Ken). Seeley. 5/-.
Conan Doyle. Micah Clarke (Monmouth’s Rebellion). Longmans. 3/6.
M. and C. Lee. The Oak Staircase (Monmouth’s Rebellion). Griffith & Farran. 3/6.
Blackmore. Lorna Doone (Monmouth’s Rebellion). S. Low. 2/6.
Walter Besant. For Faith and Freedom (Monmouth’s Rebellion). Chatto. 3/6.
Everett Green. In Taunton Town (Monmouth’s Rebellion). Nelson. 5/-.
A. E. Mason. The Courtship of Maurice Buckler (1685). Macmillan. 6/-.
Mary Peard. To Horse and Away (Charles II.). National Society. 3/6.
Mary Rowsell. Traitor or Patriot (Rye House Plot). Blackie. 3/6.
Stanley Weyman. Shrewsbury (a Romance of the Reign of William III.). Longmans. 6/-.
Henty. Orange and Green (B. Boyne). Blackie. 5/-.
Emma Marshall. Kensington Palace. Seeley. 5/-.
Anon. The Last of the Cavaliers (1688). Bentley. 6/-.
Henty. The Bravest of the Brave (Peterbro in Spain). Blackie. 5/-.
M. Rowsell. Thorndyke Manor (Jacobite). Blackie. 3/6.
Conan Doyle. The Refugees (Revocation of the Edict of Nantes). Longmans. 3/6.
Thackeray. Esmond (Jacobites. Anne’s Reign). Smith, Elder. 1/6.
Period 1714-1815—
Sir W. Scott. Rob Roy (Rising of 1715). Black. 1/6.
— The Heart of Midlothian (Porteous Riots). Black. 1/6.
— Waverley (Rising of 1745). Black. 1/6.
— Guy Mannering (1750). Black. 1/6.
— Red Gauntlet (Jacobites, 1770). Black. 1/6.
— The Antiquary (1798). Black. 1/6.
Henty. Bonny Prince Charlie. Blackie. 6/-.
— A Jacobite Exile (in service of Charles XII. of Sweden). Blackie. 5/-.
— With Frederick the Great (Seven Years’ War). Blackie. 6/-.
— Hold Fast for England (Siege of Gibraltar). Blackie. 5/-.
— With Clive in India. Blackie. 6/-.
— With Wolfe in Canada. Blackie. 6/-.
— In the Reign of Terror. Blackie. 5/-.
— True to the Old Flag (War of American Independence). Blackie. 6/-.
— One of the Twenty-eighth (Waterloo). Blackie. 5/-.
— With Moore at Corunna. Blackie. 6/-.
— Through Russian Snows. Blackie. 5/-.
Walter Besant. Dorothy Forster (Rising of 1715). Chatto. 3/6.
Thackeray. The Four Georges. Smith, Elder. 1/6.
Andrew Lang. Pickle the Spy (Young Glengarry. Ellibank Plot). Longmans. 18/-.
Author of “Atelier du Lys”. Mistress Beatrice Cope (Rising, 1745). Hurst & Blackett. 3/6.
Harrison Ainsworth. Preston Fight. Routledge. 2/-.
Thackeray. The Virginians. Smith, Elder. 5/-.
Author of “The Schönberg Cotta Family”. Diary of Mrs. Kitty Trevylyan (Wesley). Nelson & Sons. 3/6.
— Against the Stream (End of 18th Century). S.P.C.K. 4/-.
Dickens. Barnaby Rudge (Gordon Riots). Chapman & Hall. 2/6.
Walter Besant. The Chaplain of the Fleet (Fleet Marriages). Chatto. 3/6.
Sarah Tytler. The Huguenot Family (Refugees in England). Chatto. 2/-.
Fenimore Cooper. The Last of the Mohicans (English and Americans). Routledge. 2/-.
G. Parker. The Trail of the Sword (French in America). Methuen. 6/-.
Emma Marshall. The Four Reigns (George III. to Victoria). Seeley. 5/-.
— In Colston’s Days (Old Bristol). Seeley. 5/-.
— Under the Mendips (Hannah More). Seeley. 5/-.
Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities (French Revolution). Chapman & Hall. 2/6.
Stanley Weyman. The Red Cockade (French Revolution). Longmans. 6/-.
Author of “Mdlle. Mori”. The Atelier du Lys (French Revolution). Longmans. 2/6.
Harriet Martineau. The Peasant and the Prince (French Revolution). Routledge. 1/6.
M. E. Coleridge. The King with Two Faces (Gustavus III. of Sweden. French Revolution). Edward Arnold. 6/-.
Author of “Mdlle. Mori”. On the Edge of the Storm (French Revolution). Warne. 3/6.
Felix Gras. The Reds of the Midi (French Revolution). Heinemann. 3/6.
Sarah Tytler. Citoyenne Jacqueline (French Revolution). Chatto. 2/-.
Whyte Melville. Sister Louise (French Revolution). Ward, Lock. 2/-.
C. J. A., author of “Good Fight of Faith”. In Palace and Faubourg (French Revolution). Nelson. 5/-.
Author of “Atelier du Lys”. A Child of the Revolution. Longmans. 2/6.
F. M. Peard. Mother Molly (Threatened Invasion of Napoleon). Bell. 5/-.
Conan Doyle. Uncle Bernac (Napoleon). Smith, Elder. 6/-.
— Brigadier Gerard (Napoleon). Newnes. 6/-.
Tolstoi. War and Peace (Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, for teachers). W. Scott. 4 vols. 2/6 a vol.
THE TEACHING OF ANCIENT HISTORY.
By Mary Hanbidge, M.A. (Lond.).
General scope.The importance of history as a school subject has been fully discussed in an earlier section. But “history,” as taught in schools, too often connotes merely English, or, at best, modern history. Hence the necessity of asserting separately the claim of ancient history, though in the very fact that it is not a separate subject, lies its importance.
The progressive development of the human race is a scientific axiom. If we ignore the continuity of history, we tend to base our teaching only on facts, rather than on the laws which form the bond of sequence between them. Thus the sense of historical proportion is never awakened; and the girl so trained may know in detail the history of England, and the history of the Israelites, but has little idea of their relation to the rest of the modern or ancient world. The child of to-day cannot attain to a true understanding of the history and culture of her own nation unless she has some ideas of the civilisation we inherit. The Renaissance is a fact which every text-book emphasises, and every schoolgirl knows; but what does she know of its spirit? How little can she realise the enthusiasm that stirred those “spacious times” if she is an utter stranger to the “glory that was Greece, and the greatness that was Rome”! Again, in neglecting ancient history, we lose sight of the homogeneity of the human race, that oneness which Thucydides felt would make his history not merely a passing record, but a prophecy ες το αει. And in truth the ancient city states grappled with many of the social and political problems of to-day. They are set before us in miniature, we see them in their entirety, and their solution guides or warns us. The influence of capital in politics, the depopulation of country districts, the dangers of a foreign corn supply, the drifting of democracy to socialism, and the treatment of subject races, were questions of as vital importance for Greece and Rome as they are to-day. So true is Dr. Arnold’s paradox that the ancient world is the most modern of all. Thus regarded, ancient history forms a valuable mental training for upper forms, a training which, in the case of girls, is especially useful, since women too often do not realise the modern problems in which they are unconscious factors. A further advantage is the accessibility of the original authorities, even to a school class. Here at least they are not dependent on retrospective theories, but can see how the history of the day impressed the men who made it—a result not so easily obtainable in other branches of history.
General suggestions.To turn to the practical teaching of the subject. From the beginning, the child must be trained to realise that the history of the world is a whole. Throughout the school, ancient and mediæval history should be taught side by side with that of England and Palestine. English history may with advantage be taught in less detail, and time thus secured for the sister subject. In French and German schools this system is definitely adopted; we append a German scheme. If possible, the subject should be in the hands of the same teacher, that the correlation of interest may be duly emphasised. In classes where reading lessons are given, poems, plays, etc., which bear upon the history, should be chosen, and may suggest subjects for composition. A geography lesson should precede the history course, and the importance of geography throughout cannot be overestimated.
Graduated scheme.
Course A.
Ages 9-10.With young children history proper is an impossibility, but an interest in the life of the past may be awakened very early. The mental development of the child epitomises that of the race, and in the record of a nation mythology precedes history. In the lowest classes of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College a course of stories from Greek mythology has met with marked success. Quite little children know Jason, with his one sandal, as well as they do Cinderella, and Athene is a familiar friend, whose picture they recognise. Cavillers may say that we are only teaching fairy tales, but the same children grown a little older see their Athene the central point of all the glories of Periclean Athens, and find themselves in a world they know.
Such a course will begin with a talk about the Greeks and their Gods, pass on to the heroes, and end with the “Tale of Troy Divine,” the wanderings of Odysseus, and the story of Thebes; of course these will be stories pure and simple, not vehicles for any ætiological theory, and the success will depend entirely on the descriptive power of the teacher.
Course B.
Ages 10-12.We are now on the threshold of history, and since a child is naturally anthropomorphic, the personal element must be made the most prominent. This course will therefore consist of a series of biographies, but biographies introductory to history. The men therefore whom we choose must be men who make or mark a period, and their lives must be closely connected. For this Greek history offers greater facilities than Roman, where the personal element is weaker.
The following series is suggested:—
1. Lycurgus (the dawn of history); revive knowledge of Atridæ; new Peloponnesus, cf. Heptarchy; Lycurgus and his laws; rise of Sparta. 2. Solon, lawgiver of Athens. 3. Pisistratus, the tyranny; rise of free Athens. 4. Crœsus, Cyrus, Cambyses; Asiatic Greece, connection with Bible history. 5. Darius and his wrath against Athens. 6. Miltiades and Marathon. 7. Themistocles and Salamis. 8. Pausanias, victor of Platæa; his insolence and fall. 9. Cimon, expulsion of Persians from Ægean. 10. Pericles and his Athens; Sparta’s jealousy; the war. 11. Brasidas and Demosthenes. 12. Nicias and the Sicilian expedition. 13. Lysander and fall of Athens. 14. Socrates and degradation of Athens. 15. Agesilaus and the fall of Sparta. 16. Conon and the rebuilding of the walls. 17. Epaminondas, the humbling of Sparta. 18. Philip of Macedon and his plans. 19. Demosthenes and how he failed to stop them. 20. Alexander.
In these two courses no text-books need be used or notes taken, but the children should be required to tell the tale of the last lesson, either viva voce or in writing. The appended [chart] should be used throughout this course, and will show the connection with Jewish history.
Course C.History of Rome to B.C. 31. We now come to history proper, necessarily in outline. This must not be mere chronology, but a series of connected pictures of events. Such dates as are given must be the dates of a century. We suggest that Rome should form the subject of this course, since in the story of the nations Rome follows Greece. Rome touches the world the children already know, as mistress of Britain, and heir of Alexander, while Pyrrhus and Philip V. of Macedon are connecting links with the Hellenistic age, as a rule a terra incognita. Antiochus and the Maccabees will connect it with Jewish history. For [chart] of connection with Course A see end.
Course D.
Ages 13-14.Augustus to Charlemagne. The Germans recognise the importance of this period. In England, forming as it does the link between ancient and modern history, it is taught with neither, and yet it is the key to the race question of modern Europe. We suggest a scheme whose two connecting links are: the rise of Christianity and the barbarian migrations. 1. Augustus; Tiberius; Claudius. 2. Nero; the Christians. 3. Vespasian; Titus; fall of Jerusalem. 4. Roman life; Pompeii. 5. Britain and the expansion of the empire under Trajan. 6. Marcus Aurelius; Christianity and Paganism; death of Oracles. 7. Diocletian; last persecutions of Christians; barbarians; inroads. 8. Constantine, first Christian emperor; Constantinople. 9. Julian; reaction against Christianity; Franks; Strasburg (357). 10. Alaric and Visigoths (410). 11. Attila and Huns (450). 12. Fall of empire. 13. Alexandria. 14. Theodoric and Ostrogothic kingdoms. 15. Clovis and Frankish kingdoms. 16. Descendants of Clovis; Brunhilda and Fredegond; extension of Frankish kingdom. 17. Monastic age, Celtic and Roman; Gregory the Great; rise of Papacy; Gregory and Brunhilda; Augustine. 18. Mahomet. 19. Caliphs; spread of Mahometanism in Asia, Africa, Spain. 20. Saracens repulsed (732); Charles Martel. 21. Fainéant kings; mayors of palace. 22. Charlemagne. 23. Holy Roman empire.
History for higher classes.In the higher classes of a school we may assume a fair knowledge of outline history. Periods bearing on the classical reading should be selected and read in detail. Typical periods as “The Empire of Athens and the Age of Pericles,” and “The Age of Augustus”.
A standard history should be worked through, and other books, notably the original historians, will be suggested. A lending library is therefore essential. An essay subject will be set in connection with each lecture to form a centre for reading.
Illustrations.Throughout, the importance of concrete illustrations cannot be too strongly insisted upon. In many places the lectures can be supplemented by visits to local museums, Roman relics, etc. (e.g., Chedworth Villa near Cheltenham, Gloucester Museum, Bath). For elder classes a visit to the British Museum would obviously be helpful, but it is wonderfully easy to interest even quite young children. A board schoolboy of eleven, who was wandering aimlessly about the Elgin room, was delighted when I showed him the Nemesis head and told him the story of the Persian Invincible Armada, which never set up its trophy.
Invaluable help can also be obtained from the Educational Museum of the Teachers’ Guild. A full catalogue is published, in which we specially notice (1) illustrations of Greek dress, which might be copied by the mythology class (Course A); (2) maps and plans, especially of Athens and Rome (Holzel); (3) coins, museum reproductions; (4) portraits; (5) lantern slides. Mention may also be made of views of the English Photographic Co., Constitution Square, Athens, who send a priced catalogue; the series of card reliefs, 6d. each, by Lecherchier, Barbe et Cie., to be obtained from the Art Schools Association, 21 Queen’s Square, Bayswater; card illustrations from Menge’s Antike Kunst. These illustrations would be of double value were they the permanent possession of the class-room; the class could then become really familiar with each one. It would be a great boon if a central loan collection could be formed by some such body as the Teachers’ Guild, from which illustrations of special periods could be borrowed term by term, a plan which at present is only adopted for lantern slides. This would give access to a greater selection of pictures and models than a single school can provide, and might lead to the development of the historical side of the school museum, and the consequent formation of a school archæological society.
Maps.Kiepert’s wall-maps may be taken for granted. The list in the Teachers’ Guild catalogue is helpful, but a teacher must make her own period maps. (White blind holland is an excellent material.)
Books.1. Text-books. (a) Roman. Creighton’s Primer; E. S. Shuckburgh’s History of Rome for Beginners and History of Rome; Well’s Short History of Rome to the death of Augustus; How and Leigh’s History of Rome; Mommsen’s History of Rome (abridged for schools); Pelham’s Outlines of Roman History (Epoch Series); Bury’s Student’s Roman Empire.
(b) Greek. Fyffe’s Primer; Oman’s History of Greece; Cox’s General History of Greece (Epoch Series); Butcher’s Demosthenes.
(c) Transition. Freeman’s Europe (Primer); Freeman’s General Sketch of European History.
2. Historical atlases. Student’s Kiepert.
3. Suggestions for school library in connection with junior courses. Miss Gardner’s Friends of the Olden Time and Rome the Centre of the World; Church’s Stories; Cox’s Tales of Ancient Greece; Kingsley’s Heroes and Poems; Macaulay’s Lays; Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales; Epics and Romances of the Middle Ages (Wagner and Anson); Lang, Leaf and Myers’ Iliad; Butcher and Lang’s Odyssey; Worsley’s Odyssey; Morris’ Earthly Paradise and Life and Death of Jason; Browning’s Balaustion and Aristophanes’ Apology; Miss A. Swanwick’s Æschylus; Tennyson’s Œnone, etc.; Milton; Atlas of Classical Portraits—(a) Roman; (b) Greek (published by Dent); Baumeister’s Bilder aus dem Alterthum.
German Scheme for History Teaching:—
1st year. Greek legends and German sagas.
2nd year. Pictures of ancient German and Prussian history, Cyrus to the Emperor Frederick.
3rd year. German and Prussian history, from invasion of barbarians to the Emperor Frederick.
4th year. Ancient history to invasions of barbarians (every fortnight, one hour’s repetition of German and Prussian history).
5th year. German history, from invasion of barbarians to 1648.
6th year. From 1648 to the present day, with special stress on general history of civilisation.
PARALLEL CHART FOR THE YOUNGER CLASSES.
| Year. | Biblical History. | Greece. | Rome. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1400 | |||||||
| 1300 | Exodus. | Troy? | |||||
| 1200 | Samson. | ||||||
| 1100 | |||||||
| 1000 | David. | ||||||
| 900 | Homer? | ||||||
| 800 | Lycurgus? | Rome. | |||||
| 700 | |||||||
| 600 | Nebuchadnezzar. | Solon. | |||||
| 500 | Belshazzar. Temple rebuilt. Esther. | Cyr Dar Xer | us. Pisistratus. ius. xes. Miltiades. Themistocles. | Expulsion of Kings. | |||
| 400 | Pericles. Socrates. Epaminondas. | The Gauls. | |||||
| 300 | Alexander. (Ptolemies.) | (Pyrr | hus.) | ||||
| 200 | (Maccabees.) | (Antio | chus.) | (Philip of Poly | 1st Punic War. Macedon. Hannibal.) bius. | ||
| Corinth. Carthage. | |||||||
| 100 | (Cleopatra.) | - | Cicero. Pompey. Julius Cæsar. | ||||
| A.D. | Herod the Great. Birth of Christ. | Augustus. | |||||
At the beginning of Course B, Column I. (except the names in brackets) will be marked on the chart. Column II. as far as Alexander to be filled in during Course B. Column III. and the brackets of Columns I. and II. to be filled in during Course C.
TIME-MAPS.
By Dorothea Beale.
The practice of representing to the eye by means of diagrams the facts of science, physical and social, is becoming more common: we have jagged lines indicating fluctuations in the winds or in the stocks. In an American record which has been sent to me, there are coloured squares representing the thousands of children who are regular in their attendance at school, black squares standing for the defaulting thousands. By such means we can see at a glance what the mind finds it difficult otherwise to realise; it furnishes a framework into which we can fit anything we wish to locate.
It is hardly necessary to say that for any orderly study of history it is necessary to have some scheme into which we may fit the subjects of study. As well might we expect by learning latitude and longitude to understand the position of places on the earth’s surface, as by learning dates to get a clear idea of the relative position of events in time. We want some form of map which will represent the events to the eye. Historical Charts.Many excellent charts have been drawn up giving us parallel histories, but the great difficulty is their prodigious size. Time is one-dimensional, and if we give a small linear space to a century, and try to represent a few thousand years, the mind fails to grasp the picture; if the scale of the different periods varies, the proportion is wrong. For this reason rivers and trees of time, etc., have been more or less failures; they are useful and interesting, but the objection is, that they are either too large and detailed to be carried in the memory, or that the landmarks are too slight. The Méthode Mnémonique Polonaise, which is much used in France, was introduced to my notice, and first used by me at Queen’s College: it has the great advantage of compactness—it is in form like a geographical map. It can be adapted to various purposes, but I shall dwell now on its applications as a record of time, and show the different ways in which it can be used by little children, though it is equally well adapted for Tom Brown at Oxford (who seems to have used it) and for the mature student of history. It may be made for little ones into a system of object-lessons, or hieroglyphics, if you will, which appeal to the child’s imagination and help him to realise something of the proportion of things, and whilst looking at the world, as each of us must, from our own “pin-point,” yet see life in relation to the lives of others. It is compact; it shows at a glance the relations of events. We can have a world-map and give only the great landmarks, or we may by a map of large proportions work out to any degree of detail a short period. The plan is to make a square of ten represent a century, and each horizontal line a decade. Thus:—
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 |
| 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 |
| 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 |
| 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 |
| 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 |
| 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 |
| 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 |
It will at once be seen that all the numbers in the first line of a century are units, in the second tens, in the third twenties, and so on; whilst, if we look down the vertical line, all the numbers in the first row end with nought, in the second with one, and so on. The thick line is intended to help the eye; we have forty and fifty on each side of the horizontal thick line, four and five on each side of the vertical. A few minutes’ practice will generally enable the pupil to read off numbers rapidly from a blank square. He will then have to learn the position of the marks in any century, as he would learn the geography of a country, or the shape of a constellation. Take, for example, the English history of the fourteenth century. We mark Edward II., in 1307; Edward III., in 1327; Richard II., 1377; Henry IV., 1399. The dates need not be learned; we have the picture of the century in our mind and can read off the square.
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Some children take much pleasure in making and painting illustrated charts. I have one on a large scale of the sixteenth century, giving the accession of Queen Mary—1553, and a picture of the Tower, to which Northumberland and others were sent. A block in 1554 tells of the executions consequent on Wyatt’s rebellion, and a dove with an olive branch of Philip’s intercession for Elizabeth—1555; there is a picture of a martyr at the stake, and a hand in the flames for Cranmer—1557; a scroll stands for the first Covenant in Scotland, and a sword for the war with France—1558; there is a heart with Calais written on it.
Here is a specimen of a chart with a key of the sixteenth century.[19] It will be seen from this how events in contemporary history can be introduced. Thus the first year, 1500, reminds us of the discovery of America, and of the great jubilee, the precursor of the Papal downfall; the fleur de lys standing for the French kings and the cross for the German Emperors, tell of the accession of Francis I. and Charles V. Portraits are given of English sovereigns. We have later the massacre of St. Bartholomew with daggers, a ship for the Armada, etc., etc.
[19] It may be well to add that I am not ignorant of the discussions respecting the proper beginning of a century. Is the year 1800 the last year of the eighteenth or the first year of the nineteenth century? Our dates have been translated from the Latin ordinals, and we ought to say the eighteen-hundredth year, instead of the year eighteen-hundred. I have deliberately preferred to conform the chart to the vulgar tongue. If I did not, the numbers in the first line would contain nine units and one ten, instead of all units; the second line of tens would contain one twenty, and so on. If we are content to use the inaccurate language of daily life, bearing in mind that it requires correction, and making such corrections when we are engaged in important historical or astronomical calculations, we may well be content to do the same with the chart. I shall, therefore, consider the life of a century as that of a centenarian. We say of a child that he is in his 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., year, when he is 0, 1, 2, etc., years old; so, also, a person is in his 100th year when he is 99 years old; and he has lived a century at the close of this year, for the cardinal marks the number of completed years, the ordinal the number of the year in progress. So 1799 is regarded as the closing year of the last century, 1800, 1801, as the first and second of this. For a learned and elaborate discussion on the subject, and a list of authorities for the view adopted, see An Examination of the Century Question, George Bell, Fleet Street, 1850.
KEY TO SIXTEENTH CENTURY CHART.
| 1500. Columbus prisoner. Jubilee. | 1501. | 1502. | 1503. Julius II. | 1504. | 1505. | 1506. | 1507. | 1508. | 1509. Henry VIII. |
| 1510. | 1511. | 1512. | 1513. Flodden. Leo X. | 1514. | 1515. Francis I. | 1516. | 1517. | 1518. | 1519. Charles V. |
| 1520. Soleyman. | 1521. Diet of Worms. | 1522. | 1523. | 1524. | 1525. Prussia. Teutonic Order secularised. | 1526. Baber. | 1527. | 1528. | 1529. |
| 1530. Death of Wolsey. | 1531. | 1532. | 1533. Anne Boleyn. | 1534. | 1535. Fisher and More executed. | 1536. Anne Boleyn beheaded. Jane Seymour. | 1537. | 1538. | 1539. |
| 1540. Jesuits. Anne of Cleves. Cath. Howard. | 1541. | 1542. Cath. Howard beheaded. | 1543. Catharine. Parr. | 1544. | 1545. Council of Trent. | 1546. | 1547. Edward VI. Henry II. | 1548. | 1549. |
KEY TO SIXTEENTH CENTURY CHART.
| 1550. | 1551. | 1552. | 1553. Mary Spenser born. | 1554. | 1555. Persecutions. | 1556. Cranmer. | 1557. | 1558. Elizabeth. Ferdinand I. | 1559. Francis II. |
| 1560. Charles IX. | 1561. | 1562. | 1563. Guise assass. | 1564. Max. II. Shakspere born. | 1565. | 1566. | 1567. | 1568. | 1569. |
| 1570. | 1571. | 1572. Massacre of St. Bartholomew. | 1573. | 1574. Henry II. | 1575. | 1576. Rudolph II. | 1577. | 1578. | 1579. |
| 1580. | 1581. | 1582. | 1583. | 1584. Orange assass. | 1585. | 1586. | 1587. Mary Queen of Scots beheaded. | 1588. Armada. | 1589. Henry IV. |
| 1590. Faerie Queene, 3 books. | 1591. | 1592. | 1593. Shakspere’s Poems. | 1594. Hooker’s Eccles. Polity. | 1595. | 1596. | 1597. Bacon’s Essays. Shakspere’s first Play. | 1598. Edict of Nantes. | 1599. |
In the charts I have published,[20] I have given only English kings; when these are fixed in the memory, events of general history can be gradually introduced, and paper ruled on any scale required.
[20] Students’ Chronological Maps (Bell & Sons, 3s. 6d.).
If the chart is studied as a whole, either in reference to English or modern history, it is convenient to divide it into four periods, of five hundred years each, corresponding to four lines in the chart, and to characterise each century. Then on a larger scale, for which we have sheets of paper ruled, we put in gradually certain landmarks, whilst giving lessons on modern history, such matters being written in as the teacher directs. The writer’s text-book of English and general history, in which are given the sovereigns of the principal European countries, notable persons and events, etc., can be used for lessons in connection with the chart.[21]
[21] For more complete lists of sovereigns and a selection of the more important dates, Beale’s Student Text-book of English and Modern History may be referred to, and Students’ Chronological Maps (Bell & Sons).
I subjoin a syllabus of a course of lessons on modern history:—
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
| Christianity | Good Emperors | Military Despotism | Constantine | Fall of Rome |
| 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th |
| Barbaric Wars | Mahomet | Charlemagne | Alfred | Feudalism |
| 11th | 12th | 13th | 14th | 15th |
| Hildebrand | Crusades | Schoolmen | Rise of Middle-class | Renaissance |
| 16th | 17th | 18th | 19th | 20th |
| Reformation | Religious Wars | Political Wars | Revolution |
I.—In the first century we see Rome at the height of prosperity, victorious on all sides. During the second, she maintains her position fairly under the good emperors. The third is a period of trouble and confusion, the empire is struggling for existence. In the fourth, the firm government of Constantine maintained, for a short time after his accession, comparative peace; but the removal of the seat of government, and the subsequent division of the empire, facilitated the barbaric triumphs of Radagaisus, Alaric, Attila and Genseric in the fifth; and before its close, the Western empire had fallen, and Theodoric the Ostrogoth was king of Italy. This line embraces in Britain the 400 years of the Roman occupation, and a small portion of the Anglo-Saxon period.
II.—In the second line we have the period of barbarian settlements—tribes are changing into nations. The Anglo-Saxon invasions, the unceasing contests amongst the numerous petty kings, have terminated, by the middle of the tenth century, in the union of the country under Athelstane, the first who can properly be called King of all England. In France we have the union of the Franks under Clovis, the constant civil wars, interminable divisions, and fainéant kings of the Merovingian period, the union of the country under Charlemagne, the renewed civil strife, subdivisions, and fainéant kings of the Carlovingian line, and the accession of the third, or Capetian Dynasty.
In Germany, too, order is being developed out of confusion, and, in the tenth century, the different nations have agreed to choose one king; barriers are opposed to further invasion from without, free cities are rising, feudalism is being rapidly developed, the spirit of chivalry is felt, and the idea of a united Christendom, subject to the emperor as temporal, to the pope as spiritual head, may be traced most distinctly in the schemes of the Othos, and the attempt of Sylvester II. to rouse the European nations for a crusade.
In Italy, so long a battlefield, the great republics are rising, and the pope from time to time asserting his independence. In the East, in Africa, in Spain, the Mahometan kingdoms have been established. During so turbulent a period, we must expect to find many heroes, and from these we may select Mahomet, Charlemagne and Alfred, as the central figures of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries.
III.—-In the third line we have the formation of the states of modern Europe. The great nations of the West are no longer isolated units, for they have joined together in crusades against the East, they acknowledge one head in the popes. The popes, mighty in the person of Gregory VII. in the eleventh century, in Innocent III. in the thirteenth, have sunk to the lowest depths of ignominy in the person of Alexander VI. The Albigenses are almost exterminated in the thirteenth, but Wickliffe has preached in the fourteenth. Huss and Jerome of Prague have been martyred at Constance early in the fifteenth, but Luther has begun to study the Scriptures. The middle classes, too, have been growing in importance, citizens have triumphed over warriors. The power of a turbulent chivalry has been destroyed by civil wars, the people have risen to power. The invention of gunpowder has changed the aspect of war, and the introduction of printing brought about a vast change in education; great writers, as Chaucer and Dante, are beginning to produce their works in the vulgar tongue. America has, at the close of the period, been just discovered.
IV.—In the last line we have a period marked first by struggles for religious, afterwards for political liberty, the long religious wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The oppression of the aristocratic and papal powers during the preceding period led, in some instances, to the exaggeration of the monarchical authority, and to this are opposed the revolutions of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which have in some instances produced a reaction in favour of despotism. The discovery of America has given an extraordinary impulse to naval enterprise, to colonisation and commerce; this, together with the diffusion of knowledge by printing, has greatly stimulated intellectual activity, and the mathematical and philosophical studies of the sixteenth century have prepared the way for the practical triumphs of our own day.
Only a few leading dates have been marked in the published charts, which are coloured for different periods, but these may be added to indefinitely—sometimes by writing in additional signs or words to mark contemporary sovereigns, etc., but it is better not to multiply these too much; for many things no signs need be used, as persons and things of minor importance will become associated in the memory with the more important. Or again, suppose a special subject is taken up, as English literature or the history of painting, the name of a leading author or painter can be written across that portion of the century in which his chief works appeared, and all who belong to his school of thought will be easily remembered in connection with him. A chart of English literature has been published on this plan by Baker, Clifton.
In the Chart of Ancient History, the numbers are read upwards and backwards. Thus:—
| 99 | 98 | 97 | 96 | 95 | 94 | 93 | 92 | 91 | 90 |
| 89 | 88 | 87 | 86 | 85 | 84 | 83 | 82 | 81 | 80 |
| 79 | 78 | 77 | 76 | 75 | 74 | 73 | 72 | 71 | 70 |
| 69 | 68 | 67 | 66 | 65 | 64 | 63 | 62 | 61 | 60 |
| 59 | 58 | 57 | 56 | 55 | 54 | 53 | 52 | 51 | 50 |
| 49 | 48 | 47 | 46 | 45 | 44 | 43 | 42 | 41 | 40 |
| 39 | 38 | 37 | 36 | 35 | 34 | 33 | 32 | 31 | 30 |
| 29 | 28 | 27 | 26 | 25 | 24 | 23 | 22 | 21 | 20 |
| 19 | 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 |
| 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
We give, in conclusion, photographs of two charts prepared for the Victorian Exhibition (1897) with a key.
The first gives the chief events of the Queen’s reign, the second the chief scientific discoveries.
| 1820 | 1821 | 1822 | 1823 | 1824 | 1825 | 1826 | 1827 | 1828 | 1829 |
| 1830 | |||||||||
| 1899 |
KEY TO CHART No. I.
CHART OF THE QUEEN’S REIGN.
| 1837. | The Queen’s Accession. 1838. First Electric Telegraph. |
| 1840. | Queen’s Marriage—Penny Postage. 1841. Birth of Prince of Wales. 1842. Capture of Shanghai. 1846. Repeal of the Corn Laws. 1848. Death of Lord Melbourne—Chartist Revolt. |
| 1850. | Death of Wordsworth and Sir Robert Peel. 1851. First Great Exhibition. 1852. Death of the Duke of Wellington. 1854. Crimean War. 1857. Indian Mutiny. |
| 1860. | Death of Lord Aberdeen. 1861. Death of the Prince Consort. 1863. Prince of Wales’ Marriage. 1864. Birth of the Duke of Clarence. 1865. Birth of the Duke of York—Death of Lord Palmerston. 1869. Death of Lord Derby. |
| 1871. | Disestablishment of the Irish Church. 1876. Queen Proclaimed Empress of India. 1878. Death of Lord John Russell. 1879. Zulu War. |
| 1880. | Lord Roberts’ Relief of Candahar. 1881. Death of Lord Beaconsfield. 1884. Soudan War. 1885. Death of Gordon—Bible Revised. 1887. Queen’s Jubilee. 1889. Death of Browning. |
| 1892. | Death of Duke of Clarence. 1893. Marriage of Duke of York—Death of Tennyson—Home Rule Bill Rejected. 1894. Birth of Prince Edward. 1896. Jameson’s Raid. 1897. Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. |
| 1830 | 1831 | 1832 | 1833 | 1834 | 1835 | 1836 | 1838 | Daguerre | |
| 1840 | Joule Mechanical Equivalent of Heat. | ||||||||
| 1850 |
Origin of Species | ||||||||
| LISTER | |||||||||
| Edison’s Phonograph | |||||||||
| Maxim Gun | |||||||||
| Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsay |
KEY TO CHART No. II.
SHOWING PROGRESS IN SCIENCE DURING THE QUEEN’S REIGN.
| 1837. | First Telegraph. 1839. Photography—Daguerre. |
| 1841. | Sewing Machine. 1842. Nasmyth’s Steam Hammer. 1843. Ross’ Telescope. 1848. Planet Neptune Discovered. 1849. Joule’s Mechanical Equivalent of Heat—Anæsthetics. |
| 1851. | The Great Exhibition. 1852. Ophthalmoscope. 1854. Armstrong Gun. 1856. Tyndall’s Investigation of Glaciers. 1857. Atlantic Cable from Valentia to Newfoundland. 1858. The Great Eastern. 1859. Darwin, Origin of Species—Brunel’s Death. |
| 1860. | Stellar Spectroscopy—Huggins. 1861. Aeronautic Experiments. 1864. Clifton Suspension Bridge. 1865. Lister, Antiseptic Treatment. 1867. Death of Faraday. 1868. Suez Canal. |
| 1870. | Torpedo. 1871. Huxley, Anatomy of Vertebrates. 1872. Daily Weather Chart first begun. 1876. Challenger at Portsmouth—Bell’s Telephone. 1878. Electric Light on the Embankment. 1879. Phonograph. |
| 1880. | Pasteur’s Cure of Hydrophobia. 1882. Sir W. Siemen’s Steel Process. 1885. Maxim Gun. 1888. Stellar Photography—Sir Isaac Roberts. 1889. Bicycles, The Pneumatic Tyre. |
| 1890. | Forth Bridge. 1892. Tower Bridge. 1894. Argon, by Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsay. 1895. Röntgen Rays. 1896. Lord Kelvin’s Jubilee. |
ECONOMICS FOR GIRLS.
By Margaret Bridges.
Changed attitude of public towards economics.Nothing strikes a student of economics more forcibly than the change which has come over public opinion with regard to this subject during the last few years. Until quite lately, it has been regarded, except by scholars, with suspicion and dislike, accused of setting forth material wealth as the supreme object of human desire, and of ignoring all that is generous and disinterested in human nature. To-day things are very different: indeed it might be said we are all economists now. Some vestige, however, of the old prejudice still lingers in the minds of those who ask: “What is the good of teaching economics to Girls?”
Training given in accuracy.(1) The student of economics is trained to think exactly, to reason closely, and to express herself clearly. No one surely would maintain that such training is less needed by girls than by boys. On the contrary, we are often assured that women are less accurate than men, and are constitutionally illogical. In any science, vagueness of thought and looseness of expression are fatal to success, but the student of economics has a peculiar difficulty to overcome, for he finds no special vocabulary ready for his use. The terms used are for the most part those familiar in everyday language, employed however in a very definite and sometimes peculiar sense. Great care is needed in distinguishing between the ordinary and the economic meaning of such terms as utility, wealth, capital, value, and many others. And the training in scientific precision of language thus given is no small gain in these days of slip-shod English.
Reasoning powers developed.(2) The study of economics tends to stimulate independent thought, and to develop “mental muscle”. We take it for granted that the questions set for home work require an application of the principles given, and not a mere reproduction of notes. The girls must think out the problems for themselves, for, as they truly remark sometimes: “We can’t find the answers in our books”. Political economy certainly does not lend itself to cribbing or cramming—and we are thankful that our text-books supply no ready-made solutions of problems.
History rendered more interesting.(3) We find that the study of the industrial conditions of our country gives an additional interest to history. To read it with economic eyes is to read it afresh, whilst to study it without them is to leave out a very important factor.
Interest shown by pupils in subject.(4) I would urge the great importance of giving our girls, especially those engaged in philanthropic work, some knowledge of those economic principles upon which such work must be based to do real good. We have learnt that this is not easy, and that incalculable mischief may be done by thoughtless benevolence, which is too often cruelty in disguise. Mr. Loch, in speaking of charity organisation, has said: “It is likely that we shall in the future draw our women secretaries from the ranks of those who have taken the trouble to study political economy”. Of course, there must be the training of the heart as well as the head. Our theories, however perfect, will avail us little without the sympathetic insight that love alone can give, but perhaps women specially need to remember that sympathy itself must be guided by reason. Still it may be asked: “Can political economy, dealing as it does, for the most part, with dry abstractions, be made interesting to girls?” My experience is, that in no branch of their studies are the pupils more responsive or more ready to do their part of the work, and indeed to give often more than is actually demanded. Diagrams supplied by pupils.They particularly enjoy the making of original diagrams (very original sometimes!), and occasionally so elaborate as to cost the teacher some anxious study. Much amusement may be got out of such seemingly unpromising material as even the Law of Diminishing Returns or Ricardo’s Theory of Rent, when they are touched upon by an imaginative or artistic girl. To past generations of pupils I owe many apt illustrations and ingenious diagrams, which have been stored up for future use, because they were much better than any I had thought of myself. I think our lessons fail sometimes, because we work so hard ourselves, that we leave our pupils nothing to do! Now in economics we are dealing to a great extent with facts that are already familiar to them, so that we can constantly appeal to their own experience and observation, and the teacher will find that “interrogative lessons on the Socratic model” are particularly suited to this subject. Illustrations drawn from daily life.The daily newspapers will furnish her with plenty of illustrations, and economic laws can be shown to be working themselves out before our eyes. What better comment on the Laws of Demand and Supply could we wish for than that supplied by the recent “boom” and subsequent “slump” in the bicycle trade, or the speculation in seats during the late Jubilee! The illustrations furnished by the girls themselves, from their own experience, are specially valuable. The daughters of Indian officers can testify to the diminished purchasing power of the “vanishing rupee,” whilst Irish girls are eloquent on the system of Land Tenure in their own country; a banker’s daughter will supply us with skilfully forged bank notes and bills of exchange, and on one occasion an Austrian pupil gave us some interesting information on the working of the Metayer system abroad.
Judicious use of text-books.In teaching younger girls—say from fifteen to seventeen—a sparing use should be made of text-books for home reading: paragraphs, exemplifying or enlarging on the lesson given, may be selected, but indiscriminate reading, for the average girl, at that age, is pretty sure to result—as she will candidly tell you—in her getting “hopelessly muddled”. Jevons’ Primer of Political Economy is an admirable introduction to the subject, but avowedly does not cover the whole ground, and I regret to say that Professor Gonner’s very helpful text-book is now out of print. To a great extent indeed the teacher will find it necessary to form her own text-book, that is, to collect her materials from many sources, and adapt them to the use of her pupils. One feels in this, as in other subjects, that one cannot hope to do much more, in the limited time at our disposal, than awaken interest, and show what a wide field there is to be explored. Economics as an examination subject.We are glad to know that the subject is often continued after school days are over. Many of our pupils are preparing for the Senior Oxford Examination, but economic lessons are given in non-examination classes as well.
Some take up the subject again later for the Cambridge Higher Local, and have to make themselves acquainted with Adam Smith, J. S. Mill, and a host of more modern writers, hardly any of whom could have been placed in their hands with advantage at an earlier age, although they will unconsciously have imbibed much of their teaching and will find that their year’s training in elementary economics will have helped them a long way on their road.
Ethical considerations. Enlarged sympathies.In conclusion, we would advocate the study of economics for girls, because we believe that it helps them to live in a larger world, and to take a more intelligent interest in the lives of those around them.
Wealth an element in well-being.The “sordid science” is lifted into a higher plane when we regard it as “a part of the study of man”—and look on wealth as a means to an end, not an end in itself—valuable only so far as it facilitates a “growth towards that higher and purer condition of society, for which alone we care to strive”.
APPENDIX.
I give a few extracts from papers received from old pupils, in answer to the request that they would say, quite simply and unofficially, what benefits they had derived from a course of economic study.
“I think that learning economics has helped me to take a more intelligent interest in everyday matters.”
“I consider I have benefited more by that subject than by any other. There are so many subjects you can take an interest in if you understand economics, that if you do not, would appeal to you in no way whatever.”
“It helps us to understand some of the most important subjects of the day, and gives us a clearer idea of the difficulties of the poor—and shows us the best way of helping them.”
“The human sympathies cannot fail to be awakened, and narrow-minded and selfish views cannot long be entertained. Economics often shows the best methods in the relief of our less fortunate brothers and sisters.”
“Living as I do, in Ireland, the study of this subject has widened my interests greatly. Now I can more fully understand the problem of landlord and tenant.”
“Besides economics being useful, it is also very interesting.”
“It tends to make one speak more exactly and to keep to the point.”
Many more answers to the same effect might be given, but these are perhaps enough to show that the study of economics is neither uninteresting nor unpractical.
ENGLISH LITERATURE.
By Amy Lumby.
The general aim and method of the teacher.“All spirits upon which poetry falls,” says Shelley, “open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight.” To remember these words will help the teacher of literature to bear in mind her double aim—to inspire delight and at the same time to impart wisdom. It is impossible to lay down rules for accomplishing this aim, but we may trace out a few principles by which to guide our course. Literature appeals to the imagination, the faculty of the mind in which emotion and intellect join, and a literature lesson should combine the two elements of feeling and thought. Poetry needs to be enjoyed if it is to be understood, for it is the expression, not of facts which can be demonstrated, but of truth which can only be recognised by those who care for it. So the first aim of the teacher must be to make her class enjoy what they read. Dulness is a bad fault in any teacher; in the teacher of literature it is high treason. No one ought to teach the subject unless she thoroughly enjoys it herself and can communicate her enjoyment. But in trying to inspire delight in her pupils, she must be on her guard against the mental indolence of children who ask only to be amused. In this age of trivial literature and comic papers young people are apt to be impatient of serious reading, to find the Faerie Queene dull and the Pilgrim’s Progress slow, but the teacher must persevere in presenting to them as attractively as may be the very best they are capable of relishing at all, and after a while a better taste will destroy all desire for the worthless rubbish they once found pleasure in.
When once the teacher has roused real enjoyment in her class, her part becomes merely that of the interpreter. She must see to it that her pupils understand the words they read, realise the images that are called up before them, and follow as closely as they can the thoughts that are presented to them. The subject does the rest. For the power of intercourse with great and good thoughts is such that it enlarges and lifts the mind insensibly to better things. If the spirit is but rendered sensitive to poetry, wisdom enters hand in hand with delight. We can give no rules for producing this effect. The power to do it is the special gift required in the teacher of literature. She must possess the faculty of kindling and stirring thought and feeling to respond to the thought and feeling presented to them. Without this she will never make her pupils feel anything of what poetry can teach. In no subject does the mental attitude and the mental furniture of the teacher matter so much.
The earliest stage—the reading lesson.Assuming then a thorough enjoyment and appreciation of the subject, we will consider a little more in detail the method in which it may be treated in one or two typical cases. To begin with the simplest form of literature—the reading lesson—we will suppose that we have to read a poem, say “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” with a class of young children. We shall have in our own minds a clear conception of the qualities which make this one of the finest of modern ballads—the extreme simplicity of the theme, the vigour and breadth of the treatment, the pathos of the little human tragedy set against the great background of Nature in storm and tumult. But we shall not burden the children’s minds with this information; with a very few words of preface to prepare them for what they are to expect, we shall first read the whole poem through to them. The reading is a very important point, for on this depends to a large extent the enjoyment they will have in the poem. A harsh voice or a dull delivery is fatal to pleasure; and monotonous reading fails to convey the point of the story, and to suggest the atmosphere of the poem. Every teacher of literature should be a trained reader.
The poem must next be taken verse by verse; the meaning of difficult or unusual expressions, such as “veering flaw,” “lashed to the helm,” “she stove and sank,” should be explained, while those that are peculiarly apt should be noted with appreciation; for instance, “fairy flax,” “a whooping billow,” the vessel “swept” towards the reef, and many others. At the same time the class must be made to see the pictures suggested, as they rise: the wintry sea, the skipper beside the helm, the child lashed to the mast, the frozen ship rushing headlong to her doom. And lastly, the whole drift and significance of the poem must be kept before their minds by making them realise the situation; the happy child so suddenly overwhelmed, helpless and at first bewildered, then as calamities thicken, turning for help to prayer; hurried on with the doomed vessel through night and storm, and sharing its fate among the exultant breakers. And they should feel the calm of the close and the survival of the human interest beyond the short-lived triumph of the sea. Of course it will not be possible at first to make young children feel all the force of a poem like this, but our aim must be to rouse their imaginations by bringing the picture it presents vividly before them, so that they gradually become more and more sensitive to the stimulus of poetry.
The second stage—the detailed study of one of Shakspere’s plays, or some other work in detail.A course of reading lessons, graduated in difficulty from the simple ballad to such poems as “The Forsaken Merman,” “Tithonus,” and the “Ode to Duty,” will lead up to the next stage, the reading of a play of Shakspere. Here we must cling very closely to our principle of the importance of enjoyment. Very few people who have read their first play at school are happy enough to have enjoyed it. And why is this? Because a mistaken ideal has been before the teacher’s mind, and a mistaken method has been used to attain it. Careful study and exact understanding of the language of Shakspere is almost a liberal education in itself; but it is not always borne in mind that the understanding of the language is but a means to an end, and that notes, whether philological or historical, are of value only when they really throw light on the meaning of the text. It is worse than useless to burden the memories of children with derivations of words from languages with which they are absolutely unacquainted. When the original or root-meaning of a word is really worth knowing, and a knowledge of it tends to a more accurate use of the word, then it should be learnt, but to make children learn Saxon or Welsh or Sanskrit words simply because an English word is akin to them is a waste of time and power, and this explaining of the vaguely understood by the totally unknown is a subversion of all educational methods. The teacher should exercise a wise discretion in the use of notes, and not disgust her class with Shakspere altogether, as is too often done, by forcing upon the children a mass of dry information which overloads their memories without bringing a ray of illumination with it.
Some care will be needed with young children reading their first play to see that they can really follow the story of it. The dramatic form is puzzling to them; the absence of descriptive matter, together with the constant change of scene, is apt to bewilder them, and it may be necessary to read the story to them in Lamb’s Tales from Shakspere, or some such form, before we launch into the play itself. With older pupils this will not be required. With them the kind of preparation we should give would be rather a very simple talk about those moral laws of which Shakspere is the inspired teacher. Children of sixteen years of age, or thereabouts, are easily interested in problems of character, and it is well to explain to them something of what we understand by character and how it may be built up or undermined, rousing their consciousness to realise what their own moral experience has been, so that they look into themselves for confirmation of the facts with which the plays deal. Having done this, however, we must avoid tacking any specific “moral” to a play. Shakspere teaches, like life, by indirection, and we have to consider his plays as pictures of life, not as tracts against particular vices.
In bringing before a class the characters of a play, we should first form a clear conception of them ourselves. Shakspere’s people are so complex that many different views can be taken of them, and no thoughtful estimate is without its value. But it is most important that no statement about a character should be unsupported by evidence from the text. Adherence to this rule will save the teacher from making fancy sketches of her own, and will also make her shun those little text-books which give catalogues of qualities attached to each name, bringing no image whatever before the mind, and destroying all true realisation of the character. We should not be satisfied until we have made the chief characters in the play we are reading so real to our children that they would recognise them if they met them in the street.
When we have clearly realised the characters we shall be able to see the drift and the force of the play, and to show our children how the persons develop and change under the stress of circumstances and according to the absolute decrees of the moral law. To convey this teaching, all steeped in poetry of the richest kind, should be the purpose of a Shakspere lesson; and the notes that are learnt should be subordinate to that end. Our work must not be less thorough than it usually is at present, but it may well be less pedantic.
The reading of a play usually takes up a course of lessons, so that it is impossible in this space to give notes on any particular one, but the same principles which guided us in our treatment of a simple ballad will hold good here, and in the study of such longer poems as may be chosen for the reading of our class. Here as there we must first secure clear understanding of the language, then we must realise the images called up by it, and lastly yield ourselves in intelligent self-surrender to the poet’s thought, not obtruding our own personality but letting him lead us where he will, feeling ourselves, and teaching our class to feel, a deep reverence for what he has to say to us.
The reading of prose may be treated in much the same way, bearing in mind the fact that the emotional element is less marked in prose, the appeal being rather to reason than to feeling. Such prose as has become a part of literature is, however, largely imaginative, and we have to teach the children not only to follow closely a train of reasoning and to criticise it, if need be, but also to appreciate the means by which the writer makes his thought vivid to us, what figures he uses, what light he flashes upon his subject. Some of Macaulay’s Essays, Addison’s Essays, Rasselas, and similar works may well be read at this stage for the sake of the training they give in the right use of language, the first element of literary cultivation.
The most advanced stage—the study of the history of literature.The teaching of a period of the history of literature is a matter on which only broad general principles can be laid down. Children of fourteen to sixteen can hardly be expected to realise clearly differences in style or treatment, or to be able to write criticisms on the poets of the period. With them, it will be best to make them acquainted with the lives of the chief writers, as far as may be necessary, and then to let them read as much as they can of their works. We can teach them to love choice expressions, to recognise beauty of thought, to appreciate true imagination. They may not be able to say why they like these things, but they need not like them the less for that. With older pupils, capable of taking in general ideas as to the drift of thought in any particular age, the period to be studied should be set against its historic background, the first lessons being devoted to discussion of the stage of cultivation reached at the time, and the influences which had tended to produce it. For instance, a course on the Elizabethan period would require introductory lessons on the Renaissance as it affected England, on the Reformation in its bearing on education and freedom of thought, on the discovery of America and the spirit of adventure connected with it, and on the social and political conditions of the times. With clear conceptions on these points to start from, it will be easy to follow the art movement in poetry during the period, the growth of the drama, the development of prose writing in its various branches, and the students will be in possession of information which will help them to understand why Spenser, Shakspere, Bacon and our Authorised Version belong to that age and to no other. Then the chief authors should be read as far as possible at first hand, and the very cheap editions which are published of all our classics make it easy for the class to come provided with their own books. It will not be possible to read many of the longer works through with the class, but selection can be made of the choicest passages, and these can be linked together by a short analysis of the rest.
During this stage the sense of style should be carefully cultivated. Differences in style may be shown by comparing examples of the treatment of similar themes by different writers; for instance, in poetry, “Lycidas,” Gray’s “Elegy,” Adonaïs, and Thyrsis, might be studied with this aim, while in prose, selected essays of Bacon, Cowley, Addison and Lamb might be used in the same way. Taste must also be trained, and it should be made as catholic as possible; each author should be enjoyed for his own special excellence, Dryden for his vigour and common-sense, no less than Sir Thomas Browne for his “moth-like flitting” in intellectual twilight.
A suggestion for reading-courses adapted for girls of different ages is subjoined. It is not, and could not be, in any sense complete, but it may serve to help those who have not yet had much experience to estimate the character and scope of the reading that may be expected from children of various ages. Except in the case of the youngest children, the choice of books has been made so as to include prose and poetry of different epochs, and thus make the intellectual outlook wider than it could be if the reading were restricted to the works of one particular age. A girl who had read through the books mentioned in this course, or any drawn up on similar lines, would have a fair all-round acquaintance with the best kind of literature by the time she was eighteen.
| Age. | ||
|---|---|---|
| 10-12. | 1st year. | Macaulay’s “Lays”; “Marmion”; Kingsley’s “Heroes”; Keary’s “Heroes of Asgard”. |
| 2nd year. | “Evangeline” and “Hiawatha”; “Enoch Arden”; “Ancient Mariner”; Lamb’s “Tales from Shakspere”; “Ivanhoe”. | |
| 12-14. | 1st year. | “Midsummer Night’s Dream”; “Lady of the Lake”; “Deserted Village”; “Gulliver’s Travels”; “Kenilworth”. |
| 2nd year. | “Merchant of Venice”; “Childe Harold”; “Morte d’Arthur”; “Vicar of Wakefield”; Essays from the “Spectator”. | |
| 14-16. | 1st year. | “As You Like It”; “Henry V.”; Gray’s “Elegy”; “The Princess”; “Esmond”; some of the “Essays of Elia”. |
| 2nd year. | “Faerie Queene,” book i.; “Julius Cæsar”; Milton’s “Minor Poems”; Macaulay’s Essays on “Clive” andon “Mme. d’Arblay”; Ruskin’s “Sesame and Lilies”. | |
| 16-18. | 1st year. | “Macbeth”; “Paradise Lost,” books i. and ii.; “The Holy Grail”; “Areopagitica”; Burke’s “Speeches on America”. |
| 2nd year. | “Hamlet”; “Essay on Man”; “Selections from Wordsworth”; Bacon’s “Essays”; “Rasselas”; Carlyle, “The Heroas Poet and the Hero as Man of Letters”. | |
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION.
By Dorothea Beale.
The third division of Part I. has to do with man as subject, a person, self-conscious, related to other persons and to One All-embracing Personality in whom all live and move and have their being. I am to treat the subject from an intellectual point of view—religion, ethics, philosophy.
Sphere of school instruction.No school, and especially no day-school for girls, is responsible for the whole of the religious education. The school is the link between infancy and mature life, between the home and the world, the secular and the spiritual. The school has to systematise instruction, and bring it to bear on the daily tasks, on the social life, on the developing character; to make the secular and religious life one organic whole.
We have to teach our pupils, so that they may know the truth, feel nobly, and hence act rightly. We have to cultivate the power of thought by instruction, to purify the emotions by the teachings of history and poetry including the Bible and the utterances of heroic and saintly lives, to strengthen the character by the discipline of the mind, heart, will.
Relation of dogmatics to ethics.Emotion and action must be the expression of an intelligent belief. “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him.” We ought to offer the noblest gifts we can—a “reasonable service,” a devotion of heart, which rests upon the truest conception we can form; in the highest of all subjects there should be that clearness of apprehension, that strong conviction, which is necessary, if any truth is to become a practical power. We are so made that we must, if we think at all, theorise, and our acts will depend on our theories; no student of history can doubt this. Our sanitarians have found that we may teach the poor about the value of cleanliness and fresh air, but not until they understand the breathing functions do they act upon it.
So in deeper things, it is ideas that govern the world. When the Apostle would teach the most practical truths of family life and social virtue, he began with the great doctrines of the indwelling Divine life, of our brotherhood in Christ, of our citizenship in a spiritual Kingdom, extending far beyond the regions of sense. We must found Christian teaching upon definite beliefs accepted and felt to be true by the highest reason. We must not be satisfied with cultivating the affections only. There must be something more than an “enthusiasm of humanity,” something which can embrace and fulfil it, else it will blaze up like a bonfire, but soon die down, smothered under the ashes of pessimism. None of our faculties can be isolated from the others; each acts and reacts on each, the thought stimulating emotion, emotions quickening thought, and the life acting and reacting upon both. Ethics springs from dogmatics.
What do we mean by religion? Our age has been fertile in definitions. May we not say it is the power by which we enter into conscious personal relation with the One, the Eternal, the Father of all?
Religion as related to science and philosophy.Though it may be truly said that all knowledge of Nature is knowledge of God, we feel that there is a difference between the teaching of science and the teaching of religion—a distinction between the knowledge of a thing, or an act, which we may know objectively, and the knowledge of a person whom we know subjectively. We might know all the movements of a machine, but we never speak of knowing a machine. It is possible to know the works of God, and not know Him. It is personal sympathetic knowledge which is the chief factor in the education of character—the humanities are educative in a different sense from mathematics and natural science. It is this personal relation to God with which religious teaching has to do; its true end is to draw us into sympathy with the All-Good.
Two things I would here insist on which are sometimes overlooked. 1st. The child knows persons before things, and in the earliest exercises of will-power, it is the will of another that rules his will. 2nd. Through obedience to the higher intelligence, and trust in the love of another, the child is enabled to acquire right habits.
Fröbel’s religious teaching is very beautiful, but he brings out less clearly than Rosmini the priority of the personal; if Nature speaks to a child of the All-Father, it is because he knows that all has to come to him through persons, it is only much later that forces can be hypostatised, and power, justice, spoken of apart from a person; though this is, as Lotze has specially insisted, as inconceivable as is quality without substance—attribute without subject.
Piety in its double sense.First in the old sense of the word the child “worships” his parents and those to whom he looks up, he is miserable when he feels the displeasure of those with whom he is in sympathy, and their approbation is the sunshine of his soul; thus is he early led to think of the Father, to whom he and his parents owe all things, to whom they speak in prayer and whose unseen presence they feel.
Hymns then and prayers, which express the feelings of a child to a father, or the love to Jesus, and the desire to be like Him, are suitable; such as give rather the consciousness of a penitent reprobate, are sometimes heard at children’s missions, to the great sorrow of those who know how dangerous it is to play with the emotions and to excite terrors.
Consciousness and self-consciousness.We must consider first that the conscious life is only gradually developed; perceptions must become apperceptions by the controlling power of attention; very gradual is the dawn of consciousness, marked as Rosmini thinks by the first smile. So too there is an epoch at which self-consciousness seems to awaken. Maurice and other philosophers have marked the dawn of it by the use of the personal pronoun.
The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that “this is I”:
But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of “I” and “me,”
And finds “I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch”.
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
As thro’ the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.
Then, as in teaching science or language we first awaken the powers of observation, and lead the child to reflect, so here, in the case of the self-conscious subject, we help the child to interpret the facts of the inner life as well as the outer.
Whilst recognising the danger of forcing the subjective in children, we ought in this, as in other things, to follow the guidance of nature, and surely our own experience, and that of most children, will show how much they are occupied with their own feelings, with the struggles of the higher to subdue the animal nature, and how through contest they are developing the will-power, which is the only safeguard of later life.
It is especially important early to correlate the subjective with the objective in early teaching. Surely much irreligion results in later life from the divorce of the two. As we guide the observing powers in the outward life, so as the power of reflection develops we should do with the inward life: the child is conscious of the pang which comes to all of us, when we act against conscience: that pang which makes our blood run cold, as we feel we have done wrong, is as much a fact of experience, as real, as the sensation of heat, when we touch hot iron. Would people grow up to deny the existence of the spiritual consciousness, if they had been led to question their own experience? A beautiful story is told by Parker and quoted by Armstrong.[22]
[22] Man’s Knowledge of God. Swift.
Conscience.“When a little boy in my fourth year, my father took me to the farm and sent me home alone. I had to pass a pond. A rhodora attracted my attention. I saw a spotted tortoise sunning himself in the shallow water at the root of the flaming shrub. I lifted the stick I had, to strike; though I had never killed any creature, I had seen boys destroy birds, squirrels and the like, and felt a disposition to follow their wicked example. All at once something checked my little arm, and a voice within said clear and loud, ‘It is wrong’. I held my uplifted stick in wonder at the new emotion, the consciousness of an involuntary but inward check upon my action, till the tortoise and rhodora both vanished from my sight. I hastened home to mother and asked what it was that told me it was wrong. Taking me in her arms, she said: ‘Some men call it conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God. If you listen and obey it, it will speak clearer and clearer, but if you turn a deaf ear, it will at last leave you in the dark without a guide: your life depends on your obedience to its voice.’ No event in my life has made so deep and lasting an impression.”
A witness for the spiritual, the universal.The fact that we cannot get rid of the consciousness of wrong, shows that there is a higher Self condemning the self, one other than ourselves; we must not force answers on the child, but we can bring into his consciousness the presence of the holy and righteous God. We may help to make clear and permanent in his consciousness the facts, which he will only later interpret—the conflict of the merely individual, the selfish life, with the larger, the all-embracing life of unselfish love.
We may appeal too to the experience of each child, who suffers punishment rather than disobey conscience. Such victories establish faith, convince us that we are more than creatures of time, that we are sons of God. Every true and self-denying act that a child is able to do is a ground of confidence; “I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one”. Each time that the mere animal desires are subdued by the love of truth and righteousness, we prove that we transcend the things of time and space. These are the eternal things, which eye sees not and thought cannot conceive, and yet for the sake of these unseen and eternal things men live and die, and count all earthly things as nought. Do not the hearts of all children “burn within them” as we expound to them the Scriptures which tell of heroes who have done battle, who laid down their lives for righteousness’ sake, of Him who triumphed from the Cross? We can appeal too to the inward experience of those who are naughty; they do not in their inmost heart wish to be so, but they try and fail; nothing is more touching than the penitence of children, when they find that we have seen the good which is hidden, and not only the evil that comes forth—that we know, not only what is done, but what is resisted. We can, as in the old myths, show that their deliberate choice is not for selfish pleasure; they would if offered the things most delightful to the mere animal, refuse all, if they could have it only on condition of becoming wicked and cruel and deceitful. Hauff’s Cold Heart is a beautiful story on the subject. Thus should we base healthy religious experiences upon facts, and foster habits of attention and obedience to the inward voice.
Right ambitions too should be fostered, the desire to enter into the Divine purposes in thought and word and deed, to be a fellow-worker with God. This will take more definite form in the later idealising period of life; still there will be developed sometimes at an early age earnest desires to become wise and good and to do some special work.
Order of teaching.For objective formal teaching the little ones would begin with the stories of the world’s childhood. The lessons first given in a simple form will be expanded in the higher classes. The child who has learned to trust his father, will learn from Abraham’s sacrifice that we can trust God; the higher classes will see how by the frustration of his purpose Abraham learned the true meaning of sacrifice; the Psalms and Prophets will carry on the subjective teaching, and the words of the old prophets will become a fact of experience; “the word of the Lord came unto me”.
The inner meaning of the sacred myths which had once been told as a mere story will now be felt; the story of the flood as interpreted by St. Peter, and quoted in our baptismal service, the deliverance from the bondage in Egypt, typifying redemption from the slavery of sin, the New Testament teaching of the synoptical gospels, especially the parables, will have supreme educative power.
Written work.It is essential that in this, as in other subjects, written exercises which require thought be set, and corrected and criticised—this is often the only subject in which pupils are not required to formulate their thoughts—hence there exists a vast amount of current religious phraseology to which no definite meaning is assigned; the words may be true in themselves, but not true for the person using them. An American writer tells of one who for years was a regular attendant at church, and often encouraged him by her attentive and responsive expression; when he came to know her later, he found to his surprise that she was as ignorant of the fundamental truths as if she had been brought up in a heathen land.
Sceptical phases.The later period, that of ripening experience, of adolescence, will give the maximum of reflective, as the earliest childhood, the maximum of the sensitive power. As the mysteries of their own being are more and more unfolded, the problems of philosophy and metaphysics have an attraction which should not be disregarded: there is a desire to be alone; the young feel that they must work out the problems for themselves, and they resent the attempt to force on them other people’s solutions. They must question ere they can fully believe; we must never give utterance to the profane idea, that God is angry with those who make mistakes in seeking truth, only show that truth like light is a good, that we may not rest in an indolent agnosticism, for we cannot grow vigorous and strong out of the sunlight; we must encourage them, in this as in all studies, to be ever seeking a fuller knowledge of truth, to live by the truth they have attained, and then they will gain more and more, even through the mistakes. The function of the teacher now is as Socrates described it, to be ready to give help, when needed, to bring to the birth the great thoughts which oppress the soul.
Need of leisure.Later the deep spiritual experiences of St. John and the arguments wherewith St. Paul convinced himself, will come home to the religious experience at least in some degree, and the words in which he describes the vision of God as seen from the spiritual heights, which he had reached in his later epistles. But there must be for the ripening of the character time for quiet, and the incessant activities of to-day, the filling up of every hour, the deprivation of quiet even on Sunday, are much to be regretted, and all educators should see that those who need time for spiritual thought, for working out the great questions which come to every thoughtful person, should not be deprived of it, because some would misuse it. There are two excellent articles in the Pedagogical Review for July, 1891, on the “Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence,” by E. Lancaster, and another, a study in “Moral Education,” by J. Street, both Fellows of Clark University; the second article is especially emphatic on this subject.
Systematic reading.In the highest classes, some systematic reading regarding the history and foundations of philosophy in general and Christian philosophy in particular should not, I think, be omitted: one cannot do better than begin with Plato; taking the Apology, the Crito and parts of the Phædo, or the two volumes of selections by Professor Jowett, or some less expensive edition. The Memorabilia of Xenophon is obtainable for 3d. Selections might be made from Aristotle’s Ethics, and some good history of philosophy be made accessible, e.g., Schwegler’s, edited by Dr. Hutchinson Stirling, which is not too long; and some such inspiring book as Fichte’s Vocation of the Scholar may be recommended; other books I might mention, e.g., Henry Jones on Browning; Professor Frazer’s selection from Berkeley; Mackenzie’s Social Philosophy and the series of small hand-books edited by Professor Knight. There might be meetings for discussion and reading under the presidency of one versed in such matters; this would give definiteness to thought, and would at least lead to the kind of wisdom which made the oracle pronounce Socrates the wisest of men; such meetings would be specially useful for the staff. Some effort should be made to establish the primary convictions which alone make life worth living, enable one to possess one’s soul in patience, live in the faith that each is working out the will of the All-Wise and All-Good—if willingly, then with the fullest joy and reward.
Higher teaching.The subject is not ignored at the University Colleges of the States, and there is much of deep interest in the article to which I have referred, viz., “Psychology of Adolescence”. In an article by Caswell Ellis, the special training of teachers of religion is insisted on, and the establishment of professorships. “A department of pedagogy cannot be called complete that does not deal with this important part of its field. Religious training is as much a problem for the pedagogue, as is physical or mental training. Surely we cannot entirely separate them. We have already at our command in the Universities, many helps in the study of the Bible, of theology, of philosophy, of psychology, etc.; why cannot there be found some man of broad culture, wide sympathies, reverent spirit, to focalise these in a chair of religious pedagogy, or whatever it may be called? it would give the opportunity while in college to look at the larger phases of the problem of religious training. No subject is more vital, and our best men need not leave college ignorant of the problem or the possibility of its solution—and find in the decline of life that (as editors, preachers, etc.) they have been spending their energies on reformation, while the great work of formation was never considered.”
Foundations of faith.The means of giving a thorough and systematic teaching regarding the strong foundations of faith, is one that should be considered by all educators. It is true that the emotions and affections are, as in the case of all personal relations, the appropriate means of intercommunion; but the religious life, if it is not to become weak and sentimental, needs the bracing power of intellectual study, and the Scriptures, especially the writings of St. John and St. Paul, afford such exercise.
I may perhaps summarise the lines on which the grounds of a rational faith seem to be established, and which should surely be formulated, as we formulate the principles on which we base our faith in matters of science. They may be arranged under two heads—objective and subjective:—
1. Sense compels us to recognise the existence of a universe, to which we can set no bounds of space or time. We find everywhere at work forces adapted to produce results immeasurably greater, yet similar in character, to those produced by our own exercise of thought and will; we are unable to conceive of either except as ultimately proceeding from a personal mind and will.
Since our mind interprets the phenomena of sense, which is the language of Nature; since the intelligent mind is related to an intelligible universe, the finite mind must be related to the infinite, man must be the child of God.
The facts of history show us man in all ages renouncing all that the animal craves for, for the sake of the ideal, the transcendent.
2. Man is self-conscious, he can become an object to himself; that he can do this proves him to have a dual nature. The higher sits in judgment on the lower, or animal nature (identified with the individual), seeks to bring it into obedience to the universal. Since we can identify conscience with the universal mind and will, we infer that we are on the one side in communion with God, as on the other with the universe.
Man has the power of sympathy. As we cannot conceive of light without postulating an all-comprehending æther, through which all things are related, so the fact that we are affected, actually feel physically and mentally with others, is inconceivable without postulating one all-embracing Personality.
The faith that good must ultimately triumph is an axiom of the moral life; we find it impossible to believe the reverse.
These are some of the broad bases on which rest the Christian dogmas of the relation of man to God the All-Father, which tell of a perfect Son, and of the power given to all to rise through grace into the spiritual life.
I have dwelt on the subject at some length, because it seems to me that the intellectual relation to God has been too much ignored; we should love with the mind as well as with the heart; with the developing of the physical and psychical life, the soul craves to root itself more firmly on the consciousness of the universal, it desires to be at one with the All-Wise and the All-Good Father of spirits to work out the purpose of its own existence. It seeks to be in harmony with all who are living by the highest ideal; hence the impulse to work in associations, specially in the spiritual life, for life must overflow into action! It seeks evermore to be at one in its being, and to bring the individual self into harmony with the all-embracing Spirit in whom we are one.
I may recommend to teachers the recently published volume on Religious Teaching in Schools, by Dr. Bell of Marlborough.