Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1848-11-18
NATIONAL INTELLiGENCER.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

Gramdlca Iaglesa reducida vsinte q dos hccione
por d. Jose UrcuHu Edicion prnera Americana dc Ia
Sep.ima dc Paris. Aumentada Y rectsta por FAsErrE
RoBIssos. Filadelia. Thomas Cowperthwat a. Comp'a
lS4s." Chat is, English Grammar reduced to twenty
two lessons by Den Joseph Urcpa First American, from
she ssyon Paris edition Enassd and revised by FArErrE
Ron rssoN. Philadelphia Thomas, Cowperthwa & Co.
ls4s."9 limo. PIP. 262.
This, it will be at once perceived, is grammar
for the learning of English by Spaniards; and we
need hardly, therefore, remark that ii is one of the
first, and, literary only, slightest Inconvenience
of our newly-acquired dominion over wide regions
that speak different tongue. We shall have to
send the "schoolmaster abroad" our language be-
fore our laws, and pluck up dialect before we can
plant our institutions, Now will come that old and
hateful process for the conquered of seeing the civil
Offices of life the forms OF business aid of law, forced
out of their native speech, and themselves rendered
foreigners upon their own soil. Their ignorance
of our legislation will be deepened and prolonged
by their ignorance Of its vehicle; and both made
more obstinate by the patriotic fidelity with which
every subjugated race clings to its original idiom.
We are, in short, to encounter such untameable ma
tional aversion as has for five hundred years kept
alive the Irish language and their feelings as ma
ton, in spite of all English sway and colonization
and confscaton: we have perhaps to see the van
pushed after centuries, re-assert like the Magyars,
their traditions and their tongue or, like the Greeks,
cherish every vestge of heroism and letters for a
time forgotten, until the national spirit shall awake
once more and fling off our letters. Such things as
have been may well be again, and for us as much as
for English or Ausrians or Turks, when we come
like them to enslave nations. And such things will
be particularly apt to happen, unless we take WIS
dom enough to govern good deal better abroad
than we have, for some twenty years, been doing
at home. Just now, however, our subject should
be the government of words, not OF men so let us
return from this depression, natural as it was.
To recommend in English that which is to teach
people English looks like most decided solecism.
The book, however, is before US, TO be spoken of;
and how else are we TO talk of ii than in our own
dialect Ii is, however, the work OF a skiliul
Spanard, who, having encountered and vanquished
the enormous difficulties Of the most anomalous and
cultivated languages, has drawn from his own ex-
perence this excellent method for helping his coun
trymen over the obliquities of English. lis merit
for this purpose is rated very high. 1t seems to
TO be very judicious, and especially in taking the
Just mean betwixt a system too lean and one too
corpulent. Grammars for beginners seldom escape
one Of these defects, unless to fall into the opposite
one.
We receive The book through our worthy neigh
Dor, Mr.. William NJ. Morrison and with it fellow
volume, from the hands Of the same editor, which
does as to English folk what the other does as TO
Spanish. lis title is as follows:
"a Grammar of the Spanish Language, based the
system of D. Jose Urcua also, with reference to the publ
cations Of the Academy Of SPAIN the works OF Hernandez and
jesse, and the compendium Of Don Agus;in Munoz Alvarez
Of the College Of Seville According 10 the seventh Paris
edition Of Urcullus works. By FArETTE RonISsoN. PHI
adephia Thomas, Cowperhwat & Co. ls4s." l2mo.
PIP. ESQ.
This, we need scarcely say, is but reversal Of
Urculla's systematic application 10 Spanish OF the
same method, mufdtis n,utandis, which he has so
successfully adopted for English. That method
differs from nearly all others in this: that its main
features are practical and comparative that is TO
say, he depends rather on imparting the language
by showing what is the Spanish locution for each
English one, than by teaching the abstract laws Of
the tongue. The rules, in short, are conveyed by
comparative examples, instead of precepts, which
often load the memory without securing their APP
pcation. Not, of course, that this is method
like Master Dufef's so-called " natural one," 80
which rejects all order and rule. Certain things in
all languages are reducible TO method almost in
variable and to rules almost without exception.
Such parts of tongue-its ordinary mechanism
should therefore always be taught at once by regu-
lar system the declcnsion Of nouns, the conjuga-
ton OF verbs should be learned from the jump, by
rigid method But much else, in all tongues
slough not equally in a---is subject to laws so
lille certain OF so many exceptions, thatit is shorter
and easier, at first to employ only practice and COM
parison Afterwards, when the difficulties Of con-
slant occurrence have been solved by means Of
these the pupil must study out the nieeties ospeech
in reading sbundanly tile hes; authors and consult
ing minutcr grammars. But to study snch from
The first makes the work of learning too slow and
repulsive.
We remark, in the twenty or thirty earlier pages
of the book which we have examined, frequent ty-
biographical errors. There are also some inaccu-
racies. We recommend both TO the ingenious ar
thor's attention.
"THr AsEaeAS GALLERY OF AnT from the toOrkS offhe
best Artists Nth poeiicai and prose Illustrations, By dis
iineushed American authors. Edited By J. SARraIS.
PHILADELPHIA Lindsay 4 8iakision." ls4s. 40. pp
Ill, nth II illustrations.
A picturesque volume this, which does great Gre
dit to original art among us, and demonstrates bet
ter than almost any thing else that we have seen
lis rapid advance. The name Of SARTAIN as lis
editor is scarcely less pledge for the excellence Of
the subjects chosen from amongst American works
Of the pencil than is his craving an assurance
for their fine execution as copies.
1t seems from the preface that Mr.. Sartain has
long entertained purpose Of doing for Indigenous
Why "natural !" How is 81 Mature Displayed" in
this method Of teachng languages Is il more natural 10
teach written tongte wi hou the aid Of Elements than u
would be to teach Botany, Mathematics or any other cence
Why not begin Astronomy with Lapaces Meeahlque To-
Euclid hy tail instead OF