The herald., 1897-09-05

force accuracy first and disgust and
WEAKNESS do their deadly work.
Watch a child learn a strange Ian
guage by ear and you see that interest
is at the bottom Of every movement Of
the mind. Every nerve is bent on under
standing what is said, by guessing, by
the gestures, by the subject matter, by
the context. You may see the same in
an adult learning one without any book
A gentleman and his valet travel in a
foreign country. The valet learns the
language fairly well for conversation in
two or three years and often much less,
while his far more intelligent master,
with a mind well-trained perhaps to
study, learns none of it beyond few
of the most common words and phrases,
and often not even that much. 1t is
simply because the more ignorant OF the
two is more like child-curious to know
the meaning of every bit of idle title
tattle that strikes his ear, while the
other cares not cent what it means.
Put the gentleman in business there and
he will learn it far faster than the other,
and with a far wider range, because he
then becomes interested.
Here is the trouble with the college
| boy. 1t is made not only uninteresting
to him, but positively distasteful by this
| triple hedge of grammatical briers in
which he is to scratch out the eyes oi
interest in order to make him perfect
and discipline his mind. In any way
| he should learn it he would get disci-
pline enough. With strong interest. he
is quite sure to learn it. Kill that and
you kill any proficiency that will evel
be source of pleasure or profit. This
s the trouble with the everlasting pars'
ing-not that it is. not beneficial if ont
would but feel interested in it, but be-
cause to the great majority it is an in
sufferable bore. If you learn Language
in the concrete, the abstract is Of little
use beyond discipline, and if you do no
learn it in the concrete the abstract will
never teach it in a way to be of use.
| Languages present different Difficult
ties German is about the hardest to at
| tack, but the easiest to approach perfec
ton in, because SO much Of 1t is com
pounded or derived from its own simple
words and the use of the moods an(
| lenses is not hard. French is the mos
easy to make an inroad on, but far from
easy to finish on. Spanish is quite eas!
at the start, but the proper use of thu
moods and lenses combined makes i
very hard to finish off. Latin and Greel
are no harder than the others. Home
presents much the same difficulties o
dialect that Scotch does to one uset
only to English, but otherwise is quit
easy. Aeschylus is hard because it i
Aesychlus and not because it is Greek
just as Browning is hard because it l
Browning and not because it Is English
Sophocles is hard mainly because to-
long winded, and therefore too much o
a bore. No one will claim that the Gree
Testament is hard. Virgil is not as har
as Faust, Ovid not as hard as Miltor
while Livy is more easy than Do
Quixote, and the finest speeches @
Cicero TO harder than sound busines
editorial in the Mexican Financier. B
this I mean that perfect stranger t
both languages, learning them in tn
same way, would find little difference.
When you come to sum up general re
suits you find that the principal Is in a
| about the same. An instant sight famil
: iarity with so many thousand words an
| phrases unravels nearly all the reSt tina
. Is generally worth unraveling at all. Fol
, unless you are to write language or b