lar fact that tramps are, as a rule, very rarely professional thieves. Since it is impossible to suppose that this is the result of any adherence on their part to the requirements of the Eighth Commandment, it is to be inferred that the dread of a compulsory residence in the stone jug is the sole cause of their unwilling honesty. Occasionally, however, an unexpected opportunity occurs of possessing themselves of their neighbors' goods without apparent risk, and then they do not hesitate to avail themselves of it, and to defend the proceeding in the most logical manner. An extremely sharpwitted old lady tramp, who had been captured by a specially energetic constable as she emerged from the open window of an unguarded house laden with spoil, justified her action while conversing with the writer in the most easy and cheerful manner imaginable. 'Why, of course, when I saw the window open and the farmer and his folk all out in the hayfield, I thought, hurrah, here's a jolly chance for me, so I nipped in and got hold of all I could. find as quick as you like. Why should I not? They had everything and I had nothing; it was all right and fair that I should get what I could, and it was real mean to send me to jail for it. Why are they to have all and me nothing?"

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Amid much that is clearly regrettable in the ethics of the tramp, it must be admitted that a really admirable esprit de corps exists among them; they will shield and defend one another by

every device in their power, and that not on any ground of personal friendship, for they will often take up the quarrel of perfect strangers to their own serious disadvantage, but simply from a mysterious sense of fraternity with all who are of the same type as themselves, dwellers on the road, and a race unique alike in their habits and their tastes.

Thus, after the fashion which we have faintly shadowed forth, the vast army of tramps in this enlightened country journey from birth to death, and vanish into the unknown, to be succeeded by generation after generation of precisely the same stamp.

The question remains-it seems to us for somewhat serious consideration -as to whether the nation at large is to continue doing absolutely nothing to rescue this huge body of wanderers from their eminently unsatisfactory existence. It must be admitted in all honesty that no one who understands the subject in any efficient degree, can hope that measures even of the wisest description could prove available with adult members of this nomad race; but surely it might be possible to organize some legislative scheme for the rescue of the children-at a sufficiently early age to prevent their having acquired any individual taste for the life to which they are destined-so that at least the next century might see our land relieved from a standing evil, which is strangely inconsistent with our boasted civilization and culture.Cornhill Magazine.

"THE present defect of English education, from the top of the scale to the bottom, is our neglect of the cultivation of the modern languages of the nations of the world."

These words from one of Sir William Harcourt's latest speeches should be taken to heart by all who are interested in the education and progress

of our people. Why is it that our progressive country, which in most things leads the vanguard of civilization, should be so behindhand in speaking and understanding the languages of other nations? In the first place, as has been justly pointed out, the English language is spoken all over the world, and we think we can get on

without troubling to learn other languages. In the second place, the greatness of our country makes us selfsufficient. We mind but little what the foreigner says; we treat his criticisms with contempt. We are lacking in sympathy for other nations; we do not try to understand them, and we are the losers by it. Other languages often express shades of thought and feeling which are unrepresented in our own because they hold but little place in our lives, and yet which might with advantage be cultivated. We know, for instance, what comfort is, but do we understand the German gemüthlichkeit, which is independent of the luxuries of life? We are not wanting in thoroughness, but is there much of that higher element of Innigkeit in the rush of our existences? The presence or absence of a word in a language sometimes marks a characteristic national difference. The words "home," heim, have no exact equivalent among the nations who lead chiefly an outdoor life. Home sickness and heimweh are rendered in French by le mal du pays, showing that the native village or locality supersedes the more restricted. idea of the house. On the other hand, there is a sentimental ring about the German Vaterland and the French Patrie which is wanting in the English word "country." And as each nation, as Mr. Chamberlain once said, has given the feeling of patriotism a distinctive national character, the difference may perhaps indicate that British patriotism, intense though it be, is more transcendental and less connected with an exclusive attachment to the native soil. It is a fact that the Englishman, who would die for his country, very frequently prefers living out of it. When not bound by duty he makes his home wherever he finds existence easiest, and he is but little tormented with that nostalgia that makes the Swiss long for his mountains and the Breton for his native village.

There is no language from which expressions might not be quoted that are only approximately translatable, hence the study of each language opens

up a fresh horizon, and the "humani nihil a me alienum puto" is best realized by the man who knows many tongues.

The chief cause of our ignorance is the method which has been hitherto generally employed for teaching modern languages. They have been taught far too much as if they were dead languages. The teachers have been mostly people who had only a theoretical knowledge of the language, who were unable to speak it, and whose object was that their pupils should satisfy the requirements of the examinations, which are but little in touch with the needs of practical life.

A reaction has now set in, and there is a movement to teach even classical languages in a more vivid and less conventional way. But it takes a long time to overcome prejudices, to leave the beaten track and start on a new line, to remodel the whole teaching of a particular subject; and yet the way to do it is so simple and obvious that the wonder is it has not been tried before.

The general complaint is that the school curricula are crowded with subjects, all of which are more or less important; and the problem is how to give them all their due place and to attain the best results at the least expenditure of time and of strain upon teacher and pupil. It is desirable that the instruction should be so divided over the school years as to meet the powers of learning of a child-that is to say, that particular subjects should be taught at a period in a child's life when its capacities are most ready to assimilate them. This is really the secret of all education, and too much. stress cannot be laid on it. At an age when children cannot yet grapple with the difficulties of Latin grammar or grasp the problems of mathematics or physical science, they are not only perfectly fit to learn to speak a modern language, but the learning of it comes easiest. "We observe,' says Dr. Jowett, the late Master of Balliol, "that while the powers of the mind usually strengthen as years advance, at least until the end of middle life, the

faculty of learning a new language decays almost in an inverse ratio. The short period of six months is said to be enough to perfect a clever child in a new language; and a child very rarely confuses different languages: if the weight becomes too great for his memory one language drives out the other. They are learned as a whole and forgotten as a whole. Modern languages, then, should be learned in childhood, and they should be learned from native teachers."

The experience of foreign countries, such as Holland and Hungary, where the oral as well as grammatical knowledge of three or four modern languages is considered essential to a good education, illustrates the theory. The children there are taught to speak them from infancy by natives from the different countries. They learn them without effort while at play. The Swiss, French, or English nursery governess forms part of almost every wellto-do household, and foreign languages are rightly made the starting-point of education. In England the number of parents who give their children these advantages are comparatively few, because they do not see how important would be the results for their children in after years. Until we can rouse · their interest in the matter our schools must do the best they can to supply the deficiency. We must try and convince the heads of schools of the urgent need there is to begin to teach a foreign language in the preparatory departments. There is nothing so difficult as to get people out of a certain groove of ideas. It is astonishing, but it is a fact, that there still lingers among a certain number of teachers an actual prejudice against beginning education with a foreign language. If teachers would only realize that if children were accustomed to hear idiomatic French spoken from the Kindergarten upward it would facilitate the whole school course afterward, that it would put an end to, or at any rate minimize the language grinding for examinations, there is no doubt that every one of them would fall in with our views. But the system is not believed in be

cause it has never been seriously tried. It is true that in a certain number of schools French is taught in the Kindergarten, but the lessons are too short and far between, and the children only learn a certain number of words. To derive any real benefit from the teaching the children should be taught from the first orally every day, and it would. be best if French could be for a great part of the time the medium of Kindergarten teaching. But here we are met with a difficulty. From inquiries I have made I find that the Froebel method is not followed in France; that it is not recognized by the French State; that there are no normal schools where future Kindergarten teachers can be trained, but that some imperfect Kindergarten teaching goes on in private schools. It seems to me, however, that intelligent French teachers could easily master the method, especially if they were acquainted with the Gouin method, which proceeds on the same lines, namely, by gradual development. Games and nursery rhymes would soon make the foreign language popular among children, and we know how keen children are about anything they take a fancy to. In fact, a headmistress gave me an instance of the pleasure children take in learning a new language. A mother had told her that her little girl was teaching the baby French phrases, and she had heard of a father and mother being much amused by being taught French early in the morning by a Kindergarten child. The reason I lay stress on French is that, though we may not all agree with the dictum of the poet Bornier, "Chacun a deux pays, le sien et puis la France," there is yet a universal consensus of opinion that French should be the first foreign language taught, and it certainly has on every ground the best claim.

The teaching of oral French in the Kindergarten will not only prove an inestimable advantage to our girls, but it may help our boys, whose education in modern languages has been hitherto so lamentably deficient. At a meeting. of the Modern Language Association some time ago, Sir John Lubbock

pointed out that, in a country like England, which has commercial relations all over the world, the knowledge of foreign languages is of the greatest use to young men in business, and how they were often hampered without it. Sir William Harcourt showed, in the speech already quoted, that we suffer from the competition of other nations, not because our goods are not the best that can be made, but because we have not a sufficient number of agents who are familiar with the languages of the different countries to send out in order to push the trade as Germany and other nations do.

Not long ago a military man, who spoke with the experience of "an old soldier who has taken special interest in the education and training of our young officers," strongly urged, in the Times, the necessity of the study of modern languages, the knowledge of which, he said, was all important for the military profession; and it is superfluous to add that, for a diplomatic and political career, such knowledge is simply indispensable.

Therefore, if in the Kindergarten boys were given a first start, at least in French, it would be conferring a benefit on them also. In schools where there is no Kindergarten, as much time as possible should be given to French in the preparatory department of the first form an hour at least every day -and the teaching should be given exclusively in French and, if possible, by natives. I have heard it remarked that foreign languages should be taught at first chiefly by English teachers, while at a later stage natives from the country might be useful. I venture wholly to dissent from this, and should like to reverse it. To quote Jowett once more, "The true and living voice of a language, the expression, the intonation, the manner, the inspiration of it, can only be communicated by a teacher to whom it is native and inherited." All the early teaching of French and German should therefore be given, wherever it is possible, by natives. Having once acquired a good pronunciation, children are likely to

retain it. They would learn it with difficulty at a later stage, if they had been taught with a British accent in the beginning. Far be it from me to disparage the teaching of those English masters or mistresses who have studied French in France, and who have a thorough command of the language, but, as a general rule, we will all admit that, if we aim at a pure accent, we must acquire it first hand. I cannot illustrate better what I mean than by quoting what a French woman said to me once, when she was giving elocution lessons here: "I have been fifteen times in England, and yet you will be surprised to hear that I do not know English-but I have not learnt it in order not to lose my French." That shows what delicate tests French people themselves bring to bear on their knowledge of their mother tongue. This does not apply with equal severity to German, a somewhat rougher language, which can better resist the wear and tear of foreign contact. That is partly the reason why it is so important to begin French first. The standard of style too is higher in France than in Germany: the essential characteristic of a good French style being its conciseness and lucidity, while long involved sentences are unfortunately somewhat characteristic of German erudition. Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff tells us in his Diary that "Mommsen called Renan a true savant, in spite of his beautiful style."

The introduction of the Gouin method has done excellent service by drawing attention to the fact that modern languages can only be learned well by oral practice. The so-called dead, or classical, languages are taught for literary and archæological purposes, but the essence of living language teaching is to enable pupils to express themselves fluently in them, both in speaking and writing, and the Gouin system aims at this. It is based on the natural process by which every infant begins to speak-that is, by learning the sounds through the ear before it knows how to read and write -and it makes the verb the pivot of the teaching. The child is taught to

describe in accurate words and in their

natural sequence the actions and events of every-day life that are within its sphere of comprehension. Besides giving him a correct vocabulary, instead of the slipshod one that children and even grown-up people too often use, it puts order into his thoughts by making him learn a series of connected sentences, instead of the desultory, unconnected and unmeaning ones of the old exercises. It has, however, its drawbacks: one being that, if taught pure and simple throughout the school course, it would not satisfy the requirements of the examinations. It is therefore best adapted to teaching the lower forms. Another objection is that it is often a strain on the teachers, and I believe that in some schools it was given up on that account. The

method seems a first-rate tool in the hands of those who have a perfect mastery over it, and who handle it freely, but those to whom it does not appeal and who teach it mechanically, without putting any life of their own in it, will fail to obtain satisfactory results. The children will learn a certain number of phrases like parrots without acquiring any power of expression. It requires therefore intelligent teachers, who have a certain amount of originality and imagination, and who do not consider themselves tied to the series lessons of Mr. Gouin, but are capable of framing new ones to suit the circumstances, so that the method should retain its freshness and vitality, and that the interest of the pupils should not flag.

It has been effectually combined with drawing and brushwork, which gives it an additional interest, and it may be adapted to the elementary teaching of almost any subject, but this implies that the teacher should have a great deal of general and accurate knowledge.

By suiting the action to the word, children learn to associate the words with the objects and ideas and not with English wordsthe only way by which they will be taught to think in the new language. Therefore translations and exercises

are condemned by the new method for beginners at all ages, and a complete emancipation from the mother tongue is required. At a later stage translating from one language into another will be learnt with all the more ease.

A head master at the Hague, who has introduced the system with excellent results, both for French and German, into his school, said to me when I visited it last year: "It does not matter so much by what method you teach, as long as you speak the language with the pupils." That is the crucial point. To speak the language that is taught," says Professor Bierbaum, "is as essential a part of the school teaching as practising the piano is of the music lesson, or doing gymnastics of the drilling lesson."

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I have heard it stated by teachers that though French lessons are begun orally in the lower forms, it is necessary on account of the examinations to resort later on to the old methods of using English as the medium of teaching, but "that the interest when a language is learned according to the new methods is doubled, and that there is undoubtedly a greater facility in grappling with the difficulties of composition when first attempted through the previous conversational practice.' My comment on this would be, in the first place, that if the pupils were made thoroughly familiar with the language from the Kindergarten or the preparatory department upward-that is, if most of the time at an early stage were given to oral language teaching -it would not be necessary to resort to English afterward. In the second place, the old methods have proved wanting.

All the trouble taken for the examinations frequently fails for want of that very oral practice which is set aside. While the pupils can answer difficult questions in French grammar, they often do not know how to apply the rules, and have trouble to turn easy sentences into French. No doubt the fault lies partly with the examinations. One of the writers in the French paper Le Temps expressed his astonishment some time ago at the