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718 principles to classical Greek and Latin. Supposing there were no good authors in our tongue, the amendment of the bad would be as valuable an exercise as the recognition of the good. However, we should be glad to think with Macaulay: "It may safely be said that the literature now extant in the English language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world put together."

5. It may be said that, if composition were managed according to rule, there would be no scope for variety. That depends upon the nature of the body of rules. If the rule is absurdly narrow, obedience to it will result in a dead monotony. For example, on the unity of the sentence, Irving lays down that "different thoughts ought to be separated in the expression by being placed in different periods"—a rule that would reduce all composition to the movement of a jig. On the contrary, Prof. Bain recognizes that the matter of a sentence is determined by the rest of the composition, and gives the limitations of the absolute rule of unity. A principle of this kind, so far from inducing monotony, tends to assist variety: the writer is compelled to think of the matter of his sentences, and, in all probability, will thereby be prevented from the natural tendency to run them all together on the same model. Even if the rule were absolute, it would still be valuable, provided its reasons were assigned. The dull pupil would be dull all the same: the eager pupil, if he found the restrictions irksome, would either overthrow the reasons, or cast about for all variety within the letter of the law. Cut a root that intrudes into your garden, and the stump sends out twenty suckers for the one. You produce the same effect when you stop short an inquiring boy with a rule: the dull boy, a dead root, is little affected for good or for evil, but the clever boy is put upon his mettle, and becomes twice as active as before.

6. It may be said that writing by rule, like walking on stilts, must be a very cramped and constrained movement. The awkwardness in both cases is removed by practice.

7. It might be said that we should have nobody to teach the new subject. Such an evil would rapidly disappear. Many teachers are already competent, and all could without difficulty keep ahead of their first batch of pupils.

8. It will be said that no material for school-exercises has been accumulated, and that taking up an author at random would be unprofitable. It is not so; a good deal of such material has been accumulated. The reason why so little, comparatively, has been done, is plain enough. Our school-rooms have been occupied by a foreign invader, and the makers of school-books have been retained in alien service. For generations our boys have been condemned to anomalies in Greek and Latin gender, declension, and conjugation, Greek accents, Latin quantities, stiff constructions in Virgil, obscure allusions in Juvenal, various readings in Æschylus, years of study at things of no human use