Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/775

Rh, and at the same time something oratorical is read, which has been retranslated into Latin. Saturday evenings and Sundays the shorter letters of Paul are studied.

"In the fourth class the scholar hears as much as possible, interprets, memorizes, and recites, but nothing that goes beyond his power. Select letters and compositions from Horace are read, then everything learned in the preceding classes is repeated. Saturday evenings and Sundays the pupil himself gives simple paraphrased explanations of Paul's letters. In the third class they retain what has been learned and enlarge upon it. The ornaments of rhetoricians, such as tropes and figures, are explained and illustrated. In Greek the better orations of Demosthenes are read, then the first book of the Iliad, followed by exercises in style. Some parts of the Greek orations are translated into Latin, or the Latin into Greek. The odes of Pindar and Horace are set to ether metre; many poems are made and many letters written. The comedies of Plautus and Terence are brought out, and the boys compete with the higher classes. In the second class the boys are obliged to interpret Latin and Greek orators literally, so that the teacher simply calls attention to the relation of the oratorical and political usage, and requires the pupils to enter in their day-books all remarkable portions of the author. The same thing is done with the Latin writers, and these are compared with the Greek. Dialectic, the instrument of the truth, is now put into the pupil's hands; at first only the critical part, later the figurative, then rhetoric, which must always be at the side of the scholar. The Olynthiac and Philippic orations of Demosthenes are read in their bearing upon rhetoric, and the pupils are allowed to make their own selections. There are daily style exercises, and with them some short declamations which are written down by the scholars and then learned verbatim. On Sunday the Epistle to the Romans is read and learned, and repeated verbatim by all. The first class continues rhetoric and dialectic. The citation of dialectic and rhetorical rules must be proved out of Demosthenes and Cicero. Homer and Virgil are read further, and Thucydides is translated into writing; no week passes without providing some plays. The Epistles of Paul are explained by the pupils, and selected portions are enlarged upon according to rhetorical rules."

These schools of Sturm contained no history, no geography, no natural history, no physics, no elementary instruction in the German language. Arithmetic was taught only in the second class; some few sentences from the first book of Euclid and the elements of astronomy were learned in the first class. The motto was Ciceronian Latin. The problem was to turn a boy into an automatic Latin machine, capable of clicking out Ciceronian sentences. Education approximated ideal perfection in proportion as it reproduced the Latin speech. Sturm, doing education great service, did it also serious harm. Ciceronian Latin—