Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/490

474 has occasion to compare, to judge knowingly; he chooses neither the proper word nor the most suitable form, and cannot aim at clearness, force, or elegance of style. The longer he perseveres in this thankless work, the less chance has he of ever writing the foreign language in its idiomatic purity. Latin compositions of this kind have been kept up to the present time, because they were not controlled by critics of the time of Augustus.

Translation into the national language presents numerous difficulties to those who best understand it. Lamartine called a translation the most difficult of all books to make; and we set young children at this work in an idiom which is nearly unknown to them. As well force them to walk with the head in a sack. It is a real tyranny.

The hours passed out of school by the unhappy victims of routine, in writing their themes and versions, leave little leisure for reading; while, on the other hand, the correction of tasks consumes time in class which would be better employed in studying the great writers of Athens and Rome. With an excess of zeal, the master often corrects the tasks of his pupils at home, consuming time which might better be given to his own improvement.

In the intervals of the lessons, the pupils of the lyceums read what the professor can hear them translate in class—an insufficient amount of practice for acquiring the art of reading in the school-period. They translate scarcely thirty lines a day in class, two or three times a week, making a small volume in a year, when the complete acquisition of this art would require the reading of more than fifty volumes. The remedy for this evil would be an initiative, on the part of the pupils, which would lead them to read outside of the lessons of the master; but, unhappily, this initiative is not encouraged. Grammar, themes, memorized lessons, and translations with the dictionary, are too discouraging, and do not dispose to voluntary effort.

One of the worst evils of the university system is, that not a step can be taken without a master. In place of exercising the pupils in the imitation of good models, which would in part dispense with his aid, they are pushed in a false direction, where they seek their way painfully, and cannot advance without help; while the professor discourages them by corrections which are renewed without ceasing.

Self-guidance is the first condition of a reasonable, improvable being. Children should learn at school how to study alone—to discover for themselves what they wish to know. In giving them no initiation, in denying them their free-will, we prepare them to resign themselves to the passive part imposed upon the nation by governments that take the initiative in all measures of social interest. We thus form subjects for a tyrant, not citizens of a republic.

—In the beginning, translation is only a means, yet, strange to say, it is the means only that is regarded in the lyceum, without ever thinking of the end to which it conduces. And,