Page:The future of Africa.djvu/44

38 lish language is the groat lingual inheritance God has given us for the future; let us take heed to use all proper endeavors to preserve it here in purity, simplicity and correctness. We have peculiar need to make this effort, both on account of our circumstances and our deficiencies: for the integrity of any and all languages is assailed by the newness of scenes in which an emigrant population is thrown; by the crudity of the native tongue, with which it is placed in juxtaposition; and by the absence of that corrective which is afforded, in all old countries, by the literary classes and the schools. Here, in our position, besides the above, we have the added dangers to the purity of our English, in the great defect of our own education; in a most trying isolation from the world's civilization; in the constant influx of a new population of illiterate colonists; and in the natural oscillation from extremely depressed circumstances to a state of political democracy, on the one hand, and an exaggeration of the "ologies," and "osophies" of school training, at the expense of plain and simple education, on the other. The correctives to these dangers are manifest, (a) In our schools we must aim to give our children a thorough and sound training in the simple elements of common school education. Instead of the too common effort to make philosophers out of babes, and savans out of sucklings; let us be content to give our children correctness, accuracy, and thoroughness, in spelling, reading,