culated to contract and sadden the disposition of a child. The character of the scenes in which we are brought up impresses itself upon our souls. Great fanatics generally proceed from sad and sterile countries." "As is the place, so is the man. The mind is a mirror before it becomes a home."

C.

SIR,

THE DIGNITY OF SCHOOLMASTERS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENGLISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATION.

I am sorry to see that the ridiculous discussion commenced some years ago on the social position of the elementary schoolmaster is not yet brought to a termination. It betrays an ignorance of the world totally inexcusable in a schoolmaster. He ought to know that so long as his profession is not sufficiently lucrative to enable him to vie with the clerical, legal, and medical professors, in splendidly furnished houses, servants, carriages and horses," society" will not admit him within its pale. He has not yet attained even to the minimum degree of "respectability"-the keeping of a gig.

The following passage from Pascal may be of use, if inserted in the Journal.

April 11th, 1857.

I remain, Sir,

Your obedient Servant,

A SCHOOLMASTER.

"How well has it been determined to judge men by their exterior rather than by their interior qualities! Who shall pass the first of us two? Who will yield his place to another? The least clever. But I am as clever as he is. It will then be necessary to fight for it. But he has four footmen, It is then for Now here we are

and I have only one, that is visible; there is only to count. me to give up; and I am a fool if I contest the point. at peace by this means, which is the greatest of earthly blessings."-Pascal on Social Distinctions.

INQUIRIES TO BE MADE BY TEACHERS OF THEMSELVES.-Is your prime object merely to promote your own present interests, or are you prepared to sacrifice those very interests to the nobler designs of your vocation? Do your duties call forth the deepest emotions of your being, the divinest energies of your nature? Do you feel that you are forming characters, not merely cramming heads? Do you look forward with hope and fear to the future destiny of every individual entrusted to your care? Do you feel your toil to be a noble pleasure, or an unmitigated bore? Ask yourselves these questions now; for assuredly in after time you will be invoked by memory, summoned to the tribunal of blessed or blighted hearts, and questioned thus by those whom you have guided to happiness and victory, or left undone.-Dr. Cornish on Education.

HOW TO WRITE ENGLISH.-No. 3.

LAINNESS and natural simplicity are essential to effective style. Mr. Macaulay, in his late writings, has departed sadly from this canon. We find him often studying effect, not merely in the arrangement of his narrative and its colouring, but in the collocation or repetition of words, and especially in the abrupt brevity of some sentences, and the rhetorical elongation of others. At the same time he is one of the very best artificial writers who ever lived. His great art consists in painting incidents. He fascinates the reader by using the smallest facts familiar to every day life, and engrafting them with wonderful effect into his story. Like Sir Archibald Alison, he is diffuse to an excess; but whereas one is simply prolix, the other infuses power and beauty into every sentence he writes. If he lives ninety years longer, and publishes no faster than he has hitherto done, he will in that period about finish the reign of William the Fourth. It is a sad pity that so vigorous a mind will not be able to give us the benefit of any of his powers on the portentous events of the last half century, and especially of these times.

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These are reasons for cultivating the invaluable power of condensation. Very few ever attain it. The charm of dwelling on one's own ideas is too great to allow a wise curtailment of words. Mr. Macaulay, however, as regards style, is one of the most accurate writers of the day, and is certainly one of the safest models. Nevertheless he sometimes sins in verbal redundancies. Here is an instance, and there are many others. "Madame de Maintenon had," he says, "a tact which surpassed the tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses the tact of ours." Better thus-" A tact which surpassed that of her sex as much as female tact surpasses ours:" or, as much as the tact of women surpasses that of men. Again, he speaks of "a colony as more important indeed than Massachusetts, Virginia, or Jamaica; but, like Massachusetts, Virginia, or Jamaica, dependent on the mother country?" Instead of this ill-sounding repetition of the names of these States, why did he not write, "but, like them, dependent on the mother country.' Mr. Macaulay seems sometimes to think it an evil to use a pronoun. Now it is the exact purpose of a pronoun to enable one to avoid this awkward repetition of nouns. But these are only occasional blemishes; to which my attention has been called by a writer in Fraser's Magazine, who writes two long essays on "Literary Style," criticising other people's blunders with little mercy, and committing them himself with great liberality. He says of a popular novelist—

"But we willingly admit that, in point of simplicity and ease of style, there is in his last two works a great improvement. That of his former novels is too stilted and high flown, and the author, haunted with the idea of the necessity of keeping up the dignity of his subject, adopted a phraseology,” &c.

"That" must have an antecedent. What is it? According to all rule it is "improvement," which is nonsense. Is it then the "simplicity and ease of style" which this critic would decry as "too stilted and high flown?" Scarcely. What he really does mean is, that the style of the former novels was so. But he has entirely failed to express it, and has written nonsense instead. "Haunted with" is incorrect; it should be "haunted by." Repulsive awkwardnesses of expression occur in many

parts of these ill-written essays. Here is one out of many. "He is certainly one of the least squeamish writers who ever employed the pen of religious controversy." In the first place no one can be correctly said to employ his own pen; we use what is our own, and employ that which is another's. "To employ oneself" is little better than a vulgarism. But to say that a writer "employs the pen of religious controversy" is worthy only of the servant's hall; and is an instructive specimen of that slip-slop style and silly finery, against which I would especially caution all boys and girls. All that is really expressed might have been as usual better said by shortening the sentences and using two words instead of nine; I mean by inserting the word "polemical" before the word "writers" and leaving out all that follow. "Polemical means what the writer intended by the incorrect term of "religious controversy." Controversy is not religious in any sense of the word, nor do these two words express that the controversy is about religion; indeed some controversies about religion are irreligious. These however are minor errors when compared to such sentences as these. "We should not have noticed it at all, but for the reason we have already given-because we believe it to be, &c." This use of the word "but" instead of " except" is scarcely admissible, and derives sanction from few good English writers; and then almost invariably when it commences a sentence thus :- -"But for your known courage I should" &c. The misuse however, of "because" is a positive blunder. The writer means "namely that we believe," &c. If the reader thinks otherwise let him apply the best test to a sentence of doubtful propriety, namely that of denuding it of all redundant words. The sentence in question will then read thus-"We should not notice it but for the reason because," &c. A beautiful model certainly for a grammatical critic who in the next page beseeches us not to pollute the pure well of English undefiled, and deals forth charges ad libitum of "vulgarity," "conceit," "farrago of nonsense," and "faults against grammar, taste and propriety." It would be as well moreover that a gentleman who affords more than one proof that he has yet to learn that "not" and "nor" are negatives and together make an affirmative, should profit by his own "words of advice and warning:"

"The first object of every author ought to be to write correctly; the second, to write naturally and unaffectedly; and the third, to write gracefully and attractively.” These are excellent rules. We will take leave to add a fourth :-Until you can do this don't write at all; at least not as a censor of other people's style.

I have noticed these two essays because they enable me to warn young writers against being induced to suppose that what they read in the most esteemed periodical literature (in which Fraser's Magazine justly ranks) is necessarily a good model. No periodical can maintain a high standard in all its articles. It is difficult for the best of them to maintain a staff of contributors all of whom are above mediocrity. A very bad style of writing will frequently be found in the most eminent of our reviews, and oftener still in magazines. No editor can always steer clear of these mishaps.

* This writer's idea of a controversialist is a strange one. He thinks Father Newman is unequalled in point of style as a controversialist, because his manner is lively, although in the next sentence he pronounces him to be weak in argument, prodigious in assumption, and transparent in sophistry!

A very excellent book on the subject I am discussing has just been sent to me, entitled "Modern English Literature, its blemishes and defects, by Henry H. Breen, Esq.' It is a most important aid to the correction of popular vices in style and grammar. This book, if it be widely circulated and well studied, will do even more than Dean Trench's books to raise both the standard and appreciation of what English is; and how we should write and speak it.

Mr. Breen divides his book into Errors of Composition, Blunders, Mannerism, Criticism, Plagiarism, &c. Under each of these heads he has collected numerous examples of faults, great and small, which will be of infinite value to the public at large: for I cordially agree with the author that "the most striking characteristic of English literature in the nineteenth century is the loose and ungrammatical diction which disfigures every species of prose composition. We have a hundred Alisons for one Macaulay. Nay, I believe it could be shown that in proportion as the English language has been improved, the art of composition has been neglected."

*

*

The best writers are seldom free from faults, and scarcely any are always grammatical. Hence the necessity of such papers as these. Many will doubt the correctness of so dark a picture and grave a charge against the English literature of these times. Mr. Breen's book shall help us to substantiate it. Here are ample specimens and proofs:

BAD GRAMMAR.

Macaulay."The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was assiduously studied," &c.

Sydney Smith.-"An officer on European and on Indian service, are in very different situations."

Gibbon." The use of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often subservient," &c. "The pronunciation of the two vowels have been," &c.

Dean Trench.-"Sir Thomas More so writes it, although not many so late as him :"-id est, 66 so late as him wrote it!"

Alison." Often Caulincourt or Duroc were up with him, hard at work," &c.

Junius. -"Neither Charles nor his brother were qualified," &c.

D'Israeli the elder.-"No one can have lost their character," &c.

Sir E. Lytton Bulwer." The literature of France, Germany, and England are at least as necessary for a man." Literature should have been plural.

Blair.-"How far each of the three epic poets have distinguished themselves."

BAD ENGLISH; OR NONSENSE.

Alison. "We know to what causes our past reverses have been owing, and we will have ourselves to blame if,” &c.

Mr. Breen himself!" There is nothing that demonstrates the prevalence of ungrammatical diction so much as the occurrence of it in our critics,

*Longman's: pp. 307, 8vo. 1857.

grammarians, and compilers of dictionaries: as when we meet with a writer professedly descanting upon rules of grammar, and violating those rules in the very comments he makes upon them."

Mr. Breen fell into this mishap by expressing the same thing twice over in the same sentence. If we cut off the whole of the last half, beginning "as when we," &c. the first becomes a good and complete sentence: or if we substitute "writers" for the useless words "as when we meet with a writer," the sentence becomes good English. The meeting with the writer is quite irrelevant to the subject. This is not his only mistake by any means. In page 14 he strays entirely from his subject, which is about singulars and plurals,-launches into a digression, in which he censures the idolatry of authorities,—and then suddenly reverts to "this error," of which the antecedent is the said idolatry, and not the grammatical blunder he meant to revert to. No writer ever gave better illustrations of his own just comment on the "little attention that is paid to perspicuity; in other words, to the relation in which the different members of a sentence should stand towards each other."

MORE BLUNDERS IN GREAT WRITERS.

Sydney Smith." It is to this last new feature in the supposed Game Laws, to which we intend to confine," &c. To, to which!

Southey."Let me see who do I know among them?"

"who."

This is among the most frequent and most vulgar blunders made, viz., the use of the nominative instead of the objective case of the pronoun "Who did you see?" is very common, but equally wrong.

Hallam.-"In the latter also religious and grammatical learning go hand in hand."

Macaulay."The blessings which political and intellectual freedom have brought in their train."

Latham correctly says "The logical and historical analysis of a language generally in some degree coincides.

Hallam and Macaulay seem to forget that two adjectives never make a singular noun plural. Mr. Breen, however, truly remarks that the sense is nevertheless sacrificed, for a single thing cannot properly be said to coincide. The sentence should be expressed thus-The logical and historical analyses coincide.'

Shoals of writers get into scrapes through an awkward habit of beginning their sentences at the wrong end, or in the middle, or any where but at the right place. Here is an example from Blair-" They are the ardent sentiments of honour, and that only can kindle the fire of genius." In the first place he uses the plural, "they are," instead of the singular "it is," and "only" for alone." But why not begin with the sentiments, with which he is about to speak? What is the good of "they are," or "it is?" Why not simply say "The ardent sentiments of honour, &c. can alone kindle," &c. It is much simpler, more expressive, and, like most simple things, more elegant. Simplex munditiis is a good motto for young writers: it is strangely ignored by old writers.

The wrong preposition obtains so constantly, that with some writers it is only by a rare accident that they use the right one. Here are plenty of examples: