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INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.

VERYTHING we read on the subject of industry in the Bible—

E the practical example set us by the life of Christ, and those whom

he chose as his apostles, as well as the fourth commandment, enforce daily labour as the order and duty of human life.

It is clear that this labour may consist of head-work as well as handwork; and many there are who benefit mankind far more by their brains than they could do by their hands. But God has so ordered it, that by far the greatest number of people must make themselves useful by the latter sort of work. Every one must employ the kind of talent God has given him to the utmost of his power, and he will fulfil his duty. They who keep their talents in a napkin, and, leading lives of idleness or pleasure, exert no power, either of body or mind, to the glory of God or the good of their fellow-men, are leading lives of sin. Thus, every working-man who follows his calling, and thereby supports his family, and adds to the general produce of the country, and every mother who trains her children and manages her household, however lowly may be their lot, are obeying one of the chief commands of God, and performing one of the "works" without which "faith is dead."

Labour-life is full of joys which the indolent know not, and riches cannot buy. It is well said, that "to labour and be content with what a man hath is a sweet life." It is a great mistake to regard bodily labour as an evil: it is the source of almost all worldly good. It tends to morality, contentment, and usefulness; it increases our means; and though it may not always bring riches, it secures to us the wealth of health. In this vital matter, bodily labour far excels mental labour, which, if it be in excess, injures health, and frequently prevents one of its great securities-exercise. Without this, there can be no due development of the muscles, nor can the limbs or body obtain their proper strength. This great truth is much lost sight of, as regards the young. A very great proportion of school-children live without regular bodily exercise. In the higher schools this want is, in great measure, supplied by cricket, rowing, and other manly sports and games; but in the common schools there are few such sports; for the children usually spend their leisure hours either in doing odd jobs at home or in desultory play, which exercises neither mind nor body. It is a rare thing to see hearty games among poor children whilst at school. When school-time ends, labour-life begins; and inasmuch as our present school-system defers all preparation for labour, education is shortened to make way for it, in order to increase the family income.

Thus a double evil results from a system which confines schooling to head-work. First, it fails to train and prepare the scholar for the bodily work of his future life, and neglects also the great aids which industry gives to moral as well as mental culture. Secondly, it not only lessens the effectiveness of education, but tempts the parents of the child to shorten its duration, and to make it incomplete.

If school-time were properly divided between head-work and bodily industry, these evils would be removed, or at least greatly lessened. Doubtless no system of industrial education for poor children could supersede the apprenticeship of labour-life by combining with needful education a sufficient training in any one craft, complete enough to secure

perfection in it. We do not attempt to make artists or skilled labourers of school-children, nor to perfect them in any of the branches of industry in which we hope to exercise them. In the first place, as three or four hours of the day must be always devoted to indoor-lessons, there will not be, within the usual limit of the school age, sufficient time or opportunity to teach a trade, or even to perfect a boy in the handy art of spadehusbandry. What, then, do we profess to do? Simply this: to give them an aptitude for labour, which school studies do not give; to aid such studies by the vigour which bodily health and strength impart to mental faculties; to accompany education in all useful knowledge taught in-doors (both secular and moral) by its practical application out of doors; thus bringing school-instruction home to the apprehension of the child as a reality, of which he feels the usefulness. The intelligent teacher will be at no loss to bring a fund of knowledge thus to bear on the common routine of industrial occupation. The precept of training a child in the way he should go had doubtless a comprehensive meaning, and comprised the whole duties of life, physical as well as bodily. Now, if, for the class in question, industry is a primary duty, it is a necessary part of the training meant by Solomon; and certain it is, that we cannot impart to a child the spirit of the labourer, without labour.

It is by such means that we hope to further the teaching and training requisite for successful labour-life, and, in so doing, very greatly to develop mental power and moral qualities. Not only is it found, that the energy of the body imparts itself to the mind, but that it also has a most useful effect in checking those high flights and wild shoots which are just now of too common growth in the instruction even of the best of our schools for the poor; and that the industrial element tends usefully to give predominance to common things, and its due value to what is plain, and practical, and useful, over what is abstract, showy, and useless. There is, moreover, great virtue in the practice of precepts. As regards moral conduct, this is just as needful and useful as with respect to bodily faculties. The school-room gives small scope for it. Very little opportunity for the development either of child virtues or child vices, or for the treatment of individual temperaments, occurs under the dynasty of its formal discipline. At the desk and in the class, the child is necessarily an artificial creature, and goes in grooves; and the outbreaks of his nature are fitful and exceptional. Place him in the work-ground, and give free play to his whole being, animal and moral, and his dispositions, as well as faculties, come out and declare themselves, so as to be easily trained, cherished, or checked, as occasion may require.

In carrying out industrial training care should be taken so to organize it that it be an integral part of the day's work, not a mere appendage, in which case it seldom answers.

TRUTH.-Truth will ever be unpalatable to those who are determined not to relinquish error, but can never give offence to the honest and well-meaning ; for the plain-dealing remonstrances of a friend differ as widely from the rancour of an enemy, as the friendly probe of a surgeon from the dagger of an assassin.E. W. Montagu.

C

ON THE STUDY OF THE ANGLO-SAXON LANGUAGE.

(Continued from p. 456.)

The first led to any serio

HE first historical event which led to any serious corruption of the William, Duke of Normandy, generally known as William the Conqueror, invaded England, A.D., 1066, and by the decisive battle of Hastings, routed the Saxons, and gained the English throne. By this event the Normans became, and continued to be, the governing race in England.

The policy of the Normans differed both from that of the Romans, and from that of the Saxons; and it was this difference of policy that caused such a difference in the effect upon the language. The Normans did not, like the Romans, merely send over an army to subjugate, but came over as a people to occupy. On the other hand, they did not, like the Saxons, exterminate the conquered, but sought to keep them on the soil as a subject and servile race. William divided the island among his followers, giving to each a portion of territory, and of the Saxon population which was upon it. In this manner, two races were diffused side by side over the surface of the island, and kept in constant juxtaposition. The effect of this continued contact between the two races, soon became apparent.

The Normans were superior to the conquered race in military skill, but were greatly inferior in numbers. They sought, therefore, to perpetuate their authority by depressing the social and political condition of the Saxons. They introduced Norman laws and customs. None but Normans were appointed to any important office, either in church or state. Above all, a strenous and persevering attempt was made to spread the Norman language throughout the island. No other language was spoken at court, or in camp, in parliament, in the baronial hall, or in the lady's boudoir. In this language the laws were written, and judicial proceedings were conducted. No civil contract

was binding, no man could sue or be sued, no right could be enforced, and no favour won, except in the language of the governing race. The first step to every Saxon serf that wished to rise from his state of inferiority and servitude, was to forget his native language, and train his tongue to the accents of his foreign masters.

The laws of nature are stronger than the laws of man. The Normans attempted an impossibility. It is impossible for two races, especially if not separated by colour, to maintain permanently a separate existence, when kept in constant contact and juxtaposition, as were the Normans and the Saxons. A mingling of race was the inevitable result of this state of affairs. The Saxons gradually intermarried with the Normans, and rose to an equality of legal rights and social position. With the elevation of the race, the Saxon language resumed its rightful position. It had always been the language of the masses, while the Norman had been spoken only by the governing few. When two races become thus blended into one people, they cannot long continue to speak different languages. In this case, the Saxon, as being the language of the many, displaced the Norman, which was the language of the few, notwithstanding all the weight of authority and fashion that had been exerted in favour of the latter.

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that no changes in the language occurred during this fiery ordeal. As there was a mingling of race, so there was to some extent a mingling of language. If we take a survey of the authors that wrote one or two centuries after the conquest, we find, not the pure Saxon of Alfred and Cadmon, nor yet the Norman parlance of William and his barons, but a mixed language, like the race, predominantly indeed Saxon, but with a large foreign ingredient. This mixed language is our modern English. Its main element is the Saxon. But it has another element, amounting to more than one third of the whole, the introduction of which is to be attributed to the Norman conquest.

But who were the Normans, and what was their language? The word "Norman,” is a corruption of "Northman." The "Northmen were the inhabitants of the ancient Scandinavia; that is, of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. They were, in the ninth and tenth centuries, precisely what the Saxons had been in the fifth century. The Saxons, after their establishment in Great Britain, had been converted to Christianity, had acquired the arts of peace, and become comparatively civilized. The Northmen were still unlettered pagans, whose home was in their ships, and whose whole life was warfare. For the greater part of two centuries, they ravaged all the more civilized countries of Europe bordering upon the coast, until their very name become a terror. Rollo, a leader of one of those adventurous bands, penetrated into the very heart of France, and finally obliged the king to cede to him and his followers an entire province, amounting to no inconsiderable part of the kingdom. This province, thus ceded to the victorious Northmen, or Normans, was thenceforward called Normandy. The cession took place, A.D. 912.

Rollo and his followers were comparatively few in numbers. They gradually intermarried with their subjects in the province which had been assigned them, and adopted their manners, religion, and language. In less than a century after the advent of Rollo in France, his descendants in Normandy were, as to language, scarcely distinguishable from other Frenchmen. But the French language is that introduced into the province of Gaul by the Romans; it is, in short, a corrupt form of the Latin language. And the Norman-French is the same other French, only with some northern or Scandinavian words, which the descendants of Rollo doubtless retained, after their settlement in Normandy.

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The Norman-French, therefore, which William the Conqueror tried to introduce into England, was in the main a Latin language. did not succeed in displacing our native Saxon. But he did succeed in introducing into it a large number of Norman-French words, and these Norman-French words, introduced into English at the Conquest, are generally words of Latin origin. These Latin words, thus introduced through the Norman-French, constitute the first important item in the Latin element of the language.

The importance of the Norman conquest, in its influence upon the language, is not to be estimated by the actual number of words then introduced. In point of fact, a much larger number of Latin words have been brought into the language since that time, and by other causes. The chief effect of the conquest in this respect, was its having

created the tendency to adopt foreign words. There is naturally, in all nations, a strong aversion to the adoption of foreign terms. The natural and spontaneous disposition, when a new word is wanted, is to make it out of roots or stems already existing in the language, and by modes of combination with which the popular ear is familiar. The terrible shock of the Conquest, and the wholesale use of foreign words to which the people then became accustomed, overcame this natural dislike, and opened a wide door for a continued influx of Latin words from a great variety of sources.

The extent of this influx may be estimated, if we call to mind that England, both from it position and from its national policy, has always maintained the closest commercial relations with the nations of southern Europe, and that these nations, the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, all speak languages that have descended directly from the Latin, and that have consequently the closest affinity and similarity with each other. The Norman conquest having brought a large number of Latin words into the language, and having opened wide the door for the introduction of more, by overcoming the national prejudice on the subject, and by making such foreign importations fashionable and popular, there has been, ever since, an uninterrupted stream of Latin words setting in upon us, like a tide that knows no ebb. Whenever, in the progress of commerce or of the arts, it became necessary to have new words for the expression of new wants, or new ideas, instead of making these new words by a process of home manufacture, we have resorted to the easy credit-system of borrowing them from our neighbours. Almost every musical term in the language has been taken from the Italian, many of our terms of etiquette and punctillio from the Spanish, and the entire nomenclature of cookery, dress, and fashion from the French, Italian singers and fiddlers, and Parisian cooks and milliners, have levied a tax upon our tongues no less than upon our purses. These foreign words, when first introduced, usually appear in a foreign dress. They are printed in italics, or with quotation marks, or in some way to indicate that they are foreigners, and not intitled to the full rights of citizenship. But in a few years, the popular ear gets accustomed to the lingo, the popular lip learns to sound it trippingly, it becomes a part of staple English!

But there is another source,from which Latin words have been brought into the language, even more prolific than that from mixture of race and national intercourse. I refer to learning and education. From an early period in English history, even before the time of the Conquest, learning was confined almost entirely to ecclesiastics. They were all necessarily instructed in the Latin language, because in that language all their church services had to be conducted. Besides this, the Latin language then was, and indeed until comparatively modern times it continued to be, the general language of scientific and literary men throughout Europe. Every treatise intended for general dissemination was written in Latin as a matter of course. It was the only medium by which an author could make himself known to those for whom alone books were then intended; viz., the learned few. In addition to this, it has been for more than a thousand years, and it still is, the settled practice, that the study of the Latin shall form an integral and leading

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