The Eminent American Geographer.-The Pathfinder of the Seas.

MAURY'S GEOGRAPHIES

This original series by its wealth of scientific lore, its charming style, and its happy adaptation to educational purposes, has found its way into the schools of first rank in all parts of our own country, and it has also proved itself most acceptable in foreign lands. The great popularity of the most advanced books is not more marked than the success and satisfaction that are attending the use of the "First Lessons" in Kindergartens, Primary Schools, Families, and wherever the power to enlist attention and awaken thought in the minds of the young is the prime object of the instructor. The series is, in short. up with the times, and is just what every thorough and progressive teacher cannot help being pleased with.

THE SERIES-WHAT IT IS.

THE FIRST LESSONS is a medium through which the young learner sees (rather than reads) what he learns. His mind is kept alive by a sense of reality, his curiosity has a legitimate exe cise, and his memory and understanding are made companions.

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN is an intermediate book, containing a pretty full presentation of the leading facts and definitions of Geography in a very attractive narrative style. These are so grouped as to aid the memory by a natural asso

ciation.

THE MANUAL is a very comprehensive work, and is in the same fascinating style that distinguishes all the author's writings. The treatment of Mathematical, Natural and Civil Geography is most able and complete. The text, the illustrations, and the maps are all of the first order.. It is a book entitled to a place of honor, either in school room or library.

THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY treats of the land and sea around us, and the heavens above us, and of their wondrous forces and phenomena in a most masterly and interesting manner. Seldom has a book been written upon a scientific subject, containing so much on every page to entertain and instruct, both student and general reader.

THE WALL MAPS.--These are eight in number, and were designed by the author for school-room use and to accompany his own or any other series of Geog raphies. They are distinctly executed, in the best style of lithography, showing water-sheds, river drainage systems, etc., etc.

SPECIAL TERMS FOR INTRODUCTION.--Single specimen copies, for examination, sent by mail (excepting maps) on receipt of following prices:

Maury's First Lessons in Geography,

$0.36

Maury's World We Live In, (Intermediate,)

.75

Maury's Manual of Geography, (In purchasing this work, those who

want the Virginia edition should specify it in their orders.)

1.20

Maury's Physical Geography,

1.50

Maury's Wall Maps, 8 in set, $1.15 each (Map of U. S. $1.95) per set,

10.00

UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING CO., 19 Murray St., New York.

But the value of language-study as discipline to the mind may be seen more clearly by observing the process of the mind in studying language. Watch a child at work upon the problems of language. If he be well taught he calls forth into vigorous action in mastering every lesson exactly those three operations of the mind that are needed for all healthy intellectual work. Observation, memory, and reasoning-these are the three faculties that make up the sound mind. So, in learning language, by the process of observation the well-taught child takes into his mind those facts of language that he needs for speaking, reading and writing; by the process of memory he binds these facts together into groups, and he stores them up for future use in the treasure-houses of the brain. By the process of reasoning he combines these facts that he has gained so as to understand what he hears and what he reads, and he solves for himself those problems of thought that every fresh sentence brings before the mind. Thus every day spent in language-study trains the child deeper and deeper in the powers of observation, memory and reasoning. No one faculty is strained, no one faculty is stunted; all move on together in easy and equable expansion. Hence, in the experience of the world, the study of language has proved itself to be the best of all studies for training those three faculties of the mind that are essential for the mastery of science and for the achievement of mental results. A few months ago I had to consult a great professor of physical science as to what he wished done by the schools in order to prepare his pupils for admission to his classes. "Teach them how

to read," was his prompt, wise answer. In the young men that he teaches the greatest obstacle to progress is simply that they are often so ignorant of language that they cannot take in the meaning of what they read in their text-books, nor of what they hear in his lectures. When the young William Pitt was asked how, at twenty-five, he had knowledge enough of men and of affairs to be prime minister of England, and to regulate the politics of a distraught empire, he said that he learned what he knew by translating Thucydides to his father-that is, by taking in the thought and by reproducing the thought, through language, of a great master of practical politics. Many years ago, when I was deep in my school-books, construing Horace, and thumbing my way through Xenophon's Anabasis, I had the honor of being introduced to the greatest of modern merchants. He was a shrewd Scotch-Irishman, who had worked his way up from a petty trade in Irish linens to the lordship of modern commerce. He questioned me sharply about my studies, and he encouraged me to work hard at them by saying that his best lessons for business life had been gained by studying language in his youth, and by teaching language to others. Thus, in purely disciplinary value, for all young people of both sexes, whether to aid them in their professions, or in pure science, or in business life, or in domestic life, the study of language stands foremost as the most useful of all. The mathematics train the power of reasoning at the expense of memory and of observation. Historical studies, while they exercise the memory, offer neither facts to be observed nor clear lines of reasoning to be followed. Even the splendid power of the physical sciences is hampered by the disadvantage that the facts to be observed cannot easily be gathered into school-rooms for our classes' observation; and these physical sciences, without the opportunity of constant and direct observation, as mere book-studies, are admitted to be rather bad than good for the mind. But, in studying language, the facts to be observed, the facts to be remembered, the facts to be reasoned upon, may all be brought, at small expense, in convenient shape and in equable proportions, to bear upon our pupils' minds. There is no need to wonder, then, that all the civilized ages of mankind have prized linguistic studies as the most useful in training young minds; that even now, in practical life, in professional schools, in schools of physical science, the best men are those that have had in their youth the opportunity of winning mastery over the facts and principles of language.

After so much on the general worth of language-study, let me ask you now to look at another question. Are the results of lan

guage-study to be secured in the larger measure by the study of foreign languages, or by the study of the mother-tongue? If we admit that we ought to teach our pupils language, can we help them better by teaching them their own language, or the languages of other nations, living or dead? There is here a question for us all of deep interest and of wide importance. And, even if we dodge that question by saying that both the mother-tongue and foreign tongues are to be taught there comes up then another question that we cannot dodge: In what order of time is each to be studied? Is the study of the native to precede that of the foreign language, or the foreign language to precede the native? That is the special question that I wish you to think about.

If we look at the customs of mankind and the authority of history, there is found to be a wide difference between the habit of English and American school-masters on the one side, and the habits of teachers in other nations and in other ages. In Greece, for example, where the theory of education was first worked out, the study of the mother-tongue not only went before all other studies of language, but it absolutely took the place of all. Every educated Greek, from seven to twenty years of age, was carefully educated in the use of his own language; and no educated Greek, except by mere accident of foreign travel, was ever educated in any foreign language. Under this practice of education, it may be said, the human mind from the ninth on to the fourth century before Christ made the most rapid progress ever made in the development of intellectual power. Among the Romans, all children that were educated at all were first educated in the use of the Latin language; after that, such as had the means for high education were educated in the Greek. Among the modern nations, especially in France and in Germany, the study of the mothertongue is made the first and the chief of all language-studies; at a later time, when the mental powers have thus been ripened, the pick of the nation is carried on to the study of Latin, and, in favored cases, of Greek. Such was the system in England, too, down to the times of Shakspere and even of Milton. But, in modern England and in the United States, a different practice has grown up, and a different theory been accepted. By this, the mother-tongue has been dropt as too easy or too vulgar for school-masters to teach; children from the earliest school years are put to the study of Latin or of French, and no time is given to gain any systematic knowledge of the English. As the defence of this practice, the theory has been put forward that education in English is not needed for English-speaking boys; that

in point of fact, we can best learn the use and the laws of our mothertongue, not by studying it directly, but as an indirect result of studying Latin. Even now, even in our own Virginia, teachers are still found that have their schools arranged upon this theory; whatever their pupils know of English is to be picked up from the paradigms of a Latin grammar; whatever benefit is to come from languagestudy is to come for boys from mastering the Latin language and for girls from mastering the French.

Such are the two theories that have prevailed in education. The first is to teach the mother-tongue as valuable in itself, and as the preparation, if need be, for the study of foreign languages; the second is, to teach the foreign languages first, and to leave the mothertongue to accident or to inspiration. I have tried to state the two theories fairly. I have tried not to prejudice the statement by any coloring of my own beliefs. But it is hard to state the vulgar Virginia theory without seeming to expose its absurdity, without being drawn into denouncing its blundering folly. There cannot be a surer way of crippling a child's mind, a more uniailing process for making all school-work futile, then by withdrawing time and care from the study of the native to lavish them on foreign tongues. Even if to learn the foreign language were the highest object of school-life, to teach it without teaching English first, would be the absurdest of methods. For the mastery of the foreign language may be reduced to two things: first, the power of translating from the foreign tongue into English; second, the power of translating from the English into the foreign tongue. The one task is to express the foreign thought in our own language, the other task is to express our own thought in the foreign language. For both tasks, the accurate knowledge of our own language is the essential preliminary. No child that does not know the meaning of English words, nor the force of English constructions, is capable, can be capable, of transferring the thought of Virgil or of Cicero into English expression. No child that does not know the exact thought expressed by English words, can be capable of clothing such a thought in Latin expression. The exact meaning of the foreign sentence, the subtle difference between the foreign constructions, even the significance of the foreign words, and the charm of the foreign literature-these are all things that cannot be brought home to the mind of the English child, except through the medium of the English language. Thus to leave the child untrained in his mother-tongue, is to cut him off from the possibility of studying any foreign tongue with profit or with accuracy.