COLLEGE OF PRECEPTORS. SIR,-As frequent reference is made by your correspondents to the College of Preceptors, will you kindly permit me to make a few statements for the information of your readers in general, and especially for those of them who speak of this corporation in a manner which shews that they are not fully conversant with its constitution and operations. From the report of the Council, January 1861 :"The Council having heard from various quarters that persons who had no right to designate themselves members of the College assume that title in advertisements, &c., have obtained the opinion of counsel on the best means of preventing such practices. This opinion is to the effect, that an application may be made to the Court of Chancery for an injunction against any person so offending, with a certainty of its being granted. The Council have determined to resort to this measure should it become necessary for the protection of the members, who are requested to communicate to the secretary any instances of the kind of which they may have any personal knowledge." It must be borne in mind that mere membership of the College is not considered by the Council to be any guarantee whatever of attainment, or of ability to instruct; and in proof of this assertion, I give an extract from the report of the address delivered by the president, the Rev. B. H. Kennedy, D.D., at the general meeting in June 1862:-" It is important that the public should understand that the only titles which imply either examination or any recognition on the part of the College, of ascertained professional competency, are Fellow, Licentiate, and Associate." The object of admitting persons as members without compelling them to undergo examination, is to give any who may desire to promote the interests of the College and of education the opportunity of co-operating with their professional brethren. Besides, as the doors of the profession are not yet closed against unexamined men, it would hardly become the College (if I may be allowed to assume so authoritative a style) to manifest an arrogant spirit of exclusiveness, by ignoring hundreds of hard working, respectable, and intelligent educators. I would further add, that in the list of members published annually, a marked distinction is made between those who hold the College degrees and those who do not, by placing them in separate lists. Every possible care is taken (I speak on the highest authority) fully to ascertain the character and position of persons proposed for election as members. The Council has absolute power to grant or to refuse admission, since the bye-laws state that "all persons engaged in education are admissible as members" not that they are to be admitted. I shall not trouble you with any information respecting the examinations for the College degrees, as that is in print, and may be obtained from the secretary. I may observe that the College has done more to promote the interests of the profession than any other institution in England. It is the only incorporated body of educators, excluding the Educational Institute of Scotland; it is empowered to grant degrees, which it does twice every year; it first instituted the examination of schools, and thus set Oxford and Cambridge the example; it holds monthly meetings for the reading of papers on educational questions; it originated the movement in favour of scholastic registration, which has secured the approval of schoolmasters in general; and it has done much, in many other ways, to advance the cause of education.-I am, Sir, yours truly, R. THE REVISED CODE AND THE PRESS. SIR,-In your issue for September, I am pleased to observe that you invite teachers, "to avail themselves of the pages of the Museum more than they have hitherto done, to let their feelings, opinions, and experiences be known." Every reader of your magazine must feel how much information is derived in this way, and how greatly such an interchange of sentiments and experience tends to maintain that esprit da corps which is necessary to the life and vigour of the profession. But teachers should not confine their efforts to expression of opinion among themselves, or through the pages of magazines circulating chiefly among the members of their own profession. In the words of your closing article last month, they "should let their voices be heard everywhere." Allow me to suggest as a suitable means of doing so, the more frequent use of the newspaper press. The public are very generally ignorant of educational matters. Few even of educated and intelligent persons outside of those immediately connected with it know much of the Privy Council system, or the Revised readers who are in the secret would clear the matter up. 1. If pupil teachers are apprenticed as under the old Code, 1 for every 50 scholars, 2 for 80, and 1 more for every additional 40, during the period while the Revised Code is suspended in Scotland, will the Privy Council allow them the usual gratuities which they were allowed under the old Code? 2. Supposing pupil teachers are not paid as under the old Code, but as under the Revised Code, one being required for every ninety scholars, is the teacher's augmentation grant in any way curtailed in order to pay the pupil-teacher ?—I am, Sir, yours respectfully, F. E. I. S. Notices of Books. Dictionnaire de la Langue Française. Par. E. LITTRE | work we are now noticing will be, when terminated de l'Institut. 4to, Parts 1-11. Paris and London, L. Hachette & Co. The publication of the eleventh livraison of M. Littré's Dictionnaire de la Langue Française affords us an excellent opportunity of noticing one of the most valuable works that have been recently issued by the indefatigable Paris booksellers, Mess. Hachette & Co. It is well known that the Académie Française had some years ago determined to prepare a kind of historical dictionary of the language. The plan, however, was not well digested; the scale upon which the undertaking had been conceived was ridiculously large; and finally, it seemed hopeless to expect any unity of design in a compilation to which forty persons were invited to supply their respective shares. At all events, only one part of the long talked of lexicon has appeared; and in the mean while, M. Littré, after having devoted fifteen years of assiduous labour to the accomplishment of a similar work, steps in single-handed, to emulate the "forty immortals." Before giving an idea of the livraison we have just received, we shall, in the first place, notice the material features of M. Littré's dictionary; and, in doing so, the following results strike us at once. The entire work will consist of two large quarto volumes, containing together between 350 and 400 sheets, or from 2,800 to 3,200 pages. The Dictionnaire de l'Académie, which is at present regarded as the standard authority of its kind, includes only 1800 pages; so that the difference in favour of M. Littré is of no less than 1000 or 1400 pages. If, besides, we take into consideration that each page of M. Littré's volume comprises 11,000 letters on an average, that is to say, 3000 more than the corresponding space in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie, we are warranted in affirming that the more than double the size of its rival. We must now account for this enormous difference; and this leads us next to examine the plan adopted by M. Littré. The object of the Academicians in publishing their dictionary, was merely to give a list of words used at present, both in conversation and in productions of a bona fide literary character. They neglected, as entirely foreign to their purpose, archaisms on the one hand, and neologisms on the other, excluding, moreover, a number of expressions which, although thoroughly French, have not yet received the sanction,- rather arbitrary, we are inclined to think,- of the tribunal whose courts are held at the Palais Mazarin. As M. Littré has, on the contrary, admitted indistinctly all these words, as he takes care to explain the different meanings of each expression-to give its history; to discuss its etymology; to sift, when needful, the grammatical problems connected with it; to illustrate the synonyms; to supply a chronological list of quotations,-we see how it is that the proportions of his dictionary have reached far beyond those of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie. In his preface, the author begins by justifying the plan he has followed; and whilst alluding to this plan, we shall take our examples chiefly from the livraison, which is the special subject of our article. 1. Nomenclature.-The Dictionnaire de l'Académie strikes us as particularly defective here. All neologisms are not good, we readily acknowledge, and discrimination is necessary to retain what is unobjectionable, and to discard the rest. Now, instead of making a selection, the Academicians have adopted the easier plan of proscribing, and thereby they have excommunicated a number of words universally employed even by the most thorough purists. Who we find that even at the time when Vaugelas wrote, it was generally spelt fillol. The paragraph faire includes the explanation of no less than twenty-two proverbs; and in fact, the entire portion devoted to that verb, and extending over nearly seven quarto pages, is one of the best specimens we can quote of M. Littré's wonderful lexicographical erudition. will ever be brought to believe that the expressions Revolution. Then again, about the adjective filleul, flâner, flâneur, flânerie are not French? We talk of un spectacle férique, and of un auteur expurgê, and we shall probably continue to do so for a long time, notwithstanding the verdict pronounced at the Palais Mazarin. The same remark applies to archaisms. The only words of the kind which M. Littré omits are those that have become quite obsolete; and even here he gives a place to all the nouns which occur in classical writers, and to the most remarkable ones supplied by authors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He has also taken care to render as complete as possible the vocabulary of historical and scientific expressions. 2. Classification and meaning of the words.-When a word has a variety of significations, the arrangement of these significations is by no means arbitrary. A close inspection of each paragraph will shew that one meaning has naturally led to another one, and that there is a kind of genealogy of which the starting-point must, and may, be strictly ascertained. M. Littré illustrates this law by a variety of examples, and he proves how essential a knowledge of it is to those who would study the language in a truly scientific manner. As instances in point, we may refer the reader to the articles feuille, fin, fade. 3. Pronunciation.-This, like everything else, has undergone a number of modifications in course of years. We are told that a gentleman, who, during a long lifetime, had constantly frequented the Theatre Français, observed how differently the actors of the present day pronounced certain words as compared with what the custom was sixty years ago. Such details are essential in a dictionary which professes to be historical, and M. Littré has accurately noticed them. See, for example, the paragraphs fat, faisand, familier. 6. Definitions and Synonyms.—If we consider the absurdity of some of the definitions proposed in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie, we must be led to suppose that the art of defining correctly is extremely difficult. It ought, moreover, to be remembered that a definition, in order to be exact, cannot generally be worded in a concise manner; and M. Littré has very wisely preferred perspicuity to laconism, in explaining the meaning of the various words admitted in his dictionary. The question of synonyms is closely allied with that of definitions, and has been dwelt upon by our author as far as it was necessary. Thus the distinction between the adjectives fade and insipide is well pointed out, also between fatal and funeste, &c. 7. Historical quotations.-Whilst illustrating the present significations of each expression, M. Littré has given his quotations in logical sequence; that is to say, he has begun with the primary meaning, and shewn how the association of ideas or other metaphysical laws have led from one construction to the next. But, in addition to this, he has placed under the title historique, a series of quotations arranged in chronological order, and containing extracts from the most celebrated writers, beginning with the twelfth century, and ending with the sixteenth. These quotations are particularly suggestive, and in some cases give the only clue we have to the true meaning of a word hitherto considered as either obscure or entirely unaccountable. We cannot leave unnoticed, in connection with this part of the sub allusions scattered throughout the dictionary, which are all fully explained, adding much to the interest of the work. 4. Quotations taken from classical or other authors.— The custom of admitting, as part of a work like the present, quotations from various authors, seems, inject, the great number of historical and biographical France at least, of comparatively recent date. Richelet is the first who adopted it, but very sparingly. The great writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the most eminent of our contemporaries, are quoted by M. Littré by way of exemplifying the usual signification of the different words. The substantive famille thus affords the opportunity of introducing twenty-six quotations, whilst no less than ninety-nine illustrate the several meanings of façon. 5. Remarks.-Under thishead our author has discussed-1. A number of grammatical niceties referring to the language of the present day; 2. Some peculiarities to be found in classical authors, and which are now discarded; 3. Proverbs and proverbial expressions. Thus the verb fanatiser, given, we are told, neither by Richelet nor by Furetière, was admitted in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie only thirty years ago, although freely used so far back as the 8. Patois.-The knowledge of patois is often important, because it supplies us with the real sense of a word or phrase, which, in its present usual form, cannot be etymologically explained. Thus, the substantive lierre has preserved its correct spelling in certain provinces where the peasants say hierre (hedera), instead of using the barbarism resulting from the amalgamation of the article with the noun. 9. Etymology.-This forms one of the most interesting features in M. Littré's dictionary. The advanced state of philological science has dispelled the fanciful explanations put forward by Ménage and other savants of bygone days, when mere ingenuity prevailed, leading to conjectures sometimes happy, but oftener positively erroneous. We can now appeal to positive facts, and in cases which remain still doubtful, our author distinctly says so, preferring to leave the particular problem unsolved, rather than to propose solutions which could, after all, be only hypothetical. One of the most amusing instances of the flights of imagination to which etymologists occasionally rise, is suggested by the substantive galetas. Let us quote M. Littré: "Ménage derives the word from valetostasis, (post or station of the valets); Scheler thinks of the radical of galerie: some one else has adduced an Arabic expression, colata, high or upper room; Diez says nothing, and in the absence of all positive evidence, this course was perhaps the wisest. Let us leave the domains of conjectures, which can neither be refuted nor verified, and let us come to private information, which alone affords a satisfactory explanation in the use of what I may call fortuitous etymologies. Who would believe it? It is the proud and lofty tower of Galata, at Constantinople, that has enriched the French language with a new word. In the first instance, from designing a special object, Galata has assumed a general meaning. Then, it has been used to signify part of a public building in Paris. Finally, it has come to represent the meanest room in any house. It was necessary that the crusaders should start for the East towards the end of the twelfth century; that their treaty with the republic of Venice should direct their course against Constantinople, instead of the Holy Land, as originally arranged; that the metropolis of the Greek empire should be taken by them; that a French dynasty should for a short time rule on the shores of the Black Sca; all this was necessary, to introduce into our language as a common substantive the name of a foreign locality." We might easily multiply, from the dictionary we are now noticing, examples illustrating what may be called the curiosities of etymology, but time will not allow of our doing so. Enough, however, has been said to give our readers a clear notion of the plan adopted in the compilation of M. Littré's great work. For further details, let us refer to the introductory disquisition, entitled Coup d'œil sur l'histoire de la langue Française. This excellent résumé, subdivided into seven chapters, is a complete treatise on French grammar, and should be attentively perused by all those who want to be thoroughly acquainted with the subject. The eleventh livraison of the work takes us, we may add, as far as the verb flétrir. The Moral Philosophy of Paley, with additional Dissertations and Notes. By ALEXANDER BAIN, A.M., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Aberdeen, and Examiner in Logic and Moral Philosophy in the University of London. W. and R. Chambers, London and Edinburgh. All Paley's writings are remarkable for their singular clearness and pertinency, and his moral philo sophy is not an exception. There are many points of moral science which he has not discussed at all or merely touched. These Professor Bain has supplied to this edition. Professor Bain's writings are distinguished for their thoroughness, their independence, and their originality. There is no better exponent of that system of psychology which he has adopted than Professor Bain, and his books are of great value to the teacher. Professor Bain agrees with Paley in maintaining what is called the utilitarian system of morality, but he takes care to explain the true nature of the utility which he believes to lie at the basis of morals. His supplements to Paley are extremely valuable. There is no work of the same size in which a student will find a more complete exposition of moral principles, and the book has moreover the advantage of being readable and suggestive. The Study of German Simplified, in a new Systematic and Practical Grammar, according to the systems of Ollendorf amd Dr Ahn. By H. MANNHEIMER, Author of the "The Perfect Speaker." The Third Edition, carefully revised, greatly enlarged, and improved. London: Trübner and Co, 60 Paternoster Row. 1864. This work can be recommended as an admirable introduction to a knowledge of German. It is successful in giving neither too many nor too few exercises. It is moreover lucid in arrangement, and contains a number of tables calculated to be of great service. The Elements of Botany, for Families and Schools. Published under the direction of the Committee of General Literature and Education, appointed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Tenth Edition. Revised by THOMAS MOORE, F.L.S., Curator of the Chelsea Botanic Garden, author of "The Handbook of British Ferns," &c. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1865. This is a clear exposition of the principal facts of botany. There is nothing peculiar in its method. It sets out from the commencement with the use of scribes the root, the stem, and the other parts of a plant. scientific language, and after the usual fashion deIt then passes to the elementary organs, the structure of the stem, germination of the seed, the food, and secretions of plants. Afterwards we have cryptogamic plants, and lastly, the classification of plants. The little work abounds in neatly executed illustrations. It has also a good glossarial index. Key to Dalgleish's Grammatical Analysis, with Explanatory Notes. For the use of Teachers, Edinburgh Oliver & Boyd. 1865. : This book contains full analyses of the various sentences and passages set down in the Text Book. Many teachers, not well acquainted with the system of analysis, will find it very useful. Indeed, we have taken notice of it principally because we have had the question frequently put to us, whether there was such a work in existence. The Ready Writer: A course of Eighteen carefully VENS and CHARLES HOLE, Editors of the Grade We give our warmest commendation to this series of writing-books. They are based on sound principles, they are well adapted for their purpose, and they are sure to be favourites with the pupils. The best thing we can do to give an idea of their character is to extract from the prospectus : “The present series of narrative copy-books is an attempt to combine all that is useful in the preceding methods. Good models are presented for copying, and a little help is afforded the young beginner in the way of lines and dotted letters, but care has been taken not to do too much for him. He is thrown mainly on his own efforts, and is called upon from the first to exercise his judgment and power of imitation. Very large hand has been avoided, because, in the first place, its utility is very questionable, and in the second, children's fingers are not long enough to form such large letters properly. shewing the spelling and meaning of words similarly pronounced. XIV. has engraved exercises in correspondence, bills, receipts, &c. XV. and XVI. have copies similar to XII. and XIII., but in angular hand, and XVII. and XVIII. are exercise books, ruled with small round and small lines respectively, and with margin for corrections.” Chants and Anthems for Sunday School Worship. London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 27 Paternoster Row. These chants and anthems are published in parts, either the words alone, or words and music sol-fa notation, or words and music ordinary notation. The selection, as far as we can judge from the small portion sent us, is good. Outlines of Modern Geography. A book for beginners. By the Rev. ALEXANDER MACKAY, A.M., F.R.G.S., author of Elements of Modern Geography for the use of junior classes;' a 'Manual of Modern Geography, Mathematical, Physical, and Political, on a new plan, embracing a complete development of the River Systems of the Globe.' William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London. 1865. Mr Mackay's larger manual is well known, and has deservedly received high praise. This is an adaptation of it to beginners. It certainly contains a good deal for beginners. The peculiarity of the work is, that after giving the chief towns in a country according to its political divisions, he arranges them all again under the river basins in which they are situated, or the seas near which they lie. The pupil is also aided in the right pronunciation of peculiar words. The book is very neatly printed, but the type is rather too small for beginners. Exercises on Etymology. By WILLIAM GRAHAM, LL.D., of the Scottish Institution for the Educa tion of Young Ladies, &c. New and thoroughly revised edition. William and Robert Chambers, London and Edinburgh. "The copies in the first four books, which teach the formation of all the letters and figures, are in text hand on every half-page. Where possible and desirable, they are so arranged as to recapitulate the second part of the previous lesson before introducing a new combination. In the next four, and in Number XI., the pupil is taught to apply his knowledge of the letters to the writing out of continuous interesting narratives, beginning at a good bold round hand, and proceeding to small round and double small, engraved on every other line throughout the Dr Graham has attempted in this work to supply books. To give more practice, however, after a page a teachable text-book of etymology. It is not a mere has been written he is required to write over every dictionary of derivations, but the matter has been alternate copy line in Numbers V. VII. and XI. so arranged that lessons can be set and regularly Number XII. has couplets from "Dean Trench's learned. It may be questioned whether etymology Proverbs" and "Herbert's Church Porch," engraved should be so learned, whether it is wise to set boys in double small on every half-page, and Number or girls to the regular task of preparing the etymoXIII. presents as a small hand copy four consecutive logies of a certain number of words, and not rather lines of Gray's Elegy' on every page, with space for demanding a knowledge of etymologies as the words writing each verse three times. Numbers IX. and turn up in the course of other lessons. But if such X. are writing-books in small round hand, suitable lessons are to be given, Dr Graham's manual is to for the third and fourth standards. They contain be recommended. He has spared no pains to make exercises for transcription, alternately from script his work a thorough one. He has gone to Grimm and narrative, and from short sentences in Roman type | Curtius, Diez and Wedgewood, and many others, |