ould be found fault with,
if their pupils were supposed to have made little way in that first
function of language which is never to be called into exercise.

I do not rest satisfied with quoting the palpable inconsistency between
the practice of the teacher and the polemic of the defender of
languages. I believe, further, that it is not expedient to carry on so
many different acquisitions together. If you want to teach thorough
English, you need to arrange a course of English, allot a definite time
to it, and follow it with undivided attention during that time. If you
wish to teach Philology you must provide a systematic scheme, or else
a text-book of Philology, and bring together all the most select
illustrations from languages generally. So for Logic and for Taste.
These subjects are far too serious to be imparted in passing allusions
while the pupil is engaged in struggling with linguistic difficulties.
They need a place in the programme to themselves; and, when so provided
for, the small dropping contributions of the language teacher may easily
be dispensed with.

[SECONDARY ENDS OF LANGUAGE NOT PRESSED.]

The argument for Languages may, no doubt, take a bolder flight, and go
so far as to maintain that the teacher does not need to turn aside from
his plain path to secure these secondary ends--now the only valuable
ends. The contention may be that in the close and rigorous attention to
mere interpretation, just as if interpretation were still the living
use, these other purposes are inevitably secured--good English,
universal grammar, logic, taste, &c. I think, however, that this is too
far from the fact to be very confidently maintained. Of course, were it
correct, the teacher should never have departed from it, as the best
teachers continually do, and glory in doing.

On the face of the thing, it must seem an unworkable position to
surrender the value of a language, as a language, and keep it up for
something else. The teaching must always be guided by the original,
although defunct, use; this is the natural, the easy, course to follow;
for the mass of teachers at all times it is the broad way. Whatever the
necessities of argument may drive a man to say, yet in his teaching he
cannot help postulating to himself, as an indispensable fiction, that
his pupils are some day or other to hear, to read, to speak, or to write
the language.

The intense conservatism in the matter of Languages--the alacrity to
prescrib