ith living languages: but how is it to be applied to dead
languages? The Experimentalist retorts by asking what is essential to
this mode? Partly the necessity which the pupil is laid under of using
the language daily for the common intercourse of life, and partly his
hearing it spoken by those who thoroughly understand it. 'Stimulus to
exertion then, and good models, are the great advantages of this mode
of instruction:' and these, he thinks, are secured even for a dead
language by his system: the first by the motives to exertion which
have already been unfolded; and the second by the acting of Latin
dramas (which had been previously noticed in his Exposition of the
system). But a third imitation of the _natural_ method he places in
the use of translations, 'which present the student with a dictionary
both of words and phrases arranged in the order in which he wants
them,' and in an abstinence from all use of the grammar, until the
learner himself shall come to feel the want of it; _i. e._ using it
with reference to an experience already accumulated, and not as an
anticipation of an experience yet to come. The ordinary objection to
the use of translations--that they produce indolent habits, he answers
thus: 'We teach by the process of _construing_; and therefore, even
with the translation before him, the scholar will have a task to
perform in matching the English, word by word, with the language which
he is learning.' For this _natural_ method of learning languages he
alleges the authority of Locke, of Ascham, and of Pestalozzi. The best
method, with those who have advanced to some degree of proficiency, he
considers that of double translations--_i. e._ a translation first of
all into the mother tongue of the learner, and a re-translation of
this translation back into the language of the original. These, with
the help of extemporaneous construing, _i. e._ construing any passage
at random with the assistance of a master who supplies the meaning of
the unknown words as they arise (a method practised, it seems, by Le
Febvre the father of Madame Dacier, by others before his time, and by
Condillac since)--compose the chief machinery which he employs for the
communication of dead languages.

_Chap. V. On Elocution._--In this chapter there is not much which is
very important. To read well, the Experimentalist alleges, presupposes
so much various knowledge, especially of that kind which is best
acquired by private reading, and