es. Those who adopt the new method appear to think the limitations
imposed by the immature child's mind worthy of imitation when dealing
with the riper adult. Rule of Thumb has the advantage that being born of
and acquired by practice it can be applied and put into practice, but it
is certainly rather late in the day to revert to it in the acquirement of
languages. We have had some experience of Rule of Thumb in this town.
The Grammatical Methods of teaching languages are those of teaching any
science in a thorough manner. They classify the various parts of speech
for the purpose of reducing them to rule, these are studied in detail and
the rule defines the conditions and limitations under which they can be
used in construction. This rule teaches us how we can correctly form
thousands of sentences on the model of one, instead of regarding each as
so many distinct phenomena. One Grammarian, Lennie, 47th Ed., defines
Grammar as the art of speaking and writing the English Language with
propriety. I venture to say that in dealing with a foreign language one
cannot express one's self with accuracy, nay one cannot be confident of
expressing one's own meaning at all without a grammatical knowledge of
it. But, of course, speech means practice, and no amount of theory can
become a substitute for this.

Mr. Gouin was a youthful unmarried student of Caen University
distinguished by a capacious but not very retentive memory. He was sent
by the Professors to attend lectures at Berlin University and Hamburg and
proceeded to master German. He learnt the German Grammar in ten days.
But being unable to understand the lectures he learns the 1000 German
roots in four days, and again tries the lecture room with the same
ill-success. He then decided to learn the German Dictionary by heart and
did so in one month, but on again attending the lecture room, he was
still unable to understand. He passed ten months in similar efforts and
states that on one occasion he attended the lectures for a whole week,
without understanding a single sentence. He subsequently states, that
his previous ten months work, so far from being useful to him in a new
effort was detrimental. He had a wrong pronunciation, and there was not
a single verb in the whole language to which he did not attribute a
meaning other than the true one. He had to unlearn, then relearn. After
ten months labours he returned to France unsuccessful. Under a teacher's
guidan