Fardin des Racines Grecques.

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guilty of a great innovation. They taught it directly from the French, and not through the medium of Latin. The Jesuits stigmatised this as impious. 'Is it not,' they said, 'to destroy at the same time the French and Latin languages, and to break the connection which has lasted for ages between France and Rome?' Indeed, as Lancelot remarks, and as many others have thought besides, Greek is easier for children than Latin. The words are hard, but the construction is simple. No book exists in Latin so easy and attractive for children as the Odyssey of Homer. There is much to be said for teaching Greek before Latin. This was the practice of the great Étienne, of Bishop Blomfield, and of James Mill.

The garden of Greek roots, however useful in its day, would now justly incur severe criticism. It is a catalogue of simple Greek words, not roots in the strict philological sense, arranged in short rhyming stanzas with their meanings in French. M. Dübner, in a letter to Sainte Beuve (Port Royal iii. 620), has some admirable remarks on this book. I. Lancelot takes too little ac

count of usage. Very rare words are found side by side with very common words, and some of the words included have even been forged by the grammarians. 2. He mixes up poetical words with those in common use. 3. By the exigencies of rhyme he is often led to give a false meaning. Indeed the book is entirely out of date, and is rendered quite useless by the excellent dictionaries of modern times. Lancelot's rhymes contain about 3,000 words, whereas those most necessary to be known are not more than 600 or 700. M. Dübner says, at the same time, that other reforms which he himself proposed to the University of Paris, from 1856 to 1863, were similar to those inaugurated by the teachers of Port Royal, of the exist

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ence of which he was then ignorant. Among these were to attack Greek directly and not through the medium of Latin; to begin to read immediately after having learnt the regular declensions and conjugations; to learn the syntax by observation, and not to go over it systematically until it had become familiar by usage; to read a great deal, not to compose until the power of easy reading had been acquired; to allow the pupils to choose their own subjects for composition according to the matters which most interested them in their reading; to put an end to the prodigious abuse of written versions. If this advice had been followed the classical languages would have had a better chance than they now have of holding their own in the French curriculum.

Another feature of the Port Royal education is the important place which they gave to modern languages. Lancelot wrote methods of learning both Italian and Spanish, and four treatises on Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish poetry. But the advanced character of their teaching is best seen by their works on general grammar and on logic, two models of good sense applied to subjects, the very teaching of which was a novelty. The general grammar is due to the powerful mind of Arnauld. He attempted to penetrate into the philosophy of the art of speech, the science of language. Bacon had before noted a work of this kind as a desideratum to be filled up. The time was not yet come when it could be done with success. Since the time of the Jansenists the discovery of Sanscrit and its relations to Greek and Latin, of the Indian conception of grammar as opposed to the Alexandrian, the clear definition of the principal families of languages, and the relegation of Hebrew to its proper place among them, have led to the construction of a science of language which rests on fact and not on theory.

Yet Arnauld deserves great credit for having seen that a science of comparative grammar was an intellectual possibility. The Port Royal logic, perhaps the most celebrated of their works, owes its origin to the same commanding mind. It is based on the Discours de la Méthode' of Descartes, and on the essays of Pascal, ' De l'Esprit Géométrique,' and 'De l'Art de Persuader.' It breaks at once with the formal logic of the Schoolmen. It divides the operations of the mind into four. I. Conception (or ideas). 2. Judgment (or propositions). 3. Reasoning. 4. Arrangement (or method). In treating of the syllogism it remarks, that the greater part of the errors of mankind arise rather from reasoning on false principles than from reasoning badly on the principles which they adopt. The chapter on fallacies is particularly instructive. The examples have constant reference to practical life or to the inculcation of good moral principles. The Elements of Geometry,' by Arnauld, which were long in use at Port Royal before they were printed, were so good that Pascal destroyed the treatise which he had composed on the same subject.

The discipline of Port Royal was not at all severe, and was maintained by the self-sacrifice of those who conducted it. The charge given to them by their master was: Speak little, bear much, pray more. The hours of work were three in the morning and two and a half in the afternoon. Books were dispensed with as far as possible, and great use was made of conversation. Lessons were often given in the open air, by the side of a stream, or under the shade of trees. The education of girls was cared for by Angélique Arnauld and Jacqueline Pascal as carefully as Nicole and Lancelot cared for that of the boys. What a contrast between the direct attack on the mind and intelligence of the pupil made in these schools

and the ingenious waste of time practised by the Jesuits. The Jansenists were the best hope that French education ever had, and their success was too much for the jealousy of their rivals. Neither piety, nor wit, nor virtue could save them. In them a light was quenched which would have given a different direction to the education of France and of Europe. No one can visit without emotion the retired cloister which lies hidden amongst the forests of Versailles, neglected by strangers, scarcely thought of by its neighbours, where the brick dove-cot, the pillars of the church, the trees of the desert, alone remain to speak to us of Pascal, Arnauld, Tillemont, Racine, and the Mère Angélique.

CHAPTER IX.

ROUSSEAU.

Émile' of Rousseau. It hundred years before the

PROBABLY no work on the subject of education has produced so much effect as the appeared in 1762, just one appointment of the Public School Commission, which may be regarded as a new departure in English education. It rapidly made the tour of Europe and was translated into most European languages. It was regarded as the herald of a new age. About that time the accession of Frederick the Great, in 1740, had inaugurated an era in which philosophical theories of social regeneration were at last to be put into practice. The Seven Years' War was just at an end, and Europe was entering on a period of comparative peace, which was employed in most countries in attempting to remedy the evils of generations of misgovernment by arbitrary legislation. It might well be thought that the world stood at the threshold of a new order. The abuses which afterwards resulted in the French Revolution were acknowledged, but it was thought possible to remove them without so violent a convulsion No wonder that much, far too much, was expected from education. Even Kant, the philosopher of Königsberg, more regular in his habits than the town