language; in our own written and book language, above all, it fills so
large a part that we perhaps hardly know how much of their reading falls
meaningless upon the eye and ear of children in our elementary schools,
from their total ignorance of either Latin or a modern language derived
from it. For the little of languages that can be taught in our
elementary schools, it is far better to go to the root at once; and
Latin, besides, is the best of all languages to learn grammar by. But it
should by no means be taught as in our classical schools; far less time
should be spent on the grammatical framework, and classical literature
should be left quite out of view. A second language, and a language
coming very largely into the vocabulary of modern nations, is what Latin
should stand for to the teacher of an elementary school. I am convinced
that for his purpose the best way would be to disregard classical Latin
entirely, to use neither Cornelius Nepos, nor Eutropius, nor Cæsar, nor
any _delectus_ from them, but to use the Latin Bible, the Vulgate. A
chapter or two from the story of Joseph, a chapter or two from
Deuteronomy, and the first two chapters of St. Luke's Gospel would be
the sort of delectus we want; add to them a vocabulary and a simple
grammar of the main forms of the Latin language, and you have a
perfectly compact and cheap school book, and yet all that you need. In
the extracts the child would be at home, instead of, as in extracts from
classical Latin, in an utterly strange land; and the Latin of the
Vulgate, while it is real and living Latin, is yet, like the Greek of
the New Testament, much nearer to modern idiom, and therefore much
easier for a modern learner than classical idiom can be. True, a child
whose delectus is taken from Cornelius Nepos or Cæsar will be better
prepared perhaps for going on to Virgil and Cicero than a child whose
delectus is taken from the Vulgate. But we do not want to carry our
elementary schools into Virgil or Cicero; one child in five thousand,
with a special talent, may go on to higher schools, and to Virgil, and