your mind will feel and work on, gnawing, gathering, grasping at every thing, and assimilating the intellectual flakes on all sides, every minute, every day in the year, till, without a moment's fatigue, you have built such a stronghold of practical French, that it can never be shaken, never melt away, from your memory. And if you want wings, now, you will find them there, and ascend to a better sphere on high, where human genius - Homer, Horace, Shakspeare, Corneille, Molière, and Lamartine-speaks the only human language that can never die!

PART B.

In the mean time, let us attend you to your work at home, or at school, during some quiet hour, exclusively devoted to your French studies, in the interval of two recitations; for you must, first, have time, as well as the will, to succeed.

If, on coming out of class, you replace books and copy books on the shelf, without once looking in them till next recitation, why, their contents will stay on the shelf, to be sure, and not in your memory. Mark this well: the best lesson is, in the end, what you (not the teacher) can make it. If, after school, you do not work his part again down your brains, you built on sand. You have received no lesson, no instruction. And the more such lessons you take, the more unknown ground you leave behind; and, consequently, the more difficulties you create before you. You walk in utter darkness to follow an illusion. You can no longer learn the real thing; and, finally, you will know nothing.

On the contrary, if you rehearse-regularly, methodically rehearse, every day -the teacher's work, you realize it, digest it, make it your own forever, and in a few minutes! There is not one point lost. You remember all in all; and as every thing behind is perfectly clear, (known ground,) you are constantly advancing, progressing in the light, and feel that each successive lesson is easier, and works deeper, than any one before. And so it is; you treasure up, every day, some new, early fruit, which cannot but soon ripen into the most accomplished French scholarship. During the class is the time for ATTENTION; and now for ACTION and REACTION. Now, indeed, is your turn to make the lesson good - in two words, to study and practise by yourself. On these points hangs your success, and we trust you will find it easy to accomplish both of them with the aid of the following memorandum :

STUDENT'S OUT-OF-SCHOOL-HOURS NOTES.

1. Rehearse your pronunciation of the last two or three lessons in your French reading book. (See above, for directions, " Student's Parsing," page xxi.)

2. Review most thoroughly all that you have written to-day from dictation; that is to say, compare at leisure copy book No. 1 with your printed text; revise

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3. Put your correct copy book (No. 2) in complete order, every day, dividing each page into two equal columns, the left for the French lesson, and the right one for its translation in English.

4. Now shut your reading book, and, as you can never write too much French, (especially at present,) re-copy the last dictated lesson, just revised by yourself, from copy book No. 1, in your left column of copy book No. 2.

You will find more advantage than you suppose, in the mere act of copying a foreign language correctly. (See Teacher's Part B, pages xxxviii., and xxxix.) We regard it as the easiest means to acquire, quite accurately, French orthography, and even syntax. Indeed, when used as regular practice, as a systematic plan of imitation, for a reasonable time, it never fails.

There is in the apparently simple operation a very complete mysterious power, which is generally much neglected by students of every grade. Despise it not; make constant use of it; for whilst performing an easy, correct work, you will surely take the lasting, deep-rooted, good habit of writing perfect French.

You feel no fatigue; your mind is quiet, but intently watching, directing your fingers, and (by force of the very act) constrained to know better to recollect, or learn, all the constituent parts of the language, and, gradually, their full mechanism; and so truly that every particular must first take both body and form before your mind's eye, in order to appear in the blank under your pen. And it cannot be otherwise; ideas, words, grammar, idiomatic features, all rules, all previous and present corrections, every thing, is there clearly seen and investigated in the electric work of thought, as you write, or, rather, before your fingers can write at all.

Your attention is continually but comfortably on the stretch during this secure exercise; you have time to feel, to think, time to remember, time to compare, to judge; in short, you can realize, and do realize, and learn, in the most tangible manner, one page of correct French in less than half an hour. Well, believe our old experience, when you write one page thus, every day, in your copy book No. 2, you are gradually but actually writing the whole French language on the tables of your memory.

5. In the right side column of this copy book, record your idiomatic English translation of the lesson just opposite to the French text; and never fail to add this important complement to every new number entered in the French column. You must always know the thorough meaning of what you write, or say, in French, and should never be satisfied with the nearly-so-and-so. These French and English features of the same conversational style are indispensable to you, at present, for sound practice; and who knows but, in after years, you may consult them again, in your need, as the surest annals of your French scholarship?

it with a piece of paper, and fairly try to reproduce it, by re-translating, orally, into French, your own English translation. In the first attempt, you will very likely steal a glance or two at your left column; but persevere; and by and by, after a short pause, (in a few minutes, or a quarter of an hour, more or less, as you feel able or disposed to practise,) repeat this exercise, with a firm determination not to look at the French. If you succeed, go through it anew, and several times, to make sure of your improvement. If you fail, O, by all means rehearse the whole at once! try again and again, both on the same lesson, and on some other paragraphs, amongst your old studied numbers, till you have better luck, that is, till you "know better." Do so every day: it is one of the most scholarlike and effective means you can use to learn the speaking of French, the best possible substitute for oral French translation from English text books.

Of the various natural or artificial forces that can work the end, none should be neglected; but we particularly recommend this substitute to your very early attention; for, if you can acquire the habit of re-translating aloud your own English column into French, you will be not unpleasantly surprised at the substantial result which you must very rapidly obtain from this excellent and easy self-teaching.

7. If you are an advanced student, now is the time to shut both your book and copy books. You know the text; it is a short narrative of some particular historical or biographical incidents. The business in hand is, simply to relate the same facts in French exactly as you would do in English, using either the very words of the French paragraph, or any other ones you may already know. Repeat this exercise at home, by yourself, always aloud, and several times every day, so that you be, at any time, prepared to deliver fluently, in the school room, your original relation of all the facts contained in every one of your new studied numbers.

The divine gift of speech is a distinct organic power of the brain, an intellectual element, and so real that it could almost be measured as the heat of the sun, 25° below zero in one man, and 125° above in his own brother; but still it is a physiological force, which, as such, must submit to the law of human progress, and certainly, within certain limits, increase by exercise and good training.

This is trite matter of fact, behind the curtain of real life: the greatest orators PREPARE, at home, what they tell us so well in their native language. Why would you not do it in French? The learning of their very best speeches might be called speaking gymnastics, as well as our poor teaching of this humble conversational style (150° below them.) The magic and power of their eloquence belong to a far distant, higher world, in manner and matter; but the man's means, the artist's effort, name it what you will, preparatory exercise, or preparatory study and practice, or simply rehearsal, is strikingly the same thing, la chose obligée.

8. If you are a beginner, open both your pronouncing reading book and copy books, and all your books. Rehearse first, and write every thing conformably to your notes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5; and then never fail to commit to memory all your studied paragraphs, so that you, too, should be always prepared fluently to recite them, "to speak them," at the next recitation. Practise this exercise every day, as a regular system, and see above our reasons for advising you to do so. (Teacher's Part B, No. 3, pages xxxvii., xxxviii., and xxxix.)

Experience has now proved that phrase books do not keep their promise. Questions and answers are certainly very useful, nay, indispensable, and fortunately very easy to learn; but all the collections of colloquial sentences printed in Paris, as well as all modern French grammars published in America, are full of them, and they never have taught any man alive to speak French, especially correct French. The former books are good as translation, to save time, instead of losing it in thumbing dictionaries; but with them no one can teach real practice. The latter-American grammars-are necessary to impart the theory of the language; and notwithstanding some inaccuracies, (which ought to be mended in subsequent editions,) we certainly prefer them, for teaching Americans, to any French work made in Paris wholly for native Frenchmen, (and reprinted in New York for the American student.) French grammarians do not know a word of English: then their books cannot contain the most essential part of ours the corresponding idiomatic features of both languages! Then they can impart nothing to us but one side of the question. Thus it is that the worst American book, which gives an idea of the whole, is far more valuable to all teachers and schools in America, than the best one-sided book published in Paris. But still, with all our native-American-French-grammars, no one can teach real practice. Dismembered parts of sentences are in direct opposition to the synthesis of sentences; and however numerous they may be, every one of them is a mere grammatical example, and nothing else.

Phrase books and grammatical examples should be used for what they are, as most excellent means to their respectively possible ends, but neither as the instrument with which any one can teach or learn practically the speaking of French.

For this special purpose, besides pronunciation, a special book was wanted. Conversation does not consist in merely asking or answering a few stereotyped questions, as "Parlez-vous Français?" "Très peu, monsieur." "Comment

"Oui, monsieur, J'AI LE CHAPEAU;" and the like, which too often make up the whole mnemonic vocabulary of the American traveller. And it is to spare him great regret and inconvenience, in Europe, and to fill up a gap in French teaching, in America, that we have gathered in this volume some of the little extra ways and means which we have been using for the last ten years, in Boston, to oblige our pupils to hear, to pronounce, and to write native French correctly, so as to understand and speak it themselves, both correctly and fluently, as a living language. Of course, its theoretical structure and mechanism must be imparted step by step. (And perhaps we may publish in another work our own views as to the shortest and surest way to do it through a logical, though very easy, course of progressive studies.)

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But, in real practice, - our ground, now, there is neither beginning nor end; it is a circle - the circle of perpetual motion. We must leap fearlessly within its vortex, and catch at what we can, and take hold of every thing, and turn and turn again, and ever again, till we think we have seen or said all; which can never happen, (even in our own native language.) Still, this is the only way to rapid success, as complete as it can possibly be. Therefore, it is evident that our beginners are expected to attend to their theoretical studies in their usual school books. As to the majority of our readers, we what almost all American students are every where, suppose them to be, way or other, a little acquainted with French grammar, but struggling with inexperience, or the influence of the wrong imitation, (too early literary pursuits,) and disheartened by a timid, uncertain pronunciation, which especially oppose their further improvement. And so can we at once enter, with all of them, into the above practical circle of French pronouncing and speaking gymnastics, which will be found, by the majority, very easy exercises, after a few weeks' experience. But in all training of man's natural powers, mental or physical, small doses at the outset is the rule, (and, if possible, attractive ones.) This condition, being among the foremost conditions of success, will account for the choice and shortness of our paragraphs at the beginning of this volume, and for their systematic increase in extent and importance which gradually follows through the book the ascending scale of numerical order.

And we wish it to be understood that this arrangement is essentially calculated, not only to husband the student's time and strength, but also to minister to all the wants of the teacher. For instance, to make of a confused mass of extracts a very handy collection of ready-made instruments for any possible kind of practical purposes, and as quickly found as their own numbered pages; to call to every body's mind in a large class, by simply naming one or two figures, both the exact work of the day, and the whole lesson for next recitation; to identify the