we are not incapable of
learning foreign languages well. We know the story of the little boy
reprimanded by the magistrate for his folly in running away from home
because he was obliged to learn French, and his haughty reply that if
foreigners wished to speak to him they might learn his language. But our
children have outgrown him, as to his declaration if not as to his want
of diligence, and we are in general reforming our methods of teaching so
much that it will soon be inexcusable not to speak one or two languages
well, besides our own.

The question of pronunciation and accent has been haunted by curious
prejudices. An English accent in a foreign tongue has been for some
speakers a refuge for their shyness, and for others a stronghold of
their patriotism. The first of these feared that they would not be truly
themselves unless their personality could take shelter beneath an accent
that was unmistakably from England, and the others felt that it was like
hauling down the British flag to renounce the long-drawn English
"A-o-o." And, curiously, at the other extreme, the slightest tinge of an
English accent is rather liked in Paris, perhaps only among those
touched with Anglomania. But now we ought to be able to acquire whatever
accent we choose, even when living far away from every instructor,
having the gramophone to repeat to us untiringly the true Spanish
"manana" and the French "ennui." And the study of phonetics, so much
developed within the last few years, makes it unpardonable for teachers
of modern languages to let the old English faults prevail.

We have had our succession of methods too. The old method of learning
French, with a _bonne_ in the nursery first, and then a severely
academic governess or tutor, produced French of unsurpassed quality-But
it belonged to home education, it required a great deal of leisure, it
did not adapt itself to school curricula in which each child, to use the
expressive American phrase, "carries" so many subjects that the hours
and minutes for each have to be jealously counted out. There have been a
series of methods succeeding one another which can scarcely be called
more than quack methods of learning languages, claiming to be the
natural method, the maternal method, the only rational method, etc.
Educational advertisements of these have been magnificent in their
promise, but opinions are not entirely at one as to the results.

The conclusions which suggest themselves after s