his own Tongue, that he uses every moment, than to have the vain
Commendation of others for a very insignificant quality. This I find
universally neglected, and no care taken any where to improve Young Men in
their own Language, that they may thoroughly understand and be Masters of
it. If any one among us have a facility or purity more than ordinary in his
Mother Tongue, it is owing to Chance, or his Genius, or any thing, rather
than to his Education or any care of his Teacher. To Mind what _English_
his Pupil speaks or writes is below the Dignity of one bred up amongst
_Greek_ and _Latin_, though he have but little of them himself. These are
the learned Languages fit only for learned Men to meddle with and teach:
_English_ is the Language of the illiterate Vulgar."--_Locke, on
Education_, p. 339; _Fourth Ed., London_, 1699.

[56] A late author, in apologizing for his choice in publishing a grammar
without forms of praxis, (that is, without any provision for a stated
application of its principles by the learner,) describes the whole business
of _Parsing_ as a "dry and uninteresting recapitulation of the disposal of
a few parts of speech, and their _often times told_ positions and
influence;" urges "the _unimportance_ of parsing, _generally_;" and
represents it to be only "a finical and ostentatious parade of practical
pedantry."--_Wright's Philosophical Gram._, pp. 224 and 226. It would be no
great mistake to imagine, that _this gentleman's system_ of grammar,
applied in any way to practice, could not fail to come under this
unflattering description; but, to entertain this notion of parsing in
general, is as great an error, as that which some writers have adopted on
the other hand, of making this exercise their sole process of inculcation,
and supposing it may profitably supersede both the usual arrangement of the
principles of grammar and the practice of explaining them by definitions.
It is asserted in Parkhurst's "English Grammar for Beginners, on the
Inductive Method of Instruction," that, "to teach the child a definition at
the outset, is beginning at the _wrong end_;" that, "with respect to all
that goes under the name of etymology in grammar, it is learned chiefly by
practice in parsing, and scarcely at all by the aid of definitions."--
_Preface_, pp. 5 and 6.

[57] Hesitation in speech may arise from very different causes. If we do
not consider this, our efforts to remove it may make it worse. In most
instances,