being unknown, we are relatively strong. And this he represents as the
principal period of instruction. This remark is indeed still more
striking, when applied to a pupil, the progress of whose imagination is
sedulously retarded. But it is not destitute either of truth or utility
in the most general application we can possibly give it. Let it be
observed, that Rousseau fixes the commencement of this period at twelve
years. I would choose to take it at ten.

However we may find it convenient to distribute the productions of
nature into classes, and her operations into epochas, yet let it be
remembered, that her progress is silent and imperceptible. Between a
perfect animal and vegetable, the distinction is of the highest order.
Between distant periods we may remark the most important differences.
But the gradations of nature are uninterrupted. Of her chain every link
is compleat. As therefore I shall find in commencing at ten years, that
my time will be barely sufficient for the purposes to which I would
appropriate it, I consider this circumstance as sufficient to determine
my election. A youth of ten years is omnipotent, if we contrast him with
a youth of eight.

But if the languages constitute so valuable a part of a just system of
education, the next question is, in what manner they are to be taught.
Indeed, I believe, if the persons employed in the business of education
had taken half the pains to smooth the access to this department of
literature, that they have employed to plant it round with briars and
thorns, its utility and propriety, in the view we are now considering
it, would scarcely have been questioned.

There is something necessarily disgusting in the forms of grammar.
Grammar therefore is made in our public schools the business of a
twelvemonth. Rules are heaped upon rules with laborious stupidity. To
render them the more formidable, they are presented to our youth in the
very language, the first principles of which they are designed to teach.
For my own part, I am persuaded the whole business of grammar may be
dispatched in a fortnight. I would only teach the declensions of nouns,
and the inflexions of verbs. For the rest, nothing is so easily
demonstrated, as that the auxiliary sciences are best communicated in
connection with their principals. Chronology, geography, are never so
thoroughly understood, as by him that treats them literally as the
handmaids of history. He, who is instructed in Latin w