PROVINCIAL COUNCIL.

Evening Star, Issue 3247, 17 July 1873, Page 2

PROVINCIAL COUNCIL.

Tuesday, July 15,

MB HAWTHORNE’S EXPLANATION.

When the House resumed at seven o’clock, Mr Hawthorne, the Rector of the High School, made the following statement at the Bar of the House, in respect to the Report of the Commission appointed to inquire into the High School Mr Speaker and Gentlemen of the Provincial Council—l thank you sincerely for your courtesy in acceding to my request to be heard at the Bar of the Provincial Council, on the subject of the Report of the High School Commission, which was lately laid on the table of this House. I feel the more grateful for this privilege, because the application was of an unuSual kind, and might, without any great injustice, have been declined, on the ground that the granting of it would establish a dangerous precedent, and interfere with the conduct of public business. It was, doubtless, an apprehension of this kind that led some members of the Council to oppose the application, which, otherwise, I believe would nave been granted as unanimously as the wish appeared to be general that I should bo heard through some channel. Before proceeding to consider the Report, and to point out those portions of the evidence which, in my opinion, are unfair to the school and unjust to myself, I feel it my duty, in order to remove any misapprehension that may exist on this subject, to state at the outset that I have no reflections to make on the Commission. The gentlemen composing the Commission acted throughout the long and laborious investigation with uniform courtesy and strict impartiality, {although I must confess that I felt‘hurt at the refusal of the Commission to accede to the request contained in my letter of 29th May (referred to in my letter to the Speaker), and at the subsequent offer that I should bo allowed to peruse, “ but not comment on,” the reports of Professors Sale and Shand. I nevertheless entirely exonerate the Commission in the former case from any intentional injustice, and in the latter from any intentional discourtesy. To the details of the report and evidence it is neither my province nof my desire to refer; I shall confine xnysejf, therefore, almost entirely to the report of Professor Sale, which forms a portion of the evidence on which the Cpramis-* sion has based its report. In order to place the whole question of the High School and the Report and evidence of the Commission fairly before you, it will be necessary (of ,m to take a »wvey o( the

history and work of the school for the last four years. I began my work as Rector of the school on the 17th of February, 1869. On the occasion of my installation, as the ceremony of my official introduction to my colleagues and my future pupils was called, his Honor the Superintendent, in addressing those who were assembled in the School Hall, spoke as follows “There is one point to which, with your Kermission, I will advert —that is, that under [r Hawthorne’s administration of the school Classics will not be so exclusively taught as hitherto. I believe he is fully alive to the importance of teaching not only the dead but living languages, ana that he will introduce the teaching of natural sciences. Indeed, I may say that it was the decided views he has expressed on this 1 itter point, and his successful carrying out of the system in the place he has come from —Queensland—that influenced myself in voting for him. I look forward to very great results from the introduction of the natural sciences to the school.” _ This was the first intimation I received that any undue attention had been given to the classical studies in the school. In order to inform myself fully of the proficiency of the pupils in the various branches which then formed the curriculum of study, I held viva voce and written examinations of the several classes in succession. In Classics. I found that the best boys of the school were on the whole decidedly good—that they had gone over a great deal of ground, and, as far as I could judge, that their work had been done carefully. In reading over the translations, however, I was surprised to see that the spelling in many cases was very defective, some gross mistakes occurring in ordinary English words, and that the writing, with some few exceptions, was simply execrable. From inquiries which I made, I found that the Rector, and Messrs Abram, Pope, and Brent had all been engaged more or less in teaching the Classics, and that out of a total of twenty-six teaching hours in the week, fifteen had, as a rule, been devoted in the upper Forms to that branch of study alone. I found also that Mr Brent, who had been originally appointed as Mathematical Master, had been in the habit of taking one of the junior Forms in Latin, and English, including Geography, &c. The Mathematical department of the School I found, as I was prepared to expect from the fact just mentioned, in an unsatisfactory state, although a few decidedly clever boys were well advanced. Euclid I found had been almost entirely neglected, owing to the Mathematical Master’s time being occupied in teaching subjects altogether unconnected with his own department. I found also that Chemistry had been taught very successfully to the upper classes during the previous half-year by Mr Pope, and was informed that this was the only branch of physical science that had ever been studied by the pupils. On extending my inquiries beyond the school, I became aware of the existence of a very general impression that the Mathematical department was in a very unsatisfactory state, and that the Mathematical Master was held responsible for this state of things—some going so far as to say that, in their opinion, Mr Brent was unfit for his position. Several gentlemen of education, however, whom I met about this time, and who were in a position to attribute the existing state of things to its proper cause, did not at all sympathise with the popular feeling. By this time I had had ample opportunities of forming a correct judgment of Mr Brent’s qualifications as a teacher of Mathematics, and I accordingly took every opportunity that presented itself of contradicting what I felt te be so unjust a charge against that gentleman. Mr Brent appears to have been held responsible for the efficiency of the Mathematical department of the School, while the time placed at his disposal in which to teach Mathematics was utterly inadequate to secure anything like even moderate progress in this extensive and important branch of study. Considering the difficulties under which Mr Brent labored in this respect, I was surprised to find his pupils as far advanced as they were. I now saw that a redistribution of the teaching power was imperatively necessary, if the school was to meet the wishes of the people at large, and to supply a broader, deeper, and more practically useful education than it hitherto afforded ; and I accordingly arranged the school into departments. Mr Brent took the entire control and management of the Mathematical department, including Arithmetic, Algebra, Modern Geometry, and Trigonometry ; Mr Abram the English Department, including Political and Physical Geography ; and Mr Pope the French ana Physical Science, and the Third Form in tne greater portion of their work; while I was engaged myself in teaching the Classics, Euclid, and a portion of the Physical Sciences, and in the general supervision of the school Under the new time table, the Sixth Form was engaged seven hours a week in Latin and Greek (as compared with; fifteen under previous arrangements), including one hour which was devoted to the Greek Testament; ninehoursin Mathematics, and nine hours in French, English, &c, The Fifth Form was engaged five hours in Classics, eight hours in Mathematics, and twelve hours in English, French, Writing, &c. ; while the Fourth Form was engaged live hours in Classics, seven hours in Mathematics, and thirteen hours in English, French, Writing, &c. This time table, with some slight alterations, which were not of a character, however, to affect very materially the relative proportions of time devoted to the different branches, continued in operation down to the end of last year. In little more than three months after this rearrangement of the work of the School, ft very decided improvement began to show itself in all the departments except the Classical—in which, however, steady progress continued to be made. New life seemed to have been infused into the School; public confidence appeared to have been restored; the numbers steadily increased, in spite of the Board’s regulation, whieh barred admission to the School by an entrance examination under which a large number of boys were periodically rejected—in one year between thirty and forty. The average attendance for the four years ending December, 1872, showed a steady increase, the numbers being 70, 88, 120, and 126 ; the smallest attendance, in 1860, being 64, and the highest, in 1872, being 137. Had proper arrangements been made for the regular inspection of the School by competent examiners during these four yean, the'efficiency and usefulness of the School would have been, greatly increased. Since 1871, Professor Shand pas very kindly, and at considerable inconvenience to hiiqssUt examined the pupils in some of the branches of ihe Mathematical department of the School Mr ShamTs rgpqrts l}aye always been so very favorable that it is unnecessary to quote them here. Professor Sale was also kind enough to examine, in December, 1871, a few of the best papers of the senior pupils of the school in Classics and English. As 1 wish, in a subsequent part of this statement, to refer to this report of Mr Sale’s, in connection with his report of the examination which he has just concluded, I quote it here as follows :

“ I have looked over the papers of translation from Greek and Latin, ana the Latin composition of a few of the scholars of the Sixth and Fifth Form ß * The Greek passages were taken—one from Euripides, the othgr from Xenophon, and were by no means free from difficulty. The former especially would task a good scholar to reader it accurately. Considering the difficulties of the passages, , they were translated very creditably—and, so far as I could judge from the mere translations, the knowledge shown by the students so far as it went was thorough. As to Latin, I can speak more confidently. Besides passages for translation from Virgil and Caesar, the papers also included exercises taken from Arnold’s Latin Prose Composition. The translations, especially those from Vifgil, were many of them excellent; they were done with spirit, and were faithful renderings of the original. It is evident from the translations, both from Virgil and Caesar, that the students have not only obtained an accurate insight into the meaning of the authors, but have been well trained to express themselves in English. The exercises for translation from English into Latin were all well done, and they were such as to test very fairly the knowledge of the scholars in the idiom of the Latin language. I had only time just to glance at the English papers. They included questions in English History and Geography, as well as on the construction of English' sentences, and on the meaning of words, arid also an examination of 'one of the plays of "Shakespeare, The examination was strict and searching, and the liftsw’ers, So far as I had time to look at them, showed that the subjects had been well and carefully studied.” Before proceeding to consider Mr Sale’s Report on the state of the Classical and English departments of the school in May, 1873, I shall take the liberty of respectfully requesting you to refer to page 5 of the minutes and evidence of the High School Commission. You will observe from the table at the foot of that page that in 1869, 28 pupils left the school; in 1870, 24 • in 1871, 34; and in 1872, no less than 73. The large exodus of 1872 is easily accounted for. The majority had been a considerable time at the school, had finished their school training. and leaving' to enter on the duties of life. The remainder of the Sixth Form, and some of the Fifth, left at the end of the first quarter of the present year, the majority of them to attend the University of Otago as matriculated students. The boys

last mentioned formed, with the majority of those who toft in 1872, the backbone of the school By their leaving, the school might be said to have been for the time paralysed. At this particular crisis it was decided, in direct opposition to the wishes of my colleagues and myself, to examine the school I remonstrated. My remonstrance had no effeot. The school was examined, as you are aware, and (the results of the examination are contained rin the Report which is now lying on the table of your House, awaiting your consideration. In spite, however, of all the adverse circumstances referred to, we have reason, with one single exception, to be well satisfied with the result of the investigation as contained in the Report of the Commission. With our ranks greatly thinned, the flower of the school for the time being gone, we have come forth from a severe ordeal, with the single exception alluded to, almost scatheless. Professor Shand, to use his own words, “considered the High School at the time of his visit good in Arithmetic, fair in Algebra, weak in Geometry, and excellent in Practical Trigonometry ; while the discipline seemed to been good in all the classes.” Professor Black says that on the single occasion on which ho examined pupils of the High School, he was well satisfied with their knowledge of Theoretical Chemistry. Additional evidence regarding the discipline of the school sets that question finally at rest; and by doing so puts a stop, for a time at least, to the scandalous and barefaced falsehoods that have been circulated on this subject by certain individuals. On the subject of the discipline of the school, however, I shall have more to say hereafter.

I now come to consider Mr Sale's report on the Classical department of the school For the efficiency of this department I hold myself solely responsible. I have had it almost entirely under my own control since taking charge of the school For any success that may have attended its management, I claim the praise ; for any failure in it, I am prepared to bear the blame. I will not shrink one hair’s breadth from this position. Z bare only to request that you will keep in mind the exceptional circumstances in which the school was placed at the time of Mr Sale’s examination, as shown in the evidence, and referred to in a preceding portion of this statement. Looking at these circumstances, and comparing with them the nature and mode of Mr Sale’s proceedure, and the character of his report, I do not hesitate to say that for severity and ruthless injustice, his examination of the Classical department of the High School stands without a parallel in the annals of school examinations. The Report at first sight—indeed, one might say even after two or three perusals—seems to be a most damaging one it bristles from beginning to end with the most appalling mistakes, made by the unfortunate victims of careless teaching. The Classical department of the school would appear to be covered from head to foot with wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores. And what is more alarming still, there seems to be no balm in Gilead, ana no physician there. Now and again, indeed, a thin line of silvery light is seen fringing the dark cloud for a moment, but it soon fades fitfully away, and the darkness becomes more intense, and everything is again wrapped in impenetrable gloom. It is ing, however, to feel that there are two sides to this question, as there are to every other, and that Mr Sale has only exposed one of those sides to view. It will now be my duty to unveil‘the other, and to endeavor to do something like justice to a number of lads, some of whom are very young, and all of whom are unable to state their own case. lam much obliged to Mr Sale for the luoid way in which he has stated his charges against the Classical teaching of the High School It is quite impossible to misunderstand him. His charge against the High School is that neither the Accidence nor the Syntax of Latin and Greek is taught. This charge is backed up by a sweeping condemn**-’ tion of all translation from Latin and Greek authors, as not only useless, but positively pernicious, until the pupils have been “daily and diligently exercised in repeating the Accidence until they cannot make a mistake in it, " and have also been exercised over and over again in the practice of the common syntactical usages until they are perfect in them—that is, of course, until they cannot make a mistake in them. With Mr Sale’s remarks on the importance of drilling boys thoroughly in the Accidence, I quite agree, and I am sorry that Mr Sale only gives a portion of the conversation which he informs the Commission he held with me on this subject. In that conversation I told Mr Sale that I was willing to allow that the weak point of the school at the time of his visit, as it had been for-some time previous, was the accidence, to which 1 bad not been able for various reasons to give sufficient time. I informed him, however, that 1 intended to devote much more time to that subject during the next six months. I willingly admit that the boys made a great many mistakes in the Accidence, but Mr Sale'll experience of school boys must be very slight, if he does not knew that even in the best of the home schools this is found to be the case with a large proportion of the boys. And if this be a difficulty at Home, where boys attend school on an average from eight to ten years, what is to be expected in the Colonies, where the average length of attendance is not much more than onethird of that period? and above all what was to be expected in a school so weakened as ours was? But after all, 1 must say that the way which Mr Sale has adopted of exposing the errors made by the boys in the Accidence, gives a very unfair and a very exaggerated yievy of the case. Supposing, for example, that M r Shand, in examining a school m arithmetic, were to_ take |he exercise of each boy, and underline, say in red ink f every mistake and every slip that h*d been made, the examination papers of such boys would present but a sorry spectacle to those who might be unacquainted with school work. And especially would this be the case if he were quietly to pass over, without a word of commendation, all the remaining parts of the exercise that were deserving of praise. And yet this is just what Mr Sale has done. And this brings me to a point which I wish to bring fully out, before I proceed further in the consideration of Mr Sale’s report. I refer to Mr Sale’s want of experience in the management of school boys, as distinct from University students. Mr Sale acknowledges that he has had no experience in managing young boys. This was painfully apparent in his mode of handling the classes m the High School, and I do not hesitate to say, acgouqtgd tqt a great many of the mistakes which the boys ' Hw intimidated the young boys, his peculiar xpodg of putting questions puzzled them; was calculated, indeed, to puzzle older heads than theirs, They com* plain that they could not understand him. Mr Brent, in a note which he wrote to me on the subject, says:—“ I remarked to you afterwards that Mr Sale’s manner with the boys appeared too professorial and that the boys did not seem at ease with him. I attributed this to his not having been used to teach boys, adding that Mr Shand and the hoys seemed to be at once at their ease.” An incidental expression of Mr Sale’s, which occurs in page 46, eleventh line from the bottom of the page, seems to confirm this of the casg, Mr S%je, in referring to the written exercises, says -“Thfe not done in my presence, so that the mistakes in them were certainly not due to hurry or nervousness.” This seems to imply that his presence was calculated to give rise to “ hurry or nervousness.” All practical schoolmasters know that, in the rica voce examination of a class, almost everything depends upon the examiner’s ability to handle his class, and put the boys at their ease. With regard to the Accidence of the school however, I am quite prepared to abide by the results of the Christmas examination, and I can only express a hope that the Education Board will take steps to nave the school examined at that time.

I now come to the. question of Syntax, and on this subject I join issue at once with Mr Sale, and am prepared to show that the method of teaching Syntax adopted in the High School, is a method which recommends itself to reason and common sense ; and one, moreover, which is calculated, in an eminent degree, to interest boys in the study of a language, by making them feel that they have to work out for them* ■elves, from the passage which they are reading, the great bulk of their syntactical rules, if they are ever to make any solid progress in the language thtfy are sttWyjttg. ; I afljpit &l on& that I dd not “daily and diligently exercise my boys in repeating syntactical roles until they are perfect in them, before allowing them to begin to translate. 0 I should be very sorry to be guilty of any such crulty. Of course, I do not mean to be so very foolish as to say that great scholars cannot be, and have not been made under this system. It is difficult, however, “ to prove to such men that their linguistic knowledge has come in spite of an early training that has plunged nine-tenths of their school comrades in an eternal Latin-and-Greek night.” This I do say, however, that no man ever yet became a great elaMii*! scholar without making his own grammar mentally if not in writing." Apd this is just 'the-Direct of my teaching. _ I shall be quite satisfied if I Can fet the majority of my pupils who are studying jatin to learn this all-important lesson; that it is theiy duty, fcqm the first mwasat tfiftt {#o^

Mgin to translate a line of Latin, to begm t bund up their own system of Symtax, at the same time that they render the exact thoughts of the writer they are studying, into «mp*o-and cure English. Listen to what the late John Stuart Mill says on this subject-I quote from bia Inaugural at St. Andrews . If all the improvements in the mode of teaching languages, which are already sanctioned by experience, were adopted into our classical school*, we should soon cease to hear of Latin and Greek as studies which must engross the school years, ami render impossible any other acquirements. If a boy learnt Latin and Greek on the same principle on which a mere child learns with such ease and rapidity any modem language -namely, by acquiring some familiarity with the vocabulary by practice and repetition, before being troubled ■ with grammatical rules —those rules being acquired with tenfold greater facility when the cases to which they apply are already familiar to the mind—an average schoolboy, long before the age at which schooling terminates, would be able to read fluently, and with intelligent interest, any ordinary Latin or Greek author, in prose or verse—would have a competent knowledge of the grammatical structure of both languages, and have had time besides for an ample amount of scientific instruction. # D’Arcy Thomson, one of the best classical scholars of the age, thus refers to the practice which prevails in Home schools, and which would have to bo carried out in the High bchool here if the recommendations of Mr Sale were adopted in their integrity : - “ For tho first four years of public school life, the time of a boy will be devoted chiefly—l might almost say, with a trifling exaggeration, exclusively—to the mastering of his Latin Grammar. In other words, he will set upon an abstract study of a logical kind, such as only the minority of mature intellects could ever thoroughly digest, and »nch as only the minority of this minority could ever enjoy. For weary years he will be traversing dull, uninteresting patches of Classic ground; stumbling in a twilight of intelligence; groping his way by the bewildering beams of dim, flickering lamplights.” And he then adds If Latin be essential, I contend that it should be taught by proceeding very gradually from unconscious handling towards an introspective process; from particulars to generals ; from practice to theory; from objective illustration and separate statement to_ subjective consideration and comprehensive principle; in plain words, by beginning at the beginning, and ending with the end.” Ido not hesitate to affirm that in three cases out of four, if not more, boys do not understand the syntactical rules in which it is the practice in so many schools to drill them daily. Many excellent and distinguished scholars, not being able to deny this fact without flying in the face of everyday experience, nevertheless justify the practice, and say that it is not necessary that boys should comprehend the rules at first, * ‘ and that the very difficulty surmounted in committing them to memory in an unknown tongue will imprint them the more lastingly on their understandings.” I think, however, that reason dictates “that if subjects concrete or abstract be beyond a boy’s comprehension, the less he has to do with them the better.” Mr Sale complains of the Fourth Form, that although they could translate passages from Caesar “ that were very difficult, and would have taxed the energies of an advanced scholar,” they could not explain why a particular word was in the genitive case; and from this failure on the part of the boys he draws the conclusion that they must have arrived at the meaning of the author by some species of guess-work. In the particular case to which I allude Mr Sale evidently wished the boys to repeat a syntactical rule—their simple explanation, expressed in their own words which they understood, not being considered sufficient. This system of rule-repetition, to which Mr Sale appears to attach so much importance, is condemned by some of the best scholars and teachers pf the day. D’Arcy Thomson, already quoted, in referring to this subject, says : —“Meanwhile, if upholders of the system of rule-repetition argued against my plan as unmethodic and vague, I should reply that it were better for a bov to give once in simple words, that he understood, his explanation of a grammatical phenomenon, than to account for it a thousand times by a set formula that he understood partially or not at all. And I should assort that when a child has once got a thorough mental grasp of a grammatical phenomenon, he cannot let it go though he try hard to do so, any more than an educated man, unless reduced to an unnatural imbecility, can forget that three times three make nine, or that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles. And I would add that it was with repetition, as with all things good and useful, quite possible to hare too much of it. A child, if kept continually at a few airs upon the piano, will ultimatelj lose all sense of their melody; and a boy may repeat a grammatical rule until it cease to carry an echo of meaning to his mind ; and here I am boldly premising that it originally did carry a rather faint one.” Mr Sale says, on page 46, sec. 1, “ that when the Fifth Form were doing their translation from Virgil, very little reference was made to Syntax, ftqd the little pcfercnpe that wa* made seemed to me to be not' at all likely to clear up

the ideas of the students.” As I had the management of the class at the time, I am bound to consider this a direct charge of incompetency against myself. This is not the proper tribunal at which to argue points of syntax. This much, however, I must be allowed to say —I am quite prepared to meet Mr Sale, either publicly or privately, before a body of educated men, and to take any passage of Latin for syntactical analysis selected by that body. Mr Sale may use his grammars and rules of syntax; I shall use jione, but shall explain every syntactical phenomenon in my own way ; and I shall joe quite oontent to leave the question of the respective jperits of t}ie two systems to the flepisipp pf ppr jjidgep, and'abide by the result. 1 have tP find fault with the very scant justice, or rather I should say, with the injustice, done to our boys in the matter of their English translations from Latin authors. Mr Sale admits that, both when the classes were in my hands and in his, these translations wore given in good English, and, with a few exceptions, correctly; or, rather, to put it in Mr Sale’s more charitable form, in fair English, and not incorrectly; although why he should have used the epithet fair instead of good, I am at a loss to understand —seeing that, in the very next sentence (page 46, 4th line), he states that the principal part of the lesson was occupied, not unsuccessfully, with the endeavor to select the best and most poetical English words. I ask Mr Sale why he did not give the boys an opportunity of writing out translations ef some Latin passages in their best style, and publish these alongside of the Arnold’s Exercises? justice demanded such a course, and it was cruel injustice ript to ta|ce it. The translation of a foreign language into correct English I Consider of the last degree of importance, and especially so with boys. Most men who have received a classical education remember the difficulties they have experienced in the endeavor (too often a vain one) to correct a loose and slovenly style for which they were not themselves responsible, but which was caused by the vicious system of allowing them, when boys, to translate their Latin and Greek into hybrid English. I can conscientiously say that J have nerqr, to njy knowledge, allowed a boy to leave a Sentence of Latin or Greekwithopt translating it into idiomatic English. I have been often blamed for attaching too much importance to close, accurate, and, in poetry, elegant renderings, and have been told that such renderings did not pay at competitive examinations. Well, I think higher thing* should be aimed at, in the education of boys, than success at competitive examinations. Mr Sale, in the report before you, seems to refer somewhat slightingly to this feature of the classical teaching of the High School. He did not always do so, however, as you will observe by the following extract from his Report of December, 1871. He there says, amongst other things, “ The translations, especially those from Virgil, were many of them excellent; they were done with spirit, and were faithful renderings of the original It is evident from the translations both from Virgil and Caesar, that the students have not only obtained an accurate insight into the meanings of the authors, but have been well trained to express themselves in English.” fiut listen £o what has been written on this subject by one whose name is held in great honor in the Dunedin _of the Northern hemisphere, and whose opinion, therefore, is entitled to some weight in the Dunedin of the South. “ And this topic suggests to mo a radical defect in our classical teaching. < While wo treat ancient language with a servile and superstitious reverence, we treat our own with unmerited contempt. From th* moment we begin to translate ancient, authors, we begin to corrupt the purity of English idiom. It is as though, when we took to drink French claret, we should purposely—or purposelessly —deteriorate our own English ale. tinder any it is a long and laborious task to achieve simplicity, purity, ease, and elegance jn speaking pinfl writing our oWh tongue. And it becomes ttebly' difficult When ’ Over year* when imitativeness is strong we have habituated ourselves to modes of expression only heard in classic grammar schools, only written within academic • ■ * * ’a

examination kalis. If the Idioms of foreign tongues are so crotchety as to be mastered only at the expense of our own language, they had far better be left alone. In reality they are not so. Common sense would teach us the aosur dity of supposing that a sentence of good Greek or Latin can bo satisfactorily rendered by a sentence of bad English. Every lesson in a great authority of antiquity might be, and ought to be, made a lesson in the vernacular. At all events, so thought no less a man than Pitt, and no single idiomatic expression in this latter should ever be passed by; much less should the use of such expressions be rigorously inculcated.” But enough on this subject. Our High School boys must, in tho meantime, be content with the kioks, and must not ask for the half-pence. Just one other point of Mr Sale’s report, and I have done with it. Mr Side has not shown my boys much mercy ; he cannot expect much mercy from their master. I here deliberately charge Mr Sale with having, in the boys’ exercises, marked as errors in numerous instances what can be proved, from the works of classical writers, whose authority he dare not deny, to be perfectly correct. lam aware that, in making this charge, I am laboring under a disadvantage. Mr Sale will not allow me to ask for my boys the privilege he claims for himself. It is only “ the most finished scholar,” as he say*, in the last line of p. 40, “that may, now and then, by momentary forgetfulness, be betrayed into a blunder.” I can throw no such shield over the unfortunate schoolboy. There are no less than ten cases in the Arnold’s Exercises marked wrong, which, if not as good Latin as Mr Sale’s, are quite grammatical and idiomatic. I refer to the use of ut, instead of qui, in Ex. A. and 8., 12 and 13; the use of the Infinite Mood instead of gut and the Subjunctive in Ex. C. ; the use of Vespero, instead of Vexpere, in D. 17 ; and the use of the preposition ad in E., E., and G. 17. There are others I might refer to, but I confine myself to those mentioned. Now, will it be believed, that all these idioms which Professor, Sale condemns in the case of schoolboys are sanctioned by the very best writers in the Latin language? That you may have more than my bare assertion in support of this statement, I give you my authorities. Ut, with subjunctive after dignus. Quintilian. (1). viii, 5, §l2. eras dignus ut haberes integram manum. „ (2). xii., 11, 24. dignus ut eum scisse omnia ilia credatnns. Livy. (3). xxii., 59, quum indigni, ut a vobis redimeremur, visi sumus. ~ (4). xxiii. 42. quos ut socios haberes dignos duxisti.

~ (5). xxiv., 16. Digna res visa ut simulacrum celebrati ejus diei Gracchus pingi juberct in cede Libertatis. And (6) Pliny and (7) Plautus in numerous places. Infinitive Mood after Dignus. Livy. (1.) viii., 26, Auotoribus hoc dedi, quibus dignius credi est. Quintilian. (2.) x., 1, 96, At Lyriconmi idem Horatius fere solus legi dignus. (3.) And all the poets of the Augustan Age. Vespero instead of Vesperc. Horace, Virgil, Plautus, and other Roman poets. Ad after proficisci with the names of towns. Cicero, (1.) Do Sen. 4,10. Ad Capuam profectus sum, quintoque anno post ad Tarentum. Prop. (2.) 3, 21, 1. Ad Athena* proficisci cogor. And other prose and verse writers, including Livy.

On p. 46, fifth line from the bottom. Professor Sale, in reference to the boys’ exercises, says that “the best by far of all that were sent in had coecum for coccus, in the phrase utrum mavis coccus esse an," k c. The Professor, in correcting the schoolboy for using an accusative case instead of a nominative case, has himself used the indicative mood instead of the subjunctive. The Latin should be —utrum malis coccus esse, as it appears in the third line of p. 50. To the above, Mr Sale may reply that the Latin should have been written by the boys according to the directions and idioms given in Arnold, and that hence he made the corrections referred to. But this will be no answer, because Mr Sale was aware, as ho himself states (p. 47, line 5) that a number of the boys had not done Arnold, and consequently could not be expected to know what particular idioms were given in that book. Now, I hope no one will for one moment think that I have any intention of impugning Mr Sale’s scholarship, which, if other evidence were wanting, is fully established by his University standing, and his present position. I am deeply pained to have been compelled to make the above statements. I have made them, not for my own sake, but in defence of my boys, who are unable to defend themselves, and look to me as their natural protector. And now, in conclusion, a word as to the discipline of the school. On this point the report of the Commission is very satisfactory, but very brief, as not one tithe of the evidence was taken that might have beep procured. The Commissioners, however, had sufficient before them to satisfy themselves on this point, and I do not complain. None know- the difficulties with which 1 have had to contend in the matter of school discipline, or the obstacles which were thrown in my way by people outside of the school. Some of you may be partially aware of the state of the school when I took charge of it, now years ago. I have no wish at tliis late period of time to rake up the past, and describe minutely a state of things that has now happily long since passed away, and is not likely again to return. When I began the preparation of this statement, I did intend to depict things as I actually found them : to compare the past with the present, and to append copies of all the letters whiph I have received expressing sympathy with me, on account of the gross misrepresentations which have been made on this subject by certain individuals. As the old Greek proverb says: “It is better to be wronged than to wrong. ” I feel that I do not need much sympathy. Pity is rather duo to those who, without having the slightest foundation for their statements, and in the face of the clearest evidence to the contrary, can, for their own purposes, go on day after day repeating and exaggerating the calumnies to which I have referred. I am quite satisfied to conclude my remarks on this subject by quoting the following letter, received a few days ago “ My Dear Sir, —The High School some years since was a nuisance to those living in the neighborhood; but since you have had the management of the Institution I have observed a general improvement in the outside behaviour of the pupils. So much so, that at the present time a stranger living in my house could not know that there \fas a boys’ school bn the pppo? site side of the street,—Yours truly, “Edward Hulmb.” And now, Mr Speaker and gentlemen of the Provincial Council, I have again to thank you, one and all, for your great courtesy, and for the patient manner in which you have listened to my statement. Mr Hawthorne then asked permission from the Speaker to add a few words to his written statement. Sipce coining into the Hpqse, he said, I have had a pamphlet placed in pay hands containing the addresses delivered at the opening of the University of Otago, Amongst those addresses is one by Professor Sale, a portion of which I beg to quote, in order to show that the opinions held and expressed by that gentleman in July, 1871, are diametrically opposed to those expressed in his Report on the Classical Teaching of the High School. In the latter document he condemns the school, because so little attention had been ?iven to the Grammar, and recommends that or the future the pupils be daily and diligently drilled in the accidence and syntax, until they cannot make a mistake in them. In his address he condemns in the most emphatic language “ the practice of committing to memory rules of Grammar.” The practice which he recommends in his address, as regards the teaching of syntax, is the practice which has been adopted in the High School ever since I have had charge of it. Had I beep fr,y ( ,rp, before witipij vqy siateipent, of the existence gi this stat‘cmeht iq Mr Sale’s address, I should have been disposed to omit many pf the charges which I have made against that gentleman, and should have contented myself with quoting Mr Sale of 1871 in refutation of Mr Sale of 1873. The following is the passage referred to “You will observe that I have said nothing concerning the practice, almost universal in schools, of committing to memory rulea of grammar. The omission warn Intentional. I believe »uoh an exercise to be in the great majority of oases, not only worthless, but mischievous. Use grammar by all means, but use them rationally, and treat them as books of reference. I look back with astonishment at the prodigious waste of time in my younger days by committing to memory pages and pages of indigestible rules of grammar—ndeg thougji tjiey could ()e repeated when called fqr, were never really applied in practice; for the simple reason that all boys, and, I Relieve, nearly all men, invariably reason from particulars to particulars, and never from generals to particulars. Learntogby heart, it is true, is one

of the most useful exercises in studying any language : but it is passages from good authors which should be committed to memory—passages of which the moaning and grammar already are well understood, not the rules of grammar, which when taken neat, are, to my stomach at least, both nauseous and indigestible. There may be others of more cormorantlike digestion who can assimilate grammar pure and simple; but I find, at any rate, that my own experience corresponds with that of Professor Thomson and Professor Seeley, both of them high authorities in any question connected with classical studies.

“But I will go further. Even in the very rare cases, if there be any, in which the rules of grammar are remembered and applied, and make—so to speak—a short cut for the student in learning to write Greek or Latin correctly, even there the process, instead of being beneficial, is, I believe, most hurtful. For it is not rules, but principles of grammar, which we want to get at. And these principles can only be seen by an intelligent comparison of actual passages taken from classical authors—-in fact by a process of careful and systematic induction. I will give one single example of what I mean. The usual school Latin grammars give a short rule to the effect, that when tlie relative pronoun is used to denote ‘ cause,’ it has to bo followed by the subjunctive mood. Now, if this rule were universally true —which I do not thinks it is—it would be far better learnt by seeing one or two actual examples in the course of reading, than by loading the memory with the trash in which grammatical rules are usually written. Now-, instead of learning the rule, suppose a student met with a case where the relative pronoun, in a casual sense, was followed by the subjunctive. An intelligent tutor would first remind him that an idea may be represented in two ways, either as a thing conceived in the mind—that the Roman* had a language capable of making it perfectly clear which of the two notions was intended, and that the subjunctive proved that it was the latter that was intended, and not tho former; and he might quote from his own memory, or from any scientific grammar, instances in which the same principle was involved, including many in which the relative pronoun might be used in other senses besides that of a cause. Is there not here all the difference between an intelligent perception of a principle and a blind submission to a rule neither understood, nor in this case, as I believe, even true ? In the one case, it seems to me, a student is led to reason and think for himself; in the other, even if the rule were true, he would simply be using the lowest and most paiTot-like kind of memory, and at the same time would be learning the very worst lesson which it is possible for a reasonable being to learn—that, namely, of submitting blindly to authority when tho reason is neither satisfied nor even touched.”