Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/307

This page needs to be proofread.
295

woulee (in Latin volo) which easily slides intowill and would. But Bovam itself is from Baaaw, to cast;or, in this connection, to ballot, or throw the bean, or the ball, into the vase or voting box, after a question has been duly debated. I WILLemphatically pronounced, means thenI have considered all that may be said on the point of conduct in question; and I now vote, or ballot, accordingly: my resolution is taken.

Few persons, perhaps, among those engaged in education, are fully aware either of the great and various advantages resulting from a thoroughly digested and comprehensive knowledge of our own language, or of the ease with which such an acquirement may be made. On this ground far more might be achieved than is often attempted; nor should I fear to abide by the issue of a series of experiments, adapted to the purpose of exhibiting the comparative practical efforts, on the one side, of an elaborate classical education, reaching its acmé, let us say, in the production of some faultless Greek verses; and, on the other side, of an education purely English; but so managed as to lodge the entire compass of the mother-tongue in the mind, on a philosophically digested system, and as related, first to the several faculties of the mind, and secondly, to the specific uses of active and professional life. My firm belief is that the balance, as to power over the minds of others, and as to practical efficiency, in carrying on the mind's own operations, would turn decisively in favour of the latter method: but in fact the two are not incompatible.