be held there during the year ensuing, and the people of the vicinity generally find in the benefits resulting from it a subject for congratulation. It is to be regretted that in two or three instances the Institutes were not as well attended as they should have been; but the average attendance has been larger than I have known it to be during any previous year. In one county numbering more than a hundred teachers, all were present with the exception of three, and in this county the attendance had never before, to my knowledge, exceeded forty. In several counties the attendance, on the part of teachers, was from fifty-five to eighty-five per cent., and it would have been still greater had the district trustees, in all cases, consented to close their schools. This increased attendance is the result of efforts which I have made in the several counties, personally, and by means of letters and circulars. It requires time to carry out successfully the plan by which I propose to secure, as much as possible, of the good that can be derived from these associations; and I hope, at the close of another year, to be able to report still greater gains." [For The California Teacher.] WHAT IS GRAMMAR? BY JOHN S. HITTELL. WHAT is grammar? Webster defines it as "the art of speaking a language with propriety or correctness." Worcester says grammar is “the art of speaking a language with propriety or correctness." Goold Brown, who has written the largest of the English grammar books, says English grammar is "the art of reading, writing, and speaking the English language correctly." It is not necessary to quote further. I have examined a number of grammars and dictionaries in English, French, German, and Spanish, including works sanctioned by the Academies of France and Spain, and in all of them I find grammar defined as the art of using language correctly. I shall now endeavor to show that this definition is incorrect, confining myself to the English word "grammar." The standard of correctness of language is not the assertion of the lexicographers or grammarians, though repeated through twenty centuries, but the present usage of educated men. The common definition asserts that grammar teaches everything necessary to a correct use of language. I say it does not. I give some examples. 1. As to spelling. I spell "gem" with a "j," in the sentence "This is a jem." That is bad English, but good grammar. All our grammarians, or nearly all, say that orthography is a part of grammar; but no grammar book is an authority in regard to spelling; none teaches us to spell; and universal usage setting the empty statement of grammarians at defiance, treats orthography as no part of grammar. 2 .As to pronunciation. I pronounce 66 gem as if spelled with an "i." "This is a gim." That, too, is bad English, but good grammar. Many educated Irishmen have a decided brogue; but did anybody ever say that they are therefore ignorant of English grammar? 66 3. As to definition. In the journals of the legislature it is often recorded that "the committee made a verbal report." This is bad English, but good grammar. Verbal," which applies alike to all words whether written or spoken, is used incorrectly in the sense of "oral." Take another sentence. "The eruption of Vesuvius presented a grand pyrotechnical display." There, pyrotechnical, which properly applies only to artificial fires, is made to apply to a natural phenomenon. No grammar teaches us the error of those sentences. 4. As to the authority or existence of words. Take the sentence, "The diamond is a joya." That is good, grammar, but bad English. Joya is the Spanish word for jewel, and cannot properly be used in English until sanctioned by usage. No sentence is good English that contains words which are not recognized by usage, unless they are new words introduced according to certain established rules. Joya does not come under that class. Take another example. "He absquatulated before I could absquatulate." Where is the grammatical error in that sentence? Get out your books and show me the rule by which the error is proved. And yet nobody will say it is good English. It is vain to assert that English grammar teaches everything necessary to the correct use of the English language, when we know that no grammar book is, or claims to be, an authority in regard to either the spelling, pronunciation, definition or existence of words; and universal usage treats them as matters entirely and exclusively within the domain of the lexicographer. They are therefore parts of lexicology, not of grammar. mar; and I deny it. versification. I have part of Again, our grammar books say that prosody is a part of gramProsody has two parts-pronunciation and already proved that pronunciation is not a grammar; and if grammar relate only to the rules of correctness in language, then versification has no place. Versification relates to elegance, not to correctness-to rhetoric, not to grammar. Bad poetry may be grammatically correct. All or nearly all grammarians, following the track of somebody who wrote in remote time, say that etymology is one of the four main branches of grammar. In the common usage of scholars, 66 etymology" is the genealogy or relationship of words as traceable through all parts of speech and through all languages. That is the sole meaning attributed to it by Richardson, in his Dictionary; by George P. Marsh, in his Lectures on the English Language; by Max Muller, in his Science of Language; by the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and by Johnson and Webster as they use the word in the introductions to their Dictionaries. With that kind of etymology, grammar has nothing to do; nor is any grammar or grammarian recognized as an authority in etymology. The rules by which the plural numbers and possessive cases of nouns are formed from the nominatives, and by which the tenses, numbers, and persons are formed from the infinitive, are not matters of etymology, but of inflection, which last with syntax, makes up the whole of grammar, as we now understand the word. I might find any number of references to sustain my position that grammar as usually understood, does not teach the prosody, orthography, orthoepy, definitions or existence of words, but I content myself with a few quotations from our ablest and most comprehensive popular work on The Science of Language-that by Max Muller, who, though a German by birth, is a master of the English tongue. He does not examine the question, "What is grammar ?" but in a number of passages, he distinctly conveys the idea that grammar teaches nothing but inflection and syntax; and indeed in some passages he reduces it to inflection alone. I quote from the American edition : "The grammar, the blood and soul of the language, is as pure and unmixed in English as [now] spoken in the British Isles as it was when spoken on the shores of the German Ocean by the Angles, Saxons and Juts of the continent." p. 81. The orthography, orthoepy, authority, definition, and etymology have been very much changed and mixed; though the inflection and syntax remain as they were. “The Turkish language, as spoken by the higher ranks of Constantinople, is so overgrown with Persian and Arabic words that a common clod from the country understands but little of the so-called Osmanli, though its grammar [that is, inflection and syntax.-J. S. H.] is exactly the same as the grammar which he uses in his Tataric utterance." p. 83. 'Languages, however, though mixed in their Dictionary, can never be mixed in their grammar." p. 85. "What may now be called grammar in English, is little more than the terminations of the genitive singular, and nominative plural of nouns, the degrees of comparison, and a few of the persons and tenses of verbs." p. 85. In ancient and less matured languages, grammar, [inflection] or the formal part of human speech, is far more abundantly developed than in English." p. 81. "There are languages in which there is no trace of what we are accustomed to call grammar [inflection]; for instance, ancient Chinese." p. 86. "The Chinese language, it is commonly said, has no grammar at all; that is to say, it has no inflections, no declensions and conjugations, in our sense of these words." p. 47. "What is grammar after all, but declension and conjugation ?" p. 218. "The whole frame-work of grammar-the elements of derivation, declension, and conjugation-had become settled before the separation of the Aryan family. Hence the broad outlines of grammar in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, and the rest are in reality the same." p. 234. It is not necessary for me to make any long argument to show that Muller is wrong in excluding syntax from grammar; and he must have spoken inadvertently when he said it. "Men" is the correct plural inflection of man; and "goes" is the correct inflection of the verb "to go," in the third person singular of the present tense of the indicative mood, and as the words are correctly inflected, there would be no bad grammar in the phrase "the men goes;" that is, if grammar teaches nothing but inflection. I published the main ideas of this article in the Daily Alta California of the twenty-second of September, 1862, under my own signature; but I had not space then to make any quotations to support my docrine, and publication of an essay on a point of science in a daily newspaper is scarcely considered as a publication at all. THE BRAVE AT HOME. BY T. BUCHANAN READ. THE maid who binds her warrior's sash, One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles, The wife who girds her husband's sword, 'Mid little ones who weep and wonder, And bravely speaks the cheering word, What though her heart be rent asunderDoomed nightly in her dreams to hear The bolts of war around him rattle, Hath shed as sacred blood as e'er Was poured npon the plain of battle! The mother who conceals her grief While to her breast her son she presses, Then breathes a few brave words and brief, Kissing the patriot brow she blesses; With no one but her secret God To know the pain that weighs upon her, Sheds holy blood as e'er the sod Received on Freedom's field of honor! ADVICE TO A STUDENT. BY CHARLES MACKAY. LET love of books, and love of fields, And love of men combine, To feed in turn thy mental life, And fan its flame divine. Let outer frame, and inner soul, |