How English is Taught.

The following article from Professor A. S. Hill's pen recently appeared in Harper's Monthly:

"As regards the result of such teaching of English as is given in some of our best schools and academies, I may be pardoned for referring to my own observation. Since 1873, when Harvard college for the first time held an examination in English, I have read from 4000 to 5000 compositions written in the examination-room upon subjects drawn from books which the candidates were required to read before presenting themselves. Of these, not more than 100-to make a generous estimate-were creditable to either writer or teacher. This year I did not read the books, but one who did makes this report: "Few were remarkably good, and few extraordinarily bad; a tedious mediocrity was everywhere."

It is this tedious mediocrity which has amazed me year after year. In spelling, punctuation, and grammar, some of the essays are a little worse than the mass, and some a great deal better; but in other respects there is dead-level, unvaried by a fresh thought or an individual expression. Almost all the writers use the same common-place vocabulary-a very small one-in the same confused way. One year, after reading 200 or 300 compositions on "The Story of the Tempest," I found myself in such profound ignorance of both plot and characters that I had to read the play to set myself right again.

The authors of these discouraging manuscripts were, almost all of them,

Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth,

When thought is speech, and speech is truth.

They may be justly regarded as the picked youth of the country, many of them coming from the best families in point of culture and breeding, and from the best schools we have. They were all boys with blood in their veins, and brains in their heads, and tongues that could talk fast enough and to the purpose when they felt at ease. Many of them had enjoyed The Tempest-as who that can understand it does not?- but somehow the touch of pen or pencil paralyzed their powers.

If the dreary compositions written by the great majority of candidates for admission to college were correct in spelling, intelligent in punctuation, and unexceptionable in grammar, there would be some compensation; but this is so far from being the case that the instructors of English in American colleges have to spend much of their time and strength in teaching the A B C of their mother tongue to young men of 20-work disagreeable in itself, and often barren of result. Every year Harvard graduates a certain number of men-some of them high scholars-whose manuscript would disgrace a boy of 12; and yet the college cannot be blamed, for she can hardly be expected to conduct an infant school for adults.

Is there any remedy for this state of things?

I venture to say that there is; but it one which demands persistent and long-continued work and hearty co-operation on the part of all who have to do with the use of English in the schools in any form and for any purpose. It requires intelligent supervision at one time, intelligent want of supervision at another time, and watchful attention constantly. It requires a quick sense of individual needs, and ready wit to provide for them as they arise.

My plan is briefly as follows: 1, I would begin as early as possible to overcome the mechanical difficulties of writing, and would use all practicable means and all possible opportunities to do so; 2, I would not frighten a boy with "compositions," so-called, till he could form his sentences with tolerable correctness, and use his pen with freedom, but, 3, when he was set to work writing composition, he should be kept steadily at it, and at the same time should be made to take an interest in what he is doing, and should be impressed with the importance of having something to say, and of saying that something in an intelligible and a natural manner."