Directory_and_Chronicle_1842 — Page 571

1842.

Report of the Morrison Education Society.

558

In the meantime two of these boys, being able to keep pace with their companions, and still have leisure time upon their hands, took up Playfair's Geometry, studying it an hour a day, while the rest were occupied with their lessons in algebra. Their progress in this, has been such, that they have read and understood the whole of the first four books of Euclid, besides having also reviewed and demonstrated in recitation a considerable portion of them. They have done it by quietly retiring with their books in hand, and studying, with al-

most no aid from me.

If the question should be asked, How much do they know of gram- mar? it would be difficult to answer it. They have never read any on the subject, and do not know a single rule of Murray or any other graininarian, in so many and such words as he uses to set forth the the doctrines of the science. But still they have studied grammar, though in quite another way, ever since they began to learn the English language. Indeed they are not likely, nor any other boys so situated, to succeed in acquiring a foreign language without it. If English is unlike Chinese, they must know the reason why, or at least in what the difference consists;—and this is grammar. The ge- neral principles of language, or those which, may be applied to any and every language, I have endeavored to teach them, and they are therefore able in most cases to resolve a paragraph into its consti- tuent parts, pointing out the number of sentences and propositions, and these again into their elements, showing the office which each word performs, and generally the reason why it is so employed. Otherwise than this, they have no knowledge of grammar, or least very little.

It remains now to be told what the general conduct of the boys has been during the past year, and what evidences there are, that their moral character has been improved by the training the Society has afforded them. This after all is the only satisfactory end of education. The founders of the Morrison Education Society con- templated this end, and desired to accomplish it Hence the second by-law respecting books, which is appended to the constitution they adopted, viz., "The scholars shall be furnished with the Bible, and with the instruction and aids to understand it which are usually af forded in the best schools of Christendom, but the reception of its doctrines is not to be a test for the admission of scholars."

The aim and endeavor of the agent to whom the instruction of their first pupils has been intrusted, in accordance with the spirit of all the public actions of the Society, is to enlighten the mind, to rec

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