Who created? God created—Deus is the nominative. What did he create? the heaven and the earth: cælum et terram will immediately be presented to us; our cælestial and terrestrial cannot fail to give the meaning of these words, and the final m will point out to us that they are in the accusative case.
In this manner, we should proceed for two or three pages, and then read them for three or four times more, till we can translate with tolerable facility. We do not consult grammars to learn the rules, but merely to solve any difficulty that may occur. In the present mode, the grammar is learned in the language, and not the language in the grammar. Every rule is an abstraction, and cannot be understood without an example. Instead of long rules we learn examples, and these should be fixed upon the walls of a room in proper order.
The striking analogy between many modern languages, and the consequent facility of acquiring several languages, at the same time, must be evident to every one. This is particularly the case with the English, German, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portugueze languages.