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INTRODUCTION.
27

ceptible of. It is a fact well known to all my pupils, that, almost in any language whatever, the declensions may be learnt in a single hour, and all the conjugations in another. It can easily be conceived, that all the rest maybe acquired with the same facility: but this is not all the advantage of my system: anomalies, irregularities of verbs, and similar difficulties which have been hitherto the torment of the scholars, become, by this system, the most pleasing and most instructive part of the language. My pupils are convinced, by the most satisfactory experience, that grammar is to be learned in the language, not the language in the grammar; and when the true way is once known, it becomes delightful to them to go on with ease and promptitude, by themselves, from one language to another.

"3. Prose and Poetry. When we know pieces of prose or of poetry in such perfection that we are able to answer at pleasure to any single word, it is not to be imagined that in learning them we have to fix one word after another; but whatever we commit to our memory is there in such an order that we are sure to find it again whenever we may wish for it. The matter and the diction are necessarily distinguished, and every thing treated after its own nature, and we are therefore sure neither to omit any thing that is