25 FEBRUARY 1871, Page 22

CLASSICAL AND SCHOOL BOOKS.—The Order of Words in Altw Greek:

Prose, by Charles Short, M.A. (Sampson Low), is an elaborate and care- fully-made contribution to Greek scholarship which we receive from the• other side of the Atlantic. Mr. Short is Professor of Latin in Columbia. College, New York ; his work consists of a faborious examination and. analysis of the sentences—regarded as to their verbal construction—of the best writers of Attic prose. Greek composition is almost struggling for its life in England, and it is carious to see it receiving so handsome an acknowledgment from the very country whose utilitarianism seems• most opposed to such studies.—Many teachers, and, we may venture, to add, more learners, will be glad to see a book so really admirable in its way as iVordstoorth's Greek Grammar made available for beginners. by the author bringing out A Greek Primer (the Clarendon Press). We have also received A Complete Dictionary of Ccesar's Gallic War, by Albert Creak, M.A. (Hodder and Stoughton) ; A French Grammar at Sight; by A. D'Oursy and Alph. Feillet (Macmillan) ; The Practical Moral' Lesson-Book, by the Rev. Charles Hole (Longmans); the Italian. Commercial Correspondent, by A. Olivier (Asher) ; Problems itir Plane Geometry, by John Lawes (Longmans) ; An _Elementary Greek Grammar, by W. W. Goodwin (Boston, U.S.: Ginn); A New Virgil Reader, by F. Gilbert White (Longmans), appears to be based on the idea of reading a small quantity, and exhausting all the infor- mation which can be given about it. There are ten pages of text, con- taining three hundred lines or parts of lines from Virgil, and about one hundred and ninety pages of vocabulary. We take the first instance. The "text " is, Pan, calico. nentorupn. The vooabulary tells us something about the god Pan ; then describes the conjugation of " colere," and so brings us to the origin of the word " cultor." Then we have the other words, Latin and English, belongingto the same family ; then something about nemus. Altogether there are about twenty lines about the three words. Surely any boy would hate Virgil after that. But if any teacher likes the system he will certainly find it thoroughly carried out.