SCHOOL Booxs. — A Complete Course of English Composition, by J. H.
Hawley (Charles Beau). If this book can accomplish its end, the teaching a boy how to write English, it will be useful indeed. Its value cannot be determined without trial, but it has the appearance of being well arranged and complete. Some hints on the matter and form of some exercises on various kinds of composition, précis-writing among the rest, and some specimens of University middle-class examination-papers, make up what seems a useful volume. Mr.Thring'sExercisesonGnunmati- cal Analysis (Clarendon Press Series) is a carefully prepared contribution to the teaching of "English." Mr. Thring expresses his conviction that " all teaching, classical as well as elementary, ought to stand firmly on an English foundation, on English grammar and sentence-analysis." Our own view is that the two languages, Latin and English, should be taught simultaneously. The general mistake is to teach Latin only ; to teach English only would be loss disastrous, but still, we think, a mistake. The perpetual illustration gives a facility and an interest to the study which it would be a great pity to lose. Mr. Thring's book, with its maps &c., has a complicated look. It is apparently meant for older students working without a teacher. We have received two German grammars, a German Grammar for Public Schools, by the Rev. A. C. Clapin, M.A., and F. Hohl-Miiller, Ph.D. (Bell and Daldy), and a Practical Grammar of the German Language, by A. von Ravensberg (Williams and Norgate). Both have the merit of being short, the latter especially aims at the sim- plification of the ordinary rules. Mr. Eve's Short German Syntax (Nutt), aiming to teach German writing on philosophical principles, is likely to be a very useful little book ; Le Petit Grammarien, by T. Pagliardini (Hodder and Stoughton), may be best described by its second title, as "The Young Beginner's First Step to French Reading." Of books on arithmetic, pure and applied, we have Recapitulatory Exercises in Arithmetic, by the Rev. A. Hiley (Longraans), and Arithmetic for Schools and Colleges, by Richard Wormell, M.A. (Murby) ; the Commercial Correspondent, by Benjamin Bayley (Mnrby).
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