PREFACE.

The plan of "Higher Lessons" will perhaps be better understood if we first
speak of two classes of text-books with which this work is brought into
competition.

+Method of One Class of Text-books+.--In one class are those that aim
chiefly to present a course of technical grammar in the order of
Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody. These books give large space
to grammatical Etymology, and demand much memorizing of definitions, rules,
declensions, and conjugations, and much formal word parsing,--work of which
a considerable portion is merely the invention of grammarians, and has
little value in determining the pupil's use of language or in developing
his reasoning faculties. This is a revival of the long-endured, unfruitful,
old-time method.

+Method of Another Class of Text-books.+--In another class are those that
present a miscellaneous collection of lessons in Composition, Spelling,
Pronunciation, Sentence-analysis, Technical Grammar, and General
Information, without unity or continuity. The pupil who completes these
books will have gained something by practice and will have picked up some
scraps of knowledge; but his information will be vague and disconnected,
and he will have missed that mental training which it is the aim of a good
text-book to afford. A text-book is of value just so far as it presents a
clear, logical development of its subject. It must present its science or
its art as a natural growth, otherwise there is no apology for its being.

+The Study of the Sentence for the Proper Use of Words.+--It is the plan of
_this_ book to trace with easy steps the natural development of the