That there has been no encouragement given, to this day, for the establishment and cultivation of two such important articles to all British subjects, can be accounted for on no other principle, but that of custom, founded upon the strongest prejudice. From the first time that a Latin grammar is put into our hands, we are taught to believe, that a complete knowlege of Latin and Greek will of course give a complete knowlege of English; that reading the ancient writers upon oratory will furnish us with all the powers of elocution; that the same master who instructs pupils in the one, can also teach the other; and that, therefore, any particular establishments for those purposes would be unnecessary: and this prepossession has been so early in life, and with such force stamped upon us, that neither the experience of more than two centuries, nor daily demonstration to the contrary, are able to erase it. Nor need we wonder, that the prejudice has been so universal, when we reflect that some of the most eminent men that these countries have produced were strongly tinctured with it: nay, when we find, in the passage before quoted, that the clear-sighted and candid Mr. Locke was so blinded by it, as not to see that, in the very instance mentioned by him, with regard to the French, he had attributed our deficiency to a wrong cause. For though he has laid the whole blame of the want of culture and improvement in the English tongue, on the masters of grammar-schools, yet he shews clearly, that the culture and improvement of the French took their rise from another source; where he says, 'We see the polity of some of our neighbours hath not thought it beneath the "public care to promote and reward the improvement of their own language." Polishing and enriching their tongue is no small business amongst them; "it hath colleges and stipends appointed it;" and there is raised amongst them a great ambition and emulation of writing correctly.' Was it not, therefore, more natural to impute the low state of English amongst us to the want of such institutions and encouragement, than to the neglect of masters who do not profess to teach it? And was it not more rational to expect the improvement of our tongue from the same methods which brought forward the French; from public encouragement, from colleges and stipends appointed it, than from one which never was found to answer, nay, which, in its own nature, never can answer the end? In like manner, in speaking of elocution, he has imputed our general deficiency in that point also, to the neglect of the masters of grammar-schools; though, at the same time, he clearly points out the only means by which knowlege in that art can be acquired, in these-words: 'This (speaking of elocution), as all other things of practice, is to be learned not by a few, or a great many rules given, but by exercise and application, according to good rules, or rather patterns, till habits are got, and a facility of doing it well.' Now, if