§ 24. One of their innovations, though startling to their contemporaries, does not seem to us very surprising. It was the custom to begin reading with a three or four years’ course of reading Latin, because in that language all the letters were pronounced. The connexion between sound and sense is in our days not always thought of, but even among teachers no advocates would now be found for the old method which kept young people for the first three or four years uttering sounds they could by no possibility understand. The French language might have some disadvantage from its silent letters, but this was small compared with the disadvantage felt in Latin from its silent sense. So the Port-Royalists began reading with French. § 25. Further than this, they objected to reading through spelling, and pointed out that as consonants cannot be pronounced by themselves they should be taken only in connexion with the adjacent vowel. Pascal applied himself to the subject and invented the method described in the 6th chap. of the General Grammar (Carré, p. xxiij) and introduced by his sister Jacqueline at Port-Royal des Champs. § 26. When the child could read French, the Gentlemen of Port-Royal sought for him books within the range of his intelligence. There was nothing suitable in French, so they set to work to produce translations in good French of the most readable Latin books, “altering them just a little—_en y changeant fort peu de chose_,” as said the chief translator De Saci, for the sake of purity. In this way they gallicised the Fables of Phædrus, three Comedies of Terence, and the Familiar Letters (_Billets_) of Cicero. § 27. In this we see an important innovation. As I have tried to explain (_supra_ pp. 14 ff.) the effect of the Renascence was to banish both the mother-tongue and literature proper from the school-room; for no language was tolerated but Latin, and no literature was thought possible except in Latin or Greek. Before any literature could be known, or indeed, instruction in any subject could be given, the pupils had to learn Latin. This neglect of the mother-tongue was one of the traditional mistakes pointed out and abandoned by the Port-Royalists. “People of quality complain,” says De Saci, “and complain with reason, that in giving their children Latin we take away French, and to turn them into citizens of ancient Rome we make them strangers in their native land. After learning Latin and Greek for 10 or 12 years, we are often obliged at the age of 30 to learn French.” (Cadet, 10.) So Port-Royal proposed breaking through this bondage to Latin, and laid down the principle, new in France, though not in the country of Mulcaster or of Ratke, that everything should be taught through the mother-tongue.