The grades of Grammar have respectively their own forms of prelection, given in detail by the final _Ratio_. It will be enough for us to sketch the general form of the earlier critics.[294] According as it is a grammar or an author that is being explained, a very different method of prelection is to be followed. In the grammar, we acquire a fund of precepts; in an author, a store of words and phrases. Wherefore, in the books of grammar, the boys must understand perfectly the things explained; they need not attend scrupulously to the words there, with a view to forming style. But, in the letters of Cicero, and other texts of the kind, it is not so much the substance of the sentences, as the words and phrases that are of chief consequence; the significance and force of his thoughts are to be reserved for the higher classes, when the students are no longer mere boys. In the classes of Grammar then, let the Master follow this method of explaining Cicero, or any other author. First, he will sketch, in the briefest way, the meaning of the author, and the connection between what has gone before and what is now to be explained. Then he will give a version of the period literally, preserving to the utmost the collocation of words, as they stand in the author; and also the figures employed. As to the collocation or arrangement of the words, this is of such consequence that sometimes, if a single word is put out of its place, the whole thought seems to lose its force and fall flat. Herein, too, is perceived that rhythmic flow of the style, which of itself, even if other ornaments are wanting, pleases the ear wonderfully and gratifies the mind. Thirdly, the whole period is to be resolved analytically into its structural elements, so that the boys understand distinctly what every word governs; and their attention should be directed to some useful points of good Latinity. As to this structural analysis, I may be allowed the passing remark, which is familiar to every judge of a classical education, that the disciplinary value of literary studies reaches here its highest degree of mental exercise; and that the two classical tongues, Latin and Greek, are altogether eminent as supplying materials for this exercise, in their own native structure; which, in the Latin, is an architectural build, characteristic of the reasoning Roman mind; and, in the Greek, is a subtle delicacy of conception and tracery, reflecting the art, the grace and versatility of Athens and the Ionian Isles.