If practice alone would develop it to perfection, speaking ought to be easy to learn, but it does not prove so, and especially when children are together in schools the weeds grow faster than the crop, and the crop is apt to be thin. The language of the majority holds its own; children among children can express with a very small vocabulary what they want to say to each other, whereas an only child who lives with its elders has usually a larger vocabulary than it can manage, which makes the sayings of only children quaint and almost weird, as the perfection of the instrument persuades us that there is a full-grown thought within it, and a child's fancy suddenly laughs at us from under the disguise. There is general lamentation at present because the art of conversation has fallen to a very low ebb; there is, in particular, much complaint of the conversation of girls whose education is supposed to have been careful. The subjects they care to talk of are found to be few and poor, their power of expressing themselves very imperfect, the scanty words at their command worked to death in supplying for all kinds of things to which they are not appropriate. We know that we have a great deal of minted gold in the English language, but little of it finds its way into our general conversation, most of our intercourse is carried on with small change, a good deal of it even in coppers, and the worst trouble of all is that so few seem to care or to regret it. Perhaps the young generation will do so later in life, but unless something is done for them during the years of their education it does not seem probable, except in the case of the few who are driven by their professional work to think of it, or drawn to it by some influence that compels them to exert themselves in earnest.