TO THE READER.

I BEG to submit to your perusal the following pages, well calculated, I think, to remove many of the difficulties which beset the path of most English students of the French language at the present day.

I do not say that it is more useful; to speak a language well than only to write it well; but I purpose pointing out here the means of doing both together, and in a shorter time than it has hitherto been done in this country.

Of course I am not surprised to see how very little French is learned in England, by many who have been reading it for years, when I hear of a French master telling his pupils that "he had rather speak English with them, lest he should spoil his French accent;" or when I have myself been told, by persons who cannot write a single line of French without mistakes, or pronounce a single sentence without exhibiting their ignorance of the language, that "they know enough of it to teach English people," &c.

Instead of telling you what this Essay is, I would ask you to do me the favour to read it through, by which means only it can be ascertained what the work is; and if the effect of its perusal be to promote the study of the French language, and to render it more easy to be acquired by English persons than it has been heretofore, I shall have gained my end, and I shall not have to count among my lost labours the fruit of the long research which has resulted from my daily observations as a French master.

College House, Newport Pagnell.

THE AUTHOR.