The first of these feared that they would not be truly themselves unless their personality could take shelter beneath an accent that was unmistakably from England, and the others felt that it was like hauling down the British flag to renounce the long-drawn English "A-o-o." And, curiously, at the other extreme, the slightest tinge of an English accent is rather liked in Paris, perhaps only among those touched with Anglomania.

But now we ought to be able to acquire whatever accent we choose, even when living far away from every instructor, having the gramophone to repeat to us untiringly the true Spanish "manana" and the French "ennui." And the study of phonetics, so much developed within the last few years, makes it unpardonable for teachers of modern languages to let the old English faults prevail.
We have had our succession of methods too.

The old method of learning French, with a _bonne_ in the nursery first, and then a severely academic governess or tutor, produced French of unsurpassed quality-But it belonged to home education, it required a great deal of leisure, it did not adapt itself to school curricula in which each child, to use the expressive American phrase, "carries" so many subjects that the hours and minutes for each have to be jealously counted out.

There have been a series of methods succeeding one another which can scarcely be called more than quack methods of learning languages, claiming to be the natural method, the maternal method, the only rational method, etc.
Educational advertisements of these have been magnificent in their promise, but opinions are not entirely at one as to the results.
The conclusions which suggest themselves after seeing several of these methods at work are:-- 1.

That good teachers can make use of almost any method with excellent results but that they generally evolve one of their own.
2.