natural objects. The truth is that both in lessons on earthly, as well as more ethereal things, and also on spiritual things, unless our efforts are blessed and owned by the spirit of God, deep and abiding results will never be realised. We do not think that J. H. H. will be the worse for reading the warm comments of F., and settling the question with his own conscience how far his views are or are not reproved. Whatever makes manifest is light."-ED.]

EXTRACT.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN SCHOOLS.

The prevailing defect in the students considered as teachers is a want of simplicity, variety, and flexibility of language. Other faults are to be found in the students of particular training schools, but this is almost universal. When this deficiency in the power of expression arises, as it sometimes does, from an ignorance of the subject which the teacher has chosen for his lesson, it can only be said that he has shown want of judgment in selecting what he shall teach. But even when the teacher thoroughly knows his subject, nothing is more common than a failure in teaching it from want of suitable language. Sometimes the teacher is so completely under the dominion of technical terms, that if, as often happens, the children are not ready to understand them, he is completely at a loss to substitute less exact but more familiar words. Still more often he cannot supply any expressions but those which he found in the book from which he obtained his knowledge of his subject, or those which were used by the college lecturer. Most often he does not discover that the apparent want of interest and apprehension on the part of the children is due to the fact that his language is not understood. But even when he perceives the fault, his attempts to explain too frequently remind the listener of Miss Edgeworth's well-known definition of the word "famous," and serve only to betray the poverty of his resources.

This defect in the power of expression must, to some extent, be charged to the previous education of the students. The pupil-teachers give very little time to reading, and very little to composition. I have myself been so much

impressed with the need of giving them a definite course of English reading, that in the elementary schools which it was my duty to visit I endeavoured to introduce something of the kind (with the consent in each case of the managers), by giving them notice at each examination that their grammatical exercises at the next occasion would be entirely taken out of a particular poem. In this way they were induced to read Goldsmith's "Traveller" one year, and the "Deserted Village "the next. Had I retained my office it was my intention to have given them a book of Cowper's "Task" for the year following. In this way, without any addition to the work required of them, they might be encouraged to make themselves very familiar with a few standard English poems. And I know no better faundation for that cultivated study of English which ought to follow in the training schools than such a familiarity. I cannot however, say what would have beer. the result, for a two years' trial does not give sufficient data for a judgment But I feel tolerably confident that anything which would induce the pupil-teachers to read English and to learn considerable pieces by heart would greatly tend to assist the training schools in preparing them for their profession.-Rev. F. Temple's Report for the Year, 1857.

No. 89.

PAPERS FOR THE SCHOOLMASTER.

JULY 1, 1858.

A Lecture

Read before the Worcestershire and before the Bath Associations of Schoolmasters, by Rev. C. H. Bromby, M.A.

By neglecting to take our own lessons from Nature, we shall not fail to educate, but educate wrongly and mischievously. The true Educator is Nature's Priest, and if he is unacquainted with her laws, the results of his ignorance and errors are incalculable. The farmer or the gardener will have a poor crop if he knows nothing of the laws of vegetable development and of the requirements of his plants at the various periods of their growth. The Educator is a mental and moral nurseryman. By attempting to cultivate faculties when as yet they should be dormant, or to leave some faculties idle and uncultured while others are inordinately developed, his ignorance of psychology, the defiance of the laws of natural development, by retarding the growth of some and forcing into activity others that should be dormant, we may be thwarting the benevolent purposes and the wise intentions of God.

The object of the Educator must be rather to direct the young mind than to stimulate; to develop than to create the faculties. It should be laid down as an axiom from the beginning that the mind of a child should never be taxed beyond its powers at the time. Nature follows fixed rules in the order in which she developes the intellectual faculties of a child, and this order the Educator must himself follow. It is customary to recognise three periods-infancy, childhood, and youth. Writers on Mental Science have gone so far as to define these periods. We may allow this definition for the sake of convenience but not too rigidly. Infancy is that period in which the outward senses are the great medium through which the child is

being educated. This period has been usually laid down between one and seven years. At this period the efforts of the Educator should be directed towards developing the perceptive faculty. The second period is that in which the physical senses, the external frame work, is more fully perfected, and the mind becomes capable of abstractedly realising objects which hitherto have been presented to the outward senses. The second period is usually comprised within seven and thirteen. During this period we depend less in education upon the bodily senses. The law of nature enables the little pupil to retain the impressions more vividly after the object presented to the senses has been removed.

The conceptive faculty preserves and reproduces those impressions which have been received through the outward senses. It is the faculty by which the child can form a clear conception of an object without any renewed aid of the senses. It is quite clear that the correctness of conception will greatly depend upon the accuracy with which the child has in the previous period been taught to use his powers of observation. Grown-up persons, as well as children, will form different conceptions about the same object according to the different opportunities they have previously had of examining it, or the degree in which their perceptive faculties have been developed by previous culture.

The Third Period. This period has been assigned to the interval between the thirteenth when the last period closed, to the seventeenth or eighteenth. The mind has so far reached maturity as to be capable of exercising its higher faculties. It becomes able not only to form distinct and true conceptions apart from the perception of objects, but it can compare their properties together, it can examine their connexion, if such there be, and the relations that may subsist between them. In other words, the time has arrived when the Educator should bear in mind that the youth can compare, investigate proportions, draw correct inferences, trace effects from causes, and it is his province to prepare him by the right culture of his newborn faculties for the high duties of a reasoning being.

A regard to these laws of mental science will enable the intelligent as contrasted with the mechanical, master to determine the ages at which the subjects of school instruction should be introduced, and the order in which they should be taken. He has simply to ask himself two questions. (1) To what faculties does a given subject appeal? (2.) At what age do such faculties develop themselves? As a general rule Geography should precede Arithmetic, and Arithmetic Grammar. Natural History may take precedence of all three. In a limited degree this subject may be taught to infants, i.e., if we limit ourselves to facts which we call upon them to observe-the colour of a butterfly, the legs of a daddy-longlegs, the feet of a

centipede, but infants are too young to be classifiers, or to be taught Natural History without an example or a picture. They may be taught such lessons before they are able to read about them. Should infants be taught to read? We may answer generally all similar questions in these terms.-that we shall seldom be wrong if we teach any child anything which gives it pleasure to learn. We may assume it as an axiom that to teach contrary to nature, in defiance of her laws, is hurtful and irksome-to learn in harmony with those laws is ever a healthful and a happy exercise. Most children love to play because to play is natural to them. Most children only hate to learn when to learn is opposed to nature. Apply this principle to reading. So long as reading can be made a simple and not a complex process, infants may learn to read. It is the age of observation-they observe letters and are able to remember. For the same reason, e. because this is the period of observation, the employment must be almost purely mechanical. Where the monosyllable is pronounced according to the sound, they should be taught on this principle. Exceptions must be either kept back or learnt by sight, as From the first we should secure the intelligence of the words read by employing none except such as stand for objects or actions with which the child is familiar. Those who are taught in early life to mistake sounds for realities will in after life confound opinion with faith. We cannot begin too soon to make our teaching real

"love."

And if we test the suitableness of arithmetic to any given period of child-life, we must enquire whether it is or is not adapted to develop the characteristic faculties of that period. So far as arithmetic implies the power of abstraction and induction, it must wait till the close of the second period. The teacher, however, may teach it much earlier in a concrete form. To explain myself:-Figures may represent marbles or apples to very young children, and by such process they may realize the true purpose of arithmetic through the four rules gradually, both simple and compound. The rule of three so far as it implies an intelligence of ratios and the equality of ratios, should be reserved to the third period, when the child is able to reason and is capable of induction. But he may arrive at the same results (to which the rule of three brings him as though by magic) at an earlier period, if the question is reduced to a simple exercise of multiplication and division. If I ask a child what will five apples cost, if four apples cost twopence? it will be a hard task to make him understand the meaning of the numerical ratio between five apples and four, and that between twopence and the answer; and if he did, it would still be next to impossible to make him understand the process by which the unknown result is arrived at, founded upon the equality of those ratios. But he can understand that if four apples cost twopence, one would cost a half-penny, as a simple

example of division, and taking breath at this step, he will easily draw the second and still simpler inference that if one apple cost a half-penny, then five apples would cost five half-pence or twopence half-penny.

(To be continued.)

Notes of Lessons.

NOTES ON THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS.

No. III