his mind, and arrange themselves into different groups. Then, by the aid of a teacher, he perfects a scientific classification among them, bringing into each group all that belong to it. But soon the number of individuals in each group becomes so numerous, that he wants a cord to tie them together, or a vessel in which to hold them. Then, from the nomenclature of science, he receives a name which binds all the individuals of that group into one, ever afterwards. It is now that he perceives the truth and the beauty of classification and nomenclature. An infant that has more red and white beads than it can hold in its hands, and to prevent them from rolling about the floor and being lost, collects them together, putting the white in one cup and the red in another, and sits and smiles at its work, has gone through with precisely the same description of mental process that Cuiver and Linneus did, when they summoned the vast varieties of the animal and vegetable kingdoms into their spiritual presence, and commanded the countless hosts to arrange themselves into their respective genera, orders, and species.

Our notions respecting the expediency or propriety of introducing the higher branches, as they are called, into our common schools, are formed from a knowledge of our own school teachers, and of the habits that prevail in most of the schools themselves. With us, it too often happens that if a higher branch, geometry, natural philosophy, zoology, botany, is to be taught, both teacher and class must have text-books. At the beginning of these text-books, all the technical names and definitions belonging to the subject are set down. These, before the pupil has an practical idea of their meaning, must be committed to memory. The book is then studied chapter by chapter. At the bottom of each page, or at the ends of the sections, are questions printed at full length. At the recitations, the teacher holds on by these leading-strings. He introduces no collateral knowledge. He exhibits no relation between what is contained in the book, and other kindred subjects, or the actual business of men and the affairs of life. At length the day of examination comes. The pupils rehearse from memory with a suspicious fluency; or, being asked for some useful application of their knowledge, some practical connection between that knowledge and the concerns of life, they are silent, or give some ridiculous answer, which at once disparages science and gratifies the ill-humor of some ignorant satirist. Of course, the teaching of the higher branches falls into disrepute in the minds of all sensible men, as, under such circumstances, it ought to do. But the Prussian teacher has no book. He needs none. He teaches from a full mind. He cumbers and darkens the subject with no technical phraseology. He observes what proficiency the child has made, and then adapts his instructions, both in quality and amount, to the necessity of the case. He answers all questions. He solves all doubts. It is one of his objects, at every recitation, so to present ideas, that they shall start doubts and provoke questions. He connects the subject of each lesson with all kindred and collateral ones; and shows its relations to the every-day duties and business of life; and should the most ignorant man, or the most destitute vagrant in society, ask him "of what use such knowledge can be ?" he will prove to him, in a word, that some of his own pleasures or means of subsistence are dependent upon it, or have been created or improved by it.

In the meantime, the children are delighted. Their preceptive powers are exercised. Their reflecting faculties are developed. Their moral sentiments are cultivated. All the attributes of the mind within, find answering qualities in the world without. Instead of any longer regarding the earth as a huge mass of dead matter, without variety and without life, its beautiful and boundless diversities of substance, its latent vitality and energies, gradually drawn forth, until, at length, they illuminate the whole soul, challenging its admiration for their utility, and its homage for the bounty of their Creator.

There are other points pertaining to the qualification of teachers, which would perhaps strike a visitor or spectator more strongly than the power of giving the kind of lessons I have described; but probably there is nothing which, at the distance of four thousand miles, would give to a reader or hearer so adequate an idea of intelligence and capacity, as a full understanding of the scope and character of this class of exercises. Suppose, on the one hand, a teacher to be introduced into a school, who is competent to address children on this great range and variety of subjects, and to address them in such a manner as to arouse their curi

sity, command their attention, and supply them not only with knowledge, but with an inextinguishable love for it; suppose such a teacher to be able to give one, and sometimes two such lessons a day, that is, from two hundred to four hundred lessons in a year, to the same class, and to carry his classes, in this way, through their eight years schooling. On the other hand, suppose a young man coming fresh from the plow, the workshop, or the anvil; or, what is no better, from Greek and Latin classics, and suppose his knowledge on the above enumerated subjects to be divided into four hundred, or even into two hundred parts, and that only one two-hundredth portion of that stock of knowledge should be administered to the children in a day. Let us suppose all this, and we shall have some more adequate idea of the different advantages of children, at the present time, in different parts of the world. In Prussia, the theory, and the practice under it, are, not that three years' study under the best masters qualifies a talented and devoted man to become a teacher, but that three years' of such general preparation may qualify one for that particular and daily preparation which is to be made before meeting a class in school. And a good Prussian teacher no more thinks of meeting his classes without this daily preparation, than a distinguished lawyer or clergyman amongst ourselves would think of managing a cause before court and jury, or preaching a sermon, without special reading and forethought.

It is easy to see, from the above account, how such a variety of subjects can be taught simultaneously in school, without any interference with each other; nay, that the "common bond," which, as Cicero says, binds all sciences together, should only increase their unity as it enlarges their number.

BIBLE HISTORY AND BIBLE KNOWLEDGE.

Nothing receives more attention in the Prussian schools than the Bible. It is taken up early and studied systematically. The great events recorded in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament; the character and lives of those wonderful men, who, from age to age, were brought upon the stage of action, and through whose agency the future history and destiny of the race were to be so much modified; and especially, those sublime views of duty and of morality which are brought to light in the Gospel, these are topics of daily and earnest inculcation, in every school. To these, in some schools, is added the history of the Christian religion, in connection with cotemporary civil history. So far as the Bible lessons are concerned, I can ratify the strong statements made by Professor Stowe, in regard to the absence of sectarian instruction, or endeavors at proselytism. The teacher being amply possessed of a knowledge of the whole chain of events, and of all biographical incidents; and bringing to the exercise a heart glowing with love to man, and with devotion to his duty as a former of the char acter of children, has no necessity or occasion to fall back upon the formulas of a creed. It is when a teacher has no knowledge of the wonderful works of God, and of the benevolence of the design in which they were created; when he has no power of explaining and applying the beautiful incidents in the lives of prophets and apostles, and especially, the perfect example which is given to men in the life of Jesus Christ; it is then, that, in attempting to give religious instruction, he is, as it were, constrained to recur again and again to the few words or sentences of his form of faith, whatever that faith may be; and, therefore, when giving the second lesson, it will be little more than a repetition of the first, and the two-hundredth lesson at the end of the year, will differ from that at the beginning only in accumulated wearisomeness and monotony.

There are one or two facts, however, which Professor Stowe has omitted to mention, and without a knowledge of which, one would form very erroneous ideas respecting the character of some of the religious instruction in the Prussian schools. In all the Protestant schools, Luther's Catechism is regularly taught; and in all the Roman Catholic schools, the Catechism of that communion. When the schools are mixed, they have combined literary with seperate religious instruc tion; and here all the doctrines of the respective denominations are taught early and most assiduously. I well remember hearing a Roman Catholic priest inculcating upon a class of very young children the doctrine of transubstantiation. He illustrated it with the miracle of the water changed to wine, at the marriage feast in Cana; and said that he who could turn water into wine, could turn his own

blood into the same element, and also his body into bread to be eaten with it. Contrary, then, to the principles of our own law, sectarianism is taught in all Prussian schools; but it is nevertheless true, as Professor Stowe says, that the Bible can be taught, and is taught, without it.

MUSIC.

All Prussian teachers are masters not only of vocal, but of instrumental music, One is as certain to see a violin as a blackboard, in every school-room. Generally speaking, the teachers whom I saw, played upon the organ also, and some of them upon the piano and other instruments. Musie was not only taught in school as an accomplishment, but used as a recreation. It is a moral means of great efficacy. Its practice promotes health; it disarms anger, softens rough and turbulent natures, socializes, and brings the whole mind, as it were, into a state of fusion, from which condition the teacher can mould it into what forms he will, as it cools and hardens.

All these subjects I have enumerated, were taught in all the schools I visited, whether in city or country, for the rich or for the poor. In the lowest school in the smallest and obscurest village, or for the poorest class in over-crowded cities; in the schools connected with pauper establishments, with houses of correction or with prisons, in all these, there was a teacher of mature age, of simple unaffected and decorous manners, benevolent in his expression, kind and genial in his intercourse with the young, and of such attainments and resources as qualified him not only to lay down the abstract principles of the above range of studies, but, by familiar illustration and apposite example, to commend them to the attention of the children.

Although the foregoing account of primary instruction in Germany, was drawn from observations mainly in the schools of Prussia and Saxony, it is, in its main features, applicable to primary schools in the other German States. On this point, Mr. Kay bears the following emphatic testimony in his valuable contribution to our knowledge of the social and educational condition of Europe*-a work, from which we shall have occasion to quote largely in giving an account of the school systems of Switzerland and the several German States.

In Bavaria, Wirtemburg, the Duchy of Baden, and Nassau, as much, and in Wirtemberg and Baden perhaps even more, has been done to promote the intelligence, morality, and civilization of the lower orders of society, than in Prussia. In each of these countries, every village has a good school-house, and at least one learned and practically efficient teacher, who has been educated for several years at a college; every town has several well-organized schools, sufficiently large to receive all the children of the town, who are between the ages of six and fourteen; each of these schools contains from four to ten class-rooms, and each class-room is under the direction of a highly educated teacher.

In each of these countries, every parent is obliged to educate his children, either at home or at some school, the choice of means being left to himself. In none of these countries are children left to grow up in vicious ignorance or with debasing habits.

In none of these countries, is there any class of children analogous to that, which swarms in the back streets, alleys, and gutters of our great cities and towns, and from which our paupers, our disaffected, and our criminals grow up, and from which our 66 ragged schools" are filled. All the children are intelligent, polite, clean, and neatly dressed, and grow up from their sixth to their fourteenth year under the teaching and influence of educated men.

• The Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe; showing the results of the primary schools and of the division of landed property in foreign countries, by Joseph Kay. Esq., M. A.. of Trinity College, Cambridge; Barrister-at-law; and late Traveling Bachelor of the University of Cambridge. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Long. mans. 1850.

In each of these countries a sufficient number of normal colleges has been founded, to enable it to educate a sufficient supply of teachers for the parishes and towns.

In each of these countries, all the schools of every sect and party, private as well as public, are open to public inspection, and are visited several times every year by learned men, whose business it is to examine both teachers and scholars, and to give the government, the chambers, and the country, a full and detailed account of the state, condition, character, and progress of every school, so that parents may know where to send their children with safety; that good teachers may be encouraged, rewarded, and promoted; and that unworthy teachers may not be suffered to continue long in their situations.

In each of these countries, the laws prohibit any person being a teacher of any school, until he has proved his efficiency to the committee of professors, appointed by the state to examine candidates, and until he has laid before such committee testimonials of character from his religious minister, his neighbors, and the professors of the college at which he was educated.

I can give a traveler, who is desirous of comprehending at one short view the workings of the German and Swiss systems of popular education, no better advice than to direct him to notice the state of the streets in any German or Swiss town, which he happens to visit; no matter where it be, whether on the plains of Prussia or Bavaria, on the banks of the Rhine, in the small towns of the Black Forrest, or in the mountainous cantons of Alpine Switzerland, no matter where, let him only walk through the streets of such a town in the morning or the afternoon, and count the number of children to be found there above the age of four or five, or let him stand in the same streets, when the children are going to or returning from the schools, and let him examine their cleanly appearance, the good quality, the excellent condition, and the cleanliness of their clothing, the condition of the lesson books they are carrying, the happiness and cheerfulness, and, at the same time, the politeness and ease of their manners; he will think he sees the children of the rich; but let him follow them home, and he will find that many of them are the offspring of the poorest artizans and laborers of the town. If that one spectacle does not convince him of the magnitude of the educational efforts of Germany, and of the happy results which they are producing, let him go no further, for nothing he can further see will teach him. Let him then come home, and rejoice in the condition of our poor; but, should he start at this extraordinary spectacle, as I have seen English travelers do, to whom I have pointed out this sign of advanced and advancing civilization, let him reflect, that this has been effected, spite of all the obstacles which impede ourselves. Bigotry and ignorance have cried their loudest ; Romanists have refused co-operation with Protestants, Protestants with Romanists, and yet they have co-operated. There has been the same strong jealousy of all government interference, the same undefined and illdigested love of liberty, and there has been the same selfish fear of retarding the development of physical resources. In Bavaria, the war has been waged between Romanists and Protestants; in Argovie, opposition has been raised by the manufacturers; in Lucerne, by the religious parties, and by the political opponents of the government; and in Baden, the difficulties have been aggravated by the numbers of Jews, whom both Romanists and Protestants hated to receive into alliance, even more than they disliked to co-operate among themselves. But in all these countries the great principle has finally triumphed; and all parties have yielded some little of their claims, in the full conviction, that a day is dawning upon Europe, fraught with the most overwhelming evils for that country which has not prepared for its approach.

Whether the methods by which any of these different countries are carrying out their great design, are in any way applicable to this country or not, I shall not stop to consider, my desire being merely to show how different countries, with different degrees of political freedom, with different political constitutions, whose people profess different religious tenets, where Protestants of different sects, Roman Catholics, and Jews, are mingled up in every kind of proportion, have all managed to overcome difficulties precisely similar to those which stand in our way, and have all agreed to labor together to educate their poor. For it is a great fact, however much we may be inclined to doubt it, that throughout Prussia.

Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Wirtemburg, Baden, Hesse Darmstadt, Hesse Cassel, Gotha, Nassau, Hanover, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, and the Austrian Empire, ALL the children are actually, at this present time, attending school, and are receiving a careful, religious, moral, and intellectual education, from highly educated and efficient teachers. Over the vast tract of country, which I have mentioned, as well as in Holland and the greater part of France, all the children above six years of age are daily acquiring useful knowledge and good habits under the influence of moral, religious, and learned teachers. ALL the youth of the greater part of these countries, below the age of twenty-one years, can read, write, and cipher, and know the Bible history, and the history of their own country. No children are left idle and dirty in the streets of the towns; there is no class of children to be compared, in any respect, to the children who frequent our "ragged schools;" all the children, even of the poorest parents, are, in a great part of these countries, in dress, appearance, cleanliness, and manners, as polished and civilized as the children of our middle classes; the children of the poor in Germany are so civilized that the rich often send their children to the schools intended for the poor; and, lastly, in a great part of Germany and Switzerland, the children of the poor are receiving a better education than that given in England to the children of the greater part of our middle classes! These facts deserve to be well considered.

And let it be remembered that these great results have been attained, notwithstanding obstacles at least as great as those which make so difficult for us to act. Are they religious differences which hinder us? Look at Austria, Bavaria, and the Prussian Rhine provinces, and the Swiss cantons of Lucerne and Soleure. Will any one say, that the religious difficulties in those countries are less than those which exist in our own? Is the sectarianism of the Jesuits of Lucerne, or of the priests of Bavaria, of a more yielding character toward the Protestant "heretics," than that of one Protestant party in England toward another? And yet, in each of these countries, the difficulties arising from religious differences have been overcome, and all their children are brought under the influence of a religious education, without any religious party having been offended. But are they political causes, which prevent us proceeding in this great work, in which nearly all Europe has so long preceded us, notwithstanding that we need it more than all the European nations put together? Are they political causes, I ask? I answer by again referring my readers to the countries I have enumerated. Under the democratic governments of the Swiss cantons, where it is the people who rule and legislate; under the constitutional governments of Saxony, Wirtemburg, and Baden, which were framed more or less upon the English model, and where the people have long had a direct influence upon the government; under the constitutional governments of France and Holland, and under all the different grades of absolute rule which existed but a few months since in Prussia, the German dukedoms, and the Austrian states, the difficulties of the question have long been overcome, and with such entire satisfaction to all parties, that among the present representatives of the people, no member has ever been heard to express a desire for the change of the laws which relate to primary education.

But once again; perhaps there are some who say, but there is no country which is troubled, as we are, by the union of both religious and political difficulties. I again refer my readers to the cases of Holland and Switzerland. They will find in these countries the same strong love of independence of action, which we boast so proudly and so justly. They will find also, not only strong religious feuds existing among the Protestants themselves, and pushed to the most shameful extremities, as in the case of the canton of Vaud, from which one religious party has lately been driven as exiles, but they will find the still more formidable differences of the Protestants and Catholics arrayed against each other, and seemingly preventing all union on any subject whatsoever; and yet, in all these various countries, differing as they do in the state of their religious parties, and of their political regulations, in all of them, I say, have all parties consented to join on this one great and important question, THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.

But there are some who say, that if our means of direct education are worse, yet that our means of indirect education are better than those of other countries, and that if our people have not schools and good teachers, they have long had a