suspicion of dulness or apathy. By frequently changing the employment of the class, and requiring smartness in everything that was done, he kept them all on the alert. The lesson I have described was followed without pause by one in arithmetic, the two together occupying an hour and three quarters, and the interest of the children never flagged throughout.

It is then possible to teach children, at this stage at least, without making them hate their work, and dread the sound of the school-bell.

I will suppose a child to have passed through such a course as this by the time he is eight or nine years old. He can now read and copy easy words. What we next want for him is a series of good readingbooks, about things in which he takes an interest. The language must of course be simple, but the matter so good, that neither master nor pupils will be disgusted by its frequent repetition.

The first volume may very well be about animalsdogs, horses, &c., of which large pictures should be provided, illustrating the text. The first cost of these pictures would be considerable, but as they would last for years, the expense to the friends of each child taught from them, would be a mere trifle.

The books placed in the hands of the children, should be well printed, and strongly bound. In the present penny-wise system, school-books are given out in cloth, and the leaves are loose at the end of a fortnight, so that children get accustomed to their destruction, and treat it as a matter of course. This ruins their respect for books, which is not so unimportant a matter as it may at first appear.

READING, AND RECITING POETRY.

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After each reading lesson, which should contain at least one interesting anecdote, there should be columns of all the words which occurred for the first time in that lesson. These should be arranged according to their grammatical classification, not that the child should be taught grammar, but this order is as good as any other, and by it the child would learn to observe certain differences in words almost unconsciously. As good reading is best learnt by imitation, the lesson should first be read aloud by the master. It will sometimes be a useful exercise to make the children prepare a lesson beforehand, and give an account of the substance of it before opening their books. 'Accustoming boys to read aloud what they do not first understand,' says Dr. Franklin, is the cause of those even set tones so common among readers, which, when they have once got a habit of using, they find so difficult to correct; by which means, among fifty readers we scarcely find a good one."*

As a change reading-book, Æsop's Fables may now be used, and an edition with such illustrations as Tenniel's will be well worth the additional outlay.

Easy descriptive and narrative poetry should be learnt by heart in this form. That the children may repeat it well, they should get their first notions of it from the master vivá voce. According to the usual plan, they get it up with false emphasis and false stops, and the more thoroughly they have learnt the piece, the more difficulty the master has in making them say it properly.

* Essays: Sketch of an English School.

T

Every lesson should be worked over in various ways. The columns of words at the end of the reading lessons may be printed with writing characters, and used for copies. To write an upright column either of words or figures is an excellent exercise in neatness. The columns will also be used as spelling lessons, and the children may be questioned about the meaning of the words. The poetry, when thoroughly learned, may sometimes be written from memory. Sentences from the book may be copied either directly or from the black-board, and afterwards used for dictation.

Dictation lessons are often given very badly. The boys spell nearly as many words wrong as right, and if even all the blunders are corrected, little more pains is taken to impress the right way on their memory, than the wrong. But the chief use of dictation is to fix in the memory by practice words already known. Another mistake is for the master to keep repeating the sentence the boys are writing. He should first read the piece straight through, that the boys may know what they are writing about. Then he should read it by clauses, slowly and distinctly, waiting a sufficient time between the clauses, but never repeating them. This exercises the boys' attention, and accustoms their ear to the form of good sentences-an excellent preparation for composition. Where the dictation lesson has been given from the reading-book, the boys may afterwards take the book and correct either their own exercises or one another's.*

*Mr. R. Robinson, in his Manual of Method and Organisation, gives

DICTATION AND COMPOSITION.

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Boys should as soon as possible be accustomed to write out fables, or the substance of other reading lessons, in their own words. They may also write descriptions of things with which they are familiar, or any event which has recently happened, such as a country excursion. Every one feels the necessity, on grounds of practical utility at all events, of boys being taught to express their thoughts neatly on paper, in good English and with correct spelling. Yet this is a point rarely reached before the age of fifteen or sixteen, often never reached at all. The reason is, that written exercises must be carefully looked over by the master, or they are done in a slovenly manner. Anyone who has never taught in a school will say, 'Then let the master carefully look them over.' But the expenditure of time and trouble this involves on the master is so great that in the end he is pretty sure either to have few exercises written, or to neglect to look them over. The only remedy is for the master not to have many boys to teach, and not to be many hours in school. Even then, unless he set apart a special time every day for correcting exercises, he is likely to find them increase upon him.'

The course of reading-books, accompanied by large illustrations, may go on to many other things which

some good hints for impressing on boys' memories the words they have spelt wrong. An exercise-book, he says, should always be used for the dictation lesson, and of every word in which a boy blunders, he should afterwards make a line at the end of the book, writing the word as many times as it will go in the line. Now and then the master may turn to these words, and examine the boy in them, and by comparing different books, he will see which words are most likely to be wrongly spelt.

the children see around them, such as trees and plants, and so lead up to instruction in natural history and physiology. But in imparting all knowledge of this kind, we should aim, not at getting the children to remember a number of facts, but at opening their eyes, and extending the range of their interests.

Hitherto I have supposed the children to have only three books at the same time; viz. a reading-book about animals and things, a poetry-book, and Esop's Fables. With the first commences a series culminating in works of science; with the second a series that should lead up to Milton and Shakespeare; the third should be succeeded by some of our best writers in prose.

But many schoolmasters will shudder at the thought of a child's spending a year or two at school without ever hearing of the Heptarchy or Magna Charta, and without knowing the names of the great towns in any country of Europe. I confess I regard this ignorance with great equanimity. If the child, or the youth even, takes no interest in the Heptarchy and Magna Charta, and knows nothing of the towns but their names, I think him quite as well off without this knowledge as with it—perhaps better, as such knowledge turns the lad into a wind-bag,' as Carlyle might say, and gives him the appearance of being wellinformed without the reality. But I neither despise a knowledge of history and geography; nor do I think that these studies should be neglected for foreign languages or science: and it is because I should wish a pupil of mine to become in the end thoroughly con