The Commissioners on Middle Schools express a similar opinion:

The 'human' subjects of instruction, of which the study of language is the beginning, appear to have a distinctly greater educational power than the material.' As all civilisation really takes its rise in human intercourse, so the most efficient instrument of education appears to be the study which most bears on that intercourse, the study of human speech. Nothing appears to develop and discipline the whole man so much as the study which assists the learner to understand the thoughts, to enter into the feelings, to appreciate the moral judgments of others. There is nothing so opposed to true cultivation, nothing so unreasonable, as excessive narrowness of mind; and nothing contributes to remove this narrowness so much as that clear understanding of language which lays open the thoughts of others to ready appreciation. Nor is equal clearness of thought to be obtained in any other way. Clearness of thought is bound up with clearness of language, and the one is impossible without the other. When the study of language can be followed by that of literature, not only breadth and clearness, but refinement becomes attainable. The study of history in the full sense belongs to a still later age: for till the learner is old enough to have some appreciation of politics, he is not capable of grasping the meaning of what he studies. But both literature and history do but carry on that which the study of language has begun, the cultivation of all those faculties by which man has contact with man.*

AXIOMATIC TRUTHS OF METHODOLOGY.

1. The method of nature is the archetype of all methods, and especially of the method of learning languages.

2. The classification of the objects of study should mark out to teacher and learner their respective spheres of action.

3. The ultimate objects of the study should always be kept in view, that the end be not forgotten in pursuit of the means. 4. The means ought to be consistent with the end.

5. Example and practice are more efficient than precept and theory.

6. Only one thing should be taught at one time; and an accumulation of difficulties should be avoided, especially in the beginning of the study.

7. Instruction should proceed from the known to the unknown,

* Middle Schools Report, vol. i. c. i. p. 22.

from the simple to the complex, from concrete to abstract notions, from analysis to synthesis.

8. The mind should be impressed with the idea before it takes cognisance of the sign that represents it.

9. The development of the intellectual powers is more important than the acquisition of knowledge; each should be made auxiliary to the other.

10. All the faculties should be equally exercised, and exercised in a way consistent with the exigencies of active life.

11. The protracted exercise of the faculties is injurious: a change of occupation renews the energy of their action.

12. No exercise should be so difficult as to discourage exertion, nor so easy as to render it unnecessary: attention is secured by making study interesting.

13. First impressions and early habits are the most important, because they are the most enduring.

14. What the learner discovers by mental exertion is better known than what is told him.

15. Learners should not do with their instructor what they can do by themselves, that they may have time to do with him what they cannot do by themselves.

16. The monitorial principle multiplies the benefits of public instruction. By teaching we learn.

17. The more concentrated is the professor's teaching, the more comprehensive and efficient his instruction.

18. In a class, the time must be so employed, that no learner shall be idle, and the business so contrived, that learners of different degrees of advancement shall derive equal advantage from the instructor.

19. Repetition must mature into a habit what the learner wishes to remember.

20. Young persons should be taught only what they are capable of clearly understanding, and what may be useful to them in after life.

FROM JANUA LINGUARUM.'

480. Of Journeyes and Passages.-Let a traveller go straightway whither he is going without turnings; let him not turn or stray out of the way into by-wayes. 481. Let him not leave the highway for a foot-path; unless it be a beaten path or a way much

From Marcel on Language. London, 1853. As M. Marcel shows a thorough mastery of his subject, he may be trusted as giving the commonly received conclusions.

used, or that the guide or companion know the way. 483. A forked way or carfax (bivium aut quadrivium) is deceitful and uncertain... 486. Boots are fit for one that goeth far from home, or shoes of raw leather because of the mire and dirt; and a broad hat or cover of the head because of the sunne, and a cloak to keep from rain, and a staffe to rely or lean upon, for it is a help and a support. 487. There is likewise need of provision to make expenses, and to bear the charges, or at least of letters of exchange. 488. But of patience withall; for it happeneth or cometh to pass sometimes to be all the night abroad or in the open aire. 489. Wheresoever or in what place soever thou be consider with whom thou art. 490. For robbers and thieves seek for a prey or bootie; pirates a spoil; yea, which is more, a guest or stranger is not sure or out of danger from his host. (Latrones enim prædantur: piratæ spoliant: imo in hospitio non hospes ab hospite tutus.) 491. Bags, packs, or fardles, wherein they carry their own things or baggage trussed; are a budget, a wallet, cap case, a pouch, a sachell, a male, a purse, a bag of leather. 492. To be more ready, do not burthen nor charge or aggravate thyself with lets. 493. If there be necessity to make haste, it's better to use running horses or swift geldings or hunting nags than post-horses. 494. Being returned home safe and sound, thine shall receive and entertain thee with joy and gladness.-(Edition of 1639, p. 84.)

LOCKE ON POETRY.

If he have a poetic vein, it is to me the strangest thing in the world that the father should desire or suffer it to be cherished or improved. Methinks the parents should labour to have it stifled and suppressed as much as may be; and I know not what reason a father can have to wish his son a poet, who does not desire to have him bid defiance to all other callings and business: which is not yet the worst of the case; for if he prove a successful rhymer, and gets once the reputation of a wit, I desire it to be considered what company and places he is like to spend his time in, nay, and estate too; for it is very seldom seen that any one discovers mines of gold or silver in Parnassus. It is a pleasant air, but a barren soil; and there are very few instances of those who have added to their patrimony by anything they have reaped from thence. Poetry and gaming, which usually go together, are alike in this too, that they seldom bring any advantage but to those who have nothing else to live on. Men of estates almost constantly go away losers; and it is well if they escape at a cheaper rate than their whole estates, or the greatest part of them. If, therefore, you would not have your son the fiddle to every jovial company, without whom the sparks could not relish their wine, nor know how

to pass an afternoon idly; if you would not have him waste his time and estate to divert others, and contemn the dirty acres left him by his ancestors, I do not think you will much care he should be a poet, or that his schoolmaster should enter him in versifying. (§ 174.)

FROM THE EVENING HOUR OF A HERMIT.'

What man is, what he needs, what elevates him and degrades him, what strengthens him and weakens him, such is the knowledge needed both by shepherds of the people, and by the inmate of the most lowly hut.

Everywhere humanity feels this want. Everywhere it struggles to satisfy it with labour and earnestness. For the want of it men live restless lives, and at death they cry aloud that they have not fulfilled the purposes of their being. Their end is not the ripening of the perfect fruits of the year, which in full completion are laid away for the repose of the winter.

The powers of conferring blessings on humanity are not a gift of art or of accident. They exist with their fundamental principles in the inmost nature of all men. Their development is the universal need of humanity.

Central point of life, individual destiny of man, thou art the book of Nature. In thee lieth the power and the plan of that wise teacher; and every school education not erected upon the principles of human development leads astray.

The happy infant learns by this road what his mother is to him; and thus grows within him the actual sentiment of love and gratitude before he can understand the words Duty or Thanks.

. . The truth which rises from our inmost being is universal human truth, and would serve as a truth for the reconciliation of those who are quarrelling by thousands over its husks.

Man, it is thyself, the inner consciousness of thy powers, which is the object of the education of nature.

The general elevation of these inward powers of the human mind to a pure human wisdom is the universal purpose of the education even of the lowest man. The practice, application, and use of these powers and this wisdom under special circumstances and conditions of humanity, is education for a professional or social condition. These must always be kept subordinate to the general object of human training.

Nature develops all the human faculties by practice, and their growth depends upon their exercise.

Men, fathers, force not the faculties of your children into paths too distant before they have attained strength by exercise; and avoid harshness and over-fatigue.

(You leave the right order) when, before making them sensitive to truth and wisdom by the real knowledge of actual objects, you engage them in the thousand-fold confusions of word-learning and opinions; and lay the foundation of their mental character and of the first determination of their powers, not with truth and actual obligations, but with sounds and speech and words.

God is the nearest resource for humanity.

To suffer pain and death and the grave, without God, thy nature, educated to mildness, goodness, and feeling, has no power.

Believe in thyself, O man; believe in the inward intelligence of thine own soul; thus shalt thou believe in God and immortality. Faith in the fatherhood of God is faith in immortality.

Faith in my own father, who is a child of God, is a training for my faith in God.

Faith in God sanctifies and strengthens the bond between parents and children, between subjects and princes. Unbelief dissolves all bonds, destroys all blessing.

Freedom rests on justice, justice on love; therefore even freedom rests on love.

The true disposition of the child is the right source of freedom resting on justice, as the true disposition of the father is the source of all power of government which is exalted enough to do justice and to love freedom. And the source of justice and of all blessing for the world, the source of love and brotherly feeling among men, rests on the great thought of religion that we are children of God, and that belief of this truth is the sure ground of all blessing for the world.

That men have lost the disposition of children towards God is the greatest misfortune of the world, inasmuch as it renders impossible all God's fatherly education of them; and the restoring of this lost childlike disposition is the redemption of the lost children of God upon earth.

The Man of God who, with suffering and death, restored to mankind the universally lost feeling of the child's disposition towards God, is the Redeemer of the World. He is the great

sacrificed Priest of the Lord. He is the Mediator between God and God-forgetting mankind. His teaching is pure justice, educating peoples' philosophy; it is the revelation of God to His lost race of children.

FROM RAMSAUER.

As many hundred times in the course of the year as foreigners visited the Pestalozzian Institution, so many hundred times did Pestalozzi allow himself in his enthusiasm to be deceived by