up their spirits and to improve their strength and health, than curbed and restrained; and the chief art is to make all that they have to do, sport and play too.'

Locke's observation about manners and affectation

have merely an historic interest. The dancingmaster has a higher role allotted him than he plays in our present education. Locke writes: "Since nothing appears to me to give children so much becoming confidence and behaviour, and so to raise them to the conversation of those above their age as dancing, I think they should be taught to dance as soon as they are capable of learning it. For though this consists only in outward gracefulness of motion, yet, I know not how, it gives children manly thoughts and carriage more than anything. But, otherwise,' he adds, 'I would not have little children much tormented about punctilios, or niceties of breeding.' Good company will teach them good manners. Children (nay, and men too) do most by example. We are all a sort of cameleons, that still take a tincture from things near us; nor is it to be wondered at in children, who better understand what they see than what they hear.'

When speaking of company, Locke points out the harm done by clownish or vicious servants. To avoid this, the children must be kept as much as possible in the company of their parents; and by being allowed all proper freedom, must be led to take pleasure in it.

Although I would go much further than most зchoolmasters in endeavouring to make the pupil's intellectual exertions pleasurable to him, I cannot go all the way with Locke. His directions, though im

SEASONS OF APTITUDE.'

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praticable in a school, might, perhaps, be carried out by a private tutor-with, I should say, by no means satisfactory results. One employment Locke seems to think is, in itself, as pleasurable as another; so, if nothing which has to be learnt is made a burthen, or imposed as a task, the pupil will like work just as well as play. Let a child be but ordered to whip his top at a certain time every day, whether he has, or has not, a mind to it; let this be but required of him as a duty wherein he must spend so many hours morning and afternoon, and see whether he will not be soon weary of any play at this rate.' The tutor should, therefore, be on the watch for seasons of aptitude and inclination,' and so 'make learning as much a recreation to their play as their play is recreation to their learning.' Locke gives, however, two cautions, which might be found rather to clog the wheels of the chariot-first, the child is not to be allowed to grow idle; and, secondly, the mind must be taught mastery over itself, which will be an advantage of more consequence than Latin or logic, or most of those things children are usually required to learn.' His scheme is no doubt an admirable one, if it can be carried out with these qualifications.

6

As we have seen, Locke was opposed to any harshness about lessons, though much seems to have been used in schools of that period. 'Why,' asks Locke, 'does the learning of Latin and Greek need the rod, when French and Italian need it not? Children learn to dance and fence without whipping; nay, arithmetic, drawing, &c., they apply themselves well enough to without beating; which would make me

suspect that there is something strange, unnatural, and disagreeable to that age, in the things required in grammar-schools, or in the methods used there, that children cannot be brought to without the severity of the lash, and hardly with that too; or else it is a mistake that those tongues could not be taught them without beating.'

Instead of this harshness, Locke would use reasoning with children. "This,' says he,' they understand as early as they do language; and, if I misobserve not, they love to be treated as rational creatures sooner than is imagined. It is a pride should be cherished in them, and as much as can be made an instrument to turn them by.'

In the necessary qualifications of the tutor, the first and principal, according to Locke, are breeding and knowledge of the world. Courage, in an illbred man, has the air, and escapes not the opinion, of brutality. Learning becomes pedantry; wit, buffoonery; plainness, rusticity; good-nature, fawning; and there cannot be a good quality in him which want of breeding will not warp and disfigure to his disadvantage.' By means of the tutor's knowledge of the world, Locke hoped to protect the pupil against the dangers which beset an old boy, at his first appearance, with all the gravity of his ivy-bush about him;' but he who is to steer a vessel over a difficult course, will hardly fit himself for the task by taking lessons even of the most skilful pilot, on shore.

Locke's account of the work of a tutor gives so much insight into his notion of education generally, that it seems worth quoting at length:

'The great work of a governor is to fashion the

carriage and form the mind, to settle in his pupil good habits and the principles of virtue and wisdom, to give him, by little and little, a view of mankind, and work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy; and, in the prosecution of it, to give him vigour, activity, and industry. The studies which he sets him upon are but, as it were, the exercises of his faculties and employment of his time; to keep him from sauntering and idleness; to teach him application, and accustom him to take pains, and to give him some little taste of what his own industry must perfect. For who expects that, under a tutor, a young gentleman should be an accomplished orator or logician? go to the bottom of metaphysics, natural philosophy, or mathematics? or be a master in history or chronology? Though something of each of these is to be taught him; but it is only to open the door that he may look in and, as it were, begin an acquaintance, but not to dwell there; and a governor would be much blamed that should keep his pupil too long, and lead him too far in most of them. But of good breeding, knowledge of the world, virtue, industry, and a love of reputation, he cannot have too much; and if he have these he will not long want what he needs or desires of the other. And since it cannot be hoped that he should have time and strength to learn all things, most pains should be taken about that which is most necessary, and that principally looked after which will be of most and frequentest use to him in the world.'

It is curious to observe how little store Locke sets by learning. Indeed, it would seem that in those days school-learning was even more estranged from

the business of life than it has been since. A great part of the learning now in fashion in the schools of Europe,' says Locke, and that goes ordinarily into the round of education, a gentleman may, in good measure, be unfurnished with, without any great disparagement to himself, or prejudice to his affairs.' Again he says, 'We learn not to live, but to dispute, and our education fits us rather for the university than for the world. But it is no wonder, if those who make the fashion suit it to what they have, and not to what their pupils want.' This last remark is not without its application even in our time.

When we come to Locke's directions about teaching we find him carrying out his notion of combining amusement with instruction. "Children should not have anything like work or serious laid on them; neither their minds nor bodies will bear it. It injures their healths; and their being forced and tied down to their books in an age at enmity with all such restraints has, I doubt not, been the reason why a great many have hated books and learning all their lives after. It is like a surfeit, that leaves an aversion behind that cannot be removed.' 'I know a person of great quality (more yet to be honoured for his learning and virtue than for his rank and high place), who by pasting on the six vowels (for in our language "y" is one) on the six sides of a die, and the remaining 18 consonants on the sides of three other dice, has made this a play for his children, that he shall win who, at one cast, throws most words on these four dice, whereby his eldest son, yet in coats, has played himself into spelling with great eagerness, and without once having been chid for it, or forced to it.'