wide open before him, and it seemed as if he could read a dozen great pages at once. At his feet and far below him ran the winding Valley of the Orbe, with the crooked river looking like a linen thread spread over the green carpet of the grassy meadows. Behind him stood the stony peaks of the Jura stretching, mountain beyond mountain, far away into France. To the south west, up the Valley of the Joux, he could see the little mountain lake of the Joux, and towards the southcast he could see the blue waters of the Lake of Geneva. Far away to the cast was a more wonderful sight than all. the Alps, the snow mountains. He never tired of looking at them, and learned to call them by name, from the beautiful Jungfrau to the north, far round to the glorious Mount Blanc, noblest mountain of them all. How the snow-fields glist ened in the sun! He could trace the great ice rivers-the glaciers-as they wound down the rocky valleys. He saw the clouds drift over the sharp peaks and almost fancied he could see the tiny puffs of white smoke that showed where the avalanches rushed in thundering crash into the echoing valleys. He could not really see them, for he was too far away; but he made up his mind he would see them some day, and that when he was a man he would cross the great ice-rivers and see the real glaciers,with their mountains of blue ice and strange heaps of rolling stones. Sometimes he stayed on the Dent de Vanlion till the sun went down, and then he saw the snow mountains turn to fire in the setting sun. First, the white snow began to blush and look warm; then the rocks became ruddy; in a few moments the white Jungfrau was like a cherry, and Mont Blanc became as a rose whose heart was on fire. How the mountains blushed and glowed and bloomed into splendid color! This was the alpen glow,-the evening dress-parade of the snow peaks. Then the color faded as the sun went down, and the mountains stood out blue and cold against the purple sky, where the yellow moon rose above the sharp peaks in such splendor. Truly, the world was a great and notable picture-book, and when he became a man he meant to study it and learn i read every one of its rocky pages. SEX IN EDUCATION. [The Reviewer below pushes Dr.Clarke's view further than he would himself it may be presumed.—Edr.} "Dr. E. Clarke, Professor of Materia Medica at Harvard, the American Cambridge, has published an able, quiet little book, founded on an unusually great experience of this subject, which is, we believe, circulating very rapidly among the class for whom it is intended, the managers of national schools, both in America and England. Much of it needs to be discussed rather in a medical journal than in one like the Spectator, as being too strictly professional for everybody's reading, but the results at which the doctor arrives may be stated anywhere. His argument is, in part, no doubt based on special American experience, but most of it is universal, and will well deserve the attention of the more fervid advocates of what is called the Women's Rights Movement. Dr. Clarke does not deny in any way the equality of the male and female brain, indeed, he asserts it with rather more energy than Europeans will be will ing to allow. He denies, as we understand him, that there is any difference of mental capacity at all between the sexes, -holds that girls might, as far as success is concerned, be educated not only as well as boys, but in precisely the same things. A girl can study, say Euclid, as hard as a boy, and possibly with more success. Only if she studies it in the same way and at the same time, if she really works as her comrade works, from fifteen to eighteen, steadily and persistently, she will pay for her success a tremendous physiological price. She will, if she does not lose her health, as she will do in most cases about two years after her edu cation has terminated, lose her right of maternity, or-and this is the more im portant point-will produce a breed of children all nerves and troubles, who will never, from want of physical stamina, take their proper place in life. Already examinations on the head, as enforcing severe labor just at the wrong time of life; and would substitute for all our present arrangements for educating girls by hard work up to fifteen, a mild, fitful, and semi voluntary education up to nineteen, after which thorough education may begin again, to be continued as long as circumstances will allow. It follows that women's education must be totally separate from men's, that no competition between the sexes can be allowed, and that in the majority of cases no thorough education can be given to women at all. If they cannot study until they are married they will not study till they are forty, at which time the disposition both of men it is painful to doctors from New England to travel in Nova Scotia, and watch the bright, healthy, cherry-cheeked little animals, who may not have half the precocious intelligence of the New Englander, but who will be as strong as if they had lived in England all their lives, and who, we may add, like other barbarous races, may one day teach their superiors that the world is not governed by brains, but by physical power. Punch's amusing sketch of the strong lout of ten who tells his clever schoolfellow, "I can't talk French, but I can punch your head," has a substratum of bitter truth underneath the jest. It is not the kind of study, according to Dr. Clarke, which and women towards study has greatly di women have to fear, but the method and the time of study. Boys can persistently study on from twelve to twenty-one for six hours a day, and if they have good diet and plenty of exercise will not physically suffer; but girls should stop heavy intellectual work from fifteen to eighteen, and either cease to work altogether, or woak half-time, or, setting aside a rather absurd and thorougly injurious conventionality, work only when they know themselves to be in full health for working. If they do not, they themselves will not have the full intellectual benefit of their labor, will pay heavily in health, and will rear a sickly race, who will be all nerves, fretfulness, and irritability, and, as a normal rule tending towards stupidity. minished. Of course, a class, and a large class, of women will study all the same, as, for instance, teachers; but after all, one main end of education is to produce a continuing and therefore accumulative civilization, an hereditary disposition towards culture, and any system which is successful only with spinsters, even if they take to teaching, is in great part sterile. It does good to one generation, but not to all generations, and is comparatively useless. That will be denied, we know, in a shoal of letters; but anybody who marks the difference between the lower class in Scotland, where education has lasted two hundred years, and the lower class in Essex, where men of the same race have been educated for only one generation, will know that it is true. "That is the normal rule, stated by Dr. "And this brings us to the only remedy Clarke, of course more plainly; and which those who believe Dr. Clarke, and though we suspect he is speaking of an at the same time believe in female educaabnormal race mainly, the New Eng- tion, will be likely to accept, or even conlander, who is injured by climate and by sider. His remedy, the separate educaa peculiar diet at least as much as by any tion of each girl according very much to system of education, still every one de- her own will, would not work, and would voted to education will read his book with be wholly fatal to collegiate life of any profit, and, we think, more or less convic- kind. But has it ever been fairly proved tion. It is with his results, however, that that Mr. Chadwick's theory-once so we have to deal; and these, if accepted, widely discussed, and in our experience would revolutionize almost every modern so true, that half-time teaching was, for attempt to equal education,-would, for boys, so much more valuable than whole. example, abolish mixed classes altogether, time teaching-is, if applied a little later as no school could have two sets of work- in life, wholly groundless? Is it not pos ing hours; would knock the Cambridge | sible for both sexes, but more especially for girls, to make the quality of teaching | Carlyle has called America the paradise of political economists, because there they could make their doctrines take legislative shape in the most good-natured manner imaginable; and makers of paper republics find South America a virgin field. We wish to exercise a similar right in applying our theory of town libraries, and by right of eminent domain seize upon Rhode Island for that purpose and annex it to Every Saturday. We choose Rhode Island for very simple reasons: its people are intelligent, and the State is of a handy size. We suspect, and honestly tell the reader so at the outset, that our theory would break down if applied suddenly to a more extended piece of more valuable than the quantity, or even than the energy, of teaching? We believe it is. We know that it answers in the best schools for young lads, and we can see no reason whatever why it should not answer in good schools for young women. Half-time is more expensive, more troublesome, and, with very lazy people, less satisfactory, but with the only classes who really benefit by protracted education it might be productive of the best result. Nothing whatever is gained by driving a clever lad six hours a day till he is made stupid by the pressure, and with girls the system is not only negatively useless, but very often positively injurious. If girls are to be thoroughly ground, and then the latest Report of the educated-and this is one of the women's rights to which we cordially adhere-a little common-sense must be displayed in the method of education; and that common-sense is likely, after a little while, and under an eager competition, to be as wanting in England as in America, where, by the testimony of so many tutors and so many physiologists, a distinct lack of sense on the part of trustees and doctors is visibly affecting one of the picked races of mankind, the true Yankee, who has governed and taught till now, but is giving place to his fuller-blooded, but indef. initely inferior Western brother. One Adams is worth, for governing purposes, shall we say five tons or five hundred tons of Andrew Johnsons?—but it is not an Adams which female education, if so hotly pressed in girlhood, is likely to produce, but an etiolated, rickety man, with no digestion, feeble nerves, and a tendency to morbid activity, rather than to genuine power of brain."-London Spec-public-school system. tator. STATE BOOK-CLUBS. Board of Education and Commissioner of Public Schools is at hand with convenient statistics. We stop a bit at this point to notice the peculiar character of this forked-radish little commonwealth. The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, it calls itself; it has its two capitals, and so by some analogous law we presume it has its double-headed Report of the Board of Education and the Commissioner of Public Schools. A more important reason for our selection of Rhode Island is in our entire ignorance of what the several towns have done in the way of the establishment of public libraries. Very likely, if we knew, we should have to annex some other State, and we know of no one so handy to our office, and so portable. The scheme, then, which we propose, as soon as we have received our commission as dictator, is the establishment of a system of lending libraries in connection with the The statutes of Rhode Island provide that the sum of ninety thousand dollars annually shall be paid out of the public It is always an advantage, when one funds for the support of public schools, has a theory to maintain, to have some apportioned amongst the various towns real and actual field for displaying its according to the number of children and practical application; and if there is no of school districts, but that no town shall such field, then by all means invent one. receive its proportion until it has providA new Atlantis must answer if the olded an equal sum by taxing its inhabitants. one is unserviceable; Utopia must be dis. It will be necessary, in order to carry out covered if there really is no Topia. a system of public libraries, to make an appropriation, based upon the same census, of say twenty thousand dollars annually; to be appropriated, however, in those towns only which maintain a high school, and with similar provision that such towns shall raise an equal amount before receiving the State appropriation. The money given by the town may be for books, but it must be first for the additional payment of some person, presumably the high-school master, who shall act as librarian, and for the proper shelter and care of the books. The town, when it has made these provisions, may proceed also to buy books with the money raised which remains unexpended, and these purchases and all expenditure of money must be by the librarian under the direction of a committee of three citizens, elected at the town meeting, without dis. tinction of sex. priation due, those books to remain say for one year, and then to be returned to the central library, whence they will be sent out to other towns, and their placefilled with other books. By this method the State, selecting by the aid of its wisest counsellors books of permanent value, distributes them among its towns for the free use of the people, and every year provides a new collection, so that the same books may be lent in succession to the several towns until they are quite used up. The towns meanwhile may have their more permanent libraries, and may indeed, where certain books have proved very popular and desirable, obtain those very books of the State when the time of their loan has expired, or replace the copies with fresher ones. It is a mis fortune in all our prevailing systems that permanence is sought, and not elasticity and variety, in the establishment of free town libraries. The central office, by its records and by its communication with the several town libraries, could select the books every year with greater care, and could stimulate by its wise choice the taste for good reading.—Every Saturday. The Prussian Common-School System compared with the American. The towns which have complied with the conditions imposed by the State are now ready to receive the State aid; they have fitted a room in each high school building for the reception and delivery of books, and have provided for the proper care and superintendence; they have in some cases found money still remaining in their hands which they have ready for the purchase of books. The State now prepares to do its promised share. The twenty thousand dollars which has been voted is not subject, in specified sums, to the order of the treasurers of the several towns that have complied with the conditions, but is expended in the purchase of a selected list of books, made by a special officer appointed for this purpose, under the advice of a small commission selected by the governor or dictator from the most worthy citizens of the State. These books are put into one uniform binding of sheep, stamped with the State seal, and contain the proper labels on the inside of the cover, showing to what town library they are sent and how long they are to remain. For here comes in the peculiar feature of our scheme. The State does not pro-ed in the general excellence. It contains pose to give books to a town to form the nucleus of a growing library, but to lend from its own stock of books a certain number equivalent in value to the appro A small pamphlet in German, now before us, affords fresh and authentic information, of the most interesting and valu. able description, about Prussian common school education as it exists at the pres ent time. It comprises the revised and improved programme of studies prescribed by the government, together with the detailed requirements for the normal training and the examination of teachers. What makes this little brochure extremely noteworthy is the fact that it is the last word on the subject, from the most competent pedagogists or schoolmen in the world. It is evidently a complete whole, a harmonious system, where each perfect detail is blend. a clear and precise statement of the aims and requirements in respect to each sub. ject of instruction. The time to be de voted to each branch is also prescribed. The following studies are obligatory for | ceptions to this state of things, we are all children: religion, the mother-tongue aware, in many of the city schools where Including writing and grammar, arithme- there is an efficient superintendence exertic, practical elementary geometry, realien cised by the school boards and their expe comprising geography, history, the ele- rienced officers. In New York, Boston, ments of natural history, and the rudi- Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and some ments of physics), drawing, singing, other cities, programmes have been adoptgymnastics, and, for girls, needlework. ed which are intended to secure a rational To each of the last four branches the pu- and economical handling of the subjects pils of the upper classes are required to to be taught, But nowhere is this intengive two hours weekly. In giving the tion satisfactorily realized. And speaking gymnastic exercises, the teachers must generally, it is substantially correct to follow the course laid down in the official say that the American teacher has for his manual prepared for the purpose. guide, instead of a carefully prepared, rational programme, a list of prescribed text-books, too numerous and too volum inous by half, the contents of which he is expected to teach his pupils as best he can. He knows very well from experience, that whatever else his pupils may be expected to know, they must not fail to answer any questions on the text of the prescribed books, so far as they have been studied. Hence of necessity his chief business must consist in giving out lessons and in hearing recitations. In fact, the characteristic of American teaching, in all its grades, is that it consists mainly of the hearing of recitations from textbooks. The Prussian method is totally different. The Prussian teacher teaches his pupils and works with them. The text book is used only for reference, and as an aid to the pupils in preparing reviews. In this way the Prussian teacher makes very short work of geography, on which our American teachers feel compelled to waste a great amount of time, and so must crowd out drawing or singing. To the average American teacher, the above schedule of studies will probably appear rather formidable; and most likely it will not be apparent to him how time is to be found to teach them all to any purpose, in the period allotted for the course of instruction in the common school. But the Prussian teachers, it is said, do find time for this, without subjecting their pupils to the "cramming" process, or to what we call "high pressure." Nor is it very difficult to discover how the Prussian teachers are enabled to do what seems to most American teach ers impracticable. This programme throws much light on the subject. In the first place, it distincly indicates what is to be accomplished, and puts just and reasonable limitations upon the requirements. And so the Prussian teacher does not fritter away the time of his pupils in attempting to teach them a great mass of useless details which book makers have seen fit to print in text-books. But this is just what most American teachers are doing to an immense extent, greatly to But this pamphlet not only indicates the profit of book makers and book pub- the right way of handling the subjects of lishers, and at the same time to the great instruction; it shows also how the teachdetriment of their pupils. And how can ers are prepared for this sort of work. A they be expected to do otherwise? No perfect programme is a most useful instrusuch a teacher's guide as this before us ment in skilled hands, but it is only so has been furnished by any American much waste paper in unskilled hands. State. In the Massachusetts school-law The Prussian ministry of instruction is the subjects to be taught are named, and by no means content simply to put forth nothing more. It is so in all the States, a well-contrived course of study, and or in nearly all. The consequence is, the then tell the local authorities to carry it teachers are very generally left by the lo- out. It prescribes, at the same time, the cal authorities to teach what there is in course of culture and technical training the prescribed text-books. There are ex-for the teachers, to enable them to handle |