observes Canon Moseley" does not contemplate the intervention of a well instructed master at ali, otherwise than vicariously and through his monitors. During school-hours it provides for him in his capacity of an educated man and an enlightened instructor, no place in the school, but only with reference to his skill as a disciplinarian, and a man of order and authority. It intends no contact of his mind with the minds of the children of his school; it gives him no opportunity to study their individual characters, and, not being the immediate agent in their instruction, of course none to adapt the means and the subjects of instruction in any degree to the exigencies of each-to develop that of which the growth has been kept back, to strengthen that which is weak, and supply that which is deficient."

The principle of Bell, that children who have just mastered a subject are the best fitted to teach it, especially considering the superior sympathy which exists between them, and their better acquaintance with boyish modes of thought and expression, is one that has found advocates where we should scarcely have thought it.

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The following passage from Quintilian contains the germ of the principle on which its advocates maintain the superior excellence of the system depends: "Beginners, while their faculties are yet feeble, take more pleasure in measuring their strength with their school fellows than with their teachers, for this very reason, that it is easier. Their emulation applies itself to what is nearest and within reach, just as the young vine, when trained to a tree, hooks its tendrils upon the lower branches first, and thus gradually makes its way to the top. Hence we conclude, that the master himself too, if he prefer the useful to the ambitious in teaching, will make it his business, when he has to deal with faculties yet untutored, not to overload at the outset the weakness of the learner, but to attenuate and temper his own powers, and stoop to the level of his pupil's understanding. For, as a narrow-necked vessel rejects the water altogether when poured on its mouth profusely, but is easily filled when it enters slowly in a small stream, or even drop by drop, so attention must be paid to the relative capacities of very young minds. Truths of high import addressed to minds not yet sufficiently expanded to take them in pass by and make no impression. It is important, therefore, that a boy should have those to imitate first whom he may hope in due time to surpass. Thus, we shall have wellgrounded assurance of higher and higher attainments."

On this passage Pillans observes,-"I cannot but think it is an obvious deduction from these remarks of Quintilian, that pupils well selected and well trained may, under proper direction and in particular kinds of mental exercise, be better teachers than the master himself. They are aware of the difficulties which they themselves encountered but lately, and are often able to explain them to their comrades in a manner more familiar and intelligible than can be done by an adult teacher, whose habits and ways of thinking are so widely different."

But another and widely different person, the great advocate for bringing children into contact with an adult instructor-Pestalozzi himself-employed monitorial agency. And he did so not from any necessity of multiplying teachers, for he was more than a host in himself, but from a conviction that they were better adapted to his purpose.

Now there is no doubt in my mind that the monitorial system is right so far as fact teaching is concerned, or where the object is merely to convey clear ideas of a subject; of this we have daily instances in children's play. But we want a higher and more invigorating action than this. We want children to be

trained to habits of independent effort. We want them to walk the paths by which they may evolve principles, and processes, and truths for themselves. We want every power of their minds furnished with its proper object, and vigour ously exercised in the right order, and at the right time. In a word, we want such an action as only one, practically if not theoretically, acquainted with the science of mind can produce. While, then, we would not altogether discard monitors, we would make provision for the higher training of which the adult mind only is capable.

The differences between Bell and Lancaster are highly instructive.

Bell for teaching purposes employed what he termed mutual instruction, his monitors being examiners and répétiteurs. His great principles were very sound. They were preparation, examination, and supplementary teaching, reproduction in writing, and thoroughness. How these were made to pervade his system must be sought in his many publications. One thing is certain, that there are few of us who would be any the worse for making Dr. Bell our model.

Lancaster substituted monitorial teaching and mutual correction for mutual instruction. He differed from Bell in regard to the number of children he thought a boy could keep actively at work. More mechanical than Bell, he sought to lay his foundations in frequent repetition. Dr. Bell prized as much as Lancaster thoroughness in the first stages, yet thought that a superior cultivation of the intelligence would more than compensate for any mechanical loss ; and he thought that such superior cultivation was most likely where the classes were fewer, and consequently the chances of superior teachers greater. Lancaster, acting on his principle of repetition, formed three classes where Bell formed one, and from his point of view he was doubtless right; in fact, Bell shows that he himself thought so by employing mutual instruction. It remained for Stow to harmonise the two-but this in its place.

In their organizations we see the influence of these differences, and of the previous circumstances of the two gentlemen.

Bell, whose position as chaplain to the Military Asylum, Madras, brought him into contact with the parade, seems to have taken that as the type on which to construct the organization of his school. Thus his room was an open area, in which were arranged classes in squares, headed by a monitor and assistant. These classes faced the platform, from which, by means of an usher, or headmonitor, and assistants, the operations of the school were directed.

Lancaster, whose residence in London made him familiar with a ship of war, seems to have had that in his eye in planning his room. His school-room was a rectangle, in which the length was nearly twice the width. The area was filled with parallel desks facing the platform, and a space about six feet wide was left round the room for drafts facing the wall. The management of the

school was entrusted, as in Bell's system, to a head monitor acting under the direction of the master. Aware that noise creates noise, and that familiarity with the master's voice causes it eventually to be disregarded, the school was conducted by signals, posts being placed in convenient positions to aid in telegraphing the classes.

The instruction in these schools was of a very meagre kind. The greatest achievement was a mechanical readiness in the three arts-reading, writing, and arithmetic - combined with a memoritor aquaintance with scripture, and of the national schools with catechism. If there were any redeeming features, they were found in the national schools-in the culture of the eye, and the practical analysis of sentences, on which Dr. Bell chiefly relied for progress in

reading; and, in the Lancasteriar school, in the readiness with which arithmetic was performed.

With a full appreciation of the benefits conferred by the monitorial movement, and of the impulse given to the cause of popular instruction by the labours of Bell, Lancaster, and their friends; acknowledging that their schools helped to diffuse a better morality among the lower classes; yet the fact cannot be disguised, that the anticipations of a higher intellectuality were not to any great extent realised.

This fact was, from its very nature, slow in developing itself; and much more slowly were the friends of the system convinced of its truth. But the evidence given before Parliamentary committees on various occasions could not be resisted. The following facts were brought out :

That a taste for reading and knowledge was created in comparatively few instances.

That the progress made in reading was not such in the majority of cases as to rede m it from a sense of irksomeness.

That reading being hence sel lom practised, the power to read in many cases died out.

The last was not altogether the fault of the schools, but in the want of cheap literature, of libraries for the people, and of other means of taking up the education of the masses, where the elementary school laid it down.

Still much of the result must be placed to the charge of the schools.

The great defect was that there was no direct, no systematic culture of the intelligence. The demand on the schools was to turn out in the briefest possible period fluent readers. The discovery had not then been made, that the cultiva tion of the intelligence in reading promotes even the mechanical acquisition. The work of the school was mere rote. The examination based on the reading was of the weakest kind; it never by any chance led the children to dig out the sense: sometimes it was positively ludicrous; in none of the instances that have come down to us is there the least gleam of an intelligent apprehension of the import of what was read.

The only book in use was the Bible. It did not strike the people of those days that the language of scripture is so simple, so different from that of ordinary literature, that the ability to read it fluently does not confer the power to read other books. Nor was the mode of using it calculated to promote a love of reading. Instead of selecting such parts as would have excited interest, and secured intelligence, the highest achievement was the ability to read the 10th chapter of Nehemiah. How many weary hours were spent in that and similar undertakings, we have very vivid and painful reminiscences. Had the aims of the promoters of schools been to lay a clog on the faculties, they could scarcely have hit on a better plan than this system of rote and form.

This state of things could not continue. If the lower orders were to be instructed, let them have something worthy of the name. Let secular reading books be supplied to the schools. Let the number of subjects be increased. Let the methods of instruction be improved.

In

It was reserved for Sotland to take the initiative in this movement. 1813, the churches of Edinburgh united in sessions to promote the instruction of the lower orders.

To one of the schools thus established, and henceforth distinguished as the Sessional School, a wealthy gentleman, Mr. John Wood, attached himself, in 1816 with the purpose of improving the matter and method of instruction. The system of which he was the founder -the intellectual system-spread rapidly in

Scotland, but slowly in England, owing to the prejudice which existed agains doing more for the poorer classes than teaching them to read.

Though not confined to their schools, it was chiefly through the agency of the British and Foreign School Society that the system obtained a footing in England. In fact, the intellectual system was thoroughly incorporated with the British, and remains to this day its chief and characteristic feature.

The first principle of this system-that on which it founded its claim to the title intellectual-was to cultivate the intelligence of the child in every school exercise. As an illustration of this principle, we may take the mode of dealing with the reading lesson in its first stages.

Having mastered the alphabet, the child was introduced to words, the meaning of which it was expected to give. For it is to be observed that the object of this system was to lead the child to look for meaning in all it read; and this it was rightly thought would be best accomplished by requiring explanations from the child, in preference to giving them to it. This mode of teaching armed the child with two powers wherewith to attack the difficulties of the earlier stages of reading. First, there was the power which the mastery of the letters gave; and, secondly, there was the power which the effort to get out the sense gave over any unusual word.

Etymology.

Description.

Mode of Manufacture.

Kinds & Sizes.

History.

Use.

Lesson.

(To be continued.)

Lutes of Lessons.

NOTES OF A LESSON ON PAPER.
Latin:-Papyrus.

A thin flexible substance of textile (Latin,-" textus," woven) manufacture, made chiefly from cotton and linen rags, but also from straw, cordage, or any fibrous substance-cotton rags imported from Germany.

The rags are first packed and sorted according to the quality; cut in pieces; reduced to a pulp, which is bleached; made to flow over wire frame; subjected to heated cylinders; in this state resembles blotting paper; sized with a composition of vellum, zinc, and lime; then dried; cut into reams.

Writing, drawing, printing, cartridge, chancery, copying paper Sizes-foolscap, post, demy, crown, &c.

The most ancient kind was made from the papyrus, a species of reed growing on the banks of the Nile, from which we get the name of paper: first male from cotton rags A.D. 1100; mill erected at Nuremberg in the 14th century; introduced into ngland 1588, when a mill was built at Dartford in Kent.

For writing paper, envelopes, books, newspapers, paper-hangings, bank-notes, &c.

"Nothing is useless." Things which are to all appearances useless may be converted into things of value.

C. L. R.,

A Pupil-Teacher..