This foolish act of Lord North's quickly precipitated the two countries into a long and disastrous war, which subsequently ended in the independence and formation of the United States, now the greatest and most powerful country in the New World. In 1773 a Congress or Representative Assembly met at Boston, consisting of delegates from the States, and signed the Declaration of Rights, which decreed that commercial intercourse should cease between England and America until the obnoxious taxes were repealed and the Port Bill withdrawn, and Americans should have the same privileges as Englishmen. This declaration was again ratified at Philadelphia (Sept. 4th, 1774). A copy of this was sent to General Gage, the commander of the English forces in America. The Home Government would not adopt conciliatory measures, and in 1775 war broke out. At Concord, near Boston, the Americans collected immense stores of war material, and General Gage received instructions to seize them. This led to a conflict between the colonists and the British at Lexington. Having executed his errand, the Americans, under Hancock and Adams, suddenly enveloped the British, killed sixty, and took two hundred English prisoners, the victors only losing sixty killed and wounded. The provincials, as the Americans were called, hearing of this engagement, and finding no pardon was to be given to their leaders, determined to bring matters to an issue by seizing an eminence called Bunker's Hill, which commanded Boston. Marching from Charles, a small town on a river of the same name, the Americans seized the hill on the night of the 16th of June. Gage, who had been reinforced by Admiral Howe, and Generals Burgoyne and Clinton, tried to drive them out of their entrenchments, and for a long time the issue seemed doubtful, but the heroism of the British sailors made up for the inability of the soldiers, and, after a bloody encounter with the bayonet, the Americans were defeated with the loss of nearly 1100 men, and the British only 450 killed and wounded. This victory proved of little value to the British. Soon after this the Americans invaded Canada. Four thousand men, under Brigadier-General Montgomery, entered Canada from Lake Champlain and the sources of the Kennebec river, and were successful in capturing Montreal, Chambly, St. John's, and Longuaell. A second division, under Arnold, sailed up the Kennebec, and after traversing with great difficulty the forests and swamps of Maine, where their sufferings from hunger were so intolerable as to induce them to eat the flesh of dogs and the leather of their cartouche boxes, arrived at Satagan on the 4th of November, and on the 8th reached Point Levi, opposite Quebec, whose inhabitants were perfectly ignorant of their approach. Quebec was at this moment almost defenceless, and had Arnold been able to cross the river, in all probability it must have been captured; but, fortunately, the shipping had been removed to the other side, and the news of its danger reached the city while there was yet time to prepare for its defence. General Carleton, the British governor, was meanwhile occupied in endeavouring to repulse General Montgomery, who, having made himself master of Montreal, turned his attention to effect a junction of his own division with that of Arnold. The British general, by a masterly manoeuvre, passed quietly down the river, and reached the citadel on the 19th of November without inter ruption; Arnold's troops having previously crossed the St. Lawrence a short distance above Quebec, awaiting Montgomery, who, on his arrival, assumed the command of both divisions. Carleton was welcomed in Quebec with great joy; the French Canadians vied with the oldest British soldiers in zeal and energy; and the little garrison of 1,800 men, of whom only 350 were regulars-including 230 of Frazer's Highlanders, who had settled in the country, and were re-embodied under Colonel McLean-450 seamen, and the remainder a gallant band of Canadian militia and armed artificers, awaited with calm confidencǝ the attack of the combined forces. Montgomery summoned the citadel to surrender, and received an immediate refusal, upon which a blockade was commenced, which lasted through the whole month of December, when the Americans held a council of war, and decided upon a night assault. The besiegers divided into two storming parties, and, headed by Montgomery and Arnold, advanced, during the raging of a furious snow-storm, from opposite points, intending to unite near Prescott Gate, and after forcing it proceed to the upper town. As they approached the gate, the assailants led by Montgomery became crowded in the long narrow pass leading to the gate of the fortress, and a confused noise, mingling with the conflict of the elements, struck the watchful ear of the outer sentinel, who, receiving no answer to his challenge, roused the guard. Montgomery, with great quickness, formed his men for the assault, but the Canadian militia, aided by nine British men to work the guns, opened a tremendous fire from the battery which commanded the path, and compelled their retreat. The besieged, nevertheless, unable to ascertain the real state of affairs, continued their cannonade until every sound in answer to their fire had died away. The morning dawned without at first revealing any traces of the enemy, for the falling snow had thrown, as it were, a mantle, over the dead bodies of the brave Montgomery and the gallant soldiers who had fallen by his side. His death was rendered the more striking by the circumstance of his having, sixteen years before, served under Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham; but on his marriage with the daughter of Judge Livingston, he joined the cause of the colonists, and perished in attempting to deprive the British of the fortress he had previously aided them in acquiring. Arnold had also been unsuccessful. In a desperate assault on the first barrier on the opposite side he had been severely wounded, and taken off the field; but Captain Morgan led on his division, carried the first barrier, and pushed on to the second, but being hemmed in by a detachment of British and Canadians in the rear, Captain Morgan with his men, to the number of 426, surrendered without leaving Prescott Gate, where the governor had taken his stand. The death of their commander greatly dispirited the Americans, and though Arnold endeavoured to maintain his position, little was done until April, 1776, when a reinforcement of 2,000 men arrived under General Wooster, who made some ineffectual attacks; but the disembarkation, early in May, of supplies from England, obliged the Americans to retreat to Montreal, and enabled Carleton entirely to expel them from Canada. At the time of the invasion there were not more than 900 regular troops in the British colony, and the greater part of these surrendered in Forts Chambly and St. John, or were taken while retiring from Montreal. Such, however, were the feelings of the Canadians, on account of the honourable treatment experienced from the English government, after the conquest of the colony from the French, that they cheerfully exerted themselves to preserve Canada to England, thus affording another illustration of the wisdom of humane and generous policy. It was only on the 7th of September that the Canadian officers of militia received their commissions; but their activity and zeal made amends for the tardiness with which confidence had been reposed in them, and of 1,500 defenders of Quebec, 800 were militia men. When the Americans evacuated the province, they had about 8,000 men, but the Canadian militia and regulars presented to them an organised force of 13,000 men, and thus compelled their retreat across the frontier. (To be continued.) School Method and management. Writing should be one of the earliest exercises of the child, even in the infant school; and in the author's opinion should be taught pari passu with reading from script, not printed cards. This fact is recognized in "Unger's Script Primer." One reason why writing should be begun early is that it is mainly an imitative process, and imitation is the faculty in which young children excel; it would thus also add a variety to the reading, and impress this on the memory by another bond of attachment. In every good infant school, some such plan as that in the writing syllabus should be adopted; and where there is regularity of attendance, early admission to school, and a sufficient and competent staff, the first class of infants ought to be able to transcribe, or write from dictation, in large or text hand, a line of the primer or first reading book before being drafted upstairs. A very great aid in teaching writing at all stages is the drawing lesson as an accompaniment. Huxley recently asserted that everybody could be taught to draw, at least in the same sense that everybody can be taught to write (well or ill); but too frequently drawing is not begun until children have attained the Standard III., and the benefit of close association between writing and drawing in the infant school, and for Standards I. and II., is senselessly lost. Among the defects most commonly met with in writing are the ⚫ following: (1) The factor on the right of the r (the crotchet) is generally illshaped, because it is not taught from the blackboard as a separate element. (2) The o, a, g, d, and other letters made up of o in combination with another element, are not begun with an upstroke in the middle of the right hand curve of the letter, but are begun like u with a downstroke, and a kind of lid is stuck on after. (3) The stems of the d, g, are not level with the top line. (6) Female teachers almost invariably write with thin flat curves, cramming too much within the given space, and writing with too little slope. The foregoing have come most within the author's observation. To these may be added from Mr. Abbott, "Strokes rough, curve wrong, bad termination, too slanting and the reverse, too broad and the reverse, not parallel, form of the letter bad, large stroke made too fine and the reverse, too tall or too short, stems not straight." After all that can be done for a class in teaching writing, there will always be a few who will not come up to the average level of the class, from not having a good eye for form, that is, a good visual memory; and from not possessing a delicate muscular sensibility in the fingers, just as all housewives have not a "light hand" to make good pastry. We conclude this subject with a quotation from "Locke's Thoughts concerning Education." "The first thing to be taught is to hold the pen (or pencil) right; and this the child should be perfect in before he should be suffered to put it to the paper (or slate); for not only children, but anybody else that would do anything well, should never be put upon too much of it at once, or be set to perfect themselves in two parts of an action at the same time, if they can possibly be separated." Even when the head teacher has introduced the best method of teaching writing, a class often makes little progress, and in these cases the reason always is either (1) The assistant has not paid careful attention to the instructions of the head teacher, little real brain power being required either to learn or teach writing; or, (2) She has not rigidly, perseveringly, and continuously corrected the exercises of the children. In the majority of the cases of failure, the latter will be the cause; the children will write so much that they write ill; what is ill written is only perfunctorily corrected by the teacher, and so the child pays no attention to the correction. The order has been issued "go on writing," and the child "goes on," but not forward-very often backward. In other words, laziness on the part of the teacher has become stereotyped in untidiness on the part of the taught. In such a class an examiner may expect raggedness, looseness, and want of conscientiousness all round; and the child will be the father of the man. As we proceed from Standard I. upwards, while periodically set lessons in writing, and even in large hand are occasionally given, yet we gradually secure good writing while teaching other subjects; thus, in Standard I. we think only in this subject of writing and spelling, but in Standard II. we teach writing through dictation; better still through hard words picked out by the teacher and dictated to class; through grammar, picking out nouns in reading books; and in geography, to the extent of giving simple definitions, as, a lake is a portion of water surrounded by land. In Standard II., writing should be taught entirely on paper (slates should be absolutely abolished at this stage for mere writing purposes). The writing should be taught now through "hard words," "spellings," "meanings," through "grammar" (through noun, adjective, and verb), and now more largely through geography. (Every geography lesson should now be put down, or copied from blackboard after it has been given, to secure correct spelling of proper names, and to enable the less apprehensive to catch the scope of lesson.) In Standard IV. the writing lessons, qua writing, are more and more dropped, and dictation of class subjects (now comprising history) and specific subjects takes its place. Here, also, writing for the first time should be taught by reproduction, by the child, without use of skeletonlesson on black-board, of a set lesson previously given, and by original themes and essays. CAUTION.-In examining this work, the teacher should be very careful not to let the writing, qua writing, be forgotten in subject matter, else persistent bad writing will inevitably arise. The same remarks will apply to Standards V. and VI., with this addition, the copy-books now selected, at least for boys, should be such as have a great variety of arithmetical and commercial copies in them; the historical, geographical, and domestic economy series of copy-books are a hobby ridden to death in seminaries, but of no real use. Such a commercial series should contain sums worked out correctly in full to be copied for the sake of learning to write figures, and to set down the work; these figures should not be the usual school figures, but of a counting-house shape. The commercial copy-book series should be explanations of such terms as interest, discount, rebate, promissory notes in full, this is to certify etc., I. O. U.'s, bills of lading, invoices, drafts, applications for situations (but not those horrid letters on stilts of the Complete Letter Writer), agreements to take and let a house, notices to quit. Sizes of hand writing:-Large hand of an inch. The forming of the letters into groups having the same elementary lines and curves would ensure greater correctness of form and give greater ease and rapidity in learning. Children are too often allowed to copy the alphabet right through as best they may. Letters should also be dissected and their formation pointed out on the blackboard as regularly and carefully as arithmetic or any other subject is taught. This method, used by a few teachers, if done by all, would ensure the best results on both slate and copy. Many teachers also leave the children to copy the letters all the year, and neglect the more valuable converse, that of getting them to form the letters to dictation. The dictation should also be of single letters, and not exclusively of pairs of the capital and small letters. MR. WILLIAMS. I have seldom found the writing in a school good unless the children had been habituated from the beginning to write within lines on their slates. Yet, strange as it may appear, I have often met teachers who appeared unconscious of the importance of this almost essential pre |