facts accurate as to place and time, we retrace our former heterogeneous acquirements, and select those circumstances which are connected with our present pursuit ; and thus we form, as it were, a nucleus round which other facts insensibly arrange themselves. Perhaps no two men in the world, who are well versed in these studies, connect their knowledge in the same manner. Relation to some particular country, some favourite history, some distinguished person, forms the connexion which guides our recollection, and which arranges our nomenclature. By attending to what passes in our own minds, we may learn an effectual method of teaching without pain, and without any extraordinary burden to the memory, all that is useful of these sciences. The details of history should be marked by a few chronological eras, and by a few general ideas of geography. When these have been once completely associated in the mind, there is little danger of their being ever disunited the sight of any country will recall its history, and even from representations in a map, or on the globe, when the mind is awakened by any recent event, a long train of concomitant ideas will recur.

The use of technical helps to the memory has been condemned by many, and certainly when they are employed as artifices to supply the place of real knowledge, they are contemptible; but when they are used as indexes to facts that have been really collected in the mind; when they serve to arrange the materials of knowledge in appropriate classes, and to give a sure and rapid clew to recollection, they are of real advantage to the understanding. Indeed, they are now so common, that pretenders cannot build the slightest reputation upon their foundation. Were an orator to attempt a display of long chronological accuracy, he might be wofully confounded by his opponent's applying at the first pause,

*Elsluk he would have said!

Ample materials are furnished in Gray's Memoria Technica, from which a short and useful selection may be made, according to the purposes which are in view. For children, the little ballad of The Chapter of Kings I will not be found beneath the notice of mothers who

* See Gray's Memoria Technica, and the Critic.

attend to education. If the technical terminations of Gray are inserted, they will never be forgotten, or may be easily recalled.* We scarcely ever forget a ballad if the tune is popular.

For pupils at a more advanced age, it will be found advantageous to employ technical helps of a more scientific construction. Priestley's Chart of Biography may, from time to time, be hung in their view. Smaller charts, upon the same plan, might be provided with a few names as landmarks; these may be filled up by the pupil with such names as he selects from history; they may be bound in octavo, like maps, by the middle, so as to unfold both ways.-Thirty-nine inches by nine will be a convenient size. Prints, maps, and medals, which are part of the constant furniture of a room, are seldom attended to by young people; but when circumstances excite an interest upon any particular subject, then is the moment to produce the symbols which record and communicate knowledge.

Mrs. Radcliffe, in her judicious and picturesque tour through Germany, tells us, that in passing through the apartments of a palace which the Archdutchess Maria Christiana, the sister of the late unfortunate Queen of France, had left a few hours before, she saw spread upon a table a map of all the countries then included in the seat of the war. The positions of the several corps of the allied armies were marked upon this chart with small pieces of various coloured wax. it be doubted, that the strong interest which this princess must have taken in the subject, would for ever impress upon her memory the geography of this part of the world?!

Can

How many people are there who have become geographers during the progress of a war. The art of creating an interest in the study of geography, depends upon the dexterity with which passing circumstances are seized by a preceptor in conversation. What are

* Instead of

Read,

William the Conqueror long did reign,

And William his son by an arrow was slain ;

William the Consau long did reign,

And Rufkoi his son by an arrow was slain.

And so on from Gray's Memoria Technica to the end of the chapter.

maps or medals, statues or pictures, but technical helps to memory? If a mother possess good prints, or casts of ancient gems, let them be shown to any persons of taste and knowledge who visit her; their attention leads that of our pupils; imitation and sympathy are the parents of taste, and taste reads in the monuments of art whatever history has recorded.

In the Adele and Theodore of Madame de Silleri, á number of adventitious helps are described for teaching history and chronology. There can be no doubt that these are useful; and although such an apparatus cannot be procured by private families, fortunately the print-shops of every provincial town, and of the capital in particular, furnish even to the passenger a continual succession of instruction. Might not prints, assorted for the purposes which we have mentioned, be lent at circulating libraries ?

To assist our pupils in geography, we prefer a globe to common maps. Might not a cheap, portable, and convenient globe be made of oiled silk, to be inflated by a common pair of bellows? Mathematical exactness is not requisite for our purpose, and though we could not pretend to the precision of our best globes, yet a balloon of this sort would compensate by its size and convenience for its inaccuracy. It might be hung by a line from its north pole, to a hook screwed into the horizontal architrave of a door or window; and another string from its south pole might be fastened at a proper angle to the floor, to give the requisite elevation to the axis of the globe. An idea of the different projections. of the sphere may be easily acquired from this globe in its flaccid state, and any part of it might be consulted as a map, if it were laid upon a convex board of a convenient size. Impressions from the plates which are used for common globes might be taken to try this idea without any great trouble or expense; but we wish to employ a much larger scale, and to have them five or six feet diameter. The inside of a globe of this sort might be easily illuminated, and this would add much to the novelty and beauty of its appearance.

In the country, with the assistance of a common carpenter and plasterer, a large globe of lath and plaster may be made for the instruction and entertainment of a numerous family of children. Upon this they should leisurely delineate, from time to time, by their given

latitudes and longitudes, such places as they become acquainted with in reading or conversation. The capital cities, for instance, of the different countries of Europe, the rivers and the neighbouring towns, until at last the outline might be added: for the sake of convenience, the lines, &c. may be first delineated upon a piece of paper, from which they may be accurately transferred to their proper places on the globe, by the intervention of blackleaded paper, or by pricking the lines through the paper, and pouncing powdered blue through the holes upon the surface of the globe.

We enter into this detail because we are convinced that every addition to the active manual employment of children is of consequence, not only to their improvement, but to their happiness.

Another invention has occurred to us for teaching geography and history together. Priestley's Chart of History, though constructed with great ingenuity, does not invite the attention of young people: there is an intricacy in the detail which is not obvious at first. To remedy what appears to us a difficulty, we propose that eight-and-twenty, or perhaps thirty octavo maps of the globe should be engraved; upon these should be traced, in succession, the different situations of the different countries of the world, as to power and extent, during each respective century: different colours might denote the principal divisions of the world in each of these maps; the same colour always denoting the same country, with the addition of one strong colour, red, for instance, to distinguish that country which had at each period the principal dominion. On the upper and lower margin in these maps, the names of illustrious persons might be engraved in the manner of the biographical chart; and the predominant opinions of each century should also be inserted. Thus history, chronology, and geography, would appear at once to the eye in their proper order and regular succession, divided into centuries and periods, which easily occur to recollection.

We forbear to expatiate upon this subject, as it has not been actually submitted to experiment; carefully avoiding, in the whole of this work, to recommend any mode of instruction which we have not actually put in practice. For this reason, we have not spoken of the Abbé Gaultier's method of teaching geography, as we

have only been able to obtain accounts of it from the public papers, and from reviews; we are, however, disposed to think favourably beforehand of any mode which unites amusement with instruction. We cannot forbear recommending, in the strongest manner, a few pages of Rollin in his " Thoughts upon Education,"* which we think contains an excellent specimen of the manner in which a well-informed preceptor might lead his pupils a geographical, historical, botanical, and physiological tour upon the artificial globe.

We conclude this chapter of hints by repeating what we have before asserted, that though technical assistance may be of ready use to those who are really acquainted with that knowledge to which it refers, it never can supply the place of accurate information.

The causes of the rise and fall of empires, the progress of human knowledge, and the great discoveries of superior minds, are the real links which connect the chain of political knowledge.

CHAPTER XV.

ON ARITHMETIC.

THE man who is ignorant that two and two make four, is stigmatized with the character of hopeless stupidity; except, as Swift has remarked, in the arithmetic of the customs, where two and two do not always make the same sum.

We must not judge of the understanding of a child by this test, for many children of quick abilities do not immediately assent to this proposition when it is first laid before them. "Two and two make four," says the tutor. "Well, child, why do you stare so?"

The child stares because the word make is in this sentence used in a sense which is quite new to him; he knows what it is to make a bow, and to make a noise; but how this active verb is applicable in the present case, where there is no agent to perform the action, he

* Page 24.