school-boys learn of each other in playing about their bounds, are a hundred times more useful to them than all those which the master teaches in the school."

He also suggests experiments in the dark, which will both train the senses and get over the child's dread of darkness.

Pronunciation and Declamation. Émile, living in the country and being much in the open air, will acquire a distinct and emphatic way of speaking. He will also avoid a fruitful source of bad pronunciation among the children of the rich, viz., saying lessons by heart. These lessons the children gabble when they are learning them, and afterward, in their efforts to remember the words, they drawl and give all kinds of false emphasis. Declamation is to be shunned as acting. If Émile does not understand anything, he will be too wise to pretend to understand it.

On Music and Drawing. Rousseau seems perhaps inconsistent in not excluding music and drawing from his curriculum of ignorance: but as a musician, he naturally relaxed toward the former; and drawing he would have his pupil cultivate, not for the sake of the art itself, but only to give him a good eye and supple hand. He should, in all cases, draw from the objects themselves, "my intention being, not so much that he should know how to imitate the objects, as to become fully acquainted with them."

Rousseau's Opinion of Ordinary School Instruction. The instruction given to ordinary school-boys, was of course an abomination in the eyes of Rousseau. "All the studies imposed on these poor unfortunates tend to

such objects as are entirely foreign to their minds. Judge, then, of the attention they are likely to bestow on them." "The pedagogues, who make a great parade of the instructions they give their scholars, are paid to talk in a different strain: one may see plainly, however, by their conduct, that they are exactly of my opinion: for, after all, what is it they teach them? Words, still words, and nothing but words. Among the various sciences they pretend to teach, they take particular care not to fall upon those which are really useful; because there would be the sciences of things, and in them they would never succeed; but they fix on such as appear to be understood when their terms are once gotten by rote, viz., geography, chronology, heraldry, the languages, etc., all studies so foreign to the purposes of man, and particularly to those of a child, that it is a wonder if ever he may have occasion for them as long as he lives." "In any study whatever, unless we possess the ideas of the things represented, the signs representing them are of no use or consequence. A child is, nevertheless, always confined to these signs, without our being capable of making him comprehend any of the things which they represent." What is the world to a child? It is a globe of pasteboard.* "As no science consists in the knowledge of words, so there is no study

* Rousseau, like his pupil Basedow, would avoid the use even of representations, where possible. 'It ought to be laid down as a general rule, never to substitute the shadow unless where it is impossible to exhibit the substance; for the representation engrossing the attention of the child, generally makes him forget the object represented.

proper for children. As they have no certain ideas, so they have no real memory; for I do not call that so which is retentive only of mere sensations through subjects taught. What signifies imprinting on their minds a catalogue of signs which to them represent nothing? Is it to be feared that, in acquiring the knowledge of things, they will not acquire also that of signs? Why, then, shall we put them to the unnecessary trouble of learning them twice? And yet what dangerous prejudices do we not begin to instill, by making them take for knowledge, words which to them are without meaning? In the very first unintelligible sentence with which a child sits down satisfied, in the very first thing he takes upon trust, or learns from others without being himself convinced of its utility, he loses part of his understanding; and he may figure long in the eyes of fools before he will be able to repair so considerable a loss. No; if nature has given to the child's brain that pliability which renders it fit to receive all impressions, it is not with a view that we should imprint thereon the names of kings, dates, terms of heraldry, of astronomy, of geography, and all those words, meaningless at his age, and useless at any age, with which we weary his sad and sterile childhood; but that all the ideas which he can conceive, and which are useful to him, all those which relate to his happiness, and will one day make his duty plain to him, may trace themselves there in characters never to be effaced, and may assist him in conducting himself through life in a manner appropriate to his nature and his faculties."

Children's Memories may be Trained without Books. "That kind of memory which is possessed by children, may be fully employed without setting them to study books. Everything they see, or hear, appears striking, and they commit it to memory. A child keeps in his mind a register of the actions and conversation of those who are about him; every scene he is engaged in is a book from which he insensibly enriches his memory, treasuring up his store till time shall ripen his judgment and turn it to profit. In the choice of these scenes and objects, in the care of presenting those constantly to his view which he ought to be familiar with, and in hiding from him such as are improper, consists the true art of cultivating this primary faculty of a child. By such means, also, it is, that we should endeavor to form that magazine of knowledge which should serve for his education in youth, and to regulate his conduct afterward. This method, it is true, is not productive of little prodigies of learning, nor does it tend to the glorification of the governess or preceptor: but it is the way to form robust and judicious men, persons sound in body and mind, who, without being admired while children, know how to make themselves respected when grown up."

How Reading and Writing are to be Taught. As for reading and writing, if you can induce a desire for them, the child will be sure to learn them. "I am almost certain that Émile will know perfectly well how to read and write before he is ten years old, because I give myself very little trouble whether he learn it or not before he is fifteen; but I had much rather he should never learn to read at all, than to acquire that knowledge at

the expense of everything that would render it useful to him; and of what service will the power of reading be to him when he has renounced its use forever? 'Id in primis cavere opportebit, ne studia, qui amare nondum poterit, oderit, et amaritudinem semel perceptam etiam ultra rudes annos reformidet.'

Attention to be Fixed on what is Near. The following passage is perhaps familiar to Mr. Lowe: "If, proceeding on the plan I have begun to delineate, you follow rules directly contrary to those which are generally received; if, instead of transporting your pupil's mind to what is remote-if, instead of making his thoughts wander unceasingly in other places, in other climates, in other centuries, to the ends of the earth, and to the very heavens, you apply yourself to keeping him always at home and attentive to that which comes in immediate contact with him, you will then find him capable of perception, of memory, and even of reason: this is the order of nature. In proportion as the sensitive becomes an active being, he acquires a discernment proportional to his bodily powers; when he possesses more of the latter, also, than are necessary for his preservation, it is with that redundancy, and not before, that he displays those speculative faculties which are adapted to the employment of such abilities to other purposes. Are you desirous, therefore, to cultivate the understanding of your pupil? cultivate those abilities on which it depends. Keep him in constant exercise of body; bring him up robust and healthy, in order to make him reasonable and wise; let him work, let him run about, let him make a noise, in a word, let him be always active and in motion;