attention is his fault, not theirs, this will save him much annoyance and them much misery. He has, too, another advantage, which gives him the power of gaining their attention their emulation is easily excited. In the Waisenhaus at Halle I once heard a class of very young children, none of them much above six years old, perform feats of mental arithmetic quite beyond their age (I wished their teacher had not been so successful), and I well remember the pretty eagerness with which each child held out a little hand and shouted, " Mich!" to gain the privilege of answering.

The Child's Area of Interest. Then again, there are many subjects in which children take an interest. Indeed, all visible things, especially animals, are much more to them than to us. A child has made acquaintance with all the animals in the neighborhood, and can tell you much more about the house and its surroundings than you know yourself. But all this knowledge and interest you would wish forgotten directly he comes into school. Reading, writing, and figures are taught in the driest manner. The first two are in themselves not uninteresting to the child, as he has something to do, and young people are much more ready to do anything than to learn anything. But when lessons are given the child to learn, they are not about things concerning which he has ideas, and feels an interest, but you teach him the Catechism-mere sounds-and, that Alfred (to him only a name) came to the throne in 871, though he has no notion what the throne is, or what 871 means. The child learns the lesson with much trouble and small profit, bearing the infliction with

what patience he can, till he escapes out of school, and begins to learn much more faster on a very different system.

Pestalozzian Practice at Variance with Pestalozzian Principle. An attempt has been made by the Pestalozzians to remedy all this. They insist strongly on the necessity of teaching children about things, and of appealing to their senses. But, to judge from the Cheam manual, they have succeeded merely in proving that lessons on things may be made as tiresome as any other lessons. They hold up an object, say a piece of sponge, and run through all the adjectives which can possibly be applied to it. "This is sponge. Sponge is an animal product. Sponge is amorphous. Sponge is porous. Sponge is absorbent," etc., etc. I have no practical acquaintance with this method, but confess I do not like the look of it from a distance.*

Importance of Good Pictures. We cannot often introduce into the school the thing, much less the animal, which children would care to see, but we can introduce what will please the children as well, in some cases even better, viz., good pictures. A teacher who could draw boldly on the blackboard, would have no difficulty in arresting the children's attention. But, of course, few can do this. Pictures must, therefore, be provided for him. A good deal has been done of late years in the way of illustrating children's books, and even childhood must be the happier for such pictures as those of Tenniel

* Mr. Herbert Spencer has conclusively shown Pestalozzian practices are often at variance with Pestalozzian principles,— Education, chap. ii.

and Harrison Weir. But, it seems well understood that these gentlemen are incapable of doing anything for children beyond affording them innocent amusement, and we should be as much surprised at seeing their works introduced into that region of asceticism, the English school-room, as if we ran across one of Raphael's Madonnas in a Baptist chapel.

A Model Lesson in Leipzig. I had the good fortune, some years ago, to be present at the lessons given by a very excellent teacher to the youngest class, consisting both of boys and girls, at the first Burger-schule of Leipzig. In Saxony the schooling which the state demands for each child, begins at six years old, and lasts till fourteen. These children were, therefore, between six and seven. In one year, a certain Dr. Vater taught them to read, write, and reckon. His method was as follows:-Each child had a book with pictures of objects, such as a hat, a slate, etc. Under the picture was the name of the object in printing and writing characters, and also a couplet about the object. The children having opened their books, and found the picture of a hat, the teacher showed them a hat, and told them a tale connected with one. He then asked the children questions about his story, and about the hat he had in his hand-What was the color of it? etc. He then drew a hat on the blackboard, and made the children copy it on their slates. Next he wrote the word "hat," and told them that for people who could read this did as well as the picture. The children then copied the word on their slates. The teacher proceeded to analyze the word "hat." "It is made up," said he, "of three sounds,

the most important of which is the a, which comes in the middle." In all cases the vowel sound was first ascertained in every syllable, and then was given an approximation to the consonantal sounds before and after. The couplet was now read by the teacher, and the children repeated it after him. In this way the book had to be worked over and over till the children were perfectly familiar with everything in it. They had been already six months thus employed when I visited the school, and knew the book pretty thoroughly. To test their knowledge, Dr. Vater first wrote a number of capitals at random, on the board, and called out a boy to tell him words having these capitals as initials. This boy had to call out a girl to do something of the kind, she a boy, and so forth. Everything was done very smartly, both by master and children. The best proof I saw of their accuracy and quickness was this: the master traced words from the book very rapidly with a stick on the blackboard, and the children always called out the right word, though I often could not follow him. He also wrote with chalk words which the children had never seen, and made them name first the vowel sounds, then the consonantal, then combine them.

The Merits of this Kind of Teaching. I have been thus minute in my description of this lesson, because it seems. to me an admirable example of the way in which children between six and eight years of age should be taught. The method was arranged and the book prepared by the late Dr. Vogel, who was then Director of the school. Its merits, as its author pointed out to me, are:-1. That it connects the instruction with objects of which

the child has already an idea in his mind, and so associates new knowledge with old; 2. That it gives the children plenty to do as well as to learn, a point on which the Doctor was very emphatic; 3. That it makes the children go over the same matter in various ways, till they have learnt a little thoroughly, and then applies their knowledge to the acquirement of more. Here the Doctor seems to have followed Jacotot. But though the method was no doubt a good one, I must say its success at Leipzig was due at least as much to Dr. Vater as to Dr. Vogel. This gentleman had been taking the youngest class in this school for twenty years, and, whether by practice or natural talent, he had acquired precisely the right manner for keeping children's attention. He was energetic without bustle and excitement, and quiet without a suspicion of dullness or apathy. By frequently changing the employment of the class, and requiring smartness in everything that was done, he kept them all on the alert. The lesson I have described was followed without pause by one in arithmetic, the two together occupying an hour an three-quarters, and the interest of the children never flagged throughout.

Method of Teaching Reading: Stories of Animals; Æsop's Fables. It is then possible to teach children, at this stage at least, without making them hate their work, and dread the sound of the school-bell.

I will suppose a child to have passed through such a course as this by the time he is eight or nine years old. He can now read and copy easy words. What we next want for him is a series of good reading-books, about things in which he takes an interest. The language