fives, and then put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and then see how much money he could get in an hour; and then ask himself how much money he'd get in a day at that rate; and then how much ten workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at that rate -and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if he left his head empty for the devil to dance in. But the long and short of it isI'll have nobody in my night school that doesn't strive to learn what he comes to learn as hard as if he was striving to get out of a dark hole into broad daylight. I'll send no man away because he's stupid: if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I'd not refuse to teach him. But I'll not throw away good knowledge on people who think they can get it by the sixpenn'orth, and carry it away with them as they would an ounce of snuff. So never come to me again if you can't show that you've been working with your own heads, instead of thinking you can pay for mine to work for you. That's the last word I've got to say to you."

CHAPTER III.

GRAMMAR.

IN teaching grammar it is a common mistake of young teachers to overload children's minds with definitions and to take parrotlike repetition of phrases for a real knowledge of the things spoken of. A child over eight years of age must have been illtaught or ill-disciplined or both if on being told to underline all the nouns in a passage which he has written down from dictation out of a reading book used in his class, he either omits to do so in the case of many nouns, or, still worse, underlines adjectives and verbs.

After a few simple lessons the child's knowledge should be easily kept up by occasional practice from reading and dictation lessons, which for this purpose may be lengthened from the thirty minutes usually allotted to each to forty or forty-five minutes.

The main difficulties arise from words which are both nouns and verbs-as blow, stroke, love, look, box, cuff, sleep, sow, name, leaves, face, fish, thought, play, rock, walk, tears, &c. These

very difficulties give a teacher opportunities he might otherwise overlook of developing the intelligence of his class in reading. Let it not be forgotten how much in this as in all subjects may be learnt from children's mistakes. The timely and judicious correction of one blunder may enable them to avoid a hundred similar mistakes into which they would otherwise fall. As per contra the leaving one uncorrected may lead to the commission of a hundred more. When sufficient practice has been given in picking out nouns, and distinguishing the three kinds of nouns, the teacher should go on to verbs rather than adjectives, because he will then be able to point out and make clear to the minds of his scholars the simplest form and framework of any sentence. Indeed, a clear-headed teacher may make such good use of his lessons on the noun and verb, and their invariable connection and necessity in every sentence that it will be afterwards comparatively easy to teach them to analyse a simple sentence. As in teaching arithmetic it was suggested as on the whole better that children should be taught fractions immediately after mastering the first four rules, so also it may be urged that analysis of sentences should be taught before syntactical parsing. Quite apart from any question of examination and grants, were it only to improve reading, it seems desirable that analysis of sentences should be taught much earlier than is customary.

This point is ably argued in the following passage from Mr. Fearon's work on School Inspection :

"In the case of English it is absurd to waste time over learning the cases of nouns which have lost all their case-endings, and have substituted for those case-endings structural position or logical relation in the sentence. What is wanted is to get as quickly as possible a notion of the structure of the sentence and of the logical relation of its parts. And for this purpose the teaching of English grammar should be begun, and based throughout its course, on the analysis of sentences. The teacher should, immediately after imparting the first elementary notions and general definitions, proceed to the subject and predicate, beginning with the noun and pronoun as the subject, and with intransitive verbs, as verbs of complete predication. He should then pass on to the direct objective relations of nouns and pronouns with verbs of incomplete predication, introducing no more study of case-endings than is absolutely necessary for the purposes of the pronouns. Number, gender, person, tense, mood, and voice, should

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be taught as modifications of these relations. Having thoroughly worked these forms and relations of the noun, pronoun and verb, always by means of the structure of a simple sentence, the teacher should proceed to the enlargement of the subject, and thereby introduce for the first time the so-called possessive case-ending of nouns and personal pronouns, the adjective, the noun in apposition, the possessive pronoun, and the participle. Having treated of the simplest forms of enlargement of the subject, he should proceed to the simplest forms of extension of the predicate. In this relation he should first introduce the adverb, showing its use both for extending the predicate, and, by means of the adjective, for further enlarging the subject. He should then introduce the indirect objective relation of nouns and pronouns (such as that which is called, by analogy with Latin, the dative case), always as a means of extending the predicate. All through this course of teaching, it is an essential thing that the children should be required to make and form simple sentences in various ways, so as thoroughly to understand the practical application of what they are learning to the art of speaking and writing correctly. The teacher should then go on, by way of further extension of the predicate, and of further enlargement of the subject, to the use of the preposition with nouns and pronouns. After this he should proceed to easy types of complex sentences; teaching the children the use of the subordinate sentence, and therewith introducing to them for the first time the conjunction, the relative pronoun, and those words such as 'why,' which answer the purpose of a relative pronoun and preposition combined. By this means, he will be able to teach them to distinguish with confidence between the several uses of words-such as those words which are sometimes used as conjunctions, and sometimes as relative pronouns and the like. Having thus given the children their first notions of the relations of a subordinate to a principal sentence, he should then return to the simple sentence, and should instruct the children in the various kinds of phrases, in the more difficult uses of the participle, and in the nature and functions of interjections; and after this should go back once more to the complex sentence, and carry on his teaching into the different kinds of subordinate sentences; being extremely careful at this point of his teaching to ascertain that the children see clearly the reason why any given subordinate sentence is substantival, adjectival, or adverbial, by making them always point out the word in the principal sentence upon which the subordinate sentence depends.

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Advantage of this Method. Some persons may think that this way of teaching English grammar, by means, that is to say, of logical analysis, is more difficult for children than the old method of teaching it by a system of supposed inflexions, and of parsing those inflexions, based on the analogy of Latin; and may imagine that it may be too difficult for children in our elementary schools. I am perfectly convinced from observation and experience, both as an inspector and as a teacher, that this is not the case. The technical terms which it is necessary to use in teaching grammatical analysis are neither more nor less difficult in themselves than those which it is necessary to employ in teaching arithmetic, geography, or book-keeping; and they are not more difficult than the

terms which it is necessary to use in teaching grammar on the old system. As regards all such terms, whether employed in the teaching of bookkeeping, or of analysis of sentences, the great point is to make the children have an intelligent understanding of the real things which underlies them, and which they represent, and this can be satisfactorily done in the case of English grammar only by means of analysis. Moreover, teachers who adopt this mode of teaching English grammar, will find that the power of getting quickly at the sentence is of immense advantage as a means of interesting the children, and engaging their attention, in what must otherwise appear to them a most dry and unprofitable study. As soon as a child can begin to construct sentences, he feels, as a learner in algebra feels when he is able to solve an easy problem by means of an equation, that he is really doing something; and that he has got the best of answers to that question which children are always asking secretly of themselves, if not openly of their teachers, in their studies, viz. :- What is the use of all this?""

Children should be encouraged to prepare some of the dryer details of Grammar from good Text-Books as Home Lessons,1 so that the teacher's time may not be wasted on mere lists of words during school hours. It is found that children who read well instinctively analyse as they read.

CHAPTER IV.

GEOGRAPHY.

In his earliest lessons on Geography, a teacher should endeavour to awaken in the minds of his scholars a desire to know something of the earth we live on, and then to endeavour in the simplest words to turn to account and satisfy the curiosity he is gradually arousing. If a teacher begins with bald statements such as these, "The earth is round like an orange, and flat at the top and bottom. Its surface is divided into land and water; the largest division of land is called a continent, and the largest

1 Some instructive remarks on this subject by a zealous and successful Boys' Master will be found in the Appendix.

division of water is called an ocean. An island is a piece of land entirely surrounded by water, and a lake is just the opposite, a piece of water surrounded by land," &c., &c., he runs a fair chance of disgusting his class by such lifeless mechanical treatment. In this subject, above all others, should two wellknown maxims be observed, to pass from the known to the unknown, and to do a little well in every lesson. No great fault could be found with a teacher who should begin by setting before his class a map of the world with which they have become familiar from infancy, from seeing it on the school wall, and endeavour to give them some idea of its meaning—availing himself of children's love of bright colours in pointing out the distribution of land and water. Then starting with the school, he may teach them how to find the points of the compass in the room as well as on the map. He may then take a small six-inch globe and treat it in some such way as is pointed out by an able and experienced teacher in the Appendix. When he comes to treat of the parts of land and water, he should use a tray with clay and sand, wherewith to model hills, lakes, streams, channels, islands, peninsulas, gulfs, and seas. This is especially needful in town schools. Appeals to the children's experience in forming miniature lakes by damming up gutters will serve to illustrate the formation of lakes. The formation of deltas may be illustrated after a heavy shower on any sloping road. The shifting of sunlight from desk to desk, and from house to house, the shortening and lengthening of shadows, from morn to noon, and noon to evening, the different quarters in which the sun rises and sets in spring, summer, and winter, and the different height he reaches at noontide at different seasons as shown by shadows carefully marked at set times; these are all visible things, of which an intelligent explanation, especially if well illustrated by an orange, or ball, and a knitting needle, will leave vivid and lasting impressions on young minds. Children thus intelligently taught will love to be told how to find out by watching a tower's or chimney's shadow shorten or lengthen, whether the sun be rising or falling; how to learn the time of day at different times of the year; and the points of the compass wherever they are; and to work out little problems in such subjects. Being shown how much more