true and liberal instruction or useful study. From these principles rules for application necessarily flow; and it depends on the teacher and the student whether the latter shall be well and skillfully trained, neglected, or superficially taught.

Artistic Cultivation of Taste.-Provision is formally made, in many seminaries, for a more liberal allowance of cultivation for the expressive faculties, than is afforded in the mere learning to read, in the study of gramınar and rhetoric, or in the practice of composition and elocution. The demands of Taste are recognized and complied with, so far as regards a certain measure of instruction in music and drawing. But, in very many seminaries, the little arbitrary and imperfect instruction which is given in these branches, is too frequently much worse than none; unless we are willing to recognize the forming of bad taste in either art as an admissible service of education.

Lessons in Drawing: Common Mistake.-Many parents and teachers never bestow a thought on the true character or proper uses of art, as a means of mental culture, or as a practical accomplishment, but labor under the false notion that a little dabbling in it, under a very ordinary instructor, is at least something gained toward refinement of taste and graceful habit. There can not be a greater error committed in education than this. Every attempt to copy an imperfect model, brings down the tone of taste, and does something to hinder the attainment of excellence. Neglect is wholesome, when compared with perversion or with false instruction.

"My daughter," says an affectionate mother, "wishes to learn drawing; and Mr. Blank is getting up a class; and I think I shall let her join. Mr. Blank's drawing is no great things, to be sure. But a little no. tion of drawing can do my daughter no harm, at least; and, perhaps, she may take a liking for it; and then she can find a better teacher, when it will be worth while to have one." Here are the common errors,--that there is any benefit in a little poor or bad art, or that any speck of it is not a positive blemish; that the elements of art can be taught by an incompetent teacher; and that, after having taste thus perverted, the pupil can rally, acquire new principles, and form new habits. The actual experience of most pupils thus misdirected, is the painful conviction that, without a perfect command of elements, nothing whatever can be done in art, and that every neglected false line or touch, in rudimental lessons, is sure to injure the habits of eye and hand, in all subsequent execution, besides lowering the standard of excellence, and degrading the taste of the student.

Music: Singing-An error similar to that just mentioned, prevails with regard to instruction and practice in music,―more partic

ularly, in instrumental music. The vocal department, however, is not without its many evils of erroneous conception and faulty instruction. Singing, by the formal manner in which it is sometimes taught, becomes one of the listless tasks which the juvenile pupil is compelled to perform in the routine of school duty, instead of being one of the natural enjoyments and welcome recreations of daily life, in which intellectual activity is accompanied by pleasing emotion and free expression. The young learner, who should be permitted to enter at once on the pleasure of listening to pure and perfect strains of actual music, and then to join in the attempt to execute them, in the natural training of ear and voice, is commonly detained for a long course of drilling on technical terms and arbitrary rules. Music is thus rendered a tasteless, irksome, artificial exercise to the pupil, and fails of accomplishing its main objects of quickening the ear, enlivening the feelings, moulding the voice, and cultivating the taste, by the influence of pure and beautiful examples of vocal sound, in the expression of feeling and sentiment.

Demoralizing Influence of Low Taste.-The result is still more injurious when low taste is permitted to obtrude its degrading influences on the sacred sphere of music; when song is treated as merely a form of amusement or of sport, and when the corrupting effects of gross humor and ridiculous caricature, are intentionally introduced in the lessons of an art designed to purify and elevate the soul. When to such influences there is added the express utterance of degrading and demoralizing sentiment, in the words of a piece of music selected for a school exercise, the work of the enemy who sows tares in the field, is fully accomplished; and education lends its hand to the act of helping the young mind not upward but positively downward.

Deficient and Faulty Instruction.—When the grosser evils which have been mentioned, are avoided, there are not unfrequently others, quite serious in effect, arising from the influence of imperfect cultivation and false taste in the teacher, or in the community of which the pupil is a member. Inaccurate, slovenly, and heedless execution defeats all the purposes of musical cultivation, and renders the absence of culture preferable to the possession of it. Every repetition of a fault confirms an error of perception, a perversion of feeling, or a corruption of taste, and deepens it into a vice of habit and a defect in mental character.

Instrumental Music.-The more laborious forms of culture which are indispensable to success in the performance of instrumental music, strike yet deeper into the taste and tendencies of the mind, as regards the character and effects of expression. Faults in this

department of musical instruction, are, it is true, not so widely diffused as those which are so often displayed in the teaching of vocal music. But they are not less prejudicial to the pupil individually. The incessant and arduous application which is required of all who wish to perform successfully on any instrument, exhausts and discourages pupils who have not a true and deep love of music, together with the enduring physical vigor and muscular power which consummate execution demands. The attempt to continue practice, under such disadvantages, is more injurious than beneficial; and when the pupil is dragged through the daily infliction, the whole course ends in that miserable failure over whose multitude of sins the false charity of society is so often called to throw its mantle. In music, as in every other form of expressive art, no culture is greatly to be preferred to that which entails error and imperfection.

False Models.-The evils of defective cultivation are not less conspicuous when the pupil possesses both taste and diligence and good ability, but is misled in style, by the influence of a false model in instruction. Of late years, the facility of obtaining instruction of the best order, is greatly increased. But a fatal error is still quite current among parents, that elementary lessons do not require a high standard of perfection in the teacher, and that therefore the rudiments of music may be acquired under any supervision. In this way, vast numbers of pupils are rendered imperfect performers, for life, by wrong habits acquired in the earliest stages of instruction and practice, habits which no subsequent reformatory training is capable of correcting.

MEANS OF CORRECTING PREVALENT ERRORS IN THE CULTIVATION OF THE EXPRESSIVE FACULTIES.

Remedial Effects of Good Instruction. The remedy for existing evils in this as in other departments of education, lies partly, it must be acknowledged, with parents and the official guardians of public instruction; and some of the evils adverted to are confessedly beyond the sphere of the teacher's action. Still, in the actual business of teaching, even under all the impediments arising from false views of education and false plans of established procedure in instruction, much may be effected in the way of beneficial reformation, by intelligent and judicious measures on the part of the teacher, in his mode of conducting the daily lessons and exercises in those branches of instruction which are recognized and demanded by general opinion or by legislative enactment.

Examples.--Referring to the utterly deficient provision which the

general plan of current education makes for the cultivation and development of the perceptive faculties, an enterprising and vigilant teacher will find no difficulty in inducing his pupils to take a short walk with him, for a few minutes daily, at a suitable season of the year, with a view to a little familiar conversation with them about the form and character of a plant,—even though but a weed on the road-side. The conversation can be easily so managed as to lead to the attentive observation and close examination of every part of the plant, as designated, first, by the name in ordinary use, and, afterward, if convenient, by the more exact term of scientific nomenclature. A microscope, such as may be easily obtained for a few dollars, will be an infallible attraction to observation and inspection, in such excursions, and will prove a most efficient assistant teacher. Curiosity, and wonder, and inquiry, once excited in this way, will cause the young mind to drink in, with delight, every item of information which falls from the lips of the teacher. Actual knowledge will thus be obtained, and its pleasure consciously félt. Feeling and emotion, the main springs of expression, are now brought into play; imagination is awakened, and, under the guidance of intelligence, will recognize the traces of beauty and skill in the handiwork of Nature. To record, in writing, what the eye has seen, and the ear heard, and the mind conceived, during such a lesson, will be no hardship of Egyptian task-work, but a pleasure and a privilege. Many a faithful teacher in our New England States, has, in this way, without waiting for an educational millennium, in which botany, composition, and natural theology shall all be introduced into our common schools, by legislative authority,"taken the responsibility," personally, and given an excellent elementary lesson in all three.

me.

First Lessons in Spelling and Reading.-The unphilosophical and arbitrary manner in which many branches of education are actually taught, admits obviously of a remedy at the teacher's will. There is no necessity of blindly following the practice of making the child commit to memory the names of all the letters of the alphabet before he is asked to join the sounds of two, so as to read the words he or There is abundance of rhyme, but very little reason, in making the child read a whole column of rarely occurring and even of unintelligible words, because they all happen to have the same or similar combination of letters; while his bright eyes would sparkle with in telligence and delight, to see, in the column, a single word whose familiar sound would soon render its face as familiar. To the young learner in the primer, the spelling-book, or the school dictionary, the whole volume arranges itself in three classes of words: (1,) those

which children of his age understand and use; (2,) those which they understand, when they hear them from the lips of older children or of adults, but which they do not use themselves; (3,) those which they neither use nor understand, but which with the aid of teacher and book, they are, in due season, to learn to understand and use aright. To follow the true order of teaching, in such circumstances, will cost the teacher no more trouble than the simple act of dotting with the pencil point, on the column of the given page of the pupil's book, those words which he finds adapted to the class-lesson of the hour, according to the intelligence and advancement of his scholars.

Phonetic and Empirical Methods.-Another expedient for the removal of impediments to successful elementary instruction, and one. which the teacher can easily adopt, after having made the selection of words, as suggested above, would consist in the subdivision of each of the classes mentioned into analogous and anomalous subclasses. All the words of the first class, for example, those which are familiar to the child's ear and mind, by daily personal use,-are either regular or irregular, as to the combination of their letters in name and sound. The former of these sub-classes may be easily learned by the process of spelling them by the sounds of the letters . which compose the words. Thus, in the word "page," the names of the first three letters very readily suggest their sounds, the combination of which constitutes the reading of the word. But not so with the word "gag," in which not one of all the letters suggests its own sound by the name given to it. By the principle of analogy, therefore, all words in which the name of the letter prompts the sound to the ear, may be advantageously taught by the phonetic method of merely articulating the sounds of the letters successively. The simplicity of this method enables children to make rapid progress in syllabication and in reading; and on the principle of allowing children the pleasure of helping themselves forward in an intelligent, conscious progress, this part of early training should never be neglected. But, even in those words which are familiar, in sense and in use, to the ears and minds of young children, there are very many in which there is little or no analogy between the names of the letters and the sounds which they receive in the pronunciation of a word or the enunciation of a syllable. The orthography of such words is no reliàble guide to their orthoëpy. To name their component letters, therefore, can effect nothing further than to satisfy the teacher that the eye of the child has taken in every letter of the word before him. So far well. But, after all, the child's eye actually learns to take in such words by the letters in mass, and depends on an arbitrary effort