the parties and the men acting in that great drama, of which this Philippic formed but a three days' wonder; a clear and a beautifully printed Text, plain and unmarred by reference or footnote, which, after diligently studying it with the aids here given, and rendered necessary by an interval of nearly two thousand years, you can at last turn to, and read, with as much zest as did Antony himself, when it was handed him by some too good-natured friend; an Argument, after which a translation is unnecessary; and Notes, which not only smooth every difficulty, but give, ad longum, such quotations from various authors as serve to re-illuminate that old scene. A pleasant edition for the student; for one who has passed that stage we recommend Long. This edition is almost entirely translated from Karl Halm. But Mr. Mayor has done his part exceedingly well, and is too good a scholar to desire to strut in borrowed feathers.

First Greek Reader. By Archibald H. Bryce, A.B., Trinity College, Dublin. Edinburgh: T. Nelson & Sons. Pp. 222.

THIS little volume is meant by its author to supply, to one just entering on the first bitterness of his Greek learning, the place of a Grammar, an Exercise-Book, a Delectus, and a Lexicon. Save in the addition of extracts for reading, it is very similar in plan to the Principia Latina published by Dr. William Smith last year. The Nouns and Verbs are so arranged that each class of Inflexions is kept separate and distinct; and numerous Exercises follow each paradigm, for the purpose of fixing in the mind of the pupil the peculiarities of each group before allowing him to pass to another. The Rules of Construction are interspersed, but only in such order and to such an extent as fall in with the main design of affording a thorough praxis on the Accidence of the language. The author has wisely taken a large proportion of his exercises from the Extracts forming his Reading-Book, with the view of diminishing the boy's difficulties on arriving at the more arduous task of unravelling complex sentences. The Greek Vocabulary has been constructed on the principle of giving the primary signification of each word, and of tracing its derived meanings so far as is necessary to illlustrate the different instances in which it is met with in the Delectus. For obvious reasons, the English Vocabulary has been made as meagre as possible. A few necessary and useful notes are added to the Reader, and a great amount of more advanced information is compressed into convenient shape in an Appendix. For reasons stated in the Preface, the author has deviated from the ordinary arrangement of the cases, the order adopted by him being Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative. The book is clearly printed and well got up, save that some of the paradigms are a little too crowded, and therefore apt to confuse the eye of a young learner.

Arithmetic for Young Children, being a series of Exercises exemplifying the manner in which Arithmetic should be taught to Young Children. By H. Grant. London: Grant and Griffith.

Second Stage of Arithmetic for Schools and Families, exemplifying the

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mode in which Children may be led to discover the main principles of Figurative and Mental Arithmetic, and enabled to understand thoroughly the practical application of them. By Horace Grant. New Edition, with a Biographical Notice of the Author. By Edwin Chadwick, C.B. London: Bell & Daldy.

Geography for Young Children. By Horace Grant. New Edition, with a Biographical Notice of the Author. By Edwin Chadwick, C.B. London: Bell & Daldy.

In his very interesting Biographical Notice, Mr. Chadwick states at considerable length the views upon educational subjects of the author of the above-named works. The character of the manuals will be best understood by our quoting a few extracts, which are highly instructive in themselves, and contain the principles of education which Mr. Grant endeavoured so successfully to apply to the construction of school textbooks :

"Mr. Horace Grant was a member of a class, which Mr. John Stuart Mill, Mr. Grote, and others, with myself, formed for the study of mental philosophy. Whilst he devoted himself to the study of the human mind, and, from a most kindly disposition to little children, to the especial study of the mind in its earlier stages of growth, he did so with the practicality of a careful observer and experimenter in the physical sciences.

"His views and the bent of his labours will have the clearest and truest exposition in his own words, which I extract from some of his writings. Thus in the Ms. of an unpublished 'Course of Exercises in the First Elements of Form, adopted for the use of Mothers and Early Teachers,' or a 'Geometry for Children,' which he left, he thus describes the growth of the mind in its infantile stages, and indicates some of the leading principles for its treatment, and his own practical method:

"The infant begins to examine forms from the commencement of his existence; for without this knowledge it is doubtful if he could distinguish one object from another, or even be aware of the existence of an external world. Gradually he learns to know objects apart and to recognise them; and in time discerns resemblances which cause him to classify them. A vast amount of time and labour is spent by every child in these investigations during the first ten years of life; but not more than their importance requires. Every child is therefore, in some degree, a self-taught geometer. Can it then be said that form is not suited for early edu cation.

"Every one must have noticed the great bodily and mental exercise gone through by a healthy child, at perfect liberty to do what it likes; the innumerable objects observed, inquired into, and experimented on; the endless reasonings, imaginings, inventions; and the worlds of fancy into which his old materials are constantly being marshalled. Yet all this hard work is pleasure to the child; it is play, but such play makes men. Shall we attempt (imperfectly at best) to continue the course thus indicated by nature, or shall we disregard the requirements of the complicated and delicate structure with which we are intrusted, and force down indigestible matter as if it were fit nourishment, exclaiming always that nothing can be more pernicious than to overwork the mind or body of a child? Overwork is most pernicious, but one thing is worse, forcibly to restrain him from that active employment which his constitution craves, thus imprisoning mind and body. This is suffering if it be not labour; and the mischief done by one injudicious task of grammar or spelling may take months to repair. Children rarely suffer from overwork but often from improper work, the smallest quantity of which is pernicious. It is not employment usually that does the mischief, but the pretence of work; anything which strains the attention without employing the faculties; anything which, whatever significance it may have for adults has none for children, or which attempts to train some one of the faculties at the expense of the rest. Such is rote-work of every kind, and little else is required of children. We offer them the

husk, which they hate, and when they dare, reject; and sad, indeed, would be their case if it were not for the real education they unconsciously give themselves under the guise of play, and not unfrequently of mischief.'

"Half a dozen simple points investigated and discovered by the pupil will be of more value than a book full of geometry, to which he merely gives a cold assent. In the one case the knowledge forms part of the mind; it is remembered, is ever present when wanted, and is ready to be connected with, and to aid other knowledge; it assists in building up an intellect as well as furnishing it. In the common mode, however frequently a thing is gone over, it forms no part of the mind; it is joined with nothing useful or experimental, it is kept at an out-station apart from our ordinary trains of thought, and it can have little influence on the intellect or character. It might as well be so many consecutive propositions about straws, inculcated as inuring us to drudgery by going through masses of dreary matter without breaking out (as the best minds are apt to do) into open rebellion while plodding over the barren waste.'

"He did not rely on his own particular experience as a teacher, though that was kindly, and patient, and good, but he wrote out his own most successful lessons, and got varied trials made of them by others, mothers, governesses, and practised teachers. Upon such collective experience he framed the instructions to parents and professional educationists for teaching, and the courses of illustrative lessons comprised in the series of manuals now republished as the results of several years of labour, and to which he devoted almost his entire time after he left office. He was in independent circumstances, and pursued this labour irrespective of any probable or possible pecuniary profit. He adopted as a primary rule that no illustrative lesson should be inserted which had not been variously tried and been found to sustain attention by its own interest in the minds of the pupils of the ages and common conditions requiring tuition. His leading practical ideas may be further stated in his own terms, which I have marked with my own italics, though they are inadequate to the magnitude of the principles involved in his instructions to teachers: Children ought not to be perpetually harassed with dry questions. The grand object is to cause them to exert their minds with pleasure, and for this a lively conversation is the most effectual means.

"It must be remembered that nothing is more irritating to a young child than to be set up as a butt to be questioned at, nor is anything more likely to produce a distaste for accurate observation and persevering thought than a constant volley of interrogatories. The poor child who is condemned to find answers to unceasing interrogatories either grows careless, and says anything that comes into his mind, or employs his faculties in evading the subject, concealing his ignorance in a cloud of words or in vapid commonplace.

"The instructor, moreover, must not insist that the child shall know, or pretend to know, the whole of the subject. The most successful attempts of the most promising child must necessarily be feeble and incomplete. An opposite course may form that miserable puppet, an infant prodigy, than which a more painful object cannot be contemplated by a reflecting mind. The infant's progress to knowledge must, to the superficial observer, appear slow in order that it may in reality be certain and rapid; the faculties, far from being strained and forced, must be cautiously and gently exercised in order that they may in due season be mature and vigorous.'

The elementary manuals on arithmetic, geography, etc., may be called a practical and concrete embodiment of the principles which we have stated in Mr. Grant's own words. Though the teacher of primary schools may find them scarcely suitable for the hands of the pupils, he will find them his own best guide in giving instruction on the various subjects of which they treat. They constitute, in fact, a manual of method, in which principles, instead of being dogmatically stated, are illustrated by their application to arithmetic, geography, and the education of the perceptive faculties. Each book may be said to be a collection of carefully graduated model lessons.

Mr. Grant's views on the subject of gymnastic and school drill we hope to see as universal in the practice of the next generation of educationists as they are in the theory of the present.

Constable's Educational Series. Poetical Reading-Book, with Aids for Grammatical Analysis, Paraphrase and Criticism. By J. D. Morell, A.M., LL.D., and W. Ihne, Ph.D. Edinburgh: James Gordon.

To Dr. Morell we owe the first adaptation of Becker's system of logical analysis to the English language; and to him, therefore, is due the merit of the revolution that has within these few years taken place in the teaching of English grammar. This volume of poetical selections is published as a complement to the series of works he has already issued on the subject of analysis, and is designed to afford scope for the exemplification of its laws and the solution of its difficulties. For this purpose, as well as for that simply of a poetical reader, the book is admirably suited. Besides miscellaneous selections from Spenser, Pope, Wordsworth, Tennyson, etc., it contains a complete work or book of Goldsmith, Cowper, Milton, Shakspere, Byron, and Scott. The notes are very valuable; all the more so that they are only given when really required. The preface is an able and useful supplement to the author's treatises on analysis; and the Appendix contains the most succinct and best statement of the laws of English versification that we are acquainted with. As to the propriety of using such a system of notation as Dr. Morell has here introduced to indicate the character of clauses, there is room for difference of opinion. We think there are considerable objections to the plan. Pupils will be apt to get into the way of recognising different kinds of clauses, not by their nature, or according to the principles of analysis, but by the marks printed opposite to them. This, of course, is contrary to Dr. Morell's own opinion," that grammar, rightly regarded, could only be taught to any practical advantage, by thoroughly comprehending the principles." should be stated, however, that these "aids" are gradually dropped as the book advances; so that the student is every day thrown more upon his own resources. We may add that a special value attaches to this book at present, from its containing the first book of Milton's "Paradise Lost," the work prescribed for the junior candidates in the approaching Oxford Middle-class Examination.

It

Guide to the Three Services: Civil, Naval, and Military. Edited by J. Paxton Hall, F.C.P., etc. 2d Ed. London: Longman & Co.

THE Competitive system is now so prevalent in the public services, the departments to which it applies are so numerous, and the qualifications required so various, that some such information as this volume contains is absolutely indispensable to those who either have the superintendence of intending candidates or are candidates themselves. To all of these parties we would recommend Mr. Hall's "Guide," as the most

intelligible and least objectionable of the books of this sort that we have seen. It contains full and accurate details, clearly stated and tabulated, regarding the whole method of obtaining appointments in the civil. service, both at home and in India, with very sensible remarks on the examinations, and specimens of the different papers. But in addition to this it comprises, what is rarely found in works of the kind, the whole of the regulations for admission into the naval and military services, and into the colleges connected therewith. Useful as the book thus cannot fail to be to candidates or their parents, and to heads of schools, it is also of great interest to the educationist, from the complete view it affords him of the extent to which open competition now prevails in the Government offices of this country, and of the principles on which the examinations are carried on.

Text-Book for Youth: Christian Doctrine.
Macgregor, Barry. Edinburgh: A. Elliot.

By the Rev. James 1861. Pp. 164.

THIS excellent summary and exposition of the doctrines of Christianity will be found well adapted for somewhat advanced classes. The subject is systematically treated under the two great divisions of the Doctrine of Nature and the Doctrine of Grace, the latter being considered in its twofold relation to the Gift of God and the Duty of Man. The Shorter Catechism has been taken as the basis of the work, but many useful and lucid explanations are introduced regarding the evidences of Christianity and the ordinances of the Christian life. The work is well written, admirably arranged, and closely reasoned.

A School Atlas of General and Descriptive Geography, exhibiting the Actual and Comparative Extent of all the Countries in the World, with their Present Political Divisions, founded on the most Recent Discoveries and Rectifications. By Alex. Keith Johnston, F.R.S.E., etc. A new edition. William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh & London. 1861.

THE only part of this Atlas which really belongs to the year 1861, is the above title. The preface bears date 1859; and, since the boundaries of France and Italy are not represented as they stood on New Year's Day 1861, it may be concluded that the real state of the plates themselves is also 1859.

The twenty-three maps of which the Atlas consists, are somewhat larger than those of school atlases generally, and singularly beautiful. Water, in its every form-sea, lake, and river-is printed in blue, and the various colours which distinguish the political divisions of the land, being laid on by a mechanical process, are distributed with a uniformity and accuracy such as hand could scarcely achieve. The map of the world is furnished with additional attractions, in the shape of views, which may be called pictorial, representing the comparative length of the great rivers, and the comparative height of the principal mountains