intellectual and moral hope of the community, have convinced the writer that the teacher's professional wants are most satisfactorily met when elementary principles of education are simply stated and practically illustrated, and the highest relations of human duty are presented as the motives to personal and professional action.--Long may the “plain living and high thinking" of their ancestry continue to characterize the teachers of New England!

The allusions made, in the course of the preceding discussion, to existing defects in "higher" seminaries, might seem uncalled for in a course of remarks addressed to young teachers. To explain this apparent intrusion, it may be sufficient to say, that some of the classes to which these lectures were originally addressed included among their members individuals who, though young both in years and experience, were graduates of the highest class of literary institutions, were anticipating professional employment in such establishments, and were attending the course of lectures with reference to the application, in their personal instructions, of the principles under discussion.

Apart, however, from this relation of circumstances, the consideration of principles of education, and methods of instruction, necessarily extends through the whole educational course of training; and defective methods of teaching are but little less injurious in the higher than in the lower forms of culture. The fact, moreover, is undeniable, that the renovation of the character of instruction, whether at home or abroad, has uniformly commenced in the primary stages of education, and won its way gradually upward;-a circumstance easily accounted for, when we recollect that, in the reformation, now so generally effected in elementary teaching, more regard has been paid to the wants of the mind, and less to the demands of subjects, than formerly was the case in the management of primary schools, or than is now, in the customary regulation of institutions of the highest nominal order, in most of which the subject of study is still too uniformly regarded in preference to the instrument of study.

To some readers of the journal, the intellectual philosophy, involved in the principles adopted in the preceding analysis of mental action and development, may not seem satisfactory,-as not according, in express terms, with established authorities on such topics. To objections of this character the author can only suggest that, in the circumstances of many of those to whom his lectures were addressed, it was not practicable to assume the data of a previous course of study in intellectual philosophy; and all that could properly be done, on his part, was to interweave, with his suggestions for the guidance of instructors in their professional endeavors, such elementary views of

mental action and tendency as might afford intelligible ground for these suggestions.

At the same time, the writer feels free to say that, following the counsels of his own instructor, the venerable Jardine, (a student and successor of Dr. Reid,) he could not adopt any "system" of intellectual philosophy as such. All systems hitherto offered have contributed useful suggestions for the guidance of inquiry. But none, as yet, can be regarded as exhaustive or complete. The mind, as a subject of study, has not yet received the humble measure of justice which we yield to a plant or a mineral,—a careful observation and close examination of its own character, apart from the obscuring influence of the conflicting views and metaphysical speculations of great writers and eminent authorities. But, to the teacher, philosophical theory is a doubtful aid, compared to his own daily inspection of the mind itself, in its actual working and obvious tendencies. He is, if he understands his position, himself a primary observer, authority and reporter, in the science of mind, as developed in the processes of education. His work is that of a living philosopher, in act. To his young disciples, he is Plato, and Socrates, and Aristotle, embodied in one person;-opening to their expanding minds the highest spiritual, moral, and intellectual relations of truth.

III. PESTALOZZI AND THE SCHOOLS OF GERMANY.

FROM THE GERMAN OF DR. DIESTERWEG.

EVERY one considers it a matter of course that all our children go to school until they grow up to be youths and maidens. The observance of this custom begins at the sixth year. But the parents have long before spoken of the school to the child; he looks eagerly forward to the day of entrance; and when it takes place, he is absorbed in his school and his teacher for the next six or eight years or more. We always think of children and schools or children and books together. To be a child and to learn, have become almost synonymous terms. To find children in school, or passing along the streets with the apparatus which they use there, makes no one wonder. It is only the reverse, which attracts attention. The school fills a very important part in the life of the young. In fact school life is almost the whole life of childhood and youth; we can hardly conceive of them without it. Without school, without education, what would parents do with their children? Without them, where would they secure the young the necessary preparation for actual life?

With our present organization of society, schools are indispensable institutions. Many others may perish in the course of time; many have already perished; but schools abide, and increase. Where they do not exist, we expect barbarity and ignorance; where they flourish, civilization and knowledge.

No apology is necessary for sending our children to school. At school they learn. There they acquire mental activity and knowledge; the manifold varieties of things; to gain the knowledge of things in heaven above and in the earth beneath, and under the earth; of stones, and plants, and animals, and men; of past, present, and future.

[The remainder of the discourse treats of three points :

1. What were the schools before Pestalozzi?

2. What did they become by his means, and since; that is, what are they now?

3. What was Pestalozzi's life and labors?]

I. THE OLD SCHOOLS.

Our present system of common or public schools-that is schools which are open to all children under certain regulations—date from the discovery of printing in 1436, when books began to be furnished so cheaply that the poor could buy them. Especially after Martin Luther had translated the Bible into German, and the desire to possess and understand that invaluable book became universal, did there also become universal the desire to know how to read. Men sought to learn, not only for the sake of reading the Scriptures, but also to be able to read and

sing the psalms, and to learn the catechism. For this purpose schools for children were established, which were essentially reading schools. Reading was the first and principal study; next came singing, and then memorizing texts, songs, and the catechism. At first the ministers taught; but afterward the duty was turned over to the inferior church officers, the choristers and sextons. Their duties as choristers and sextons were paramount, and as schoolmasters only secondary. The children paid a small monthly fee; no more being thought necessary, since the schoolmaster derived a salary from the church.

Nobody either made or knew how to make great pretensions to educational skill. If the teacher communicated to his scholars the acquirements above mentioned, and kept them in order, he gave satisfaction; and no one thought any thing about separate institutions for school children. There were no school books distinctively so called; the children learned their lessons in the Bible or the Psalter, and read either in the Old or the New Testament.

Each child read by himself; the simultaneous method was not known. One after another stepped up to the table where the master sat. He pointed out one letter at a time, and named it; the child named it after him; he drilled him in recognizing and remembering each. Then they took letter by letter of the words, and by getting acquainted with them in this way, the child gradually learned to read. This was a difficult method for him; a very difficult one. Years usually passed before any facility had been acquired; many did not learn in four years. It was imitative and purely mechanical labor on both sides. To understand what was read was seldom thought of. The syllables were pronounced with equal force, and the reading was without grace or expression.

Where it was possible, but unnaturally and mechanically, learning by heart was practiced. The children drawled out texts of Scripture, , psalms, and the contents of the catechism from the beginning to end; short questions and long answers alike, all in the same monotonous manner. Anybody with delicate ears who heard the sound once, would remember it all his life long. There are people yet living, who were taught in that unintelligent way, who can corroborate these statements. Of the actual contents of the words whose sounds they had thus barely committed to memory by little and little, the children knew absolutely almost nothing. They learned superficially and understood superficially. Nothing really passed into their minds; at least nothing during their school years.

The instruction in singing was no better. The master sang to them the psalm-tunes over and over, until they could sing them, or rather screech them, after him.

Such was the condition of instruction in our schools during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and two-thirds of the eighteenth centuries; confined to one or two studies, and those taught in the most imperfect and mechanical way.

It was natural that youth endowed, when healthy, with an ever increas

ing capacity for pleasure in living, should feel the utmost reluctance at attending school. To be employed daily, for three or four hours, or more, in this mechanical toil, was no light task; and it therefore became necessary to force the children to sit still, and study their lessons. During all that time, especially in the seventeenth century, during the fearful thirty years' war, and subsequently, as the age was sunk in barbarism, the children of course entered the schools ignorant and untrained. "As the old ones sung, so twittered the young." Stern severity and cruel punishments were the order of the day; and by them the children were kept in order. Parents governed children too young to attend, by threats of the schoolmaster and the school; and when they went, it was with fear and trembling. The rod, the cane, the raw-hide, were necessary apparatus in each school. The punishments of the teacher exceeded those of a prison. Kneeling on peas, sitting in the shame-bench, standing in the pillory, wearing an ass-cap, standing before the school door in the open street with a label on the back or breast, and other similar devices, were the remedies which the rude men of the age devised. To name a single example of a boy whom all have heard of, of high gifts, and of reputable family, Dr. Martin Luther reckoned up fifteen or sixteen times that he was whipped upon the back in one forenoon. The learning and the training corresponds; the one was strictly a mechanical process; the other, only bodily punishment. What wonder that from such schools there came forth a rude generation; that men and women looked back all their lives to the school as to a dungeon, and to the teacher as a taskmaster, and jailer; that the schoolmaster was of a small repute; that understrappers were selected for school duty and school discipline; that dark, cold kennels were used for school-rooms; that the schoolmaster's place especially in the country, was assigned him amongst the servants and the like.

This could not last; it has not, thank God! When and by what efforts of admirable men the change took place, I shall relate a little on. Let us now look at the present.

II. THE MODERN SCHOOLS.

What are our schools in this present fifth decade of the nineteenth century, and what are they from year to year growing to be? Upon this subject I can of course only give my readers a fresher and livelier impression of matters which they already understand. I begin with the exterior-not only every town, but every village of our father-land has at present its own school-houses. They are usually so noticeable for architecture, airiness and dimensions, as to be recognized at the first glance. The districts often compete amicably with each other in their appearance, and make great sacrifices for superiority.

In the school-house resides the teacher; a man who is often an object of the ridicule of the young, but who, if really a teacher, deserves and possesses the respect of the old. Many of course fail to obtain an adequate reward, especially for their highest aspirations, in their important