three go into more complicated qualities and combined relations, and are, therefore, more adapted for the advanced or juvenile school.

Besides a knowledge of objects, with their qualities and uses, much useful information may be communicated, such as easy arithmetic by tangible objects, the simpler geometrical figures, the elements of Geography, and even History, with an endless variety of amusing and instructive matters, which may all be selected to be of value as preparatory for more advanced education, and future life.* But let it never be forgotten, that all this may and must be attained without TASKING or FATIGUING the infant pupil. The following is an extract, on this vital point, from Chambers' Infant Education :

"This section ought not to be concluded without a caution, the omission of which might cause infant education to become an irremediable evil instead of good to its innocent objects. We learn ́ from physiological observations, too numerous and accurate to admit of doubt, that the brain, the instrument of the mind, is in infancy imperfectly developed, unconsolidated, and subject, in its own substance, to serious disease, as well as to be the cause of other diseases, by being overtasked. Now this overtasking is an error into which infant-school teachers are very apt to fall in the intellectual department of the training. They cannot, they suppose, give enough of lesson exercise, or advance their pupils too fast and too far in their learning. Parents, they say, expect it, and have not learned to appreciate anything else; and to their ignorant prejudices they are forced to yield. This is a grievous, often a fatal error. We refer

to what has been said in our introductory matter, on the secondary importance of intellectual to moral, and even to physical, training, at that early age. It ought to be secondary in the time allotted to it and the attention bestowed upon it. It should not task the memory, or have in it the slightest character of labour for any of the faculties. Conversant with objects more than words, it should be little more than a better directed and more systematic exercise of the senses and the simple observing powers-those the child would engage in if left to himself. It ought all to be amusement, not study or exertion. If the knowledge is gained, it should be as easily gained as if picked up spontaneously by the way. It may be

I may here recommend, as guides in infant education, Wilderspin's work on the subject, and the number of Chambers' Educational Course, entitled Infant Education, equally suited to the infant school and the nursery.

asked, how does such light study agree with the numerous lessons arranged and referred to in this and the previous section? Our answer is two-fold. A small and easy portion of these lessons is given at any one time; for the total is the work of four years; and there is none of them which may not be imparted by insensible degrees, without approaching to labour or going beyond amusement. In most infant schools, the in-door occupations, we think, bears too large a proportion to the out, or, in bad weather, to the in-door recreation. The common practice is an hour's lessons and a quarter of an hour's play, alternately.* We should wish to see the children, for a much larger proportion than this, in the play-ground. However alternated, HALF THE TIME OF SCHOOL OUGHT UNQUESTIONABLY TO BE SPENT IN PLAY. There is no time for moral exercise in the brief intercourse of ten minutes' play, cut short by the hand-bell. The teacher, too, is insensibly led to devote himself to the intellectual teaching as primary, and to slur over the moral and physical exercise as secondary. This he has another temptation to do; the intellectual is the only exhibitable training. The teacher's ambition to show off the children's attainments, which, to gratify his own vanity, perils the bodies and minds of his pupils, ought to be unsparingly put down by the directors of an infant-school,† and

*Such an allotment of their time cannot fail to be more or less prejudicial to children so young and tender. A better plan would undoubtedly be exactly to reverse the periods here alluded to. The excess of in-door study in infant schools has called forth much just reprehension from the opposers of such institutions.-EDS.

+ This observation is equally applicable to the system adopted in seminaries for adults, where half-yearly exhibitions are “got up” at the sacrifice of the pupil's health, and to the total neglect of a sound and useful education adapted to his wants in after life. In a majority of schools, the pupils are almost exclusively occupied, for one or two months, in committing to memory Greek or Latin plays, or entire eclogues of Virgil, who would gaze with vacant wonder if asked to enumerate the component parts of the air they breathe to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies or elucidate the most simple and beautiful of the organic laws. But this classical display of erudition answers the purpose for which it is intended: first, it gratifies the vanity and excites the astonishment of the parents, who, in most cases, have long since buried their crude and imperfect knowledge of the classics in oblivion; secondly, it tends to render them blind or indifferent to the deplorable ignorance of their children in every other branch of knowledge; and, thirdly, it ministers to the ambitious views of the master, who considers his fortune made if one tithe of his pupils distinguish themselves at the University. The film is now happily removed from the eyes of the intelligent portion of the community, and this barbarous system of "our fore-fathers" is about to be abandoned, in spite of the vigorous efforts that have been made by bigoted and narrow-minded advocates to uphold it.—EDs.

forsworn by the teacher himself. There are too many Books for Infants. Infants require no books. Good books for infants' teachers are what are wanted; and these will tell them that they cannot give the children too much of the play-ground and its exercises, mingle too much with them there, or too much observe, and regulate, and guide, the dispositions which they manifest in their play-ground intercourse. We recommend to any infant-school teacher to be possessed of a copy of the work of an American writer, Dr. Amariah Brigham, On the Influence of Mental Cultivation and Excitement upon Health. In nearly every word of that admirable little work we cordially concur. No teacher can read it, and continue blindly to overtask the infant brain. It is a work which, properly understood, will not discourage infant schools, but prevent their abuse and perversionwill not supersede that early training of the dispositions without which they never will be trained at all, but will guard that paramount object from being rendered of less effect, by a course injurious, and often destructive, to the mind itself. We also recommend another American work, Dr. Charles Caldwell's Thoughts on Physical Education, a discourse delivered to a convention of teachers in Lexington; and Dr. Andrew Combe's Physiology as connected with the Preservation of Health, and also his Physiology of Digestion.* These four works should be the constant companions of every infant-school teacher. It may here be briefly noticed that Dr. Brigham justly holds that the exercise of the moral faculties or feelings is unattended with the dangers attending excessive intellectual labour, provided always that over-excitement and every thing that rouses selfish passions, such as rewards offered to emulation, or punishments addressed to fear, are carefully avoided."

The foregoing extract is followed, in the same treatise, by a section entitled, "Prevention of prejudices, fallacies, tyrannies, cruelties, unfairnesses, selfishnesses, bad habits, &c." The section is thus introduced:- "There is no part of the infant system more important than the field for watchfulness and exertion indicated by this title. There are no greater moral evils, or causes of evil, than that title enumerates. It is by judicious infant training alone that they can be warded off, and society defended from their conse

* We beg to add our tribute of praise to the excellence and practical utility of the productions of the three talented physicians here mentioned; those who have not perused these works are not a little in arrear of the times, and should, without loss of time, become acquainted with their contents.-EDS.

quences. It is not meant here to specify every prejudice, bad feeling, or bad habit, which obstructs and deranges human affairs. A few only are enumerated as examples. Others will occur to an enlightened and moral teacher: and there are no points in the whole range of his labours where his reiterated lessons and illustrations will do so much good. He ought to vary the manner in which he presses this preventive moral teaching upon his pupils ; he should attract them by anecdotes and examples; lead them by precepts, interrogatories, exercises; and ever and anon renew the subject during their total attendance at school, till habits of thinking and acting, the reverse of the unfavourable here referred to, shall have taken fast hold of their minds. The benefit to another generation of steady and unceasing attention to this one department of the infant school teacher's duties is incalculable. Here, then, follows a sub-section upon each of the following moral evils; and their anticipation and prevention is recommended in the very threshold of education. The love of war, and passion for military glory-national self-sufficiency and antipathy-religious bigotry and intolerance-false sayings-self-sufficient and false judgment -the spirit of contradiction-exaltation of every thing connected with self-conceited deprecation-pride and vanity defeat their own end-jealousy, grudging, envying, detracting-obstructing and injuring competitors-want of candour-tyranny, annoying the imbecile, provocation-derision-frightening-practical jokes, witches, ghosts, &c.—superstitions-the gambling spirit-cruelty and antipathy to animals-destroying inanimate things-stonethrowing-nuisances and nastinesses-want of consideration for others, and of civility-evil speaking and gossiping-pleasure in exercising the benevolent and just sentiments-prudential attentions and maxims-temperance."

Exercise on all these points for four years, when the mind is pliant and youthful confidence strong, would work a change on society, even in one generation, almost beyond the calculation of those who view that society only as it is now disfigured.

We have reason to know that the practical working of well-conducted infant schools is entirely satisfactory. In the appendix to the first and second reports of the Edinburgh Model Infant School, published in 1832 and 1835, are a series of incidents which occurred in the school and in the intercourse of the infants, which demonstrate that kindness to companions and to animals, and honesty and truth are practically exemplified, not in a few instances, but generally; and that cleanliness and refinement, respect for ornament,

attachment to the teachers, and other excellent dispositions, are established as the characteristics of the place. Numerous letters from the parents speak, in terms of unbounded gratitude, of the change produced in their children, and of the comfort and pleasure they enjoy in their society when they return from school, instead of the wearisomeness of their former company. Objections to the infant education system, all of which were founded on ignorance of its nature, are now fast disappearing. I have not heard of any objections worth more than enumeration.* The system, it is said, tasks the infant brain before it is consolidated, and will send the precocious, more especially, to early graves. I have already given a solemn caution that the infants should never be tasked; but that all their intellectual exercises should be light amusement, and instruction as an accessory. The objection is reasoning from the abuse against the use of such institutions. Dr. Brigham's work was laid hold of by the opponents of infant schools and by their supporters at one and the same time; by the former as an instrument wherewith to demolish infant education, by the latter as a guide to regulate and improve them.

Again, we have from many persons an admission that infant schools suit the labouring classes very well, but that no mother above that rank would or should part with her infant to be trained in a public school. She is the natural guide of the infant's first feelings, and conductor of its early education. Now what, in most cases, will the mother do? She commits the child, for many more hours than are demanded by the infant school, to a nursery-maid— a creature utterly without education, and often with the very worst habits. Even if the mother kept the child beside herself, the most intelligent and excellent mothers will be the first to admit that they cannot systematically train their own nursery morally. The mother wants the element of numbers, a variety of dispositions. This alone is an answer to the objection which admits of no reply. She cannot give that unremitting and systematic attention which infant education requires; she must delegate; and to whom can she do so more beneficially than to the enlightened, mild, and practised conductors of that well-regulated nursery-as it was called by Lord Jeffrey—an infant school; where warmth, air, exercise, health,

* Dr. Caldwell, in his excellent Thoughts on Physical Education, expresses himself averse to the infant school system. We think, however, that his views on this subject proceed from a want of a practical knowledge of such institutions, and of their aim and objects.-Eds.