little heart the first germs of that most precious habit of attention, his too officious friends have done their best to sow the seeds of mental dissipation and inattention."

What is the moral of all this? It is that we must be careful from the first, while giving children enough, not to give them more than enough-that is to say, more than their minds can easily take in. Do not obtrude interesting objects on a child who is wholesomely interested already. To break the natural sequence of a child's thoughts is mentally as mischievous as it is physically to wake a child suddenly out of a refreshing sleep. As it is the mark of a great artist to know when to omit, so it is the mark of a good trainer to recognize the danger of interfering with Nature, and the usefulness of leaving children sometimes to themselves.

The faculty of observation is secondary to, and in some degree inconsistent with, the faculty of attention; when attending, i. e. given up to the study of one thing, the child cannot always be free to observe other things going on around him.

The varied sights of Nature out of doors are the best stimulus to observation, and the best preservative against the rare danger of excessive concentration; and not having these (however great may be the artificial distractions of town life) town children are somewhat at a disadvantage as compared with country children in the training of the faculty of observing.

A powerful incentive to observation is found in the habit of making distinctions. Until a boy has been taught the different kinds of clouds he will be content to stare vaguely at them; but when he has learned to distinguish between "hair clouds," "heap clouds," "level clouds" -for of course we shall not inflict on him the technical terms for these objects he looks at them with a new interest and quickened power of observation. And so of trees: to learn the characteristics of an oak or an elm separately is rather dull work; but to note the differences between them is more interesting and appeals more readily to the memory. At a very early age children may be led to take pleasure in collecting and classifying the leaves of plants and trees; and this method of training the observation is within the power even of those bred in towns. Much may be done or undone in a walk with children. "It was my fortune," writes Preceptor, "as a child to be taken for walks by a friend who encouraged me to converse on some subject of literature or history, or to cap verses, or the like, the consequence of which (and in part perhaps of other causes) has been to develop in me a considerable power of attention and abstraction, but a singular inability to observe."

Walking in town may seem a necessarily dull and barren occupation, so far as the observation of natural objects is concerned; yet even in

the suburbs and parks of London, the clouds, trees, wind, smoke, weathercocks, shadows, points of the compass, sun and moon, afford objects to which the observation of a little companion may be directed, and topics on which a conversation may be hereafter started.

Indoors something may also be done by making a child shut his eyes and tell you what is on the mantelpiece? what on my side of the room? what on yours? Or sometimes, after showing him a picture, you may examine him in the same way. It will be a good plan first, however, to shut your eyes and present yourself for examination, allowing the child to correct your mistakes and supply your omissions.

Later on, observation may be stimulated by teaching a child to take an intelligent interest in things by learning the How and Why. Drawing is of course a powerful developer of this faculty; but drawing, at the present stage, is out of the question. Let it only be added that for observation, as well as for attention and most other good habits, it is indispensable that the child should be physically and mentally healthy and fresh, and that the moral of the last aphorism holds good for observation, no less than for attention, that a child must not be required to observe something new when he is still engaged in observing something old.

To sum up, there are three dangers to be avoided: (1) vacant staring; (2) excited distraction; (3) excessive concentration. Of these the first is perhaps most to be avoided for country children; the second for those in towns; the third is rare, and in the coming generation likely to be rarer.

6. MEMORY.

The memory will have been developed, first, by the habit of attention; secondly, by the habit of classification and observation; but it may also be stimulated by encouraging a child to give an account of what he has seen or heard, under the guidance of questions so regulated as to help the child to divide, and thus bring out an orderly narrative.

Thus, if a child has been to the Zoological Gardens, instead of asking him for "a description of the Zoological Gardens," or "Tell me now, what did you see in the Gardens?"-questions to the indefiniteness of which the poor boy is likely to succumb in silent bewilderment, or else to make confused and chaotic answers-you must help him thus, "So you have been to the Gardens? Well now, I want to hear how the beasts are getting on. First, the savage beasts that eat flesh. Did you see the lions fed?" etc., etc. Then you may proceed to the birds, beginning with the eagles, and so rapidly go through the whole. At the end, if you like, and if the child is in the humor to listen, you may give him a kind of summary of what you have elicited from him, so that he may find himself unconsciously committed to a methodical narrative.

To take once more the ancient Romans for our example, the motto that they used for ruling, "Divide and rule, we may utilize for remembering. Associations are of great importance in the cultivation of the memory; and we shall have more to say on this point when we treat of the memory as applied to repetition lessons; but even without intelligent associations, the mere process of division is of great help.

'Among other debts," writes Preceptor, "which we owe to Shakespeare, is the invention, or popularization of the word Honorificabilitudinitatibus; it affords such excellent practice for teachers and pupils. 'What a word!' says the poor bewildered pupil on first hearing it, 'I shall never remember it.' 'Wait a bit,' you reply. Any one can say honōr.'1 Pupil. Yes, honōr.' Teacher. 'Now say, honor-ifică.' Pupil. Honōr-ifică.' Teacher. 'Say it again; now again; once more; that will do. Now for bili; that's easy enough; it's a boy's name. Say it. Now bĭlĭtů. Good; now say, dinĭtā. Right. And now, bilitū-dinĭtā. Again; again. Now, you see, there's a rhyme:

Honor-ifică

Bilitü-dinĭtā.

Say it. Sing it, if you like. you've done it. We've only to "I well remember," he adds, "being taught this very word in some such fashion by my father, and teaching it similarly to my children; and I think that every boy in England ought to be taught to pronounce it, and till he pronounced it easily and rapidly, ought not to be considered to have passed in pronunciation."

Good. Now again. Once more. Now add tibus at the end.

7. EXACTNESS.

"Writing," as we all know, "maketh an exact man "; but as the child, now under consideration, is supposed not yet able to write, some substitute for writing is needed in the attempt to make him exact; and the best will be oral description by the child of something that he has seen. Some skill is here required to induce children to give anything like a continuous description, without feeling that they are being persecuted or forced to "make an exhibition," than which nothing is more detestable to the young. Under the head of "Observation," above, are set down a few hints as to devices by which this may be effected, and among other means was mentioned the use of pictures. On this point I will once more insert some remarks by Preceptor.

"I was in the habit," he says, "of getting a very good lesson in exactness for a youngster out of a picture-book of animals, containing striking and highly-colored, yet accurate, representations of the locale of the several creatures. After a picture had been carefully examined, and the particular animal noted in detail (his shape, color, tail, tusks, mane, etc.), and after comparison or contrast had been drawn between

1 Stress should be laid on the or here.

this and others known to the child, attention was next directed to the scenery, hill or plain, rocks, rivers, trees, or other vegetation.

"We used then to shut up the book, and set out upon a hunting expedition to chase the beast, I being the hunter, and my boy the dog. Arrived at the country, the hunter questions the dog as to the nature of the scene, and obtains convincing proof that he has reached the habitat, say of the hippopotamus. At last we spy a creature which the dog is again called on to describe. It is found to be of a greyish blue, with a huge smooth body, short, thick legs, small tusks, small ears, very small tail and eyes, and is either wallowing in some stream or trampling a rice-field. All these particulars having been elicited in rapid dialogue, the animal is chased, slain, and (if possible) eaten; and I used to think that he never perished without having afforded a good mental, as well as physical, exercise to the dog."

Arithmetic of course affords a far better training than this in exactness; but our pupil is not supposed to be at present capable of arithmetic, and such an imaginary hunting scene may supply a hint to parents and tutors as to the kind of means by which exactness may be encouraged simultaneously with observation and imagination.

8. IMAGINATION.

When our minds are dissatisfied with the objects presented to them, we find in ourselves a faculty, called imagination, of creating an image of something better. In order, therefore, that the mind may imagine, two things are generally necessary. First, it must have previously received striking and memorable impressions (for no mind can construct images save out of the mental material already accumulated); secondly, the person must not, at the moment, be able to perceive objects like those which he is imagining. "What a man seeth," says St. Paul, "why doth he yet hope for?" and the same applies to the imagination, which is a kind of strain of the mind attempting to realize things beyond the experience of the senses. If a child is always completely satisfied with what he sees and hears, he will be under no stimulus to imagine.

It is for this reason that elaborate toys are detrimental to the exercise of the imagination. They are so complete in themselves that they leave nothing to be supplied by the child's mind.

Fairy stories encourage the imaginative faculty, because they present things old, in combinations so new, as to take the child altogether out of the range of things which he sees, and stimulate him by pleasurable associations to realize visions utterly unlike his own experi

ences.

Several of Æsop's fables may be dramatized by children and for children; and such dramas, like the hunting exercise mentioned in the last section, besides stimulating other faculties, develop the imagination also.

9. ORDER.

A child will learn habits of order in part by seeing order in every part of the household around him.

Yet if he is allowed too long to enjoy the results of order without himself contributing to them, he is in danger of assuming that order can be maintained without effort, and of ignoring the disadvantages of disorder because he has never experienced them.

He must, therefore, begin at a very early age to put away his own toys, and occasionally to feel the inconvenience of not having put them away. If he leaves things about, so that they are mislaid, he must search for them, and so gradually learn that disorder means inconvenience and annoyance.

10. DUTY.

Duty seems naturally to connect itself with rights and possessions. Even toys are felt by a child to have a kind of claim upon him to be preserved from misuse and destruction; and the task of taking care of them and keeping them in order introduces to him a rudimentary form of responsibility.

But with much more force does the possession of pet animals enforce the sense of duty. That birds and rabbits are to be regularly fed is intelligible to very young children indeed; and though a child's office be merely to see that a kitten has its milk, or to throw out crumbs to the birds after breakfast, some little perception of duty is thereby instilled.

It is well to begin very early to apportion to young children little duties and offices in the household, the more real and useful the better; but almost any are better than none, unless they are so palpably superfluous that even a child perceives their uselessness.

11. THE APPETITES.

Healthy and active children are not in much danger of becoming greedy or epicurean, unless the example of their elders leads them wrong. Where they are not extremely delicate, and averse to food, it is best to assume that they will eat whatever is set before them, and to allow them occasionally to try a little of the Spartan sauce, "hunger," rather than to give way to their whims and fancies about food.

"Where there is a tendency to greediness it may be well," suggests Preceptor, "to try to rule the appetite for food by the appetite for play, making some game or amusement follow immediately after the meal; or during dessert a bird-cage may be placed on the table (as Froebel suggests), or a microscope may be called into use."

Fastidiousness is probably more difficult to cure than greediness; and it is not always easy to distinguish natural and constitutional aversion to certain kinds of food (e. g. fat, rice, milk) from an unnatural craving for strong and agreeable flavors. Preceptor is doubtless right