as the last one dies on the air all gates are closed, and every man must be in. It is after this that the obnoxious proctor prowls about, perchance to discover some truant and lead him in guilty consternation to the Vice Chancellor. To see Oxford well, one should be there in early May. Then, nature seems to exhaust herself, laying her magic hand every place. The crimson vines on Magdalen and the Observatory take on bright and vivid shades of green, the trees on St. Giles seem to clasp hands overhead, park and garden are a wilderness of beauty, and along country walks the primrose modestly lifts its pretty head. All is peace symbolized. But by the second week in May all this quietness has fled. Carriage loads of smiling matrons and blushing maidens pour in until one seems to be in the rush of London gayety. The river is crowded daily with boats going down to Iffley, and the innkeeper there takes on a sleek, well-satisfied air. The cause of all these festivities is the boat races, during which the greatest excitement prevails. Honors in scholarship have always been sought by Oxford men, but honors in athletics are with many the most desirable of all things offered in a college career. The boating excitement has scarcely worn off before the commemoration or commencement takes place and the round of gayety begins anew. But after the display of new B. A. and M. A. gowns and numerous balls and garden parties even the undergraduate departs and the quiet is unbroken for two months or more. It is during these days that many of the sons of the University love to return to it, for then there are no MAGDALEN COLLEGE AND BRIDGE. strange faces to break in upon the memory of the old ones so deeply cherished. "The Grand Old Man," Gladstone, often comes to Oxford at such a time, leaving behind the cares and burdens of state and entering upon the peace and calm of college life again. He comes, and hardly have the people realized that he is there until he is quietly established in the old quarters he occupied as a boy. He spends two or three weeks in undisturbed study and then departs as unostentatiously as he came. His presence cre ates no furor, causes little comment, for Oxford is used to great men! To the European traveler Rome has its fascination, Paris is captivating and London has its peculiar charm. But in Oxford one. finds each and all of these, and her influence in one's life comes to stand for all that is beautiful, inspiring and ideal. To him. that goes there we would repeat the message sent by a celebrated man: "Give my love to St. Mary's, that most beautiful of spires!" TERRE HAUTE, IND. I LETTERS TO TEACHERS AND STUDENTS. T. D. A. COCKERELL. I. To a Teacher in a Country School who said she could not teach Science for Lack of Time. UNDERSTOOD you to say, the other day, that while you did not doubt the value of science teaching, you found it out of the question in a country school, simply for lack of time. You had so much trouble simply to teach the children to read and write, and master the elements of arithmetic, with such other studies as were called for in all schools, say some geography, a little history, language lessons, and some drawing. It seemed better simply to lay the foundations of these necessary branches, without confusing the children's minds by attempt ing too much. On thinking over this apparently just statement of yours, I could but feel that there existed a misunderstanding as to what was meant by the word science. Just as art has in many quarters been unwarrantably taken to include only the fine arts, so science has been regarded as only including what we sometimes call the sciences,-astronomy, geology, botany, and-so-forth. When it is suggested that you shall teach science in your school, you immediately begin to think of a subject to be added to the curriculum, and ask yourself: shall it be botany, or geology, or what? You do not perceive, perhaps, that you have already in your list both science and art; for example, the science of geography, the art of writing. Even the elementary drawing you are hardly prepared to describe as art. But, you will say, if I admit that you are already teaching branches of science and art, why am I not satisfied? I am not satisfied because, while teaching scientific and artistic subjects, you so little appreciate their proper characters that you do not in your own mind dignify them by the titles science and art at all. * * Some other time we will discuss art, just now we are concerned with science; what is it, after all, and how can it be taught? Science, I take it, is simply the knowledge of things, just as art is the doing of things. The children are to be made to know and do. What are they to know?—surely that which will help them in doing. Science, therefore, is the nurse of the arts; it is the foundation of all useful activities, except such as are instinctive. A little reflection will show you how universally true this is. A great poet, or a great painter, has not usually the reputation of being a scientific man, yet his work depends on a truly scientific faculty of observing men and things. Read any good literature, and you will find that its excellence does not lie alone or even most in its artistic merits the use of language, the perfection of expression-but in the powers of observation and deduction possessed by the author. Our poets and novelists have observed and described phases of human feeling which are too subtle to be observed or expressed by our psychologists; they have shown themselves the better analysts, the more correct observers,-in short, without pretending to be scientific, they have exhibited scientific attributes in a very high degree. When we pass to the arts of agriculture, mechanics, and other ordinary bread-winning occupations, their connection with science is too obvious to need pointing out; so that, wherever we turn, we find science, open or disguised, to be the foundation of doing or making-that is, of art in its broad sense. Thus, you see, you cannot help teaching science in your school; but you can, I am sorry to say, very easily avoid teaching the scientific method; that is to say, the method of observation and deduction. Just consider, for a moment, the net result of your own education. What do you know, and what can you do, at the present day? I am sure that what you learned in school is but a very small proportion of your knowledge, and that it alone would scarcely serve you through life. Every day you have learned something or other-often many things which you have not been taught,-you have learned them from observation. If your education has been a good one, it has developed in you the powers of observation and deduction, so that you have been able to find out for yourself very much more than you could ever have been taught in school. Your best teachers have not been those who have told you a great deal, but those who have taught you sound methods of learning. for yourself, or, in other words, have given you a scientific spirit. There is another important consideration. Science is ultimately a study of nature, because the laws of nature are of universal application. Nature is a whole, and while for convenience we parcel it out into what we call the sciences, there is no break of continuity. In teaching, it should surely be the aim to eliminate these artificial barriers, and see things in their relation to one another. What should we think of a man who interested himself only in those things which were green, or those which were heavy, or those which were small? We should call him irrational, if we used no harder term; but we do, in fact, often take nearly as one-sided a view of things, when we treat the various branches of science as totally separate entities, always to be regarded apart from one another. But I am sure you will protest, here, that we must take a one-sided view of things, since the human mind is not capable of grasping more than a little. Let me try to make myself clearer. We must, indeed, take one point of view, but let us see all that is visible from that point. To illustrate; suppose we are looking at a landscape; some objects are close and prominent, others distant and obscure, and we know that what we see depends largely upon our standpoint; but let us see the landscape as a whole, instead of being taught one to see only the houses, another only the people, another nothing but the trees. The present writer is a specialist in certain branches of science, and he earnestly warns you, out of his own experience, that this very habit of seeing only one thing, or only one phase of a thing, is the besetting sin of modern scientific workers, and is vitiating many of their results. So, therefore, by all means in your power broaden the minds of the children, and teach them to connect their studies, so that the passage from one to the other is as imperceptible as the equator, and does not involve the process of mental dislocation which is so destructive of good work and clear thought. Thus, we have arrived at three fundamental ideas observation, deduction, correlation. You do not tell the child these names; you simply ask him-What do you see? What does it mean? How is it related to other things? All this must be at the very beginning. Now, I have before me a course of study for the primary department of a graded school, and I read the list of subjects, thus: "Numbers. Reading. Spelling. Language. Writing. General Lessons. Drawing." This is for the lowest class. Cannot you see, after what has been said, that there is here some tendency to put the cart before the horse? Numbers, writing, language, drawing-what is all this but the machinery for expressing ideas, for recording observations? I fear this machinery is allowed to take a place it has no right to occupy. Would it not be better to teach the children first to observe, and then how to record the observations? In practice, the two things will be necessarily almost simultaneous, but the child will learn to count, because there is something to be counted; to read, because there is something to be found out; to write and spell, because there is something to be recorded or communicated; to speak, because there is something to be said; to draw, because there is something to illustrate. I think that in this way the methods will be learned faster than ever before, because their purpose and utility will be appreciated. In this way, all the work will possess a dignity it never had before, and your pupils will have started on the same road, and will be using the same methods, as the greatest masters of science. MESSILA, N. M. WHAT MAKES OR MARS THE TEACHER. STATE SUPERINTENDENT D. M. GEETING. "You will do a greater service to the State if you raise not the roofs of the houses, but the souls of the citizens; for it is better that great souls should dwell in small houses rather than for mean souls to lurk in great houses."-Epictetus. HESE words of the old Roman, though though, spoken nearly two thousand years ago, contain the teaching of this great Roman philosopher, who had worked his way from slavery into public recognition through the principle embodied in his life. The principle of his philosophy was based on the fact that gentleness of manner is the strong index of character, and in the discussion of the subject before us we wish to dwell principally upon this phase of the question; believing that we, as teachers, are prone to think of gentleness as a negative rather than a positive quality, and as a positive quality which wins love rather than a negative quality which commands submission. ness among the potent forces of the universe; yet, as a matter of fact, no force in all the universe is greater or more wide-reaching than gentleness. Gentleness is the force of forces in the material as well as in the spiritual world. Gentleness is a pre-eminent force in human character and in human action. "Thy gentleness hath made me great," says David in his recounting of the forces of God's providence. "The gentleness of all the gods go with thee," is Shakespeare's expression of the wishes for another's power in meeting the adverse forces which must be encountered. "A gentle hand may lead an elephant with a hair," says the old Chinese proverb in illustration of the force of gentleness. And Shakespeare pictures a two-fold power of gentleness in "As You Like It;" where the Duke would first have resisted We are not accustomed to count gentle- the sword-enforced appeal of the brave Orlando, but is won by Orlando's gentleness and is prompted to say: "What would you have? Your gentleness shall force More than your force move me to gentleness." Whereupon Orlando himself is subdued and responds: "Speak you so gentle, pardon me I pray you; After a time Orlando concludes by saying: "Let gentleness, my strong enforcement be; In the which hope I blush and hide my sword." Gentleness in the teacher is everywhere. recognized as consistent with great strength and force of character; even though it be not counted as evidence of it, and unless the teacher has the power of gentlenesshas it by nature or by acquisition-he falls short of the highest attainable force of character, whatever other attributes of power he possesses. Of course there must first be the elements of real strength in the teacher before the force of gentleness or any other force is a possibility to him. If there were nothing of the whirlwind, of the earthquake, or of fire in the teacher's composition, the sound of stillness in his case might be the sound of a tame stillness instead of the sound of a gentle stillness; hence, it follows that there is sometimes a force in a man of violence beyond the force of a man of negative quietness. But wherever the other attri butes of power are in existence, the power of gentleness in control of those attributes is the nearest possible approach to the force omnipotent. In this sense it is that "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, And he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city." Gentleness always indicates; it always suggests a reserve of controlling powers and unvarying gentleness; for example, Gen. Grant's great success as a military commander was the result of his marvelous selfcontrol. It is a well known fact that Wendell Phillips, as an orator, carried the art of gentleness in his oratory to such an extent that his gentleness of manner became the force of forces, in his control over an audience of those who differed from him most radically in all the wild propositions he was bringing down upon them, with the smoothness of oil-pouring on a stormy ocean. It is not a sign of her weakness, but as a token of her strength, that gentleness is recognized as a pre-eminent attribute of truest womanhood. King Lear recognizes this in Cordelia when he moans out: "Her voice was very soft, Gentle and low; an excellent thing in woman." Everywhere and always the surest proof of inborn nobleness in womanly nature is given in a gentle voice, and the highest attainment. of woman's force is found and exhibited in a gentle spirit and in an unveiling of gentleness of manners. Nor is gentleness the noblest attribute and attainment of womanly character alone; it is equally the crowning grace of the strong man's power. Only he who has strength of character can be gentle. Only in gentleness is true strength of character exhibited most forcibly. The gentleman is, in fact, the man who has sense and responsibility of power in all his words and deeds. He is one of those who can say in frank simplicity, "We are gentle-men ; That neither in our hearts, nor outward eyes, Envy the great, nor do the low despise." To have the force of gentleness of spirit and gentleness of manner, by nature or by choice, is to be superior in the plane of humanity. But gentleness by birth or by training must be proved in the present personal exhibit and not by family register. If you are gentle others will know it without you saying so. If you lack gentleness you can never have the force to make others think you possess it. Hence, it should be your aim to be gentle and so prove your gentle ness. |