But let us look at the subject from another point of view. Herbert Spencer says: "Acquirement of every kind has two values-value as knowledge, and value as discipline." Under the latter, its more strictly psychological aspect, we will look at it. The chief end of education is to secure harmonious development—a symmetrical growth of all the mental faculties. That grammar does train the memory, the judgment, and the reasoning power we do not deny; so does logic; so does psychology. The importance of these or their value as disciplinary studies has nothing whatever to do with the time at which they should be taken up. The only question with which we have to deal is, whether grammar is the study best adapted to secure the symmetrical development desired. Can it not be provided for with studies better suited to the mental capacity of a child at this stage of his education?

If attention is secured, every study strengthens the memory.

There are few lessons which may not be made use of to exercise the constructive imagination. In elementary science-lessons, botany and natural history, by experiment, observation and inference, the first systematic lessons in inductive reasoning are given.

In arithmetic, the processes are mainly deductive because of the nature of the truths on which the science is based.

It is also an exact science, requiring accurate and concise statements of truths which are eternal and about which there can be no difference of opinion.

The judgment is called into play from first to last-when a child compares two colors and pronounces one red, the other green-also in comparing size, weights, distances. The language-lessons furnish material for its development in matters of literary taste. This discussion of historical events and characters gives fine scope for its exercise.

I think we cannot urge the study of grammar as mental discipline when it is so well provided for without it.

Some history of language should precede the study of grammar, that the pupil may see that its definitions and its rules were not made for his special annoyance, but that there is a reason why, and that there is an end in view worthy of his utmost efforts to attain.

Scant results will be obtained from teaching any subject till there is a desire-nay, almost a demand-of the mind for further knowledge. I think this point will hardly be reached until the pupil is prepared to enter the high school. Even then, it should be used with caution. The pupil should clearly understand that he is using it as a help in analyzing and interpreting the thoughts expressed by others, in expressing his own with greater precision and in accordance with established usages. also valuable as an appeal on disputed points; though the doctors themselves disagree, and some even affirm that there is no such thing as

English grammar.

After all, there is no argument so strong as that

drawn from experience.

From this point of view, whose opinion could have more weight than that of the principal of our own State Normal school?

I give it in his own words: "My experience is, that English being a language with the minimum of form, and, therefore, its principles being those that underlie all grammar, the conceptual power of pupils under thirteen or fourteen years of age has not been sufficiently developed to enable them really and fruitfully to grasp the underlying principles of the subject, except in cases of unusual precocity or abnormal development of the language faculty. This experience is derived from observation running through a number of years, and embracing thousands of children from every walk in life."

On the Study of Geography.

There is a remarkable diversity of opinion as to the value of geographical studies as a part of the curriculum in school and college. Look at the time devoted to geography in the public schools, and this would seem to be one of the most important topics. Talk with the teachers, the scholars, and the parents, and the loud outcries may be heard against its domination. Confer with the members of a college faculty. Now and then, from authorities like Arnold Guyot or George P. Marsh (not to name any one living), the most glowing commendation of such studies will be heard, but oftener, expressions like those of the late Coutts Trotter, of Trinity College, Cambridge, who frankly admitted, in a letter intended for publication, that he had not "any very clear ideas of what the study of geography as a separate subject would mean, or what would be the nature of the lectures of a professor or reader in geography." Yet Mr. Trotter was a scholar, a traveler, a man of varied interests, and well acquainted with the problems of modern higher education. This divergence of opinion is more apparent when the ways of German universities are compared with those of English and American institutions. In Germany, there are more than a dozen chairs of geography, filled by men of high distinction, and a trustworthy authority, Mr. Scott Keltie, states that their courses are attended by from twenty to eighty hearers. In England, the neglect of geography in education has led the Royal Geographical Society to concerted efforts for reform. The recent proceedings

*

* Since the days of Kant, author of one of the earliest physical geographies, a succession of distinguished Germans have been devoted to geography. Humboldt, Berghaus, Ritter, Steffens, Kiepert, Petermann, Peschel, Richthofen, and many younger men deserve remembrance.

of that body, and especially the first volume of supplementary papers, contain many significant articles upon this theme. Among them, attention may be directed specially to the opinions that have been collected from enlightened men in different countries by the editor, Mr. Keltie.

In the United States, we cannot be reproached with the neglect of geography. The public chest, from the days of Lewis and Clark, and the private purse, from the days of Peabody and Grinnell, have been opened for the aid of continental, oceanic, Arctic, and African researches. In the primary and grammar schools, much time (we have already said) is bestowed upon the study, but books and methods are often dry, and not infrequently sterile.

As these facts are borne in mind, it is a hopeful sign that the Brooklyn Institute has recently made a public exhibition of the best maps, charts, models, reliefs, diagrams, atlases, and books that the world has produced, and having shown them, free of charge, to throngs of Brooklynites, is now ready to transfer the collection to other cities. Nothing but good can come from such a display. It was undoubtedly superior to any of the kind that has been seen in the United States. It comprised the varied sorts of educational apparatus published in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, as well as in England and the United States. The general effect was impaired by want of sufficient wall-room, and by the unsympathetic surroundings of the Arcade in which the collection wast arranged. If these objects are to be transferred to other cities, larger halls with plenty of wall-room should be secured, and much more should be done than was attempted in Brooklyn to guide the visitor by labels, descriptive cards, leaflets, and familiar lectures. Nevertheless, the collection exhibited by the Brooklyn Institute is most praiseworthy. It should not be too soon dispersed. Its display in other cities would certainly acquaint many teachers and managers of schools with the general inferiority of the maps now employed in this country for school and college instruction. Better apparatus would soon be called for. It is the want of accquaintance with the progress of geographical science which makes our educational authorities indifferent to the methods that are employed on the continent, and to the aids that are provided in Germauy and France.

Everybody knows that we live in space of three dimensions, not two; on a sphere, not on a plane; yet maps are often constructed as if they represented "flat land," or the world of two dimensions. Mountains are omitted altogether-as in a popular historical atlas that lies before me, and in most of our railroad guidebooks-or else they are indicated by symbols which suggest narrow ridges crossing the country as a zigzag rail fence runs across the meadows. The indication of broad regions of upheaved land, like those of Spain or Anatolia, or the vast plateau of Asia and North America, is generally wanting. Countries which are

diversified by low and lofty plains, by ridges, peaks, and passes, by broad and narrow valleys, are represented as if they were as level as the sea beach or the prairie. Hence the circutious routes of traffic and travel, the tortuous movements of armies, the sites of memorable battles, the sinuous windings of political boundaries, are not understood.

Yet admirable maps, for the wall and for the table, exhibiting the reliefs as well as the horizontal outlines, have been prepared for every part of Europe, for the United States, for all the continents, and for many of the islands of the sea. Regions of noteworthy geographical or historical significance are also illustrated by special orographic maps. It is a wonder that they are not more commonly used. Compare, for example, Levasseur's map of the region that is bounded on the south by the sea and the Pyrenees, on the east by the Alps and the Rhine, with a common map of France. The one is full of suggestions to the traveler or the student; the other is flat. The one is alive; the other is dead. On the one the routes that Hannibal, Cæsar, Louis XIV, Napoleon, must have followed are apparent. The meaning of transalpine and cisalpine Gaul requires no glossary. Ultramontanism is not an obscure term. "There are no more Pyrenees" is a rhetorical phrase, not a geographical fact. The prolonged disputes with reference to the Rhenish frontier appear foreordained. Metz, Strasburg, Belfort, are not merely artificial fortresses ; they are natural strategic points. Great Britain faces little Britain. conditions which have made Paris the central city of a great state are easily comprehended. The less one knows of French geography, the more he is incited to study it by this map; the more he knows, the more he will enjoy the study. Or, instead of Levasseur's France, examine Kiepert's Hellas. The limitations of Greek states, their rivalries, alliances, points of contention, places of assembly, shrines, are seen to be based upon the orography of the land. Indeed, without such a map of Greece the classical and the modern historians are alike difficult and obscure. Pen descriptions like those of Curtius, Grote, Kiepert, Jebb, are indeed most graphic, but even their skillful phrases are illuminated by good maps that exhibit the upliftings of the land surfaces as well as their horizontal dimensions.

One word of caution should perhaps be added. In selecting a physical map, avoid, as a general rule, those that are overlaid with typography. Out of deference to the prejudices, or perhaps to the ignorance, of purchasers, the cartographer often endeavors to make the same map serve for natural, historical, and actual political conditions, and consequently he obscures the sheet by a profusion of names. There are, of course, reasons why certain maps must be covered with words-that is what a postal map is for, and a map of the bishoprics of Christendom, or of the minor sovereignties of Germany will be meaningless unless well lettered; but even maps for such purposes as these will be more useful and intelligible

if paired with maps that indicate the orographic features, free from disturbing elements. Under no circumstances is it wise to obscure topog

raphy by typography.

An admirable piece of geographical apparatus has lately been prepared for Baltimore by Mr. C. Mindeleff, of the United States Geological Survey. He has translated (if that expression may be allowed) into a topographical model the topographical map of the city and its environs. lately made by the government. The elevations are represented without exaggeration just as they are in nature. Here may be seen in the true relations the hills, rising to five hundred feet of altitude; the cañon-like ravines of Jones' Falls and Gwynn's Falls; the broad plateau over which runs the Pikesville turnpike; the rolling country on the summits of which the Cathedral, the Washington Monument, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Bay View Asylum, and other edifices are placed; as well as all the watercourses and shore lines. Everything on the map is as trustworthy as it is clear. For instruction in geographical forms nothing better could be wished for. If reliefs like this, representing districts of special significance and importance, were common in our schools and colleges, the value of geographical study would quickly be recognized. A few hundred dollars would insure the preparation of a like model for Boston, New York, and other large cities. The original, once made, might be copied at moderate cost. When the full meaning of such maps is perceived, they will be found valuable as accessories for the prosecution of many branches of science.

Not only the student of history, but the student of political economy, will demand them, as they are now called for by geologists and naturalists. Statesmen and legislators will make fewer blunders to be corrected by after generations, if they will only become familiar with the enduring physical characteristics of every region which they are called upon to govern, or over which they exert an influence. Goldwin Smith wisely opens his new book by saying that whoever wishes to know what Canada is, and to understand the Canadian question, should begin by turning from the political to the natural map. "The political map displays a vast and unbroken area of territory, extending from the boundary of the United States up to the north pole, and equaling or surpassing the United States in magnitude. The physical map displays four separate projections of the cultivable and habitable part of the continent into arctic waste." What he says so concisely of Canadian maps may be universally extended. To understand any country, "turn from the political to the natural map.” We may even go further, and demand a map which shall show a geographical unit in its relations to other geographical units. For example, the valley of the Mississippi, from the Appalachians on the east to the Cordilleras on the west, is a geographical unit; and to comprehend it, the relations of this vast territory to the lake system and the Canadian terri