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ovals, loops, etc., in the letters in Plate XVI. cannot be introduced here for want of room; hence but few explanations concerning these letters will be given. One feature should be observed, and that is the rotundity of the curved lines which are thrown about the capital stem oil be

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to form these letters. Give them their full degree of curvature and their proper position, and the letters will assume graceful form. The small tie or loop on the right side of the first B and the letter R should touch the stem and point upward toward the left.

SHADING, when employed upon the capitals, should be heaviest at the middle of the oval curves and taper alike each way from that point. The thickest shade in the capitals may be from three to four times as wide as the hair lines.

STUDY THE CHARACTER OF YOUR PUPILS.

THE successful disciplinarian needs to be a thorough student in human nature. An ability to read the peculiarities of his pupils will show him that, as they are widely different in their character, temperament and degree of cultivation, so must his methods of dealing with those pupils be as different, and especially adapted to the circumstances of each particular case. The pupil who is dull of comprehension, diffident, and for that reason often falls short in the performance of duty, needs not so much to be driven nor urged, as to be encouraged, allured, and to be borne with in patience; while the brilliant, though hot-tempered and insolent youth, who flies into a passion at the least exciting cause, and breaks over all rules and sense of propriety, will require to be met with the utmost decision, coolness and unimpassioned reasoning. The boy of low, vulgar tastes and tendencies, and the shameless girl, must be kindly and plainly shown their great mistake, in their estimation of what is worthy and what is

not; and must be led in the better way by judicious counsels and lofty motives. The malicious and unprincipled must be disarmed by the teacher's own magnanimity and integrity, and the pupil who has become prejudiced, needlessly perhaps, against his teacher, must be disabused by kindness, especially in little things. Those roguish boys and girls good-natured, but thoughtless; brim-full of fun, but meaning no harm-must not be harshly dealt with, but gently checked, and must be shown, that while there is a time and a place for all things proper, trifling with the precious time of school, with the rights of other pupils and with the authority of the teacher, is a little too serious to be indulged in for mere sport.

Then there is another class of pupils whose management requires great tact and prudence. We mean those children who are neglected and abused at home, and whose countenances so often wear the marks of sadness and of sorrow. They need the teacher's utmost forbearance and especial compassion. To them the world seems very hard. Teacher, if you can make the hours spent in the school-room the sunny portion of each day to them; if you will allow them to see a friendly smile on your countenance, though they seldom or never see one on the faces of those who have the care of them at home, you will have the proud satisfaction of making glad their sorrowful hearts, and furthermore, you will have their hearty coöperation in all good measures for the success of your school.-Mass. Teacher.

ence.

For the Schoolmaster.
PSALM SINGING.

TIME and tune are greatly improved in these days of musical sciSo we shall begin to believe strongly, if we remember the clumsy versions of our fathers in New England. The grotesque psalm singer and instructor of psalmody Cooper introduces into.one of his illustrations of backwoods life might be astonished at the melody of our verses, the perfection of our chords, the tameness of our melodies, and excessively shocked with our flagrant departures from what in early Colonial days was the only orthodox material for song worship, the Psalms of David. While we glean from popular operas some of the music we are allowed, in these enlightened days, to sing

in church, and find not a few of our effective hymns among the poetic effusions of uninspired men, it need not be deemed improbable that a David Gamut would put his fingers in his ears and his resonant pitch pipe into his pocket, to seek sadly the ancient melodies and listen with unsatisfied ear for common metres, and for literal paraphrases of the good old psalms of the inspired minstrel of Israel.

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Well, the prejudices and the disputes of old time are dead, only to be, mayhap, revived in other forms to-day; but the rude sacred harmonies of our fathers are still extant; their rough, unmelodious rhythm and their faulty rhymes. Listen to the hymns of other days and remember that in hundreds of square pews, in cold, unpainted meeting houses, all over the land, have resounded the voices of men, children, maidens and mothers, toning forth in simple strains, these majestic though now forgotten songs.

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The writer of this line has opened beneath his left hand a very rare and curious work on the topic placed at the head of this paper, whence he reads and quotes. When the Puritans came to this country in 1620, their manual of Psalmody was a small, neat edition of Ainsworth's version of the Psalms. Its poetry was like the quotation made below:

PSALM I.

1. O, blessed man, that doth not in the wickeds' counsell walk:
Nor stand in sinners way; nor sit in seat of scornful folk.

2. But setteth in Jehovah's law his pleasureful delight,

And in his law doth meditate by day and eke by night.

3. And he shall be, like-as a tree, by water brooks planted;

Which in his time, shall give his fruit, his leaf eke shall not fade;
And whatsoever he shall doe, it prosp'rously shall thrive.

The reader will see that in one or two places rhythm is strained to suit text and fact. What will he say when he scans the metre of these lines which follow here from the Bay Psalm Book Improved, which the author I am quoting considers a great improvement upon the version of Ainsworth:

"I' th' city of the Lord of Hosts."

This is the Lord on whom we had our expectation;
We will rejoice and will be glad in his salvation.

Of to see this version of the Song of Moses:

"Iah is my strength and song and he is my salvation;
He is my God and I'll prepare an habitation."

Thus far from the historical book.

One of the sweet, soothing and devotional melodies of those olden days is echoing now in my ears. It is "York," written in an old book, of date more than a hundred years ago, noted in the faw, sol, law, me style, new in that century. But I cannot remember now any modern melody of this character though polished and pruned, bedecked with harmonies and garnished with euphonious verse, that sinks so deeply into the inner recesses of the soul and quiets and calms as this three-part tune stills and quells every feeling but devotion. Since I finished the last page of this manuscript three male voices have sung this and the One Hundredth Psalm tune out of this worn and stained, antiquated little book, that I see now open before me. They are melodies and harmonies less nicely balanced than those of to-day, yet how majestically they must have sounded from the strong voices of faithful worshippers in the churches of a century ago! And how the tones of these harmonies heard to-night seem to be mingled with the notes of those old singers and seem, but only seem, to be accompanied by awakened voices long since silent, of men who now slumber in their graves! They were times when "Tate and Brady" were new. The Revolution was then more than a quarter of a century in the future. Watts was living in England, Cowper flourished nearly half a century later. Mrs. Barbauld published her first poems thirty years after the date of this little work. Henry Kirke White begun his brief though memorable career a few years less than half a century from the time when our fathers read and sung these psalms. Bishop Heber and James Montgomery were still later in the list of poets whose devotional poetry now makes up much of the more beautiful portions of the hymn books of to-day. So that hymnology has received its greatest accession since the days of Samuel Gerrish, for whom this little work was printed in MDCCXLIV., at “ Boston, N. E.," and the Rev. Mr. Tufts, who made the introduction to the singing of psalm tunes and collected the tunes to be sung, as saith a certain yellow antique title-page before me.

My pen has long ago been promised the satisfying task of exposing the innovations of sacrilegious book-makers who have so softened and toned down many of the poems of these memorable writers that David Gamut himself, or one better versed than he, would scarcely recognize them now. Had they improved them, they would have secured some gratitude from men whose literary taste is equal to their

devotion. Had they left them untouched, harmony of sound might have been violated sometimes, but singers and readers would have had the satisfaction of knowing that the minds of these ancient worthies had followed in the same path as that smoother and more easy one ostensibly marked out by them but shorn of some little roughnesses that might, left to themselves, have given more pleasure to those that would delight now to walk therein. HENRY CLARK.

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Hard is the work of our soldier boys:
To leave dear home and its innocent joys;
At the trellised door the last time to stand;
To feel the last clasp of the parting hand;
To march away from the village green ;
To turn from every familiar scene;
To feel that loving eyes will look
Far down the road-far past the brook-
To the very turn around the hill,

And when all is vanished keep looking still;
By the church and school together to march,
And over the bridge that spans with its arch
The stream that winds through fields where years
Have witnessed what heart to heart endears
The work, that partner with healthful play
Parcels the hours of a rural day;

To hear the clang of the railway bell,

Of homely life the funeral knell;
To hear the rumble and feel the jar,
Of the special-night-train crowdedcar;
To know themselves hurrying far away
From health and peace to the deadly fray.

Hard is their work-in the fort, the camp;
Hard the sentry's path to tramp,
Keeping the watch in the dead of night;
Waiting for day, to begin the fight;
Then to stand firm where the rushing shot
Or the bursting shell may be their lot;
Hard to respond to the "charging cheer"

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