Count the English words I have enumerated and you will find ten, all meaning round bodies, and all from the same root.

I have taken most of my examples from a book not easily obtainable; but the little book of Archbishop Trench entitled, "On the Study of Words," has been reprinted in this country and will be found full of entertaining and instructive knowledge of this kind. ED.

GLEANINGS FROM THE GERMAN.

IRONY. Hence the very doubtful expediency of the use of ridicule in dealing with children. With grown persons it is often a highly useful means of calling out the better feelings. But in children these feelings are seldom strong enough to bear such treatment, and to carry off the victory in the conflict which is excited. Hence they are morally weakened by ridicule; or else a reaction is occasioned, and a personal feeling in regard to the teacher excited, which interferes with his future usefulness. The feeling of alienation and estrangement, which is only momentary in the teacher, continues in the mind of the pupil and renders him hostile or insensible to the best efforts of the teacher afterwards. -[Beneke.]

PRAISE. The habit, on the part of a teacher, of giving hearty praise, is of great importance, is essential to him when he has occasion to blame. How often do we see children who are only willing to take admonition or to allow it to operate on them when coming from one respecting whom they have learned to understand that he also knows how to praise. When the admonition has not this support, its effect is too often wholly lost, or else it serves only to excite hostility and alienation.-[Beneke.]

OBJECT-TEACHING. Object-teaching may very easily be abused, for it may very easily be made to consist of the most commonplace trivialities. Whoever makes it the only principle of his teaching will be apt to neglect the higher, nobler and more spiritual part of his pupils' minds for the sake of the cultivation of the lower

senses.

Unless conceptions are made to follow perceptions, and judgment and reasoning power are built up upon them, it will go ill with the pupils' mental development; and when the mere sensuous is not elevated to an æsthetic or a moral feeling and the mere idle curiosity to a conscious voluntary effort, the child's education will remain in the lowest stage, and never reach any real completeness.-[ Curtmann.

It is a great mistake to suppose that mere perception is sufficient for knowledge. Complete knowledge belongs only to the pure thought of the comprehending reason, and perception is therefore only the beginning of knowledge. It is only when we have raised ourselves to this power of abstract thought respecting a thing, that we have a true and complete perception of it; the perception is merely the form in which the knowledge is brought together again. In the immediate perception I have indeed the whole thing before me; but the thing cannot stand in my mind as an analyzed and understood whole till there is added to my perception of the form a developed systematic knowledge. It is therefore only the cultivated man who has perceptions that can separate the accidental from the essential, and so form out of the objects the senses present, true conceptions by the help of reason.-[Hegel.

READING. Good intelligent reading requires a fine intelligent sense and much study; there is much goes to the making of a good reader, and it presupposes many other attainments. Practice in reading, when combined with reflection upon what is read, is, when we examine it closely, an accomplishment so highly to be valued, that perhaps the greater part of ordinary school instruction might with advantage take that form, and we ought to hope that as its capacities are more thoroughly understood, it will take its place as one of the leading methods of culture. [Hegel.

TRUE KNOWLEDGE. True culture consists not in an aggregate or conglomerate of knowledge, but in complete clearness in that department which we have chosen for ourselves. Hence I counsel you to strive constantly to discover what parts of that still demand investigation at your hands. Socrates placed himself quite on an equality with the sophists, as far as regarded the fact that he, as well as they, knew nothing: but he placed himself above them in this,

that he knew that he knew nothing, while they did not. Follow his example, and turn to the dark sides of your consciousness many times and often. A later insight, gained, perhaps, from some quite new quarter, will throw an unexpected light on these dark places. Whoever has once had the delight of this experience, will never doubt that, by honest striving, he can always succeed in reaching clear convictions. Providence has given every man the power to reach that degree of knowledge and wisdom which will lead him to true life. It is the destiny of humanity, as a whole, and of every individual man, to be guided by the light of Truth. Before that sun, the clouds of error and deceit are sure to fade away. Let "Forward!" be your watchword your whole life through. [Diesterweg.

We live in a period of disciplining culture, and civilizing, but far away from the period of moral education. In the present condition of man, we may say that the fortune of states grows with the misery of men. And it is still a question, whether, in a rude condition, where all this culture was not to be found, we should not be happier than in our present condition. For how can we make men happy, when we do not make them moral or wise? The quantity of evil is not by that means diminished.

[Kant.

Two inventions of man may well be looked upon as the most difficult, viz.: the art of government, and the art of education; and men are still at variance in respect to the fundamental ideas of both.-[Kant.

We ought to read the ancients, in order to learn to live as they did; but the philologists think we ought to live in order to read the ancients.-[Menzel.

The domestic novels for children run over with father's love, mother's love, brother's love, sister's love, grandfather's love, grandmother's love, uncle's love, aunt's love, teacher's love, &c., and with all possible sentimentalities and softnesses, domestic comedies and hypocrisies. The coxcombry of virtue and the twaddle about feeling in these books cannot fail to exert a bad influence on children, and must either appear to them ridiculous or train them up to dissimulation. True domestic virtue never has

so much to say for itself; genuine feeling is silent; and if my children should ever come to me with such pretty expressions as we find recorded of clever and pious children in thousands of these child's books, I should scold them as affected fools or whip them as accomplished hypocrites.-[Menzel.

No teacher can pour his own thoughts into me; he can only awaken my thoughts by his words. Words are merely the instruments, and I must learn to use them with my own powers, and in my own way, or I have learned nothing. The best test, therefore, for ascertaining whether any one has really learned a thing, is to see whether he can reproduce it in his own way and in his own words. [Herder.

AFTER-SCHOOL THOUGHTS.

As the last faint echo sounded low

Of the tread of little feet,
A shadow darkened the sunny glow,
That had made the day seem sweet.
Methought I could hear, in the vacant room,
A sound, as of fluttering wings;
And dirge-like sounded the mystic hymn
That the breeze with the pine-tree sings.

I thought of the sparkling, flowery morn,
When each joyous little one,

Had greeted me with the morning kiss
And a heart that with love o'errun;

The sunshine came in through the open blind,

And fell on the motto green,

Till it seemed that the "Peace" of "Wisdom's ways,"
Like a vision of angels was seen.

With loving obedience, those same little feet,
When the morning school-bell had rung,
Had quickly hastened each child to his seat,
Ere our morning hymn we sung;

With rev'rence each little head was bowed,
While the solemn chant was given,

Of that beautiful prayer that our Saviour taught,
And we felt that 'twas heard in Heaven.

'Twas sad indeed that a shadow should fall
O'er the close of a day like this;

That a glance o'er its records should swiftly recall
A thing that was sadly amiss.

As the gentle sound of the fluttering wings

In far distance seemed dying away, I recalled the grief on a childish face, Like a cloud on the skies of May.

For some trifle, by thoughtless childhood done,
I had quickly and harshly spoken;
And the fast-heaving sob of the little breast
Showed the orphan almost heart-broken.
That grief has haunted my after-hours
That have sped so swiftly along,

And I bitterly wish that remorse had the power
To efface the dark mem'ry of wrong.

But no! in the tender heart of the child
The record on earth is made;
And his angel guardian, hovering near,
The record to heaven conveyed.
And, humbled and sad, I think with awe
Of the import so lasting there lies,
Perchance, in the sound of a careless word,
That 'twill meet us beyond the skies;

And resolve that henceforth my ministry,
With the blessing of Christ, shall be,
With more patience, more loving earnestness,
From harshness for ever free;

That if there be present one tender heart,

That not elsewhere a joy may know,

At school it shall be my sweetest care
That it taste of heaven below.

SYLVIA.