JUST PUBLISHED. SOMETHING ENTIRELY NEW. QUESTIONS ON THE PRINCIPLES OF ARITHMETIC, Designed to indicate an Outline of Study, to incite among pupils a spirit of Independent Inquiry, and especially fitted to facilitate a Thorough System of Reviews. Adapted to any Text-Book, and 48 pp. 12mo. to all grades of learners. Paper Covers. BY JAMES S. EATON, M. A., Author of a Series of Arithmetics, etc. Some of the Advantages of using these Questions. 1. They are separate from any text-book, and equally well adapted to all text-books. On this account they present all the benefits of the Question Method, and none of its defects. 2. They indicate a definite outline of study, and afford a substantial guide to the pupil in the preparation of his lesson. 3. They incite the pupil to inquiry, awakening that thirst for knowledge which is the best motive for its acquirement. 4. They open up the several subjects by such short and suggestive steps, one question following upon another in the chain, that the pupil is thus led to follow out and develop the subject for himself. 5. By inciting the pupil to inquiry, and guiding him in developing the subject for himself, they subserve the highest and only true style of teaching, namely, to draw out and develop the faculties and thus lead the pupil, instead of dictating to him and driving him. 6. They afford the best means for frequent reviews and examinations, since it is the Princi ples of Arithmetic that should be reviewed, and not the mechanical operations. 7. The use of these Questions will not fail to ground the principles of Arithmetic in the mind of the pupil, and thus give him the KEY which will command all practical operations. These Questions are published in the form of a pamphlet, and sold at a very low price, in order to render it easy for all schools to supply themselves with them. As they are not in the form of, nor designed for, an exclusive text-book, they do not require to be adopted by Boards of Education, but the use of them, like cards or other illustrations, will be at the option of teachers. Price 12 cents. Teachers supplied at $9.00 per hundred. FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. Specimen copies mailed to teachers on receipt of ten cents. Address Dec., '65. TAGGARD & THOMPSON, Publishers, 29 CORNHILL, BOSTON. A friend said to us, the other day, Is there not great danger, that, with the current of popular feeling setting so strong in favor of practical studies, the claims of learning in this working-day world of America will be lost sight of? Are we not running the risk of going to the other extreme in regard to practical science, and after unjustly neglecting and depreciating the study of physical phenomena as an element in education, shall we not now be too apt to forget the claims of scholarship and letters? "For," he went on to say, "you may talk as you please about your selfeducated men and your physical philosophers; - they will be the first to tell you that their education lacks an essential element, the want of which none feel so much as themselves; that there is such a thing as culture as well as knowledge, and that culture and that indefinable grace by which we know an educated mind is given by those very linguistic and classical studies which are now so much decried. Look," said he, "at England's best scholars; -I grant all you say of the worthlessness of a great deal of what passes for education in England - but look at England's picked men, and where, save here and there in this country a solitary genius, can you find men to match them in the refinements and graces of true scholarship? Can we afford to do without scholar ship in this country? What people need it more to refine the vulgarity which seems inherent in a democratic community? Surely, instead of too much of it, we could afford to have a great deal more. For Heaven's sake do not strive to make that little less." We have written strongly, as some of our readers know, in defence of the study of physical science as an absolutely essential element in popular education. We are not disposed to retract a word of all we have said on that side of the question, and yet we feel and entirely assent to the force of our friend's remonstrance. Not a little experience in teaching has given us an opportunity to appreciate the value of linguistic studies, and the refining influence of Literature, using that term as is often done in contradistinction to science and its absolute necessity as an element in any liberal education. We would be the last to discourage the cultivation of Literature or undervalue its elevating and purifying influence. We know how easy it is for the vulgar man of science to become a gross materialist, though we do not believe in any tendency in the study of Science rightly pursued to engender a materialistic philosophy. But we think that though on this subject it is easy to go to extremes, and though we shall doubtless have many partial and onesided thinkers, there is yet in this movement towards the cultivation of physical science, and the making it enter as a larger ingredient into our systems of education, a very healthy re-action against a narrow, hide-bound, pedantic and antiquated literary culture which really bore no fruit at all. Our higher education is not really of home growth. It was imported from England, and planted in New England by our Puritan fathers, as an education for their ministers, but it never took root here, and has never really formed a part of our American life. Bungling attempts have been made to conform it to that life, but with little success, and it now exists apart from the popular sympathies, and unincoporated, as are the lower grades of schools, into the national system. Now, we are far from saying that this is because of the study of Latin and Greek, as many are swift to say in regard to it. We do not believe the evil would be remedied by the abolition of Latin and Greek, and the turning of all our colleges into polytechnic schools, which we should reckon the most unfortunate of measures. We do not believe in any necessary antagonism between Learning and Science, Physics and Belles-Lettres. We surely do not want to see the physical philosopher become as unreasonable and onesided as many of his opponents. A number of distinctions are to be carefully drawn on this subject before we can arrive at the truth, and 'reconcile the conflicting parties. We say parties, for between the causes there is really no conflict at all. In the first place, it needs to be seen that there is no such thing as a uniform training for all minds: but that inasmuch as it has pleased the Creator to make minds of an infinite variety, so it behoves us to study that variety, and adapt our educational processes to it. No exclusive and one-sided education of any kind is good, a scientific as little as a classical; but the bent of the mind should surely be consulted, and nothing is more certainly proved by long and disastrous experience, than that the attempt to force an exclusively classical education on a very large class of minds is absolutely futile. Would we then replace it by an exclusively scientific education? In many instances we believe this would succeed better, but it would quite as much be open to the objection of one-sidedness; but surely we may say, that, given all the elements which constitute a complete education as ten, two different modes of mingling them may be conceived of, in one of which Science shall stand as six and Literature as four, and in the other Literature as six and Science as four, or in any other proportions according to the varying qualities and aptitudes of particular minds. But, again, it is one thing to say that literature should enter as an ingredient into every complete and liberal education, and quite another thing to insist that in all cases literary studies should be represented by Greek and Latin. These two studies did once indeed stand as almost the only representatives both of Philosophy and of Belles-Lettres; but how different is the case now! Linguis tic science has extended its limits far beyond the narrow bounds of the languages of Greece and Rome, especially as these were taught in the narrow and antiquated method of the older generation of English classical scholars, who have been to so great an |