altogether from observation by the ear and experiment with the tongue"-and this we believe to be the tendency of those teachers of vocal culture who have originality and breadth enough to make patient and independent investigations.

In conclusion, let us recommend this volume to the attention of the teachers of the country. By all means, cultivate in your pupils a love and taste for these gems of thought and right sentiment. Do not fear that your pupils will speak too much or too often. Lord Brougham said to a young barrister, anxious for advice, "Speak whatever, whenever, and wherever you can, so you do not offend propriety; for facility, if not success, will come with practice, and facility is a success in itself."

M. T. B.

WHAT SHALL WE TEACH ?

BY E. L. B.

I had on my blackboard a crayon sketch of a cross, surmounted by a crown, and partly enveloped with clouds. One of my neighbors happening to see it, exclaimed at my want of judgment in matters appertaining to school-rooms: "Just rub that out, and put on there the geological formation of the earth. I don't know as you can, but some people could-and the children could learn something from it. It would do them some good. But what can they learn from that thing you have got there?"

Most, I believe, really think the highest good in the schoolroom consists in the greatest percentage of positive bookknowledge which can be "stuffed" into a child. "He don't know much about books," said a friend to me, in speaking of another, "but he knows a great deal about men, and the world in which men live." Good books are delightful things, and as a general thing, men and women who read books are far more delightful companions than those who do not; but "rid me and deliver me" from the companionship of those who know nothing, or next to nothing, except what they have read or learned from books.

Are we not too closely confined in the school-room to our books? When I begin to remember the limitless or almost limitless opportunities which offer themselves day by day, and hour by hour, for directing the minds of the boys and girls around us toward high purposes, toward noble thoughts, toward good deeds, I can only exclaim, "Who is sufficient for these things?"

Let me not be supposed to underrate the value of exact critical information. It is very well, and in some cases may be extremely useful, to know the names of the counties of your own State in alphabetical order; but if the choice lies between learning this list and the ten commandments, then by all means, I suppose, the Decalogue should have the preference. As if it could, by any possibility, be better for a child to know where the Euphrates river rises, than for him to know that truth, sobriety, and love, will make for him a garden of Eden more beautiful than that which once lay upon the banks of that ancient river. True, if I am hired to teach arithmetic, I must not devote my time to moral essays, or even to reading Christ's Sermon on the Mount; but if I have an immortal soul to feed, I must see that its nourishment is indeed meat and drink.

The souls of children hunger and thirst for what is beautiful and good. "I say unto you that their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in Heaven." Children do not learn evil far more easily than good. Offer to them the pure cup of innocence and the foul cup of wrong, and the chances being equal for an unbiased choice, they will infallibly choose the unpolluted. A good impression is made by the lightest touch. Lay your hand never so softly upon the conscience of a little child, and you have left a mark there which will brighten with the spotless flash of beauty, or the brassy glitter of evil, as years are added to the little one's life. Let us be careful to sow our seed deftly, for it will spring up and bear fruit-"it may chance of wheat.”

THE laws of God must be instilled into the mind as the rule of right, and a reverence for divine things and the Supreme Being must be breathed by the conscientious teacher into the heart as the rule of duty.-Huntington.

ON REFORMS.

BY S. A. N.

The public mind is eminently conservative. A custom once established continues by virtue of its own inertia, and is accepted by the majority of men as something good in itself, without question of its origin or usefulness. At the time of its adoption, it may have been sanctioned on account of its supposed or actual merits; or reluctantly allowed for want of something better; or it may have been a recognized evil forced upon mankind by arbitrary legislation; or it may not be possible to spe ify the time and circumstances of its genesis, because it grew with the growth of a rude and ignorant people. In either case, it may have outlived any usefulness it once had; or its inherent evils may have become more glaringly manifest, and their continuance more grievous; or it may have failed to supply the needs of a larger growth and a wider knowledge. In spite of all these considerations, if it wears the ærugo of past ages, it is hallowed by the authority of our fathers, and commands almost universal acquiescence. He who ventures to doubt its usefulness, or to suggest that there are other and better methods, is at once stigmatized as a Radical-a monster whose only offspring are fire-breathing Chimeras.

This almost omnipotent force of custom has long been acknowledged in theory, and sincerely bewailed by thinking men, even when acting in obedience to its laws. Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. Every page of history bears ample testimony to its power. If, by a successful revolution, one custom is dethroned, it is only to give place to another equally arbitrary, and perhaps no better or even worse than its predecessor. Of course, no one presumes to say that some, perhaps the majority, of the existing customs are not the best possible; but whether good or bad their sway is alike powerful.

All that has been said of customs applies equally well to the accepted opinions and beliefs of men. The son generally follows the political prejudices of his father, and accepts the religious dogmas of his mother, without much investigation into the soundness of either. It is not seldom that the Talmud has greater weight than the Pentateuch; that the tradition of the Fathers is more reverenced than the inspiration of the Gospel. The astronomical theory of Pythagoras was displaced by that of Ptolemy which is far worse, and whose adherents denounced as heretics those who held with Copernicus a far better theory. Some existing practices would be ludicrous, if they were not attended with serious consequences. The Alchemist held that lunacy was caused by the moon, i. e. Luna, and believed that silver was peculiarly affected by it; he then reasoned that epilepsy was a species of insanity, and homeopathically administered nitrate of silver or lunar caustic for its cure. Is it surprising that its use has continued to this day? If our knowledge were sufficient, we should doubtless find countless examples as absurd as this. Alexander was censured because he did not fight his soldiers like Leonidas, but the Macedonian phalanx, once established, continued till Pyrrhus met the Roman legion. Frederick of Prussia was a mere blockhead, who did not know when the art of war declared

him beaten. Napoleon the Great was another ignoramus, because he did not fight like Frederick; and some of our recent victories have been preposterously impossible, because Grant an Sherman did not sufficiently reverence the Napoleonic tactics. But then these men were radicals in their profession, and richly deserved censure. These examples of successful innovators serve to show how hard it is to change,-not that one method of fighting is better or worse than another. If Alexander, not Pyrrhus, had fought Fabricius; if Napoleon had met Frederick, and not the Archduke; if equals had been pitted in conflict; if let us not draw conclusions where such eminent Doctors disagree, but hold with good Touchstone there is "much virtue in if."

Without doubt every profession is more or less cumbered with the weight of "authority," by the tenacity of old and effete ideas, by the power of custom; let us see how it is with the profession of teaching. If we follow the historical development of the sciences and of the art of teaching, we may, perhaps, find that some of our notions are without foundation; that some of our most cherished opinions are merely hereditary dogmas, the outgrowth of old necessities, but now no longer necessary; that some of our methods are unworthy the name; that without reason and without excuse we are following in the curriculum of the ancients, and are heedless whether it is desirable to adopt for ourselves the goal they established, and, covered with Olympic dust, delighted to pass.

The name given to the first places of instruction in the liberal arts well indicates their character. They were schools-that is, places where men of leisure met to talk over their growing theories; and this, as the dialogues of Socrates sufficiently prove, often without any established order, but directed by the eldest or wisest of the junto. In this way men gathered about Pythagoras, or about Plato, or other sages renowned in their time. When, long years afterward, their studies were systematized, it was found they could be conveniently grouped in two classes: the Trivium-grammar, logic and rhetoric; and the Quadrivium-arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. These were sciences which men could pursue independent of collateral aid derived from inventions, or from the general culture of the masses; but, as might be expected, the studies of the Trivium engrossed the attention of most philosophers. Generally each teacher confined himself to one branch of study; thus Cicero at various times had six different teachers, if not more. For our present purpose, it will suffice to consider all the Grecian philosophers in one group, as being essentially distinct from those that followed. If any one will carefully study the methods pursued by these teachers and sages, he can not fail to perceive many things worthy of attention and of imitation. Among these note-worthy points are first: The disciples were not slavish copyists of their masters. Aristotle was the favorite pupil of Plato, but the lyceum he founded differed widely from the academy. That the Greek was free in thought is manifest from the numerous sects that arose among their philosophers. Second: The teachers limited their instructions only by their knowledge, giving preference, as would be natural, to favorite branches-some to mathematics, as Euclid; some to metaphysics, as Plato. It is idle to suppose that such men as Aristotle and Democritus taught nothing but dialectics, when their writings cover the whole ground of the sciences.

Third: The leaders of the schools were men of indomitable energy and of untiring industry in the acquisition of knowledge. All of them were profound thinkers. Most of them had, at some period of their lives, studied in Egypt. Some traveled to India, and, like Ulysses,

Roaming with a hungry heart,

Much had they seen and known: cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments.

Fourth: These men were conservators only of good, and Radicals in all else. They acknowledged no crystalline methods of thought, and, without banners emblazoned with idle devices of Progress and Reform, steadily progressed where their light led them, and unflinchingly wrought reform where reform was possible. They sought the good in every direction, and adopted without scruple every hint that promised well. Fifth: Schools, as we now use the word, did not exist. There were places where Grecian Squeers flogged unruly boys over their waxen tablets, and where the boys converted their styles into daggers; but the school was something beyond an abecedarium—it was a gathering of men bound to no course of study, restricted to no allotted time, governed by no puerile legislation, but earnest in the pursuit of knowledge. Much more might be written in praise of these early teachers, who were in no sense of the word pedagogues, but enough has been said to contrast their work with that of their successors. One fault remains to be noticed: There were fifth-rate men then as now, who took all things on the ipse dixit of their masters. The reverence for authority was in full force among the followers of Pythagoras, but never to so great a degree in the academy nor among the Peripatetics; yet it must be remarked that the deference paid was purely voluntary, such as men instinctively yield to great minds, and not enforced by edicts fulminating horrid penalties against disbelievers. It was reserved for a later day to install authority as supreme, and uphold it if not always by bulls of excommunication and charges of heresy, yet by the unanimous suffrage of a clique who held and still hold that knowledge will die with them; that they only are competent to judge of the right way of training, and who are, unfortunately, sufficiently numerous and powerful to make their opinions law to the majority.

When Grecian learning declined, a few Roman imitators fell into Grecian methods, but achieved little that was new or valuable. The Fathers of the Christian Church, full of their great mission, neglected the study of the heathen philosophers to dispute over Arianism, Pelagianism, and other heresies, or to quarrel about precedence, until finally learning so much declined that even Bishops could not sign their own names. Then came a night of utter blackness, and when the dawn appeared it glimmered but faintly on a new world. All the learning of the middle ages was in the monasteries. The monks busied themselves for awhile with the legends of the saints, but when the Crusades brought new life to Europe, it reanimated even the dry bones of the cloisters. Through the medium of a Latin translation, with notes by an Arabian philosopher, they became acquainted with Aristotle, and were developed into schoolmen. Universities were founded for monks and clerks, but their Doctors, instead of widening the range of study, enclosed it in narrower bounds. Out of