and that, in exercising an illjudged constraint during the period of instruction, the moral faculties are impaired, at the same time that disease is entailed on the organs.

As the fault is the same in all the stages of instruction, it produces universally the same effects: it injures the delicate organization of youth, and extends obvious detriment to the health. It is necessary, therefore, to comprehend, in the same strictures, both what concerns primary instruction, and what exists in stages more advanced.-Hufeland has said, It is only the best physical and moral education, which can put man in possession of his physical and intellectual powers.

To command and to enforce a sustained attention in schools, it has been deemed indispensable to recur sometimes to threatssometimes to chastisements. As the language of reason could not suffice to render motionless, little beings whom nature entices to a course opposed to our views, we have recourse to instruments of pain.

*

*

The custom is bad; if recent attempts have proved that a just distribution of rewards, that a privation of them, that the fear of blame, that a lively emulation, maintained, revived, by a multiplicity of expedients, and supported by a regular system of gymnastic movements which render instruction agreeable ;—if these attempts have demonstrated the uselessness of coercive

measures.

This proof, then, is furnished; and every day it receives a new degree of confirmation in those primary schools which charity and beneficence are raising amidst troubles and confusion.* By the routine adopted, study is varied; and, ceasing to be monotonous, it has ceased to be injurious to health and irksome to the mind. Attention is discontinued the moment it becomes fatiguing, and is exchanged for slight exercises which form a part of the system of operations; and which only serve to enliven the youthful spirit, and relieve the action of the brain. By this innocent expedient, the body is never fatigued, and the intellect retains all the energy it requires. The pupil takes more interest in exertion which pleases him he performs it with so much more alacrity, as he never suffers from it. It is thus that all the faculties, all the organs, simultaneously employed, operate to the best advantage. This result is decisive.

Strange affair! Our instructers, though so well nurtured in the reading of the ancients, appear for the most part to have overlooked the necessity of two inseparable educations, which

Alluding to the monitorial schools established in 1815, by the Society for Elementary Instruction.-ED

ought always to advance hand in hand-that of the body, and that of the mind; and, by a consequence very natural, they have neglected the principle of enforcing the one at the same time with the other. For, as Montaigne says, It is not a soul, it is not a body that we cultivate-it is a man. We are not to form them separately, but to conduct them equally—as a couple of steeds attached to the same pole.

In colleges, the time is very well divided between exertion and recreation. All the advantage, however, has by no means been obtained from these which might have been. It would be necessary to direct them in the most advantageous ways for the development of the powers, as is practised in some establishments of Germany. But this is not the object of our present discussion. Our only question, here, is in relation to what is customary during the time of application, and to the happy modifications introduced in primary establishments.

It appears singular that this intermixture of exercises of which we have been speaking; that this combination, so favourable to the progress of the intellect, and so calculated to maintain the body in all its vigour, could be considered as an innovation. Independently of the precepts of Plato, who recommends to render instruction agreeable by varying it with amusements and recreations, the method of the Greeks has come down to us in the authentic relations transmitted by their writers, and by those of Rome-as Cicero and Quinctilian.

During the last age, great efforts were made to divest the moments of exertion of whatever rendered them wearisome. The method which we now employ was almost entirely known to Rollin. We have seen the modifications introduced in 1744 by the Abbe' Bertaud, for reading only. But M. Gauthier, guided by his genius, embraced a much more extensive career in 1786, and he extended to all instruction in grammar, geography, and history, the happy conception to aid these branches by means of games. He also succeeded in rendering less dry and less fatiguing the study of arithmetic. Some of his improvements in aid of this science ought to constitute an epoch in the annals of physical education, and in the records of instruction. It is thus that in the institute at Yverdun has been discovered the art equally of avoiding the exhaustion of the mind and that of the organs, which is a natural consequence of the former-in supplying the scholars with movable objects, which they add or substract to form different numbers,-a practice somewhat resembling that of the Dutch, who make use of small cubes for the same purpose. This method approaches to those which we employ, at pres

*

*

*

*

ent, in our primary establishments,—in the manner in which calculations are sometimes formed, by the children themselves, who assemble or separate, in order to vary numbers by frequent change of place: they favour, in this way, that motion which we consider the source and the guaranty of good health; convinced, as we are, along with Ackermann, that 'movement is almost as necessary to man as nourishment.'

It is impossible to avoid appealing continually to the ancients, when we treat of physical education: to neglect their precepts would be to reject the lessons of nature, which they knew so well how to copy, and to succeed in this respect, we cannot act more wisely than by studying them.

In collecting the knowledge thus scattered, men capable of seizing the true points of view have come to found those establishments which are the admiration of our day. The institution at Yverdun is well known-a sort of wonder-raised to such a degree of perfection, that it is with difficulty we can conceive the hope of enjoying it in our country.

We repeat, however, that our present inquiry extends only to the important modification introduced during the time of mental exertion itself-a modification so necessary, so indispensable, that, of itself, it seems to us capable of correcting the faults of the old system; and that we see no security for the feeble organization of some children, if it is not decidedly adopted in all departments of instruction.

We confine to their benches, for several hours in succession, the little scholars in our primary schools, as is done in colleges: we demand of them a continual stillness, against which their whole nature revolts; we enforce the attention of grave years, at an epoch when the mind, endowed with an extraordinary mobility, ought to be permitted to pass over a great number of objects at once, in order to secure a liberal provision of ideas. It is thus that the brain, an organ so delicate, becomes fatigued, exhausted, and ultimately produces disordered principles, incongruous thoughts, and sometimes falls into idiotism-a result sufficiently ascertained in several instances of persons originally possessed of great intellect.

Unfortunately the experience of ages is lost upon men. The majority, seduced by the charm of hypotheses, give themselves up to speculative meditations rather than to the observation of nature. One daily sees in families, injuries caused by an education well conceived in relation to the intellectual faculties, but badly directed as regards the physical frame; and, far from endeavouring to understand or correct their views, people remaining utterly unsuspicious that such a mistake exists. Parents

content themselves with lamenting, without suspecting, the source of their grief; and they attribute often to hereditary dispositions what is owing only to the bad direction of instruction.

The science of medicine should hold up its light over this dark point; but its ministers are only consulted in diseases, and never upon the arrangement of plans of study,-far from judging their intervention indispensable, it is not even thought to be necessary. We forget that that the ancients, who summed up all instruction in music and gymnastics,—or, in other words, whatever relates to the exercises of the mind, and of the body, added to this division a new branch which they denominated medical gymnastics.

The frail organization of the first period of life can never be compared with that of adults, whose fibre has acquired all its firmness. This idea alone ought to make us fearful of exposing to injury the delicacy of the organs, and attacking the very beginning of their development. Although the barbarous custom of chastisement had, it must be admitted, the merit of fixing some children upon their books or their paper, it had also the inconvenience of injuring the elements of the organization and the springs of life. Why forget that the body, when it is undergoing its development, is like soft wax susceptible of every impression? It is possible to compel the intellect to acquire ideas; but if violence is employed it blunts sensibility: it destroys, by checking vitality, the harmony which ought to exist among the different functions of the system.

The result of all these principles is, that we must study man in connexion with the means which nature has imparted to him for his growth. It is in the noble pursuits of anatomy, of physiology, and hygiene, that we find the necessary guides for his first education. In investigating these sources, we become convinced that the motive or muscular power is endued with a prodigious activity, designed by nature to impress on the agents of movement the firmness and the force which is useful to them.

Two extremes, equally hurtful, are to be shunned-that of permitting too much scope to this mobility, (often excessive,) which precipitates into excesses very common at an early age, and that of limiting to a circle too narrow, which renders the vital exertion imperfect, reduces the organs to a state of emaciation, weakens the sanguineous system, alters the lymph, and deforms the osseous system.

The disposition to these extremes is to be corrected by wisdom and experience. The art of the preceptor consists in moderating excessive mobility or enlivening habitual dullness. No one is ignorant that the instruments of motion are the

fleshy and red-coloured parts composed of small and very short fibres, the union of which forms as it were, bundles, which are called muscles. These, even during sleep, are in a state of oscillation, greater in early years, and diminishing as we approach old age. This is proved by so many physiological and pathological phenomena, that it is scarcely necessary to recur to the fact that to this principle is attributed the origin of many convulsive maladies so frequent in the early stage of life.

It is to the will that the total movement of a muscle is subjected, while the partial action of the fibres is pretty generally withdrawn from its control. If this partial and imperceptible mobility is performed with force, as happens in infancy, the individual becomes impatient, eager for movement and change of place: he is drawn into it by his constitution, as a stream is towards declivities; and if he is compelled to a motionless state, through fear, through chastisement, or even by the influence of reason, the laws of his organization and the laws of nature are equally violated; and serious maladies or tendencies to contract them, are the necessary consequences. It is our part, then, to endeavour to communicate to the body all the activity, all the force, all the firmness, which it is one day to exert in society, which protects it. This last suggestion explains why it is necessary, also, that physical education be directed in consonance with the laws of the state and the manners of the age.

These principles once established, it is easy to see that to their judicious application in the new establishments, is owing the air of satisfaction and of conscious freedom preserved by the young pupils. If their faces appear better coloured, it is because the blood circulates more freely in their veins; as nothing oppresses their nervous system, nothing alters their natural gaiety; the brain enjoying all its physical liberty, attention is not painful, the imagination suffers no fatigue; because it is often in repose, it is always ready for fresh exertion; no effort being made to restrain the pupils, beyond the limits prescribed by reason, more docility and more silence are obtained of them. In one word this succession of little exercises, of slight movements, of interchange of place, ensure the health of the body, the free expansion of the mental faculties and an amenity of character.

[Parents, in their domestic tuition and management, and teachers of elementary schools-in cities more especially, should always carry with them the spirit of the closing sentiment of this article. There have been periods in the progress of society, and there still are conditions of life, in which health may be fairly taken as a point assumed, being provided for in the free scope