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Address letters relating to subscriptions to G. R. MARBLE; letters relating to advertising to JOHN P. PAYSON, Chelsea; Editorial communications to W. P. ATKINSON, Office Massachusetts Teacher.

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The American Union Speaker (new).- Containing Standard and Recent Selections in Prose, Poetry, and Dialogue, for Recitation and Declamation. By Hon. John D. Philbrick, Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools. $2.50. "As a collection of truly elegant and eloquent extracts it is unsurpassed, while its peculiarly American character makes it doubly valuable."-GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

"In every feature the work seems to be of the highest excellence."-A. P. STONE, Principal of the Portland, Me., High School.

"A work of unqualified excellence. Just the book needed by every student of declamation."-PROF. LEWIS B. MONROE, Director of Vocal and Physical Culture in the Boston Public Schools.

"The whole seems to have been prepared with the taste and skill which always mark the literary performances of the distinguished compiler."-RICHARD EDWARDS, Principal of State Normal School, Bloomington, Ill.

Worcester's Elements of History, Ancient and Modern. By J. E. Worcester, LL.D., author of Worcester's Quarto Dictionary. A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED, BEING BROUGHT DOWN TO APRIL, 1866. Price $1.75.

The new chapter on the Great Rebellion and the Administration of Abraham Lincoln is a most accurate and discriminating view of the remarkable series of events covering this period. The addition to English History, comprising the chief events of the last twenty years, is of great value.

This well-known Work, so long the Standard Text-Book on General History in Grammar and High Schools and Academies, is thus newly commended to the favor of Educators.

Worcester's Historical Atlas, containing Charts of History, Mythology, Chronology, Biography, &c. With descriptive Illustrations and Questions. $2.00.

Smellie's Philosophy of Natural History. A new and Revised Edition, with an Introduction and Additions, by Dr. John Ware. Printed from new stereotype plates, and illustrated with over 50 beautiful Engravings. $2.00. This new and illustrated edition, embodying in its revisions the recent discoveries in this science, forms an attractive and accurate text-book in this branch for High Schools, Academies, and Seminaries.

The School Service Book (new). Containing Hymns, Chants, Scripture Readings and Responses, and other Music for opening and closing Schools. By Asa Fitz, author of several School Song-books. 48 pp.; paper covers. Price 20 cents.

This little work supplies a want long felt, and its price puts it within reach of all, The Gymnastic Song Book (new). Containing Songs with Exercises, Marches, and Elocutionary Gestures; also, Rounds, and Select Pieces for Amusements. By Asa Fitz, &c. 32 pp.; paper covers. Price 15 cents.

Every one who has attempted Physical Exercises in his School knows that Music is the indispensable accompaniment to them, if they are to be made successful. This book also contains directions for performing the Exercises themselves. It should be in the hands of every Teacher and Scholar.

The Boston Primary School Tablets. Twenty Tablets, mounted on Ten Large Cards, 21 X 27 inches in size. By Hon. John D. Philbrick, Superintendent of Boston Public Schools. Price, $7.50. Specimen sheets sent for 30 cents.

These Cards present a course of Primary Instruction by the Oral or Object Method, comprising the subjects of the Alphabet, Penmanship, Drawing, Punctuation, Numbers, Sounds of Letters, and Syllables and Words for Reading.

These Tablets enable a Teacher to instruct a whole class or school at the same time. By this method the Teacher can sometimes accomplish in an hour what would require days of individual teaching.

Bradbury's Trigonometry and Surveying. By Wm. F. Bradbury, Cambridge, Mass. Especially designed for High Schools and Academies. $1.50. This new Work has received the highest praise from leading Teachers and Reviews. has already been extensively adopted in many of the best Schools.

It

"It bears the test of the School-room admirably. Both in the selection and treatment of topics, it seems to be just what was needed for High Schools and Academies."-W. J. ROLFE, Cambridge High School.

Eaton's Standard Series of Arithmetics. Used in all the Public Schools of Boston.

Liberal arrangements made for the introduction of the above School TextBooks. For Descriptive Circulars or Terms, address

TAGGARD & & THOMPSON,

29 CORNHILL, BOSTON.

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[We have here thrown together some extracts on the evil effects of "cramming," on the brain and nervous system of children-an old subject, but one on which there is still unhappily but too much need to repeat the lesson. The first extract is from the " Chapters in Physiology" of that eminent London physician and man of science Sir Henry Holland; the second from a very able paper on the physical influence of certain methods of teaching, in the English Social Science Transactions for 1857, by Surgeon R. B. Carter; the third, from the able work of Mr. Bain on the Senses and the Intellect.]

The whole art of education as respects the memory consists in regulating the reception of first impressions, so as to give them firmest hold on the mind; and in furnishing methods by which the power of recollection in dependence on the will may be best guided and maintained. But, though thus simple in its outline, the education of the memory is in reality rendered a very difficult problem by the numerous natural diversities already mentioned, and one much less capable of being determined by general rules than is commonly believed. There are, however, various points in which its efficiency may be greatly increased by experience and good

sense directed toward the result. And these are precisely the instances where physiology and medical knowledge afford suggestions of much value with reference both to particular cases and to the more general methods employed.

beyond one remark This is the fact well

Upon this topic, however, I cannot enter which bears directly on the subject before us. attested by experience, that the memory may be seriously, sometimes lastingly injured by pressing upon it too hardly and continuously in early life. Whatever theory we hold as to this great function of our nature, it is certain that its powers are only gradually developed, and that if forced into premature exercise they are impaired by the effort. This is a maxim indeed of general import, applying to the condition and culture of every faculty of body and mind; but singularly to the one we are now considering, which forms in one sense the foundation of our intellectual life. A regulated exercise, short of actual fatigue, enlarges its capacity both as to reception and retention, and gives promptitude as well as clearness to its action. But we are bound to refrain from goading it by constant and laborious efforts in early life, and before the instrument has been strengthened to its work, or it decays on our hands. We lose its present power and often enfeeble it for all future use.

Even when by technical contrivances the youthful memory has been crowded by facts and figures, injury is often done thereby to the growth of that higher part of the faculty which recollects and combines its materials for intellectual purposes. And this is especially true when the subjects pressed on the mind are those not naturally congenial to it,—a distinction very real in itself, and partially recognized by all, yet often unduly neglected in our systems of education. The necessity must be admitted in practice of adopting certain average rules under which the majority of cases may be included. But special instances are ever before us where the mind by its constitution is so unfitted for particular objects that the attempt to force the memory or other faculties upon them is not merely fruitless but hazardous in result. It is tersely said by Hippocrates, Φυσέως ἀντιπραττούσης, κένεα παντα * — a maxim requir

*When nature opposes, our labor is lost.

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ing some qualification, yet never to be disregarded in our dealings either with the mental or bodily condition of man. In the course of my practice, I have seen some striking and melan choly instances of the exhaustion of the youthful mind by this over exercise of its faculties. In two of these unattended with paralytic affection or other obvious bodily disorder than a certain sluggishness in the natural functions, the torpor of mind approached almost to imbecility. Yet here there had before been acute intellect with great sensibility; but these qualities had been forced by emulation into excess of exercise without due intervals of respite and with habitual deficiency of sleep. Of the importance of the latter point I have spoken in a preceding chapter.- Sir H. Holland.

The pupil whose intellect has been aroused cannot help striving to understand, partially at least, what he hears or learns, and cannot fasten his attention upon sounds that are unintelligible to him. The pupil whose intellect has slumbered while his senses have been active remembers sounds with facility and is content to attach no meaning to them. He substitutes the appearance of knowledge for the reality the sign for the thing signified words for ideasreality—the answers for information. His verbal knowledge is often so accurate as to prevent the slightest suspicion of the utter mental darkness that it veils. At a school examination he is asked (say) to enumerate the properties of iron; and he has malleability, fusibility, ductility, and so forth at his fingers' ends. Some one possibly, doubtful of the depth of his attainments, may ask what he means by a "property," but the reply that it is a quality will seldom fail to satisfy the querist. Few would suspect what is certainly often the case, namely, that none of these words represent or have ever represented any glimmering of knowledge, any sort of intellectual idea. The children who repeat them often not only do not understand or wish to understand them, but positively do not know that they can be understood; remembering and imitating what they have heard just as a little savage would the cry of a wild animal or the call of a bird to its mate.

The effect produced upon the pupils by this sensational learning may be briefly regarded in a twofold manner. In the first place

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