sional School, composed of boys of all ages, is the conclusion to which, after much anxious deliberation, we have felt ourselves compelled to come. We are now decidedly of opinion, that, were this implement altogether banished from such a school, we should either sacrifice its general order, and the welfare of the individual scholars, or else be compelled to have recourse to some substitute, neither less degrading and revolting, nor more unobjectionable. Often have we seen the bringing out of a child to receive a single stripe on the hand, restore that order and attention, which the young teachers and their assistants had been unable previously to procure. And is there really any other method by which the same important end could, with children of six and seven years of age, or even upwards, so expeditiously, so effectually, and, at the same time, less objectionably, be attained?"

These words express very fairly the deep conviction of our own mind, that great practical evils would result from the general adoption of such restrictions as we have been objecting to, namely, requiring the previous consent of, or a subsequent resort to, a committee in every case in which corporal punishment is inflicted. Besides the substitution of other methods still more objectionable, as far as the character of the pupils is concerned, and also obliging a more frequent recurrence to the very extreme punishment of expulsion, these restrictions and requirements would defeat their own object in more ways than one.

(a) They would lead, in many instances, to clandestine and underhand dealings-the very worst example for the children. Such has been the case in nearly all that have come to our knowledge, in which the attempt has been made. The masters are so unanimous as to the necessity, that we should dread the result; a law that might be, would be, broken daily, if not hourly, and which could not be enforced, would be worse than useless. Secresy, too, would lead to hastiness, and hastiness to severity.

(b) They would tend to the increase, indeed to the multiplying of corporal chastisement. In this respect also the master would be tempted to resort to some disingenuous contrivance or trickery, at once degrading and demoralizing both to the master and the boys. When we speak of the multiplying of corporal chastisement, we include, of course, all cases of pain inflicted upon the body by way of punishment, whether with or without a recognized instrument: we wish that all persons understood the term in as large a sense. The worst sorts are where none is used at all. In schools where there is professedly no corporal punishment, the boys who know most about the matter, will tell of boxing the ears, and pulling the ears or hair, and even kicking the legs, and throwing books and rulers, or of being made to hold out a book at arm's length, probably a bible as being the largest and heaviest book within reach. Referring to the practice of France, Mr. Wood aptly remarks: "It may possibly be very true that the emblem of punishment has been removed, which is by no means the difficulty to be surmounted. But surely it cannot with justice be said that punishment itself, or even corporal punishment, has been abolished in a country in whose public schools every day, not boys only, but young ladies, are compelled to rest on their knees for a very considerable time upon a floor."

Of course such things ought not to be: but are not the restrictions and the required report one part of the temptation? These are the worst sorts of corporal chastisement, as being inflicted on the spur of the moment-in all probability a moment of passion; and for these there is no place in the periodical report. Cordially as we agree with the remark of Dr. Bell, that "a maximum of improvement cannot be obtained without a minimum of punishment," we still believe, that if the best school were to report every case to the best committee, not being persons practically acquainted with all the details of school-keeping, they would be shocked and alarmed the very first week.

After all, the greatest danger of the abuse of the power arises from the thing being done hastily. That it may be made as judicial as possible (for this is the grand point), it is well for the master to adhere to some such rules as the following.

To listen to no complaint whatever from monitor or teacher during schoolhours; the offending party being simply told to stop in. At the end of the school-time summon the accused and the accusers face to face; and after hearing the charge and the defence, if any, and pointing out to the delinquent the folly and wickedness of his conduct, let the master pronounce sentence, when necessary, in due form. A cane, which at all other times should be kept under lock and key, is then brought out with due ceremony, and the culprit receives a stroke on the palm of the hand, or, in aggravated cases, two-at the most, three. He should never be struck elsewhere than on the palm of the hand, except in the very rare cases (chiefly those in which the child has been encouraged in rebellion by the parents) where the culprit refuses to hold out his hand to receive the punishment; in those instances the child may be struck on the shoulders until he obeys.

It must be borne in mind that the master is supposed to have altogether got rid of the class of offences that in most schools form the largest class for punishment, viz., those that come under the head of attendance, Under our improved system, he will have neither late boys nor truants; indeed he cannot have.

In a word, we flatter ourselves that we are practical as well as zealous advocates for the reduction of corporal punishment, which, however, we feel can only be brought about by openly recognizing its legitimate and judicial employment.

ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION IN POOR CHILDREN.-No. 3.

My Dear Sir,-When I began these letters I did not mean to make the unconscionable demands which I have made upon the patience of your readers; but this shall be the last.

I have spoken respecting the cultivation of the imagination in very young children. Infancy, we are wont to say, is the time for receiving impressions; the senses are just awakened—a new world is speaking to

them. Yet the child shews that it has energies within. It wrestles with these impressions, and strives to make out of them something new. Hence a kind of restlessness which we wish to check, because it prevents the little creature from receiving the lessons we are trying to impart; which we are afraid to check lest we should destroy the capacities whereby these lessons are hereafter to be made profitable. The practical remedy, I thought, lay in that faculty of wonder, which God has bestowed in so large a measure upon children. By appealing to this, we lead them gradually to acknowledge that in the very things which they see and handle, there is something deeper and stranger which they cannot see or handle. We prevent the impressions upon their senses from being oppressive to the inner life; at the same time we save them from losing the feeling of truth and reality in the effort to construct a little world after a plan of their own.

No one will say that boyhood is merely a time for receiving impressions. That the senses are awake in the boy there is no doubt; yet often far less awake than in the child. Parents are continually disturbed by this circumstance. The lively quick-eyed infant of 3 or 4 becomes the shy, lumping, yet restless clown of 10 or 12;-the sights which you most wish him to take notice of, he seems not to heed-he scarcely ever says a clever thing—his great delight is in animal exercises -running, jumping, climbing, are to him now what seeing and hearing were five or six years before. This is our general experience, and the apparent exceptions of the sickly, the excessively studious, and even of girls, will be found if rightly considered to fall under the rule, or at least to be explained by it. In every instance we shall find that a desire to act and to find opportunities for action is the characteristic of this period. The little savage may be content with bodily activity— the exceedingly precocious, unnaturally trained, civilized boy may be satisfied with unceasing exercises of the intellect—but in both there is the appetite for doing; if either is obliged to be merely taking in, he is restless and discontented. We may fancy that it is otherwise with those who, in this second stage of life, exhibit an extraordinary passion for mere reading: but I believe we are mistaken. In this reading there is an active exercise of sympathies and affections; a boy never reads from an impulse of his own, merely for the sake of getting information. Those who have a strong bias to any particular pursuit will read with intense delight books which have reference to that pursuit, because they draw out their own energies and activities in the direction which is most congenial to them. Those who have not these particular tendencies, at least in any strong degree, may still read with great interest and pleasure, but it will be such books as refer to the actions of their fellows, exhibiting men at work, busy about the things in which they would like to be busy.

These are very obvious remarks which must have struck all of us, but they are not the less important on that account. We may often go far to look for the principles which should govern our proceedings in education, when some fact, which lies close under our eyes, and is meeting us every day, may really be of much greater help in guiding us to them. I do not mean, however, that this desire of action, this

longing to exert power, though it seems to me the most characteristic feature of boyhood, is the only one of which we have need to take notice, or is sufficient of itself to show us the nature of the discipline which this period of life requires. With this quality is inseparably connected an intense desire of freedom-the natural but bastard form of which is the craving for independence, the wish to shake off all government. Closely allied to both of these feelings, and yet constantly coming into collision with them both is the feeling of friendship, the desire of fellowship with equals; in its natural and worst form involving impatience of domestic ties, and of intercourse with elders.

It is evident, I think, that each of these feelings belongs to all classes alike. Aristocracy and plebeanism, may partly determine the modes in which it exhibits itself, but it belongs to the boy as such. According to the old notion of our grammar schools, (inapplicable it may be to the present circumstances of society, but still I believe one essentially sound and not to be lost sight of,) these common feelings were made the grounds for a common education. The English boy, be his outward circumstances what they might, had still certain characteristic tendencies, which had need to be directed; certain characteristic temptations, which had need to be resisted; and the hope of our nation, which must consist of all classes, being a manly and united one, depended (so it seemed to our ancestors) upon the method in which these common boyish habits and inclinations were dealt with.

I have hinted, in a former letter, that I believe the course adopted in these grammar schools supplies the best hint for the guidance of the National schoolmaster. It would seem, on the one hand, that the treatment required for the boy is quite different from that which is required for the child, different not merely in degree, because the faculties are more developed, but in kind, because faculties and feelings, which before were hidden, have become the most prominent, and those which were the most prominent have gone into the back-ground. On the other hand, it would seem that there is the greatest danger of the second stage in our lives being separated from the first, of the boy striving to make himself a different being from the child, of all that has been acquired in early years being cast aside as by-gone and worthless. It is the natural tendency of each age in our individual life, as of each age in the world's history, to set itself up against that which has gone before; it is the great effort of Christian education in the individual, and in the world, to "bind each to each in natural piety," to make it practically felt that the boy is different from the child, and the man from the boy, and yet that the child is father of the man, and that the boy is the link between them, not the chasm which separates them. If this be so, then every thing must be done to give the greatest play to that sense of power, that feeling of fellowship, that craving for freedom which we find in boyhood, and everything to hinder the sense of power from becoming merely an animal instinct, and from being satisfied with animal exercises, to overcome the impulse which would turn the new feeling of friendship into a cause of separation, and into the destruction of reverence; to bring forth the longing for freedom through the help and guidance of law, its real friend and

them. Yet the child shews that it has energies within. It wrestles with these impressions, and strives to make out of them something new. Hence a kind of restlessness which we wish to check, because it prevents the little creature from receiving the lessons we are trying to impart; which we are afraid to check lest we should destroy the capacities whereby these lessons are hereafter to be made profitable. The practical remedy, I thought, lay in that faculty of wonder, which God has bestowed in so large a measure upon children. By appealing to this, we lead them gradually to acknowledge that in the very things which they see and handle, there is something deeper and stranger which they cannot see or handle. We prevent the impressions upon their senses from being oppressive to the inner life; at the same time we save them from losing the feeling of truth and reality in the effort to construct a little world after a plan of their own.

No one will say that boyhood is merely a time for receiving impressions. That the senses are awake in the boy there is no doubt; yet often far less awake than in the child. Parents are continually disturbed by this circumstance. The lively quick-eyed infant of 3 or 4 becomes the shy, lumping, yet restless clown of 10 or 12;-the sights which you most wish him to take notice of, he seems not to heed-he scarcely ever says a clever thing-his great delight is in animal exercises -running, jumping, climbing, are to him now what seeing and hearing were five or six years before. This is our general experience, and the apparent exceptions of the sickly, the excessively studious, and even of girls, will be found if rightly considered to fall under the rule, or at least to be explained by it. In every instance we shall find that a desire to act and to find opportunities for action is the characteristic of this period. The little savage may be content with bodily activity— the exceedingly precocious, unnaturally trained, civilized boy may be satisfied with unceasing exercises of the intellect—but in both there is the appetite for doing; if either is obliged to be merely taking in, he is restless and discontented. We may fancy that it is otherwise with those who, in this second stage of life, exhibit an extraordinary passion for mere reading: but I believe we are mistaken. In this reading there is an active exercise of sympathies and affections; a boy never reads from an impulse of his own, merely for the sake of getting information. Those who have a strong bias to any particular pursuit will read with intense delight books which have reference to that pursuit, because they draw out their own energies and activities in the direction which is most congenial to them. Those who have not these particular tendencies, at least in any strong degree, may still read with great interest and pleasure, but it will be such books as refer to the actions of their fellows, exhibiting men at work, busy about the things in which they would like to be busy.

These are very obvious remarks which must have struck all of us, but they are not the less important on that account. We may often go far to look for the principles which should govern our proceedings in education, when some fact, which lies close under our eyes, and is meeting us every day, may really be of much greater help in guiding us to them. I do not mean, however, that this desire of action, this