Even here the clear enunciation, the easy utterance, the pleasing tone, the unaffected grace of the pupil, will appear only as the reflection of these in the well-trained, well-informed, cultivated teacher. Even here in the earlier grades, and perhaps here more especially, a familiar knowledge of both physical and mental physiology is needed a ready knowledge of the right uses of the various powers of body and mind, and the laws of their growth and development, and by what slight causes they may be distorted, and their healthful unfolding arrested or retarded. A recognition of the diversity of mental and moral as of physical features should belong to him who makes teaching his special work.

In the physical world, the earth, the rock, the tree, the plant, the flower, the fruit, the beast, the bird, the fish-what illustrative material is found for the lower as well as the higher grades, combining the sweetest pleasure with the highest use! Surely the elements of geology, botany, and zoology are not beyond the teacher's needs.

And what a power from the first to the last has she who has at her command the graphic art, the use of crayon and pencil!

Not as an ornamental branch, a pretty accomplishment, does it come to the school-room, but as an essential part of all good work, enchaining the almost infant mind, illuming the pages of history and geography, and making the study of the sciences a possibility.

We talk much and often of the study of the childnature, its powers and its susceptibilities, but this is not new study; it has claimed the attention and commanded the best thought of sage and philosopher, and little advance will he make who comes to the consideration of the child-life with no knowledge of results already reached.

"There were kings in Greece before Agamemnon." As well might the student in astronomy disregard all the past, and begin anew the old star-gazing of Chaldea, without even the aid of smoked glass, as the young teacher turn from the writings of those who have made. teacher and teaching a life-study. Phenomenal as the first child is in a young household, the pupil at school is not like a new comet, whose elements must all be calculated anew. Rarely does a disease appear or accident occur whose like is not recorded in the books.

One who has never taught learns little from visiting another's school in comparison with him who there sees his own errors in a new light, and finds methods and devices for which he has sought in vain, and which he may put to a wiser use in increasing his own efficiency and worth.

And without a familiar acquaintance with the studies and results of some of the past leaders of thought and adepts in practice, poor and unfruitful will be the young and unskilled teacher's explorations into the mysteries of the child-nature. Errors have been made which need not be repeated; methods tried and found wanting which have no present place, save in the museum of the antiquary.

But with the well-studied chart of past experience and the compass of well-established principles before him, with a watchful and discerning eye and a firm and steady hand, may the true pilot bring his craft with its precious freight through changeful seas, 'neath varying skies, past sunken rocks and treacherous sands, to the safe harbor of the destined port.

And, perhaps, no period of our history has been more keenly alive to the importance of right aims and means, or been richer in wholesome result, than the present.

These daily records have not many of them yet reached the formal volume, and are to be found only in the intelligent journal and thoughtful magazine, not to be ignored by him who would be in the line of present progress.

But it is not every new method that is to be adopted before putting it to the proof. People in haste to descry the new prophet may cry, "Lo, here!" or "Lo, there!" but the end is not yet. Prove all things intelligently, and from the poorest teacher we may often derive aid and valuable assistance.

It is at least curious, if not instructive, to study the lives of educational reformers. How many of us are familiar with the life and work of Pestalozzi, the father of object lessons and language work, the two great ideas of to-day? No more unpractical man, perhaps, ever lived. At school he was "dubbed Harry Oddity, of Foolborough," and school-boys often show an instinct before which the wisdom of age may bow in lowly reverence. After trying a profession and business with no success, he turned to school-keeping, and it is perhaps well to note how often an utter unfitness for any other calling is regarded as conclusive evidence of a call as teacher.

The history of education presents no more lamentable failure than his. Never could he keep a school together

for a year.

After a score of years of poverty and despondency, he wrote, among other things, a novel, upon which his reputation depends. Other things he wrote of no worth, and again was driven to the last resort of teaching, but to no other purpose than to prove, as he himself says, "his unrivaled incapacity to govern."

Nor was Froebel much better. His prime idea of

"the spontaneity of the child" could hardly lead to any end but confusion and failure. And yet from these wrecks have been saved some of the most fruitful theories of to-day, gathered and systematized by more practical workers.

But educational works are not the only or, it may be, the most important part of a teacher's outfit. wider culture must he seek who would most benefit his pupils. Narrow, indeed, must be the study, the thought, the heart of him who goes not beyond the dry and beaten path of text-book and school literature.

Text-books are but mere guide-posts, pointing the way to the inexperienced teacher, but giving little knowledge of the wood, the field, the country through which he passes; or, changing the figure, they are but skeletons, suggestive of what might have been, but leaving us as ignorant as before of the life and character, the work and worth, of him whom they had upborne. Little has he of grammar, of language, who, planting himself upon the text-book, is not read, and well read, in the works of those who are skillful in its use, familiar with their nice expression, their delicate shading of thought, and their clear and distinct utterances.

In the reading circles that to-day are forming all through the land, as I look over the lists of books, I seem to see too much of this narrowing tendency of our work, too much mere text-book study. Better, it seems to me, would be the little gathering or club whose members should meet to study Longfellow or Tennyson, Hawthorne or Shakespeare, Motley or Green, comparing thought with thought, exciting by the attrition of mind with mind a living magnetism, through whose influence life should be infused into the otherwise dead forms of expression.

School-life, unless thus enlivened and broadened by literature and science, by mental contact, is a narrowing life, as that life must be that forever closes in and in upon itself, busy always with minds narrower and weaker than its own.

I have dwelt thus upon the qualifications of the teacher because here, as it seems to me, lies the strength, the hope of our schools. If we are to throw off the belittling bondage of text-book, and reduce it to its proper place as a ready aid and suggestive guide to our pupils, we must, by a wider range and a larger comprehension, possess ourselves of the subjects; we must clothe the skeleton with muscle and nerve, and breathe into it the breath of life.

If we would teach our pupils to examine thoughtfully, to collate, compare, and judiciously decide, we must give them an opportunity to present their views, discussing with them their conclusions, meeting their criticisms and wrong deductions, not by our mere arbitrary dicta, but by more convincing arguments, wise enough, too, to confess our own errors when in fault, without attempts at unworthy subterfuge or feeling of humiliation.

Very little of the logic of mathematics does a class receive from a teacher with whom a key is a necessity.

This earnest, vigorous thought, this honest endeavor, the tracing of the relations of causes and results, induces a love of truth and right which we call virtue-the integrity of purpose which we call character. Thoughtless submission to unsupported authority is not character, nor heedless innocence, of necessity, morality. It consists rather in duty known and performed, that which is due to ourselves, as thinking beings, and to our fellows; and with this knowledge and performance on the part of our pupils the teacher has much to do.