them artists, botanists, zoologists, or conchologists; but I wish them to look on nature with a religious -nay, with a poetical eye; and I care not whether they ever know any scientific arrangements. MRS. TUCKField. -- 20. Of Systems of Preaching. The writer of the present Account would wish most anxiously to guard his readers against the erroneous notion, that the success of any seminary can ever depend entirely, or even principally, upon its machinery (so to speak), or external system of arrangement. That no school can ever be well conducted without due attention to order and method, every one in the slightest degree acquainted with the subject will readily admit; and the gratitude both of the present and of future ages is therefore most justly due, for the facilities which the systems of Bell and Lancaster have, in this department, contributed to the cause of general education. Every judicious conductor of an establishment for education, accordingly, will be at the utmost pains to render his system in this respect as perfect as he can. But, when this is done, he will keep in remembrance that the weightier matters remain behind. He will consider, that it is not upon the nature of the scaffolding, or building apparatus, however skilfully devised and admirably adapted to its own purpose, that the beauty, or usefulness, or stability of the future fabric is to depend; nor will he suffer himself to forget how often it has happened that, on the removal of the scaffolding, some deformity or flaw in the structure itself has been disclosed, which the apparatus had hitherto concealed from the eye of the spectator. From inattention to this fundamentally important truth, how large a proportion, unfortunately, of the schools instituted even upon the most justly celebrated systems have been allowed to become little better than mere pieces of mechanism, pretty enough, indeed, in external appearance, but comparatively of little use; in which the puppets strut with wondrous regularity and order, and with all that outward "pomp and circumstance," which are well calculated to catch a superficial observer, but in which all the while the mind is but little exerted, and of course little, if at all, improved. Nor let it be imagined, that the scheme adopted in the Sessional School may not be liable, as well as other systems, to have its injudicious admirers and imitators. Struck with the alleged success of the system as there exhibited, one may investigate every its minutest detail with no less punctilious care than that of the poor savage who, restored on one occasion to health by the administration of a particular drug, ever afterwards fondly treasures up in his memory, with a view to the recurrence of a similar exigency, the recollection of the day of the moon, the hour of the day, the posture of his own body at the time of his receiving the medicine, and every other little adventitious concomitant of his cure. The copyist may introduce precisely the same number and the same size of classes, may place the master, the monitors, and the scholars, in the same respective positions, may prescribe to them the same movements,-may put the same books into their hands, and, in short, may give the whole the self-same external aspect, but if he be not at least equally desirous to catch the spirit, as to imitate the forms to keep steadily in view the ends, which it is the legitimate object of education to attain, as well as the steps, which, under proper guidance, may facilitate their attainment,-if he imagine that any artificial contrivance whatever can, in the slightest degree, supersede the necessity of diligence and zeal, of earnestness and kindliness of manner, on the part of the instructor,—if he treat his pupils more as mechanical than as intellectual beings, attempting rather tɔ cram into them a certain definite quantity of instruction, than to inspire them with the taste, and furnish them with the power, of acquiring knowledge for themselves,-if he content himself with teaching them to repeat by rote, with slavish precision, rules of which they are left alike ignorant of the principle and of the application, or to pronounce with formal tone, and measured cadence and inflection, a mere jargon of sounds, to which they have never learned to attach the slightest signification,—let him not wonder if, notwithstanding all the pains which he has bestowed on the externals of his system, it should degenerate into as dull, cold, and lifeless a routine, as is exhibited in any of the most unproductive seminaries around him. It is no less necessary, on the other hand, to guard against the opposite error of imagining, that because the externals may subsist where the spirit is awanting, the former, in place of being rendered subservient to the latter, should be laid aside altogether, as utterly unavailing. It may be very true, that neither the monitors and other arrangements of Bell and Lancaster for facilitating mutual instruction, and maintaining order and constant activity, nor the places and prizes, and other incitements to emulation, which have so long held their place in almost every approved system of education, can of themselves ensure success to any seminary. But it is much to be doubted, whether the Sessional School would ever have attained its present character, if its directors had either neglected those modern arrangements as useless innovations, or abolished these incitements in order to make way for the operation of a purer love of excellence, or still purer love of knowledge, or love of duty superior to either.WOOD: Account of the Edinburgh Sessional School. 21. Of Catechising. Of all the methods of instructing the young in religious knowledge (and perhaps we may add in every other species of knowledge), CATECHISING appears to us to be at once by far the most interesting and the most profitable. By this, however, we trust we shall be understood as recommending something more than merely reading, from a book denominated a catechism, a certain number of prescribed questions, and hearing the child repeat by rote the words, which are set down for him, in the same book, as answers to these questions. We here employ the term in its more comprehensive signification, "to instruct, by asking questions, and correcting the answers." (JOHNSON.) At the same time we are far from asserting, that a form of sound words, drawn up on the principle to which we have referred, when rightly employed, and holding only its proper place in religious education, is by any means without its use. On the contrary, we think it wise in every church to have formularies of its own of this description, to serve both as text-books and standards for its young members; as TEXT-BOOKS, to secure their attention being called to those fundamental truths without which Christianity might be reduced to a meagre and lifeless system of ethics; as STANDARDS, to guard their minds as much as pos |