'countervail, to be most beneficial in developing and strengthening 'the intellectual faculties.'

But do we mean to admit that no actual knowledge will be gained by the pupil, which will be useful to him afterwards, if he is judiciously trained in the ancient languages? By no means. What we say is this, that that knowledge is only an advantage attending one of the means which we use to the great end: and is not the end itself.

There is one other point in the argument about words which we wish to notice. Listen to a zoologist, an astronomer, or a chemist describing the respective objects of his chosen science : what does all that he is saying amount to? To words and figures: language and quantity. Is it not then most reasonable to teach these two things accurately and minutely even with an ultimate view to the sciences themselves? Language is not only the symbol, but the very instrument of thought, and mixes itself up with all our mental operations, coloring our thoughts and insensibly moulding our opinions. Now, a person who has never studied language accurately, not only can never express himself accurately, he can never think accurately, he cannot form to himself a clear notion often of what he thinks he means, he has not the skill to analyse his thoughts, because he cannot fix the precise meaning of his words. Words are not merely the raiment, they are part of the body of one's thoughts. So that, antecedently, one would say, that language, some language or languages, ought to form the staple of education, the great instrument of mental cultivation.

FOURTH FALLACY. It is considered that nothing should be learnt by mere rote, but that every thing which is learnt, should be explained at the time.

Of late years we have heard a great deal of the advantages of explaining every thing in teaching, of leaving no difficulty unsolved, and of not allowing children to learn any thing which they do not at the time thoroughly understand. We can hardly take up a single book, which has been written within the last ten years on the subject of education, in which this notion is not adopted and insisted on. The way in which the advocates of the all-explaining system love to express themselves is somewhat of this kind, that children should not be mere parrots, learning by rote page after page, the force and beauties of which they cannot enter into; poring over the drilled dull lesson,' as they call it, while the reasoning powers are but little exercised, and in 'fact the mind is enslaved to a sort of mechanical drudgery and 'routine, to be pitied by any reasonable being.' All this rests on a fallacy, which may be readily seen. In order to understand one thing, we must know twenty; and if the one is explained to us without our knowing the other nineteen, we are as

much learning the explanation by rote, as it is called, as we should be the one thing itself. We must learn much more, or we might as well have learnt less. We know many facts now perhaps as facts, which at present are inexplicable, but which something we may learn a year hence will probably make clear. In every thing practice comes first, thought after. Reflection is altogether a subsequent act. It does not follow, because a child does not seem to enter into the meaning of what he learns now, though he learn it ever so perfectly, it does not follow that he never will enter into it. Because, when you have put a seed in the ground, a plant does not immediately rise, with its green stem and leaves, it does not follow that it never will rise. It requires time, and rain, and sun. So with knowledge. Byron says, in speaking of his juvenile studies,

My mind to meditate what then it learned.'

A few instances will show the advantages of attending to this principle. An eminent scholar of the day acquired great familiarity with Homer and skill in the Greek language by reading the Iliad through, without a lexicon, reading straight forward, marking the words which he did not understand, and passing on. As he proceeded, words which he had marked before explained themselves by their recurrence and context, and when he arrived at the end he had comparatively very few words left unexplained. Of course he knew a good deal of Greek, when he began. We know a gentleman who read a Portuguese book of travels in this way, without having any previous knowledge of the language; but he understood nearly every thing before he had finished. Of course he knew Latin and French. But the principle is the same, he used no dictionary. Often the meaning of something we heard years ago, but did not at all comprehend then, flashes upon us all at once. Nothing, in fact, is more absurd than objecting to children learning any thing by rote. Was not much of our own most valuable and most indelible knowledge acquired, when we did not understand the meaning of what we learnt? Have we not found lessons originally got off by the merest rote exceedingly useful in after life? Do we not often hear persons say, 'I learnt so ' and so when I was at school, and I have never forgotten it,' and that at a distance, it may be, of ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years. The fact is, learning by rote is the only way of learning a multitude of things, which must be learnt. How is the multiplication table learnt in the first instance, but by rote? We may reason upon it and analyse it afterwards, but this is altogether a subsequent act. We get the thing first in its totality, and afterwards separate and survey the parts.

This principle may be profitably applied to religious education. How absurd is the objection to teaching religious doctrines which

children cannot comprehend; of which they cannot see the scope or ascertain the bearing! How crude the notion that doctrinal teaching is a mere inefficient and bald recital!

For if some tones be false or low,
What are all prayers beneath
But cries of babes, that cannot know
Half the deep thoughts they breathe?

'In His own words we Christ adore
But angels, while we speak,
Higher above our meaning soar

Than we o'er children weak."

We are not saying that the bearing of doctrines on feelings and conduct should not be gradually elicited and enforced of course it should: what we say is, that doctrines must be taught as doctrines, dogmatically, as much truths and axioms as the results of the multiplication table. Thus truth is beforehand with error: the mind is preoccupied, and is not left open, and free to hostile incursion. It is armed, and defends itself.

This leads us to the consideration of another fallacy, which refers more particularly to the education of youth than of children, but which may be advantageously regarded in connexion with the observations we have already made.

FIFTH FALLACY. It is considered, by some, that on a subject of morals or religion (the latter more especially), the different conflicting opinions should be given, and the pupils left to choose between them.

We believe that this notion is entertained by many who do not know that they entertain it. They have never brought it out in form to their own consciousness, or reduced it to words. If it were stated to them, they would reject it. They, however, consider it more liberal and candid, and more generous-minded, to leave the pupil to make an impartial and dispassionate choice: such a course is complimented as truth-loving. If analysed, the notion will come to something of this kind, that principles are like wares, that they can be taken on approval, and if not liked returned. Such, however, is not the case: the mind is in reality somewhat differently affected from a beer-cask. Yet even a beer-cask smells of beer, a long time after the beer is gone.

'Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem
Testa diu.'-Horace.

A bad principle is not easily changed for a good one. On this, as on many other subjects, Plato was wiser than many moderns..

Christian Year.

but not the other part, and may think that part which he does see very insufficient, as indeed it often would be. Do all you can, you may not be able to explain to him the other part, possibly it might not be proper to explain it to him. The child must know a great deal more, and act and obey a great deal more, before he will be able to take in and appreciate the real reasons of half of what he is ordered to do. Let him do what he is told, and after a time he shall find that it was right. This is the principle of all virtue, as well as of religious obedience. Action precedes and accompanies knowledge. In education there is great need of faith; faith on the part of the master or parent that the seed sown will not be choked, but will be fruitful of good; faith on the part of the child, towards his master or parent, that what he does or orders is for his good, and will prove so in the end. This is the true principle of a child's obedience. This is the ground on which it is placed by Scripture, by common sense, and by universal experience.

A parent sometimes directs a child to do a particular thing, and then assigns a reason why he should do it. The child hesitates, objects, argues; at last the parent will say, Well then, do

it because I tell you.' If this had been said at first, it would have saved much trouble and many words. So, a master should never argue with a pupil; never allow a boy to answer again, reply, ask reasons, and so on. All this is out of place, and detrimental to good order and healthy discipline.

But, it may be asked, would not these principles encourage arbitrariness and tyranny on the part of masters? On the contrary, a master (if what he ought to be, which is of course presupposed), finding his responsibility so great, will take the greater pains to be in the right; finding that whatever he orders is to be done, will not order what is unnecessary, or unjust; finding his pupils submissive towards him, will be lenient though strict, and kind though authoritative, towards them. And this is what boys themselves always prefer. There is nothing they hate so much as an uncertain, vacillating, capricious discipline; no master is so much respected as one who will be obeyed, and who keeps them in strict order and up to the mark. Boys do not really like confusion any more than men; they like order and regularity, and he who insists on order and regularity, and, without caprice, enforces obedience, is sure of their respect. They have no respect for a man who does not claim respect as his due; they cannot submit willingly and regularly to one who does not insist on obedience and regularity himself. It is too much to expect a large number of boys or men to keep themselves in order, without some actual, visible, external restraint. And this both men and boys like. They actually enjoy more liberty by being so restrained: they are more comfortable for being kept in a state

that at first sight it appears almost unfeeling to do any thing to unsettle it, still more to refute it altogether. It seems to be based upon love in opposition to fear, and appeals seemingly to the better and more generous sympathies of our nature. But for all that we must look at it closely, and see whether it will bear examination.

When we order a child to do a particular thing, and begin to argue with him to show him why he should do it, we put his obedience on a wholly different ground from our will or authority; we put it on a different ground to him, and a ground which he can take as well as we, and which he will not be slow to take. We put his obedience on the ground of his seeing the reasonableness of our order. Now, often he will not see the force of our reasoning, and if he is unwilling to see the force of it, of course he will not see it. Well, one of two things, then, must follow. Either we must give in, which would be yielding to the child's self-will, and would be ruinous to all authority; or we must still insist on his doing what we ordered; we must after all fall back on our authority, and then seem to the child to be enforcing what was unreasonable. In other words, whenever the child does not see the force of the reasons we assign, we must appear to him either weak or capricious, either yielding and pusillanimous, or arbitrary and tyrannical; either the child becomes practically master, or we become apparently unjust.

Of course, the mere theorist or writer on education does not see this. How should he? But let him have the responsible management of a hundred boys for six months, and then say whether he would be content to place his system of discipline on the ground of persuasion. If he did, the boys would soon ride upon his back. We never knew a practical schoolmaster of any experience, to entertain the notion under remark. Some parents entertain and act upon it, if that may be called acting, which rather consists in suffering. They say of a son,' we 'never oblige him to do what he does not see the propriety of 'doing, we endeavour to show him the reason why he should do 'this or that.' They seem to have forgotten, that when they have given an order, they have given what ought to be the strongest motive for obedience, and that by adding other motives, inducements, persuasions, and coaxings (for it soon comes to that), they are, in fact, only weakening the grand motive and habit of obedience, and encouraging the arts of dissimulation and hypocrisy. Obedience is prompt; and unless prompt, is as much like disobedience as it can be.

The truth is, a child is in very few cases able, in the nature of things, to see or comprehend the whole of the reasons for what he is told to do. He may see one part of the reason for a thing,