Froebel, is an art, and not a science-but, like all artists, she could not define her method. The Bible, common-sense, and good English poetry were the things which she laid down as a basis for elementary education; but, of course, the word 'commonsense' begs the whole question. Still, there is an element of suggestion in the list. Good English poetry was ruled out by Mr. Edgeworth, on the ground that it was foolish and wrong for children to learn to repeat words of which they did not know the precise meaning; and then there is a very curious passage, in which poor Rosamond is reprimanded when she wants to repeat the opening of Gray's Elegy' 'because the lines sound so very pretty.' Her mother tells her that she does not know what 'curfew' means, nor a 'knell;' Rosamond replies, as one would say like a very intelligent little girl, that she cannot tell the meaning of every word, but she knows the general meaning. It means that the day is going; that it is evening; that it is growing dark.' However, this avails nothing, and she is reduced to a better frame of mind, and accepts, as the most appropriate poetry for her years, a description in rhymed couplets of a weaving machine-apparently the work of her condescending father.

Mr. Edgeworth, in many ways the type of the modern parent, is not quite in the movement on this point. Everybody admits nowadays that it is well to encourage children to take pleasure in the sound of beautiful words, and in the Froebelian system great importance is given to learning verses by heart. But the verses are verses specially composed, written down to the infant intelligence, and for that reason scarcely examples of good English poetry. It is again the method of spoon-feeding adopted, instead of letting a child learn by heart, as children will do with enthusiasm, the ringing phrases of Macaulay's Lays' or the songs of Shakespeare, which they repeat for the mere pleasure of the sound, training their ear and their instinct insensibly to the beauties and the uses of language, which is the instrument of all human business and the material body of thought. In education, as in life, a child gains continually by contact with the unfamiliar, at whose meaning he guesses. It is from the mind's tendency to conjecture that we learn to think.

All modern theorists lay great stress, like Mr. Edgeworth, on the importance in elementary education of physical science. I confess to a prejudice on this matter. The worst educated men among men of high intelligence that I have ever met were mathe

maticians; and next to them in order of deficiency I should put men of science. Nobody disputes the value or the interest of scientific knowledge, but it seems to be an indifferent training for the mind. I can never forget that Darwin, who in his young days loved Shakespeare, when old lost all pleasure in him, but continued to delight in the commonplace novel with a happy ending. It seems as if a mind dwelling perpetually on the tangible and definite-on the thing that can be absolutely proved or disproved-lost its sense of the mystery and fascination which hang about the meaning of life. I think that by early insistence upon physical science you may develop an undue bias for the material fact, a contempt or distaste for the unascertainable; and the business of life does not deal with fixed quantities. Still, there is enough in science to stimulate the imagination, heaven knows! and of the value of its study as a kind of gymnastics for the mind I have no experience. Comparatively few people have; but no doubt it will be tried. It is an age of science and experiments, and since people have made up their minds that education is a science, experiments will be tried in education.

There exists in London a club-the Sesame--which provides sitting-rooms, dinners, newspapers in the ordinary way for the ladies and gentlemen who belong to it; but in its inception it was not as other clubs. It began with an association of people for the purpose of studying and spreading knowledge on all matters relating to educational reform; it was, in short, and still is in some degree, a club for the production of the educated mother, and, if possible, of the educated father also. The Sesame Club, as I understand, issues Child Life,' the paper of which I have already spoken, and identifies itself in this way with the Kindergarten system. It has even founded an ideal Kindergarten, where students may go to practise Froebelian methods upon children who receive a gratuitous schooling. Young ladies may go there in order to become educated mothers and competent in the theory and practice of such objects as child development, natural science, hygiene, and general household management,' as well as education. If you ask for a more precise definition of the ideals to which the modern parent, as represented by this club, subscribes (in both senses), one is provided by Professor Earl Barnes: 'The great work of the Kindergarten is to help the child to integrate his personal, material, social, and religious worlds.' The definition may not be very comprehensible, but it sounds suffi

ciently comprehensive too much so for my liking. I should like to adjure the modern parent to ask a little less of education and trust a little more to nature.

It seems that the present generation-the people whose children are growing up-are convinced that they themselves were extremely ill educated, and are determined, at all events, to be wiser than their parents. Frankly, I do not think it was so bad as all that. My friends appear to me to be very agreeable and welleducated people, and I see no reason to be discontented with the bringing-up which made them what they are—if indeed the system had much to say to it. My own opinion is that in any case, being brought up among the same persons, they would have turned out much the same whatever method had been adopted. The moral part of education is a thing that can be delegated to no Kindergarten in the world. Our conduct, in so far as it does not proceed directly from our innate qualities, is governed by imitation, conscious and unconscious. The people who influence us first are our parents, with whom we must live in some degree of intimacy; afterwards we are chiefly affected by the associates whom we choose for ourselves. Admiration is at the root of it, and the natural instinct of a child is to look up to the grown-up people it lives with and to adopt their ideas, but only on condition that the elders behave naturally. Boys do not imitate their schoolmasters, for they know perfectly well that their masters assume a behaviour for their edification; perfect naturalness is hardly possible in the relation of teacher and pupil, and, the more we think about influencing our own children, the less likely we are to accomplish it. Lady Isabel Margesson, in a paper read before the Women's Congress (reprinted in 'Child Life'), declares that we ought to learn how to' self-express ourselves.' I think she is needlessly disquieted about the matter. Children understand their parents very well, and when one human being deliberately tries to explain himself or herself to another, the result is nearly always misunderstanding; this is the most fruitful source of the quarrels of lovers. The one thing to be avoided is fear-habitual fear. If you cow a puppy you can do nothing with it, and some children are cowed-oftenest by a stinging tongue. I will say this for the modern parent-that this evil is far less common than it would appear to have been even half a century ago; the father is not that awe-inspiring personage he once was. Human nature being what it is, one need not be

seriously afraid of his becoming in many cases a sort of amateur schoolmaster, like Mr. Edgeworth or the model Froebelian parent.

As for the intellectual side of education, I merely wish to urge that the simpler and more definite our aims are, the more probable will be their attainment. Exactly what children, boys and girls, ought to learn at school may be matter for discussion, though I can conceive of no more proper basis of study than language, which is to be the vehicle of all our ideas and our means of communicating with our fellows. But the essential thing is that they should learn what they are set to learn; and the sooner they learn that they have got to learn, the better. I do not feel convinced that this simple but invaluable knowledge will be acquired in a place that aims at integrating the material, moral, social, and religious worlds of a child, and teaching him how to play.

STEPHEN GWYNN.

THE HOME ARMY.

BY HESKETH PRICHARD,

A STEEL-GREY church in the green centre of an English county saw the curtain raised upon the first act, when a brown-haired girl was, one frosty morning, married to a British officer. They had already been engaged for some time when out of the level of halcyon days arose the rumour of war in South Africa. A few weeks later came the summons to the front. The lover went to tell the matter to her whom it most concerned. What they said to each other lies sacred in the memory of each; the end of it was, she elected to bear his name, whatever the dim future held of better or of worse, and the marriage-bells rang out over the yellow stubbles and the russet land. The honeymoon was spent largely in cabs and in buying water-bottles, filters, waterproof blankets, and other campaigning kit. It closed at one o'clock of an autumn day, when the wind from the Island dried the tears in gazing eyes as they watched the slate-grey ship lessen down the reaches of Southampton Water.

Nor, as you know, was this particular instance at all unique. Sisters, wives, and mothers, the same partings happened, the same ordeal was accepted and bravely gone through in every county between the English Channel and the Shetlands--ay, and not only in the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, but also in the Colonies. The hearts of the women were as high and ready as the courage of the men, and yet the women's part is far the harder of the two. Theirs it is to fight the fight of sit down,' to shiver with sick fear at the strident howl of the newsboy in the street, to lie awake through the 'dead unhappy night, when the rain is on the roof. To them the war is a nightmare through which they catch glimpses of the men they love struggling and turning in the riot of a grapple, or else lying and watching with weary eyes the little angry spurts of smoke that break from the grim entrenched hills, of which those at home read.

And how great is the part they play, this home army! They are the groundwork of the fighters' thoughts, the loadstones to which the individual mind and heart of the soldier turns, as he