a complete mastery of the science and art in all its forms; and, while you are engaged in the acquisition, it will be in the highest degree interesting to you.

9. Teach one thing at a time. In teaching Grammar, for example, show first what a noun is, and let the pupil be exercised in this, in various ways, until it becomes perfectly familiar, before he is even taught the difference between a common and proper noun. Advance thus, step by step, making sure of the ground you stand on before a new step is taken.

After all the pains we can take, it will still often happen that much which a child is learning he can understand but imperfectly. There will still be some things which he cannot understand at all. In these cases he should be led to distinguish what he understands from what he does not, and be encouraged to hope that he will, by reviewing and farther study, be enabled to understand better hereafter.

The following suggestions, under the name of general cautions, are taken from the excellent work so often referred to.*

"1. Never get out of patience with dulness. Perhaps I ought to say, never get out of patience with anything. That would, perhaps, be the wisest rule. But, above all things, remember that dulness and stupidity (and you will certainly find them in every school) are the very last things to get out of patience with. If the Creator has so formed the mind of a boy that he must go through life slowly and with difficulty, impeded by obstructions which others do not feel, and depressed by discouragements which others never know, his lot is surely hard enough, without having you to add to it, the trials and suffering which sarcasm and reproach from you can heap upon him. Look over your schoolroom, therefore, and, wherever you find one whom you perceive the Creator to have endowed with less intel

* The Teacher.

lectual power than others, fix your eye upon him with an expression of kindness and sympathy. Such a boy will have suffering enough from the selfish tyranny of his companions; he ought to find in you a protector and friend. One of the greatest pleasures which a teacher's life affords is the interest of seeking out such a one, bowed down with burdens of depression and discouragement-unaccustomed to sympathy and kindness, and expecting nothing for the future but a weary continuation of the cheerless toils which have imbittered the past; and the pleasure of taking off the burden, of surprising the timid, disheartened sufferer by kind words and cheering looks, and of seeing in his countenance the expression of ease, and even of happiness, gradually returning.

"2. The teacher should be interested in all his scholars, and aim equally to secure the progress of all. Let there be no neglected ones in the schoolroom. We should always remember that, however unpleasant in countenance and manners that bashful boy in the corner may be, or however repulsive in appearance or unhappy in disposition that girl, seeming to be interested in nobody, and nobody appearing interested in her, they still have, each of them, a mother, who loves her own child, and takes a deep and constant interest in its history. Those mothers have a right, too, that their children should receive their full share of attention in a school which has been established for the common and equal benefit of all.

"3. Do not hope or attempt to make all your pupils alike. Providence has determined that human minds should differ from each other, for the very purpose of giving variety and interest to this busy scene of life. Now if it were possible for a teacher so to plan his operations as to send his pupils forth upon the community, formed on the same model, as if they were made by machinery, he would do so much towards spoiling one of the wisest of the plans which the

It

Almighty has formed for making this world a happy scene. Let it be the teacher's aim to co-operate with, not vainly to attempt to thwart, the designs of Providence. We should bring out those powers with which the Creator has endued the minds placed under our control. We must open our garden to such influences as shall bring forward all the plants, each in a way corresponding to its own nature. is impossible if it were wise, and it would be foolish if it were possible, to stimulate, by artificial means, the rose, in hope of its reaching the size and magnitude of the appletree, or to try to cultivate the fig and the orange where wheat only will grow. No; it should be the teacher's main design to shelter his pupils from every deleterious influence, and to bring everything to bear upon the community of minds before him which will encourage, in each one, the development of its own native powers. For the rest, he must remember that his province is to cultivate, not to

create.

"4. Do not allow the faults or obliquities of character, or the intellectual or moral wants of any individual of your pupils, to engross a disproportionate share of your time. I have already said that those who are peculiarly in need of sympathy or help should receive the special attention they seem to require; what I mean to say now is, do not carry this to an extreme. When a parent sends you a pupil, who, in consequence of neglect or of mismanagement at home, has become wild and ungovernable, and full of all sorts of wickedness, he has no right to expect that you shall turn your attention away from the wide field which, in your whole schoolroom, lies before you, to spend your time, and exhaust your spirits and strength, in endeavouring to repair the injuries which his own neglect has occasioned. When you open a school, you do not engage, either openly or tacitly, to make every pupil who may be sent to you a learned or a virtuous man. You do engage to give

them all faithful instruction, and to bestow upon each such a degree of attention as is consistent with the claims of the rest. But it is both unwise and unjust to neglect the many trees in your nursery, which, by ordinary attention, may be made to grow straight and tall, and to bear good fruit, that you may waste your labour upon a crooked stick, from which all your toil can secure very little beauty or fruitfulness.

"The school, the whole school, is your field, the elevation of the mass, in knowledge and virtue, and no individual instance, either of dulness or precocity, should draw you away from its steady pursuit."

CHAPTER III.

INSTRUCTION.

SECTION 1. READING.

"Learning to read is the most difficult of human attainments."EDGEWORTH.

A COMMON mode of teaching the letters has been to point them all out in succession, at each lesson, until they were learned. This is a slow and bad way. The impression of each letter on the mind is erased by that which is shown next. A better way is to show a child only one or two letters at a lesson, give their names very distinctly, speak about their appearance, and let him look at them until he can distinguish them and call their names. They may be on blocks of wood or on pieces of pasteboard, and the child may be sent to bring them to you, directed by the name, until he is familiar with them. One may be added at each lesson, but care must be taken that he does not forget either of those he has already learned. Each child should be

furnished with a slate and pencil, and when he has learned a letter, he may try to draw it on the slate; and he should be encouraged to persevere until he can make something like it. When he has learned the small letters, he may learn the capitals, and afterward the italics.

If no blocks or printed letters on pasteboard are to be had, the letters may be drawn, an inch or more long, on a blackboard or slate, and the child be allowed to learn and copy them. When he has learned a letter, he should be encouraged to find it in a book. What are called the abs should never be allowed to be learned, as they mean nothing, are of no use, and have a tendency to accustom a child to read without using his understanding.

A better way of learning to read, much and successfully practised of late, is to let children learn words first, and afterward the letters of which they are made up. This is Nature's method. A child learns to know his mother's face before he knows the several features of which it is composed. He learns what a dog is, before he learns what ears, hair, teeth, and paws are; and what a cradle is, before he knows what the sides, back, and rockers are.

The following excellent directions as to the first steps in reading by this method are from the Teacher's Manual, page

113:

"Worcester's Primer is an admirable little book for beginners. We shall use it, therefore, as our First Book. Commencing with a child ignorant of his letters, we should turn to page 15, where we find pictures of a man, a cat, a hat, and a dog, opposite the corresponding names, in capitals as well as in small letters. The teacher may commence thus:*

"Teacher. What is that?

"In order that what follows may be fully understood, the reader should have a copy of the Primer before him, and turn to the pages indicated."