time as our systems require, and we believe the day not far distant when different ideas will prevail upon this subject, and children will be less confined than they now are,-confined for a shorter time, but with far greater effect and more valuable results. At any rate, it will be seen that the afternoon is not taken into the school session in our plan. We use it for another purpose. At the close of the regular session, the children are all sent to their homes for their meals and refreshment, irrespective of all other considerations. We have no idea of killing children in order to make them moral or industrious. Allowing a reasonable time for refreshment, delinquents return to the school-room, and are there required to make up for the deficiencies of the morning. The time is ample. The pupil does not apply himself to his work, thoroughly jaded, but entirely rested, and there, in deliberative leisure, he finishes all that he had lazily neglected to do at the proper time, or atones for violation of rules respecting conduct. This time is also employed by the teacher in explaining difficulties and elucidating subjects of instruction to the dull and backward pupils, who are regarded in these schools with peculiar tenderness, and are the subjects of special and untiring effort. The whole system is such as to encourage and uplift, not to depress and dishearten. No passionate expressions of contempt for any scholar are ever heard by the school from the lips of the teacher. No boy or girl is ever called "stupid," "senseless," “ a dunce," "a blockhead,” "a small potato," or any other of those numerous appellatives which every one has heard in his lifetime, from teachers who had not learned the importance of self-control. Every child feels itself respected. He is addressed as a human being. His progress keeps pace, as it ought and must, with his capacity. He is always ready for every new step, when the necessity arises for taking it, and consequently, if he really is stupid, he is not allowed to discover his own stupidity, and his courage is constantly rising. It certainly ought to be known too, in this connection, that many children who appear at first stupid, if they are properly stimulated to the energetic use of their powers, often turn out to be in the end the brightest men and women. There can be no more reprehensible practice than that of discouraging children who appear dull by reproaching them with opprobrious epithets. Many a child, who had sterling qualities in him, must have come in this way really to credit the commonly received opinion of his own stupidity, and to discontinue exertion altogether, and thus in the end, through the folly of his teacher's course, to verify that teacher's oft-repeated predictions. But we must proceed to say that

The order of our schools is greatly promoted by the example of the teachers. Every teacher is in the right place at the right time. He is himself, as far as possible, a realization of the great ideal of perfection in the matter of order. He is always at school in time. His own desks, books, and papers are always in order, and whatever duty devolves upon him, is always faithfully discharged. He is neat in his personal appearance, careful, but natural, in his conversation, regular and systematic in his

habits, punctual and prompt in fulfilling his appointments, regards scrupulously all his promises, improves his time with exemplary assiduity, and shows in every act and by every word that he is conscientious in what he says and does, and that he may safely be imitated. All this, however, is quiet and natural. He never asks the attention of his students to himself as a model for their imitation, but commends himself by being that model. There is inseparable from his very presence, that "unconscious tuition" which has been so beautifully described by one of our most gifted brethren.* It has a power, though it seems to know it not. That power is felt, though none can say why. It is not an unpleasant, but rather a delightful constraint, the just respect that children as well as adults pay to goodness, selfcontrol, fidelity, conscientiousness. All have felt this power, but none can say how. But again we must say that

The order of these schools is maintained by direct appeals to high motives. The students are taught that by correct courses of conduct and faithful attention to duty, they will really promote their own happiness and well-being. True views of life are imparted to them.

1st. They will have a social position to occupy. They must now set forth in such a manner that they will ever maintain the respect of their fellow-men. Hence they must cultivate the qualities essential to true manliness. They must in their walk and conversation be orderly, polite, gentle, considerate of the comfort of others. They must hold the profane, and the obscene, and the false in unutterable contempt. They must be candid, sincere, truthful. They must never persist in a known wrong for a moment, though the acknowledgment of it may involve brief mortification. No human being, in fact, can ever be a man in the true moral sense of the term, unless he is above the feeling of mortification in acknowledging an error, which he has discovered to be such, though he had previously supposed it to be otherwise. The highest and brightest adornment of noblest manhood is truth. The just end of all study and philosophical investigation is truth. Truthful models, truthful ideas, truthful hopes, and truthful prospects are therefore constantly presented to our students, that their admiration may be drawn powerfully to that which is true, and just, and lovely, and of good report.

2dly. They will have a civic position to fill. Truth here too, as in social life, is the highest ornament of the man. Oh, how much falsity, hollowness, shallow pretence, and accursed duplicity is found in high places! Is it not time to draw the attention of our children to the corruption and the mendacity, the humbuggery, the offensive forwardness, and the transparent selfishness of ambitious men, who wallow in the turbid shallows of the political pool in search of the pearls of office, honor, place, and emolument, who seek to wheedle and cajole the dear people into such an appreciation of their own merits, as will insure them the object they covet? This gained, what care they for the dear people? We look to education, to

* Prof. F. D. Huntington in the American Journal of Education, vol. i. p. 141-163.

right education, moral education, to adorn our rising sovereigns with the lustrous ornament of truth, and we seek in our schools to prepare our students properly and well for the social circle not only, but also for the relations of civil and political life.

We scruple not to say here, too, that our pupils are young immortals, and we realize our duty to them in this important aspect. We open our schools with the reading of a passage of Scripture without note or comment, and we invoke the blessing of God at the commencement of each day upon the duties and labors of the day before us. It is done solemnly and seriously, and not as an unmeaning service. Nor do we hesitate to use the general precepts of religion in moral instruction; but not by a word or act, or even by implication, is one attempt made to inveigle or decoy any pupil into the meshes of any denominational net, or to carry the citadel of any heart for an external form, or a sectarian creed. We believe that education can never be complete without the culture of the heart. We know of no truth like Bible truth, no power like Bible power, for this purpose. We avoid with the most scrupulous care the propagation of any sectarian view, but if we wish a golden rule, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them," we hesitate not to adopt it because it is in the Bible, or because the sublime precept first fell from the lips of the Redeemer of man. Nor do we hesitate to go to the Bible for those fundamental truths that lie at the foundation of all correct philosophy, and which can be derived from no other source with equal clearness, some of them from no other source at all, as the creation of the world, the Bible view of which alone can set at rest all questions on the subject of cosmogony. It is general truth, simple moral truth, as it affects our relations with and to our fellow-men, and simple religious truth, as it affects our relations to God, not controversial or controverted points, that we feel at perfect liberty to use and inculcate, because they are in consistency with the views of all sects. It is what may lead our pupils, when they grow up, to be thoughtful and examine for themselves their duties to God and man in their broadest sense. Let us take care that in our horror of sectarianism we do not lose sight of the fact admitted by all sects, that the God of the Bible is the God of our nation, acknowledged in its foundation, acknowledged hitherto in its progress and its rising glory. Let us not, from a dread of sectarianism, induce Him to spread his sheltering wing, and take his flight forever from our public institutions. Disastrous indeed, fatally disastrous, would such withdrawal be. We have no greater evil as a nation to fear.

It is believed that we have adopted the right plan in these institutions, and that in a few short years the happy results of what we have done will appear in a renovation of our school system, in the elevation of our schools throughout the State to a normal condition, in the securing of correct, salutary, model methods of instruction and discipline.

INDEX TO VOLUME V

BARNARD'S AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION.

Dunglison, R., dictionary of medical science, 320.

Christian education, scheme of, by Synod of Dort, 77. Dwight, Francis, memoir of, 803.

Common sense, the result of correct training of the Everett, D., author of "You'd scarce expect," &c.,