(Each boy watches his own plant, sketching it and its parts at various stages.)

The Natural Friends and Enemies of Plants. -Worms, bees, various insects, parasites.

Protective mimicry.—Metamorphoses of Insects.

The Weather and Conditions which Influence it.-Construction of weather chart, entries being made daily. Direction of wind, with use of compass. Frost. Depth to which hardness of ground is noticeable. Rainfall, with use of rain gauge. Temperature, with use of Thermometer.-Barometer.-The atmospheric pressure is marked, though the use of the barometer must at this period be based on empirical knowledge.

The Work done by Rain.-Formation of springs and rivers. The work done by rivers.

Towards the end of the year the measurement of length in the metric system is begun. On these measurements all the work in decimals is based, every example being concrete. After having finished the addition and subtraction of lengths, the boys proceed to the multiplication and division of lengths by whole numbers. They then learn the operations involved in the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of vulgar fractions, the examples being again concrete, and, at the beginning, based on actual measurements made with a foot rule. It ought to be stated that every boy in the school is provided with a ruler on which both English and metric measures are marked.

SECOND YEAR. Average Age 124.

Boys at this stage have become familiar with the ordinary operations involved in the use of decimals and vulgar fractions, and now continue their vulgar fractions as mathematics, and no longer quite so concretely. In the previous stage they have not learned to multiply or divide decimals by decimals, but have confined themselves to the multiplication and division of length by whole numbers. They now go on to the measurement of area, beginning with the area of a rectangle. It is easy for them to extend their knowledge of multiplication by whole numbers to multiplication by decimals. Multiplication by decimals less than unity is rendered possible by changing the unit employed from a centimetre, or decimetre, to a

metre.

The word "division" is applied to two distinct operations; first, that of dividing a certain quantity into an exact number of parts; and second, that of finding how many times one quantity is contained in another. The first operation has been learned in the previous year, and the second is now begun, as it involves the division of decimals by decimals. Concrete examples are easily found. Examples involving the same operation arise from such processes as finding the length of the side of a rectangle, having given the area and the length of the other side. Examples involving all the various rules are derived from determinations of

the areas of parallelograms, triangles and polygons, various properties of these figures being found incidentally.

Much of this work is, of course, left to the mathematical master, while the science master continues the study of physical geography begun in the previous year. The following is the syllabus in use, experiments on a small scale in the laboratory being carried out by each boy, as

he gains thereby not only a better knowledge of physical geography, but also an acquaintance with the more usual methods of manipulation in chemistry, an acquaintance which will be of use to him in later years.

THE PROPERTIES OF WATER.

Solution of Solids.-A solid dissolved in water spreads through the solution. It does not settle on standing. It can be recovered by evaporation. It passes through the pores of a filter paper. Insoluble substances can be removed by filtration, or by decantation. Drinking water contains solids in solution. River water contains insoluble solids.

Distillation. The work done by rivers (a) in dissolving solids, (b) in carrying undissolved solids.

Reasons for saltness of sea, for freshness of rain water, for formation of mud banks, deltas, &c. Comparison of rivers of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Solution of Gases. -Drinking water contains dissolved air. Estimation of amount.

The Formation of Waves on Water.-The work of the sea. EarthThe work done by ice. Forces tending to raise land. quakes. Volcanoes. Coral. Shape of the Earth. Latitude. Longitude. Motions of the earth. Day and night. Seasons. Phases of moon. Eclipses.

Measurement of Time.-Sundial.

Water clock (by running

water out of burette and noticing time taken for each 5 c.c.). Pendulum.

The Sun.-Examination of white light. Reflection and refraction of light.

THIRD YEAR. Average Age, 131.

Boys in this stage have finished their measurements of length and of area. Having found the areas of rectangles, parallelograms, triangles and polygons, they know something about angles, and are therefore prepared to begin geometry. Instead of adopting Euclid, an introductory course has been drawn up which provides a gradual transition to abstract geometry from physical measurements. In comparing two lengths he has always been accustomed to measuring each with a ruler, and has therefore adopted the axiom that things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. He has for two years been constantly superposing one length on another. It is therefore natural for him to compare two angles either by the indirect method of placing a protractor, which he makes for himself, on each of them, and finding whether both contain the same number of degrees, or by the direct method, to which he has hitherto been unaccustomed, Hence he of placing one angle on the other. begins his propositions with those capable of proof by super-position. Having thoroughly grasped these, he uses them to prove other propositions. At this point, his geometry becomes more abstract, and the work is left to the teacher of mathematics.

The science master begins now with the area of a circle, and the value of π, and goes on to the estimation of volume.

The rest of the syllabus is as follows:

The volumes of right prisms, cylinders, spheres, and irregularly shaped bodies. Weighing. Relative density. (Relative

density is taken, as the boy has at this period reached proportion in arithmetic.)

It is evident, both in this syllabus and in that for the other years, that great care is necessary in drawing up the whole school routine for each year, and that the teachers of science and mathematics must be in close touch with the work of each other. It has been found, in actual practice, that the quantity of work done can be so regulated that the boys do study the cognate parts of each subject at the same time. This arrangement has been greatly facilitated by the division of the staff into committees for the discussion of the curriculum, the mathematical and science masters being on the same committees.

FOURTH YEAR. Average Age, 141.

educational environment. Literature-by which I mean the best and most artistic record of thoughts by men about men; by which I mean that appeal of humanity to humanity, of mind to mind, not to one limited portion of it, but to the emotion as well as the intellect-literature, in this sense, has for even the schoolboy a triple function. One of these elements is the production of literary power, the power of admirable, not merely commonplace, expression during the boy's school life, and in connection with his other school work. We teachers know well by experience the cramped, stiff, laboured work of boys who have no acquaintance with literary models and have missed the teaching with which the study of literary models should be connected. Contact with the literary model and the literary teacher-that is, the teacher whose own knowledge of literature is wide and whose sympathy with the subject is intense-contact with these, in a fair number of lessons per week, is of inestimable service in promoting the development in the boy of the valuable art of verbal self-expression.

The second function of literature as a school subject

Syllabus :

Elementary hydrostatics. Barometer. Boyle's Law. Elementary mechanics.

Principle of Archimedes. Elementary heat.

FIFTH YEAR. Average Age, 15.

In this stage the subject studied is elementary chemistry, treated more or less according to the so-called "heuristic " method.

Boys who remain in the school after this begin to specialise, working for the various examinations they are bound to take.

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

LITERATURE.1

BY W. J. ADdis, M.A.

Headmaster of Holborn Estate Grammar School.

TWENTY years ago, a paper on this subject would have been an interesting, but not an important, detail in the ordinary round of educational lectures or papers. To-day a different condition of things prevails. The interest in the subject remains, perhaps, the same-that is, unfortunately, confined to few. But its importance has increased tenfolda fact recognised, in the main, by even those teachers to whom both by predilection and by practice the literary branch of education makes but a subordinate appeal. the chemistry master in a school nowadays will shake his head sorrowfully and agree that a boy's power of expression and mastery of language are very insufficient and a great drawback to his assimilation of those valuable principles, those nourishing sentiments, and eternal truths for the inculcation of which chemistry alone affords adequate scope.

Even

But, true as this may be, handicapped as a student undoubtedly is in other subjects because of his feeble and flaccid grasp of language, there is a deeper sense in which the boy who is ignorant of literary models has been unfairly treated by his

1 A paper read at a meeting of the Assistant-Masters' Association held at University College School, November 7th, 1900.

literary model and the literary teacher-is not less important, though possibly less apparent, as regards other school subjects. I mean the function of enriching the whole mind, enlarging the contact with humanity on its best side, familiarising the youthful mind with the valuable thoughts of a Wordsworth or the superb conceptions of a Shakespeare.

And the third function of literature is not so much directed towards the present as the future. Man's mind is restless and must be occupied. What greater boon, therefore, could be conferred by a teacher upon a scholar than the taste for literary culture, the faculty for literary enjoyment-the will to read great authors, and not trash. Our well-trained mind is not only a mansion and a dwelling place for loveliness: it is also an aspirant towards what is permanently good.

Having thus recognised the three functions of literature—(1) to help other school work, (2) to enrich the mind in the present, and (3) to provide at once a store and a stimulus for mature years I will pass to the practical investigation of the methods by which to spread the subject over the whole of school life.

In the first place, we must not suddenly superimpose literature on the V. or VI. Form boy after having allowed his literary sense to go starving in the lower Forms. There is a tendency to do this sometimes, from one of two causes: (1) Either his masters suddenly awake to the fact that the boy cannot write passable, much less admirable, English in his ordinary school work, or, (2) he is going in for some examination in which English Literature forms an important detail. (Here I may mention the London Intermediate Scholarship. It is hopeless for a boy to take the General Literature paper set there unless he has been a reader on his own account for many years; in other words, unless the instinct for literature has been fostered in his extreme youth.) Literary insight, literary appreciation cannot be crammed. Dates, facts, and a certain memoria technica can be crammed, it is true, but not the critical faculty. So it comes that, too late in his school career, and from motives the most ignoble on the part of his masters, the boy is suddenly set on to a study which bewilders and disgusts him and for which he inevitably acquires a hearty distaste. This, it is hardly necessary to remark, effectually prevents him from going to literature for solace and support in his maturer years. We must, then, begin our literary work down very much lower. There is no reason why it should not begin in the I. and II. Forms. The simplest way to do this is to have plenty of repetition work. Three or four simple poems like “ Lucy Gray" would amply suffice for one term's work. There is no need for a printed book. Indeed, the difficulty of procuring

a Child's Anthology (we must remember that we are now dealing with boys of eight or nine years old) is very great. Most of the cheap ones contain trashy verse, which is what we want to exclude. But this difficulty is got over by the following method. Let each boy have an exercise book kept for the special purpose of copying from the blackboard two verses at a time of the poem taught. This work should be done

For my part, I correct and tidy however, find it poor," good,"

slowly and without mistakes. Also, a general idea of the sense of the coming verses should be given before any writing is shown; and contributions to the verses elicited from the pupils by asking them to supply various words for which you have given an equivalent, or by asking them to fill up a rime, &c.; e.g., in "No mate, no comrade," &c., say, "This verse tells us that Lucy had nobody to play with," and try to get the words "mate" and "comrade"; similarly "grew can be elicited as a rime-word. A process like this will soon make the little boys conversant with synonyms, and they should be encouraged to select the best. Praise should be given to those who succeed. When the eight or ten lines have been talked over in this way, copying can be begun. always consider marks a great stimulus to work; those who do not care for marks will, most useful to have a scale of comments-" "excellent," &c.—and take care to write the comment clearly at the side of the verses when complete. It will be found that mistakes in copying will soon be very few indeed; and thus the benefit of a writing lesson will en passant be afforded. Then each boy should come up in class, as he is able to say his two verses quite correctly, with no help whatever. The eagerness to become one of the clever standing boys and to leave the slower sitting lot is a great incentive to speed in committing to memory. The literature lesson becomes, if treated in this way, even with little boys, both interesting and productive of great benefit. The talking over is the most important part. It inculcates, if carried out in the manner I have suggested, what is, after all, the great value of literary studies-the discrimination between synonyms.

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One important warning, however, should in this connection be given. Keep the literary lesson purely literary-purely educative of the verbal judgment, the taste for words. In most schools the practice is, I think, to adulterate this work with simultaneous attention to the grammatical or philological aspect of language, e.g., to fasten little lessons in analysis, or parsing, or derivation, on to words and sentences in the passage of literature. This, I am convinced, is a mistake, which has its root in a psychological basis. Analysis is an appeal to the logical faculty; literature rather to the aesthetic.

When we

are busy in the education of the latter, the former must play a subsidiary part, in so far, of course, as any division of labour can be made in the case of two faculties so closely connected. And I am sure that grammar is so difficult and distasteful in its inception to both teacher and pupil, that in the line, "Ever the fitful gusts between," the difficulty for a small boy of recognising the objective case will do a great deal towards deadening his recognition of " gusts" as the best word for strong winds. The gust, you see, evolves into disgust, and the word becomes Byron's

Drilled, dull lesson, forced down word by word in my repugnant youth. Therefore I would advise, in the case of I. Forms that (1) a piece of the quality of "Lucy Gray" or "The Wreck of the Hesperus" be chosen, (2) that it be talked about and its actual phraseology drawn from the class, (3) that it be correctly transcribed and committed to memory, two verses at a time, and (4) that no grammatical lesson be grafted on to it.

Now, with III. and IV. Forms two distinct changes are desirable: (1) A text-book should be provided (instead of the copying) and (2) the pieces should be longer, like "The Lay of No. 25, VOL. 3.]

the Last Minstrel " or "The Ancient Mariner." The textbook should contain plenty of suitable annotation, not philological but exegetic, explanatory. While equal attention should be paid to verbal knowledge, we can now introduce written paraphrase, and quite so much need not be committed to memory. Also, a very important addendum to this programme should be a weekly informal literary lesson, in which the master selects passages from, say, "The Deserted Village,' "Hart-leap Well," or "The Miller's Daughter," and elicits the diction from the class on the same lines as before. A note should be kept of the passages so treated, and in a year's time it will be found that a class will have gone through about thirty passages, and, if the thing is done properly, will have acquired a fair differentiating knowledge of authors, their styles, predilections, and peculiarities. Thus they will begin to feel (rather than merely know) that Wordsworth makes the desert smile with flowers, that Tennyson is more pretty than potent, that it is gold that Browning smites on his rude anvil. And here I would suggest that teachers should not be frightened of blank verse; let it be occasionally introduced, even to IV. Form boys, and one or two examples committed to memory, because the true test of verbal melody lies, after all, not in the "chimes of the rimes that sing sweet as they go," but in that stately and yet flexible measure (adapted alike for solemnity, for tenderness, and for grace) of which Landor declared that, by its side, even the great Homeric hexameter sounded to him tinkling.

A further practical hint to the teacher is this: let him study his own diction, let that be as literary as he can make it; it need not be stilted, pompous, or high-flown, but he must beware lest it be too colloquial; for the colloquial is near akin to slang, and slang is perilously close to vulgarity—facilis descensus Averno.

I remember full well how my own appreciation of literature was quickened and what a valuable addition was made to my mental equipment through lessons of this kind given to the IV. Form at my school by the headmaster in person. That headmaster is now dead; but if to live in the affectionate esteem of those whom he trained the obscure reader of this paper and a great living poet alike-if so to live is only partial death, then of Henry St. John Reade it may truly be said: Non omnis est mortuus.

This Latin sentence, gentlemen, leads me parenthetically to explain what I meant by saying, at the outset of this paper, that the importance of teaching English literature is greater to-day than it was some years ago. The reason is this. Some years ago the phrase is vague, but you may attach to it what of numerical definiteness you will-the literary instinct, the feeling for diction, the care of form, was much more widely cultivated, owing to the general study of the Classics-a study which, to-day, subjected to the severe onslaughts made upon it of recent years, now limps lamely along, a poor camp-follower rather than one of the captains of the educational march. When the concinnitas of Vergil, the felicitas of Horace, were part and parcel of the equipment of every schoolboy; when his mind was familiar with

Or with

Te, dulcis conjunx, te solo in litore secum, Te veniente die, te descendente canebat.

Lenesque sub noctem susurri, Composita repetantur hora.

He had, in translating them into English, the inevitable compulsion to seize or to select the best English word, and this gave him a mastery over his own language, a familiarity with synonyms, a discrimination in their choice. In my schooldays, all the Classical Forms were readers of the best English-the thing could not be helped; they had to be conversant with the Bible for Homer, with Landor for Martial.

C

Nowadays, with the cause the effect has gone, too; the average London day-school boy knows as much of his native literature as he does of Chinese. English must now be taught through English.

Well, gentlemen, from III. and IV. Form work I will now pass; but first let me summarise the suggestions I have made regarding it :

(1) Repetition once a week only.

(2) Paraphrase once a week.

(3) Informal literary lesson, to make boys conversant with several authors.

(4) Teacher's vigilant criticism of his own diction.

With the highest Forms the great aim should be to cultivate critical power. A play of Shakespeare's is typical work. How is such a subject to be tackled?

Let the boys be instructed to approach a literary work on three sides (1) the aesthetic, (2) the informative, and (3) the grammatical. I place these in what I consider their order of value. To take "Henry V." as an example. I should attach most importance to the fact that a boy, after reading this play, should be able to select Act IV. as containing the richest and finest literary expression; that he should, in this Act, be disposed (of his own accord and before the master tells him to, on account of the examination) to learn by heart (1) the chorus, (2) Grandpré's description of the pitiable condition of the English before Agincourt, (3) Henry's prayer before the battle, and (4) Henry's address to his soldiers before engaging the enemy. I should cultivate the capacity of selecting lines, and even phrases, like the battle's "umbered face," "tardy-gaited night," gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes"; also of appreciating the beautiful bright ray of colour introduced into the sensation of wide dimness fraught with tragic imminence, which Shakespeare gives in the person of Henry, young and vigilant, passing cheerily at dead of night across the sadly patient host.

On what I have called the informative side, boys must be taught to become familiar with the items of historical or social information which the play, by expression or implication, contains. This is not work so much for the teacher as the text-book. The same may be said for the grammatical side of the study, especially in the philological portion, which there is a tendency to overdo, because of the comparative ease with which it is learnt. Yet boys should learn to understand that no play of Shakespeare can be thoroughly mastered without due attention to these three aspects; and that if every piece of literature which they study is treated in this way, their knowledge of it will be pleasurable, valuable, complete-totus, teres atque rotundus.

The VI. Form boy, moreover, should paraphrase, but not on paper, only orally. His paper-work should consist mainly of composition on literary subjects, synopses of works, comparative study of styles, periods, lives of authors, the connection between the circumstances of their environment and their mental output, and so on. Also, what seems to me a highly important and quite a feasible point is that of an occasional verse composition. A subject and a metre should be specified, and the number of stanzas limited; unless this be done, boys will experience great difficulty in making up their minds, and much time will be wasted. At first, in this experiment, we shall naturally be confronted with much crudity, but it is astonishing how quickly this will be toned down. The metrical awkwardnesses are always greater and more prolonged in the case of boys who (from not having passed through the school) have not in early years been familiarised with verse movements. When the exercise is over, the various versions should be publicly criticised by the boys themselves, and the class should be shown how a poor version could have been turned into a much better

one by some modification of epithet or even of order. Lastly, a final version should be copied, which incorporates the best points of each version. In this kind of work the class will take pleasure and feel pride. The exercise may be varied by a demand for, say, ten lines of blank verse, and the metrical value of the " cæsura," or sense pause, thus practically appreciated. Three or four of these verse exercises a term will do a good deal to consolidate knowledge of the points in prosody which have presumably been already indicated in previous "informal class" lessons.

A further subject of study in the highest Form should be this discussion of certain commonly used but little understood terms, with the purpose of clearly envisaging the ideas, and arriving at a definition of the terms. I mean such words as "literature," "style," comedy," "humour," "poetry," "satire" (in its literary sense). Why should not the VI. Form leave our schools knowing what is connoted by these terms, or knowing, at least, what opinions have been held regarding their connotation? The habit of mind acquired by this kind of investigation is eminently useful if we consider the great number of similar terms regularly employed in ordinary life, but conveying no definite meaning to either those who utter or to those who hear them—“ religion,” 'politics," ism," &c.

46

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"social

And, lastly, the holiday task which it is now the fashion to set and which usually takes the form of a novel, might, in the case of a VI. Form, be altered to a work of high literary merit, not necessarily a novel, such as "Sohrab and Rustum," "The Knight's Tale," or "Atalanta in Calydon," or "Maud," or "Christ in Hades," or The School for Scandal," or Browning's "Dramatic Lyrics," or "Childe Harold "-the difficulty of choice resolving itself into an embarras de richesses. A searching paper should be set, and, so important is it that the paper should give scope to the literary appreciation of the student, that I have drawn up some questions on the lines on which I think that these papers should run. It is on

"Sohrab and Rustum."

(1) Illustrate from this poem, and discuss the statement, that complex sentences should be avoided in narrative verse.

(2) Quote lines in which you would say that the notes of (1) sublimity and (2) pathos have been rightly struck.

(3) Discuss Matthew Arnold's blank verŝe.

(4) Quote three similes occurring in the poem, mentioning also which you think best, and why.

(5) In what connection do the following occur: (1) polar star, (2) far seen pillar, (3) golden platter, (4) clear porcelain, (5) huddling young, and (6) sinewy wood cutters?

The development, then, of our scheme of literary instruction for the highest Forms involves the following points:

(1) An inculcation of the threefold aspects in which a literary work should be studied (æsthetic, informative, and grammatical). (2) Oral paraphrases.

(3) Definition of literary terms.
(4) Careful paper on holiday task.
(5) Verse composition.

(6) Provision of a literary library.

As a most useful supplement to these efforts let me recommend a fair sprinkling of high literary works in the school library. The tendency is to stock these with fiction and dictionaries; sometimes with patriotic works which no boy reads, but which the master has seen well reviewed (like Captain Mahan's" Sea Power "). I do not say keep these and id genus omne out altogether, but give the others a chance too-"Christ in Hades," Tennyson, M. Arnold, "Sesame and Lilies," &c.

This, gentlemen, is all the practical advice I can offer you on this subject at present. I cannot too strongly impress upon you that literature is the chief channel through which the

emotional part of a boy's mind is appealed to in his school work; and that, for the boy's future good, as much attention should be paid to this part as to any other. Every man has leisure time, and requires relaxation--and seeks it. In the case of the boys who are now under your care, it largely depends upon yourselves whether their leisure hours in maturity are spent in the contemplation of high, noble, and beautiful thoughts, or employed in more ignoble ways. I would ask you, therefore, to put into practice, according to the boys' ages, the suggestions I have made, and I think by so doing you will realise a simple but a most important ideal-the development of a sound taste for good literature.

INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE

IN GERMANY.

INTERNATIONAL correspondence as a means of acquiring modern languages seems to have established itself in Germany. During three years ending in June, 1900, the Centralstelle at Leipzig has found correspondents for 6,641 Germans, of whom 91 per cent. are pupils in schools. Allowing for a certain inevitable leakage, we may estimate that twelve or thirteen thousand persons are engaged in this educative correspondence through this agency alone. The promoters of the movement at Leipzig, whose report has just reached us, have worked hard to bring about this result. Not only have 5,000 copies of last year's circular been distributed among schools and colleges in Germany, France, England, Scotland and North America, and 200 copies of a pamphlet on the subject to the leading journals of Germany and France, but a special appeal has been made through the post to women's training colleges in Germany to the number of 70, to respond to requests for German correspondents from young ladies in North America; and the most careful guidance has been given in every issue for the conduct of the correspondence as a system, as well as directions in fullest detail, for addressing, posting, &c.

In significant contrast with all this energy and the response it has evoked stands the fact that for the year ending June, 1900, the whole of Great Britain and Ireland supplied only 105 correspondents; so that had not North America come to the rescue with 238, it would have been impossible to find the requisite number. As it is, the report bewails the dearth of English-speaking applicants, when France sent 801 in the same twelvemonths. Even then the Fatherland had over 240 unsatisfied applicants. Surely it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that we are as listless in the pursuit of modern languages as our methods of imparting them are antiquated.

The North American Modern Language Association (1899) last year gave emphatic approval to the principle of international correspondence, which seems to have gone the round of the educational press in Germany. A reprint of the recom. mendation in the current issue of the Mitteilungen makes it seem excusable to refer again to its principal clauses. They lay stress on: (1) the advantage of acquaintance with contemporary foreign life, as means of general culture and broad-mindedness: (2) the usefulness of such correspondence as a motive to correct composition. And they conclude: "The committee is, therefore, united in believing that the international correspondence can, with average students, be made a valuable adjunct to foreign language study, and that it certainly deserves a full and impartial trial by interested teachers."

In this connection, the Leipzig Mitteilungen makes some interesting observations on the unanimous resolutions passed in favour of the international correspondence at the Paris Exhibition. Both the Congrès International de l'Enseignement des

Langues Vivantes and the general body of the Congrès International de l'Enseignement Secondaire warmly recommended the system to the attention of educational authorities, as un auxiliaire précieux (see resolution of August 3rd), all the speakers without exception throughout the debates admitting its claims. The occasion was noteworthy as the only one at which schoolmasters and mistresses of all ranks, and not alone modern-language teachers, have considered the subject, and of course the first time that it has been the subject of international deliberation.

The Germans are apparently resolved on the acquisition, by all possible means, of the French and English languages. The latest movement is probably the Veranstaltung fremdsprachlicher Recitationen, by which it is proposed to introduce to students, through the medium of the living voice of an educated reciter, passages from the literature of the foreign language. Thus the English selection includes: Shakespeare, "Julius Cæsar" (Antony's speech); Byron, "The Ocean"; Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life"; Lord Chatham, "On the American War"; Macaulay, A speech delivered in the House of Commons on March 2nd, 1831"; Dickens, "A Christmas Carol, 1"; and Mark Twain, "The Awful German Language." These have been published in a convenient form, and previously studied, and trials have been made in many German towns, which, to judge from figures given, and press comments, have given the most promising results. Nor is it left to private enterprise alone, for on October 9th of this year the Town Council of Magdeburg voted 300 marks for such a recital to be given in the town-hall buildings. Doubtless their example will be widely copied – but it will be in Germany, not in England, we fear! Lectures, too, have been delivered in the foreign languages on set topics, and both lecturers and reciters have been hitherto graduates and natives of the countries whose language they have to illustrate.

AN INTERESTING EDUCATIONAL

EXHIBITION.

WITH their usual enterprise the Technical Instruction Committee of the Manchester City Council have secured, for exhibition in Manchester, the fine collection of educational exhibits sent by the United States Government to the recent Paris Centennial Exhibition to represent the numerous phases of educational effort in the States. Mr. J. H. Reynolds, the Director of the Manchester Municipal Technical and Art Schools, paid two visits to Paris in order to fully study the section of the Exhibition devoted to education, and after his first visit he reported to his Committee that they could not do a better service to education in Manchester and the district than to take steps to secure the American exhibit as a whole for that city.

The Technical Instruction Committee authorised their Chairman (Mr. Alderman Hoy) to take any preliminary steps towards securing the exhibits which were possible. Mr. Hoy proceeded to Paris, and having examined the American collection of educational objects of interest, he fully endorsed Mr. Reynolds's recommendations, and gave the Director authority to proceed with the negotiations with the United States Commissioner. These transactions were brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and an agreement was made by which certain of the fittings have been purchased by the Manchester Committee and the whole of the exhibits secured for display in Manchester.

An arrangement was come to with the Co-operative Wholesale Society, Limited, to ship the exhibits by one of their steamers to Manchester via the Canal. This was successfully accomplished,